So we're going to continue on in our discussion and we've been talking about the obstacles that exist on the spiritual path to Allah. So just a bit of a recap, we really covered one of the main obstacles thus far and today we're going to be deep diving a little bit further into the second one. Last week we touched a little bit on this but we have to do the class online because of the weather so I do want to recap it a little bit in detail just in case folks missed it. So the first big hurdle is the hurdle of knowledge and the idea here is that you can't really travel the path to Allah if you don't have knowledge of who you are trying to reach. So knowledge of Allah, knowledge of the details on how to reach him, knowledge of the rules and then knowledge of the spiritual etiquette on how to approach the path which is the knowledge of how to purify the heart and spirituality. You could be going on the path but you could be going in the wrong direction, run into a lot of hurdles and obstacles when it comes to being deceived by shaitan, being deceived by your nuts. And so these are all challenges that exist along the spiritual path for the one who's taking it seriously. So the first step is knowledge and the three types of knowledge we covered that are obligatory for the Muslim to learn. These are but are called farad-e-ain knowledge, individual obligations meaning that if you pass away without having learned these knowledges we will hopefully not but according to the understanding of our scholars that we will be held to account for these knowledges. For the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that it is incumbent on the Muslim to learn and this is the farad at its basic minimum, right? So what are these farad-e-ain knowledges? It's knowledge of Aqidah, knowledge of what we believe about Allah, what we believe about the angels, the prophets, the books, the day of judgment, the grave, the next life and kind of our core set of beliefs. For those people if they're Muslim they have a general sense of their belief. It's good and especially for the one who's taking the path seriously to review a text of Aqidah and actually study that. That's one of the most essential things to study because when doubts and issues come up along the path you need to have the intellectual defense that is already ready in order to make sure that you understand who you are traveling to, right? Especially in a society full of atheistic philosophy, just a godless society in general, there are a lot of these tendencies and a lot of these questions that come up. And so that's why Aqidah is important to study and belief is important to study. This is going to inform how someone views the world. The second as we mentioned is that it is wajib according to the dominant opinion for a Muslim, again someone especially who's taking the religion seriously to have a madhab and to follow a singular madhab in the religion for most of their rulings. And then if there's a small percentage of which they need to take what's called a ruksa, a distanciation from, they can. If someone does not have a follow specific madhab, it's most likely that growing up or whatever family they're from, that they were something they just didn't know. We have four accepted madhabs, except in the Sunni tradition, right? The Hanifah school, Shafi school, Maliki school, Hanbali school. And the Shia tradition has their own madhab with the Jafari school. And there's not significant differences between these. It's all from the core teachings of our religion. They all are from the Qur'an and from the sunnah of Prophet Muhammad. So let's a little bit in case folks understand, oh, what's the difference between them? Why is someone not going directly to the Qur'an and the sunnah? That's a really long discussion.  They do a checkup. They say, hey, take this medicine in order to handle your cholesterol issues. And instead of going listening to what the doctor says, you say, well, hold on, what what page of the medical textbook did you find this on? And they're like, well, which medical textbook I studied like 250 of them. And you're like, well, you know, the main one. And then there's so many of them. And then and then you'll say, what is the composition of the chemicals and what reaction happens when you actually take the medicine that you're giving me? And they'll say, well, this is what happens. They'll try to explain it at a basic level and that someone has to probe further without having any knowledge of framework. That is the equivalent of somebody trying to go into the Qur'an and into the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam directly, meaning the hadith and try to extract rulings of thick. This is not to extract moral advice. It's the domain of every Muslim to extract moral guidance from the Qur'an and from the hadith. That's obvious. So if it says, be kind to your parents, OK, that we got to do that. The Naseh Hussana Allah says, speak good to people. We do that. But then there's rulings that are given, right? And the rulings need context. And the Muslims who don't have the requisite knowledge, they take these rulings out of context, which is why we have crazy Muslims running around in parts of the Muslim world doing unthinkable things that would have never been done in the past in the name of Islam. And they can find a verse to justify it, just like the Ku Klux Klan can find verses in their books to justify what they're doing. But all of those things are taken out of context. And that's why knowledge brings someone to the middle path, true knowledge. But it must be done with the guidance and it must be done with seeking knowledge from those people, which is why we are told to obey our scholars. The people of Vicar, this is beyond just knowledge. These are people who internalize deep internal knowledge, spiritual knowledge and external knowledge when you don't know the answer to something. Allah doesn't actually go directly to find the answers in the source text. As just an example. So anyways, all that to say in case folks have questions on why you. That's why it's why you have to follow a madhab, one of the four schools. Not difficult to learn. What advice would be to study a basic text in the in a madhab? And I have an example here that, for example, in the Hanif school, this is an introductory text that one can study, is that translated Maraki Sa'adat, Ascent of Felicity. And it's not very long and it is all the basic things that someone needs to know with regards to the prayer, with regards to fasting, with regards to Hajj, with regards to Zakat. And those are the obligations. And then what someone does any time they're about to embark on something important in their life, they learn the fifth of that. So when it's time to get married, the sake of marriage, also the sake of divorce, because that's important when you are getting married. So you know what if you say something that ends up in a divorce, there are unfortunately people who don't realize that their marriages are unknowable, they're divorced without realizing and they're still living together because they said something that in Sharia equates to divorce. We don't know all these things. It's very difficult to claim ignorance when we spend decades of time learning everything for our dunya and we don't spend the requisite time and if the access is there when it comes to knowledge. And this is why the scholars of the spiritual science, what they're trying to do is they're trying to wake the Muslim up. Specifically, the texts we're studying, Imam al-Khazali's text that's the framework for this discussion. He really has a like wake up, wake up, wake up type approach, which is why if someone reads his text directly without studying them, teacher, sometimes they'll get a little bit startled by how direct he is because it's very, very, very direct. And because the whole goal is the nafs, which is the ego and the lower self. It doesn't like to wake up. It likes to just be lazy. It likes to think it has money every time. It likes to make excuses for itself. It doesn't make excuses for other people. But we learn in our religion, you make 70 excuses for other people, you make zero excuses for yourself. The nafs likes to make a thousand excuses for itself and negative excuses for other people. It's like looking to find faults in other human beings and it doesn't like to find faults in itself, which is why the scholars of spirituality, their goal is to wake us up and in a very, very real way. And so in this case, when it comes to knowledge, this is these are the regulatory notions and so they're pretty strict in terms of the kind of command. The book for the one asking, it's called Minhaj al-Abideen ila jannat Rabb al-Alamin, the path of the spiritual service to the garden of Allah and you can get this on Amazon. It's written in English, Imam Pai Mamal Al-Zadeen. So the third type of knowledge is the knowledge of spirituality, diseases of the heart. What are the diseases? How do you cure them? And that's obligatory to learn because some of the diseases of the heart are major sins, meaning that just like you have an external major sin, like adultery or like, you know, zina or fornication, something like that, you have internal major sins, like envy, envy in someone, being extremely jealous of someone and wishing that they didn't have some. That's a very serious sin in our religion, but it's inside the heart and somebody may not realize that they have this and so serious that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that envy burns your good deeds away like fire burns wood. It'll just completely get rid of the good deeds when you feel envious of someone because the root of envy is you think you know more than Allah. Allah gave that person a blessing and you're essentially questioning where we're questioning Allah. Why did you do that? I deserve the job. I deserve the promotion. I deserve the spouse. I deserve the child, the house, whatever thing it is that we are jealous of. That we are jealous of. So that that is very, very, very important. And for those who are asking questions as mentioned in the introduction online, that there is that we have question and some breaks of which we take every 20 to 30 minutes. And then at the end, so please reserve your questions. We will not be doing questions intermittently because we're trying to cover under that. So those are the three sciences and this whole text is about the third, essentially, it's about the science of spirituality. And how to that travel that science. But I have to travel that path. But the first two are going to be, of course, outside of this book. And it's important for someone to study them. And it takes like a weekend. Like it doesn't take much time. But enough will delay, delay, delay, delay, delay because it wants to waste time. Is it possible for the sisters to see if that door can be open? I think there's other people trying to come into the back door. Yeah, thank you. OK, so now once someone has established knowledge, they they realize that this is a hurdle and they begin the path to clear the hurdle. The first thing we realize, and again, this is serious in terms of the it's kind of it's a little bit heavy. We realize how many mistakes we've made in our life. That's the first thing. That's the first thing that I'm going to say. I mentioned you're going to realize that, OK, I want to the path of spirituality. I want to travel the path of obedience. I want to travel, try to travel the path of getting closer to a lot. And the first realization comes when we learn like, oh, man, I've really been slipping up. I did this wrong and this wrong. And I was making this mistake and this mistake. And Shaytan's goal is going to try to be quick. Get off get off the path, not what your time. Just live a life of fun and heedlessness. And and it's all, you know, it's all going to be just OK. But the goal of the person traveling, the goal of the person traveling is to first at this point, seek repentance. So you seek a, you begin the process of asking Allah for repentance and asking Allah to forgive our mistakes and our sins. Now, it's important to understand that when we sin, we clog up our, we really block our own spiritual progress. How is that the case? Because this path of trying to get close to Allah, there are different paths in our religion. OK, there is Allah described this in the Quran. Ashab-ul-Yameen, the people of the right hand in Surah Waqia, the Muqar Rabin, the people who are trying to get really close to Allah and the Ashab-ul-Shimal, the people at hand. That's obviously not what we want. That is the path of that hellfire. Then there's the path of the people of the right hand. And then there's the path of those who really want to get close. Imam Ghazali is usually speaking to the people who are for sure trying to be people of the right hand and people who want to be really close. That when someone is being admitted to Jannah, there are going to be rows and rows and rows, 120 rows, and some narrations potentially more. But we're talking rows of millions and hundreds of millions of people potentially. And these are the people they want to be in first place. They want to be the, that Saab-ul-Khayrat, as Allah mentioned in the Quran. They want to be ahead of everybody, ahead. And but Allah says that there's many of them in the early generation Wa Qaleel Min Al-Akhirin and a few of them in the later generations. We are obviously in the later generation, but he didn't say that there's none, that there are people who are really trying to get close in the time that we live in. And there's two ways to achieve this, with many ways to achieve it. But one of the ways is to work, do all the work yourself and just hope that you're going to get there. The second way is to put the effort but to love the people who are already likely there. Allah knows best and to ultimately rely on Allah. We don't rely on all the efforts that we put in, because we're going to make mistakes. We might want to do this. We might want to wake up early and pray. Hadja, all the time, if we want to fast and all the acts someone wants to do, they might, there are people who want to make sure they go 15 hours a day without thinking a lot, other than thinking a lot. This is the state of these people that they are trying to always be in the presence. Obligations are things they've been doing for 10, 15 years consistently. Now they're in a state where they want to be present. That's the end goal of this text we're going to be talking about. And that is not easy to do, which is why we don't ultimately, when we set out on this and when we even read some of these more, again, heavy words, we don't rely on our own deeds. We rely on Allah. We do the deeds. We hope Allah gives us the benefit of them, but we rely on him when it comes to his mercy. And the secret of the time we live is it comes in various narrations that the weight of something small that we do will be worth 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 times something the Sahaba would do. Why? Because they all had Muslims and people of righteousness to support each other. And we're just out of your time to survive. We're just barely hanging on, right? It's like holding on to a hot hole is like that metaphor given in the Hadith when it comes to holding on to your need in this time. But that's why the people who in these lands we live in, lands of overall, there's not much belief in these lands in the Western world that they hold on to bigger and they try to do extra. They get a lot extra because a little really goes a lot. These gifts are being distributed by Allah. There's called their call. There's various names for the gifts with some of the scholars that use the term Nafahat, spiritual breezes that these deep breezes that come on to the person and that they by means of these breezes, that person is like magnetically pulled towards Allah. But if there's no one seeking those breezes, then it's just given to one person or two people, three people that are doing it. But traditionally, there would always be like a hundred or a thousand people. They each get a little portion. But now the reasons are distributed. There's only a few people seeking them and they're going to get the biggest portion. Which is why in the time we live, it goes a long way, but it must be done correctly. And Shaytan's whole goal is to try to be to make sure we don't do our deen correctly, which is why knowledge is the first hurdle. That you can pray and fast. And the whole time we're doing something wrong, that all of it is at risk of counting, of actually being accepted because the knowledge wasn't there. But learn a little bit of knowledge, make sure it's done correctly. And the potential to reach high stations with Allah and get our deeds accepted is very, very high. Inshallah, especially because of the time that we live here, especially because of the time that we live in. OK, so we'll go ahead and continue, inshallah. So now we get into this is the goal, right? Now, as this because this goal is one of complete purity, there can't be blocks and shackles and impurities in our way. And that's why repentance is so, so critical because our goal is to achieve this state with the prophets of Allah, as I mentioned, in the famous Hajj of real, which is the state of Aqsa, which is to worship Allah as though you see him. That someone in their worship specifically and in most of their moments, they're in a state where they minimum realize Allah is watching them. But in the higher states, they actually are worshiping as though they see the cosmos and as though they see the unseen. And then, of course, that as though they are able to see Allah. It's not something that words really taste that someone says, Oh, and someone will feel a taste from it's like we've if we've ever felt like, you know, in Ramadan and those nights when we're really trying to worship a little bit of the tranquility and delight, imagine 100,000 times that. And that probably wouldn't even get to the thing that these people are feeling, right? Now, this is very pure. It's a very pure, pure, pure, pure, pure feeling, which is why sin cannot get in the way, which is why sin cannot get in the way. And that's current sin for sure. But past sin is how does past sin get in the way because it's tainted the heart. And if the heart's not clean, how can it be pure? Ultimately, your heart is like a mirror. The spiritual heart, the calb is like a mirror. And it needs to be rubbed and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed until it becomes perfectly clean and then it can reflect on it. The Nur, the Nur of Allah and it can reflect this light. And when it reflects this light, you benefit and everybody around you benefits. Everybody around you benefits because the light will be so strong that will be coming from the Divine Presence, that will be hitting your heart and that will spread towards everybody else. And Allah talks about this light in Surah Nur in the Quran. And the prophets of Allah have been narrated in a bunch of different collections, speaks of this Nur. But this Nur, if the mirror is dirty and it's full of things and it's full of darkness or it's just completely covered up, it's not going to be able to reflect the light. It's not going to be able to capture it. And so that's why we polish, polish, polish. And the first step of polishing, he's going to get into a bunch of different things we need to do throughout the book. Really, ultimately, the goal is to polish the heart. But the first step is repentance because the big sin and the biggest shackles they're literally holding someone back and they are the biggest blocks to that spiritual progress for somebody. And you and I might not even know that sin we did ten ago, we never repented for. And that's blocking us from progressing. We can't figure out why can't I feel like I'm close? Why can't I get close? We don't know. And it's a sin we never repented for. We just took it lightly, maybe. Right. And so Imam Ghazali, he's calling us now to really seriously take ourselves to account because there's a day when Allah takes everybody to account, but the person who's traveling path, they take themselves to account every day or at least a few times in the year before Allah takes them to account when they pass away. We don't want that. We don't even want us. There are people who enter Jannah without accounting. That the lady is that is mentioned. We want to be from those people. We don't want even face just even if all the accounting is going to go out just to be questioned for a millisecond by Allah. We can't handle it. It's just not it's very difficult. It's it's so over. It's going to be so overwhelming. We don't even want to do that. And so the key to do to to to being from these people who are not going to be held to account is to hold ourselves to account every single day, hold ourselves to account every single day to reflect on what we've done and the sins that are dragging us down. The sins that are dragging us down. And he mentions that for those who they want Allah to use them in his service, he wants them to use them in doing Allah's work. That how can they do that if they are shackled down by these impurities? That how can they serve the Lord when the impurities are shackled? And so that's why, again, this path of purity becomes so important. And he also says for those who see called intimate conversation with Allah, that there are people who the whole day they're in a what's called they're having to do that with Allah. There is the time you sit there, you make dua, you pray. And that's that's to establish the connection and to further it, to give your Salat, establishes your Sela, your connection. And then there is the people who are always in a state of prayer. As Allah says in the Quran, that they're in Salatim, that they're always in a state of prayer. And these are the people they're just always talking about having a deep content. They're aware Allah is watching them. They're in a conversation with him. They're they're thinking through what is Allah trying to teach them in every moment, what an attribute of Allah is manifesting in their life and every moment. Is it his looks, his gentleness? It is his God, his intensity and pride? Is it his majesty? What is it? And they're aware they're having this dialogue with Allah. But all of these states, they began with purity and purity starts with cleaning the heart and cleaning the heart begins with repentance. And so the sin will impact our worship and it will impact our ability to achieve these states in a variety of ways. The first thing that's going to happen when it comes to worshipping Allah, we want to get the goal is to worship him in a state of purity. The first thing that happens when sin is bogging us down is limbs will be really sluggish, which is not will be lazy. We want to do it and a sign of this is the prayer time comes in we're like, I'll do it later and then it comes and then it goes. Especially these days, it's going by like this and next thing you know, lower came in at 1230, it's now like 248, Asr is about to come in and we still haven't prayed. That's a sign that this limbs are sluggish and that the sin is shackling us down. Even worse state than that is, of course, that the prayer time comes and goes and we just skip it all together out of either negligence, forgetfulness. But ultimately what he's saying is that the one who sins have covered their heart up such that they are blocked, they will be those who are sluggish in obedience. And for the one who's present, who's been working on themselves, no matter what, no matter what happens, they are going to be in a state of the first to pray as soon as the prayer time comes in. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said in a hadith that the best of these is prayer at the beginning of its time, the beginning of its time. It's not for the one who's traveling the path, the prayer at the end of the time, they seek toba from why did they pray at the end of the time? I'm sorry, I prayed so late. There's no praying in the time, but that's not the path of virtue. The path of virtue is to pray when the prayer comes in. With the exception of Isha, in general, you have a longer window. But for every other prayer, Fajr, Boher, Asr, Maghrib, to pray, especially Maghrib, to pray when it comes in close to the beginning, ideally for men in Jama'at in the Masjid and for that if you're not able to pray in the Masjid in Jama'at at home and for women that it's completely permissible or permissible for both or for women, there's abundant rewards still for praying at the house. And it's permissible, of course, to pray in the month. But this is the reward for the one who's seeking, again, first place. This is the goal and they're trying to get first place in this race to Allah. They want it. So they're going to be showing up first to everything, first, the first to do good deeds, to believe in something. The first two and one of the secrets of Sayyidina Abu Bakr, is that the minute the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told him something, he just believed it without any doubt. He was the first that he would just always be wouldn't you question it that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam came from Isra'a Meiraj and the people of Makkah were that they that they found out and he told them that he was in Jerusalem last night and in the heavens. And the people of Makkah were walking around being like, yeah, like, look, he believes that he went to Jerusalem, which is like this many days of a journey away. And the book was like, if he believes it, if he said it, I believe it. He said things that are harder for someone to believe, like the fact that he received revelation from God via angels. So this is not difficult for me to believe. He was just the first in that day. He received the title of the one who confirmed the truth, the completely truthful. So this is the reason why one of the reasons why repentance is on board and a sign to evaluate. And again, the sometimes it's difficult for the enough to think about this, but it's important because it's better that we evaluate our diseases right now than we wait a long period. The sign, if we are unable to wake up for Fajr or for unable to wake up for Tahajud, if we have that intention, but we're unable to do so, or we're unable to do like extra good, like we're unable to do extra fasts, barring some health issue or something like that, right? Like that's a different scenario or some overwhelming circumstance in our life. Like this is for extra needs for the legatory needs. It's still required, obviously. We have to look what sin are we shackling down because there's some or another that's locking back. That's either backbiting too much and we're not realizing it. We're talking way too much about other people, right? Which has happened a lot in our time. He said, she said, there's constant backbiting. There's backbiting on social media and common threads. A lot of backbiting that goes down. We're watching something we shouldn't be watching. The world is full of filth these days. 99% of shows on Netflix are hot on because of how much inappropriate clothing, that action, all the different types of inappropriate scenes that exist, right? But it's full of it. And we are doing what everybody else is doing. We're just following everybody else. The Muslim is not a follower. Some is a leader. The Muslim does not follow what everybody else does. The Muslim follows the Prophet's OSL 11, the Sunnah and the issue that exemplified the credit Sunnah. But we have to examine. So when we are in this state, the first question we ask is, what am I doing? Why can't I wake up? It's, and we don't, we make excuses for ourselves. So our excuse can't be, well, I just slept too late and I just, you know, I'm really tired because of work. No, no, there's people who sleep three hours a night and they're up for Fajr at the beginning of Fajr. They're up for the Hajj. So what is blocking us from that time? Why? Because that time is the chosen time, especially the Hajj. It's a very special time. If Allah blesses us with it, it's a sign of goodness. But if we're unable to do so, we have to examine. Where, what are we doing wrong? And same thing with any good deed. If we're consistently missing any prayer, there's two levels to look at it. One is at the level of our own laziness. The second is we don't have tofiq from Allah. And both levels are important. The second one is harder to accept. But it's important that if Allah does not give someone enabling grace to do something, they're not going to be able to do it. And sin will not enable grace from coming. And the punishment for sin, as Allah says in the Quran, is more sin. If someone contains sin, the punishment for the sin is he'll put them into another sin, which is why people who drink, especially people who drink a lot, you'll notice they'll come in six or seven other sins from the time from just drinking. They'll drink and then they'll say foul words and then they'll hurt somebody. The people who drive while drunk, they hurt themselves. They hurt other individuals just through one sin. And not to mention the lewdness and the foul behavior that comes with that. Because they did the sin and now more and more sins and punishment and the reward for the good deed. There's a reward in the next life, but the reward in this life is more good deeds. Nurun ala nur. That you get nur, light, and light brings more light. So someone gets light from a good deed and it brings more light and it brings more light. And so we have to examine at the first level is outwardly. And outwardly, what are we doing that is lost from spiritual progress? The second thing we need to know about repentance is that it's incumbent so that our worship will be that accepted, that our worship will be accepted. So if someone is, let's say we do a lot of extra worship, like we pray a lot of extra prayers and do these types of things with extra put on, but we have yet to repent from the sin. What we're doing is from the sins of the old days, let's say, right? Well, if we have repented, we're focusing on something extra, but we haven't gotten to the first priority yet. So this comes down to now. My mom is trying to remind us, hold on, first just make sure you clear out the past. And most people will do that. Like most people will have a wake up moment where they're like, oh wow, I really think we're doing some wrong things and we'll sincerely repent. But the problem becomes when Shaitan makes us think that what we did wrong. And then it's like, well, you need to repent for it. You weren't even doing anything wrong. It's all good, everybody else is doing it. They're fine, right? And so we have to repent from things that in the Sharia are haram. We have to learn what those are. And we'll talk about a few of those kind of core, the core categories of what those deeds are. But we have to learn and then we began the process of asking Allah for forgiveness. Because he's basically saying that have this voluntary donation we're giving, be accepted when the debt we have due is yet to be cleared. The debt that a human being has due isn't cleared and we're trying to do extra credit. No, we have to prioritize, get the debt cleared and then do the extra, then do the extra credit. And prioritization is really, really important when it comes to working on our spiritual progress and working on our sins. And this is also something that we won't try not to make the tension about this, but the Muslim, we've kind of forgotten how to prioritize. We'll focus on very, very, very small things and because it'll become like viral or it'll become widespread that, oh, saying this haram, doing this is a small little thing, really irrelevant to those spiritual progress. Meanwhile, like I gave this example before, people make a huge fuss about saying, Merry Christmas and like, oh my God, you can't say Merry Christmas. Meanwhile, they're back inviting people left and right, talking smack about other people, drop bombs, cursing, all things that are categorically 100% haram verified in various hadith versus the intention, let's say someone has of saying Merry Christmas is that they're not believing in the shirk, they're not believing in it and they're just saying it, right? 100% not nearly as bad as what they could, what most of those people are doing. But they think, and this is where the nuffs is very tricky.  You don't even say Merry Christmas. You don't even listen to a Christmas jingle.  And meanwhile, instead what the nuffs will do and this is very subtle, is it'll hear a group of Muslims who do this and by name, it's one thing if someone says, I hope Allah like assists the Muslims. So there's a general thing that does not as backbiting. But when someone says, oh, so misguided, may Allah guide him, like that, when they take the name of the Lord, it's just slipping, it's just really slipping, may Allah guide him. The nuffs will come in the form of a dua and say you're making a dua for that person, you're getting the sin for backbiting because your dua is a dua of arrogance, making it seem like you are in that person for something that they did because it's something that they did and you are quote unquote claiming to that, this self-righteous kind of supplication which is obviously not a true supplication, right? A true supplication is not made in front of people like that. If you sincerely care about someone, you'll wake up in the middle of the night and pray for them and Allah guide them.  But this is the trick of the nuffs that the nuffs is very, very subtle. And this is where the Muslims, we've lost our prioritization. So we're focusing on all these silly little things and we forget to focus on the big stuff, on the big blocks that are really blocking us. Everybody can evaluate based on the presence we have in ourselves a lot, how much our sins are shackling us. And for most of us, I mean, at the top of this list, like very difficult to be present in our prayer. So I know there's big things blocking, big things blocking. And we have to ask ourselves, what is blocking? Let alone if we miss the prayer, that's a whole different story, right? Let alone if we delay the prayer, we miss the prayer. But if just by praying and not being present for the one who's traveling the path of spirituality, they have to ask themselves what sins are blocking you. So there's three categories we want to look at here in terms of the types of sins. The first is the sin of omitting an obligatory duty that is due to Allah, the second is a sin between Allah and the third is a sin between you and another human being. The first category is that omitting obligatory duty. So this essentially boils down to missing fasts and missing saccots. Those are really the primary obligatory duties. There could be a few more, but these are really the key ones. So here, what someone has to do is at minimum, we have to ask Allah to forgive us for missing these and then we have to make up what we owe. So starting with, let's say let's start with the fasts because it's super, super clear and it's easier to count. Okay, if we know we had days where we miss fasts, if we had a valid religious excuse, like let's say that a woman is on her cycle, right? Keep track of those and then ideally you make them up ideally before the next Ramadan comes. But if not then you still need to get those made up and you keep track. If someone was that not a sin, obviously that's not a sin, but these are just something someone missed. But if someone just misses them and doesn't keep track, makes no effort to keep track, that becomes a big problem, right? But let's say now someone purposefully misses fasting. We just had a time period in our life where we're like, I don't want to fast. I just don't want to do it, right? Or someone's like, I'll fast one day and then I'll take the next day off. Like whatever path we were on that we were struggling, we have to make up those fasts. We have to calculate those fasts. We have to make them up. And then we have to do what's called kafada for the fasts that we missed. And that's a whole separate thick discussion, but there's different rules. Like if we missed one for a valid reason, that's like a one to one, oh wait. But if someone broke the fasts, let's say purposefully, someone purposefully ate food during the Ramadan fast in the middle of the day at 2 p.m. Or they purposefully had a relationship with someone, intercourse with someone. Then they do 60 days of continual fasting is the expectation for that. Six, two months of just straight fasting outside of Ramadan, not including Ramadan, and the fast that they missed. So these are examples of, so we have to calculate, okay, did we ever do this? And some of the schools do allow for someone to pay to give food and feed 60 people. But the kind of stronger opinion you could say that the stronger thing to do is to do the 60 days continuously for the purposeful. If someone did it accidental, that's different, right? Even if there's, within fasting, there are times where we might have broken our fast, we might not have known we broke our fast. But we still owed that one fast. Like if we, there's like a bunch of technicals, like if we saw a toothpaste or something like that, right? Like we shouldn't have done that. We technically that fast would have been broken. We owed that fast. We're not in a state of sin because we didn't do it intentionally. So all these things have to be made up. That's when it comes to fasting. Then we have prayer. When it comes to prayer, this one takes a little bit longer. But it is required according to the consensus of Bulimah. You're talking about 99% of Bulimah in the Shafi, Maliki, and Hanifi school. And many of the other scholars all who said that if you miss prayers from your past, you're required to make them up. And that is this opinion we should be taking when it comes to miss prayer because it is the first thing we're asked about on the day of judgment, according to one hadith that are prayer. And so then the one who is starting to travel the path, the first thing we do after we start to learn these things is we say, okay, I got to calculate my missed prayers. And I have to figure out from you start with the time you had puberty to the time you know you started praying five times a day or closer by five times a day. And then you determine in between those years how consistently did you pray? Because we know can be, I always prayed lower nasser. I wasn't really regular on Fajr and I probably missed the other ones. Then we assume for those years, let's say someone started praying, let's say someone has five years of prayer to make up, right? They may have in the first, in all five of those years, they may have prayed most of their doha's and assas so they take an estimation. They say I only owe 10% of my doha's and assas but I owe 100% of the missed Fajr, Maghrib and Nisha. And you create a spreadsheet or something of this sort. You calculate that and then you begin the process of making it up. Those prayers, according again to most of the schools take precedence over any nafila prayers. Many, including tarawih. So many of them, they recommend that you either pray some portion of tarawih and go home and do makeups or that you pray Isha and the Masjid and the Ramadan and you go home and do makeup prayers if you are gonna be consistent with it, right? And do 20 rakah, makeup rather than 20 rakah. That's how serious it is. In many of the schools, it takes precedence over the sunnah as well. So some of the scholars recommend do the sunnah Fajr regularly but all the other sunnahs, if you don't have the Himmah to do the Fajr, the sunnah and the makeup, in lieu of the sunnahs, we need to be doing makeup prayers. So with Lohar, you could do her makeup. And the makeups don't have to be done in the time that they were missed. So you could make up Fajr at 7 p.m. and you could make up Isha at 3 a.m. It doesn't matter what time. Intention must be that you make a Qada for a makeup and then you begin to track it. And then you begin to track it. And there's a tracker online, tinyurl.com slash makeup prayers that have a spreadsheet that one can use to calculate with some instructions and then you can just put in the years and then it'll calculate the number of prayers that someone uses this tinyurl.com slash makeup prayers. So that is the second thing. And as long as someone starts off on the path to do so, inshallah, and then we pass away and we haven't done it and we haven't finished, Allah inshallah will give us the reward. The key is to begin. The key is to begin, the key is to try because there are people who have 10 years, 15, 20 years they have to do, but the inspiration should be, well, this is something that's a debt due to Allah. I make time for all sorts of other things in life so I can make some time for a debt that I have to do. That is the, and when the nafs comes or when people come and they try to, might encourage us, well, don't worry about this. It's all taken care of. It's agreed upon by most of the scholars that going to Hajj waves the sin of missing, but not the debt that's due.   We might go to Hajj. The sin of that is taken care of and the example that one can use is if you owe someone, let's say $10,000 and you delay, you just keep ignoring them and you just, for like 10 years, you just don't speak to them, you never pick up their calls.  You go to them and you say, I'm so sorry for just ignoring you for all these years.  You can't just say, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you're gonna forgive the $10,000. The debt is still due because the prayer is that significant. There are some very minority opinions out there that one would not do so, but again, we're talking like 1% versus 99% of the scholars. I would not recommend taking those opinions. The Miss Prayers for the One Who Missed is tinyurl.com slash makeup prayers for the tracker. Then you have Miss Zakat. Many of us that we probably weren't earning our money up until a certain point in life, Miss Zakat is calculated by you to determine at what point did you start having enough earnings and savings above the Nisab amount. This is a matter of thick. You calculate the Nisab amount. It's not much, about 1,000, 2,000 or so. And then if we miss paying Zakat in those years, we have to go back and roughly calculate how much Zakat we owe. And then we pay that Zakat. And we get serious about the Zakat that we, Zakat is calculated from lunar year to lunar year, or from, yeah, in one lunar year. So let's, most people pick Ramadan, any Islamic month, and you calculate that in that time, how much, for the most part, liquid savings or assets to someone have, and you calculate 2.5% and you give that. So someone has $10,000 in their savings. At that end time, they would give 2.5%. So, what, $250 for Zakat that they'd have due. And then that's the obligation. That's the far, and then for, there's also Zakat due on gold and livestock has its own, but I don't think any of us have, you know, bunch of goats or anything like that. So, Zakat is something someone calculated from the past, and then we make sure we are consistent on it now. Many of us have 401Ks and other investment vehicles. Zakat is due on those investment goals, and you have to figure out what is the percentage that's due and when with someone. So would it be paid that year, or would it be paid at the time when you take the, you know, you get paid out for the 401K and so on. So those are things. So Ms. Prayers, Ms. Fasts, Ms. Zakat, I'm in love. And so it's the first step is ask Allah, ya Allah. Sorry, I made this mistake and I just neglected this. And then the second step is to make it up. And all of this obviously has to come with some form of motivation. It's very difficult to do this if it feels like a burden. Like this is why the beginning of this, and we talked about this in the first class, I know today's a little bit more kind of like direct. But it requires like this love and this kind of drawing this whole from Allah, Allah says that Allah will put this desire in the human being to want to draw near to him. And then they was out on the spiritual path of taking their life seriously. And it's a really, really, really good sign, inshallah, a really blessed sign. We can't do enough shukr. If somebody begins in the time we live and think about it, not even including the non-Muslims, just among the Muslims, how many people don't just aren't taking the Deen seriously at all. That even seriously is probably not even the right word. We're just, how many people are not even praying Jumma that any of the far prayers, let alone the five, let alone caring about zakat and all these other things. I mean, so it's a big blessing if Allah gives someone the Himmah and the inspiration to want to care about these things. Now we have to do, he says you have to safeguard that. You have to safeguard it. Meaning don't let the pull and the push and pull of dunya and of what everybody else is doing around you, get to you. Because sometimes traveling the path of taking it seriously, there will be a lot of people. Sometimes in your own family, sometimes in your own community, sometimes your own friend circle that are like doing. Why are you making, Allah says make it easy. Prophet Muhammad SAW said they'll bust out all the hadith about easy. They'll use the hadith, the religion is easy, everything's easy and without the seriousness aspect of it. And you have to struggle, say no, no, no, no, no. I already took it easy for a long time. I was taking it easy for 10 years. Now I'm trying to make up for that easy and I have a lot of work to do. And that the spiritual traveler, they're easy with their people, but you're hard on yourself. You're not hard with everybody and easy on yourself. No, you're easy with that. So other people, it's like, okay, you guys do what you gotta do until someone is in a position of scholarship or responsibility as a parent or something like that. And then of course their responsibilities there. But in general with other people, it's like take it easy. But with yourself, hard. The Muslims inverted that these days. We are hard with everybody else, we're easy on ourselves. We have to be hard with our own enoughs, hard with our, take ourselves to account. And with everybody else, we make excuses for them. Okay, maybe they didn't know, maybe they didn't know that we make a variety of excuses. And the question, do you have to get on property? No, you do not. On the property you live in, you will not be given to God. So if you, or if you have rental property or you own a home or something like that, you do not give the God the 2.5% of the God on a home in the Bay Area. And that would be, you know, you'd have to sell the home to pay that. So like stocks, if you have like liquid stocks, RSUs options, you work at a tech company. If it's liquid and it's possible to liquid date, the God is due on those. So that's important to keep in mind. So that's the first step is the obligatory duties. And if we omit it, get on the path. And the prioritization here becomes so helpful that once someone shifts their perspective and they start focusing, the nafs will not want to give up extra deeds to do these obligatory duties. That's one warning that our teachers is like, someone could be praying the hachua, then they could be praying all their sunnas and reciting Quran and doing all these things. But for some reason, they can't get themselves to make up their prayers. They're just like, what, make up prayers? No, I'm not gonna, the nafs hates it because it loves extra things. There's enough that loves doing the extra because it wants the internal attention. It develops this disease called ujjab. Looking and being impressed with this, look at how much extra I'm doing. Look at how much I'm doing. I'm such a great person and they love that. But obligatory from the past, that's a humbling thing.  No, you're not gonna feel proud praying that.  It'll humble you. And that's why the mis prayers will take precedence over the nafida. And then when it's done, you'll have reward inshallah, inshallah inshallah, to be able to do more of nafila and a himmah to do the nafila. And some people, they'll make the enchanter say someone's regular on the hachua or doha prayer, but they're praying that they have many years of misprayers. You'll just pray your misprayer at that time. You'll still, inshallah, get the reward of the time, right? That would be another recommendation is if you wake up with the hachua regularly, just make your misprayers at the hachua time. Don't make the enchanter for the hachua, make the enchanter for mis salah and so on. And it's the, before you give sadhaka, let's say you have a lot of charitable projects you wanna give to, on the little button in Islamic relief, just click zaka instead of sadhaka and make the intention for your past zaka. It's not like, it's not difficult, but the nafs makes it difficult. You just have to get, that you have to get, we just have to kind of get serious about it. The second sin, category of sin, is sins between us and Allah. Okay, so these are admitting obligatory duties. The second is sins that are meant that Allah will hold us to account for. And then the third category is between other people. This would include the drinking, for example, drinking alcohol, drinking or consuming any other type of drug. There's a list of about sin to 70 depending on the scholar and depending on which sources they're pulling from of the major sins, not even of the minor sins, but of the major ones, right? So this would include adultery. It would include fornication and zina, right? So sexual relations outside of marriage would include lying when taking an oath. This would include bearing false testimony when you're asked for testimony. This would include the sin of stealing. This would include the sin of consuming interest. And I'm gonna just deep dive on this one for a second because it's very ignored in the West in the time that we live in. So these are amongst the major sins. And there's more that for someone attending inappropriate gatherings, let's say going to Haram gatherings, parties and clubs and these types of places that these are considered major sins which have brought out a lot of rust into the heart. They must be ideally individually repented for, but if not kind of a collective, sincere repentance, I'll forgive me for that whole life of wrong that I was doing should be done. Now, the inspiration we have here is that many of the greatest Muslims of the past used to live lives that we would never imagine. One of the stories that's narrated, it's a true story, is about a man who used to be a highway robber and had a gang of highway robbers. So imagine we don't really have highway robbers, now we just have gangs. And so they're just like, that they create problems for people.  And then they wouldn't kill the people, they just take everything they have and let them go. So him and his group of fellow gang members, they would just be jumping all these caravans.  There's a whole process.  So they'd have many things with them and they would, these people would jump them and take everything. So one day this man, he took something from a group and a guy decided from that group to find out where this man is and where his gang is and to go and confront him. And he's like, I got my stuff back. And so he goes and he sees his associates and then there's leader and he's like, where's your leader? And he's like, he's praying. It's like, what? It's not even prayer time. Like it's not the horse, the horse, it's not prayer time. He's like, oh yeah, no, he's praying nafila. He's praying extra prayers. And he's like, what is this guy doing? And so he goes and he's like, what's up with you?  And then he says that the topic of food comes up and he says, I'm fast. He says, I can't eat today. I'm fasting.  Like he just again, didn't make any sense. And he was like, it's all, it wasn't Ramadan. It wasn't Ramadan. And he says enough, it's an extra fast that he's doing. And he's like, again confused. And so he says that, you know, I know I'm doing a lot of wrong and I'm like, I'm trying. I want to stop it, but I'm trying to just keep our two doors between me and God open. Just one or two doors between me and God open like something some good deed open between me and God, even though I know I'm doing wrong. And I believe in this in the narration, he gives them the man who came to request things, back his things. And then one day he's that also either I on one of his missions with his gang and he hears this Aya from the Quran about when will people really wake up to the Dikr of Allah? When will that hit their heart? And this huge feeling of remorse kicks in and just an overwhelming weeping state takes him over and he just completely decides that that moment he's going to repent. He then turns to Allah sincerely. He repents for everything it is that he's done. And then he goes and he finds the people and he searches for as many of them as possible whose things he had stolen. And he tells the rest of his crew is leaving and he give returns all of the belongings that he is able to return. And then he sets out on the path of spirituality and he became known as one of the great people of the past, one of the great scholars and saints of our religion. His name is Al-Fudail ibn al-Hayat. And this is just one story in the books. There's many of them. Many of them. There are people who were literally selling themselves for money like sex slaves or prostitutes, right? And they would repent and turn and live a life to Allah. The key here to remember, this is more for ourselves but also for other people. Every Muslim needs to keep a door, at least one door be opened between us and Allah. And if you see a Muslim opening a, having a door open between them and Allah and yet they're immersed in sin. Like we're all immersed in something or another but let's say someone's immersed in major sin. Don't be the person who closes that door. There are a lot of Muslims who close that door for other people. They'll be like, how could you do this? Like I knew a guy who would, oh, like he would smoke a lot of weed. And then he'd pray. And it was just like, how could you pray when you're high? I mean, there's all these rulings on praying when you're high, it's not a good idea.  Anyways, the door was kept open and it's very easy to do the munkar on that person to just kind of call them out. But it's important for ourselves as well. Ideally, we're not immersed in any of these sins but if whatever we're immersed in, we keep a door open between us and Allah because Allah will keep the door of repentance open for us always until we die. That door is open. So it's only Shaytan who closes that door. It's called disfair, which is a major sin in our religion. It's actually a major sin to despair and Allah's mercy, to believe that Allah won't forgive me. So Shaytan's job is to get the human being to despair but Shaytan has people who uses to get others to despair and sometimes those people are Muslims and their job, they go around and they comment on other people's social media videos. They just kind of getting rid of everybody's mercy.  You don't know what someone is doing in the depths of the night. You don't know. We have in the hadith it comes about a man who used to drink like a lot and the Sahaba that he was getting the punishment, the had punishment because at the time of the Prophet's Assam, if someone is doing a major sin, there is a punishment that comes in this life. Ideally, inshallah, that wipes this in a way so that the punishment doesn't come in the next life. And the Sahaba were like, ya Rasulullah, curse him, curse him. Again, drinking alcohol in the time of the messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And he said, I'm not gonna curse him. He says, I don't know that anything about him except that he loves Allah and his messenger. The Prophet's Assam was just believing good of him. The man, he heard that. He heard that the messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, thought about this about him and it was because of that he just gave up alcohol completely. He said, this is what the Prophet's Assam makes of me and he was just completely overwhelmed and he gave it up. Our job is to bring hope to people. That's the job of the Muslim. For to ourselves and to people. Our job is to not call other people out on everything. If we are doing that, we are just that part of the army of shaitan. Hisbalawa shaitan, the party of Allah, the party of shaitan. And shaitan will come to you with religion more than you know because he was the most religious person in the entire cosmos. He was so religious, there was not a part in the earth that he had not bowed down that he had not made such that too. So religious that he was called up to the heavens.  He wasn't an angel, I mean a jinn, but he's called up to the heavens because of how religious he is. And yet all the religion did to him was make him arrogant, kibber, more kibber, kibber, arrogant. So he's cool when everybody's cool with him. But the minute Allah like, I bow down to Adam. And he's like, what, no, I'm better than him. How can I do that?  And so now that's why he knows how to get religious people and he knows how to get not really, he's not really concerned about people who are already super, super far gone when it comes, he was full in kofa. So he's just like, yeah, they're doing everything that they're doing. He knows though how to mess with people who are traveling the path of religion. He really knows, he really understands. And this is why you need a teacher, why we need teachers and shoe to guide us because they'll give us the tricks. It gets very, very, very, very subtle. And they'll give us the tricks. Shaitan is going to come to you like this and to you like this. And he has doors. Imam Ghazali later, I think in this book, he mentions 12 doors of Shaitan that are used to come to be human being and ways in which he'll try to deceive us and get us to be tricked. But he understands the psychology of the person who takes the religion seriously and he knows how to ruin their good deeds by making them arrogant because of their good deeds and then closing the door of mercy. Our path, the path that Imam Ghazali is trying to get us on, we hope that it can be on this path, is one of humility. But with ourselves, we are hard. With everybody else, we're merciful. But with ourselves, we're like, how can I do this? You make a mistake, you hold yourself to account. Say, in the Omar time, someone was coming near his house with the other Sahaba and they just heard him reprimanding somebody. And there was like, whoa, I better not go in right now. Say, in the Omar is like really giving it to someone. And he came in and no one was there. He's like, who are you talking to?  I was talking to myself. I was just, I couldn't believe it. I did this, I was just reprimanding my nuffs. That that is the state of the believer that we take ourselves to account. We, our job until we become qualified, someone is given permission by their shoe to do proper and joining good and forbidding evil and assisting and being still the path of mercy. It must be done with mercy. It must be done with kindness and gentleness. But otherwise we focus on ourselves and we help other people in a very, very broad way, but not restrictive. We don't restrict the Dean and limit it and kind of make it small because we might be the means for someone to repenting and to turn back to Allah. So we'll just end with this, finish this list and then we'll talk about the process of repentance and then we'll end the cell. So he lists this, these major sins among the major sins that are ignored by the, in the time that we live in is consuming interest loans, taking them, giving them, being witness to them. And this is among the category of sins that Allah curses the person who takes the loan, the interest loan and he, the messenger of Allah and Allah says in the Quran, this is not an hadith, it's in the Quran that Allah and his messenger wage war on these people. There's no other sin. Imam Ali was asked about the worst sin. He said, there's other than share. He couldn't find a sin where war was mentioned. We're taking that, that a lot of messenger wage war on them. And so it gets very, very deep here when we think about how deeply embedded we are and ingrained we are in a society which is built on interest and how we've just completely given it. We don't ask any questions and we just completely do what everybody else is doing. And this now we have to take this seriously when it comes to interest loans. This is one of the sins. Maybe we did it. Okay. We have to seek Allah's repentance and make priority to pay, make it a priority to pay those loans off and not do it again. There are categories of loans here that would fall into this. And there's various hadith and ayahs. I think the one that hits me the most is the one that Allah and his messenger wage war. There's another one that the touch of the devil is on the one who does this. There's another one. There's another hadith that Allah, that the that accursed is the one who takes usury and who consumes interest. So the curse of Allah, that the curse of the touch of Shaitan and the war from Allah. And they're very serious, very serious because it leads to major economic problems in a society when people promote this. People are okay with that. And you need in order for supply to exist, you need demand to exist. That's a basic equation. So if we're the ones who are consuming it, of course they're going to be ones that are promoting it. So this gets into that student loans, auto loans, business loans, and there's a small difference of opinion on mortgages for your first house in a Western country. But specifically in the first three categories, it's generally agreed upon by the traditional classical scholars of Islam that the justification is not there. The only time someone is allowed to take interest is in the same categories of why someone, someone is able to drink alcohol or eat pork, is if they're about to die. Like, or they're in a very dire state.  That's the severity of it. That's it. It's worse than drinking and eating pork. And that's the thing Muslims are forgotten. We won't get close to pork, obviously we shouldn't get close to pork, but when Muslims would be like, oh my God, pork, but then we're going to the bank and just like signing off every single loan. Not realizing how severe it is, very, very severe. And we have to make, and we will lose the blessing in our wealth without realizing this is the thing with, with, and it's a very, very common misunderstanding from the Muslims that we think, well, nothing's happening to us. So it must be fine, because we think that if we make a mistake, like a bolt of lightning is going to hit us that day. You know, these days it's been a crazy storm and we ask Allah for protection. We think that that's going to happen. Go, well, that didn't happen. We must be fine. It's all good. I'm not doing anything wrong. It's not how it works. Allah gives people a long leash. He says in the Quran, it gives them a long time. Let them change, but then if they change as they come, Allah ceases them. Allah takes it seriously. He says, don't ignore the rules. Don't mess with the rules, especially rules that are like super, super explicit and that are amongst the major sins, right? And so this is worse than, I mean, we could talk at length about all the sins of this is worse. This is worse than dressing immodestly. This is worse than sleeping around with people. This is worse than going to parties and drinking. This is worse than consuming pork. This is worse than stealing. Like it just on and on and on in terms of right up there, right before shirk and a few others is interesting. And some of them even debated like right now, like literally right after murder. Like that's how bad it is. And so it's a reason why and this slicing might disappear. We don't notice the blessing disappearing, but we get one loan and then we're in debt and then we get another loan and then we get another loan and we're living the life of debt. And we think it's not noticeable because it's 2.99% APR that's just being deducted monthly from our payments and we have no idea. But we could have been creative about it. Like so start with auto loans. All someone has to do is buy a used car that's cheap that they can get on cash or lease a car and you can negotiate what's called the money factor rate to basically zero and there's no interest involved. And then you still you save up enough money to get the car for other types of loans are also a variety but it takes a lot of talk to get there because people ask this question a lot what we're supposed to do? How are we supposed to go to college? How are we supposed to go to medical school? How are we supposed to go to law school? And this is not a popular answer. Where did Allah command us to do those things? Where in the Quran does Allah say you have to do this in order to live in this world? And Allah doesn't say it comes out that we love a hubbid of the dunya that we love the dunya so we'll put the dunya above Allah. The people who are traveling on the path they will say Allah says in the Quran that when you have taqwa of Allah Allah will give you a way out. That's in the Quran. That part is in the Quran. When you have taqwa of Allah he gives you a way out of every problem where you're zukum and hate to die, that's it. And he provides from you or for you from where you never expected. But it might take a little time. It might take an extra year. It might take three more years than the average person. Allah will provide. If someone wants to do it, Allah will take care of it. But the taqwa must be there and it must be firm and it must be sincere. And we cannot let the haam become so captivating us that we just fall into it like everybody else. This is not the way. And if we've done so, or we're in the middle of it we gotta find a way out and we have to make repentance for it. Minimum repent that Shaitan will try to make it and say it's not a big deal, everybody does it. And that's the alarming thing with this one. Probably 90% of the Muslim community in the United States is completely engrossed in this without even thinking a second thought about it. Just no issue whatsoever. But when we, and there's levels of it. The one who's paying a lot more is in more sin than the one being a little bit. Paying 1% versus paying 10%. It compounded years and years and years is a lot worse than it being over five, six months and then you get out of it as quickly as possible. But there is a path to it and it's not, that's why the path to Jannah as it comes in a narration is not easy. It's surrounded by difficulty. Surrounded by a lot of difficulty. And the path the Prophet said to help is easy. It's all ease and desire. And so when we want the same desire at the root of the desire for any success that needs interest at the foundation of it is what's called love of the dunya. The love of this world and wanting some prestige status that might be cloaked in the cloak of trying to help people. That I wanna do this and I wanna go to school so I can help someone. Well, Allah doesn't need us to do something hot on. We would never say I need to drink alcohol so that I can help somebody. But we don't use the same principles many times because the understanding is wrong. And so I just wanna kind of touch deeply on this one because it's something that we are very caught up in as a society in the West. And we have to find a way out. We have to repent and we have to give up those loans. Allah literally says give up what is due to you of interest and what is due of interest. Just give it up. It's a commandment in the Quran. You can find these verses in sort of a book. And so if we read them, we reflect on them. We take them seriously. What we have to be really, really careful of is minimizing it such that it's not a big deal. That's when you know Shaitan has won. When he makes a sin, not seem like a big deal anymore. It doesn't matter. You don't need to worry about it. You don't need to worry about doing this. You don't need to worry about that, you know, dressing in a certain way or acting in a certain way. Just says it's all good. Just leave it. No, it must be taken seriously. And you'll know that something isn't for you to work on. Hearing about it. That's what makes nobody like seeing no one, no one. It's like, tell me about that. I wanna know that we know that things are serious when we dislike hearing about them. That's how you know you've gotten enough. You really dislike hearing about some of these things. And so we obviously take it gradual. I'm summarizing, and so I'm making a little bit more condensed, but we take it gradually. We do what we can. We don't want to completely just change our life tomorrow, but we make the intention and we get on the path. And I know many people, they made the intention to give up the interest that they had in their life because once they learned how serious it was, and they made dua and Allah facilitated it. You got them out of the interest. You can even negotiate with the... Today's car market is not a good market, but many times you can negotiate with the dealer to make the loan 0% as possible to negotiate with the credit score and the right credit score. You can increase the price of the car, but instead of negotiating the price down, you say, instead I wanna negotiate the loan down to zero. We'll keep the price at what you have listed. We'll keep the loan at zero and they'll do it. It takes a little bit of creativity, right? But for the person who's like, no, I only want this car. And the dealer's like, sorry, there's another dealers that would have done it, but we didn't check because we're so, we were very, very specific on what we wanna do. So anyways, I don't want to elongate the point too much. There's a list of major sins. I would advise everybody review this list. There's a book, Agenda to Change Our Condition by Imam Zaid Shaker, the founder of this machine and she comes to Yusuf and that he, let's not say the comment, but they categorize 17 major sins. They do it by limb. So by the hands, major sins of the hand, of the eye, of the tongue, of the stomach, of the private parts of the feet, and they basically count. So I covered like five or six of them and of the whole body. The major sin of the whole body is disrespected parents. That's the one that is probably the, hit me the hardest was like disrespecting parents is the one that is very, very, very high up there. And it's like the, he goes like mouth, tongue, it's better than, then there's one that the whole body is responsible for and that's disobedience and disrespect for parents. And so again, sometimes in Western society, it's very easy to just say things, talk back, be rude, but we gotta learn to control our tongue when it comes to our parents and when it comes to the interactions that we have with them. So that's the second category and just stop and the third category are sins between us and other people. Between us and other people. So this would be that if you like stole something from someone, you gotta return it. I think we know that. But the bigger ones are if you like cut ties with someone or if you hurt someone's feelings by distancing them, those must be repaired. If you ruin someone's reputation, you must do whatever you can to fix their reputation. And if we misguided somebody, you have to fix that. If we called someone names, we gotta fix that. If we cursed at someone like a lot, if we hurt their feelings, we fix that. There's a lot of things when it comes to between people. And most of them, they're very hard to do. For example, he mentions if you backbid someone, you talk bad about them. You have to go to the person who you talk bad about and now you have to do it about them and say, I'm sorry for what I said, if that was bad, that wasn't even true and it was completely wrong of me to do and you rectify it.  People are just gonna be like, what? Talk, you did that, you said that about me. They're going to accept it. So the second theory, repair or repentance for that is to make a lot of the offer that person sincerely to make a lot of the offer that person and ask a lot to make that person you did wrong to any of these wrongs you're unable to fix. Let's say you did something wrong from someone like seven years ago and you don't remember and you don't know where that person is and you're unable to rectify it. You have to ask a lot to forgive you that increase them in their life and that make that person forgive you in their heart because on the day of judgment, if somebody did something wrong to someone, so the accounting will take place and you'll have the scale, weight of good deeds and bad deeds. And then the people will come whose rates we transgressed, who we said mean things to. This includes, by the way, online comments, rudeness, all of these things that people will come and they'll find you no matter what your username is and they'll go to that person and they'll say, you said this to me and the person who will be back, it will be like you back at me and then they'll just take our good deeds.  They talked smack left and right about people. Sometimes cloaked in religiosity, sometimes not, just continue to do so. They were rude to people. They were harsh to people. They were mean to people. They yelled people, right? They transgressed people's rights. They always wanted everything their way. They were arrogant with people. All of these things was commented at what's called su al-akhraq and su al-adab, bad adab and bad akhlaq with people, bad character. The good deeds are taken, taken. And then that person, we run, that person runs out of good deeds and now Allah says, okay, give them your bad deeds. So now they start saying, okay, you did this to me, here's my bad, and you just give that. And then that person who was gonna be a person of jannah now is not a person of jannah anymore. Because of what? Of the wrong that we did. This is why we have to take care of having good character with people. And it's very critical in our religion to be good with human beings. Because sin's gonna, it takes repentance. All you have to do is three-step process for repentance. Remorse, feeling bad about it, feeling guilty in front of Allah. And remember to sincerely asking Allah for forgiveness where we really turned to Him and we cried to Him and we wept to Him and say, Allah, forgive me. This could include something as much as we're just here at our home in California and we do so or we, you know, make umrah or hajj or something and we do so. But it's sincere toba. And the third step of repentance is we make the intention to never do that sin again. As long as someone follows those three steps of repentance, the sins between you and Allah that we just discussed, inshallah, are forgiven. And of course, we have to make the intention to not do that sin again. That's why an example of if someone was smoking or drinking or whatever, we make the commitment, I'm not gonna do this again. We won't get into it. If we slip back up, do the same thing and make repentance and we come up with a plan to quit. Same thing with interest. If someone, we give it up and then we make intention to not do it again. And so on, the other sins. But sins between you, between us and other people, those are difficult because we can't just, we make repentance but now they have to forgive us as well. And so we have to pray a lot then for those people. We should spend a portion every week or month just thinking about the people we spoke bad about and we pray for them. And we ask Allah to forgive us, forgive them and forgive them for any mistakes they've ever made and they like that Allah increases them, gives them jannah and Allah puts goodness in their heart for such that this reality does not come on the day of judgment that they take things from us and that they do that. And the other category would be if someone violates family ties, like cuts family ties, pushes away their family, just completely ignores family members. That's a very serious one, including non-Muslim family members. So we don't, we don't, we don't, the non-Muslim family, you don't just completely cut off for those who are converts. We have to make sure that we maintain some level of a relationship with them while protecting your own, while protecting your own. And then the other one is if someone accused someone in religion of doing something wrong.  And they hurl religious insults at them. That's way dear than some of the other sins we just listed because to accuse someone of being an innovator or a kafir obviously is a very big deal, Allah's eye. It's a very big deal.  That's gonna be really difficult, especially if it's not online. It's gonna be really difficult. And so in the time we live in where people are just hurling comment and saying things left and right about other Muslims, left and right about other Muslims, how are we gonna, 100,000 people might see that. Things can go viral and we are held to account for every single person who saw the wrong that we did and that we spread. Which is why we should really just follow the advice of the messenger of Allah, salallahu alayhi wa sallam when he said the Muslim, whoever believes in Allah in his last day should speak good or remain silent. And you'll know that good is accompanied with light in the heart. There is a feeling of tranquility and wrong and something that you know you shouldn't say is accompanied with trepidity and anxiety and worry. Which is why most arguments are not supposed to, we're not supposed to argue, they're accompanied with anxiety and worry. And any kind of good speech and calm speech and loving speech is usually accompanied with sweetness to it. That's a way for the heart to discern that whether you're about to say something that's good or not, but as you start with outward rules, you don't just only look at the heart. And so if we do that and we follow the three step path to repentance, inshallah, then we'll have clear to this hurdle. So our job now is to think about basically the categories we listed, what have we done wrong? And again, as of repenting to Allah, really sincerely ask Allah to forgive us for the wrong that we've done. And then make it, there's a big time repentance and there's a continual repentance. The big time one is the one we really need to do when we take ourselves to account and ask Allah to purify us, purify us and clean us. And then there's the one where we do regularly, where we ask Allah for forgiveness every day because we do so much wrong. The thoughts that cross our mind, the things we say, the things we look at, we're just bound to slip up. But those things are forgiven if we ask Allah for forgiveness and the minor sins like between wudus, between prayers, they're forgiven. The wudu washes off the sins of the eyes and the hands and every part of the water touches the wudu washes those sins off. And but not the major ones, the minor ones, the small ones, the slip ups, right? That that's why it's important to continually stay on these things. So inshallah with that, we'll go ahead and then next week we'll just wrap up there's one or two examples that he gives you with regards to repentance and the kind of stories that are told about people who did make a sincere repentance and then we'll get into the next section inshallah which is going to be a lot about this dunya and the challenge that we're going to face and the sign of the accepted repentance that the life changes. The sign of the accepted Hajj only Allah knows ultimately but the sign outwardly is that life changes. Someone goes from living a life of wrong to living a life of good, living a life of decency to living a life of a lot of good. That that's the sign. And so the prophets and those close to Allah they're constantly, the prophets can't make mistakes or sin obviously but that they are constantly increasing degrees but the people who are close to Allah in this life or not prophets, constant repentance, such that they're always increasing in degree. Always increasing in degree. They're always in the state of trying to get closer and closer to Allah. And we pray that Allah make us from and that Allah allow us to achieve the realities of repentance and that he allow us to turn to him sincerely and with a love for him and messenger salallahu alayhi salam such that we direct our entire being inwardly and outwardly to him and we focus on him, we make him the goal of our entire life. And if you, the one who makes Allah the goal of their life and Allah takes care of all their other goals. One who tries to do all their goals themselves Allah just leaves them to themselves. So we make Allah the goal and Allah and the here Allah, the prophets and some of the here after our goal Allah will take care of everything else it is that we need because the heart that has Allah doesn't need anything else inshallah. So with that, we'll go ahead and end and if there's any questions go ahead and take questions. Yes. Let's say we do all fudges, all of them. And then the next break, let's say after two weeks to all of them first. Is Allah also or are you going to do like Fajr? Yeah, good question. So the question was, was it online for them to make up prayers? Is someone able to do one prayer like all at once? Like all Fajr's and all Fajr's in order to have the answer is that you can do in whatever order you please and you can do all the Fajr's at once. So for example, Fajr's usually a little easier to do because it's too Raka. So to get yourself in the rhythm of baking up prayers that's actually a very good idea. You just spend, let's say you have a long time you put in a whole year and make up Fajr's you do one or two, three sets every day and you can get those done in Ramadan. You just pray 20 Raka of Fajr at night in Tanawih instead of attending Tanawih as an example, right? So yeah, you can do that. Yes. Very good question. All right. That's going to be very difficult to do. Yeah, I see the question is what if you're enjoying the benefits of the interest that someone has. So look, there's like levels of this, right? Like if it's like your parents you're not going to like not go there or something like that. By the way, the home one is an interest topic. There are opinions that say at home that someone gets in Western countries would be permitted but investment properties and extra and that would be considered not permitted. The stronger, at least the opinion that I've heard a lot of those best is that one should strive to get an Islamic loan because those do exist that are in contract called Mudabara Mashaqada which are permissible contracts in Sharia and Islamic finance. But that being said, there are some scholars who were very scrupulous about their about earnings. So if they knew someone worked a Haram job, let's say it was like very expensive Haram whether it was with a loan or not that was the source of their income. Let's say they were like their whole job was to make money off of other people's loans. They would avoid like eating at that person's house, for example. If they go there, they'll just like kind of steer clear of the food but you have to be very delicate in terms of how you do that because you can't verify what you do is you assume that some portion of what they're doing is coming from lawful means and you just assume that you do it. But if there's like a very, very clear like let's say you know that this person like sells drugs, they're a drug dealer and like everybody knows it. Like yeah, I would avoid anything that they ever give you or anything that they, because the source of all of that will be impure. You won't be able to find anything permissible in what they're doing. But in some circumstances, there are ways to find kind of permissible things. So it's a little tricky for the one who achieves a state of what's called what on scrupulousness. And this is where you have to know where you're at on the path. You don't go too high in the degree of Takwa before we have yet to establish the earlier degrees of Takwa. So that you will, as someone travels, they'll know, okay, now I'm ready to be this careful about things. So there's people, for example, who are super careful about every little ingredient in food. Ingredients that are not pork or anything. They're just like some ingredient that they think could potentially be hot on. That's not for everybody. There are some people who are at that level of what up where they're able to manage that. Other people are not able to manage that. And they don't need to worry as long as the food has been slaughtered properly and it's okay to eat. They're fine eating it. They don't get too into the details and there's kind of a balance there. Does that make sense? Yeah. I have a future long interest. Yeah, good. So do you know what's like the housing thing? Is that on that, like Western countries, houses, or the prices is designed with the idea that you get a mortgage? Like are they inflated because of that? The only way to inform creoles? Yeah, that's why I permitted the loan for that one. Yeah, but the question for those online is like what is the rationale for why someone would be permitted to take the mortgage? I'm not sure. Yeah, I haven't read that. I thought about it at least. I think I know I read it a while ago, but I haven't read it recently. But I believe there's different principles in the Sharia and the Asul and the scholars who used it. I think Shikabalab and Vaidya is one of them. And then there's some out of India that were given that had various rationales. You could probably search it and find it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, my follow-up to the colleges is that it's the same way to which it's designed because it's sort of an industry that's designed to be unformable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the question would be on the follow-up but it was about student loans. So there are, so yeah, when it comes to student loans, the path of the majority of the scholars, again, there are a few people who were not considered classical or traditional scholars who gave these sensations for student loans and like breaking in places, but the way the student loan structure has like a way to forgive and things like that. But for the most part, the advice of scholars here and who have knowledge of the circumstances here, that let's say it costs $15,000 or $20,000 a year. First is you have choices in terms of the colleges you go to, right? And so there's an option for someone to go to community college first and then enter into university if finances are the issue. So they would go to community college and in that time they would work as much as possible. And in that time they would save up and then in that time they would have conversations with members of their family or community who were able to lend them a certain amount of money at 0% which is possible and they would find ways to get it. Then they would join a work study program while they're in university to mitigate at the cost that they might have. If they're qualified for any grants or financial aid, they would also do so. And then they would engage in going to the university. So it wouldn't be like the first step interest is never permitted in that case. We just like, okay, I have to go. If someone has the option to go to a private university that's $50,000 a year and a public university that's way cheaper, and you need to take the interest for the private one, it's very difficult to accept but you have to go to the public one that would not have interest associated with it. So it gets pretty nuanced and that's why it's really the responsibility of the whole family to know this from early ages. So when someone has a savings plan they can save adequately such as they think is and work in high school in other ways to save enough money to be able to afford the education it is that they need it with a lot of a lot. It gets very difficult if someone is at the point of about to enter university and just graduates high school and now they start thinking about how I'm gonna pay for it. But someone knows early on there's probably about 25,000 scholarships that each give 5,000, 5,000 each that are out there in America that someone can apply to. There's so many routes out of it that it's very possible to do it. It's just hard, that's all. And also it's like insurance agreements that have interest with credit cards. So if you spend your games you can have credit card and never pay interest. But then because the agreement still has interest associated with it. Yeah, good question. So the question is credit cards and if you enter into an agreement that has interest with it versus but you never pay the interest because of the card. So as long as you're paying off the card on time you will never have the interest so you don't need to worry about that. Because the agreement says that if you're paying off the balance a case below a certain level or if your debt hits a certain level you now start accruing like egregious interest like 27% APR, really high levels of interest. But as long as someone pays it off, it's careful. Even the credit card companies they're very tricky they'll never let you pay off the whole balance. Someone's got to log in and do this whole thing to make sure you're always paying off and always at zero. And so you just have to be on it and on top of it. And otherwise in that case it would be permitted for someone to do so. But some people are like, yo, I'm not gonna touch it and they find other ways around it but that's pretty difficult. We know the process of Nadi that at the end of times everything will have the dust of interest on it, the traces of interest. So like we're in the bank, we have bank accounts, we have all these things but we have to try to make sure we don't engage in the transaction that increases the little minimal, beyond the little minimal stuff that we have to do. That makes sense. And then a couple of small things. Is there any distinct between like benefit from interest to save like a high yield savings account versus like losing because you're paying interest on the credit card bill? So the difference between someone who has a high, so the question is, is there a difference between someone who has a high yield savings account and has a crewing interest versus paying interest? So most of the scholars will equate to and so the original, many of the original versus were on the people who are benefiting from the interest. That's how many of them interpreted. So they might have got slightly worse for the one who's benefiting from the interest in this case who's actually making money off of interest. But most of them have equated it essentially where if you're paying it or you're benefiting from it because it's always two-sided, you have to get it. So high yield savings accounts would be impermissible. What you do in any savings account is right now the high yield ones have good rates because interest rates are high and the federal funds rate is high. So what you do right now is you would, any amount you crew in the low savings account, you have to give that a charity. You crew like 1%, whatever it is, you just give that a charity as like, this isn't really my money, it doesn't belong to me.  That would be considered a non-permissible vehicle. Investment vehicles are fine.  You're okay. And the last thing is like, usury and English is defined as excessive interest. Is there any similar distinction in Arabic when it's a sharia? Good question. The question is, is usury is defined as excessive interest? Is there any distinction in the sharia? Some have made the argument that riba, like is a riba really considered interest when it's taken, you know, like a little bit. But there's various how do you, in fact, where the province of Psalms prohibited, for example, if you have two that wet dates and good quality dates and you trade it with someone for like 10 not good quality dates as a transaction inhibited that he said is interest. So like, it's, what I'm meaning to say there is that it's even something that looks very, very minor. Anything that has gained in it that is of equal currency and equal status, right? Is considered interest in the sharia. And so you don't, and it gets, and when someone goes into the books, a fit and looks into this, it gets so specific that you're like, wow, there's a lot of stuff that I used to take for granted. Actually, I need to be much more careful about. So it's, I have not heard our teachers considered the usury riba, like kind of etymological roots argument as a good one, because many examples that are given in the sharia that the Sahaba being careful about exchanging anything that was of the same currency for more value, it must be of equal value that they kind of exchange it for otherwise it would be considered or interest. Yeah. Any questions on the sister side? Okay. And online. Any questions? Yeah. Sorry, I was going to ask about five to two, like fixed rate loans as well as opposed to five to two. Yeah, no, it's, it would apply to fixed rate loans as well. Yeah. So you're just referring to a fixed rate loan for a home or a fixed rate loan for, yeah, for a home. Yeah. So it would apply for a fixed rate loan is still, it's actually the dominant form of loan versus a variable loan. It's all compounding though, right? At the end of the day. So they're taking like, if you take a million dollar loan and you have 4% they're taking 4% of the million dollar is making you pay it every single year, essentially until you reduce them out of the principal. So you're paying, even economically, it's a very bad loan to get into because all you're doing is paying interest for the first 10 years. Let's just say you never, never scratch, make a debt in the principal of the loan. So fixed rate is bad. Variable rate is even worse because the variable rate loan or what's called an arm and adjustable rate mortgage will just fluctuate. Like one day you're paying 4% and the next day you're paying 17% because the interest rate went so high and now you're in big trouble because how do you get out of that? Right? The thing to do there would just be to refinance with a when reasonable with an Islamic lender. And there are very reasonable Islamic lenders in the U.S. guidance residentials one. I think there's one called University Islamic Venture. Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, I think they all Western countries for the most part had it. You'll notice in many Muslim countries that people just wait and they save up and they buy it at home. They don't ever like, the concept of interest loans doesn't really exist in many Muslim countries. There's a question on, is it permissible to accept the 2% cash award that comes from using the credit card? So the cash awards that come from using the credit card are not based on interest. Those are based on a change fee like exists between the card networks and the issuing bank. So generally would be permitted to accept that cashback because it's being charged to the merchant. So when you buy something at Walmart and you use your credit card, Walmart is being charged 2.5% of the transaction fee to accept your credit card.  And that's all part of the transaction fee that's not user. This may be a dumb question, but if I'm praying Salah and I lose my wudu, do I stop and restart all over? Yeah, so if you, it's a really fine question. If you pray Salah and you lose your wudu for any reason, that you have to go leave the Salah, make wudu and you would start over. Yeah. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and end. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah.


So, Brandon, I did hear that you were in this year's internship, and I just wanted to ask, what was the experience like, and how did you feel during internship? The internship was great. It really helped me get closer to God before I went to the internship. I just felt like a flake, because I never came to church, and I never really did anything, but after the internship, I felt like going to the morning prayers and going to all the classes and everything, I really grew closer to God. Right, come on, give a round of applause for Jesus. And, Brandon, I also know that you were during internship, or just recently, God set you free from a certain addiction. What was that addiction, and what can you tell us about how you struggled with it? I was addicted to tobacco for seven years, and last year, there was a prayer line, I was set free from it, I was livid, but I didn't believe in my deliverance, and I kind of fell back into it, and then I just started lying to everybody saying, hey, I'm free, you know, God's great, and all the while, I just keep doing the same thing. And after, at the internship, I was like, no, I'm freaking done with this.  And he's like, all right, so he prayed for me, and I was completely set free from it.  So Brandon, as you're standing here today free from the addiction, what can you advise people who are also addicted to smoking tobacco or smoking weed or really any addiction, what can you advise them? Don't keep it to yourself. Tell your mentors, tell your host group leader, tell your pastors, tell somebody about it, and just be completely honest with them, you can't hold it in, you cannot do it on your own. Seven years, that's a long time. I could not get free from it for seven years. I couldn't do it on myself with my own strength. It's only through God's strength that I got free from it. And it's only through God's strength that you guys are going to get free from it as well. So go to your mentors, be honest with them.