As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi So we're going to continue on inshallah we are talking about this new series that we started we're on the second class about it which is the journey the soul's journey from the pre-eternal life from the time before we were even conceived up through all the different stages of the life of the human being until we meet Allah and until one is destined for either the jannah or jannah and so we are speaking about the second stage so we're going to continue talking about that today which really the most critical one to be aware of which is the life that we're in right now so we spoke about the stage of from the time that from the time where we meet Allah in the realm of where Allah asks us to bear witness about his creating us and when Allah asks every single creation all of money Adam am i not your lord and everybody says yes you are our lord and we bear witness to that and it's important to keep reminding ourselves of this because the human being goes on the journey where we forget where this is lodged the reality of this meeting with our lord is lodged deep inside of us there's different layers to your inner realm to our inner realm there is the heart and there is the spirit there is the secret there is the secret of the secret lodge deep inside of the human being is this deep recollection that Allah is our lord and what we are created to do and the purpose that we have but as we go throughout our life especially in this dunya we get covered we get layered all sorts of veils cover us and we have to work on uncovering these veils to unlock that reality this fitra this primordial state which exists in order to start to move in the right direction again the stage in which you do that that is the dunya that is the light that we are in right now which is the time again that from when you are born until the time that you and I die this is the stage of accountability as well so that's what we'll be focusing on inshallah and we've already spoken about a few of these stages we'll recap what we discussed with regards to the stage of youth since that's the the stage in which someone has the most energy and then we'll get through the rest inshallah today so just to recap the youth is from the time that somebody roughly about 14 15 the time when someone hits puberty their accountability against until the time where they're about 35 to 40 of course a different scholar so that is known as the stage of youth it is the stage in which one has the most amount of energy that they can devote to either karam or to obeying Allah and most people devote their energy to disobeying Allah and this stage is what he's saying because the idea is well it can change later i'll work on myself later and so on but this is the age where if somebody devotes their life to Allah and devotes their youth to Allah they will be sent moving forward inshallah they will be sent moving forward based on a hadith where the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam tells us that your Lord wonders at somebody who's young who shows no passions and another hadith which the one of those who are under promise the shade of Allah's throne on the day of judgment is the person who worshiped Allah in their youth so that's the in this stage that many are in right now so that being said we spoke about what we should avoid in our youth there are two or three things to summary of where he said we should focus on the first is to protect ourselves and getting them in a mindset of protecting ourselves from all forms of karam from all forms of things that are impermissible this is easier said than done one has to be aware of their inclinations based on the stage that they're at someone is 15 to 25 they have different desires and different hormones that are being activated then when they get into their 30s let's say someone has to know which desires trigger me as an individual based on my temperament based on my upbringing based on what i've seen growing up and so on and so forth and then one must guard themselves against these desires an entire spiritual path is based on protecting oneself against the main appetite that the community has this includes the desire the sexual desire which is very very strong in the in the days of youth as is the desire for fame and power and money and and and so on it's over these these are all desires either help you or it can ruin you one of the if somebody channels them in the right direction it can be good but if somebody obeys the desire instead of obeying Allah it will be that energy rather not desire if someone who uses that energy to obey Allah that that's going to be setting them up for success if someone uses that energy to disobey Allah to cave into their desires and they will be setting themselves up for a very very difficult stage he says the second thing you and i can do is learn to manage our time because youth is very much a stage in which we think we have plenty of time i have my whole life ahead of me i have plenty of time to make all my mistakes right now and just change later and so the one who understands that their time is the only thing they've been given and that if they don't use their time wisely in this stage it's highly unlikely that they will have the foundation it's possible that they will have the foundations to use their time wisely as they get into later stages and for the one who's traveling a spiritual path they understand the deep value of time it's not meant to be wasted it's not meant to it's only meant to be taken advantage of because it is how we invest in our next life and the third is to acquire knowledge during this time and start to practice it it becomes harder and harder and harder to acquire knowledge as one grows older and it's still very very very very critical that one continues on the path of acquiring knowledge as we get older but when one is young and they're free and they don't have the same level of family responsibilities and they don't have all these different things and the stress of work has yet to necessarily become as burdensome they are learning and most of us we spend our youth learning yeah secular knowledge which is not a problem but what he's mean what he means here is use the time to acquire spiritual and sacred knowledge and so if we're still in that phase of our life then we need to use our time also and the key moment for the he doesn't mention this here but it's mentioned in other texts the key time for the umma that's blessed that if someone who takes advantage of it will have gained the most amount of good in their life inshallah is the time from fudger to the early morning that is the time this umma has been blessed in that time and so the person who recognizes from a young age the importance of going to sleep early waking up early staying awake after fudger no matter how difficult that is using that time to study and to do thicker and to to to to work on things that will be ways of drawing them near to Allah they'll notice immense barakah in their life so that's something practical that we can take away especially in these winter months which we're still in where the nights are very long there's plenty of time to sleep it's not like you have to wake up at four o'clock for fudger fudger is coming in at 6 a.m. 5 55 a.m roughly it's very very doable for someone to sleep to sleep a good amount of time start their day break the hajj start their day at fudger get their coffee in and just start moving learning doing paper whatever they do before their work day starts or their school day starts rather than than just a very very quick fudger go back to sleep wake up two minutes before we're supposed to be somewhere quickly get ready and like that that way of living will either keep somebody productive and moving in the right direction or keep somebody lazy and moving in the wrong direction and that's not to say yet for someone in their youth will say i don't need to wake up the fudger because i have plenty of time to do so later that's also a trend of she thought he says oh you can do this later right now sleep gotta sleep no no no no no that the youth is the time to get the ibadah down because it becomes much harder to have the energy when someone gets older to take the ibadah as seriously take the ibadah seriously so these are the three and then the fourth which is important to add in the context that we live in one must be mindful of the common practices of the age that they live in that can spoil their youth so every age is different every age meaning every epoch every time century that somebody lives in every era rather someone lives in will have different desires what different ways of pulling somebody in one direction or another direction the time the society the culture that one lives in one has to be aware okay what are the downfalls of the society that i live in and what is it calling me to that negates my responsibility to Allah and how do i actively counteract that so i mean the imam was saying this on friday talk about right like in the time we live in there is an active focus on trying to confuse people about their manhood as an example for them they're trying to confuse people about their manhood about trying to confuse people about what their role and their responsibility actually is in the society that they live in based on what Allah wants from them so if somebody's aware of that they will need to make sure that in the stage they're in especially in their youth where they're most susceptible you usually can't change people's minds when they're 55 60 if you can let me know what tricks you're using but usually it's pretty difficult you're usually able to get through to people most when they're younger and they're still and that's also a beauty and why young people are so hopeful and so in terms of their their desire to change the world and the desire to actually make an impact if someone as they get more advanced in age they might start to think on this i've been seeing this for decades not going to change when we're younger someone has this himma this hope but also that means the mind is susceptible to go in different directions different philosophies ideologies and understandings can influence somebody's own direction or another and so we have to be on guard against that this is where knowledge will serve as a force field as a shield against improper ideologies improper understanding of things coming in so seeking knowledge and then being mindful of what practices are going to mess me up so in the time of ibrahim aley salam for example or in the time the sura the sura sura kath the sura of the cave everybody was was worshiping idols at their stages of their life especially when they were well at all stages really of their life idol worship was a big big requirement meaning literally would create a physical idol it would have their temple they would go to it they would worship the idol they would ask it for things and so on and so from a young age to their older ages one had to guard themselves against this sin this sin of shared and the sin of thinking that an inanimate object can somehow have divine powers and abilities in the time that we live in that's i mean i don't see that happening really at least not here in america very very very i've never met someone who's like made an idol have a stone put it in front of them and started bowing down to the idol no they would do it what they worship here a lot of people they worship science they worship different scientific theories meaning like the atheistic understanding of the world right a lot of people just automatically will believe the theory of evolution without ever challenging the the core fundamentals of it so these things they become sub via they become their religion basically so that's what they're but that worship is not outward it's not visible yet till you talk to them till you see till you see what they're teaching in schools and so on so one must be aware in their youth in this stage of 15 to 35 what are the things that could get in my mind the mind of my children and i have to counteract them same thing with different practices of sin different societies throughout different eras have different sins that they struggle with some societies there is more of an inclination to doing certain types of drugs or drinking or partying others there is um the financial sins are the big ones right taking out interest fair and loans and so on so the different different people literally depending on the people who we hang out with how we grew up they will be impacted by different sins in their youth and one has to be aware of what those sins are right and and and the sin of luxury for example over excessive exuberance spending on things it will it will not afflict somebody who has very little money their sin might be a different type of sin but therefore so one has to know okay based on where i've been placed in the circumstance i've been in my life what sins are most prevalent around me that i need to guard myself again so i don't corrupt my youth um so this is the key and and the essence of it or the the final part of it is just to not let ourselves get in a state of justification of where we'll change our lives later the more one can have role models of people who from a young age were very living strike straight upright lives the easier will be to say you know what that's totally possible instead of somebody saying that's not possible again i'll do it when i'm way way way older it is possible some of the most resilient people and they'll not give our brothers and sisters in palestine complete complete confidence and relief and victory some of the most resilient people right now in terms of their struggle and their resistance against this uh Zionist occupation are people in their youth who are young who are standing up for the umma or standing up for Islam and who are exemplifying immense amount of patience and fortitude so it is possible in a young age it doesn't happen to be somebody who is much more advanced so youth that's the key the second is this age of maturity so now he says okay somebody gets past this stage and they get into the stage of maturity he says this sees um where someone will will will on the youth they're on their way up this is the peak the peak meaning the peak of what of wisdom and of intelligence so if in no jose he says that this stage begins at 35 and ends around 50 in the 50s in the early 50s so he says here what happens is that one will start to attain if Allah wishes good for them and again the precursor to this is Allah gives it to somebody and of course if Allah gave them the ability to practice what they needed to practice in their youth Allah will give them immense wisdom and now in this stage ideally repentance and returning to God constantly dominate the quality of this person and they're they really want to return to Allah they know that they have to and they try to focus as much as possible on constantly turning back to Allah every time they make a mistake every time they make an error a slip they turn back to their Lord because that wisdom has become clear as Allah says in the Quran and when he attained his prime we gave him wisdom and strength and depth and and thus do we reward the good and then in another dua i believe this is referring to i'm so sorry but this might be a foreign saying that is my yield alayhis salam the son of raba him alayhis salam but a faham century and until when he attained full strength and reached 40 years he said my Lord inspire me to give thanks for that that you have favored me and my parents and to do good works that are pleasing to you and be gracious to me in the matter of the of my children of my seed of those in my loins truly i have turned to you repentant and truly i am of those who are from the muslims from those who have submitted so here Allah is showing okay at there's a certain age where who gives the wisdom and the strength it's gone god decides i will just show you now with wisdom and with strength with a certain type of um unlocking and understanding we all know when we've been around people who are wise right like there's just some some some rounding quality about them that the words that they say the way in which they approach the advice that they give us is just very wise and they're not going to to hasten to do things i was just on the phone with the brother today who's probably in this i think the idea in this day of his life and i was like we gotta get this thing done and we should get it you should just do it tonight and he was just like oh i don't think i need some time just think about it i'm gonna think about it over the weekend take my early next week and it was like a difficult conversation we have to have with someone else early next week i'm going to have a conversation and i was like yeah that's totally totally the more mature thing you did not listen to my advice extremely hasty not like your your approach to just the way what you said it was wise and the approach in and of itself deliberation is almost always better there's very few instances unless there's like some abuse or something crazy going on that where a deliberate where being deliberate and calm about things is not good usually it's very good to do right but that wisdom it will start to show in this stage and so it was in this stage where the messenger sallallahu alayhi wasallam received his prophethood formally it was at the age of 40 so 40 is a big turning point in the life of the muslim a big turning point it is what it doesn't cut your life in half but it kind of is the point at which you were our phase of accountability from the time where we started being accountable began until the time when we might pass away so say from 15 until 65 which is the average age of this according to the process right around the middle of that right so this is the age in which he sallallahu alayhi sallam achieved a uh he got his revelation he the revelation formally began of course he had been prepared for prophethood well before this as Allah had been preparing him but this is where the formal mantle um was was given the prophetic mission was given and so he says at this point it starts to become clear the direction in um the direction in where where someone's life is headed so if someone's life is headed towards good it will start to become pretty clear towards this age and if someone's life is not headed towards good which means they can still change it doesn't mean that seal the fate is sealed but it will also start to show what are the priorities that people have what are the things that um that they talk the most about that they think the most about what are the ways which we live our lives and how do we exemplify the prophetic qualities that we should be exemplifying at this age it should be a serious age if somebody has lived through Islam and hits the age of 40 and hasn't really woken up to the real the reality of life that's a problem that's a real problem meaning like still caught up in the same sins making you know all sorts of jokes all the time inappropriate jokes not actually taking life seriously just all the things that again in our society that might actually end up happening or being overly concerned about cosmetics and overly concerned about looks and all sorts of things and and they're at the age of 40 it's a problem because age of 40 signifies seriousness it signifies maturity and it's a jib Allah doesn't talk about he doesn't say we gave them outward qualities he says we gave them wisdom and strength now strength can be strength from a physical perspective but we can also understand strength from the perspective of iman and the spiritual perspective at this age at this turning point so what we seek in our relationship with Allah as we go through these stages of life it's these qualities of um of knowledge which are the most important and then wisdom is really how you apply that knowledge so again when we're younger we might learn something and we might just want to do it in the way we think it needs to be done but as we get older if we've been learning hopefully then we'll have started to have the flavor of wisdom to it actually this is not really the right thing to say even though the book says to say it each probably shouldn't say it why it's not the right time to say it to that person it might not be done in the right tone and it might not be done in the right method and that's wisdom it's knowing how to apply something in a way that aligns with the sunnah not just in a way that looks like the sunnah the inner reality of it is in accordance with the sunnah and so one starts to gain these traits it's actually why book knowledge without having teachers and without seeing these things in practice can actually be dangerous for for us because one just sees a bunch of black and white rules when there's a lot of gray area in terms of how those rules are applied especially in the context of that we live in so he says that this is a time where again the direction starts to become very very clear imamah shafi he says that when he reached 40 he began to walk with staff and like the the the the the the tall staff six head and and he said when he was questioned about it he used to say it's to remind myself that I'm a traveler and I'm just a traveler because we are just travelers in this world we're not supposed to be here for a long period of time and usually someone will use that right it's like the old version of a hiking stick and someone is using it to remind said and the staffs were used for many many many reasons there's a lot of utility to them but to remind myself that I am a traveler and then one of the great scholars even remember he said that I have read somewhere that each morning a herald announces from the fourth heaven so caller announces from the from the fourth heaven that oh people of 40 you are a crop whose harvest is near as you are a crop whose harvest is near so you should be getting your gear that that everything you've been working towards the harvest is very close he said oh people of 50 questioning them what have you sent ahead of you have you sent anything ahead of you what have you sent ahead of you and what have you kept back what deeds have you sent forth and what have you kept back oh people of 60 you have no excuse you have no excuse and then reminding them that um uh uh like if what if creatures have this burden of being we're created right like once you're created now the responsibility comes just that way so he's reminding them that once you're created the creatures who appear they know why they were created and the hour is getting very close to you so beware the hour is what the day of judgment is not when the end of the world comes the day of judgment for me and for you is when we that that's that that's the actually the small hour attention and there is that is the the the the small piano meaning because the full day of piano for us our deeds have essentially stopped there's very few things there are things we can do as other gajaria but they're not that many our prayers are fast or zakat everything we're held accountable to and stop so that's when the time comes and he's saying that at these stages that the reality has to sink in the key for us in the time we live in is not to just be doing the same thing in every stage of life because nobody in their right mind would just live the same life in their dunya and be doing the same thing that they were doing at age like 17 or 18 and then at age 31 they're doing that and age 45 they're doing that even with regards to most people with regards to their careers or their jobs they would be highly dissatisfied if they had a position when they were at age 25 and they have the same position at age 45 some people would be content with it but others most people who are in certain fields would be highly dissatisfied with it am i even doing how come i'm not getting promoted how come i'm not getting erased why am i and and and it wouldn't but for spirituality and for maturity we have we usually most of most people in our society we don't have the same standard we might be the same level of spiritually mature spiritual maturity in our 20s as we are in our 40s and that goes back to prioritization so if we are still the same thing what we were doing when we were younger always socializing always hanging out it always needs to be about just finding something to do to fill my time so that i don't have to actually remember the real and we're still doing that one right in our 40s and we're still doing that one in our 50s and we're just filling the time problem wake up call has to happen and then it's even worse if somebody is committing the major sins and they haven't changed someone who's still drinking and smoking and so on and they were still doing it when they were young and they do it as they get older that's even worse at least for the person who's young well there's no excuse in the sharia there's kind of like an understanding okay maybe at some point they'll stop but if someone is in their more advanced ages and they've hit this age of senior or of maturity and it's happening that's a problem if we have not hit this stage yet we need to start praying to Allah that He uses us in the best way possible because we only get one chance in this planet during this state that's what our goal should be the prophet nobody has had more barakah in their life he was only given prophethood for 23 years formally and look at how much impact he had and how many billions of people are going to be under his banner of the day of judgment other prophets had over 900 years of calling and they're still in Allah's rank the highest the ranks but outward results may have not been necessarily the same the prophet sallam shows us that this umma has a lot of blessing if they use the blessing wisely if they use their blessing because we're all linked to the prophet sallam and so we all have the chance to use the special gifts that have been given to him in his umma properly the best way to do this also as we get in his age is link to people who are linked to him the ones who are linked to him the most are the Ahlul Bayt Rasulullah sallam the ones where his direct descendants of which there are many around right now imam ablalamin alayhi haddad the text we're reading he was one of his descendants and he also the land where he's from the land of hadramot in tarim yemen uh that or where tarim yemen is it's full it's all scholars of ahlul bayt inshaAllah and so there's there there are people who are many many many places many places around the world and they're still there including in america but when one links to them and says how am i going to have a lot of love for these these people and how am i going to have a lot of understanding of what their akhlaq is if they're implementing islam of course not not just if they have the title but don't implement islam now one starts to have a understanding and a deep spiritual there's an inward understanding just like there's an outward understanding and so linking two people who sat with someone who sat with someone who sat with someone who sat with someone who sat with someone all the way to the who sat with the tabi'in who sat with the sahabah who sat with the prophet sallam himself that's not going to be the same as somebody who's never done that it's just it's not possible because the prophetic inheritance is being passed down by one group of people and so that's one thing we can do to try to awaken up this inner clear this avail we have this blocks our inner reality the next one we go to is so so he says this is this is now the age of maturity and then we get to seniority or advanced age he calls it so this is from 50 to 70 at this point most people they may not ever reach a stage past this because the average of this umma is from 60 to 70 the prophet alay salatu as-salam he passed according to most narrations when he was 63 years of age so the and he said that it's going to be the average lifespan of the month so he says at this point many times physically signs of weakness start to show and the strength that was there that a peak starts to receive outwardly doesn't mean inwardly someone doesn't have strong email and strength many of the people that that are doing the most amount of ibadah are in this age group usually but it is you do get tired more easily right and it is not the same level of him and then somebody might have had aspiration or energy someone had when they were younger and he said that the prophet alay salatu as-salam he said in one narration that um um that we'll find the hadith in a second inshallah but the the ayah in the Quran where Allah says did we not grant you a life long enough for the one to reflect for him who reflects to reflect therein and then the warner and the warner came to you he said this verse applies to people who are in this age that okay now the life was long there's no excuse at this age to say i didn't have enough time at 50 to 70 there is no excuse at this point i didn't have enough time i didn't get enough chances there was not that he says that life was long enough to start the reflection and um and and to to to let it uh and and to let it really sink in in one narration of this hadith that god has left no excuse for one who he allows to reach 60 there's just no no god will not accept or just or or in this case that there are no excuses that can be presented before Allah again there are different ages who really present different excuses but for someone who's been given this much time for sure there were times in that 60 years of life where somebody couldn't use their time maybe differently to do things that were important to rectify their life this is especially important for those uh of us who may have missed prayers when we were younger and as we get older with that weight of missing those prayers becomes very serious as we mentioned in previous um classes missed prayers according to the dominant opinion in the majority of madahid have to be made up going to hajj and making sincere toba does not clear the debt one owes to Allah for miss salat we're not talking about someone who converted to Islam someone who was born Muslim at the time that there were puberty at the time that they were in puberty they were Muslim until whenever they start praying again properly they missed prayers they those prayers one is accountable for this is a common misconception time that we live in at one once they start taking Islam seriously that's the only time that they're accountable for things missed prayers and miss zakat and missed fast are not excused in our religion there there is no so now if somebody says well i have i know ten years of missed prayers ten years is a lot but it's totally possible i know people have gotten 15 years of missed prayers done gradually over 15 over future years they've gotten 15 past years done just by doing one extra set a day but one can't just say at this point i don't have enough energy i can't make up my missed prayers one has to have worked hard to say you know what if i owed miss zakat if i owed miss past if i owed miss prayers i took them seriously when the himma was there or i'm going to start taking them seriously at this stage because time is is starting to wrap up for this group of people and he says it's interesting because the lifespans of the muslims are the shortest have ever been in earlier nation there are people who lived near or in excess of one thousand years and some have said that those people who lived to one thousand years that they didn't even hit puberty until they're 80 years old 80 years old is when their puberty would start and then after that they had 920 years of accountability that's that's the the the age we know the say the new hallislam called his people for 900 to 950 years he would be making he was making dow to them that's how patient he was and they didn't even listen arrogance in front of him they didn't listen and that's when i left when he finally after that time he prayed to Allah okay this isn't going to change take care of the situation and then you know obviously in a very intense way the great flood came so he said that it was said that one of the sons of Adam or perhaps in future generations died at age 200 and people felt sorry for them having such a brief life at the age of 200 years and so this this is this this this is um totally a interesting phase that we've been given where for this one month a very short period so how do we make up for it this is why he mentions that the stage we were given laya till cover laya till cover and many of the other barakah secrets in our religions uh secrets meaning um blessings that we've been given that kind of our unlock significant amount more spiritual blessing in our life they've been given to this umma so it is better than 83 years of ibadah so somebody gets just like 10 of these in right that's 830 years of ibadah and and all it takes is that they have to be in ibadah for a good portion of that kind there's many other ways this umma has been given um blessings right that our intentions are just making the intention results in a good following through that with that intention can result in 100 or 700 good deeds or multiplied by many many many times over um and so and same thing we were mentioning with the secret of the time that we've been given where it comes in an aeration that the morning time the early morning time is blessed for my umma so now already he's saying you'll be able to get a lot done in this time compared to um and and it will unlock barakah for someone that maybe was you used to take somebody 10 years to unlock in a previous generation someone might be able to get it in a week or five or five months right Allah is is is distributes according to the lifespan that he has given so there's still there's still um risk to distribute and so Allah can give somebody immense what's called tofi divine assistance in their time but they have to know to use this time wisely so he goes on this this explanation of um of these these days of barakah and these nights of barakah but just given what this this this umma has been um uh has been the blessing that this umma has been given and so he says at this age now what happens is it's all about reverting to God the dominant state must be constantly turning to Allah not focusing on this dunya much at all focusing on gathering provisions for the life to come motion obedience kind of letting go of all the things of the dunya that we're still attached to so first if we're in our 60s or 70s even even which he's going to say in the next stage and we're still worried about the stock market and what our 401k looks like and it doesn't even matter none of that stuff's gonna matter because we might die tomorrow right and like those types of things anybody could die tomorrow but specifically someone in this age group the messengers already said that this is the average like the middleman so that the wake up call should come in same thing if we're trying to start new businesses and new companies and make new investments and all the things that we very normal for us to do at our age in the in this country the senator of this state was literally trying to be in the senate even though it was very obvious that that there was almost no life left until like 85 or 80 i'm not sure exactly what age just just passed away 88 just just every staffer is assisting and then you're literally honest you will be on the floor of this corrupt government the institute that you're standing up for on the floor of the senate until you're about to die that's not how the muslim guys the muslim does not it's not crashing for power until that age that's not gonna happen that's not the key and in other instances people in in the nation uh who are people in our country maybe who are not muslim or people are muslim and they're 70s 80s lawsuits with every other person fighting all sorts of people i mean look at trump he is like 80 years old and everybody has sued him already every other state has sued him every other company has i mean just constantly and that's the goal but you can trick yourself only so much by dyeing your hair and putting injections in your face and whatnot whatever these people do to think that you're still young but it's going to catch up it's going to catch up and so the muslim they understand okay i'm at that phase that's why it's why learning the texts and learning these things is so important because then you know what the time hit i gotta change now i can't if i'm devoting 20 hours more than i need to to work and i should probably devote some percentage of that to ibadah i should probably consider doing that and now if i don't regularly pray my five prayers i gotta change if i don't regularly pray the hajjud and i'm not doing it at this age i gotta change if i'm not reciting Quran regularly i gotta change if i'm not giving more in charity or serving whatever things that somebody will do there's their their decisions for the good deeds that they decide to do beyond the farah one starts to take it seriously and Allah even sent them signs what are the biggest sign he says his white hair when the hair becomes white that's the first sign that okay you're on your way out things are going to change and then when it becomes fully white that is the biggest sign he says when the hair becomes fully white then as it comes in one narration white hair brings with it the suspicion that one's time has come and it is the manager of hope hope in this case not meaning like hope and Allah but that there's not that much more time left one should stop thinking i call change later wow many more signs are needed same thing when the wrinkles start to appear becomes very very clear when the bodily functions start changing so this is the stage at which all of these things start to happen where all of these things start to happen um and and and he says do not let Allah burn the light of your white hair because light the white hair can signify a nur it's like a luminosity with the fire of your sins don't let that light be extinguished because of the fire of the sins that we are committing and so at this age again that sign should not be um we should be we should be very very very attuned um to this and at one in one narration Allah says by my eminence and majesty and the need of my creatures for me i would be too ashamed to torment my my servants my men servants and women servants delineating both whose hair has turned white in Islam and then the Prophet ﷺ wept and they said what makes you weep he said i weep because of those before whom Allah is ashamed if you do not feel ashamed before him that Allah is saying himself i would be too ashamed to torment them if their hair turned white in Islam and he said that i am weeping because there are people who Allah is who is Allah is is is ashamed of her but they're not ashamed in front of their Lord obviously ultimately Allah does not is not ashamed in the way we would think about it literally but there's this is for for teaching us right and so again that Allah is showing the sign when everyone is young strength is there the energy is there as long as older things change physical appearance are changing so what about that in the society we live in where everybody wants to hide all of that there's no no appreciation or recognition for the fact that you're not supposed to look the same at 55 as you did at 35 it's not going to happen in jannah it will happen everybody's the average age will be like 33 or so but according to some narrations but it's not in this life it's not going to happen so for the people who are in this category to be aware of the society that we live in that it's trying to make us just like it made us forget about the importance of seriousness when we were young makes us forget about the importance of seriousness when we're older and this is especially especially especially the case for for for women in our society where the types of stuff that gets sold is constantly focused on appearance and this did all sorts of different ways to spend our money to make ourselves appear younger but what if we're not supposed to appear younger according to what we're learning you're supposed to embrace the fact that i'm getting older and and that's supposed to remind us so if my hand my hair was was whitening and then i'd dye my hair every like how often it used to be dyed once or so and and now i've just looked in the mirror and i'm not even getting up so young hold on to say that's a lie it's not true you're not actually that young you're actually your hair is whitening and it's supposed to be a reminder but i'm covering up the reminder if my skin is first sturgeon wrinkly and i'm starting to give bags under my eyes and so on and i just go in and put all sorts of serums and potions and all these other things that are being sold to me and then injections and botox and fill it all up but so now i'm going to think yeah i am still young but you're not it's fake it's all not real the reality is actually underneath it and so by not embracing the reality of things the organic way in which people which we were created and by putting so on so many things on us that will stake us or trick us into thinking this is not actually real we do ourselves a disservice because we continue to try to do the same the same the same things with our with our bodies that we did when we were younger but it wasn't supposed to be the same had it needed was it if it was supposed to be the same allow it have never allowed for aging to happen it just wouldn't be the case because Allah doesn't need us to to age actually it could just be if someone always looks like they're you know 33 always and just like look or always looks like they're 25 and then they never age and then they just they get to 75 or 68 and they pass away you could just let it be like that it's why because there's a reminder of the stages of life there's a reminder of the stages of life so as as Muslims we should be the first to counteract all of this stuff that's like trying to trick us into thinking that that life is not progressing and that's trying to make us freeze in time just like I could just be young again it's free no just embrace it we're not going to be young again it's be old just be old and be young hearted but it's totally okay but not to to try and let the trick of shaytan get to us so he says the white hair is a huge reminder it's surprising actually how much time he devotes just to hadith about white hair and how much a reminder that is as a reminder for men it is impermissible to to to dye your hair black except for g and when your one is a jihad so this is actually something common once sees often is men dying their hair the only permissibility as possible is someone who dies white hair with like a red coloring like a mandi or a saffron but but black is prohibited for one to to dye their hair and one cannot deceive people about their about their age um so he just gives that as a reminder actually at the end so then and I think we'll have just enough time in shala for this one gets uh one gets to the age of decrepit he calls it decrepit just the word itself is like that's that's the word decrepit so now he says this is from 70 onward everything begins to weaken and Allah says is himself in the Quran Allah is he who created you out of weakness and then appointed after weakness strength then after strength appointed weakness and gray hair and he creates what he will he is the knower the able so weakness one goes from when you're an infant a baby you completely completely rely on your parents weak and then this period of strength sets in and the strength has an up and up and then it has one losing the strength right and then one starts to get to the stage where he says weakness starts to kick him again and gray hair starts to come and then Allah says in the Quran that among you there is he who who is brought back to the translation is the worst time of white so that after knowledge he knows nothing maybe maybe commenting on memory loss or the inability to think or understand right all sorts of diseases that start to come to somebody as they get older and there's nothing wrong with this is how Allah has created us but it's an assign that when somebody was young nothing we were babies we didn't maybe know anything our intellects we weren't understanding things right and then as somebody gets into this late stage of life now dementia can kick in and all sorts of other diseases called diseases of old age there's no medical cure for them right and Alzheimer's can kick in and these types of things so he says these are known as senility and the loss of one's mental faculties and these start to kick in and so there's even a hadith where the Prophet ﷺ asked Allah o Allah asked for your protection from being brought back to the worst time of life or from based on this ayah we would assume and then another from the evil of senility and and so the there's a physical tribulation that comes at this stage and actually this is there's a dua maybe i hear some of our elders reading maybe when they're like in their 50s and 60s they say oh Allah take me while i'm walking or take me what before i'm like deeply relying on people only make me rely on you right because usually it's very difficult for the human being if any if we've ever had to to see or take care take care of our grandparents or parents and they're really elderly it's difficult for them to they need help using the restroom it's difficult they don't want to ask for that but they need the help so of course one has to help but it's not something that one wants to seek help for right it's it's a difficult stage help getting up help walking help going up the stairs and so it's a very difficult stage of someone's life so he says this is the stage at which many people have already passed on from the world according to the hadid from 60 to 70 before they even reached this stage but some will reach this stage and then they have a different difficult degree of suffering and according to my narration the prophet's son said few of my nation is there he was asked what is the age the average age of your nation he said 60 to 70 there's their deaths on average will be between this age and he said what about those over 70 al-as-wabab he said few of my nation will reach that age and then and then he said may Allah have mercy on those who are over 70 and then may God have mercy on those who are over 80 and just giving making dua for them because again this difficult stage starts to come in so there's there's further commentary that's given but for the the hulasa the summary of it is that one really needs to take advantage of the strength before they get to this stage why is it important that if someone here is 30 or 40 or 50 whatever age someone is at um that they understand what happens when we get to this point and we study it because sometimes it's right in front of us and it doesn't make any impact like our grandparents might be right in front of us and really yeah but they're great grandfathers grandmothers i don't know i'm really this age i had plenty of years to write in front of us we don't really see ourselves in that we don't really and especially in the society we live in where maybe we're not living in homes the multi-generational homes like traditionally they used to live in so we only see people are age was last time someone like called up somebody was 60 years older than them was like hey want to have dinner i'm just hanging out it's usually we're usually hanging out with the same social circle with the same group of people so it's highly unlikely that one is is is going to um be aware of these things i just found out there's somebody and it was i i thought it was a very virtuous quality someone i know who's in their late 20s and um someone else i know recently started a nursing home so she was asking she was like hey i know a few people who want to like volunteer in your nursing home and just like visit the the elderly i was like yeah i mean the people there are like 101 like hospice care on their way out they're like yeah we just want to visit them and it was like this person she had grown up with her grandparents always at home and living with them and then also saw her grandparents pass away at their house they're late they're late 80s i believe 70s and 80s and so i was talking to my wife after and she was like you know it's it's clearly a quality that she misses that she misses actually being around their grandparents and misses being um and just just just the the there's there's some type of a feeling that someone gets an attachment almost that um that they still want to go and spend time maybe to remind themselves that they're of their grandparents or for other reasons but the reason one of the reasons why i felt that was i was such a noble thing to do is because just visiting somebody who's a lot older to remind somebody you know what i'm going to be on this stage in life right now so i better be careful about what i do when i'm younger and how i behave when i'm younger there's many many people wrote books in broad history at this age of life deeply regretful books usually um uh the ones that both salute got published we usually like lead like male leaders hired in some of them and they were right about how ashamed they were about arrogant they used to be when they were young and now how weak they are and how they just wish they could go back and treat people nicely and just the remorse that one that one might have because they're spending a lot of time in bed and a lot of time or or maybe sometimes some folks are immobile so the reason why it's important for us to reflect on this stage is because we will either die or we'll get to the stage those are the two options either we die before in which case we got to live our life straight or we'll get to the stage or we don't have that many opportunities or we've got to live our life straight so the path points to one thing live our life straight as possible that's like where the the mind has to get to that point and the heart has to get to that point of realization and um uh a long life though in obedience of Allah so someone reaching the stage and still obeying Allah is desired in our religion so the best among you are those whose lives are long and whose works are good according to Allah or they get ample amount of time to do ibadah ample amount of time to turn to Allah to do more to do more work and so on and you work meaning ibadah and good deeds um and and and so on so as as one narration says and let none of you wish for death for either you are doing good and best you'll start to see increases or you're doing wrong right now and you'll have more time uh to make uh immense with Allah to fix your relationship with them so don't don't wish for for a short life or for things because things are difficult i don't want to live anymore no we should never make that go off we should always ask Allah to allow me to live as long as good for me and when it's not good for me then take me away but the usual we see our teachers make us this do Allah bless us with long life in your ibadah long life in your ibadah um where we where we are able to understand the purposes of each of these stages um and and so he goes on to various uh things that happen then until one finally reaches the point of death and so uh we'll probably cover that next time we want to try to get to today but for the sake of time it's a little bit lengthy and there's it's a pretty critical stage of life to understand is when someone actually is about to leave this world it's one of the most momentous um uh events for us to grasp so we'll want to spend probably the whole class or part of it on it inshallah uh but just briefly we'll finish this up he mentions that many people who lived lives in immense barakah never reached these later stages so imama shafi which is the one the great imam the one who founded the shafi madab he died at the age of 54 he said imama ghazali the proof of islam project the islam muazzali he died at 55 and then he mentions many others um uh who who died amongst the great women and men uh leaders of this umma and spiritual pillars of this umma who died in their 40s or 50s or 60s it not not necessarily that it doesn't necessitate that for one to live a saibna wabakar and saibna omar also passed away between 60 and 70 of the alam so it doesn't necessitate that somebody lives a significantly long period of life for them to be able to accomplish a lot he says the key is barakah the barakah in the time that they have and how they use that time will be the key to unlocking how much they're able to accomplish um with the with the time that they have been given so he said this last period decrepitude usually is on its way according to most scenarios the end someone ends with a fatal illness then their life starts to be wound up with some type of illness and then with death death can happen without illness a lot is not even an excuse for death to take place but most of the time this is what happened so so someone gets into this advanced old age so to know this and to know that okay death is at every door either i'm going to reach this age and i will die with some disease or i'm going to reach this age and my time is going to come and a lot will take me or i think i have plenty of time left and the next thing you know tomorrow got bits i'm going to pass away it's he said every door leads to death and leads to the meaning of Allah so if that's guaranteed then maybe use of our life of our time of our moments of our days of our conversations of our interactions and as much as possible and use them in the right way don't let a day go by where we feel doubtful am i committing sin like if we know something's wrong i gotta leave that wrong that's it tomorrow i'm leaving it there's no ifs ands or buts about it because i know i'm gonna die the next day i could die and if you make the intention today to leave a wrong if we make the intention today yalla i don't want to do this thing again and tomorrow we do die and we never left the wrong in the first place will be it will be as though we did the wrong because the intention is what matters so one we have to use these moments hopefully is as means of really reflecting why am i doing that that would not be happy with what i do and how am i going to change that and then inshallah we set out on that path to change uh so with that uh if there's any questions we'll go ahead and do them i know folks ask online what book is this is lives of man by imam abdullah al haddad the lives of man it's a short book um but packed with a lot of good uh content yes yeah you want me to do that one first yeah yeah really good good great question so the question is if we missed our salat um do we have to try to remember the salat or is doing the nafila and the sunnah prayers enough to make up for that um so the you do have to try to quantify and measure how much was missed to the best estimate possible so what someone does is um someone calculates okay i know that i was responsible legally to start praying at age 15 i might have prayed from 15 to 18 most of my prayers maybe 95 percent of my prayers maybe there's a few i didn't pray but i know for a fact from like age 18 to 28 i was in jailia i was not praying i was messing around whatever one was doing maybe they weren't taking a lot or they say you know what i miss fudger every day i know it i never woke up i miss the word because i was at school and i didn't want to pray whatever else so now one would say okay for 10 years i have to calculate let's say someone miss fudger and the word two prayers fudger and the word for those entire 10 years and you estimate that you do a little bit more than what you think because usually it could be a little bit more and then you can you literally can create a spreadsheet if you would like i i know resource extended to you the spreadsheet you can track it and then you say okay now i have to slowly start making you know and now you have to make the intention for that prayer not the day that you missed it like january 14 2008 no you'd have to say i'm making up a fudger from the past and i make the qada fudger and then you get it you pray fudger and you can do it fairly quickly it doesn't have to be long prayers you can do the short suras it could be quick but one then would quantify and start to make those up and if it's all of them then it's all of them it's all five um if one doesn't remember whether i was praying or not uh you take the general understanding and probably wasn't praying usually one would remember if we're doing most of our prayers or at least some of them and then the sumna and the nafila prayers um they make up for deficiency in the farth prayer not the farth prayer itself there's actually a very common question um that folks have is does the sumna and nafila replace the entire prayer so if i'm praying and the reward for the prayer is this much that i could get a hundred percent the vast majority of us are like thinking about something and the next thing i have to do this tomorrow and i have to do this for work and i have to what am i going to eat for lunch and whatever thoughts we have in our head that she thought might whisper into our mind right when we start salam so we actually might only achieve 30 or 40 percent of the reward the sumna prayer now helps you get a little bit more and then you do the next sumna and it just gives you the maximum reward for the prayer so it makes up for deficiencies or um mistakes that are not like critical mistakes that someone makes so someone makes a big mistake that's not excused one has to make up the prayer but like small mistakes one makes in the prayer and one they make up for that so that's why we must do the sumna and when those mistakes don't exist it is a bunch of extra reward extra reward extra reward but the farth prayers do have to be made up yeah good question the question is about white hair and someone might get it a lot earlier so um what he's speaking to here is like the commonality the general rule there could be specific instances like i know somebody who their hair was fully white at age like 26 fully right and uh brother and i mean it just i think it ran in the family it was just genetic it was it there was a face was fully youthful right but the hair was fully white um and and so there's a difference between let's say when it's genetic and with the commonality he's referring to as the commonality when it comes to someone genetically being predisposed to someone and then like what do they do about that um that would be someone you would ask like a specific question in that age let's case to a scholar would say okay it's permissible for someone to do this because they got it a lot earlier but in general the white hair it is a sign of noor and one of the hadith do mentioned that don't let the life of your white hair be extinguished by the fire of your sins so it's not that it's a it's a bad sign what it's supposed to be a reminder of is that i'm i'm not at that early youth stage anymore things are changing and i'm advancing and so i'm most of us will gradually get most human beings will gradually get white hair some in their 20s and then in 30s and i really start to pick up and then in 40s and then at some point it's full white and then what he's referring to is when it becomes full white really really really taken seriously so yeah does that answer we'll do one here yeah so so your so the question is let's say last ramadan is someone missed fasting for a valid legal reason like travel or something or sickness and now ramadan is about to come you know i'm the lover in red jeb so in two months until it's ramadan you're saying does someone have to make up before the next ramadan yeah so you are obliged actually religiously to make it up as soon as you have the ability to make it up so it's not even that necessary waiting till the next ramadan like you gotta try to make it up shawal like it's like not really there's not that much time given but um if someone regularly misses that and regularly misses that all you have to do religiously and i um anyone has a more detailed answer otherwise um we're all looking to it one has to religiously is you have to keep track of it of the fast that i owe and then at some point you have to make those fasts up right so it's similar with a miss prayer or one technically has to make up the miss prayer as soon as they can but maybe they'll wait 20 years and they'll never do it right and then we might do it a lot later so then one might reach the stage where they have a lot of fast to make up but the reason why that's not recommended is because i guess it's really difficult to make up a lot of fasts right like it's hard you cannot fast sunnah or nafila fast if you have farth fast to make up so if somebody has a fast of ramadan to make up you cannot fast moharam or ashura or um the fast of shawal with the intention only of doing the nafila fast the intention first has to be that i'm making the farth fast up and then some of the scholars permit a secondary intention that i'm doing this this uh this for the sake of the the noble day that one is fasting on and hope maybe Allah will give the reward each other but um if you didn't let's say someone didn't make it up between ramadan and they had the ample time um that would be usually one should make toba for the fact that they fell short in that uh that one would ask Allah for forgiveness that they would that they fell short in having 330 days of the year and one did not even consider making up those fasts uh it could be different for a pregnant woman or a breastfeeding woman who might have missed a whole ramadan and now you're talking 30 fast to make up versus somebody who is sick or traveling for two or three days and talk so so the the scenarios will kind of vary depending on the this one. Did you have follow-up to that or separate? Yeah go ahead. So we talked about to go on the board of law or would it be meant to lead to the law? Yeah so why don't you do their utmost within within their ability to do so?  Yeah. You want me to answer that one first? Yeah yeah so the question is um you have far the prayers to make up um is it preferred over tarawih according to two of the madahib it is preferred over tarawih and in fact according to one of them it's obligatory you cannot pray any sunnah prayer if you still owe a part prayer according to other madahib like the Hanafi school um you should go to as much of the tarawih as you can and then use the rest in make up and then other madahib may permit you to make an intention during tarawih if you're doing toorakat toorakat to use that for make up fudger for for fudger make so there's a difference between the the schools um I generally but I've been taught and tried to prescribe to is to take the make up some more seriously than the sunnah prayers and so if let's say you can come for tarawih maybe you come for eight and then you go home and you do 12 make ups right and so now you're still doing 20 prayers at night or how many ever someone wants to do even more than 20 the malikis used to pray 36 traditionally so one might do 40 extra prayers whatever else it is but they're they're using the time others they pray their far prayer and they just get straight to the makeup center madahib they don't use any time for anything else yeah good question so the question is about dual intentions for fasts such as the fast the 10 days of dohicha um so because those are not obligatory fasts different madahib had different opinions on whether a dual intention is permitted some said no you can only make the intention for the singular sunnah not so fast that it is and that's it others said no you can make both intentions and the primary intention is for the far prayer or so far as fast that you missed and then you make the secondary intention that I'm doing it during these virtuous days with the hope that Allah will give me the reward of of these virtuous days but what you would not do is delay the makeup to those days just so that you could get the extra reward what you would do is try to make it up sooner and if you weren't able to find the him but now everybody in your house quick numbers forward and like okay now i gotta do it now you you know would kind of make that do it so it is permitted this is where on the level there's multiple madahib in Islam and different scholars have different interpretations that allow for you which one is it that said you cannot that you can double up um i believe both the shafi and the maliki school from it doubling up and the Hanafi's are usually not as okay with it yeah Sidi Ismail is that the shafi school usually permits the dual intentions from my understanding in both the prayer and the fast okay we can follow up on that yeah no worries yeah so the Hanafi say that you can that um the first the prayer is the prayer the intention of the imam is the only intention that you can have so that's the Hanafi school says and they say that you actually would do terawih and you have to find time to do your makeups they would they would not say that one is prioritized um immediately over the other but then but the makeups will have a significant response so the shafi school from my understanding and i have not studied shafi thinking detail but from the few opinions that we've gotten that you can make the dual intention according to one of the opinions in the prayer for the makeup for fajir let's say for terawih and um that you need to prioritize missed prayers over makeup prayers and believe the maliki school while it doesn't permit the dual intention it does basically say you have to do the makeups before anything else but even within the schools there's many opinions that came in a lot so a lot of best you can check on that for sure any other questions brothers nothing sister sister side no no so if you pray the qadah that day let's say somebody misses fajir and makes up at 8 30 a.m and they pray fajir but you did your qadah that there's not there's not like a makeup calculation what to do same thing if somebody misses lower they make it up that day or that week if you don't have to do any calculus what we're referring to is like 10 years ago i missed a bunch of prayers now i got a question is how do you reconcile medical innovation that is aiming to curb many of the natural processes of senescence i believe you mean at an old age i'm not talking about botoxillers to hide our healing appearances if someone if you could qualify what you mean by that by what innovation you're referring to like that that that can curb the natural processes of old age that would be helpful i'm not i'm not aware of too many of them and then there's a question in general there's a few questions about appearances and what's permissible and what's not the general understanding that we should have as muslims is we should really really really cannot try to change our appearance there's actually an ayah in the Quran where Allah talks about how its shaytan inspires them to change themselves from their from the perspective of their appearance you are the way Allah created you we take care of ourselves we maintain ourselves we look dignified to the best degree possible we try to you know there's room ourselves and so on from that perspective one has to make sure they do that but physical alteration of the human body and the human experience is especially with the intention that's like any unrighteous intention so the intention of just doing it so one can appear beautiful for longer for the sake of people usually right as an example or for any other reason one should be extremely careful to do that because you're now getting into a gray area where you are actually trying to tell God that you naturally are allowing for something to happen and i'm going to find a way to stop that thing from happening um and this this this does not apply to one taking care of themselves drinking a lot of water and making sure they get enough sleep we're talking about physical alteration alteration plastic surgery botox all these sorts of things so since there's a few questions on that we'll just say kind of comprehensively um we should keep that in mind when it was a question when we struggle with our faith what is the best reminder to bring us back um it's a good question so the first thing that when we struggle with our faith we should have a habit of opening up the Quran as quickly as possible because the Quran is the word direct the message directly from Allah actually to every one of us individually it's not a message that's just revealed and meant to be only um uh and access from different periods of time sent to us individually so we should open it up and say what is Allah trying to tell me and that in and of itself will there will be a message in the ayah that you read for you specifically that will be for the exact faith challenge that you were going through try and test it i'm sure many people in this room and we are facing that we open it up and Allah is telling us something so that's the first thing the second thing is that one should immediately try to um sit and either pray if they're able to pray or make doha or whatever they're able to do to say ya Allah i'm struggling right now i just want to talk to you so open up that door of communication ultimately the goal of faith is so that you can have a conversation with your reward regularly that's one of the key points of faith you believe in him you interact with him and you see him and all your interactions so in that when one starts to have that conversation it automatically um that the heaviness the struggle one is feeling it might start to calm down a little bit because now you are letting your lord in he's already always been there and he's aware of what's going on but you are allowing for him to come so those two things um that we would recommend and then the follow-up uh medical innovations that curb diseases of old age such as Alzheimer's or a drug that could prolong the life of individual cells which is in research currently yeah so the second one um i don't know you would want to ask the Mufti who's qualified and understands um the specific bioethics spiritually around that uh the first one if you're trying to curb diseases there's nothing wrong with the most part of that right so you are the senility that kicks in and now one is taking a medicine of some sort that is going to help somebody not have all the memory loss as long as there's nothing haram in the medicine that's going to hurt you in another way Allah knows best and i would again check with Mufti on this um you would usually would be fine with most of those medicines where it starts to get tricky is artificial things that one does solely not to change your intellectual capacity but to change your um physical physical appearance uh and and and those types of things so that's at least from what we've understood but Allah knows best hopefully that helps um there's another question when relatives trouble us what do we have to do yeah so Allah so first thing you have to remember Allah says will you not be patient we have created some of you as a test for others will you not be patient that's the ayah all of us should remember when we are interacting with relatives because the nature of family is it was going to trouble you i don't know if i've ever met anybody who's never had any problem with the family members you're going to have a problem with the family member be that somebody who's a muslim a non-muslim practicing not practicing the family the the issue will come up you remember that the second is you remember the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam struggled the most with his relatives they gave him the hardest time his uncles persecuted him persecuted him they had major issues with him and they gave him the most amount of difficulty you have a few routes one is you internally try to exemplify as much suburb patience and eqsan in your approach to them so try to try to be patient and and and not overly responsive in a bad way with what they say if the trouble is getting so difficult it's bearing on you or it's getting to the point of like verbally problematic you try to have a strict conversation with them where you draw the barrier you draw a line you say you can't speak to me like that it's not respectful you really need to make sure we have proper communication and we we kind of fix this and then you're not alive to see people who create a lot of problems for you all the time and you just you just have to maintain enough of relationship that you're not cutting them off but not one in which you're imposing a lot of difficulty for you but if it's like once every couple months you're seeing them and they're creating problems that's part of patience life is going to have to we're going to have to be patient with each other and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said in one I believe it's a hadith in one narration that it's more virtuous to be with the people and have to deal with the ups and downs of interacting with people than it is to just seclude oneself and you know kind of go kick it in a in the mountain or something somewhere and not be what do people do to that live a life of seclusion and there's nothing wrong with that but it's better to be with the people and to interact with them and to go through the ups and downs of difficulty and the follow-up what if the person is violent I mean yeah that's a whole different story right and at that point if someone it starts to get abusive or violent this is this is more I would take this to the appropriate kind of solution or center that can offer assistance but because these days you're calling the police is probably not the right moves if they usually are less helpful than more but you would need to find someone to intervene in that instant there's no place for violence and abuse and religion far none so you can't allow for that to happen if it's like a older cousin or something was pushing you and violent a lot more and it's not necessarily like a domestic abuse situation you want to make sure you're bringing that up to someone elder in the gathering and saying hey look like this is really hurting me or like creating a lot of problems for us we need to do something about it so the key is that one has to not tolerate the injustice when it's not like just small personality issues when physical problems get involved or there's emotional abuse or anything of the sort one has to take the precautions either directly with people involved there or with some other you know external parties to assist and to remove that or to confront the person properly with others to back you up and to say this is wrong what you're doing you need to stop right because sometimes people think they're just if they're like rough housing i think they're just joking but it's actually might seriously be hurting somebody or just inappropriate for them to be doing yeah okay i think that's yes great question question was around um we mentioned the importance of learning and learning with the teacher versus just reading on our own um and and and so what's the balance basically around them how do we go around how do we go about finding someone to help us with this the key is the connection not the physical amount of time that you spend with them so what we mean here there's various types of teachers that have been laid out in our religion we should try to have somebody who can give us a sense of what books should we read as we're trying to progress along the path that's sufficient and then you have if you can ideally ask them a question every now and then about the book and if they've studied it with the teacher or they studied it you know sufficiently then that would be very good in the time we live in traditionally that would be difficult to accept people would like know you gotta go and sit and learn with somebody who has this knot and has chain and but we're just living in a time where that might be difficult one could also say that you would review the book online with like an online class or in the class on youtube that was taught which there's thousands of them under law online now um where at least you see there's a curriculum that was followed and there's questions and answers that were asked that you could help help you process whatever questions might come up if somebody can do that then reading on your own with kind of like a guided reading would be very good if not then at least the bare minimum everyone still has to read on their own they're farther behind their basics it's usually when you get into a little bit more intermediate or advanced topics where reading might confuse somebody they don't have someone ask questions to the second is um that and the person by the way who you ask questions who doesn't have to be physically there uh so um people have teachers that are international they like what's happened questions down to ask answer the question that they have a resume call with them and it's it's sufficient right it's not doesn't have to be like someone sits with them second question on how does one go about finding a teacher right and the key is one makes a strong intention to Allah Allah I want to learn please give me the ability to to to learn with someone and to access somebody they say that literally Allah will bring someone to your doorstep according to them they think it will be Allah will bring someone in your life when you make that intention sincerely and that person will be a means of assistance and I know many people who that's happened to and they have no idea that it was like right there person next and they might have grown up around that person and the person they never knew until they made that intention and now some interaction happened between them and that person that made it clear oh this person is a person of immense knowledge and connection and then they started guiding them and sitting with them and helping them we're in the bay area i'm the love there's ample amounts of people like this many people who are people of knowledge who are people of learning who've sat with some great shoe sat with the likes of Imam Zayd and others the many in the faculty in Zaytuna having immense knowledge and you don't necessarily sit with them but you sit with somebody who sat with them who's taught who's and you just you just need kind of an older brother older sister type of figure to help along the path but that intention when someone makes it it will be clear for rare people it's even been mentioned in some of the books they make a sincere intention they beg Allah they beg Allah and they beg Allah and then you know that somebody might have a dream or something like that which might indicate to somebody this is who you should go to to learn but the key is one starts with their intention apologies it's getting late oh there's no question oh sorry you make the intention to make to make a prayer and you sleep through it but you're you still get the sin of missing the prayer it depends how sincerely you follow through on your intention so like if you know that you sleep like you snooze a lot and you set like two alarms it's usually not excusable if you set like 12 alarms and you did your Siri your iPhone alarm you told Alexa to set an alarm and you did this alarm you did all the alarms and you told your wife to wake you up when you called your brother and you're like make sure to wake me up or budget you did whatever you could sincerely for the sake of Allah and you slept on time not sleeping at like 3 a.m. and expecting to wake up at 6 right you really and now you missed it okay you hope that in shall Allah it's excused but usually there's very little there's few excuses there are excuses for someone who sleeps um who just literally like sincerely sleeps through something with and they tried their best right and they don't even remember when they wake up that they snooze all the time but then there's the excuse is not the same for somebody who wakes up they are very aware that they're awake they press snooze and then they say you know it's it's it's eight o'clock and they slept through it so um this is what's called Siddique Tawaccio truthfulness in our aspiration in our direction of what we're trying to do comes in how truthful is someone in that intention and if somebody does all of the prerequisites and they feel remorse when they wake up I really really am trying so hard and keep doing this please help me then you we hope in shall Allah that there is that forgiveness that's granted um but if it just becomes a pattern it's happening every day we're not really trying too hard we're just kind of hoping that it'll work out uh then one's intention was not as sincere as the the other case that makes sense so yeah yeah a little hard to hear could you yeah um though the the comment was if one starts to do um usually any type of exercise specifically cardio and then drinking ample amounts of water actually also um will help somebody just get the right amount of sleep that they need it's usually easier for them to wake up in the morning and as well as dohas that one needs to eat before they sleep make sure not to see any sins at all right before bed like if we're scrolling on instagram right before everybody will have problematic things come up in instagram feed put it away don't let them look at that before bed all the things you can do to protect your spiritual state so you sleep in like a saintly state and a protected state so that you can be woken up right some people are woken up right the they won't even set the alarm and they could be wake up um and so so you want to try to do that for example okay any other questions okay so if there's anyone else online we'll try to get to it next week um because it's getting a little bit late and the lesson with a with a duo uh i will be traveling next week uh so we will not have class uh inshallah so the following week we will do an absolute best to resume um like 95 percent sure it will be good to resume the following week uh if if uh if just look at her message in the what's that y'allah we are sitting here and hope we are benefiting from security and from ease and from comfort and from the ability to to sit and be in a state of security y'allah brothers and sisters continue to suffer immensely y'allah we're suffering y'allah and many people are ignoring them but we know that you are not ignoring them we ask Allah that you give assistance and that you give mudad and that you give protection and that you give split belief and split aid to our brothers and sisters and because of y'allah but i mean we ask that you assist the children we ask that you assist the parents we ask that you assist the the elderly we ask that you assist the men and the two sister women and that you assist all of those people y'allah but i mean in the region y'allah there are many who are continuing to be and serve you and we're providing medical treatment we're providing journalistic coverage and we're doing all sorts of things while they're under immense immense immense adversity and while they're being targeted their lives are being targeted we turn to y'allah this is the umma of your beloved prophet y'allah you love him and you love this from my y'allah we ask y'allah that you give relief to them y'allah that you give relief to these people that you accept them and that you give them tobacco and that you give them patience y'allah there are those y'allah who are who are suffering in the cold and we don't have water to drink and we don't have food to eat and we don't have a place to live properly y'allah we're living in tents who are suffering immensely y'allah we ask that you clothe them and to feed them and to give them warmth and that you give them comfort and that you give them tobacco and that you give them patience y'allah we ask that you help this umma y'allah through this immense adversity and give relief to this umma and that you give assistance to this umma and that you give them suffering that you give them immense high stations for this difficulty y'allah we ask that you accept all of those who have passed away as the highest stations of shahid that you accept them y'shuhada that you give them the highest ranks and martyrdom y'allah we ask that those who are trying to serve you and your cause and who are resisting this oppression yalla that you make their feet firm open after they are in a sovereign but thabba and the adama are more so now that pomelecafi make their feet firm make their hearts firm and give them victory over the disbelievers yalla give the Muslims victory over the kufari yalla give the Muslims victory over the shayatina yalla give the Muslims victory over these shayatina over these evil people who are trying to oppress and who continue to oppress and all of those who assist in the oppression the evil who assist in atrocities we ask that you take them to account in the best of ways yalla kubir yalla patina ahad we ask yalla bilad min yalla bilad min that you hold these people to account in this life and in the deepest in the deepest ways in the next life yalla we ask that you wrap this kuma with your mercy yalla that we ask that you give us the ability while we are in safety and security and soaking and swimming and basking and blessings that you allow us to take our lives seriously and that you allow us to work towards you and that you allow us to serve you properly and that you allow us to be people of shunka and kabool Iman, people of khikr and people of tzaan yalla bilad min and let us do whatever it is that you want us to do to serve you we ask that you protect us and our children and our family and our loved ones and our parents and that you grant us the highest of stations of jettana and that you allow for us and our generations to come to be protected from the difficulties at the end of time to protect it from the kufar of the times we are living in and at the end of time yalla bilad min we ask that you protect us from the fitna and the fitna, the masij el-dajal and the fitna of the end of time So we ask that you allow us to be connected to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and to you always Ya Rabbil Alameen, that you give us a deep connection to you, we ask you for everything good. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam asks for protection, for everything evil that he asks for protection from and any difficulty or disease or worry that anyone is going through. We ask that you remove it and that you cure it and that you give ease Ya Rabbil Alameen to us and to those who remain in Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, Wa-A'la-A'la-A'l-Ibu-Sallam,


One, two, three, four! Ddu-du-du-du-du-du-du-du, du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du. Ah, talking away. Talking away. I don't know. I'm to say I'll say it anyway. Trying away.


Ladies and gentlemen, the Railroad Hour. Here comes our star-studded show train. The Association of American Railroads presents the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical play, Very Warm for May, starring Gordon MacRae and his charming guest, Annemarie Dickey. Our choir is under the direction of Norman Luboff and our music is prepared and conducted by Carmen Dragon. Yes, tonight another great musical success is brought to you by the American Railroads.  And now here is our star, Gordon MacRae. Tonight's story, I'm Johnny Graham, a Broadway triple-threat man, writer, actor, producer, and Annemarie Dickey is a gal named May, who, well, I think she's wonderful. When I first met Johnny Graham, he was walking down the street and he wasn't looking where he was going, and he bumped right into me. Hey, hey, wait a minute. I didn't bump into you. You bumped into me. You were wearing that big floppy hat and you couldn't see through it or out of it or something. I wasn't wearing a hat at all. You were, too. You were wearing a great big, silly carton. Now, Johnny, I don't intend to get trapped into that argument again. I was not wearing a hat, and that's all there is to it. Okay, you were not wearing a hat. Were you wearing your head? Oh, yes, Johnny, I was wearing my head all right, but I lost it the moment I saw you. What did you think the first time you saw me? Well, I thought you were kind of scrawny, but you had possibilities. You did? Sure. What did you think? Scrawny, huh? If that's what you thought, why did you ask me to have dinner with you? I just told you. You had possibilities. Well, anyhow, we had dinner, and we seemed to click, didn't we? We sure did. That dinner stretched into an entire evening, and we danced the night away. I remember exactly what you said. Do you? I certainly do. As soon as I got through with the theater, I was knocking at the door. And no matter when it was, I was waiting. It seemed like the idea... Until I found out she wanted to go on the stage. And until I found out, he didn't want me to go on the stage. What do you mean you're going into summer stock? What do you mean, what do I mean I'm going into summer stock? I am. Barn theaters, playgrounds for Audi amateurs to try out screwy ideas. Well, some very good things come out of summer stock? Yes, well, you're not going to be one of them. I want to come home at night to a wife, not an actress. Were you thinking of marrying me by any chance? You know, Don, well, I was thinking of marrying you. Well, there's some things a girl likes to be told. And one of the things she likes to be told is how the man she's in love with feels about her. All right, darling. This is the way I feel about you. So will you please give up all this nonsense about summer stock and marry me? Johnny, try to understand. I love the theater. I know I can do something and I'm leaving for Connecticut tomorrow. Okay, go ahead. If a nowhere job means more to you than I do, there's no point in me staying here. Well, then why are you staying here? I'm not. I'll see you around, kid. Mrs. Ogden Quiller, our director. Mr. Quiller, Mr. Graham. How do you do? Charmed. How nice of you to drop by and see us. Oh, I didn't drop by to see you. I'm on my way through to Boston. Oh. Mr. Graham evidently doesn't have time to waste on amateur productions. No, as a matter of fact, I don't. People have to get started someplace, you know. Ogden, didn't you say something about lunch a moment ago? Charmed. Well, let's go. There's no use taking up the time of such important Broadway people. See you around, Johnny. I stood there alone in that empty stage and I didn't know what to do. All I knew was that I loved me, in spite of her silly ideas, and well, then I had to do something about it. Yes, yes, she is. Better watch out, Quiller, because it's going to be very warm for me. Most of us take railroads pretty much for granted. We rarely stop to think about them as the vital link which connects mine, forest, farm, and factory with the stores where we buy all as a matter of course the things we need every day. But in time of national rearmament under threat of war, we begin to think more about our railroads, the highways of steel on which trains of cars and locomotives turn out the great bulk of all intercity freight transportation service. For the fact is that this nation and its people and its armed forces can have no more of anything than can be hauled. And that's why the railroads, as the country's basic carriers, are a fundamental defense industry, an essential part indeed of the whole process of production. It follows that if the needs of our armed forces and the requirements of our essential civilian economy are to be met, then the needs of the railroads in time of emergency must also be met. Since the end of World War II, the railroads have spent one and one-half billion dollars for new cars, nearly as much on new locomotives, and more than two billion dollars on better tracks, shops, signals, and other improvements to add to their capacity and efficiency. Since the beginning of the invasion of Korea, the railroads have ordered almost another billion dollars worth of freight cars and more locomotive power to match in order to expand railroad-carrying capacity to meet national needs. And there is no way in which steel and other scarce materials can be used to better advantage in the increase of transportation capacity than by building these cars and locomotives, which the nation needs. Here is the second act of very warm for May, starring Gordon MacRae and his guest star Anna-Marie Dickey. And he started showing up for rehearsals. I didn't say anything. I stayed in the back of the theater. I mean the barn. You said plenty to me every time you got a chance. I just said that that bum quiller was a very lucky fellow. You were very sarcastic. I was not. I was worried. And you made some very nasty cracks to me. That's right. I did it that. I said, Your sweethearts, how do you rate them? I discovered a long time ago that there's no point in arguing with you. The end of the story, if Mr. Quiller hadn't done me a great favor, he walked down on the show a few days before opening night. I was asked to take over and, well, the theater is my racket. And why should you miss a golden chance like that to take me over the coals? Well, May, that wasn't the idea at all. Well, that's what happened. You started right in on my first song. You were awful on your first song. Yeah, that's what you told me, remember? Now, May, when you did that song tonight, I noticed a few things. You don't mind a little criticism, do you? No, Johnny, I want all the help you can. Oh, good.  You're singing it to just one man. Okay? Let's try it, please. Now, wait a minute. Stop, stop. What did you do that for? What? The thing you did with your hand. What was that? Oh, I don't know. It was just a gesture. I've seen lots of singers do that. Mm-hmm. So was everybody else? Well, what do you want me to do? Stand here like a lamppost? All I want you to do is figure out what the words mean and then sing them that way. Now, look at me and try it again. I am on the town with you. Man, you're supposed to be singing it, too. Just a fa- You're not with it, May. Look, look, you love me, don't you? You mean in the play? Course in the play. What do you think I meant? Now, look, we're working now, and I'm going to make you put this song over if it's the last thing I do. Oh, all right.  I'll sing it that way. Just a fa- Sing your heart out. Pretend that... No matter how much a girl loved you, you'd never... Even if you stand there until you drop, you're going to stand there until you can sell that song. Yes, Johnny, I sang it, and it was a hit, thanks to you. And then I decided that that wasn't what I really wanted. All of a sudden, I knew it was going to be enough for me to be Mrs. Johnny Graham. That's a full-time job in itself. Are you sorry, honey? You still got a secret hankering for the footlights? Sorry? How could I be sorry? You know how I feel about you, Johnny. You've certainly told me enough times. Of evening, the trambles on the brink of alarm. The musical play, very warm for me, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II was adapted for the railroad hour by Gene Holloway. The railroad hour is brought to you each week at this time by the American Railroads. America's abundant production and its vast rearmament program are dependent on many things. The will of the people, adequate raw materials, ingenuity, energy. But beyond these things, it takes efficient and economical railroad transportation to move raw materials to factories for fabrication and then deliver them to our armed forces and to stores and homes all over the nation. Because the railroads do a mass transportation job that no other form of transportation can do, it's important that they receive the steel and other materials they need to build freight cars and locomotives to still further expand their carrying capacity. And here again is lovely Anna-Marie Dickey. Well, Anna-Marie, I never thought I'd be telling a gal like you how to sing, but I certainly enjoyed it. I did too, Gordon. The men I studied Grand Opera with had much longer hair. Who are you giving lessons to next week? Well, the show is the Gypsy Princess and our guest star is Yarmulah Navatna. Bye, Golly Gordon, if you aren't careful, you're going to have every operatic soprano in the country singing love songs to you as if they meant them. Is that bad? Well, I'll certainly listen. Well, Anna-Marie, it's always wonderful to have you with us and come back again real soon. All aboard! Well, sir, it looks as though we're ready to pull out and so until next week, this is Gordon Mackray saying goodbye. Mackray appeared through the courtesy of Warner Brothers. Our choir is out of the direction of Norman Luboff and our music is prepared and conducted by Carmen Dragon. This is Marvin Miller saying goodbye until next week for the American Railroads. Now, keep tuned for your Monday Night of Music on NBC.