spiritual pu it is a spiritual spirit to the heart it will destroy your heart literally it will completely destroy the spiritual heart when somebody engages in that and look that doesn't mean that if we're caught up in it we forget we we give up no no no we turn we turn back to a lot a lot can wipe our hearts clean in a minute ramadan is coming we're already in a special month of rajab we're about to enter ramadan in about a month and a half so there's a lot of time until for us to change the goal is not for us to despair but it is for us to realize that hey we might be struggling with it and if you're if you're if you have like siblings or you're a parent you have kids just know and i know this through like having worked with a fair amount of youth that people are struggling with pornography like a lot and they're doing so on their phones they're doing so in the middle of the night on their laptops they're not like you would likely have no clue that somebody in your house is is engaged in that but they are and that leads and it has significant damages in their worldly life just in terms of how it's going to impact future marriage future relations there's a lot of damages going to have let alone the spiritual damages and the uh the spiritual damages sins and uh that people have ruined the impact it's going to have in the next life so what do we do about this right so if somebody is struggling with this or you know somebody who's struggling with this it's important to to realize a couple things first is just realize the damage that does number two is to actually and i've i've i've uh seen people who like work in this field mention this to those who are like addicted to this imagine that if somebody else was watching some like a mother or or sister of yours engaged in this activity imagine if somebody they were watching that person what would you do you couldn't stand it for sure you couldn't stand it right you would um you would uh just lose your you would completely erupt if you if you thought that someone was watching your mother or sister doing that type of act now you got to keep in mind if you're struggling with this that is someone's mother or someone's sister or someone's daughter so how could you allow for that type objectification to happen to somebody no the human being is dignified somebody might be in a state where they're caught up in engaging in that act or doing so for the sake of money and whatnot that doesn't mean that we get caught up by promoting that industry by encouraging that industry no we have to be people that are calling to good and that are staying away from that so that's the first thing to remember the second thing is if someone is struggling with it is okay you reduce it slowly you might not be able to get rid of the addiction immediately you slowly work on it okay i'm going to go from this many times a day to this many times a week to this many times a month and then i'm going to work towards quitting this this type of behavior and this type of action the third thing that someone does is to pray to Allah to sincerely this should really be the first thing but i'm just kind of going you know no specific order here pray to Allah to really help you with this situation right and if you and if you're sibling or parent pray for Allah's protection for your children or for your you know siblings or whoever it is with this because this is very much present across society right now very much present so pray for special protection for this type of stuff it's not the same as it was back in the day it's really not it's too accessible right and this is we're talking about there are two types here you have like people actually going and logging in on like what are actually pornographic websites and then you have what's called basically soft pornography which is people seeing like people posting pictures of basically themselves make it on even basic on platforms like instagram even on tiktok and other platforms stuff is happening and so how do you respond to it well you and i have to control ourselves and we have to help ourselves and we have to help other people who we know that are struggling with this the fifth the next thing that we do is we increase the amount of protective thicker that we're doing so remember this the more thicker somebody does the more light someone will have the more light someone has the farther away shaytan will the less effect rather than shaytan will be able to have them and we see this in the hadith of the prophecy somewhere he says he tells satan the omar that if you were to take if you were to travel one path shaytan fears you so he would travel another path because the light and the the the augustness of satan the omar it was so amazing that shaytan couldn't stand it right satan couldn't stand it so that's possible the more protective thicker somebody does the more they will assist in this i know people who told me that they couldn't control lowering their gaze they couldn't control this desire and then they started adding more thicker to their schedule they started doing a couple of basic protection duas they started adding in the sunnah morning duas and the sunnah evening duas they started adding in a couple of these basic things right a recommendation that i've made before it i would say again is to read regularly try to at least listen to on youtube if not read what's called the weird al-latif of imama haddad which is a compilation of the process i'm going to do in the morning of the evening and try to at least read that in the morning time right where w i r d al-latif la it uh la it i f uh sorry la t i f so that is the way to protect ourselves you gotta do more thicker we know we're gonna struggle so like if we're going into battle and remember when you are on the internet in some way to perform you are entering into a territory where people are going to be coming at you in a negative way whether that's hate haters which happens a lot or whether that's um uh haram coming at you so you have to be protected when you're out in the world you have to be protected it's like entering a spiritual battle spiritual battle should not be entered without spiritual preparation spiritual preparation is uh done so by asking a lot for protection and it's best done through the sunnah duas that the provisional allocated and told us to do with regression protection and if one isn't able to do that just make general duad that a lot protects you from uh the type of lust that you and i might be it might have or we might channel that so that is a very high level overview right so first is realize it'll destroy your heart we're talking here about someone who might have an addiction or regularly engage in pornography second is imagine if someone is doing this to like someone who's watching you know you someone in your family a mom sister daughter and realize that that person who someone is watching is a mom sister or daughter to somebody so like that's how could you do that right third thing is to reduce it slowly fourth is to realize that um pray to Allah regularly to help you and pray for your family and your kids and others to be protected and lastly is to increase the amount of protective thicker that you're doing if you do these four or five things Allah will help inshallah Allah helps the person who starts to uh starts to work on themselves inshallah so that's the first major bucket the second major bucket of things that i believe that i've seen that people struggle within our society is just an overall like you know not an ability to lower their gaze and then that gets into like illicit relationships right so this comes from a desire of like maybe someone always wants to flirt if someone always wants to get attention maybe somebody always wants to present themselves in a very specific way so the opposite gender could be attracted to them happens all the time and you know the filters that we have on social media make that a lot like more inauthentic by just we can make ourselves look like ways we don't even truly look right and that comes then if someone sees that image and they might not lower their gaze right and so what do we have to do first and foremost we have to be people who follow that try to follow that commandment okay i'm going to follow Allah's commandment and the Quran it says to lower my gaze i'm going to try i might not succeed but if one out of every five times i can succeed if today i'm lowering my gaze zero times now every time i see something i shouldn't be looking at if one out of every five times i can succeed in lowering it i'm improving remember shaytan will try to get you to go from zero to 100 real quick you'll be like if you're either like a super super saint in the religion or you're like a terrible terrible you know sinner who has no hope like he's going to try to point paint those extremes remember this umma is a middle nation as the Prophet sallam said so you and i don't have to be on either extreme we just have to try our best Allah rewards it when you try remember that always allow or reward you when you try it's not about being perfect not about getting it right so with regards to this we try to lower the gaze we remember number one the sweetness and the worship that will come and this overall calmness will feel number two we realize that when we see haram and when we text somebody haram things when we text haram images and when we start to do this type of stuff what happens anxiety builds up in the heart anxiety and depression come from a spiritual perspective from the limited understanding that i have is um from the sins that we are committing and it's very very real the more sins one commits the darker the heart gets as the Prophet sallam told us and the more dark the heart gets the more trepidation and worry and anxiety and problems the heart has so we might have anxiety that we're feeling now because of certain things that we were doing a six months ago or a couple months ago or even last week you might not feel the effect of the sin immediately there is an effect that that happens right so keep that in mind it will help you when you lower your gaze it will help you with your anxiety and third way to help reduce lowering the gaze or sorry to increase lowering the gaze is to again increase the number of thicker that someone is doing the amount of thicker someone is doing the same prescription for that the the one struggling with less and pornography is very similar here right now the other thing to keep in mind is um let's talk about specific places that you and I get into when someone might start to the desires aroused many times it'll be a specific app like tinder or instagram or something else where they're or you know tick tock something else that someone is on and they see something you know that they shouldn't be seeing and uh then the desires get aroused and they start to follow down a bad path so or it's a specific person that they're texting their dma their messaging and there's a certain type of lustful slash love interest that's forming that we might think is going to lead to marriage but it might not we don't know right so we might be doing something we shouldn't be doing it's damaging us spiritually in the process so if it's a specific app and we're or a specific website that we're not able to control ourselves we should take a break from it doesn't mean permanently delete just take a break from it though until you're able to control yourself i know people who deleted these apps and it's had tremendous spiritual benefit for them because they were able to take a break reset clean themselves or a lot of course cleanse them and then you know keep keep still had stuff to work on but just okay now they were able to go back into it because the intense power of the lust that was being ignited wasn't as present so if it's a specific app delete it if it's a specific website block it there's blockers you can get like on macbook they have a blocker called self control which is an app sometimes when i'm working i'll like put you know a couple of websites news sites and others on that app and then even for the whole day i can't access those sites even if i want to go read the news or whatever other site somebody wants booked so if it's a pornographic site someone's struggling to stop looking at block it just control those things put those control mechanisms in place parents you don't have to do this forcefully for your kids if you are a parent you should talk to them about it and because the helicoptering type of issue the helicoptering type of issue might might become more challenging for somebody so you want to make sure you do it in a very very gentle way with with somebody so what do we say specific specific app delete it specific website block it if it's a specific person that is inciting those desires distance yourself from them if it's a specific place that one goes to stop going or bring someone with you so if you know that like when i have my device alone in the room at this time that is time i'm going to mess up put your device away if you know if i go to this person's house i'm going to start to flirt with them or whatever it is don't go to their house it's it's difficult these are like simple things but they're difficult to do so we just have to take you know what we can do and and do our best with it and if it's a specific time that we engage in this this activity we fill that time with something else right so we do our best and again Allah will guide us um the other two things to help with this first is uh too fast regularly and you don't have to do that as a full day fast if it's not Ramadan if it's you're just trying to control the desire you just reduce the food intake so maybe you skip one meal right the less full someone is the less they will act on their desires that's a proven methodology according to our religion so you lessen the food intake and the animal instincts inside of you become weakened and then you don't act in that type of way so food and less will desire directly linked the second thing to do to make sure to do this in more broad way so the first is to control the food intake the second thing is to increase the bigger intake as we mentioned the third is to say out with the bilim and shaitan energy regularly as soon as we are about to do something to say out of the bilim shaitan energy it'll stop it to a degree it will inshallah because shaitan is coming at you and it'll immediately heal the the next thing is to never be alone with the opposite gender in either some type of you know private communication in the same room to the best of ability best of our ability because that's when the desire starts to start right so when you and I are like texting somebody and we're not married to them and we're you know slowly starting that conversation DMing them and doing all this stuff we know where it's going to lead to we want it to lead somewhere and that place we want it to lead to is a desire of ours that's impermissible so we have to just cut it off at the root right and keep this in mind the best thing to do the best thing to do mama khazali mentions is to break this at the outset that to cut it off at the outset he said to cut the desire off at the outset meaning to like immediately lower the gaze or immediately close the app or to immediately delete it or something like that he's like it's like pulling a bowl before it gets to the gate imagine you have a bowl like an animal a bowl and it's about to get to the gate it's like you know there's a gate and it's going to run in the field after that it's if you cut it off at the outset it's like controlling the bowl before it gets to the gate but if you try to treat it after it has after the outside after the desire has been stirred it's like the bowl is running loose in the field and you're literally chasing it and trying to catch it from its tail that's not going to be easy to do it's possible it's not going to be easy right so this is why cutting the desire at the outset is important these are addictions and addictions they take they take us completely they completely consume us right so that's a kind of general prescription that scholars outline so what is what we'll review one more time it's to control the desire at the outset it's to never be alone with the opposite gender to reduce our food intake and fast regularly it's to increase our thicker intake and it's to say out of the membership on energy and it's to cut that thing off so it's an app we cut it off if it's a website we stop going on it if it's a or we block it if it's a person we limit our communications with them and so on and so forth this is the the way that we can hopefully start to do this and most importantly inshallah Allah will help us and lastly what is the way to channel this in the right direction so I did say that that we'll talk about the way to channel this in the right direction having sexual desire is not haram in and of itself but channeling it in the wrong direction in the lustful direction is what's not allowed so we can channel in the right direction what do we do the first thing is to actively channel the desire in the right direction is to get married now what does that mean obviously someone has to be in a position where they're capable and they're able to get married at the same time though we do need to have real conversations in our community about like having extremely high expectations that parents might impose on kids say you have to be this age the girl or the guy has to be like this look like this walk like this be of this position be of this race in order for you to get married to them we set expectations so high and I can guarantee you for the parents who if you're doing that your kids are in some way or another starting to get into some form of illicit relationships it's almost impossible to control desire in this country and if you and I as people if we have kids if we are the ones who limit them from getting married when they feel like they're ready to get married the haram and the sexual desires that they get into the lustful desires that they get into that's on us that's on the person who limited them keep that in mind so be much more open minded this is not the same as things used to be way back in the day like they're this stuff is way too easy to get into you don't want someone's spiritual heart to be ruined someone's mental health to be ruined someone's addictive addictions to go up all because we were not able to have a very frank conversation about getting married in an appropriate age if someone is out of college and they're able to like earn some money they're like in their early 20s I believe personally they should get married even younger than that I think if they're able to manage it they should do it because otherwise the desires just keep increasing people are hooking up with people people are on tinder like and again more 95% of people of parents and one don't even have a sense of the stuff that's going on on the internet because we're because they might not be engaged in it themselves or the different apps someone's in so that's the first thing is to get married and to have a hollow way right that someone is able to release these desires the second is if you're not able to do that the the the energy that one is trying to activate or release with these desires one does so in other means so one takes up the sport one's exercise one does some other intense activity to release that energy that is not a long-term cure like the way marriage is but it is a way for us practically speaking to say okay every time I'm about to do this I'm gonna go run instead I'm gonna go do this instead it's going to release a certain type of dopamine inside of you that is going to still trigger similar things that would have been triggered with that other addiction that one has so those are really the two like ways that I believe and Allah knows best there's probably more if you have others please comment and suggest that one can channel this desire and this lustful desire in the right direction so those that's really the main thing you want to keep this brief so if anybody has any questions I'll wrap up and if anyone has questions please post them in the chat or the q&a section wherever it is and I'll go ahead and try to answer a couple of these questions or comments or things you've seen or you know concerns and whatnot please do so and we'll go ahead and try to answer it I see someone said yes this topic needs to be addressed I'm gonna learn I totally agree so just as a kind of recap while we wait for any questions to come in and again the goal here is like be open create an open forum ask whatever questions it is that on someone's mind and we'll do our best to address them and inshallah if not we'll do our best to check with a qualified person and hopefully get back to you you know in a future week or in a future discussion but just as kind of a quick review we spoke about sexual desire and we know that it is something that Allah created in us it's something that is a good thing if channeled in the right direction it's to allow us to marry it's allow us to have kids it's allow us to understand that it's a small portion of the delight of the afterlife as according to mama was Ali at the same time though the societies that we're living in are full of lust full of desire full of promiscuity full of sex at younger and younger ages and so we have to do our best to control this desire and the way to do that is to lower our gaze to cut it off at its root to try to fast often to try to increase our bigger intake and to turn to Allah sincerely and ask him for help and if we are caught up in a major major difficulty like we're addicted to pornography or something else we do what I just mentioned before and we slowly reduce our intake if we can't cut it off directly cutting off directly is obviously preferred and we reduce our intake of that and then we cut off the apps or the websites or the different channels it is that we are consuming this stuff from or the people it is that we're engaging in this stuff with and inshallah slowly and slowly Allah will facilitate Allah will help we ask Allah bless all of you and make this easy for you anybody who's sick may Allah cure you and inshallah I'll see if there's any questions I don't see any pop up anybody has anything please post it in the chat inshallah otherwise we'll go ahead and Salam alaikum wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah Muhammadin wa ala Ali wa sahbihi sallam ya Allah ya Rahman ya Rahim ya Allah please allow us to channel our desires in the right direction please allow us to channel our desire ya Allah and have knowledge of you and love of you and to desire your heaven ya Allah desire your agenda and to desire you ya Allah desire closeness and nearness to you and nearness to your prophet sallam ya Allah please forgive us and pardon us for any impermissible things that we've done for any wrong thing we've looked at or anything else it is that was just pleasing to you and please cover us in your mercy and your love and please forgive all of those that are struggling with their life all those who are here and present and watching or any have any intention to work on themselves please forgive them and pardon them and please assist us in all of our different situations and all of our different affairs please allow us to control our desires please allow us to lower our gaze please allow us to be people who are people of chastity and people who are who are pure inside and outside and please allow us to have love of you and your prophet sallam sallam wa sallam wa sallam wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka say Muhammadin wa baraka me thank you so much as i go here i don't see any question um uh and yeah someone said i deleted my social media and it has lowered yeah it lowered my lust desires totally feel the amount of fight or yeah totally feel that i know a lot of people that's happened with just because the amount of things that are out there that we're seeing when we're just scrolling we can't you don't even have time to lower your gaze because the next scroll is something else right so totally totally feel you thank you for sharing that um i don't see any of the questions i'll give it another like 20 seconds or so otherwise we'll go ahead and thank you all so much for it thank you. I hope everybody is doing well it's having some culties here. All right so today we are going to talk about we're going to continue this conversation on deceptive desires and really the focus for today is going to be um on the framework reviewing the framework for desires and then we're going to talk a little bit more about the desire for money and kind of what this does and how it relates to greed and uh uh treating others poorly and and uh just the overall sickness that having a deep attachment for money can bring to the heart. So as we've been discussing a human being we have desires we have many desires we have uh sexual desire we have our carnal appetites we have the desire for food we have the desire for money we have the desire for fame we have the desire for power we have the desire to be in control and so on and so forth now not every desire is considered a bad desire right there are some desires that are actually considered um good desires and there are some desires that are considered desires that can be channeled in a in an appropriate direction in a beneficial direction so that's something important for us to remember the second point is uh the second kind of main takeaway uh from the conversations as far as that you and I can channel our desires either downwards or upwards and the goal is to channel them vertically upwards what that means is to channel them in a way that you and I are desiring Allah we are desiring love of Allah we are desiring knowledge of Allah we we love dhikr we love these types of things and this might seem like a very very lofty type of state to be in but it is possible right and and that's something that we want to try to aspire to uh inshallah so now we'll get into the conversation for today um so we're really focusing now on the desire for money and what that is so we live in a society that's really filled with um it's filled with everybody trying to get rich right trying to get a get rich quick schemes are here uh there are people who are trying to not only get rich quick but who will steal people's money in inadvertent ways who will commit fraud who will do anything it takes in order to get their share and to take somebody else's share and so it's important to talk about this concept of greed and this concept of money we also live in a society where everybody wants to be rich and famous now it's important to know that there's nothing inherently wrong with having mashallah a lot of wealth and a lot of money but there is something inherently wrong with just like always desiring and doing whatever it takes and forgetting our religious obligations in order to just try to be uh ahead of everybody else and to try to be rich and so on and so forth that that is something for us to uh keep in mind so Allah mentions in the Quran he says that your wealth is a test for you he says that and he gives us regular indications in the Quran that he's going to test us with different means and your wealth wealth being one of them he also says in surah al-amran that the enjoyment of worldly desires um that he he tested mankind with various worldly desires including uh he says in the verse that we gave we we have adorned various shahawat various desires for the human being and in those he includes treasures of gold and silver and and he includes horses and he includes cattle and fertile land all of these he says these have been made appealing to people and then he says but these are the pleasures of the worldly life but with Allah is the finest destination right with Allah is the finest destination so what does this mean what does it mean when Allah is giving us this indication of desires and giving us these indication of uh you know gold and silver and horses and cattle and whatnot well we don't live in a time where you know most of us have horses and cattle and we don't really have gold and silver very much either um and we don't have you know as many not many people have land whatnot so what does this mean right in our context you and I could translate this as saying okay gold and silver includes all of our money our salary our stocks our investments like these are the types of things we get absorbed in many times and uh horses in this context right and could be translated as cars the different types of vehicles that somebody has um and just obsession with oh I gotta have a car I gotta have this car I gotta go for the utmost luxury and the next the next model comes out I gotta get it right and it's like this attachment that you do you by any means necessary will go to get that thing that it is that you want right and then you know land and cattle other aspects of our wealth is this constant idea that I have to grow my portfolio I have to grow my investments and whatnot again nothing inherently wrong with doing that but if that's our obsession if that's the desire that fuels us that's where the problem comes in right and that's very very important for us to discuss it's very also important for us to discuss as generally speaking if you come from a masha Allah a wealthy background a successful background no no nothing wrong with that that's a good thing alhamdulillah you should praise Allah you should feel grateful for but if somebody allows that to get in the way of their religious obligation if somebody allows that to get in the way of doing the right thing if somebody wants to keep going and going and growing in their wealth and society and they go and they do haram things in order to grow and that starts to become a problem and so we have to look at that very very seriously there's also hadith or the problems some indicates that true hungry wolves do not cause a direct destruction in a group of sheep in a flock of sheep as much as the love of rank and wealth does in a muslim the problem is indicated right now imagine you had a 50 sheep right and again this is we're not most of us we're not farmers so these types of situations are harder for us to imagine but imagine if somebody had that and then you had two hungry wolves what type of damage they would do to the sheep they would just go after them right there would be carnage obviously someone is saying that that they don't cause as much destruction to the sheep as does the love of wealth and rank and we're going to talk about rank next time inshallah as does the love of wealth and rank to the human being right so we have to take a look at this that these are things that are happening at the heart level the inner level rather than nufs level you and I not every single thing that's good is seen we're not every single thing that's bad that's is seen for our intentions you could have really pure sincere intentions and it could be a very very good thing alhamdulillah and nobody would really see it though only Allah sees that intention you could have very very bad intentions you could have very very bad thoughts only Allah is seeing that in the same way in the same way you and I could have very very negative things going on deep down inside of us and only Allah is going to be able to see that right and so the obsession do by any means necessary obsession with wealth could be one of them right you have a another narration this is a story of Issa al-aslam and says the disciples of Issa al-aslam asked him he said what what is the reason that you can walk upon water and we cannot he said how do you and so Issa al-aslam replies to them right this is a jesus he replies to them he says well how do you value gold and silver in your hearts what's the value of these in your hearts and they said they're good they're good he said they're the same as earth to me they're the same as dust to me they're the same as dirt to me right like that the the one of the traits right is that you had he had this trait of ascetic detachment where these types of things were not valuable these are not inherently seen as valuable and as a result he was able to achieve very very lofty stations and Allah blessed him and through Allah's power he was able to have many miracles on his hands right so those are some of the examples of you know where wealth can become a risk for us and what we need to try to aspire to right with regards to this kind of love obsessive love that many of us have this depth deep attachment that we might have to money and that manifests in a couple of ways it can manifest when we have a hard time letting it go it can manifest that when somebody needs our help we don't want to help them it can manifest in a way that we have a hard time um spending on other people it can manifest in a way that we are constantly stressed about money not like am i going to make ends meet but how am i going to get more and more and more we're never really satisfied it can manifest like that this is sickness that that many of us have inside i mean i know i definitely struggle with this right this is something we all have to work on right so there's another story in the Quran where Allah mentions the story of someone named Qadrun and this was a man at the time of Musa al-Islam and he had so much money in so much wealth insane amounts of wealth like next level amounts of wealth that it took a group of like it took a whole group imagine a whole group of like really strong dudes filled this this whole room this back room and that's how many people would not not be needed to carry his wealth but to carry the keys of his wealth to carry the keys that's how many people would be needed right a whole room of people would be needed in order to care a group of strong people would be needed to carry the keys of this guy's wealth right so he had a lot and what will people do people would look up to him people would be like oh look at him it's Qarun he's the boss he's the rich man he's like they would um give deference to him they would have an next level level of respect for him kind of you know as though as though he has uh some rightful for them just because of his money right so they had this immense respect for them and people with other people more more righteous people would say like why do you guys respect him so much like what are you doing is because oh he's he's look at this position that he has look at the station that he has look at all these types of things that he has right so what happened he became arrogant he's like you know when you have this much and you have a group of dudes who need to carry your keys just literally the keys to all your money you think you're a big shot right so he became super arrogant and he thought you know he he calls all the shots everything is about him and so he became so arrogant that a lot opens up the earth and swallows him because of his arrogance because of his attachment to money and because of the arrogance that results now was money the problem no it was the arrogance that was the problem but if somebody has a lot of that how many of us could manage it that's we have to know we have to know the trade and that's what we're trying to you know trying to discuss right it's just like we talked about last time is let's say um sexual desire in and of itself is that the problem no it is the way that that manifests in the way we're not able to control it same thing with the desire for food is that in and of itself a problem no but we need it to eat but if we start doing haram and so on and so forth then it starts to become a problem right so these are things for us to keep in mind now remember we have to just remember a couple things here what is the benefit of this wealth why do what is the benefit of of money right what is the benefit of this well the main benefit that we have to keep in mind is it is a means to an end that's what it is it's a means to an end it's a way you are going somewhere just like you need a car you need a car to get you from a to b right money is a car it's a vehicle to get you from where you are here to the next life to traverse and you need a map you need it in order to not be always stressed in order to not always be worried in order to not um uh uh uh be be worried about different conditions that are going to go on in your life right we need that but when you spend on our families food house alhamdulillah that Allah has given us all this type of stuff however the way in which you spend is the issue right and it's can somebody handle the potential negative implications of having it and if do they become greedy as a result we we all have probably heard hadith of the Prophet's son said that the son of Adam or he indicates the son of Adam that if he or she had one mountain of one valley of gold they would just want another like they're never they never get the only thing to fill them will be the dirt in their grave right and Allah says in the Qur'an he says al haqum et tukatur tattasursumul maqabit that vying for worldly increase has distracted you it's occupied you you've become so into it until it is that that that you will actually be um you know visiting the graves where you whether you are yourself in the grave or it is this kind of realization i'm going to end up in there and then Allah says that you will then know that's when you and i are going to realize so like our goal in this life is to realize that this is not the end game it is not the end game and i'm saying that to myself first and foremost it is not the end game to become rich it's not the end game to become wealthy it's that that's not the end game the end game for us is to get to the next life and to successfully uh successfully get to the next life and if wealth helps us do that alhamdulillah but we have to be on guard for any negative aspects of it so let's talk now about how this desire manifests right how does it manifest well remember this the desires are the root and the sins are the branches so you have to be able to to cure the root before it becomes a disease right and spread throughout everything else and becomes a sin can also become a good deed though if you cure it properly so what happens here a couple things happen if some the desire for wealth gets to somebody in a bad way first is that you begin to want everything around you you it manifests in greed i want this i want that i want more i want more it's always about more more more more more and that goes back to this hadith that if the son of adam had one value of gold that they would want another the next thing that happens you and i become envious if we start looking at other people be like oh he has this he has that latest iphone i should get that oh he has a benz why don't i get a benz oh i should get this car oh he has a bmw oh he has a tesla oh she has this purse oh look at that they have a five bedroom house i have a four bedroom house i should get the five bedroom house but if i get a six bedroom house what about a swimming pool what about this again nothing inherently wrong except the fact that overly getting into these luxuries and forgetting the main point of our existence can become a problem because the one who keeps going and going and growing it's like okay now the next thing is once the love of wealth is not sufficient for people then the love of fame comes in which we'll talk about next time love of status the love of power it keeps going and growing and growing which is why you'll never see people in a society be content with just being rich they will actually want to then be more than rich they're going to want to quote unquote climb now i need power now i need influence i gotta run for this position i gotta run for that position once you have that you gotta keep getting it right and because it doesn't stop the desire doesn't stop right and it can end up manifesting in negative consequences if it's not tamed properly so then what ends up happening if somebody does not change the desire correctly they end up taking haram means many times they end up taking the wrong means to get wealth right and so the goal here is for us to always keep in mind if we do want to have a strong intention in mind and we do want to achieve worldly success i'm there not nothing wrong with that but if we now start to three things usually manifest with regards to someone taking the wrong means to acquire wealth first is they just go after haram jobs and haram income that's important for us to not do there are the obvious ones like selling you know liquor having a liquor store selling drugs these types of things but there are the unop they're the ones that are not so obvious like maybe working for a super unethical like weapons manufacturer i mean that's kind of obvious but like working for an unethical organization or somebody that's an organization that's getting most of its money from completely haram sources these are questions we have to ask at the very least we have to look into it and we have to try we might not fail we might not succeed we might fail but we have to at least try because but if you and i become so obsessed so obsessed with this with how much money we have how much rank we have how much influence we have and so on and so forth we'll go to any means necessary and i know many people that you know really really really high paying jobs like will they will will reach out to them but they're in an industry that they're just not comfortable going in that industry and they'll just kind of turn they'll just turn down the job because that's not worth it to them it's not worth the Muslims it's not worth sacrificing that income for them right even if it's paying them two three times more than they might be making so that's one way the second way is if this love of wealth manifests is we start to take out impermissible amounts of money in the form of loans what does that look like what we live in a society where lending is a huge part of this society and so let's say again that we've given that car example oh i have a you know a solid car but everybody else around me has a Mercedes or a BMW or a fan some other fancy car now what i've got to get that too well i don't have enough money to buy it and so what am i going to do i'm going to go i'm going to take out a car loan i'm going to take out a two three percent apr car loan not thinking that there's any problem with it well there is a problem with it because having a car loan that has interest associated with it under no circumstance like under most circumstances right why we couldn't be we shouldn't be doing that we know that interest a love very severely warrants against interest in the Quran he says that tells us to stop taking interest he says stop giving interest he says he wages blood his messenger wage war on the one who takes out interest right so there's very very these are verses in the Quran very serious but we don't consider them because the love of money is so deep rooted and then it becomes it i gotta have this thing i gotta have that thing and then that's one example okay well maybe there's somebody who um wants to go and remodel their house okay cool well now i'm taking out a loan at five to ten percent apr over going on my credit card bill just so i can have really really nice cabinets let's say okay nothing wrong with having the nice cabinets if we say alhamdulillah but what means are we going these are just examples apply them to whatever situation we have in life but the excessive credit card debt the excessive debt that accrues as a result just because we weren't satisfied just because the love of and that greed deep down inside of material objects and money was just deep down inside right and then the third way this manifests is we just overindulge right overindulge all we do is just shop and buy things and i gotta get this i gotta get that that's an issue right we can't we can't be getting into a life as muslims we're like all we care about is consumption no we have to care about giving back to others we have to care about if if somebody uses their wealth to give to others to build massage it to assist others of course to take care of their family you know alhamdulillah if you have nice things we say alhamdulillah for them but in the appropriate ways in the time that we live in that's so different than somebody who just is like i gotta have the best of five designer bags and then ten this and you know i have to i have to buy a five thousand dollar shirt and you know five thousand dollar dress and just all these types of things that like just keep on accumulating because when you have the money it's all relative people say that right wealth is relative hundred thousand dollars to somebody might be chump change versus to somebody else it might be their entire year of salary it just depends but it doesn't mean that it's worth squandering that's when luxuria which is a disease that was it's part of the kind of catholic framework in the christian framework it's also manifest in our in our sense right like this love of luxurious things all we want to do is spend our money on luxurious things it's a problem we have to think about that nothing again wrong with doing things within limit but overdoing it beyond beyond even a bit more than what we need it can become an issue so we have to think about so what then is wealth for as we talk about this desire for wealth and desire for money what is it for it's for three things according to mama was out he says first it is a vehicle as i mentioned to get you to the destination use it wisely it'll help you in the next life the promises on me indicated he said in various hadith and stories how much have you sent forth for the next life right and it's how much have you saved for the next life and he said that everything it is that you give in the way of charity is what you've saved for the next life everything you've saved in your savings account if you don't give it away at some point right or use it for something beneficial it's not saving for the next life right it's used in this life so there is that aspect use it to get to the next life this is in two ways it should be to to give or to help us get the things we need to have a car to have a home and to take care of our family and put food on the table all these things some of the great things it's done with the right intention and we try to do them with a lot of income but that's the main goal right it's not too that we cannot let the means become the goal it's not the goal it really isn't the goal the second thing wealth is for is to help build either ourselves our families our institutions to let's say you you want to hire someone to help you so you can focus on your taking care of your family or focus on learning the dean or something like those are praiseworthy things mama was all he mentions that right because you will free up your time to do things only you can do right let's say you want to read Quran and someone some and so on and so forth rather than spending you'd say Allah bless you with wealth rather than spending four hours cleaning your home you spend that time in beneficial activities and you maybe get some help to clean your home you're using it in an appropriate way you're you are focusing on building your own knowledge your own skill set and in the same way building out institutions taking care of family and whatnot it's all positive things right and then so these are really the vehicles that we can keep in mind that this is what the the goal one of the goals for wealth is and so the Prophet has warned us against this kind of intense greedy competition and told us and indicated to us many times how detrimental it can be for our community and we don't have to go much farther than the Muslim world even to see like the level of the how much the negativity that the desire for wealth and the desire for money and fame has crept into some of these societies i mean you it's amazing you can have literally people who are struggling significantly and the people who are competing to build super tall buildings and who are paying like for example in parts of the Emirates you have people who pay insane amounts of money to get their license plate to be the absolute best license plate so like it's something like i think i think it's in Dubai there's fewer numbers you have license plate the more high class you are seen in society they'll pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars equivalent to getting the numbers reduced on their license plate they have like very few numbers it's a form of status it's part of love of status but it also just shows that like what is that wealth being used for right how is it that we can get into that level i mean what is the point of that is literally zero zero point absolutely zero point zero benefit to that it's just but somehow Muslims weird we're doing that type of stuff because we've lost we've lost the way of what we're supposed to be going right so what is the cure for this what is the cure for this excessive love of money the cure according to the scholars is first is to get rid of the haram sources of the money so if we are in love with it so much that we spend a lot of money on haram thing or sorry we're getting a lot of money from haram sources we have to reduce that either slowly or get rid of it completely we can't keep getting access to our wealth from sources that we know our questionable we have to work on that the second is to reduce haram spending so spending that we know is not good things we shouldn't be buying but we are buying right that we that are impermissible same thing then goes with loans if we all do or are caught up in loans we got to get rid of them as soon as possible right we have to work on paying them off we have a car loan got to work on paying it off because it shows that there are many other ways to get the car most likely there was probably a way to lease it and to negotiate the rate what's called the money factor rate and at least that you're basically paying you know close to nothing and what would be and what would be the interest or the money factor there are ways to do that but are we going out and finding these ways or are we just going out and doing it everybody else is doing and trying to compete with everybody these are the questions we have to ask and then the next thing to do is to just overall reduce our consumption and to not be so focused on the luxury right okay i'm going to get what i have alhamdulillah and these are unpopular topics i know because the nests we like the stuff i mean this is this is hard for all of us right to really really really think about this um but the the reality is is that it should not it should not make us obsessed whatever occupies you all the time means we are obsessed with it we gotta get rid of that obsession and you have it alhamdulillah you just say alhamdulillah having things is not a bad thing we have to say alhamdulillah we gotta keep that in mind but excessive attachment to them such that it distracts you from your theme that's where the issue comes and we ask Allah for guidance because for some people wealth is a blessing and for others the same thing is a test a test in in the sense that we do Allah is going to see how you handle that right the third way to do this and by the way i see this question come in until i'm going to get to this just a second um and please if anybody has questions please just post them in the chat that the third thing is uh to contemplate death that is one of the ways to remember okay this is not everything this world is not everything it's not always about this world i gotta remember i gotta remember what i'm here for i'm here to make it across this journey of this world so i can enter into the next world inshallah in peace and then hopefully make it through that journey so i can enter heaven inshallah that's my goal to be with the messenger of Allah so to be with Allah so i remembering death contemplating death just sitting just tried a couple things that the scholars recommend sit alone with all the lights off and just imagine what it will be like to be in your grave there will be no phone there will be no people there will be no facebook there will be no instagram there will be nothing with you it's just you and your grave and Allah hopefully is with you in there right like from a from a spiritual perspective or or not it could be negative right we don't know so we have to contemplate this let death settle in let the reality again unpopular topics but let the reality of the fact that i am going to die i'm going to meet my lord let that sink in let it let it really sink in so that we start to realize that oh this stuff dude it's petty why am i worried about it i just gotta keep moving in life get through it make sure i'm praying my five prayers make sure i'm doing a little extra and just kind of make moves right right and then the fourth thing is in order to cure this is to contemplate right the the the fact that all this is going to disappear and death contemplation will help with that right all this is going to disappear your the money that you save for the next life is the money you and i will give it's not the money that we just literally save and hold on to right and the fifth way to cure ourselves is to be generous and to give money away if we have it to be to give our okay i'm going to give a donation even five dollars ten dollars anything we can do if we have more hundred dollars five hundred dollars a thousand dollars give it to an institution give it to somebody in need give it to you know charity or something but to to get rid of this idea that like i have to hold on to everything right and this is the way then to channel the money and we said with every desire we'll talk about how to channel in the right direction the way to channel this in the right direction is to use it for the right reasons to be generous and to build for with it to build institutions with it to make it a sadhika jarya for us to to to help people with it right and again that means then there's nothing wrong with having it it just cannot be an obsessive desire that we are really really attached to so just a quick review of these q we get rid of the haram sources that includes our loans that it like that includes the haram income that we have we stop spending on impermissible and haram things we reduce our consumption overall and we stop just becoming consumers we're always buying i gotta buy this you know 50 outfits and this many bads and this so on and so forth we begin to contemplate death right and then we are generous and we give our money away often we try to be generous with it we try to give out we try to give back we try to take care of people inshallah if we do these things this desire will go away and once the desire goes away mama rizali this is a very interesting analogy he says wealth is not it's like a snake he says you have to be a snake charmer you got to know how to work with it not everybody can do that though not everybody can do this we can't just think like oh everybody can handle sometimes like oh i want to be a billionaire well not everybody could handle being a billionaire most people can't handle being a billionaire because i mean there's a lot of there's a lot of things that come with that right like a lot of accountability will come with that and on the day of judgment potentially a lot knows best and we asked he doesn't take us to account for anything but not everybody can handle all the different things that come with having significant amounts of money we have to know how to handle our wealth we have to know how to handle it as mama rizali says so may Allah and salla assist us we'll just get to this question if you're coming from a poorer family and you're looking working to change your family wealth status and um is that an unhealthy or an unislamic mindset no no not at all that's an amazing mindset mashallah if somebody is trying to do more for their family if someone is trying to assist their family and trying to kind of quote unquote move up and establish themselves i from my understanding um there is nothing wrong with that the main thing though to remember is to just do it in a permissible way to not find impermissible sources if something is impermissible to to project it right to not like take out a loan to then start a business so that you can grow right because that would be then impermissible route and as a result something impermissible to go to continue with that type of thing it would be something to watch out for but overall like if someone is doing in a halal way and they're able to give themselves a solid life and that's their intention to take care of the family take care of the parents those that that goes into the praiseworthy direction inshallah so hopefully um brother that answers the other question so if anybody has any other questions inshallah please just post them we'll just wait in the chat for just a 30 seconds or a minute or so and otherwise we will go ahead and do a short dua and end i don't see anything i'll just do a dua and if anybody has anything please go ahead and post it in ismail aqman ar-Rahman ar-Rahim alhamdulillah oahumma salli wa sallim wa barak ala sayedina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi sallim ya Allah ya rahman ya raheem ya Allah please assist us please uh help us with our lives ya Allah please help us with any difficulty that we are going through please ya Allah remove any desires that we have that are negative ya Allah please allow us to channel those in the right direction ya Allah please allow our uh our nafs to not have control over us and please bestow sakina upon us and please bestow tranquility upon us and please cure all of the Muslims of any diseases and please cure all of our loved ones and family members of anybody else who struggling with COVID in any other situation ma'sha'Allah wa sallim wa barak ala sayedina Muhammadin wa alihi wa sahbihi sallim alhamdulillah we have another question come in unrelated what do i do if i have not fasted for many years since Ramadan is coming soon um alhamdulillah so if you have not fasted for many years so i if you could just clarify in the question is this what do you do if you need to make up your fasts or what do you do if you're just kind of out of practice um that would be that would be helpful uh if you if Ramadan is coming up the best thing for us to do is first to know it's it's going to be here in about a month and a half inshaAllah for us to start to get in the rhythm of fasting okay maybe we try to fast once every other week or even once this month and then two three two two times in the next month just kind of get in a rhythm or fast once a week whatever it is that we can do or just start to maybe you skip a meal here and there right you start to get your body used to skipping a meal so that you can be ready for Ramadan the second thing though if you're saying for not faster than again if you can clarify in the chat we can try to respond in a more specific way but if you're saying what do you do in terms of makeup fasts right if you have to make up those fast then of course you fast this Ramadan um okay got it got it got it's not just makeup fasts you're saying overall well look don't don't stress get do what you can right so if somebody is just getting into Islam and you're just starting to you know get into a rhythm mashallah ala make things easy for you take it slow do what you can right okay you can do if you can go into it the you gotta know the obligation is okay i gotta do 30 days i gotta do the full 30 days right um with except the time for a woman when they're on their cycle if someone is getting into the religion newly entering the religion newly starting to practice you do manage it with whatever you can do so you make the intention i'm gonna fast the whole month you ask Allah for assistance and you start with that and hopefully you Allah will help you inshallah will help you get through it so just kind of begin right so from a um a basic perspective it's fasting from the time right before fudger comes in what's known as pre dawn up until sunset you don't eat or drink water and then of course you try to pray all of your prayers during that time and try to limit any other haram things that we would be doing or try not to do any of those at all that's like the basic kind of rule of the fast but you know we can get more into that tell us we'll try to do some basic Ramadan prep so hopefully that answers the question that was being asked with regards to Ramadan but if one does have an out of practice or have a lot of makeup fast and what not to do it's okay just take it slowly do what you can okay of course the obligation is the obligation get into it but if somebody it's like impossible for someone to handle all the makeups or whatever it is that they have to do they just slowly work through and ask Allah for assistance inshallah may Allah assist all of you and help you and make this time easy for everybody inshallah if there's any more questions we'll please post them otherwise so I don't see any others. Okay, thank you. Well just like I said, Assalamu alaykum inshallah. We'll see you next week at the same time Wednesday 7 p.m. inshallah. So we're going to continue this series now inshallah on deceptive desires. We've been talking about a different desire every week and today inshallah we are going to be talking we're going to do a quick review and then we'll be diving into a specific desire which is focused on the desire that the human being has to always be right and to argue and also how that stands in relation to the desire for anger. So a couple of things but we've been talking about so far it's basically this idea that the human being can either go in a good direction or a bad direction. The human being who follows their lower desires, their lower appetites, their shahawat, they will end up generally going in a bad direction. So these include the desires that we've been talking about that following the desire for food in the wrong direction, the desire for sex in the wrong direction, the desire for money in the wrong direction, the desire for fame and power and argumentation and to be right and all these other things that you and I can follow those desires and we can go in the wrong direction if we follow those desires and we don't channel them correctly. At the same time we there's a reason why we even have desires and if we follow and channel the desires in the correct way inshallah we are going to use what Allah created for us in a positive way and to hopefully ascend closer and closer to Him. So the one who restrains their themselves from doing what's haram we all have this understanding and know this they are going to benefit and the one who gives in to these desires they are going to be harmed and Allah says in the Qur'an after out of the bilan shaitan that destroyed or sorry successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who doesn't. So our job is to try to purify ourselves and what better purification than to try and purify our nafs right. So what is the nafs? We've been talking about the nafs a little bit. The nafs is known as the lower self. This is the lower part of us that inclines towards following and doing haram things until it's refined. So the nafs goes through training. The more spiritually trained somebody is the more the nafs is going to improve and eventually the nafs can get to high stages known as for example as mentioned in surah al-fajr, nafs says in what's marahina, the tranquil soul where the soul will actually be in a state of accepting Allah's decree and assisting you and I in accepting Allah's decree and being in a state of contentment. However in the early stages what is known as nafs al-ammarah mentioned in surah al-yusah and the other early stages these this is the evil commanding soul and the nafs will follow its base desires and take you in the wrong direction. So you and I have to work on ourselves. Now here is a very very important thing just because somebody is starting to practice religion or has become religious or has signs of religiosity does not mean that they are refining their nafs. The two are not always linked. If they are following the right path, if they are following the right types of knowledge, if they are doing the right types of spiritual practices in line with the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ attempting to be aligned with the akhla and the character of the Prophet ﷺ, okay that's a very very good thing. However if they are following a very very outward focused harsh way of religion that everything has to be their way or the highway and yes they might be worshiping a lot but is the worship really benefiting them then you have open questions about if their acts are actually benefiting them because as you become more purified your character should improve and what is the evidence of this the evidence the evidence is a hadith that the Prophet ﷺ where the sahaba came to him and they were impressed with a woman a woman who used to fast a lot extra fasts no also fasts and she would pray a lot of extra prayers specifically that the hadjid prayer the prayer known as the prayer the last part of the night very very virtuous things for somebody to do and so they were impressed by her however sahaba mentioned that it was mentioned that she was also rude to her neighbor right and had this kind of rudeness and the Prophet ﷺ said that she is in fire he said that she's in the fire because even though she might have done these this worship the ahlaq the character wasn't there and we it comes in the hadith that the wadiest deed on the day of judgment is one's good character one's character will be the wadiest deed on the day of judgment and then the Quran magnifies good character as well so let's let's let's examine that right that it's not just about how much worship you do no you can do the base amount of basic amounts of worship and a little bit more but work on yourself work on having good character try to work on getting rid or mitigating your desires and you can be in a very good place and you can do a lot of worship and all these things but if you're not doing it in the right way and you're getting puffed up thinking you're all that thinking you're better than everybody is it really even helping you is it really benefiting you so this is something to keep in mind so we're trying to talk about just briefly today is this desire to be right this is a desire that in the world of social media in the world of the way things happen now on twitter and on facebook and on instagram and on tiktok and even in the comments and these different threats everybody wants to be right and this was the case this has been the case throughout history but now everybody has to prove themselves i want to be right it's my way or the highway it's about me anytime you hear somebody really magnifying themselves me me me know that they are really at a subtle level worshiping themselves they're worshiping their nuts they're worshiping their opinion the person though who's humble enough to accept that okay a lot of course is the only one in control and there could be a different way to do things they at the end of the day are following the kind of correct approach that we should be taking in our religion so what is this desire to be right all the time this is a sickness this is a sickness deep inside the human being and remember from different desires stem different sins so the sins are kind of like stems and the desires are like roots so the sexual desire when uncontrolled can result in the sin of adultery right can result the results in the sin of zena can result in the sin of looking at pornography and so on and so forth the desire when it is uncontrolled the desire for uh uh the desire of anger and the desire to be right it results in the sin of arguing it results in the sin of yelling at people it results in the sin of trying to always prove yourself and maybe you're even backbiting people because you're saying oh did you hear what they said they're you know she he or she totally you know uh totally wrong and you're just talking bad about them all the time this is what the desire to be right leads to and it's very very present in the world that we live in so there are different categories of this desire you have those who have this desire who argue about it who argue about worldly matters right so i have to be right about okay i'm talking about politics my opinion is right my party is right we saw this manifest in the last election and we see this manifest throughout the united states right now that there's very very little cooperation between different parties simply because they believe that their way has to be the way there is no such thing as compromise for them because it's about their way and that links to other desires not only the desire to be right but the desire to win the desire to be in charge and so on and so forth so we can see how much these desires really end up ruining us at the same time at the same time there are different ways that you and i can manifest this desire in in in in the world in a worldly sense so i might manifest in politics could manifest at work could be in our own homes we might hope i have to be right with regards to like you might be just you know young and arguing with your parents or vice versa and even though you might have a sense that the other side is is kind of on the verge of the truth you because you are sticking to your point it's like no it's about me i see this happen from time to time right people who like have this arrogance to them that it is difficult for them to admit that they're wrong about something and it's very much a cultural practice and generally speaking many of us of us men we have this a lot i would say that right there is a kind of general sense that you know no i'm i'm the boss i'm in charge i'm right and the the the promises on taught us humility you taught us that being wrong is okay and imam malik said that saying i don't know is half of knowledge so you know there is no concept in our religion of having to prove yourself always in to be right so that can happen in so many different areas it can happen at work it can happen in of course you know at work a new job it can happen in the political arena it can happen with family it can happen broadly with extended family so many ways it can happen then there are people who it's it's it's about arguing for religious matters this is far more dangerous far more dangerous i have to be right when it comes to my view on the religion when it comes to my specific approach or even if you follow mudhub it's only my mudhub that's correct right it's all this argumentation argumentation is not in any place in this religion and we have to work on ourselves to get this desire to be right if we want to really purify ourselves remember Allah says that successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who isn't who doesn't so we have to try to purify ourselves we have to try to work on ourselves in order for us to actually grow and succeed in this religion so when it comes to arguing about religious matters what does this mean right you do have um many many examples of things that have become controversial unfortunately because so many people have tried to fit their framework in here's something to keep in mind or sorry the religion into their framework you have two types of people you have somebody who they want to know the truth and they will fit their religious practice into whatever the truth ends up being okay and then you have somebody who has a very specific framework in mind and who will fit the religion into their framework and who will exclude this and include this in order to fit it into their framework now the danger of this latter methodology and why it's so problematic is because there are groups of people unfortunately today who have major prominence in the Muslim community and the Muslim world who literally had a very specific view of religion in mind and they took out everything it is that they didn't like and they just made stuff up oh this is weak this is fabricated because i don't like it not because of anything else made the great imams of the past had accepted certain hadid that accepted certain statement no i don't like it because in the line with my view has to be my view right and their arrogance and their following their desires got them down a path where they became very very harsh with everything and it's still manifest today where if your practice doesn't fit their very narrow view and their desire to be right has become so magnified that you are excluded there are even movements in the leader leaders of these movements that would say everybody who does not follow my way is a catheter even though there are so many different differences of opinion that you could follow about how should you do a certain religious act and and whatnot but again the desire to be right took them over and there were they killed people they straight up muslims killed muslims in the then in the um uh they kind of disguise if i'm right and i'm on the religious truth this is a very dangerous desire and it ruins people it ruins people and it's very related to the hadid that the praksha samari said that i fear more more than the dajal the antichrist i fear for you evil scholars olemah asu that these scholars who literally they will fit the religion into their framework it's about themselves it's about their nuts it's about their ego it's about their fame it's about hypocrites like the hypocritical that's very dangerous and it's become a disease in the olemah today such that you and i will see very just someone's just trying to worship i'll give an example tonight tonight is known as later to the israeli mirage masha'Allah the mcc will have a inshallah beautiful program with dr ali atayah and acclaimed scholar teaches at zaytuna college and he lectures in many other places as well including mcc on the just reflections on israeli mirage right what took place on this night this is the night of the 27th of rajab we are in the blessed month of rajab we have just alhamdulillah entered this blessed night and it's good to talk about the events that took place on this night it's good to remind the muslims Allah says uh fadakya inna dikratan fa al mu'minid remind and reminding benefits the believers right but you have a group you have groups of muslims who it's about their way so because they don't they don't know oh this is how you should do certain things it's okay they're going to that you start to have people who say no you shouldn't practice anything on this night there's no need to single out any specific nights of worship uh there's no proof for this so on and so forth and just continue the same thing same groups of people do it for nes shaban they do it for the motive of the provisional and they'll continue to go on now the danger of this it's one thing if you're really sincere and you're really just like okay i really really firmly believe at the bottom of my heart that every single thing that i do has to be like in line with the very very very narrow methodology of how i do things okay you're welcome to do that but then at the same time that group of people like you should you should definitely stop watching television you should get off of all social media you should probably stop driving cars you should probably stop using watches to tell the time and tell the prayer time because all of these things will not fit the narrow methodology or the kind of innovation methodology that somebody is trying to fit their view in but that's not going to happen because it's only when it comes to my desire to be right right i have to prove myself and then religious argumentation begins this happens all of the time in the community it's the big problem and the way we respond to this is we should not engage in argumentation we should not i see it all the time in youtube threads and and all these different threads people just arguing back and forth back and forth as though you forgot that we're brothers and sisters that we are muslims that we are supposed to be united that we have enough people outside of our umma who are going to hate on us that we don't need to hate from within that if you disagree you are entitled to disagree and you can have your opinion but disagree respectfully and just leave it right just let people do their own thing that we're living in a time when people are just barely trying to hold on to faith so stop trying to fit everybody into the narrow technical view that you want to follow like right like let's let's be a little bit it's called magnanimity let's be a little bit magnanimous with regards to our approach to other people and try to be generous and try to be open to harm rather than trying to shove everybody how it doesn't fit our narrow approach this is what happens with the desire to be right and these people they push people away from the religion they push people away and it comes in narration that a people never went astray after they were upon guidance except when they took to arguing right and one of the scholar of the great scholars he said if Allah willed evil for people he would give them argumentation and prevent them from action so you have many people a very very special time comes in the religion all they spend this all that time they spend arguing about it instead of just worship just go make dua go pray go do something useful or just at least not arguing it'll be better just remain silent right as it comes in and narration speak good or remain silent right there's no need to always be talking and arguing about trying to get your opinion across but this is it just happens so we have to control this desire we have to work on this desire we have to work on ourselves so the way that we need to approach this right it's first and foremost to realize that and when it comes to matters of dunya when it comes to you know politics and work and sports and all these things we should engage in discussions if we want but these are like i mean come on these are petty things let's not let disagreements really get in great risks between us let's try and be reasonable with our conversations and let's just be okay with being wrong or be open to hearing different perspectives that's the kind of back road but when it comes to and so that's there with it however when it comes to religion we have to know there is no room for argumentation if we are not scholars and we are not scholars and so we really should be arguing we should know that we need to have the sunnah methodology and everything so if you want to be right let's say you have this desire to be right and you want to prove your point the way in which you go about proving if you and you believe your point is the correct religious way which means it's the way the prophet says on practice the way in which you go about proving your point must be aligned with the the sunnah as well so the methodology has to be correct and the fact that you're presenting has to be correct you cannot go improve your point and then the arrogant yellow people get angry get mad use slurs call people names and say my point though is my point i mean i'm on i'm on the truth i'm following the sunnah how are you following the sunnah if your methodology is not in line with the sunnah show me one time when the prophet says i'm argued show me one time where his uh uh just just i have to be right got in the way no he didn't even have that right this was one of the famous nights on this ramiraj where we know his blessed heart so the love sunnah was actually washed all of these things were washed away from him so as a perfect human being so what does that mean it means that we need to work on ourselves we need to work on our hearts we need to work on our foods we need to work on our egos we need to stop thinking that it's my way or the highway we need to humble ourselves we cannot be so puffed up all the time walking around just looking for people to make mistakes so we can call them out this has to go away i know so many people who've been pushed away from islam by by those of us who might act in this way and we ask Allah for forgiveness if we've ever pushed somebody away because of this methodology but we have to work on this right so a couple of things to keep in mind ways to attain this desire to be right number one really recognize the danger for you to always be praised or for you to always be at the forefront or for you to always be right that's not a good thing it's not a good thing in western society it's a good thing because everybody the people don't operate with the afterlife in mind but it's not a good thing for us in our in our context in the islamic context to always have to be right because we know it's a desire knowledge is the first step so once you know that this is a desire don't follow it down the wrong direction where does the desire to be right come in when it comes to to be on the hawk when it you want to be on the truth that's a good thing alhamdulillah if you want to follow the truth you want to really learn how does this religion really work i want to learn the religion in the best way possible alhamdulillah that's a good place the desire to be on the right path is good but the desire to say now now i'm following the dean now everything i do is the right way everything somebody else does is the wrong way we can't do that we cannot do that your kids might do things differently than you as long as within the permissible the permissible boundaries that the scholars have created and including the differences depending on the scholars have created say alhamdulillah that they still believing and that they are doing that they're not going to follow every little thing you might get disappointed at certain things that's okay just but know that it is a test for you and i because Allah says that he will test us with all these aspects he will test us with our wealth and our children and within ourselves and with other people we will be tested so we have to ask Allah for patience and we cannot let this desire to be right and to be to win all the time given the way the second thing to do is to work on our anger usually the negative aspects of this they result in angry argumentation angry arguing and it's a problem so we have to work on our anger how do we do that the Prophet saw someone he told us that if when you get angry he told said say alhamdulillah the shaytan energy and he said if you are standing sit down if you are sitting lie down that anger is a fire like the from the fire of shaytan and it makes you rise get up right you see people ever and get angry and they're just like they'll do their math they like they're they want to fight they like say what'd you say to me and they start to get up and then you can see they're getting puffed right so calm it down promises and said just calm down and then he said if that if you do that and also if it doesn't work make wudu with cold water because cold water will extinguish the fire flame know when you are about to get into an argument and when you were your desire to be right is manifesting to leave the situation that forgetting the exact verse that when the approaches you say peace when the ignorant person who just wants to argue like yo come like tell me about this tell me about your proofs for this tell me about this there's every single thing is about arguing you know they're not coming with with a very humble approach there's one thing when someone comes into you and you know hey you said this thing or you know I'm learning something and I just was wondering like how do I think about this like I heard one thing from one person what are the different proofs for for this type of approach mashallah that person is really trying to learn and somebody coming and just being like you this way is wrong everything you're saying is wrong your approach is wrong this is an innovation this is a bidah now my approach is the correct way and show me why you get this wrong it's a disease just ignore people like that just ignore them just say Allah say Allah and leave them to their idol talk just leave them to that because that won't benefit you I'll tell you that much will not benefit you enough if the scholars want to discuss it the differences of opinion mashallah they do that already so let's let them do that for us it's not worth it let don't let the desires to be right and religious matters get away so taming the anger is very important here third is analyze the issue and think about is it worth reading you really like having to be right right and is it really worth my time and is it worth me getting into sin because when you start arguing and anger comes in the way you are getting into sin you are creating animosity you are disrupting things between yourself and you are disrupting a societal harmony you've ever been in like where does this happen a lot of me we've got we've all been quarantined for a while so we haven't gone but you know maybe at the airport or like sometimes I've seen this on on the subway back when we used to be able to ride the subway that something small will happen everybody's quiet and doing their own thing two people like disagree on something and boom argument start and everybody's impacted the entire harmony of the situation has been messed up I mean this happens sometimes at airports but anytime when people are kind of an intense mood this happens sometimes it happens unfortunately even in our own communities our own messages so what does that mean don't don't disrupt other people's harmony if you have inner harmony I will tell you this you will not be the person who's disrupting the outward harmony because your inner harmony will be a light that brings harmony to everybody else but if you don't have inner harmony you're just going to go out and look to pick fights you're going to try to pick everybody apart argue here argue here argue here my way the highway every single situation that is a disease I highly recommend to your set to you to myself first and foremost and to all of us we have to work on ourselves to get rid of that disease it will destroy us it will destroy us it will mess us up as an umma it will create problems it will create animosity it will create tension and it is a desire that just like these other desires once they get out of control like the sexual desire and the food desire all these other ones we will start doing many haram things and we do not want to be in that boat we don't and people will this one is to a degree very problematic also because people will just hate us too so like you know we're going to be in major trouble with other people as well and we will we will create a dissension amongst people so if anybody has any questions feel free to post them to this chat we're about to end inshallah when we have any questions or or anything please feel free to post them we will go ahead and get to those inshallah so those are really the ways that we should approach this and lastly all of these desires can be controlled with us doing the following things with us doing an abundant amount of thicker with us fasting often with the right intention and with us appealing to Allah and really turning to him and ideally in the later parts of the night and begging for him to help us that yeah Allah get rid of get rid of this for me help me with this those are the general over-the-counter tours that the scholars prescribed right that try to and in this case though the fourth one actually that's also prescribed is to limit the amount that you that you talk so that doesn't mean we don't talk ever but when you're about to get into an argument just zip it okay i'm gonna i'm i know my desire to be right is going to manifest right so let's work on ourselves let's try to do these things and when that comes up when a topic comes up just say you know what i'm just going to leave this i'm not going to like i'm not going to engage i'm going to leave it because Allah will appreciate if i leave it we know that famous story and we'll inshallah end with this and we'll mention briefly on isram miraj we know the same story of said number buckler siddiq that one time he was in the mudship and somebody was insulting him and he was the provisional someone was with him and someone insulted him the provisional stood by and he was the provisional was actually standing by and i believe the narrations that he was smiling and this person kept insulting said there were buckler workers at radiolaho and didn't say anything kept doing it he didn't say anything he kept doing it and finally the provisional still listening and smiling and finally the person insulted him again i say the number buckler siddiq radiolaho that he responds to defend himself and at that moment the provisional went he left and the buckler catches up with the provisional and said he asked Allah this person was saying this to me you were there and then why did you leave he said because when you were silent right there are angels there responding on your behalf but when you decided to right say something and engage shaitan came and shaitan and the prophet cannot be in the same room right so uh and i'm paraphrasing this is the hadith here but that that's more of an indication right that look at look at what the prophet is on his teaching us here just don't engage i'm not talking about in categories where you have to respond or somebody's like getting getting you or your family into a difficult situation or into trouble or any situation that abuse or talk or anything i'm talking about just when people just want to argue improve themselves right just don't respond it's a desire don't you shouldn't follow it i shouldn't follow it and don't let someone else follow it inshallah we ask that Allah help us we ask that Allah assist us we ask that Allah facilitate goodness and care for us and allow us to control our nuts and allow us to work on ourselves and that he allow all of our intentions that are good to be fulfilled inshallah and prevent us from following or any evil intentions or evil thoughts that we have salallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barakah alayhi wa sallam Muhammadin wa alayhi wa sallam alhamdulillah just briefly if anybody has questions inshallah please post them on the chat we'll take them now and one thing to mention so tonight is a blessed night israela miraj mcc will have a program just in about 30 minutes on also streamed on on youtube live and i think facebook live check it out inshallah um just briefly about this night it's a very very special night it's a night that the prophet ascended to the heavens he went from mecca to jerusalem to the heavens and this is the night in which he was gifted the prayer and he was gifted the prayer directly it didn't come in the same form of revelation through the same methods that the quran came no the prophet was gifted the prayer and i'm sure the doctor aliyah will get into this but there was this whole conversation the prophet came with 50 prayers he went and said the musa alayhi salam uh said the musa alayhi salam uh told him your umma cannot do 50 and he went back and increments of five or ten there was like this kind of back and forth until Allah eventually legislated five and said the musa alayhi salam said your umma cannot do five and the prophet said i'm too shy to go back and he uh accepted five prayers Allah said it is five with the reward of 50 so use this night to connect to Allah there's not any specific ibadah that i'm aware of that we're supposed to do on this night but it is a good night just like all the nights are all the nights of rajab especially good nights to just pray good night to make ablani duha good night to learn about the events that took place and it's a good night to make duha for yourself and for the umma of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and just to overall remember how much he sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did for us that one of the most amazing aspects of this night was that when he was in this conversation with Allah the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam according to most of the opinions of this ulama he met Allah on this night and Allah says when we say in our prayer atayatu lillahi that that whole up till the end it is Allah Allah says that we repeat that we follow that Allah said to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam peace be upon you oh Nabi wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said peace be upon us peace be upon us peace be upon us and all of the righteous servants so when he was in this amazing intimate meeting with Allah he sallallahu alaihi wa sallam didn't just think about himself he thought about the whole umma he said peace be upon us right that's us hopefully we can fall into that category even if we're not righteous and you know I'm definitely not there but hopefully I can just fall into that peace be upon us and may Allah eventually make us from the righteous right but look at that he remembered all of us so the least we can do is remember his umma and our du'a regularly and not argue don't waste time arguing about anything tonight or in any of the nights Rajab is here Shaaban is coming up there will be a group of people who try to argue about Shaaban and its merits and this Shaaban just don't engage Ramadan is then coming up alhamdulillah our umma is united about Ramadan at least and don't argue about moon sighting don't argue about any of that stuff just worship Allah follow whatever it is you're down to it ask Allah for guidance worship him remember all of us in your du'a's may Allah make this time easy for you full of light full of khair full of abundant abundant abundant openings for you and your family and cure any of of you and any of us we're going through any difficulty or move any anxieties and depressions and problems and sicknesses and issues that we might have and allow us to have abundant secrets and blessings poured upon us on this night and all the other nights Allah thank you for for the comment on the last of if there's no question we'll swim another 30 seconds uh and inshallah we'll end we are passionate of the truth we know which is only a fear of Allah but we have to control our emotions and doing that one not to argumentation exactly to the to the to the person who mentioned that part of that one is not arguing that's actually otherwise it's not that one because Allah says that call to the way of your lord with hikmah with wisdom right and he tells musa aleyselam when he's going to do that one to fer'on he says to fer'on one of the worst like tyrant ever he says to fer'on to be to be gentle with him so it's not that one if it's with argument that's something else it's from it's not from the dawah of the promises on it's something else entirely so let's just keep that in mind but totally agree that we have to control our emotions we can't be passionate or we can be passionate but we cannot be intense and argumentative we have to be merciful then we have to not be harsh we cannot push people away from islam and to bring people in and we will bring people in from our akhla not from our from our intellectual rhetoric it will come from our akhla inshallah our character i'm gonna say the as-salamu alaykum wa alaykum as-salam alhamdulillah okay i don't think there's any more questions inshallah i will stay on for another little bit if anything pops up what do we do when people say on tiktok lgbtq muslims are going to bad place do we argue no so so good question look this the topic of homosexuality and that entire topic is a very very broad topic but just briefly only Allah knows where someone is going number one number two there are many lists of harams it is not about having a desire it's about acting on the desire so somebody who has a desire before they get married for any sex opposite sex or the same sex and they act on that desire right let's say that somebody's not married and they are like a man and they sleep with a woman well and that's not their wife they that's haram same thing if they sleep with a man that's haram right and so that's one thing to keep in mind second thing is there are many lists of haram sins or sorry major sins among which are homosexuality arzina it is uh adultery is another sin disobeying your parents is considered one of the biggest sins in our religion there's so many sins taking interest loans are it's a huge sin so when people get into very specific topics many times that are stemming from a disease of the heart that they just want to single out groups and they don't want to look at everything in its macro context there are many big major sins it's not worth narrowing in on very very specific groups getting very very homophobic getting angry with you know the specific groups because of that right the the other thing is if somebody has that inclination it's about again controlling the desire the inclination of it in and of itself is not the problem we're talking about the desire and acting on it is the problem so when people start to take the place of Allah and say this person is going to hell this person is going to heaven this whole group is in hell this whole group is in heaven it's like oh really it didn't know that you that that you that you are you are God next to God are you are that what you are don't engage with people who try to legislate where people are going leave that to Allah Allah knows what's in someone's heart and Allah knows where someone is going to end up they might people might make toga people will change inshallah and there might be righteous Muslims who in their hadith that indicate this who at the end of their life they will change and may Allah protect us from this but they will have a bad ending and there could be Muslims who are really doing lots of haram and at the end Allah will change their life and they will have a good ending and it is about the way that Allah seals our life inshallah but definitely don't argue don't argue about any controversial topic just don't waste your time it's a desire don't waste your time by arguing about LGBT don't it's not your it's not not not my business not your business let the scholars discuss it and be merciful to people who are in that struggle be merciful to them be nice right don't argue about controversial things Muslims argue about just just tell people like you know go worship go make dua for people and you'll see the feelings you get in your heart you will see the light that enters the heart when you spend time learning and worshiping Allah that is way better than the tension and trepidation that enters the heart that is associated with arguing and all the other worries i i face this issue all the time and people just want to argue about stuff and i'm just like i i have that inclination as well and i have to hold myself back like how do i stop this because this is not healthy for me even mentally let alone spiritually good question thank you for asking sister okay all right and if there are any other questions inshallah please post them otherwise please keep everybody you can go ask tonight inshallah please check out this program that dr aliyah tai will be doing at 8 p.m easterns in about 22 minutes check it out until i think it's on youtube or israh mirage hopefully it'll be recorded as well so we can watch it later inshallah what if you bring logical arguments just for someone to reason and come to the truth so argument the the the construct of an argument the Quran is full of arguments meaning Allah is presenting to us in a very very logical way this is why you should believe right so that's not a problem when i say arguing i don't mean the classical definition of argument what i mean is that like this kind of intense angry debate that people engage in to prove themselves right so if you bring logical arguments let's say that what's an example here let's say somebody wants to know let's say that somebody wants to know interest let's talk about interest okay someone's like oh i i don't really understand interest like is it haram is it not like what is it about is it just me is it just like when the interest rate is really high so you say well according to the scholars the first thing you started what are the consensus of the scholars the consensus of the scholars is that interest-based instruments are problematic then if they really need to look at the proofs again it's really not actually for you and me to look into all the proofs because there's hundreds of thousands of proofs so we're not going to know them most of them right just like a doctor when they're treating you they're not going to tell you the different chemical formulas that came up in that treatment that result when you take the require virus vaccine you're not diagnosing all of the different ingredients in the vaccine no you are just taking the vaccine and you're hoping it's going to help and hoping it's going to work same thing with you go to the scholar and you say what is the situation here and they will tell you so let's say with interest don't you really want to look go in the Quran Allah has many verses with the butler and other ayah that talk about interest he says he wages war on the one who take him and a lot of messenger wage war on the one who takes interest then you can look up different hadith there are various hadith that indicate the the the problematic place that somebody who is giving interest or bearing witness to interest or taking interest will be so you can present those to somebody and say you know what you should check these out i think it's very dangerous i think we should get out of interest i think we should stop taking car loans and stop taking student loans and ideally convert any other loans into any Islamic loans that are possible right you can do that but if it's like an intense argument and usually the argument comes with like on contrary on very controversial topics logical proofs are fine but just be careful not to let it get into a bad place right just be very careful because what happens is just like the let's say somebody who's going to engage in in a zina and in haram and like like a sexual acts with somebody that they're not married to it's not necessarily haram to like just you know say hello or something like that but it starts with the hello then it goes into a text conversation then it goes into a little bit more and a little bit more next thing you know the haram act has happened so you have to know yourself is the logical argument you are bringing going to lead to the haram argumentation that's going to happen if so don't do it but if it's just to and the person is receptive mashaAllah bismillah and you are able to control yourself then we should we can engage in that so with our intention that people come to the truth yeah good question if there's anything else inshallah we will go ahead and answer it or we will try inshallah forgive us hope everybody's doing well hope everybody's preparation inshallah for Ramadan it's going to be again soon inshallah okay i don't see anything else so we are going to continue on in this series where we've been talking about different desires that the human being has and today we are going to move on to a desire that is very very prevalent in the world that we live in and this is the desire for fame and the desire for followers so what we're really going to be focusing on is to understand why do we as human beings why do we have this desire to be famous why do we have this desire to have so many followers why do we have the desire to have the most amount of views and to have the most amount of people constantly watching us and praising us and what is the spiritual cause for that and what are the spiritual cures for this desire for fame and this desire for followers so we're going to try to keep it brief inshallah and as you have questions come up please feel free to post them in the chat whether you're following along on youtube or anywhere else so we live in a society where followers and fame are really really really big part of the culture that we live in it has become universalized and almost democratized in the last 10 or so years where as before it could be that you know you had to be among a very very specific class of people you had to have a very very certain type of privilege in order to kind of rise through the ranks and become famous that's no longer the case and now with the advent of more and more social media platforms and with all of us having our smartphones it's very very easy to just put something out there and to try to become famous and to try to get followers and to try to get views and to try to get likes and while there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to do some type of good or spreading some type of benefit using different types of platforms it definitely becomes risky when you and I start to desire this stuff when we actually start to want more I want more people following me on more I want to be more famous I want to be more in charge I want to get more and more people under my purview I want to get more and more people listening to me I want more and more power I want more and more control that actually becomes very dangerous for the human being that's why it's called a desire and that's why it's actually warned severely against in our religion because what it can do is it can eventually go on to ruin you and me that you and me desiring people to follow us and people to be like us and to people to like everything it is that we say and everything it is that we do it can actually end up ruining us spiritually and this is important because you and I won't notice this when we're young that as we get older and older and older the more and more we let this get to us the more and more the impacts of this start to happen and they start to creep in the more and more we start to become stressed out and the more and more the spiritual ramifications start to take hold and we've seen this happen in all realms of life we see this happen where somebody begins their life in a very very specific way they began their political career or their social media career or whatever it is and initially right they're just trying to do something and then from there what happens is people start to like what they do and people start to inflate them a little bit and they start to get a little bit of a bigger head right and then from there it starts to become about how much money am I going to make through this so we touched upon this in two two classes ago where we talked about the desire for money and we talked about what the desire for money is linked to and why the desire for wealth can very very much ruin us because the Prophet ﷺ he said in the hadith I mean he indicated this that the love for money and love for wealth are worse for a Muslim than wolves are in a flock of sheep among a flock of sheep right as I see somebody says salaamu alaikum wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullah and so the the love for wealth the love for for fame the two are linked and we'll talk a little bit about that but that can ruin you it can really really really ruin you because your whole life becomes about pursuing empty things that's at the first level remember you and I are here for a very specific reason we are here to try to get through this life and to try to get to the hereafter we are not here to collect fortune we're not here to collect a bunch of things we're not here to collect a bunch of fame and a bunch of followers because guess what when you die your bank account doesn't go with you your social media following doesn't go with you all the likes that we collected don't go with us all the views that we collected don't go with us none of that's going to go with us to our grave all of our stocks all of our investments all of the money that we've gathered none of that stuff is actually going to go with us when we pass away so what is going to go with us our good deeds will go with us the amount that we gave away will go with us these types of things are what go with us when we pass away so the perspective of the muslim is always a perspective of what am i going to have not in in the life that i'm living right now no it's what am i going to benefit from after what am i going to benefit from when i leave this world because the afterlife that is at the end of the day what matters Allah says in the Quran that the Akhirah is better for you right it is better for you than where you are right now so that is the reason one of the reasons why this desire for fame and status and followers and rank and all these types of things are very very condemned and we'll talk now a little bit about what it does so what it does as you and i start to spiritually the impact that it has as you and i start to follow our desires is it starts to ruin you slowly and slowly and slowly so people become very much destroyed by searching for this type of stuff and we see in haditha the prophet says that love for rank and property causes hypocrisy to grow in the soil as water causes like plants and leaks and other types of things to grow so just like water will cause certain things to grow in the soil the love for rank the love for followers the love for people watching you and people being and basically kind of sort of in a very very many way many worshiping people that love in the spiritual heart in the soul it causes hypocrisy to grow now what is hypocrisy hypocrisy is to do one thing on the outside but to actually be somebody else on the inside and why is it that this grows well one of the reasons it could be Allah knows best is because when you and i are trying to do things for other people we are not necessarily doing things sincerely only for the sake of Allah that we require a certain amount of work on ourselves first and foremost we have to work on ourselves before we start doing things publicly because otherwise the hypocritical aspect can come in and even if we still do all that the hypocritical aspect can still come in but that's where we ask Allah for protection and we ask for assistance and Allah says in the Quran that we have made the hereafter for those who do not seek elevation on the earth they're not going about and seeking elevation like what does that mean that sounds you know very very like a big big word big phrase right what does it mean Allah is saying that if you and i are not going out and actively seeking that i want to run the show i want to be the boss i want to have be the most popular i want to be the most famous that that is who the hereafter is meant for and this applies to all aspects of our life so we really have to think about this that the culture that we live in then glorifies and magnifies people who are popular and glorifies and magnifies people who are famous it glorifies and magnifies people who have some type of inherent popularity or fame about them right you maybe they're in the like for example these days the royal family these types of things these types of things are all irrelevant what does it matter whether somebody's popular we know this in high school we really see it in high school that i remember in high school high school is a scarring place very weird place because it's all about like oh what a popular kid's doing you're a popular kid's going to this party and dude at the end of the day like nobody even remembers the popular kids anymore i mean and if we were among the popular kids okay cool but like what did we do that actually is going to benefit us later in life most of the people that i knew that when we were in any of those circles most of the stuff that those of us who got caught up in that stuff it hurt us right it ends up hurting you but that's all irrelevant why does it matter who cares these days everybody's talking about the royal family and this thing and that thing i mean why are we giving so much attention to the to these monarchs who colonized so much of the world they're irrelevant they should be completely irrelevant i mean the wrongs that they do we need to notice them and we need to call them out but like they've been doing wrong since for the last you know many many centuries the fact that they even get attention is a problem right but it's because oh they're famous and there is this fame and same thing with celebrities you see this all the time a celebrity does something and everybody's talking about it who cares what why do we why is it relevant to us when you and i die is that person going to be relevant to us no so why do we give so much of our worldly attention than to that it's because they're famous and when they're famous there's a there's an aspect of we elevate them and actually what ends up happening and spiritually this is something mentioned in our religion that what ends up happening is they become a mini god that we worship they do they become a mini idol that we worship that i'm worshiping this athlete i have to know everything about them i'm worshiping this celebrity i'm worshiping this president i'm worshiping this prayer and it's not that you're bowing down to them actually when you make sajdah right in prayer you're bowing down to Allah but when you spend all of your time and when you and i spend all of our time thinking about something and always just being obsessed with it in a mini way we have that mini worship and that's what the desire is because Allah says in the Quran have you seen the one who takes their hawa their desire as their lord so the one who takes their desire as their lord is the one who gives something preference overgiven preference to Allah right and so we have to think about the danger of this stuff and now what ends up happening is we grow up in a culture that magnifies this stuff and then we ourselves want to be magnified we ourselves want to be elevated we grew up in a culture that emphasizes so much on fame and popularity and rank and now it's so easy everybody wants followers everybody wants likes and then we grow up and that's what we think we have to do and we end up in this stressful pursuit all the time of these superfluous empty things and it ends up impacting us because we don't focus on the big stuff that matters in life so this is something just for us to keep in mind for us to reflect on this is not something that goes away immediately but we have to at least think about it and we have to know about it right and so let's talk about why spiritually why the human being wants this as the scholars mentioned and again as anybody has comments or questions or anything just please post them in the chat so why do we want it the human being what you and i want is we have that we we have a desire deep down inside of us to want everything that's really what it is and so we wonder why do people want fame more than they want wealth right so you get to a point in life where you're rich let's say we see this a lot people are rich but at some point the the wealth is not enough and the money's not enough now i gotta be i have to become famous i have to be have a certain type of profile and even higher than that is the people the desire for power after you become a certain level of fame or have a certain level of fame you want a certain amount of power and control we'll talk a little bit about why that happens slowly what ends up happening is you and i just like we have control over a bunch of things so like oh i have this thing and that thing now i acquired this i acquired that i got this i want new clothes i want new that we just always buying stuff right versus this desire for wealth and i want new cars all the time and just keep getting keep getting what ends up happening is that that the human being also desires now control and influence over people's hearts and over people's attention so it's like oh i got this much now how many people can i get to follow me how many people's attention can i get oh i have 20 people i have a thousand people i have 10 million people how many people's hearts have i captured you can't buy your way to someone's someone's attention it's not going to work you have to influence your way they recall these days everybody's an influencer you have to influence your way to them and the more and more i have the better it is and you start thinking of yourself as something you elevate yourself and it doesn't matter what you where we are at in life that elevation does happen because people they give their worth they base their worth on this many times you and i have been introduced to people like oh have you met this person they have one million followers okay great well if the people fall if they're if the people are following them towards something good and they haven't their egos not full of themselves and they're not full of themselves right okay mashallah but if they're following to like a to hell frankly like to to to to sin i mean none of that stuff is relevant and even if they're leading someone to good but they're full of themselves they think they're all that we see this happen all the time in the Muslim community somebody will achieve a certain level of of rank and followers and people and kind of being influenced by them and then they go off and they do something super corrupt they're like embezzled money or they you know have like a scandal by like having secret wives and this type of thing i mean what is that where do you find that in the in the sunnah of the prophet sallam you don't find it because these people they didn't prioritize correctly they went too quickly after fame and the wrong things without grounding themselves this is why grounding is so important so this is now let's walk through a little bit of this kind of deep deep spirituality that's linked to this desire for for followers and the desire for fame this uh and if this gets at all complex just please post a question and we'll do our best to address it so the human being you and i actually have a very very deep spiritual nature we have a very angelic nature and we have a have a nature that is directly from the divine presence because Allah says in the Quran that he says that the spirit of my lord he says the spirit is from the command of my lord that's what he says that he tells the prophet sallam say let's say that the spirit the Ruh is from the command of my lord now what does that mean that means that deep down inside of us we have something inside of us that has a a very very high nature right because it's from the command of our lord now all of us at the same time the soul the nuffs so that's the spirit that's the elevated part then you have what's called the nuffs the ego the nuffs has a desire in deep down inside of it as Allah says in the Quran right that Pharaoh he says that i am your lord most time the nuffs has that desire the nuffs deep down inside wants to be the lord most high so Pharaoh was the personification the embodiment of the nuffs so he had no hesitation in saying such an arrogant and very frankly problematic statement that i am your lord most high even though Allah is the lord most high Allah is the only lord right but pharaoh had no problem saying that then human nuffs has a tendency deep down inside to actually want that same thing that pharaoh wanted to be the boss to be in charge to have as many people but you and i know that we can't have that but we can't have control over everything we can't have control over the sun rise in the sunset we can't have control over the planets and the stars we can't do that so then what we end up doing is because we can't have control over all of those things we settle for what we can't have control over and that is we can have control over how many people we are able to influence and how many hearts we are able to capture that we can't have control over so then we start desiring that and remember there's a big difference between somebody who starts this with the wrong intention and someone who says okay look i know that there's risk is out there but i'm going to work on myself big difference Allah does not tell us to be perfect from the get go but he does tell us to have a good intention and to be sincere from the get go that is not much God tells us so when we go out and about and doing what we're doing we can't get so influenced by the western culture and by western uh pedagogy and by the way that these that the west frankly generally speaking a culture dominated by white men that they have that they're they're trying to teach us to do we can't let them influence us no we have to have our own ways our own paths so their technologies are created in such a way that everything is about followers and everything is about views and everything is about likes and everything is about influence okay we can use it but we got to know like when it's going to get to our head and we got to know what to use it for and to not use it in the same way that is where where it can become negative um or negatively impact us right so eventually what we end up doing is we want control and influence over people's hearts and their attention span the more we can get that the more we the more elevated we become oh i got that i got one more one more one more and eventually it becomes a thing i got 10,000 more 20,000 more and more and more followers more and more fame and that is that is the essence of the problem that's not where our hearts supposed to focus no no no that's you and i are not supposed to be focused on that we are not we are supposed to be focused on worshiping a lot getting through this life without trying to collect all these things but the one who collects themselves they will eventually get ruined that's what's going to end up happening and how does that happen just just let's talk about where it's happening today it happens all the time that the the people who get the most famous and they get the most amount of power and the most amount of followers they become full of themselves they become super full of themselves we're seeing this happening right now with you know certain political figures here in the united states that there were moments of extreme fame extreme popularity extreme amount of followers a lot of a lot of power and arrogance and control and then what ends up happening well you think that you're invincible but what goes up must come down and so now these people they get exposed they get in scandals they get caught in their sexual abuse and sexual assault scandals you will rarely find somebody who's risen to the top in these types of ways that has not done something wrong majorly wrong along the way hurt people abuse people assaulted people i mean it's so rare in the time that we live in you'll that they start to get exposed because the the the that that that fake kind of image that they've put out can only last for so long until some people realize not this is who this person really is now their time it's time for them to get exposed and Allah eventually does expose many of these people and if he doesn't expose them in this life the hypocrites are exposed in the next life we already know that they're exposed in the next life like that happens many many many times that you become you think you're invincible because of the number of followers because of the fame because of where you're at and then slowly life starts to and we have a lot of protection for all of us our brothers and sisters and all the Muslims that this never happens but that what ends up happening is slowly and slowly and slowly right the exactly someone says the facade can only last for so long totally agree thank you for mentioning that that fake miss can only last for so long because you're just like dude that's not really who you are you put on a facade and guess what even if it does last let's say that somehow you can get it to last for as long as possible right before you die it's not going to last past your grave and all those millions of followers are not going to visit your grave how many people visit the grave of celebrities and like actually do something beneficial for them no the Muslims sometimes we have people come to our graves they read Quran they make dua for us when they're praying all this type of stuff but like how many people does that happen right for when when when fame becomes the primary motive it's not it doesn't happen it does not happen right so that is something for us to keep in mind this will ruin us it's just a matter of when so we have to know what the cure is what is the harm so first and foremost the cure for this type of thing the cure for this desire for fame this desire for popularity this desire for followers just to just reorient your mind and reorient my mind we have to start thinking this is a bad thing i cannot be this is not my cannot this cannot be my motive i might have a deep intention let's say that you are you know teaching people or you or you are doing something in which you need to get you need to try to access as many people as possible so you make like a facebook page or something or you're like an instagram page or something and you're trying to sell something for your business or whatever it is they're trying to okay nothing wrong with that but if you start to become like you're so worse you're literally worshiping my god oh my god have this many followers oh my god have this many likes oh my god and you're just like that's all you get you literally get off on that there's a problem because you should not get that excited about anything related to this dunya to this lower world we might get we might that might happen because we're weak i know i get excited about stuff like that because i'm weak but i gotta know the whole goal of spirituality is to know what the top know what the kind of top goal is right and then work our way from where we're at so like if i know this is the aspirational goal this is the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ but i'm like all the way on the ground one day i just gotta get as close as possible i mean i'm never gonna reach the full nearness but i just gotta get as close as possible and Allah says those who strive in our way surely we shall guide them so for anybody who has an intention to get closer to Allah to become more sincere to stop desiring followers and fame let's just make that intention right now to make that intention right now somebody asked a question where are you from uh i'm from i'm from the originally i'm from Pakistan but i live in in the bay area in terms of scope area so that is the cure that is the first cure just realize how problematic it is the second cure is to just realize how harmful this is the harm of rank and this this pet this kind of empty hollow followers and rank and all this time the harm what is the harm you're all first of all you will always be tripping about when something goes wrong what's going to happen here what are people going to think here what are they going to say right oh what are they saying