to this year's Seymour ceremony and together with my colleague Debbie Baff I'm looking forward to getting the show on the right. I can see quite many people watching and we've got a few nervous presenters here backstage so do try and put your hands together and post in the chat where you're joining us from and wave hello. The first person to introduce it's my pleasure to say hello to the person who heads up the scheme and will lead the ceremony today Debbie. Hi Debbie, welcome. Hello Maren, thank you ever so much, hello everybody. Very excited to be here this evening, done my hair and everything and I even remember to take my curlers out which is really really impressive so yeah really delighted to see people joining us and that even more delighted that we've got some people some special guests today to share their stories about Seymour with us so yeah please do tell us where you're from in the in the chat it'd be great to see some people to see where you've come from. I can see many people already saying hello so we've got Matt joining us, Anshul joining us, Dan, there's also Roger, Fiona, Eleanor, fantastic. Hello everybody and welcome. Brilliant that's really great thanks Maren so perhaps if we could put our speakers all on at the same time I think that would be really really nice and so they can see us down the side and we can just say a quick hello before I get going with the actual slides. I will warn you folks as well I've been trying to, hello everyone, I've been trying to do some clever stuff in the background and put some clapping and things like that on in the background so I hope they're going to work but we'll give it a go so I'm sure you can all clap along in the in the chat if that doesn't work. Okay so this is the rough format of how we're going to do it today in terms of this particular award ceremony and I'm sure that everybody watching will recognize the Seymour accreditation framework which is up there and these lovely photos and images that Brian Mathers does for us. So we'll do a quick introduction from myself and Maren just to say hello and then we'll take you through each of our speakers today so we have Sammy give us a wave Sammy. Thanks Sammy. We have Richard give us a wave Richard. Yay I feel like I'm on a game show and then we have Rob. Thanks Rob. Yay give us a wave. Awesome and hello to everybody I'm glad seeing in these comments coming through. So obviously you can find out more about the Seymour accreditation framework and we have these three different pathways and I'm very pleased to say that we've got the speaker from each of these pathways today. Okay so you've spoken to me so I'm just going to let Maren say a very quick hello. Hello everybody I'm a senior Seymour holder currently renewing my portfolio so I'm particularly thrilled to see some fellow senior Seymour holders both on stage and in the chat. It's fantastic to have you here. It's only been two years since we started the scheme but day to day I think I've had involvement with Seymour since 2008 and it's been fantastic to see the development of the scheme in the past year which is in no small part thanks to Debbie. Thank you Maren. That's lovely thank you very much for that introduction that's brilliant. So as I mentioned I'm going to tell you a little bit about Sammy first of all and then I'm going to just give you a brief quote from Sammy's portfolio that I found that thought would be really good to share with you and then I'm going to pass you over to Sammy. So Sammy is an FE maths lecturer and she consults with them colleges all over the country and developing their use of education technology and advising on their strategies for teaching and learning and it does say on here as well that Sammy was the first female Google for Education Certified Coach in Europe which sounds really impressive and she's also a Google innovator and trainer and when I was looking at Sammy's portfolio I thought that this really kind of struck me and I thought that the way that she put this into her portfolio was brilliant really because it talks about her work as a teacher but also as a mentor to other people and I think Sammy's portfolio is particularly reflective so I'm really really pleased that she's here today to talk to us and I've got one of my little widgets now and I don't know if this is going to work because I haven't got my headphones in but just imagine that it's a drum roll if it doesn't work. There you go Sammy over to you. Oh thanks Debbie I didn't know there was going to be that happening that was a little bit awkward but anyway yeah I am very proud to get my Associate Seamult this year and it was a long piece of work and I really did enjoy the reflective part of it. Core Area 2 was where I reflected most and what I wrote about in Core Area 2 is I wrote about what happened in my classroom and that sort of led me on a journey and then it was this is what I did in my classroom and this is the technology that I used and then I went and showed this colleague and this is how they used it and this is where we ended up and so it was almost like a story in Core Area 2 of what I did what I shared with my colleagues and then how we all moved forward with it as well. What I'm particularly proud of as well is Core Area 3 because I do teaching mainly I chose to focus on SEN and the Code of Practice and some of the work that I did with one of our provisions and it's a really simple thing but I'm incredibly proud of this just like Debbie's just used the sound effects in her presentation we built slide decks with sound effects of speech to text but then we used touchscreen technology for the students to then create almost their own assistive voice technology that could be customized to them and so I really enjoyed reflecting on that in Core Area 3 and that's really all I wanted to share about my portfolio it is going into the database so others can look at it but yeah I'm really proud of it I really enjoyed doing it. That's all that's brilliant thanks so much Sammy and I'm so glad that my drum roll worked I've never been really embarrassing as I said you know you are one of our associate CMART holders and your portfolio was just an absolute pleasure to to read so thank you so much and I really appreciate you coming today. Okay so I'm going to move on now to Richard Biles Richard is a CMOLT holder and he has he joined the Northampton University Learning Technology Team in 2016 and Richard does all sorts of things I had like this massive thing that Richard had given me in terms of his biographies so I'm trying to just pick out a few things and it's amazing the kind of experience that's on there but his CMOLT application documents really talk about things about active learning and the use of discussion boards and journals and padlet and things like that and I'm a real fan of padlet and so I think it would be really useful for Richard to tell us a little bit about the stuff that he does and hopefully I'm going to be on for a hat trick I hope today if I've done this so this is my quote that I found on Richard's portfolio and as you can see from that he basically sort of talks about how the experience of doing it has been really really useful to him and that how he's going to learn from all the stuff that he's done in the future and obviously you know as an experienced technologist with a with a wide range of skills really I think that being able to have his portfolio upon view as it were to the world really brings it all to life so I'm going to try another drum roll can we go for it that's brilliant I'm passing over to Richard thanks David so yeah I'm hoping you can see my screen so I'm going to jump right in and quickly show the online training course I produced as my specialist option in my portfolio so I've got three training courses that I made for partner staff who are based all over the world so I've got a basics course which really talks about the central platform that Blackboard learn and you know really basic things like releasing size making content things like that I've then got the let's jump to the assessments one first I've got an assessment one which goes through setting up Blackboard and turn it in assignments and all those sort of things so these are all the kind of things we're getting asked all the time by partners but we don't actually get a chance to meet them because they're in different time zones so the course was really useful for that and my my favorite of the three courses was this enhancements course which I'll just quickly click into and it's breaking down into a number of units so it covers things like discussion boards, blogs, edge of blogs, padlet, virtual classrooms, couchour and I guess this was all sort of pre-COVID so a lot of this material would have perhaps been PDF guides at that point or FAQs but it wasn't all pulled together into one course and what we've really done we've well I've written some content so we've linked to existing guides there, blackboards, guidance all those sort of things and then we linked to things like Jilly Salmon and we have some challenge sheets and in case that is so really just pulled together a lot of stuff that was perhaps existed elsewhere or where I created so it was the idea of this being all pulled together in some different courses so I thought this made a pretty good example for my for my CMAP because I think it represented a lot of different skills that were pulled in there so I was really lucky to have the opportunity to lead this project so joined the LearnTech team at a time when both our institution was moving to a new digital campus and we were changing our pedagogic approach to teaching and learning so these courses are really designed to promote how the digital tools can help our staff engage through online activities and I'm particularly pleased with that enhancements course because I then I interviewed our head of Institute of Learning Teaching Allie Armolini who talked about active blended learning here and also sort of that was reflected through the case that is that we did there so I think it really worked for us to build this online course. I think in terms of how this related to my CMOL I was it gave me a really good opportunity to speak to people about what I was doing at the university and I was really surprised to get these fantastic testimonials back and that I guess that really hit home not only our people appreciate the technical help we provide but also when we're sitting with them our ability to listen to develop confidence and to give people the same supportive space they need to learn. I think in terms of challenges the hardest part of my CMAP was being critically reflective I found that quite tricky so my approach was to keep writing show drafts to colleagues and then keep writing it again and just really working and working until it took shape but I think just to say that really the CMOL for me has been a massive sort of achievement I think it's been a really good opportunity and it's it's really sort of followed my career as I've started as a learning technology and understand the breadth of the role I think trying to do in this I was perhaps focused in one or two areas but I've really used that CMOL to expand myself into different areas so that I you know I feel that I'm a more complete learning technology as a result. So I just want to say a massive thank you to everybody at CMOL especially my assessors for their fantastic feedback and also obviously my colleagues here at Northampton have been really really supportive and given me the time and support today. So yeah big thank you to CMOL been a massive massive opportunity fantastic opportunity. That was lovely thank you Richard that's so good and we were just saying weren't we kind of backstage in the green room as it were that you know one of the the good things about the CMOL and all of the different pathways is that it is personal to you and it really does highlight and make your skills and you know all of the different things that you do really really visible which is why I just think it's such a good scheme really. Okay thank you ever so much really really enjoyed that thank you. Okay last but definitely not least is the lovely Rob Langney and Rob is one of our newly qualified senior CMOL holders and he works at the teaching enhancement unit at Dublin City University and he works with academic staff to enhance their teaching and learning and assessment practices on different modules with digital technologies. So I think when you see Rob's portfolio it's a really nice clean looking portfolio as well I found it really really easy to kind of look at it and it was really navigable if that's a word. So this is the quote that I came out with this which I thought was really lovely and Rob has said that you know the process of completing this portfolio has been a really rewarding one and he talks about you know when you really take stock and reflect on what you've done you can actually see the totality of your own work and I think that's so true because often in this kind of in the world that we live in we do things we maybe fix things and then we move on and it's always you know it's really nice to be able to reflect on that stuff and you know as we all know it's having the time isn't it to do these things but writing it down and being able to put it into a portfolio type approach is great really so I'm going to go for the hat trick am I going to get my drum roll in I could have had different drum rolls couldn't I but hey there we go right let's try it awesome over to you Rob. Thank you very much Debbie and thanks to everyone else I think that was a great quote you chose from from my portfolio because it really sums up what the whole process was about for me and it was probably the first time in my career that I truly stopped to think properly about everything that I've done in my journey and where I've gone and where I've ended up and so on and that kind of summarized the whole process for me when I started my Seamoth journey I didn't have the full map in mind I knew I had some things to showcase and to evidence and important things I wanted to share but the process of completing the portfolio was so important because the road unfolded for me as I started walking down so I could see what I had done before I could see the impact that I had and that's also put me in a good position to look to the future as well of where I want to go and how I want to continue having the impact on staff and students in higher education so I'm just going to show you three very quick things from my portfolio so one thing is the deployment of learning technologies this is very much a COVID era entry in my portfolio and I think probably in a lot of portfolios you can't escape the theme of COVID because it's been so impactful on society as a whole obviously but also on learning technology and on on education and so these two examples are about how I worked with my team to deploy Zoom in DCU to continue remote teaching during the campus closures last year and this is really interesting because I suppose I was unpicking what I while we as a team had done and how we had worked together to support staff but also what I contributed and what I contributed to the team and how I helped individual staff as well and the different kind of support sessions we ran and troubleshooting and how we helped and how responsive we were to help our lecturers and our students keep teaching and keep learning and my second example is around deploying the V-Box tool I mean the V-Box is a sponsor of the conference and is a fantastic tool and this is something that I lead primarily by myself and you know try to get our staff using so they can engage students a bit more give students a voice to participate in in learning and in class sessions which of course is hugely important during the remote teaching context when everyone is feeling so isolated tools like this and technology can really bring people together so that was a particularly important section of my portfolio and you can see here I did keep my portfolio nice and clean that's my that's my that's the kind of mind I have I like consistency I like cleanliness I like ease of navigation so I'm glad you found it quite navigable Debbie and one other thing to show you quickly then is my role and I know it's not true of all learning technologists but my role involves a lot of cpd and supporting staff and both internally in dcu and and externally so this is one of my um specialist areas and really gave me a chance to think back on my approach and my philosophy to cpd and how I work with people and how I try and help people and it's all about I think trying to understand the shoes that other people walk in understand their positions their their fears their values and then seeing how can I help with that how can I help them improve their practice and there's a number of different cpd activities I'm involved in again both myself that I would lead but also working with with my team I'm so privileged to have a wonderful team in dcu that I work with and and nationally I'm involved in a in a project with with several other universities and I think the portfolio itself is quite personal and it's it's my story but it's also the story of all the people I've met along the way and all the people I've worked with and keep working with and all the people who have helped me along the way become the learning technologist um I am today so it's it's um the portfolio has been a fantastic journey and is a lot and means a lot to me and I think as I said positions me in in in in planning my own development further down the line and the last section to show you and then I'll wrap up is is an advanced area which is around assessment I I believe strongly that's good assessment is is enjoyable for students and for staff I think it can really engage students support their learning showcase their attainment and of course I'm particularly interested in using technology to support assessments such as my work with the edtl project here in Ireland supporting assessment and feedback and one area in particular is student partnership as well student partnership and assessment is something I really believe very passionately in and in working with students to get them more involved give them agency let them take ownership of their of their learning so that is my portfolio it will be put up on the um on the on the database soon enough and I just want to say again thanks so much for the opportunity and a big thanks Debbie to you you've been such a wonderful support and I'm sure for all of the candidates throughout our journey you and all the rest of the team and also I do owe you a big thanks as well oh thank you oh that's so lovely thanks Rob and thank you so much for for showing us your portfolio as I said you know it was lovely and I think um having the spread and the breadth of the portfolios that we've seen today gives a really good insight into the extent of the whole scheme so um and there's loads have a look down the chat because there's loads of love for all three of you in the chat brilliant seemingly you've had lots of um influencing um on other people down there so it's so thank you so much well and now as we say thank you to our um seamal holders who've joined us here on the stage we are going to get ready for hopefully will be the biggest drum roll of them all um as we get ready to reveal everybody who has managed to gain seamal this year so get ready um for the actual ceremony now I hope you saw what I saw yay it's taken the ages to do that what a brilliant it's few learning technologists to help me with it so thank you ever so much and this is a massive congratulations to our associate our seamal and our senior seamal certified holders including those people who have completed their three yearly review so thank you very much and congratulations so what I'm going to do now is like the big reveal um I'm just going to put on the names um I'm not going to read them all out because there's quite a lot of them I've tried to put them in alphabetical order and I put your lovely new post nominals after as well what I would say is if you're in the audience if you spot your name give us a wave in the chat and then hopefully Maron can get your name going across the bottom that was the only way that we could think to do it that made sense so without further ado and we've just found what was this one was this a drum roll am I going to fail at the last hurdle still I pretend that was a drum roll here we go yay here are lovely seamal certified holders as you can see on this slide there's a lot of them this is only slide one there was another one to come after this so as I said these are to all the different pathways so we have people from associate seamal and we have seamal and we also have senior seamal as well I hope that if you do spot your name it's a big list well don't David is I can see your comment there um it is a really big list and we're going to go on to the next page in a second but I just thought I'd leave that up there so that you can kind of drink that in and really see how um you know people have achieved everything this year it is really really impressive you know given the last 18 months that we've all had to be in this position where people have managed to still keep up with their professional development and still pull over their portfolios together you know fair play there's a lot of work that's gone on behind the scenes oh we've got some people waving here we go Marin can you spot we do we have quite a few so we've got Fiona here who's on our list there's also Dan Clark who's on our list so you've got quite a few people in the audience and also wonderful rounds of applause from plenty of people um all around the room so fantastic thank you very much for joining in Debbie I think we're ready for the second um second list ready for the second list okay Alison is in there so congratulations Alison we can see everyone now quickly scanning their name and there's a shout out to Agatha and Sophie congratulations brilliant look at that it's lovely it's so so good awesome and yes all of your names now are kind of indelibly etched into my brain as well because I've seen them so many times um so I do hope you kind of I I tied with the idea of which was the best way to display this and this was Marin's suggestion to come up with this particular layout so I hope that works and I hope you can read it all so I'm going to move on to the next one there we go this is our second page um and as you can see on there again we have um uh lovely associate Seymour holders Seymour holders and senior Seymour holders I believe yes we do and um as I said earlier on these are people who have newly become certified or they have updated their portfolio as part of the three-year review so that's just a reminder for those of you in the audience that they not have quite done your three-year review yet I don't know who you mean Debbie I don't know what you mean one of us might be due next month so oh thank you Marieke nice to see you so good oh that's lovely that's so nice to see everybody and I'm loving all these emojis there's so many emojis in the comments it's brilliant well a really warm congratulations I think as we've all said it takes real commitment to achieve external recognition for all the hard work and knowledge and ncpd particularly in pandemic times so I think we can all um we can all empathize with how hard that's been um to make that happen and from everyone at ALB from our board of trustees from our staff and all the fellow certified members associate certified members and senior certified members congratulations to everyone um our new CMAL told us it's been absolutely fantastic thank you Marin that's absolutely great um okay so um there's just a couple more bits and pieces that I wanted to do before we come to the end of our time so I'm just going to move on my slide because of course we must not forget our amazing CMAL assessors so to be fair you know all of these people do this and the day job in the horrendous pandemic that we've all been through you know and they are still contributing and doing their scholarly contribution and they all volunteer and you know it's it's very rewarding work but it is additional work um and I'm happy to say that I will be um introducing some uh open digital badges specifically for our CMAL assessors so that will um be able to demonstrate the kind of work that they do so hopefully um that will be something that will um will kind of stand with you and you'll be able to use it in your appraisals and all that kind of thing so um I did this there's far too many to list on there they wouldn't fit on my slide um but I know that there are people in the audience there um and you know we really do appreciate all I know I say it all the time but I really mean that we could not do this scheme without you guys contributing your time and energy and enthusiasm so another round of applause please to all our amazing CMALs that's right thank you so much um peer review peer assessment is at the corner square and one more sound effect I love it Debbie any final words from you Debbie yes how do I stop the sound now well I think that's the perfect time for us to close the curtain and say thank you very much to everyone who participated thank you to Richard Robb and Sammy thank you to everybody who joined us and a very big thank you to our lovely host Debbie Buff who heads up our CMAL accreditation scheme so thank you very much everybody and enjoy the rest of our conference


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Masha'Allah, Alhamdulillah, we've entered into the 27th night of the holy month of Ramadhan. There's a strong opinion, there's nothing definitive, but according to our Ulama the strongest opinion is that tonight is Laylatul Qadr, which is the night of power, there's different ways of translating Laylatul Qadr, the night of power is one way of translating like Qudra, the night of constriction because the Ulama say that on this night well the Quran says that the angels descend and the Ruh and the Ruh or the spirit according to the Mufassidin of the Quran is the archangel Gabriel Jibril alaihi salam, the angels descend and there's a type of constriction so there's a type of constriction on the earth due to the just a sheer amount of angels on the earth. Another meaning of Laylatul Qadr is the night of destiny which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala decrees for all of us what's going to happen during the year and that is not to say that we are strict determinists, the Mali said that dua changes the Qadr, now when reality nothing can change the Qadr, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's knowledge is perfect, but from our perspective we know that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given us limited volition, something of free will, a limited ihtiar, but we have no power whatsoever to do anything intrinsically, there is neither strength nor power except through Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so we're given choice we know this intuitively you know this is why we have courts of justice in the world, someone who's caught or convicted of murder they're gonna say well why are you putting me in jail this is part of the Qadr that's true but we know intuitively that we have limited volition we know this it's part of our nature so when we act Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala on the occasion of our action he dispenses his Qadr, he dispenses his power, another meaning of lady tul Qadr is the night of honor or rank because Qadr in Arabic also means to have rank, so this is a truly momentous occasion that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given us to come and gather, the prophet sallallahu alayhi he said in the hadith which is sound and qama lady tul Qadr, ima nan wahdi saaban whoever stands to pray on lady tul Qadr with faith which is maybe a better translation as confidence than faith I don't have a problem with faith but some people they hear the word faith and they think oh that's the opposite of reason either logical and have reason or you have faith, right? And this is something that the new atheists have really started in the West right after 9-11 that faith is this type of blind adherence to believe without reason. So to have confidence in something is a better word and confidence just means faith, confides with faith. It doesn't carry the baggage of the word. Unfortunately, the word faith has been, it's been sullied. So we should try to own it to redefine it or use a different word. But we believe because it is reasonable to believe. That's why we believe. You know, Ibrahim alayhi salam, he said to his people, he said, do you not see what you worship? You and your fathers of old? And he said about this ayah. This is in Surah Shuhara, I believe. He said that in this ayah Ibrahim alayhi salam, he wants them to think about what they're worshiping. This is a verse. He says this is a verse that condemns this type of theological taqlid, this type of blind adherence in matters of theology. It's not permissible to be a blind follower in matters of theology. In other words, you have to believe what you believe. You have to be able to explain why you believe something. That's called discursive theology. You don't have to be a theologian, but you have to know something. If somebody asks you, why do you believe in Islam? Your answer shouldn't be, I was my dad's Muslim, or my grandfather's Muslim, or just raised in a Muslim household. You should be able to give reasons. Why do you believe the Qur'an is the word of God? Why do you believe the Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi salam is a messenger of God? And one of the keys of getting these types of understandings, these types of openings and understandings, because there's IQ, right? I think IQ is real. Some people say it's not real. I don't know why they say that, but yeah, your intelligence is probably to a certain degree determined by genetics. But we also believe in futuhat, in openings. And I've seen people that struggle with learning Arabic, really struggle. And then I see them a short time later, and they're, masha'Allah, fluent in Arabic. How did this happen? Well, dua is and sometimes we forget that. This is the essence.  We call Allah from the depths of our hearts. Allah answers our dua in some way or another. He's going to answer our dua, whether in this world or in the next world. But this has a type of efficacy to it. Don't think dua is falling on deaf ears. Call on Allah, Allah SWT.  So whoever stands late to Al-Qadr, imanan, with confidence in Allah SWT and expecting a reward from Allah SWT. So we have a good opinion of Allah SWT. The Prophet SAW said, where are the two na'alain, where are the two sandals of hope and fear? Of khauf and raja. So we have hope and Allah SWT. We have hope he's going to forgive us. And we have fear in Allah SWT. We don't have so much fear in Allah SWT that we start to despair of the mercy of Allah. And it's haram to be in a state of mercy. Allah SWT says do not be in a state of mercy, do not be in a state of despair of the mercy of Allah SWT. But on the other side, on the other hand, we don't have so much hope in Allah SWT that we start becoming a bit lazy. And by lazy, I mean sloth. This is one of the seven deadly sins according to the Catholic tradition. So sloth is spiritual laziness, not in dunya. There's people that are lazy in dunya. Yeah, but that's not what we're talking about. You can work 80 hours a week and have sloth. 80 hours a week in the dunya and still be spiritually lazy. So don't have so much hope in Allah SWT that you start leaving the prayer. That you start disobeying Allah SWT. That Allah SWT has a haq upon us to obey him. And one of the companions of the Prophet SAW, Abdullah ibn Abbas, he came to the Prophet SAW for advice. And he's related, he's the cousin of the Prophet SAW. And the Prophet SAW said, that literally guard Allah SWT and he will guard you. Guard you. Preserve Allah, he will preserve you. They preserve Allah. Guard Allah. What is the meaning of this? According to the ʾilama, the meaning of this is, guard the commandments and prohibitions of Allah SWT.  If we prioritize Allah SWT, you prioritize us. Or you who believe, give victory to Allah SWT. Give victory to Allah SWT and so that he might give victory to you and he'll plant your feet firmly. How do we give victory to Allah SWT? According to the exegetes, we obey Allah SWT. And the means of our obedience is the Prophet SAW. And this is clear from the Qur'an. We follow Allah and his messenger. This ayah in the Qur'an is chapter 3 verse 31. This is called ayat al-imtihaan, the verse of examination. So Allah SWT says to the Prophet SAW, say, if you really love Allah, then follow me. Follow the Prophet SAW. Then he will love you and forgive you your sins. Allah is forgiving and merciful. So adherence to Allah and his messenger. This is of paramount importance. And life is short, you know? Very short. I remember Y2K. Many of you were born after Y2K. I remember my first day of kindergarten. I ran away. Our house was across the street. I remember walking across the street and looking at my shadow on the street. I can still remember this. This was in, you know, 2017 dollars. This was in the 80s. I'm dating myself. I'm actually younger than I look. That's what people tell me. But time goes quickly. And as I always tell our young people, life is too short to sell out the dean. It's going to be over soon. I know that sounds a bit maybe morbid, but it's true. And we need some reminders, you know, that are sort of sober. We need sober reminders. Life is short. Life moves quickly. Right? Have istiqama in the religion. You know. So nowadays especially, there's all this madness happening. There's, it's very difficult for a lot of people. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, there's going to be a time when someone who has patience over his religion is like clutching onto a cinder, a burning coal.  That's how hard it's going to be. Holding onto your dean. So you have to keep juggling it. Some people drop it. Some people get burned. We have to hold on to it. Allah says in the Quran, hold tightly to the rope of Allah.  Right? It means a type of grip that's going to save your life. Like the, you know what I'm saying? It is the grip. Imagine the grip. Imagine you fall into the ocean and someone throws you a lifeline. Imagine your grip on that rope. That's called hold on for your life. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, The imagery he's using to communicate this truth. He says, I exhort you to follow my sunnah in the sunnah of the rightly guided caliphs. The rightly guided caliphs, Abu Bakr Sadiq, radiallahu anhu. Omar ibn al-Khattab, radiallahu anhu. Othman ibn Affan, radiallahu anhu. Sayyidna Ali ibn Abi Talib, radiallahu anhu. Imam Hassan alayhi sallam, radiallahu anhu. These are the five, according to Imam Suyuti, the five rightly guided caliphs. Hold on to their sunnah. Hold fast to it and bite down on it with your molar teeth. This is what he says. These molar teeth are very strong. Bite down on it as if your life depended on it. Don't let go of it because life is short. You know? And don't join a firqa. Wala tafarruku means don't join a firqa. A firqa is a group that believes they have the exclusive truth and everyone else is a kafir amongst the Muslims. This is different than a madhab. It's permissible to join a madhab, even recommended. A madhab is a school of thought like a university. The first firqa in our history were the khawarij, the karajites as they're called. They believe they had the truth. Everyone else was a kafir. They make tukfir of even sahaba. They don't discriminate. If you can say one thing positive about them, they don't discriminate.  They make tukfir of you. But that's a firqa. In the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he warned us against those types of people. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was one who united the hearts. Right? And his disposition was very gentle. Which is amazing because he came into an environment that was extremely harsh. And the fact that he had this gentle disposition is a miracle. His life is a miracle if people would just open their eyes. He's the most praised human being in the history of the world. His name means the praised one. Right there. Okay. How do people not see this? His name Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam means the one who was often praised. But now you have like Christian apologists saying that's his later name. That's not his real name. Can't be his real name because that's such an obvious sign that he was a prophet. So no, his actual name was al-Abin, they say. That's his real name. Completely misreading. No, that was his title that was given to him. But you see the trickery that they use. Right? Asaad-i-Qul-Amin was a title that was given to him by the Quraysh before Islam. Right? Because even they testified to his truthfulness. So the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he unites the hearts. And this is mentioned in the Qur'an. It is part of the great mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that you have gentle disposition. If you were harsh or hard-hearted, you would have seen men flee from your presence. He was a gentleman. This is a beautiful word in English. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was a gentleman. A true man. Right? And part and parcel of being a gentleman is sometimes a gentleman has to have a bit of strictness because he has to be courageous. He has to set the earth. He has to place just upon the earth. He has to defend people under his authority. And so we see that beautiful balance in the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. That no other Prophet had. He's insan al-kamil. Right? As he's called by our ulama. Every Prophet is insan al-kamil. But no one had the perfect equilibrium like the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We look at the Prophet, statesman, military genius, military leader, father, right? A messenger of God, etc, etc, etc. No one in history is like this. This is a major sign, a major dhalil of our religion, a major dhalil of his nabua sallallahu alayhi wa lalayhi wa sallam. So engaging in the Qur'an, engaging in the Qur'an is very important. Engaging with the Qur'an. What does the Qur'an say about the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? What does the Qur'an say about our Lord, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? And this is the month of the Qur'an. So there's a few early surahs of the Qur'an that were revealed to him sallallahu alayhi wa sallam during a time of extreme difficulty in his life. Right? During a time when basically the Qur'an is trying to cancel him. Right? We live in a weird culture nowadays where people are offended very easily. People don't want to have discussions. People don't want to talk about things. You know, it's strange. They won't even let you, if you say for example, you know, I don't really think it's a good idea to give children, you know, hormones when they're nine or 10 years old and sallallize them. They don't want to, you don't want to hear it. They won't let you talk. It does cancel you. They kick you off social media. It's very strange. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, during the early period, there was, you know, there was distress. There was, it was the time of anxiety, even depression. So I want to talk about one surah in particular, and I mentioned this in the past, but nowadays it's, it's even more relevant. Surah 93 of the Qur'an is called Surah al-Duha. And this surah really gives us a prescription as to how to deal with basically the postmodern world that we're living in, where more and more we're seen as just very strange people, which is a good sign, by the way, because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, he predicted this sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. This Dean began strange. It was very strange for the Arabs.  So what is this? Very strange. And then it became normative, right? Because when Islam spread around the world, it became the standard. And then he said, it's going to return to be strange again. It's very strange, right? I remember, what was it, year 2000? I was at the copy machine. I used to be an accountant, by the way, making copies. And one of the other employees said, I heard you're getting married. And I said, yeah.  I said about two weeks. What? That's so strange. It's okay. And they come by my cubicle. Are you coming to happy hour? No. Why not? You know, I don't drink alcohol. Why? What do you do for fun? I'll never forget it. What do you do for fun? We live for the weekend. And then every Friday, like clockwork, are you coming to happy hour? Same people. Are you going to happy hour? No. Are you going to happy hour? One of my, I have a neighbor, Mashallah, brother Muhammad, he said, he said that a good way to get out of that is just to say, I'm a recovering alcoholic. Never ask you again, because that's something to remember. I'll never ask you again. But we're strange people. We believe in traditional morality. We believe in the difference between men and women. I had a, one of my professors said that undergrad was a rabbi. And I asked him about shaking hands with women, because he's orthodox. They don't shake hands with women, right? And vice versa. It's called shumr negaya. It's a concept they have in their halak, which is their sharia. And he said, I said, how do you explain this to people? And he said, I just tell them I'm sexist. I said, oh, what? He said, yeah, what's the definition of being a sexist? You treat men and women differently. In fact, we all do that. And what's wrong with that? That's a good thing. Obviously, the people who, I'm going to talk about mistreating people of the opposite gender. There's only two genders, by the way. It's intuitively obvious. This is a problem with modern education.  That's called Robert. That's called grand larceny. They drain the common sense out of you. You were smarter going in, then you came out. And now you're a lot poorer. So, Han'ala. Yeah, this is a attack against the natural inclinations, anyway. So, and then I said, okay. And then he said, I'm also discriminatory. I discriminate. I said, oh, what?  You're just, yes, I discriminate. I treat people differently. I don't treat my mother like I treat my sister. I said, oh. But the modern world wants to equalize everybody. And this looks good on paper. And I don't mean any disrespect, but it's kind of like Christianity sort of looks good on paper. Love. God is love. Love, man. He died for your sins, man. Isn't that beautiful? But then you scratch the surface a little bit. It kind of falls apart, right? Anzidunasam anazilahum, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, treat people according to their status, according to their rank, right? This is extremely important that we have a concept of hierarchy. The word hierarchy comes from the Greek. It means sacred rule. Hierarchy is established by God. The ultimate hierarchy at the top of the ultimate hierarchy is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. If everyone's just equalized suddenly, say we're all equal. It sounds good. We're all equal. We're all equal. Then what happens? The people of knowledge are completely decentralized. My opinion is as good as their opinion. My opinion is I can make tafsir of the Qur'an. Who cares? You have 40 years of training. I have a translation here. I can read. I can take ahkam from the Qur'an. I can interpret the Qur'an. And Talid al-amatu rabbata ha. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, it's very interesting he chose this in the hadith Jibril. When Jibril alayhi How many questions did Jibril alayhi sallam ask the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam by the way? Hurry, hurry. Hurry. Five. Most people say three. It's actually five because we put the hadith on pause. Tell me about Islam. Tell me about iman. Tell me about ihsan. Then we push pause. Tell me about Sa'a. The hour. The one being questioned knows no more than the questioner. They ask you about the Sa'a. Say, the knowledge of it is only with my Lord. Then tell me about its signs. That's the fifth question. Tell me about the signs of the Sa'a. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam could have said anything here and talida al amatu rabbata ha. A slave girl will give birth to her mistress. A slave girl will give birth to her master. Very interesting. There's different ways of looking at this hadith because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam had jwaami al-hikam, jwaami al-kalim and jwaahir al-hikam. He had extremely comprehensive speech that's just saturated with sapience, with wisdom. There's different ways of looking at this hadith.  And we see that now. We see it everywhere and it's not a good sign. People not respecting scholarship. They're not respecting age. He's not from us. Who doesn't have mercy on our little ones, our young ones, and have waqar and have respect for our older ones. Now you go into a university classroom and they're referring to the professor by his first name and openly disagreeing with bad adab. One of my teachers said recently that one of these Zaituna alumnus, he's a Georgetown and all these non-Muslim professors are they love him. He's a graduate student because he shows so much respect to them. This is amazing. This is a very counterculture nowadays. It's just a show respect to a teacher. It's very strange. So this religion will return as something strange. So during this time, the Prophet he received the the Wahi, Iqra, and this is when the entire Qur'an was brought down. It's called an Inzal. Inzal means the entire Qur'an was brought down to the Samatud Dunya. And then five verses from the Inzal were given to the Prophet Muhammad, what's called a Tanzil or a piece meal revelation. So Iqra and then you have an Mudathir and other early verses of the Qur'an. And then some of the mushrikine, they had caught wind that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was claiming to receive Wahi from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And then there was a break in the revelation. It's called the Fatra. There was a break. And some say it was a few days, some say a few months, even some of the Mufasirin say might have been up a year, but there's a break. And so the mushrikine began to taunt and mock and ridicule the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And Umu Jameel bintu Harb, who's the wife of Abu Lahab, who was canceled by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala by the way. That's a cancellation you don't want. That's the cancellation we should be really concerned with. Because nobody's going to remember us in 100 years. Everyone in this room in 100 years unless, you know, I mean they're trying to upload their consciousness into clouds now. That's what people are trying to do. There are people who think whatever is latest is greatest. This is their whole philosophy of life. Whatever is happening now must be the best. So right now what we need to do is we, you know, stop getting married, go live in a pod, go buy an electric car, start eating bugs, and worship technology, and go into the metaverse and become an avatar and then eventually upload your consciousness into the cloud and then we can download it into a cyborg and you can live forever. Isn't that beautiful? This is what millions of people believe because this is their philosophy. Whatever is latest is greatest.  I was using, you know, the wrong verbiage. But now I'm woke. And I'm so different from three years ago.  Kheiro Naskarni. The best generation is my generation. When was that? 1,400 years ago. Oh my God. 1,400 years ago.  That's crazy. That's, what? How can this be? So, you know, this, anyway. So one of the mushrikine, she caught wind of that the prophecy was claiming prophecy. And then there was a break in the river. So she said, she said, Inna Rabbahu wa Da'ahu wa Qalahu. That's the wife of Abul lahab. That's what I'm talking about. Tabad yada abilahabin. This whatab means he's cancelled. Goodbye. Abul lahab is cancelled. There's only a few people, by the way, we can say are cancelled. We have to have a clear, dhalil. Abul lahab is cancelled. Abu Jahal is cancelled. Fir'aun is cancelled. Right? There's only a few people. So we have to be careful about consigning people to the hellfire. This is haram to do this in our religion. We can't do this.  That's why I look older than I really am. Turn your hair gray. But one of the sort of sales, one of the, I don't know what to call it, sales pitch, I don't know. They'll say something like, I have a personal guarantee I'm going to paradise. A personal guarantee. Do you have this guarantee, Mr. Muslim? I said, I was not a personal guarantee. The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, man qala la ilaha illa Allah, man shahida man qala la ilaha illa Allah, whoever says la ilaha illa Allah with sincerity will enter paradise. But it's not a personal guarantee.  But the Muslim, I hope to be that. That's not good enough. I have a personal guarantee. You know, and it's interesting, a lot of these Christians who claim to have these personal guarantees, they convert to Islam. What happened to your personal guarantee?  Now that he's Muslim? No, no, no, no. So what's the point of saying you have a personal guarantee? Anyway, so in the Rabbahu wadaahu wa qalahu, indeed his Lord has forsaken him and hates him. This is what she was going around saying. Right. And so Allah swt revealed this beautiful surah, surah wadduha, as a surah of tasliyah, of consolation, consolation upon the heart of the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He begins the surah by taking an oath, this is called a qasam, an adoration. And when Allah swt swears by something, that something is great. And Allah says in the Quran, La amruqa by your life. He swears by the life of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But in this case, wadduha. What is wadduha? This is the morning light. This is the light before the sun reaches its zenith. So that light is always soothing. It's not hot. It's not uncomfortable. Right. Even the, the hottest of environments, the light of the dhuha is soothing. So the ulema say dhuha here symbolizes the wahi, the revelation. Because this is a, a source of consolation and comfort for the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So by the revelation, wa layli idha saja, and by the night when it is still, the opposite of dhuha is layl. So the opposite of revelation is when there's no revelation. Right. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is saying, whether you're receiving revelation or not receiving revelation, your Lord has not forsaken you.  Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will never forsake the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So what do we gain from this? You know, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he's revealing the surah to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, but we are the ummah of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And in the Qur'an you'll notice that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala seamlessly moved from a second masculine singular to a second masculine plural. Speaking directly, in other words, speaking directly to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and then speaking directly to him and his ummah without skipping a beat. Without skipping a beat, this is in rhetoric, il-ti-fat, sudden change. Turn your face towards the sacred mosque in the singular to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Wherever you are, turn your faces to the sacred mosque. What does this show, according to the Mufassirin, a very close intimate relationship between the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his ummah? That's us. So this surah, Allah speaking to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, by extension to the ummah of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.  And this dunya is just, it's a test. It's a trial. And we should recognize it as being a test. And ashad bala'in al anbiya, the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, the most severe of tribulations come to the Prophets. Right? But it's never a punishment for them. It's a means by which Allah raises their rank. But for us, it could be that, but for us, it could be a punishment. So we make toba to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And if it's a punishment, then good. We make toba, Allah is purifying us in this world. And inshallah, put us into jannah. We don't want the punishment in the next world. He says that if a type of trial comes to you, then make shukr to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because it could have been worse, he says. Like, you lose a million dollars. You could have lost two million dollars. You lost the use of one of your hands. You could have lost both of your hands. Make shukr. It could have been worse. Number one. Number two, it only happened in the dunya, not in the akhirah. Number three, it didn't have anything to do with your deen, but only in your dunya. So we should be in a state of shukr. So your Lord has not forsaken you, nor is he displeased with you. What is later is better than what is now. Right? So you can take this in two ways. That what is later in Medina is better than what is happening now in Mecca. In other words, have hope. Be an optimist for your life now. Right? Have hope that your life, your conditions will improve, but you have to take initiative. Right? So the famous iconic statement, right? Tie your camel, then trust in Allah. The better one was outside, didn't tie his camel. The camel is running around like this. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, whose camel is this? He said, that's my camel. I have trusted Allah. He said, hobble her, tie her down, then trust in Allah. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. So we have hope. We have raja in Allah. Raja is different than tamanna. There's two words. There's many words for hope in Arabic, but tamanna is sort of a hope without action. Right? The Qur'an says, amlil insanima tamanna, with a human being have whatever he hopes for vainly without any action. Right? Tamanna. Right? Sitting back and, you know, making dua, but not taking any steps towards that end. Right? Muslim is an active participle. The word Muslim is called an ism fa'il. Right? Muslim, not Muslim, not passive.  Right? Like it says in the Hadith Qutzi, that if my servant draws close unto me, the span of a shibr, a hand span, that I draw close unto him, the span of a dira'a, which is a cubit. And if he draws near to me, the hands, if he draws near to me, a dira'a, a cubit, I come to him, a fathom, which is this, arms length, a wing span. And if he walks towards me, I run towards him in no anthropomorphic way. So we have to take an initial step. Right? So we have raja in Allah. You have in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern of conduct. Whoever has raja, hope in Allah, hope with action, hope with action in Allah and in the last day, it makes frequent remembrance of Allah Another meaning of this is the afterlife is better than this world for you. Right? So, you know, we do our best in this world, but we don't put all of our, all of our, what is the expression, all of our eggs in the spirit of Easter, even though we don't believe in it, because he was never crucified. But alaihi salam. We don't put all of our eggs in the basket of the dunya. A lot of people do that. People of the world, ahlul dunya that are materialists, this is all they have. So they try to create this kind of jannah on earth by any means necessary. This is tried in the past and it's led to massive death, massacres, whole scale massacre, genocide. It doesn't work. You'll never actualize true justice in this world. We have to do the best we can. But at the end of the day, true justice will manifest on the yawm al qiyama by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And on that day, we don't want justice. You don't want justice. On the yawm al qiyama, nobody is going to be saying no justice, no peace. Nobody wants justice on yawm al qiyama. You want mercy on the yawm al qiyama. Mercy. So this is part of our commitment as Muslims that we believe in the punishment in the grave, the questioning in the grave. We believe in the yawm al qiyama, the day of judgment. We believe in the sirat. We believe in jannah and nahr. You know. But we have hope in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.  A'utaw. A'utaw means like a gift. He'll gift you something. Fatah al-daw. And immediately you'll be pleased. So what is this thing? According to Mama Sayyuti, when the Prophet ﷺ received this ayah, and by the way this ayah was given to him according to Sayyuti in itqan, directly by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, without the intermediation of Jabil ﷺ, is placed directly into the heart of the Prophet ﷺ. There's a few times, there are few places in the Qur'an where this happens, like the end of al-baqarah, khawatim al-baqarah, which contains our essential creed. So this surah and the following surah, these were placed directly into the heart of the Prophet ﷺ.  And according to Mama Sayyuti, the Prophet ﷺ said, I will never be pleased. Never be pleased. Well, one person from my ummah is in the fire. So the ulema say, what is this thing that's going to give the Prophet ﷺ? Immediately, is that the entire ummah will enter jannah eventually. Soon I will give you this. Your entire ummah is going to enter paradise. Now look at what happens here. This is, again, by extension, he's speaking to all of us in times of depression, in times of anxiety. What does Allah say to the Prophet ﷺ? He starts to remind him of past blessings. Did he not find you an orphan and gave you shelter and give you shelter? Don't you remember that? Alam is a rhetorical question. In the Qur'an, when it says alam, it's a rhetorical question. The point of this question is not to get you to say yes or no. It's simply to remind you. In other words, you were an orphan and he sheltered you. This again, second masculine singular, speaking to the Prophet ﷺ. Didn't you see what your Lord did to the companions of the elephant? In other words, you should remember that event. Why did Allah do that? That was the year you were born. Allah saved Mecca for your sake. Because that was the year you were born. And you were searching and he guided you. And Da'alan here does not mean he was lost or disobedient or something. This is by all of the Mufasirin. Da'alan has different meanings. One of the meanings of Da'alan is wandering or searching for something. Asking for something. Because the Prophet ﷺ, his bi'atha was on Lidatul Qadr, but he was a prophet when Adam was between al Ruh and jassad. He was a prophet before Adam, and this is sound aqida. This isn't some goofy Sufism. These are sound hadith. He was a prophet before Adam. He has irhas. He has pre-prophetic miracles. Prophetic meaning pre-bi'atha. Pre-commissioning miracles. That Bahir of the monk, he saw a cloud covering the caravan in Bostrah. And he knows from his knowledge of Ahlul Kitab that a cloud signifies Tufiq. Because a cloud would follow around the Bani Israel in the Sinai. Demonstrating God's Tufiq that God was with them protecting them, etc. So he invited all of these men into his cell, right? He said have a meal inside my cell. He was a monk. He's surrounded by manuscripts. So he noticed that there was a 12-year-old, 10-year-old boy amongst them, and that a palm tree had bent its trunk to shade him. So he approached this boy and he said, I'm going to ask you a question in the name of Al-Atan Al-Uzza. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam does not interrupt people, unless it's absolutely necessary. And he said, no names are more detestable to me than Al-Atan Al-Uzza. So Bahir said, okay, he's passed the first test. This is a Mu'ahid, and he's the greatest Mu'ahid, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He's the greatest, monotheist in the history of humanity, and no one can deny this. No one can deny this. And the Jews, they don't know what to do with him. He's an enigma for them, because that's their claim to fame as Tuhid. That's what they say. We're chosen because God chose us. They say Hashem chose us, God chose us, to give the light of El-Ekhad, of Tuhid to the goyim, to the nations. That was their whole job, but this one man does it better than all their prophets put together. All their prophets put together. He says, oh, what happened here? So Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, okay, he's a Nabi, but he's only for the non-Jews. So he's for 99.99% of humanity. Okay, you're almost there. You're getting closer? Because they're very reluctant, they're very reluctant to ascribe to Kithb. Right? They're very reluctant to do that because he's so extremely successful as a monotheist. How can we say he's making this up? Okay, he's for the non-Jews. You were weighed down with family responsibilities and we enriched you. So to enrich someone spiritually as well as financially. In all of the Mufassilin say, the means of his enrichment was who supported him with her wealth. So we have three reminders of past blessings. So when you feel depressed, when you have anxiety, when the modern world is bewildering us, which happens more and more now, I can go into some more details, very disturbing things that people want to normalize. It's hard to even watch a movie now with kids. You can't watch a kid's movie. You have to screen it six ways to Sunday. There's all these hidden satanic messages and everything. You can't go to a library. You can't go to the kid's section of the library. And the kid's, mommy, can I read this? Oh, let me look at it. No, what's wrong with it? It's a kid's book. So you have to sort the books out. Haram halal. In the kid's section. What's going on? Ajeeb and gharib. Types of things going on. So when we have this type of distress, remember these past blessings of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That number one, he made you Muslim. He put you in a masjid and laid it to al-Qadr. Who knows if you're going to be here next year, even if you're alive, you may not be here. That Allah gave you Tawfiq. Imam Malik said, and some of the teachers, they say don't even say this, but he said that if you pray in Jama'a, Isha, you have your portion for al-Qadr. Just if you pray Jama'a, Isha prayer. You've caught the lady to al-Qadr. And part of the wisdom why the exact night wasn't given, because imagine a Muslim who knows the exact night, and he's nowhere to be found in the masjid. How pitiful of state is that? If he knows the exact night. Ajeeb, remember these past blessings. And then we have three imperatives for the future. So remember these past blessings, and here's something to do. Don't be harsh towards them. Why? Because you were an orphan. That's the subtext Allah is saying. So there's a correspondence in these ayat. This is incredible in the Quran. The Quran, the surah is a complete literary unit. The surahs, they have this chaiastic concord to them. There's this type of parallelism. That is, and this happens with short surahs and al-Baqarah. There's a book written by non-Muslim. You see Berkeley professor Raymond Farron called Coherence in the Quran, where he looks at surah to al-Baqarah. He says the entire surah is a big chaiasm. And if you're not writing this down, this is impossible. If he, Salah al-Islam, is not looking at these ayats and putting this here and this there, you can't do this. It's 286 verses. And not only that, he's receiving Baqarah and then a verse from Al-Ma'idah and Nisa. He's not just getting all Baqarah. And then it's not in the way he's receiving the Quran is not in the canonical order. It's in the chronological order. So he's telling the scribes where to put this ayah, where to put that ayah. And you look at these surahs in the canonical order and they're all works of art. This is impossible. Unless he has a 400 IQ, you can't do this. And it's what people are realizing now. Because the classical sort of orientalist, this Quran is jumbled up and it's moving tenses and it's talking about Adam, then Moses, and then it is going back to Adam and it's Quran al-Lah. No, no, no, no, no. If you have the depot of the Quran, you'll see the coherence of the ayat. And our scholars talked about this. This is not something non-Muslims found. Imam al-Razi talks about this. He calls it al-Munas-Abad. He calls it al-Munas-Abad. You know, the sort of coherence of the ayat of the Quran. As for the orphan, do not overwhelm him. Wa-am-mas-sa'i-la-fala-tanhar. And the one who asks you for something, the sa'il, don't reject him. What is this verse? What's the sort of parallel of this verse? Wa-wajaraka-dwa-lan-fahada. You were searching for something and he guided you. So the one who comes to you searching, right, don't reject them. Because you were searching. In other words, treat these people like I treated you. Allah is telling the Prophet ﷺ. Treat these people like I treated you. Wa-am-ma-bi-ni'ma-ti-rab-bika-fahadith. And as for the ni'ma, the blessing of your Lord, talk about it. Speak of it. What is this ni'ma? Al-Islam. This religion. Speak about Islam. Right? So this is our prescription. This is our prescription for how to come out of the type of distress and depression. Right? Know that Allah SWT has not forsaken you and does not hate you as long as you are in obedience to Allah and His Messenger. And we have Toba. Right? Toba is a very beautiful thing. We should be in one of two states. Toba or shukr or both. Toba or shukr. And again, the modern world, they don't recognize these. Three of the greatest theological virtues. Toba, repentance. I'll finish in a minute here. Toba, right? Repentance. The modern people in the modern world, the postmodern world, they don't believe in God. Many of them, they're atheists. Toba to who? You know, why should I make Toba? I didn't do anything wrong. What's wrong with me? I'm perfect. And then shukr. Gratitude. Gratitude to Allah SWT. Contrast that with the victim mentality that's being bred in these colleges, universities. Everyone's a victim. Right? This is totally satanic. Because this is a satanic mentality. Right? When Adam, alaihi salam, made Toba, Adam and Eve, it's in the plural. Right? O our Lord, forgive us. We have wronged ourselves. وَإِلْنَا مْتَغْفِلْ لَنَا لَنَا كُنَنَا مِنَ خَسْنِ And if you don't forgive us, we'll be from the last ones. Right? This is Adam, alaihi salam. This is the Adamic paradigm. What is the satanic paradigm? Because you did this to me, he says. فَبِمَا أَغْوَيْ تَنِيْ You led me astray. Shaytan victimizes himself. The Prophet, SAW, did not victimize himself. He didn't. And there was real oppression happening. And that's what happens when people victimize themselves and they're not real victims. What does it do? It completely minimizes people who are victims. And then we don't see that victimization. We don't see that oppression. The Prophet, SAW, people threw garbage on him. He went home. He wrapped himself in his mantle. He laid down. You wrapped him in a mantle. Stand up. قُوم means get up. Literally, stand up and also have استقامة. And dust yourself up. Clean your clothes. They threw this on you. Clean it. Don't expect someone to pick you up and start cleaning you. You have to do it yourself. And shun their idolatry. You have to do it yourself. You have to do it yourself. You have to do it yourself. You have to do it yourself. You have to do it yourself. You have to do it yourself. Shun their idolatry. Shun their defilements. And magnify your Lord. And don't expect anything in return. Don't expect any reward from human beings. This is only from Allah SWT. So may Allah SWT bless all of you. Bless all of us. May Allah SWT accept our fasting and our worship. May Allah SWT blot out our sins. One of the greatest of the dua, the adi'iyah of the Prophet SAW during the last 10 nights. Allahumma innaka afoon duhibbu al-afwa fa'afu anna.  It's gone. Like Allah is called al-Ghafir, al-Ghaffar, al-Ghafur, the one who forgives. Right? But the sin is still there. He just forgives it. But the afoon is the one who, it's deleted. It's gone completely. And Allah can delete things completely. So we ask Allah SWT to delete all of our sins. So there's no trace of them. And he loves, the Prophet said, he loves to delete sins. So delete them from us. Peace be upon you. With your permission, Dr. Adeta, a few questions? Put you on the spot. All right. If you want to raise your hands, usually the sisters have the most brave wreath and the brothers. So I'm looking at you on your side. I doubt it. Sisters? Nobody? Oh my God. She's letting me down. No question? No, good. All right. I'll come to you next, brother. As-Salaamu Alaykum. So during the speech, at one moment, like what I heard when you mentioned Khatija Raleel Avon, like her name, right? You, it's like what I heard is like instead of saying Raleel Avon, you said, Aleyhum As-Salaam. So I just want to know, like what is the right way to, you know, address there? Yes. Sometimes when I do that, people think I'm a Shiite. So where are you from? Iran? What is your name? Ali. Okay. No, we can, we can say Aleyhum As-Salaam, Aleyhum As-Salaam for Sahaba. It's perfectly permissible to do that. You'll find handwritten maqtutat, handwritten manuscripts, I see Sahih Al-Bukhari, where they write Fatima Aleyhum As-Salaam because she's from Ahl al-Bait, right? So it's permissible to say it. For some reason, just sound kind of organically, I guess maybe to I don't know, to maybe draw a distinction between Sunnis and Shi'a, that a culture kind of developed, where the Sunnis would say radiallahu anhu an'anha and the Shi'a, they would say Aleyhum As-Salaam, Aleyhum As-Salaam. But when I meet you, I say As-Salaamu Alaikum, right? I say Aleyhum As-Salaam to you. Aleyhum As-Salaamu Alaikum. So it's perfectly permissible to do that. You know, and especially for Ahl al-Bait, I mean the Ahl al-Bait have a, in Sunni orthodoxy, they have a special rank with us, right? So, and this is something in the Quran. Qul maa as-salukum a'lihi ajran illa al-mawaddatat fi l-khorba. In Surah Shura, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says, so the Prophet ﷺ say, no reward do I ask of you for this, except love for the family. And this is interpreted by almost, by many, many Sunni Mufasirin, that it is incumbent it is obligatory to love the family of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, that they have a special place, right? And you have the Hadith, in Nitarikun fi kumathaqalain kitabullah wa Sunnati, that's one Hadith, that's a sound Hadith, but there's an even stronger Hadith, in our books, Sunni books. Kitabullah wa itirati ahl al-Baiti. And there's no contradiction here. See, what is it then? Do we follow the Sunnah or the Ahl al-Bait? Right? There's no contradiction because the Sunnah has always been preserved in its most pristine form amongst the Ahl al-Bait. And most Ahl al-Bait are Ahl al-Sunnah wa l-Jama'ah. Most descendants of the Prophet ﷺ are Sunni. People don't realize that. You know, that's just a fact.  That's how he put it. I said, what Khalifas are you talking about? He said, you know the Khalifas. I said, no, you name them. He said, okay. He said, Abu Bakr. I said, I follow Abu Bakr. He said, Amr, what's wrong? Keep going. Oh, Ali, okay. So the question is faulty. The very question is false, right? So, you know, we shouldn't fall victim to these kinds of simplistic polemics, right? But, you know, that's part of our tradition, you know. We love Ahl al-Bait and we're not afraid to say it and we don't care what people think about us when we say that we love Ahl al-Bait. Okay, sisters. Okay, good. I'll come to you, brother. Assalamu alaikum. I'm sorry. Can you hear me? My question is if you have a consistent pattern of where you're having some kind of a problem or question and then you show up to a talk or a Qutbah and that conversation is being referenced of what your troubles were or your questions were, is there a deeper meaning to that? I've always been curious. Thank you. Oh, Allah, I don't know. Yeah, probably.  You know, that Allah SWT is using the asbab. He's using certain means to give us the answer to things. This happens, I mean, it's people, you know, they say this is coincidence and things like that, but this happens a lot. I remember just tonight I was behind Qari Amr and they say that if you can keep your brain having one extraneous thought during the prayer, you've reached wilaya, right? And Abu Bakr did that during his prayer. He was completely focused. But most of us are not awliya. So during my prayer, I thought suddenly it came to me, what am I going to talk about later?  So we could keep our eyes open. It's like the guy, you know, who, what is the joke? There was a flood or something, he's standing on his roof, right? And the ambulance comes by and says, get in, get in, it's going to be flooded. He's like, no, no, no, I made du'al to Allah. He's okay and the ambulance goes away. And then it's flooding and a guy comes with a boat. He's get in, get in, you're going to be drowned. I made du'al to Allah. And then the water gets higher and higher and he's like, he's about to drown and the helicopter comes, throws him a rope. I said, grab the rope, you're going to drown. I made du'al to Allah. And then he dies. And then on the day of Qiyama, Allah SWT, you know, he says to Allah, I made du'al to Allah.  I sent you a, I sent you a, a, a rowboat. I sent you a helicopter. This was the answer to your du'al three times. Okay, I'm coming over there. So when you were speaking about the Khawadij, correct me if I'm wrong, please. They were really strong about the, even more than the companions, and they had this practice where they would count the, they would say like the vikr, and they would count it on stones and they would kind of put them in front of them, right? Would you say that's equivalent to the prayer beads? Is there any relation? I was wondering. That's okay. Get in my steps. I haven't heard that about the stones. But according to the Ulama of Ahlus Sunnah al-Jama'ah, it is a practice of the salaf to use the subhah. And that it's, it's a good thing to use the subhah. Even just to have it on you, even if you don't use it, because when you feel it on your person, even if you don't use it, you'll, you tend to make vikr, or you remember Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So I doubt seriously that it has origins with the Khawadij. But Allah, I haven't heard that before. But you're right about the Khawadij. I mean, when Sayyidina Ali sent Ibn Abbas to them, he said that during the, after Dohr, when it's really, really hot and the Sahaba are taking their naps, you can hear buzzing like bees in the dwellings of the, of the Khawadij because they're reciting the Qur'an, right? He says, if you saw them pray, you would, you would nullify your prayer. You think your prayer is nothing, but the Prophet says to them, he said, the prayer, the Qura'a doesn't pass their throats. It doesn't, in other words, it doesn't penetrate the heart, you know? So that's the danger of being a formalist. Right? And Isa, I mean, Imam al-Ghazali quotes a lot from Isa, because during his time, Imam al-Ghazali was dealing with a kind of phariseic mentality where there was all this sort of importance attached to the outward and not necessarily on the inward. The outward is important. There's no doubt about it. But if the outward is, if the outward is, if the outward is, if the outward is, if the outward is sound and the inward is corrupt, you know, then that's, that's a problem, you know. Imam al-Ghazali mentions a story in the marbles of the heart. He says, there was a, there was a sheikh, a sheikh of sharia, of fiqh. He was a faqi. And then there was a Sufi. And when I say Sufi, I mean, I'm talking about a man of ihsan. I'm not talking about some sect of Islam or something or some new age type of, you know. The Sufi, according to our traditional understanding is someone who doesn't have any dunya in their heart. So by this definition, the sahaba were Sufis. By this definition, so Sufi or tasawwuf is a technical term for ihsan. And ihsan is the third component, the third major component mentioned by the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam in the hadith jibreel. Anyway, so this is not an absolute dichotomy. It's not like there's fiqh on one hand. And there's, this is just an example he's given. He's given in the the marvels of the heart. To demonstrate the importance of inward sciences. So he says there was a faqi. His name was sheikh ibrahim al-raqi. And he heard about some mystic named abul khair. So he went to the dwellings of this mystic. And he noticed that he was praying maghrib. So he caught the prayer behind him. And then during the prayer, sheikh ibrahim was thinking, this guy's qaraah is horrible. His voice is horrible. So yeah, what is this? He wasn't making any mistakes, but just his voice was, you know. So then after the prayer, they had a conversation. And he said that he meant go, went to go make, refresh his wudu sheikh ibrahim. And he went and he was over by the wudu area. And he said a lion came out of nowhere. A lion, right? Sheikh like aah! And he ran back. He said, he said to the, he said to abul khair, he said there's a lion in your wudu area. And and the mystic said, ah, he's still there? So he went over there and he grabbed a lion by his mane. He said, don't you know I have a guest get out of here. And then the sheikh said, oh, how did you do this? And so abul khair said to him, you put so much stock on the outward, you're afraid of lions. I put more stock on the inward and lions fear me. So ultimately, the state of the heart is the most itadjah arabahubi qalbin salim. This is what the khawaraj missed. The khawaraj, the khawaraj, there's a story mentioned by Ibn Asakir where he says that three of the khawaraj, they massacred a family, a companion of the Prophet ﷺ. They killed him. They killed his pregnant wife. And they took out the fetus and slit its throat. These are khawaraj. They did this to a companion of the Prophet ﷺ because they said to him, what is your opinion of Ali? And they said, Amir al-Mu'mineen. And they said, kill him. Right. And so and then Ibn Asakir he mentions they were walking along and they saw this kind of orchard area and they started picking grapes and eating them. And they suddenly said to themselves, we didn't ask the owner for permission. Astaghfirullah. We're eating grapes. We're stealing grapes. And he says, look at this mentality. They have they have the blood of a massacred family from the Sahaba on their clothes and they're worried about some grapes. Yeah, the grape. Okay. It's you stole some grapes. But look at the bigger picture here. This didn't occur to them. Anyway. Sisters before I go to the brothers. Yes. I'll start. I'll be right back there. As-salamu alaykum. So in the lecture you said that Allah has sworn by life of Prophet Muhammad. So I just want to know in Quran, what are the other things that Allah has sworn by? And what is their significance? So there's different adjurations. So while asr, right, asr time Allah takes an oath. So you'd have to actually go into the tafasir to look at the significance of these things. Wa-l-layli-i-d-yaqshah. Right. What are some other ones? Wa-l-fajri wa-layalin asr wa-shafi'il wa-l-wazir. Right. Wa-tini wa-zaytun. Right. So we'd have to go into the tafasir. Right. But there's great significance attached to these objects. So Allah SWT can swear by whatever he wants. We swear by Allah SWT. We only swear by Allah SWT. But Allah swears by the life of the Prophet SAW. I swear by your life they are just, they are intoxicated in their lust. Very interesting. Aya. And unfortunately nowadays you have people that, like I said, there's this kind of leveling across the board. People think they can interpret the Quran without requisite knowledge. You know in alim, in alim is someone who has at least 25 years full-time training. 25 years full-time studies. That's an alim. A sheikh 40 years. Right. So anyone under 40 who claims to be an alim, I'm very suspect of that. I mean it's possible they start studying at like 15 or something, but full-time for 25 years. You know. We go to like these, you know, you take a class on intro to Quran at the university. They have, they read these texts through something called radical hermeneutics, which means that you can basically interpret the text however you want, through any type of lens. So you have for example, you know, a, I don't know, a feminist reading of surat-mariam, an LGBTQ plus reading of surah-ud or something like that, where they're arguing something that's clearly antithetical to the text. But then you point out, what about this verse over here? They say, oh, don't worry about this verse.  Ibn Hisham says, the Quran is a jujah, a Waheda. It's like one sentence. And you can't just isolate something from that sentence. Right. أفتؤمنون ببعض الكتابي وتكفرون ببعض. This is what Ahlul Kitab did. Allah addresses Ahlul Kitab in the Quran. Do you believe in some of the book, but not other parts of the book? And they're very brazen about this. They're very famous, I mentioned this before, very famous feminist Muslim professor who says, you know, if there's a verse in the Quran that you are offended by it, just say no. Just say no to Allah. This is how she puts it. Just say no. No Allah. Just say no. When I was a kid in elementary school, our teachers used to tell us, someone offers you drugs. Just say no. That's good advice. Just say no to Allah. Bad advice. But I don't know, you know, I feel sorry for our young people entering into these institutions. I really do. I mean, it's just, I don't know how they, it's a jungle out there. And, you know, if they can hold on to their e-man, you know, that's a, it's a tough, it's a tough place, any. And it's getting harder. So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to strengthen our e-man, you know, to give us, to give us istiqama, to give us if-bat in the religion, you know, not to be afraid.   They don't fear Allah. The Quran says, Let the people of the Gospel take, take by the, let the people of the Gospel take a hukum by what Allah has revealed therein. The Quran wants the Christians to follow their text. Follow your text because that'll make for a better world. This is why Muslim men can make Christian women. You say, well, they're Trinitarian. Yeah, but they have family values that are similar to ours that'll make for a good marriage. They believe in gender roles. They believe in traditional morality. Those things count in a marriage. They count very high. It's very important. Follow your book. But nowadays you have people, you know, they basically interpret their text through the current lens, the current zeitgeist, which means the spirit of this age. Whatever is again, whatever is latest is greatest. It must be the greatest because I'm living now. It must be the greatest. I'm alive. Right? I know we can keep going all night with questions, but we'll take one last question. Dr. Lutah. Yeah, just a little bit. So, in your experience, like with Christian debaters, because that's how I kind of like knew you, have you perceived like any shifts in like the intellectual rigor over time? And what is the most prominent topic of discussion with them currently? Because I'm noticing that they're a little bit weak. They're very, they're kind of repeating the same, regurgitating the same discussions. Also, I want to invite you kindly to Clubhouse sometime to speak to some of the brothers there, like try to give Dawa. I mean, we speak to Christians there all the time, but yeah, just that. But yeah, I mean, what is kind of like the hot topics now with apologists?  Like they really have nothing going for them. So is it funny anymore? Like kind of describe like what's going on in that field? If you don't mind, please. Yeah, I really wish you didn't mention this person's name. You know, these people are mustahazi. Right. And it's impermissible for us to even sit with them. You know, a mustahazi is someone who mocks and ridicules the religion, who mocks and ridicules the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We're not even supposed to give them a platform. They don't even just completely ignore them. Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala says, wa kafaa naa, what does he say? Wa kafaa but the mustahzeeen. Allah says, I will suffice you with respect to the mustahzeeen. In other words, I'll take care of them. Like Abu Jahal and Abu Lahab. Right. There's a few, seven or eight of them that were known. All of them, all of them were killed at Badr, or they died from disease. You know, so I wouldn't engage, I would be very discriminatory as to who you engage with, even if you're claiming to be Christian and they come to you with smiles and this and that. And you know, I learned my lessons a hard way. I mean, there was a cop to Christian guy who was smiling and talking about love, this and that. And he wanted to have a debate with me in 2003. And I said, yeah, we met the night before at a hotel and we were very cordial and this and that. And then the next day at the event, he had three other debaters. So it was like a four against one. And two of these guys were like fluent in Arabic and they knew like, what on in Hadith and everything. I mean, still one.  We took care of business, you know. I remember the MSA was panicking and they're calling, we're trying to get this local Imam to come help you. I said, relax, brother. The hawk will win. And then it was just, but I got to a point because they were losing.  He became belligerent and started slandering the Prophet's Asylum. And at that point, we can't, you know, you know, lesson learned, right. But you're right. It's the same issues, you know, they're bringing up marriages of the Prophet's Asylum and they bring up the fact that the Prophet's Asylum was a military leader and all of this is hypocrisy. I mean, I mean, if you look at the, if you look at all of the casualties in every battle of the Prophet's Asylum, Abu-l-Hassan al-Nadab and Rahimullah, he did, he actually did a study on this and he said there's about 1,018 casualties in all of the Ghazawat of the Prophet's Asylum. Enemy and Muslim, Mushriqin and Muslims, 100, 1,018 men in 23 years, all men on the battlefield, right. Musa al-Assalam in Exodus 34, he comes down the mountain, he sees his own people worshiping the golden calf, he orders 3,000 men slaughtered on the spot in one night, but he's a Prophet. But the Prophet, oh no, he can't be a Prophet. This is total hypocrisy.  What they're doing is they're banking on Muslim ignorance of their own text. They know a lot of Muslims, they've never heard of Qiraat. They've never heard of the Ahrufa Saba'a.  Oh, two different Quraans. And then the Muslim du'at, that are very young, right, they're there and they're doing their best. They start going, they have this cognitive dissonance. You wrote this Quran. You, this is a fabrication. You're calling this a fabrication? Yeah. Oh, really? You know, so a lot of it sort of, you know, smoke and mirrors, it's the same stuff regurgitated. I don't find any strong arguments coming from the Christian side. You know, but you know, we have to be cordial with people. These kind of debates that are highly polemical. I mean, I debated this other guy. I'm not going to mention his name. Very popular on YouTube and this was about 16 years ago. You know, and it's probably, it was a bad idea. But, you know, we should have adab with people. We should be discriminatory with people as to who we debate. And at the end of the day, lakum dinakum muliyadin. Right? So we should inform, we should inform with adab. The Quran tells us how to make da'wah. Right? So, call people to the way of your Lord with hikmah, which means dala'il according to Imam Zamaqshari and others. He says it means with proofs, scriptural proofs, rational proofs, historical proofs. When mu'idat al-hasana means good, adab, good comportment. Right? With adab. Right? So both of these have to, have to work, inshallah. But, you know, we shouldn't, we shouldn't disrespect people's religions. We shouldn't, you know, mock people. This is not the sunnah.  So we make toba, we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala to forgive us because we'll be hindering people from the path of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. We don't want that to happen.  Right? So, we could point things out to them, you know, with adab. It's very difficult to do. I don't have the temperament for debate anymore. This is what I've learned. I don't have the temperament because I let my ego get involved and I can't do it. I thought that when I got older, I would be more patient, but I've just become a crudgety old man. I don't want to hear these bad arguments anymore. You can miss me with all of that now. I don't want to hear it anymore. I've already dealt, I've already dealt with it. That doesn't mean I won't come on clubhouse. I mean, I'll come, I'll come, inshallah, but Faa'fu anna. Allahumma innaka thuhun tuhibhul afwa fa'fu anna. Allahumma innaka thuhun tuhibhul afwa fa'fu anna. Ya Kareem Oshala Allahasir Muhammad Walaha alihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahalim Alhamdulillahi rabbil al-alamin Al-Fatiha.