Sociopolitical networks are the networks of connections between members within a society which influence and shape collective decision-making and collective action. Sociopolitical networks may involve many overlapping heterogeneous and distributed networks throughout society that influence collective decision-making and the distribution of power. These networks might include social media and communications networks, economic and financial networks, or cultural and ideological networks. The study of sociopolitical networks shifts the focus of political analysis away from an emphasis on the formal political structures of the nation-state and towards the more distributed and complex set of informal social networks within the broader society. The network-approached political science adopts a relational paradigm where social and political phenomena are understood in the context of the relationships between people and groups, which are seen to produce the outcomes that interest political scientists. Such networks are typically non-linear and involve emergent phenomena. As such, the tools of political network analysis differ from the more traditional methods used within the social sciences, namely those of statistical analysis, by looking at and visualizing whole networks of connections. The significance of network theory as a tool for studying sociopolitical phenomena has greatly increased as of the past few decades, with the ongoing proliferation of network forms of organization as industrial societies are becoming transformed into network societies. Network society is the expression coined by social theorists in relation to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked digital information and communications technologies. The theory of the network society has been expounded upon by a number of thinkers, most notably the sociologist Manuel Castells in his book The Rise of the Network Society. In his interpretation, the rise of networks as the dominant modality for sociopolitical organization reshapes social structures as they no longer need to be tied to physical space, but simply to networks of information and communications flow. Traditional organizational structures, based on geographical proximity and the synchronicity of time, come to increasingly exist alongside a new space of networks, where space is compressed and time becomes asynchronous, what Castells calls the space of flows and timeless time. These new organizational structures become based on the processing and exchange of information and ideas. Ideas become reified through information technology to make them something greatly more important in the immediate workings of society. The theorist Van Dijk likewise looks at how a combination of social and media networks shape society's primary modes of organization and most important structures at all levels. He compares this type of society to a mass society that is shaped by groups, organizations and communities, the circle mass, organized in physical co-presence. In a network society increasingly power shifts from a traditional form, which is defined by one's position within a hierarchy, to increasingly becoming linked to one's access to and capacity to use networks enabled by technology. As networks come to occupy, mediate and coordinate ever more spheres of social life, political organization becomes reconfigured around access or lack of access to these global networks. In his work, Emmanuel Castells argues that these networks are highly efficient because they're very effective at managing complexity and at adapting to changing conditions. Thus as our socioeconomic systems become more complex and more dynamic, the divide between those who are able to access and use these global networks, relative to those who continue within existing industrial age institutional structures, becomes greater as two parallel systems come to coexist. This in turn reshapes sociopolitical organization on the macro level. Traditional political divides move to the background as new ones emerge based on a distinction between those who have the resources to access these global networks in terms of education, cultural receptiveness and technology know-how and those who don't. We can note in passing how this divide has already fed through to disrupt traditional political dynamics as it has been expressed in the split of the American middle class into upper middle and lower middle with resulting political repercussions. In the divide in England over votes on Brexit and on a global level between nations that want to close their borders and those that want to access these global economic networks or those cultures that want to form part of the prevailing global culture and those that reject it. This change in the underlying structure of sociopolitical systems then in turn requires a recalibration of methods and models within the social sciences in order to maintain relevance. Before dealing with specific models this changing approach first requires a reconfiguration of basic assumptions. Network theory is a relational paradigm, it is looking explicitly at the relations between actors. This is in contrast to a more traditional paradigm that focuses on discrete entities, people and organizations. Most of social science, political science and policy making to date is done based upon data sets that consist solely of data about individuals and their properties. This is of course only half the picture, just as important is how those people aren't connected. We are increasingly waking up to the fact that we've been doing social science and policy making as if we were dealing with groups of people who had nothing to do with each other. In the past we put a lot of effort into building up databases about individuals but now we have an ever growing amount of relational data between people coming from social networks and other sources for free. In political and social science we tend to focus on well-defined organizations as these formal organizations are easier to identify and they limit the number of entities that we need to deal with to a level that is more easy to comprehend. However this focus on the parts of the system can work to blind us to the complexity of the real situation. Viewing things in an object-based paradigm leads to an incomplete understanding and ensuing incomplete policies guided by this insight. Most notably it leads us to focus on the centralized formal institutions of political organization but blinds us to the complexity of the multiplicity of distributed informal overlapping networks that make up any society. As information technology greatly facilitates the development of these distributed information networks they become ever more important to understanding what is going on in the system and in such a case it becomes important to switch our focus from looking primarily at the formal institutions to looking at the network of informal organizations around them. Society is just as much about who you are as with whom you are when one continues with a focus on the parts when connectivity increases then things stop making sense. The primary parameter that affects the overall workings of a network system is its density of connections. Going from low connectivity to high connectivity is a paradigm shift that induces new patterns and behavior in the overall system, new rules for survival and success. At a high cost of making and maintaining connections the network will have a low density. With a limited number of connections things are connected in a limited number of ways which makes the system relatively linear. That is to say there will typically only be one way to get from A to B. To conserve on the limited degree of overall connectivity resources and information typically have to flow to a centralized point from where they are then distributed thus creating centralized organizations and a hierarchy based upon one's proximity to the center where the massive resources are flowing through. This is the same for a transport network, a financial network or a sociopolitical network. With a limited degree of connectivity organizations can have strong boundaries and be defined by those boundaries. As the cost of transaction is high most of the organization's resources need to lie within the organization which in turn works to reinforce the dichotomy between the inside and outside and strengthen the boundary condition. In such a world it makes sense to focus one's analysis on the individual parts and their properties. Organizations that have more resources internal to their boundary will likely prevail and be able to define the overall system. As it becomes easier to make connections within the system both the number of connections proliferate but also the number of channels may also proliferate meaning that things do not just go in a linear fashion with everything flowing to the center and back outs instead things can now connect directly peer to peer. Information and resources can start to flow and connect things in a multiplicity of ways. The system becomes non-linear in that there may now be a multiplicity of ways to connect things with options as to which of these channels may be chosen. In such a world the nature of power changes substantially as power is relational and it is in one's capacity to restrict other people's possible actions to those that one desires. It is much more easily exercised in a world where there are limited possible connections where one can directly control those channels. As the number of degrees of freedom for the individual in terms of connectivity increases the centralization of power now becomes diffused out into the network. Moises Naim author of the book The End of Power knows this when he writes the ones uncontested leaders of every arena from religion to government and from military to finance are increasingly aware that they face unprecedented constraints in what they can do with the power they have. Power has become easier to get harder to use and far easier to lose. Big powers everywhere face a reckoning as insurgents fringe political parties, upstart citizen media outlets, leaderless young people in city squares and charismatic individuals who seem to have come out of nowhere shake up the old order. They are undermining and thwarting the once unquestioned mega players at every turn. Naim concludes that power as we know it is over. In the book he writes about the extent to which recent developments have made traditional sources of centralized power whether political, corporate or cultural, newly vulnerable to challenges from smaller, nimbler entities. He also warns that the decline of the superpower as an authority providing global structure is producing less stability than ever before. He believes that a situation where small actors have the power to veto but not to dictate essentially to destroy but not create is a recipe for gridlock, anarchy or both. In a world of connectivity closed organizations are rendered less effective in the face of networks that can aggregate resources on demands. In adapting to this new context traditional organizations are required to go through a process of what we call unbundling. We go from a world where everything is held within a predefined hierarchical structure and managed through formal structures to dynamic networks that work to aggregate the distributed resources within very large groups of people in the way that Facebook or WeChat do. These networks create value by connecting people who now have powerful tools of communications in their hands and a desire to create content. As resources become more widely distributed within the society it becomes about creating networks for accessing and using those resources outside of the formal organizations. Organizations that try to go on doing everything within formal structures of ownership and management start to appear cumbersome in the face of agile and dynamic networks that are able to more rapidly aggregate resources and adapt to the changing context. The most important structural transformation that takes place in this process of increasing interconnectivity is as Castell writes in his book the logic of the network is more powerful than the powers of the network. When connectivity increases it is possible to access resources external to the organization more easily thus sharing resources across the network becomes greatly more viable. The result of this is that the amount of resources that can be easily and quickly accessed on the network becomes greatly larger than what may exist within any one organization. The network as a whole becomes greater than any of its parts and those who can orchestrate networks become more powerful than those who can control any of the individual formal organizations within it. Traditional organizations come to find themselves embedded within and increasingly constrained by these global networks. The internet is a classical example of this more information can now be accessed on the internet than any organization could possibly have. This has shifted the balance of power away from these organizations that once had the information like universities governments intelligence agencies etc towards anyone who can access the network but equally it shifts it to those who can orchestrate these networks organizations like Google or WeChat that orchestrate people's access to that network are greatly more powerful in shaping people's perception than any formal closed organization none can own or control the network but those who can orchestrate it become the new superpowers network orchestrators are platforms and another term for a network society is a platform society in a network society the design of the platform organization is better able to harness the underlying structure and resources they become the dominant form of organizational mode enveloping the traditional industrial age organization today in business and economics we now understand the mechanics of why platforms become the dominant organizational modality within a network society and there are even mathematical models now for understanding this in economics sanghi Paul Chattery one of the preeminent theorists on platform organizations contrast them with the industrial age model which he calls the pipeline business model and notes that when a platform enters a pipeline firm's market the platform almost always wins which is very similar to the previous dynamic during the development of the industrial age where whenever a bureaucratic model of organization entered a new sphere of life it came to dominate societies and organizations are made up of both nonlinear distributed networks of informal organization and formal structures the formal structures emerge out of and are determinant of the informal structures although we may often only see the formal structures they are contingent upon the much more complex network of informal structures within the organization formal political institutions are defined by a set of formal relations of power in the way that a hierarchy defines a chain of commands a set of relations that defines superior and inferior actors and thus formal institutionalized structures through which power is channeled informal sociopolitical organizations though often do not have this formal power structure the resource that flows through the informal networks of civil society is instead what we call social capital social capital can be understood as the networks of relations among people within a given community through which they share common norms values and understanding that facilitates cooperation and thus enables that society to function effectively social capital is the measure of the degree of potential for cooperation within a community given such a network social network analysis thus helps us to model and identify these informal networks and how they influence political processes political systems represent the processes through which people made collective decisions and implement them the more the trust consensus and cooperation within the community network the less the need for common decisions to be imposed through formal power structures to achieve effective political organization requires both connectivity between members but also institutions built on that connectivity that enables pro-social behavior pro-social behavior is acting to the benefit of society in general the handbook of social psychology explains that pro-social behavior refers to a broad range of actions intended to benefit one or more people other than oneself pro-social behavior plays a vital role in maintaining social bonds and in making social transactions possible out of the combination of connectivity between members and pro-social behavior combined one gets something that is very valuable to a community the infrastructure for consensus and cooperation in making collective decisions and taking collective action and we can call this social capital the value that is inherent in the overall sociopolitical network of the community and which can be deployed towards enabling collective action political capital refers to the trust consensus and cooperation among members that enable them to achieve collective political decisions without their imposition through formal political structures thus in looking at the political system of any given community we need to identify the formal and informal structures the formal structures will be most manifest to us but they will only give us a limited degree of insight into the system's overall workings and often the manifest institutions of a society are simply those institutions that the society wants you to see and thus they can often be misleading to gain a full understanding it requires that one look at the informal networks of connections the central factor here being the degree of integrity to the network and the degree of pro-social behavior thus the overall amount of social capital that is flowing through the system for example the single best predictor of crime within a neighborhood in the us is how many of the people in the community know each other in the absence of people knowing each other and thus looking out for each other we will likely have to impose formal authoritative structures to police the community we may well then praise ourselves for how well the police force does but we would of course be doing better if they were not needed in the first place when the network has integrity and there are resources flowing through it that incentivizes people to form part of it and contributes to the network likewise having a functional network makes it then possible for people to build solutions on top of that network by tapping into its resources instead of everyone having to reinvent the wheel each time they want to create a social organization or achieve some collective project just as with the rise of the internet as we can now build organizations based on that network that harness the common resources available the same is true for social political and economic organizations for example now that we've built these global supply chains cities and countries like dubai and china can build solutions on top of them tapping into the flow of resources by performing a required process whether that's manufacturing or financial services the same is true for functioning social networks once people within the community are connected via information technology and there is a limited degree of social capital one can build solutions on top of this like apps for people to report graffiti in potholes to make local decisions they care about etc in such a case the emphasis shifts from the formal political structures of control and management and the provisioning of discrete public services to the integrity of the social network and fostering the flow of social capital that is available on the network so that people can build their own solutions on it


Alhamdulillah. So we have made it to the section. InshaAllah we're going to talk about what happens when somebody is in the barzah and in the intermediary realm. So this is after somebody has now passed away and what is going to take place and then what happens between then and the moment where we stand for judgment day for yawm al tiyama. These are very, very, very important parts of our creed, parts of our ahidah, which we should know, which we should understand and which we should experientially try to or which we should understand in a more experiential spiritual way versus just a rational and logical way because these types of things are going to be very significant. Allah wants us to reflect on these moments before we actually experience these moments. So what we had just finished off last time, we had spoken about what takes place in the grave and the human being will enter into the grave. We will have questions in the grave. We will experience a life, an entire life will play out, an entire lifetime. For some it will be longer than others depending on how much duration takes place between the time we pass away and between yawm al tiyama. For some people, they've had 10,000, 20,000 years in their grave and in other, it could be a lot less than that. So at some point, everybody will experience either a beautiful life in the grave, which is a sign inshallah of jannah to come, of heaven to come, or a very, very, very difficult life in the grave, which is a sign of the fire and we ask Allah for safety and refuge and for protection from that. And then at some point what happens is Allah commands one of the archangels to blow the trumpet. And this is mentioned in the Quran, the first blast which takes place. As Allah tzala says in the Quran, that the horn is blown and all those who are in the heavens and the earth will fall down in a swoon. So everyone will essentially pass away at this point or become unconscious, save him who Allah wills. So this is the first blast which takes place. And every human being will at this point pass every human being. So if somebody is not already in the grave, there will be a small percentage of people, of course, who will still be on the earth at this point. And the blast will take place and then everybody will essentially transition into this realm. And this is the first phase now. At this point, we are about to enter into the life of Yom al-Qiyamah. We have another period now where another blast will take place as Allah says in the Quran. Then it is blown in the next, right there in the same ayah. Then it is blown another time and there they stand awaiting. And according to Imam al-Haddad, between the two blasts are 40 years. So human beings will be, everybody will pass away and enter into this intermediary realm. Till the second blast takes place and now everybody is actually resurrected. This is the trumpet where everybody is resurrected. So the first thing for us to reflect on here is that these are very, very, very serious momentous events that are going to take place.  They mentioned in some, I believe Imam al-Hazali mentioned this, that the distance between the two lips of the archangel who's going to blow the trumpet and the trumpet itself is vaster than the earth itself, vaster than the heavens and the earth. So we're talking about something very, very, very significant in terms of its size, in terms of its magnitude, in terms of all of Allah's creation being affected and jolted and in such a scared state when this takes place that everybody is going to pass. And then everybody is going to be awakened again. And this is where people are either awakened in a state of goodness or in a state of anxiety and worry. And now begins the day of judgment. Now begins the hour, the day of judgment. So then what he mentions is he mentions what will take place in the moments before the actual first trumpet is blown. So we have different phases of end of times that are important for us as Muslims to know. You have the signs of the general end of times. The first sign of the end of times is the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He is the final messenger. And he said between me and the, I believe between me and the hour is the hadith is like this. So already the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is indicating to us that it's very, very, very close between then many, many, many, many, many signs have been listed out. Dozens of signs have been listed out of what is going to take place in the latter days. So those are signs which are important. He doesn't get into all of them here because that's not really what his focus is. Then there's the signs of what happens before the hour. The hour is the end, the actual end of time when this trumpet blast is blown. At this point, time as we know it collapses. This concept of time, space, everything goes. It's now just Allah and whoever the select Allah has left out with his archangels or whoever is referring to in this ayah where Allah says save him who Allah wills is protected from this blast, everybody else is impacted. So that moment, it's important for us to know, okay what are the signs of the general end of times and then what are the specific signs which lead to the hour, which lead to the hour. So you have a phase of time where we know that as you get closer to the end, immorality will spread, corruption will spread, we'll have very, very corrupt rulers and leaders. There will be a lot of fahshah, of lewdness. We know that the economic system will become problematic as well. These are many signs that are listed out. Then we know that at some point that Mahdi Aleyhis Salam emerges and then we know that the jal comes. It's at this point now that the main events really start to take place, which will signal the coming of the hour of yawm al qiyamah. Isa Aleyhis Salam actually emerges and it's important for the believers to understand this, to know this and then we have now a various hadith which indicate what happens after this. So he says that after the emergence of Isa Aleyhis Salam, you will then have the emergence of who will kill the dajal and then he says there will be a period of years people will live during which there will be no enmity between people and then there will be a wind that Allah sends from the direction of Syria and anyone who has any faith or goodness in them will die and then the people who will remain. So now we're getting into the last phase of humanity. The people who remain at the end end will be the worst of people moving like as delicately as birds wearing the skins of beasts. Recognizing no good disapproving of no evil and sheytan will basically command them to obey his call command them to worship idols and commit fahshah and lewdness and it will be on these people that the horn that the horn will be blown. So at the ultimate end you have a period of difficulty of general immorality in society then you actually have a period of righteousness again. The Mahdi coming and Isa Aleyhis Salam coming are going to be paired with their righteous rulers ruling the earth according to the law of Islam and according to a very very in a very just way. And then after this whole phase is when there's going to be immense immense immorality and one hadith at the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam mentions along with Sayyidina Muhammad that the hour will not come as long as anyone still says Allah as long as someone still says Allah the hour will not come. So you're talking the hour the final blast comes at the moment again when there's no iman no faith or people to say Allah and then he said evil people will remain living like donkeys in chaotic depravity and it is upon them that the hour shall come. So comparing people to donkeys is a very serious thing especially in with the Arabs because they were agrarian society and so they were very the animals were very present in front of them it was very the donkey is not seen as an animal that's that's that's a very highly ranked animal it's it's a diss really to compare someone to so these are the types of people that they are they're just animalistic carnal desires and then in hadith could see meaning it's a narration from Allah Allah will grasp or or this narration probably says Allah will grasp the earth and fold up the heavens and then in his right hand figuratively speaking and say I am the king where are the kings of the earth where are the tyrants where are the arrogant so you will now have a very intense jalali majestic these these moments will be very difficult the last juz of the Qur'an and surah the 29th juz and the 30th juz they a lot of those surahs talk about what's going to take place on the day of judgment so it's very important for believers to have a connection to those surahs to reflect on the meaning of those surahs and to try to understand the intensity there's surahs that mention the sky it's splitting asunder like literally the entire sky will crack in half and the heavens will start to split and all the whole firmament everything Allah has created will start to it's not it's not we see it as though it's in place in perfect order but as soon as the command comes from Allah everything will go into chaos everything will go into chaos and it is upon this so this is the type of moment we are entering when the day of judgment comes what keeps us firm on the day of judgment and preventing ourselves from being an internal disarray is our faith and is the way we lived our life that's what keeps us firm there's no outward preparation one can do there's no money there's no bank accounts there's no politics there's no rulers there's nothing there's no organization nothing that's going to help anybody but if they were people of virtue and people of righteousness and people of goodness and people of noor the day of judgment will be facilitated inshallah for the believers even we meant it's it's i don't know if we mentioned it here or or if it was just mentioned when we were reading this but uh the believers will have a light on their faces the day of judgment will be dark and they will be guiding people they could be guiding people people will ask them to guide them but the believers will have a light on their face from the wudu um actually i believe narration is people will ask them for their light and they won't share the light because these will be the hypocrites and the disbeliever that are asking so everything we do in this life it starts playing out at the time of death it has an impact like the way we live this life does have an impact on this life but for a lot of people they won't see the impact of this life this is why the rulers that the corrupt they get away with so much they have no idea what's in store for them no clue what's in store for them for all the corruption and the killing and the violence and the injustice that they that they reign on on earth because Allah says now he will see and Allah will be angry on this day where are the rulers where are the kings where are the tyrants because Allah is the true king and Allah does not let people outwardly always understand his kingship if they're not trying to understand his king but on the day of judgment his lordship and his rule will become very very very clear so it's a day we're supposed to fear that day it's not supposed to be a uh you know it's one of the things where even the prophets they fear this day it's a very very very very serious day um and and and face so it's good to know the signs that come and leading up to it so he mentions you will not see the hour this is again the blowing of the trumpet until the following things happen the sun rising from the west there's going to be a big smoke at some point on the earth that the job there's going to be a beast that emerges from the earth there's going to be three sinkings into the ground and i don't know if this means earthquakes or i think the earth will split open and these things will happen in the east in the west and in the arabian peninsula and the appearance of isa alai salam and yajuj and majuj and the last of them will be a fire coming out of the Yemen and so these are big signs that happen right before again the trumpet is blown the trumpet is blown but only Allah knows when the hour is going to happen so we know as believers through the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and through what's been passed the signs of the hour but when the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was asked by jibri alayhi sallam when is the hour he said the one asking knows no more than the one being asked the closest of Allah's associates as like angels that i mean um they're even they don't know the messengers Allah is Habib Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam doesn't know when the exact moment of the day of judgment is going to be only Allah knows as he says in the Quran knowledge of it is with my lord he alone will manifest it in its time and indeed with him is the knowledge of the hour and different ayah but we have to know the signs and what's going to happen so phases it's a phase of general moral depravity general corruption on the earth that's the phase we're in right now immense immorality immense it's mentioned other hadith the amount of promiscuity that will take place all of these types of things are showing that we are headed towards the end where's the we are in the latter days and then there's signs that have already started to appear example hadith which roti doesn't mention here but um where the bedouin will compete in building tall buildings that will literally touch the sky right these skyscrapers in dubai in Saudi Arabia and other places all people are bedouin and now they they got you know they stumbled upon oil and now they're competing to build these huge tall buildings and when one country builds one that's taller the next one starts its next one so they can be tolerated it can just be it's so these are signs that will happen but those aren't the major signs the major signs are the ones that are listed out and and so after the coming of isa alaihi salam and and the killing of the dajjal and the coming of yajuj and maju to them there's this final period of immense immorality and no faith left meaning nobody at that point they say in one narration here that islam will wear out this is according to the prophecy some in a way that a garment becomes worn out until no one will know what fasting prayer pilgrimage or charity might be the book of god will one night be taken up so that not one verse of the Quran will remain on earth some group of people will remain in which old men and women will say we remember that our parents used to say la ilaha illallah so we say it too so again one of the key components of holding down iman on this earth is what is knowledge the knowledge of these things once it goes it's a big problem it's one of the main things that we can do as believers is spend our time learning and implementing and it's already happened as an umma we've lost knowledge we've kind of just not given importance to it anymore but just talking about the sacred knowledge knowledge islam really prioritizing it so these are these are things that are important for us to do to prevent the impact of the end of times hitting us or our family inshallah so then now he gets into the next section which is actual judgment day which is actually the day so at this point everybody is resurrected so he says the fourth light this is the fourth life so we finish the third life which is the barzah and the first trumpet blast he says the fourth life now extends from the time when a person leaves their grave for the resurrection until a moment until the moment when mankind enters either the garden or the fire so this is the first the fourth life for the human being oftentimes we think about yom al qiyamah as a day it's not a day it's a whole life in and of itself as Allah says in the Quran 50 000 years it can be up to 50 000 years in length for others it will be a lot shorter and for some it could be as short as two rakahs but it is an entire life it's an entire phase one is resurrected and one is rebuilt re-originated again so one will die and they will be in their grave entirely and they will decompose our bodies decompose but just like Allah originated the creation the first time we will all come back to life again we will all be re-originated again this is for the people at the time when this was being revealed it was a little bit harder for them to understand for us now you know with stem cells and these types of things it's very easy to see how you can like re-create as long as you have the origin right for Allah he doesn't even need the origin he is the originator he's al fatir but this is how it's going to take place so then there's a various ayahs that he mentions here well Allah will command the archangel israfiyel this is the one so this is a various archangel jibreel is one of them israfiyel is one of them nikahil is one of them and so you have different archangels that have these big assignments that Allah has given them major assignments and this is his assignment he's waiting for this moment to blow the trumpet and he says and the morn is blown and low from their graves they will hasten to their thorn and it is blown another time and there they stand awaiting so this is the moment where all of us we will wake up from the grave and then this is when everybody who didn't think that life was life was done they thought life is done after they died or maybe just life in the grave is it this is where the anxiety really starts to kick in those who disbelieve they claim that they will not be raised again alas says say no by my lord you will be raised again and you will be informed of what you did everything that you did so it's it's it's going to be a day where somebody realizes this and it's very difficult for them to think i'm about to be held to account because in the grave that counting is not the type of accounting that's about to take place now this is the day of accounting one of the names of it is the day where debts fall due yo madin maliki yo madin as we read in the fatihah the day where the debts fall due everything not a single iota is left out if Allah keeps it on the record and if Allah chooses to erase and to pardon then it's pardon but everybody has their chance on this day to get what it is that they deserve in form of justice or hopefully for the believers and for the this umad then in the form of Allah's mercy so he gets into various aya's of for those who question the resurrection says have they not seen how Allah originates creation and then reproduces it for god that is easy and say to them walk the land and see how he originated creation then how God brings forth the later growth meaning you think about this in terms of plants and vegetation there's these cycles right it like it it dries out and then it comes back and then it and the human being very similar right it's not hard just like Allah can do that with with plants and with fruits and so on and so forth it's very easy very easy for him to do that um with with us indeed Allah is able to do all things and then and then he mentions um again there's various aya's we're just picking out a few of them um then Allah gives us an example right and he says who will revive bones which have rotted away say he will revive them who first originated them and he has knowledge of every creation so just like the one who first created us he's going to be the one who revived us so in this day it's a little physical we believe in a physical resurrection not in a figurative spiritual resurrection incarnation any that is a real physical experience that happens physical experience that happens um so now this is where things become again focused on one's faith and their yakin according to one's strength and their ma'rifah of their lord their knowledge of their lord and their yakin of their lord um and their acts in this life and their relationship with Allah that will determine how things go for them on this day that will determine or on this phase of life this whole life we should not just say this day really this this phase of life so this is a long narration but it's important to cover so the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that Allah will level the earth okay so the narration says in the Quran the verse says on the day when the earth shall be changed to other than the earth and the heavens they will come forth from before god the one the invincible he will level it and spread it just as a leather rug is spread so you will see neither crookedness nor curvature he will then drive the people to one in one cry and they will be in the changed earth in this new understanding of earth whatever the creator this is in the same state that they had been in the way before those who were inside it will be inside of it and those who were on its surface will be on its surface then god will send down upon you from beneath the throne water called al hayyawan the life and it shall rain for 40 days and then the narration continues okay so this is him getting it and then he will give command to the bodies which will grow just as plants and vegetables grow until your bodies are as fully formed as they've been so now this narration is getting into more details on how exactly the the resurrection will take place meaning it not necessarily sudden but it takes a a phase of time and then Allah goes command by command let the bearers of the throne return to life and this will happen meaning the angels who carry the throne let jibreel mika'il israfiyel come back to life they come back to life and then israfiyel the archangel aley salam he is the one who then blows this this this horn this trumpet after which Allah will call the spirits which will be brought to him and the muslims will be blowing with light the others dark the others dark and then israfiyel blows the horn and the spirits fly out like bees filling the space between the heavens and the earth in which Allah then says let each spirit return to its body by my might and majesty let each spirit return to its body so the believers the spirits are not in the same place as the body necessarily right so now the spirits are returning into the bodies then he gets into a lot of detail the spirits will repair to their bodies enter through the nostrils and will spread inside of the body again just as venom spread inside it spreads inside someone who is bitten then the earth shall split apart from around you and I shall be the first for whom it will do so meaning the prophets a lot of salam and he says you will emerge as young people of 33 so this is the the the age at which one is uh is at right 33 is this this prime age as mentioned in various narrations um this one mentioned the language on that day will be syriac and then he talks about them hurrying to their lord so not every single detail is something that we'll um get into in this hadith it's an excellent comprehensive and religious like all hadith aren't uh but very very good for us to just understand these these specific details so I don't think it's usually it's that difficult like we're mentioning to believe the concept of resurrection and the concept of coming back even though we rotted away for the people of the past it was a very difficult concept to understand so there was a lot of time in metaphors and in analogies and in detailed explanations of what takes place and how that's going to happen for the believers the key thing to spend time on is to understand how intense and mighty uh this day will actually be so we won't go into everything but for those who have the book the text and for those online we're reading the text of the lives of man by Imam al-Haddad I would highly recommend reading this section in detail for the sake of time we can't go line by line um but Allah mentions this in the uh in in the uh mostly in the 30th choice but in various parts of the Quran where he talks about the intense events that are going to take place that are going to take place so he says subhanahu wa ta'ala on the day when we will cause the mountains to move you shall see the earth emerging and we assemble them and leave not one of them until they are before their lord and ranks in rose you have come to us just as we created you at first but you thought that we would set no time no appointment for you so the many many many many human beings do not believe that anything's going to happen to them after they die and so Allah is now going to challenge them on that day you thought nothing was going to happen you thought you could just get away with it you didn't get away with any of it now the appointment starts now the key spiritual thing to reflect on here the feeling we need to reflect on is how on earth are we going to be able to stand before god almighty the creator of the heavens and the earth and all seven heavens who's fast and and and who's who will be upset on that day when we are when we sin so much because every sin we commit will be exposed exposed on that day and we will be questioned about everything Allah will ask you were there at this place when you were 23 years old at 5 17 p.m why did you do that you were there at this place it was 6 a.m it was fudger time why did you miss the prayer you were there at this place prioritizing this thing this money over this you took out this financial instrument which was haram when you didn't need to do so why did you do that did you not trust that i would provide for you i gave you this much time and this many this much life why did you spend your life the way that you did i gave you the blessing of wealth and i gave you the blessing of security the two the blessing of food and security the two essential blessings Allah says in the Quran worship uh uh that Allah says worship the lord of this house in surah quresh who who satiated you from your hunger and gave you the blessing of protection and security that he's going to ask us i did all of this and yet you still didn't didn't listen and you still didn't worship and so these are going to be the the questions that are asked on yom al piyama these are going to be various various various types of questions some narrations mentioned the beginning these are the we're just giving examples here they're mentioned the types of of questions that are going to be asked the types of questions that are going to be asked today on wednesdays we're praying at eight so if you guys want to do a jamaat right now you just let go ahead so we'll we'll pray around eight and then the every human being will be questioned according to how much we repented or didn't repent what do we mean by that meaning there will be parts of our life where we're not questioned about but we did do something wrong and we're and and we're going to wonder hold on a second i i thought i did something wrong on that day you didn't bring it up unless there's no you repented for that so repentance in this life functions as the eraser it erases all the things it's like taking the Allah will show us a whole movie of our life and it's like the director's cut where you cut certain things out of the clip and you edit it and that's it that's what repentance does it cuts out the sins and the bad and of course for those who did certain things before they became Muslim all of that inshallah is wiped away and and so we are now entering upon we're in the month of shaban about a month left before the month of Ramadan Ramadan is this month of purification and of repentance and these are the types of things that should drive us anytime we're feeling lazy anytime we're feeling like we don't want to do the things we're supposed to do really focus on on worshiping our lord um in one narration a man dies or a person dies in accordance with the way that they had lived and is resurrected in accordance with what they had with with with what he had died on what they had died in so some people will be resurrected in the way that they died we so imagine a very very not a noble death an ignoble death imagine that right if someone we don't want to be in that state right now these days there's people like a year or two ago there was this concert that took place i forgot where this happened all the time in concerts but literally all these people died in a mosh pit at a concert i mean and while listening to like immensely haram music and participating in a lot of haram type of activities around them that's no way that that's not a dignified way to die we ask Allah for protection we don't want to be doing things we never want to enter into a state that we die in an ignoble in a noble way right that should be one way thing to protect us if the fear of god is not going to protect us from the sin we don't want to die in a way that that um the fear of death rather than the fear of the resurrection should protect us we always should ask Allah for us to know often people die on college campuses um uh i know i know people who passed away literally they they they were found intoxicated and passed away through alcohol poisoning just on on the floor of a fraternity house just after a long long night of partying that's no way to die that's not a noble death but if we don't live in a noble way it's for exposing ourselves to those types of things right or or or or we let ourselves go into so slip ups if we live through the slip up we can repent but what if we don't live through the slip up that's the key a lot of people when we're young especially and you talked about this when you're young controlling your passions are very hard when we're young but there's no guarantee that somebody is going to live righteously after because they might not even have life afterwards and so we want to make sure again that we live in an upright way so that we can pass an upright way another narration he mentions mankind shall be resurrected barefoot naked and uncircumstice everybody on one plane and Aisha says Ya Rasulullah oh shame Ya Rasulullah eat everyone looking at each other because that's the natural thing that comes to their mind men and women all in one place in this in this situation he says the situation will be way too desperate for them to be worried about that like that's not even going to cross anyone's mind none of those types of things are going to cross anyone's mind because of how desperate human beings are going to be on Yomil Kiyama these are the types of things again we need to reflect on it's not just like something we should think about rationally we really sit with and how am I going to be able to do and then there will be people with sweat and various levels of sweat how much they're sweating some people to their ankles to their knees to their navel to their neck and others that are drowning in their own sweat because of how scared they are of what's about to take place and also because the sun is very very very close on the day of judgment which is why we want to be under Allah's the shade of Allah's throne on this day inshaAllah then he says people shall be gathered more hungry than they'd ever been more thirsty than they've ever been uh unclothed more naked than they've ever been and more exhausted than they've ever been but those who had given food for the sake of Allah will be fed by Allah those who had given drink water for the sake of Allah this says drink but assuming water for the sake of Allah will be given to drink by Allah those who had given clothes for the sake of Allah will be clothed by Allah and those who had acted for Allah's sake will be protected by him Emphasizing the Prophet ﷺ gives us various narrations, reasons why we should take care of the poor, why we should take care of those who are living in destitute conditions, of those who are unclothed, of those who are hungry, among one of the most virtuous types of good deeds. But it will all come back, all of it's going to be paid back in various ways and Allah is too generous for you and me to do something that's good, one good, and for him to just give us one good in return. That's just not how it works. Al-Haljaza al-Ahsan illa al-Ahsan. What is the reward for excellence? Accept excellence. His excellence, in response to our attempt at excellence, is not even close. So the good that Allah gives is very, very, very different. So we want to take a portion of each of these things and put them into practice. Okay, if we don't feed people often, there's a lot of hungry people around here. We don't have to even, we don't have to go as far out as like, almost some world they're donating online. That's very critical to do as well. But we just go make it a habit.  Right? And we should do so in groups and be careful. Sisters, I would not advise in Oakland area necessarily if you're not to do that as much and brothers, I would be careful because it's not as safe here because of drug use and so on and so forth. But if we can find an area like a homeless shelter or like a soup kitchen or something, these are very good things to do. This is, believers used to live their life. Like if people were hungry, they would have a hard time going to sleep. It was like, that's how serious people used to take this. And then we should give a lot of money overseas or wherever we can to help people who are hungry. The dollar goes very far overseas. You could feed with like $2. You could feed somebody a whole meal, two meals sometimes. So, 100 bucks, that's 50 meals to somebody, right? And so we really, these are ways to build our spiritual bank account. And anytime we spend on ourselves and we buy an expensive meal, sometimes we might spend a lot on food. We should make sure that in that same phase of time, we go and we spend on people, even if it's a lot less money, we should just go and spend and feed people, right? Because it's hard to be spending $50, $100 on food for like two, three people and so many people are hungry. So these are ways to protect ourselves, not just in this life from tribulation, but also in the next life. He then says, there's other things that are mentioned here, but we're going to just kind of shorten it. He says, people will see their deeds appearing before them. Good deeds will comfort them and accompany them. The wicked ones will reproach them and make them feel desolate. And they may even climb on their backs and force them to carry the deeds. As Allah says in the Quran, they bear their burdens upon their backs. Evil is that which they bear. And in another ayah, they will surely bear their own loads and other loads besides their own. And there will be question on Yom Al-Piyama concerning that which they have invented. So everybody has recording angels. These angels are recording everything we do. Allah doesn't need any angel to record what we do. But this Allah's indisam on this planet, on this earth and this life is to do things through means, not that's usually how things are done. So the angels are the means. The angels are writing down every good and every bad. All of those now are going to be shown to the human beings on the day of judgment.  So users, those who took interest or who charged interest, for instance, will see their stomachs grow so large that as they walk, they're constantly overbalanced by their weight and they stumble over. This is on the Yom Al-Piyama. We're not talking yet about what happens in the next life.  Alcohol drinkers will come to the gathering with their cups, their cups in their hands, their drinks in their hands. Liars, backbiter, slanders will see their tongues lengthen until they reach their chests. Those who withheld their zakat will have their money made manifest in the shape of large snakes coiled around them. The arrogant will be brought forth in the form of small ants. The arrogant people, the tyrants, they'll just be like little ants on the day of judgment. And they will be walked on by people. And so it shall continue. Allah says in the Qur'an, the guilty will be known by their marks and they will be seized by the forelocks and their feet. So there's a lot of things that take place on Yom Al-Piyama. We'll try to get through a bit more of it. So this section is just starting to give a glimpse of what happens to somebody with the sins that we do. Every sin in the spiritual realm has a magnified opposite reaction, right? We say like every action has an equal and opposite reaction according to the laws of, I think that's Newtonian physics, right, according to laws of physics. In the spiritual realm, every action we do here has a much more amplified reaction in the next life, especially when it comes and the good will have prominence, right? All the, for example, doing some, doing wudu consistently brings about an immense newer, but doing and praying and so on has a lot of good. But for example, missing zakat, right? Having their money made manifest in the shape of large snakes that are coiled around them, right? Assuming they're constricting them. These are the types of things that take place on Yom Al-Piyama. And this is before the Resurrect, the Hesab hasn't even started yet. We haven't even started questioning, being asked questions by God. This is just, from the time we get resurrected, if we were in this state and we were doing these types of things, this is what's going to happen. So what's interesting here is so many of these sins are also our sins of character as well. They're not only sins of actions. They're sins of actions and their sins of character. So drinking and the, and adultery and these types of things, taking usury, taking interest off our time and our, the time we live in. This is stuff is spread out everywhere. We have to guard ourselves against believers and guard our families and our children from this, but also their sins of character, right? Arrogant own, doesn't only mean tyrants. It doesn't only mean the Bidens and the Netanyahu and all these evil people in the world.  At least the arrogant can mean anything, really.  Akhlaq and character are really, really, really important ways because the light of good character very quickly reduces and mitigates the darkness of the bad that one might have done. So then the narrations continue. So Mu'ad ibn Jabal, radiolahu, and he asks the prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he says, Ya Rasulullah, what of the saying on the day when the horn is to be blown and you shall come and hosts, assuming like groups and the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, oh, Mu'ad, you have asked about a formidable thing and then he, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, wept abundantly. And then he said, 10 different kinds of people of my nation will be gathered in groups distinct from the groupings of the Muslims. Their forms will have been changed. Some of them will have the forms of monkeys. Others the form of pigs. Others will be upside down. Their legs upwards being dragged on their faces. Some will be blind, hesitant.  Others will be chewing their tongues, which will hang on their tests, and their saliva will be pus so that they discuss the other people in the gathering. Some will have their hands and feet cut off. Some will be crucified or tree trunks of fire. Some will be fouler than putrid cadavers, the smell, the stench. Some will wear robes flowing of tar. As for those who resemble monkeys, they are the slanderers. The slander, we talked about slander last time, is one of the main reasons of punishment in the grave. Talking bad about people and spreading lies about people. Slander specifically is when you not just say something bad, but you say something bad that's not even true. And the backbiting is what is true, which is essentially just as that. Those who will have the forms of pigs are the people of ill-gotten, illicit, unlawfully taxed, or you could say stolen type of money, illicit wealth, haram money. Those whose heads and faces are beneath them, their heads and their faces are beneath them, are those who consume usury. Usury is mentioned a lot in the narrations about the Day of Judgment and about Yom El-Kiyamah and also in the Quran. It's probably, I would argue, the most, the biggest sin, major sin, that's the most ignored in the time that we live in. And the one that we have to be very seriously on watch. Usury is interest, it's the small interest and it's the big interest. We have to be on guard against it and we mention this frequently because it's very, very, very critical. Every type of interest-bearing loan, car loans, it's not far to drive a nice car. We don't need a loan to take out. We can do other things, student loans, it's not far. This is so critical. People think it's far to go to university. There's not a single pillar of Islam which says it's far to go to university and take out a loan in order to do so. The vast majority of the world right now, billions of people are living, having gone to university without ever taking out any interest or any loan. Because in many other countries, you don't need that. But we're choosing to live in this country and then we're choosing to do something caught on. We could, Allah says, to travel the earth and do whatever we need to do to worship Him, right? So these are not excuses that we're allowed and if we've done it, we have to make repentance. Same thing with personal loans, with business loans, with credit card loans, with high APR on our credit cards and that we don't pay off. All these things that the consumeristic lifestyle that America, the capitalistic country has built itself on, we have to take ourselves into account because there's serious repercussions that haven't even talked about what's going to happen in the final afterlife. We said the blind then are those who rule with tyranny.  Proud of their, we're assuming here this means religious actions, but it could mean other things as well.  The people, these are Muslims, he's talking here about, he said, these are gathered in groups distinct from the groupings of the Muslims. So either they're not necessarily Muslims, they could be anyone who could be in this category according to this wording. In this group obviously the ulama and the judges, right?  Those who are crucified on trunks of fire are those who frequently denounced people to the authorities. Don't know exactly what that one means. Those who are fouler than putrid cadavers are those who enjoyed passions and pleasures, but withheld Allah's due and their wealth. So what was, we were supposed to pay in our zakat and our charity, didn't people, we didn't do it, but we enjoyed the money that we had.  And we can't dodge it, we can't live our life the way we do and then ignore these types of things. And those who wear these robes of tar are the arrogant, the boastful and the conceited. So this is one of the longer narrations, but there's others that also talk about. So he says then that there is a standing place where people will be assembled. So there's this huge plane where the Prophet's system said mankind will be gathered on a single plane and each will hear the summoner and the eyesight will be penetrating. It will be very serious in terms of the events that they're saying, and then there is going to be a standing place where the Jin, human beings and the Sheyateen and the cattle and the wild beasts and the predators are all assembled, are all in one place. And it will be very, very, very crowded and there will be turmoil and difficulty and the sun will draw near until it is one mile above their head. One mile. So the sun right now, I don't know how many millions or a hundred millions of miles is the way it is, but it's just if it were one mile, two miles, three miles closer, life could not exist on this planet. If it were a few miles farther, everybody would freeze. That's how perfect it is the sun's distance from the planet Earth. This will be one mile from the resurrection, from the plane of resurrection. So if someone is not under the shade of God's throne, imagine the intensity and the heat and the sweat that we will feel on that day. And again, all the key to all of this is righteousness. All of it, all good lies in Taqwa and a good relationship with Allah. And Ahlulah, good Ahlulah was default. So all of these things can be protected from Him. He says, people will be afflicted then by such great hardship, such heat and thirst, intense heat and thirst that only Allah knows of. They will perspire, meaning sweat, until their sweat penetrates the depths of the earth to a depth of 70 arm lengths. 70 arm lengths is usually an expression that's used to mean a significant amount, it could be a lot more than just 70 arm lengths. But that's how deep the sweat will penetrate into the earth. And He says, the sun will come near on the day of judgment. People will sweat. There will be those who will reach to their heels, to the middle of their legs, to their knees, to their thighs, to their waists and to their mouths. And then here He raised His hand to His mouth and some will be completely covered. He would put His head over it. So it's very, very, very, very, very intense. It's not a, these matters. Imam Ghazali, he mentions in his book on Yom al-Kiyamah and death. He says that the vast majority of human beings don't believe really in the day of judgment. He said they don't really believe in it. He said they really believe in among the Muslims. He's talking about the Muslims. If they really believed in it, he said there's no way we would live our lives, the way we live our lives. He's like the reality of the day of judgment of what's going to happen, has yet to penetrate the hearts of the vast majority of us. So what we have to do is reflect, reflect, reflect. We talked about this in one of the other texts. The importance of tafakkur, sitting, thinking, contemplating, visualizing, really internalizing what is going to happen to me and how am I going to be able to do this? And then what's going to happen, usually when someone does that, is they start to tremble and they start to weep for Allah. Because they realize I can't do it without Allah. And then we realize how in need we are of Allah and our, our abject servitude before Him that we need Him in every moment. And if we need Him in every moment in this life, surely we will need Him in every moment in this, in the day of judgment. And then we realize we can't do it on our own. We turn to Allah and now one starts to live a life where, where the reality of, of, of, or we start to hopefully experience the reality of slavehood and servitude to Allah. But the reflection is very, very, very critical. So I'll mention one more and then we'll end. InshaAllah he says, alaihi s-salatu wa s-salam. So he gives a lot of plays out on this day. One of them, he says, one will be under the shade of their charity on the omel kiyamah, the shade of their charity. So give, we should give while we can. While we have the money, while we have the ability, give. Because these are types of things that will protect us. And another, and well, this is the, the, the very important hadith. We'll cover this in a moment. Seven kinds of people will be shaded by Allah and the shade of His throne. When no shade will exist except Allah's. The first is a just leader, a just ruler. The second, a young person who grew up in the worship of Allah. The third, someone whose heart was attached to the masjid. The fourth, two people who have love for each other for the sake of Allah. Who came together in this and separated in this. The next, someone who when they were seduced in this narration, a man who went a woman of rank and beauty attempted to seduce him said, I fear Allah. I fear Allah. This is what happened in the story of Yusuf, alaihi salam. And of course, you know, you would assume this happens in the inverse way as well. That anyone who guarded their chastity when they could have given it, right? When it was very easy to give in, but they guarded their chastity. The next, someone who concealed their charities, they gave so much charity. They concealed it such that their left hand did not know what the right hand spent. Obviously, that doesn't mean literally the left hand, may or may not actually have knowledge, but it means just giving and giving and giving and not telling other people about it. Just being really humble about the charity that we give, right? And then another one. The one who remembered Allah when alone and whose eyes overflowed with tears. Whose eyes overflowed with tears. So these are among the seven. I believe there are various ways in which we can seek Allah's protection against us. But this hadith, which is a famous hadith, this is the type of thing we want to be in every single category here. We don't want to take any chances, no chances. We've got to be people who the last one, we regularly weep before Allah. We spend time with Allah alone, weeping before Him. Communal worship is critical. In Ramadan, we also want to make sure we have time just for alone worship, especially in the last 10 nights. And that sunnah in the last 10 nights is to withdraw from creation. So we spend a little time with the people, with the group and do whatever we can in Jama'at and then go by ourselves, be with Allah alone, weeping before Him. It's easier to become emotional in our connection, usually when we're alone, if we're able to. Giving a lot of charity. So this is practically speaking, it's very easy.  Let it go, so you don't even have to think about it. But it's just being done, right? Like just like we subscribe to things, we have a charity subscription, which is going. And the more we can, every time we get an increase in income, hopefully our charity should increase, inshallah. Every time, even if we don't get an increase, we should keep giving an increase and more. But these types of things are easy for us to do practically speaking, right? Another one, we don't necessarily want to be in a category where we're faced with having to choose the hadith about someone who, someone of rank and beauty comes to try to seduce them. So maybe that's not one we seek. And the next one, the one whose heart is attached to the masjid. That's, what does that mean? It means between the prayers, between the Jumma, someone is excited to go back to the masjid. A sign of iman and belief, people we like being in the masjid. A sign of hypocrisy, we can't wait to get out. And when is this thing going to be done? When is Jumma going to be done? When is this hadith going to be done? I got to go. Not like if we have to go to work, that's different, but like just like, I just want to get out of here. I just like, I'd rather go and, you know, go to the mall or something like that. Right? This being attached to the masjid is a very noble thing. And the one that hopefully we can all do, because we talked about youth and youth is really in that age before 35 or 40, growing up in the worship of Allah. Trying to do worship while we're still, like while we have choices to not do it. Everybody as they get older, as we talked about, you're compelled really. It's not, the choice is not the same. When it's younger, there's so many more passions and options that are available. And a just leader could be a leader who if everybody is leading someone or another, right? This could be someone is leading a team at work.  If you have younger siblings, you're a leader of those various ways. If someone is in an organization and they're leading, so on and so forth, right? So there's various doors by which we enter from. We want to be like the people who don't leave any door open or closed rather, don't leave any door closed. Every door we want open. We want to go through all of them as much as possible. And he mentions then whoever reprieves someone who is insolvent or agrees to reduce their debt will be shaded by Allah's throne.  It's forgiven. Alhamdulillah. So with that, if there's any questions, we'll do the questions now in shala and then we'll pray it's not going to be shal. And then next time we hope in shala we can finish. I think we should be able to finish this section on the day of judgment. Let's see. In shala we'll finish this section and then the following class will do the jannah and jannah. And then those are the lives of man, of the human being. That question. If you take out a loan, so you take the interest-bearing instrument, even though you could pay it off, that would be haram. Yeah, so any time anyone, so even if you can't pay it off, interest has nothing to do with whether one can pay it off or not. The instrument in and of itself is something that invites the wrath of Allah. Allah says in the Quran, in Surah Bakr, this is Quran. Allah and his messenger wage war on the one who takes interest. They don't say that about alcohol, or about adultery, about murder. I mean, there's so many other big sins which have big punishments, but who wage war because the economic system, one of the first things the Prophet Salaam did in Makkah is he fixed the unjust economic system, which interest was a big part of unjust economic system. So there's various ways in which one can go about building credit as an example. I mean, this is not a class on that, but let's just say you could take out a credit card and as long as you're making the payments every month, you're never charged interest on the credit card. So credit card in and of itself is not impermissible if someone is making the payments such that they will never be charged interest because the interest only happens when you exceed the credit limit. If it's like 5K limit and you exceed it and you don't pay off the balance, the interest comes. But the instrument which bears the interest in and of itself, so the auto loan, if they say, hey, there's 6% APR, 5% APR, and we take anything more than 0% APR, that in and of itself puts us in the category of haram. And now we have to do whatever we can to pay off that loan, right? The only workaround would be that if from a financial point of view, if somebody were to go and buy a car and they were to say, put in the contract the amount that into my principal that and make sure that it's 0% APR and then you pay off the amount and you can do it over a phase period of time. Contractually, that would be valid in the Sharia. But in form and in taking out the instrument in and of itself in this scenario would not be impermissible. And it's not really a view. It's also not a viewpoint thing. Like we want to make sure with regards to these topics, this is black and white, halal haram, right? There's not really gray areas when it's Quran. Gray areas come when it's like a situation of desperation and then there's a gray areas that can come. Yes? You're so smart. Like a bank or was there another example of it? Was it what you were referring to a bank or another example? Yeah, good question. So the question was what would, in terms of working for a company in which let's say interest is the primary means of revenue or that's like with the role. So if you're in the role of actually collecting that, like that is your role. You are the loan officer. You are something else. That's not a permissible job according to the vast majority of Olima. There's difference of opinion. I go by the opinion that one should avoid it entirely. Just like the institution in and of itself we should avoid it. That's like the dominant opinion that I've always learned is that working for companies in which that is the primary means of revenue, we should avoid it because there's ample opportunities out there. I have seen opinions in which if you're not the one who's actually doing the core work of that, there's some room for like a rucksack, like permissibility, but it doesn't really like, I don't think it holds that much strength because there's still so much risk in it mixing with the income, but it would depend on like a case by case on a basis, yeah. Life insurance is haram, categorically, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, life insurance, yeah, sure.  The first spiritual concept is you don't place your trust in anything except Allah. So you don't say that I'm gonna take out a $500,000 policy so that my children when I die, even though I didn't do anything to earn that policy, what you're doing is you're saying, I put in, you might have put in $1,000, people do this, they gain the system that they like fake things and all these types of things, but they make $100,000 and all of a sudden, $500,000 appears, right? And they put their trust in that policy and not in Allah. That as a concept is haram, coupled with the fact that you turned a little bit of money without any like real, there's no investment in that, there's no shared like the way a stock would work or you have, you share in the up and in the down and then you would all of a sudden that policy would turn into a bunch of money. Insurance in general in the Sharia is a very like debated subject, but we live in a country we live in, you have to take out certain policies like car insurance and these other types of things, but there's a lot of debate amongst the Fokhaha and majority of them leaning towards like, you should just avoid all of these, but you can't in certain circumstances, right? But the life insurance is not mandatory at all, so we should avoid life insurance policies, avoid accepting payout from life insurance policies and so on, yeah. Like auto insurance or home insurance or something like that, yeah. No, I don't think it's, it's not at that black and white to say that it's for Sharia, you would want to like check and that situation I would recommend checking with a Faki, a scholar of Fik who studied the jurisprudential principles that relate very specific, because this stuff is deep, it's like not simple. You go really, really, really deep, there's a lot of principles that relate to it, because it's not as like black and white. If you're selling life insurance policies and that's your main job, that would be avoidable, right? But there are other areas where there's probably rooms. I would actually, you would want to check and maybe we can talk after, I could try to think of somebody you'd refer if you have deeper questions to refer you to who's like studied in this, because I'm not studied in finance jurisprudential rules, yeah. Sister side, anything? Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I was thinking about this a little bit. If you have, let's say you have a chase or if you think it's a big company, do you think it's a bigger company? I think you can actually call the things and give you some purpose on that. So is it participle of like, does it tell you both you can compare and gain some interest? Is it okay to just have that account be like, how does this money end up with an interest gain? Or should you just close the venue and have to find money while you're in the office? Yeah, the question is about bank accounts and the interest that's collected and earned. So first, you avoid the accounts which have high APYs. So there's no, there's like, so the checking accounts, they give no money at all in checking accounts, right? Unless you have like $5 million, $20 million, they're not giving anything on the vast majority of us in terms of what we keep in checking account, right? Maybe a situation is different, I'm the la la bless you. But anyhow, so that is the, let's say it's like two cents or $2 at the end of the year. What you do with that, if you did get that, you actually just give it away. You donate that amount. So it wouldn't be something that you would actually keep and you just take that amount and intention it, this is the amount that I've earned. But intentionally opening like a savings account, which allows you to make a lot of money on the APY because it's locked there for a period of time. That would be, again, an impermissible instrument. There would be no need to do that, right? If you have your money though, in a savings account, that just has like, again, a very, very, very minor percentage.  And it tells you at the end of the year, this is the amount that you got. It's usually very negligible and you just make sure to give it away. Yeah, make that intention. Yeah. Give it to us and then we're going to buy cash. Yeah, yeah. If you don't give it to your bills, you give it to them. Yeah, giving the money, if we have that type of money, the little bits that we get, you give it to any charity. It's not a, you don't have to give it to like the worst charity in the world. It's, you know, it definitely don't give it to non-Muslim charity or some Zionist or something like that. We wanna just give it to any, any charity is generally fine. Just like give that money away. It doesn't need to be like destroyed or something like that, right? But it's a wealth that we do not want to keep. We're saying Allah, this is not money that I want to actually keep. And I am bound by the circumstances that I'm in. There's varying degrees. I'm sure there's a lot more depth to this topic. For the sake of time, we probably won't get into all the nuances of it. Maybe some of the scholars said other things and to give it to other places or to get rid of it entirely. I'm not sure if this is just the minimal amount that I've learned about it is, yeah, in line with the kind of way you're saying it. Just kind of give it away, yeah. Other questions, questions online. I have a question. Salam, how about Door Dash? If it's Haram food that we bring? That's a really good question. So if you're, I'm assuming the question is if you're delivering the Haram food, right? Yeah, if you're outright delivering like alcohol, that would be a problem. If you're delivering like a burger that's not halal, that's not necessarily the same. So it's a little bit tricky. If you could send me a DM, I can do a little more research and give me some more details on that. So I'm wondering how can we attach ourselves to the masjid and knowledge if they're not available to us? Good question. So the intention is what matters here. So let's say we live in a community where we don't have a masjid. We make a strong intention, yalla. If there were a masjid, I would love to be there. And one day I would love to be the person who helps build a masjid in this area or in this community. So that's the intention that we want to try and make. With regards to knowledge, alhamdulillah in the time we live in, there's ample ways to learn knowledge even if it's not locally available. So online, a lot of ways I would highly recommend for the one asking the question or for anyone else, seekersguidance.org is a platform which has authentic Islamic knowledge just taught for free in all the key sciences of Islam or most of the key sciences of Islam. So in Naqidah, in Fit, in Tasgiyah, in Sohof and in Arabic if you'd like. And so there's various different types of knowledge that are taught. You can get the free classes, learn them. There's like sometimes they have 20 different sessions. It's like there's a curriculum, you follow along, you can listen to the recording, take it live. So there's actually ample ways to do it. The key is if you learn online to do so with reliable scholars and YouTube is good but be careful of information on YouTube that could be off versus like an authenticated website that's a little bit more real. Just want to clarify, if you have a credit card it's paid off before you fall into an interest it's okay to have, yeah. If we have a credit card and we're not letting the interest ever touch the actual payment we are okay because all you're doing is you're borrowing money for a period of time. You're paying that money when it's due and it's 0% is charged. What you avoid is ever being late and getting into the insane APRs that they have. Okay, we'll do a few more questions. What if we work in a bakery that have Huram products? Will that job be Huram? No, you would assume that the risk that you're getting would be from the Halal products, the permissible products especially if you're talking about minor ingredients that there's a difference of opinion on. So you usually would be fine there but if you're working at a liquor bakery or something I don't know if there's a thing but a lot of people they put alcohol in their baked goods if that's where you're working yeah, I would avoid that. You're making all your money from people who are drinking or if you're working at a cannabis bakery that would be Huram. Okay, are there major signs before the 40 days of fog? We didn't mention the 40 days of fog in today's class. The major signs that you and I want to make sure that we know of are first, the coming of the Dajjal, the sun rising on the west, Jesus' son of Mary descending, these major blasts or that earth shaking events that take place, the beast that comes and the adjuj and majuj, those are the ones that we want to make sure that we know of based on this hadith. Oh, the name of the website is Seeker's Guidance. Seeker like, seeker, S-E-E-K-E-R-S, guidance.org. Yes, question. So yeah, the question is about credit card points. So credit card points are based on, there's no interest in credit card points. They're based on interchange fees and the interchange fees. So Visa charges like 2.6% interchange fee, MX charges like a 3.2% interchange fee, two merchants to allow for that service to happen. And what they're saying is, hey, instead of using the cash, when you use the credit card, we'll get the interchange fee and we'll give you a portion, like 1% of the interchange fee or half of the interchange fee or whatever else it is, because you used our service. So the way I've always understood it and there could be very different opinions on this, a lot of those best, obviously with all of these things I would recommend checking with the Mufti that credit card points are not userious and credit card points are not, there's nothing predatory about them. There's no predatory practices that are happening and or the interchange fee is based on like a interchange financial network that's been set up internationally. And then there's ways in which you're using their payment rails and they're benefiting and then they're passing off that sum of that benefit to you. Okay, I think we have one more question. How to become less materialistic? So that's interesting, Antonia. Yeah, it's an entire, it's a lengthy topic. There's three things one needs to do. First one, we need to know that Allah puts no worth towards materialism. Allah does not put worth towards materialism and towards wealth and money and fame and luxury and these types of materialistic things. So Allah doesn't put worth towards them, we wanna work on detaching these things from our heart. The second thing is when one starts to give more and more money and start to spend less let's say on themselves and more on other people, it's a way of ridding their heart of this materialism, of this love of materialism. The third way is that one reflects on the ahira and sees it as closer to them than the dunya that we live in. So if one does that and sees the reality of the ahira as closer, the materialism will all disappear. All the things that we get for the sake of the dunya will all just disappear at one point and they will go away. But the deeds, what are called the baqayat, the salihat and the good deeds that we do, they're everlasting.  The Lamborghini, the Bugatti, the Louis Vuitton, it's all gonna end up in the same junkyard at some point or like similar junkyards. Didn't do anything for me, right? Had I been less attached to that and maybe use that money in a little bit more of a better way, it would have been better for me. And so reflecting on what your wealth is supposed to be for will also be helpful, inshallah. So with that, we want to be mindful of time with the Trisat al-Isha, so we'll continue next time. Clarify buying car loan with bank loan is not permissible. Yeah, it is not permissible to buy a car with a bank loan, not permissible. It's interest bank loan, unless you get what's called a 0% APR loan, which some in this interest rate environment, you're probably not gonna get it, but in other environments, auto agencies and dealership would offer 0%. So if it's 0.0%, you're not paying any interest, you're good to go, but if it's anything more than that then you are, yeah. Alhamdulillah, rabbi al-alameen. Allahumma salli wa sallam, abaraka ala sayyidina Muhammadin al-awwaliin wa salli wa sallim, abaraka ala sayyidina Muhammadin al-akhirin wa salli wa sallim, abaraka ala sayyidina Muhammadin al-malil alayla yawmidin. Rabbanatina fiddan ya hasuna tawafil akhara ya hasuna tawakina adabanna Rabbanah afliqalina sabran nathabitaq qadamana wa sunna laqqum ilkaafirin. La ilaha illa anta subhanak inni. Kuntun minab al-alameen, ya Allah. Ya Rahman, ya Rahim, ya Kareem, ya Rab al-alameen.


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards, and I'm ripping one box of 2021 top scrom platinum anniversary baseball lights for Matthew G.   Wayne Rooney is coming down for now. Wow, Bradley bold move taken down the So we're looking for Special anniversary like mini diamonds in this one Anthony Santander Refractor, I like Rookie Lewin Diaz got Mike Cameron on the color match Aqua wave, that's sick Nice one there for ya Mike Cameron That's a name Big poppy on the back there. Glad he junior got Cody Hewer on the These are the light box exclusives the anniversary mini diamond black and whites. I think you get four per box Something like that get like one auto a key. So they're pretty rare, but they're possible Julio Urias mini diamonds a Vibrance, I don't know Bradley. I don't think so Alejandro Kirk rookie Lester Romero I Got Humberto Machia to 70 on the rose gold mini diamonds. Oh, yeah, I might have been top-loading I might have been top-loading for sure that sounds right Refractor Marcus Simeon blue jays Avenger Seth Elage Mark McGuire as an a Jorge Guzman Jose Garcia got Garrett Anderson X Fractor one per box Nice vat hit for the angels there. He had a disgusting card in MLB show Last year, yeah, like my buddy my buddy had him Malik Smith, Berge Jenkins. Hey Brennan. How you doing man? What's up, Brennan? My buddy had him in MLB the show and yeah, he had PlayStation so he had played for like years and years and years because he loved baseball and Dalton Varshio mini exclusive Yeah, sounds good Andrea. Sounds good for sure And I have Xbox so it hadn't come out for Xbox I was terrible at it and he would destroy me every game we played William Contreras and he had that Garrett Anderson card and he just absolutely just let me have it Okay, Anderson, so I'm like I've like trauma Anderson cards base Yeah, you got some time before it comes for sure Trout will be back in the line. I'm nice Steve sacks. Leave a zilly.  Good luck here Matthew Silver Nick Castellanos that will do it for the break for you Matthew. Congrats on the hits. We'll get those right out Yeah, appreciate it as always


So, how much potential does the market see in the future of rotorcraft? You know, it's a pretty good market. You just have to sort of get past what happened in the past five, six, seven years. I mean, there was such a huge ramp up when you've got something like 50, 60 percent growth because of the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan and of course the burnout of existing fleets. When you remove that as an anomaly, this is a long-term growth market. Unfortunately, there is the experience of building down from that massive upsurge and that of course means that people have to shrink a bit and the industry might have to shrink a bit. But in terms of long-term growth expectations, excellent. This is not a market with systems that need to be, or can be replaced by some disruptive technology. The scout mission might be an exception to that, but everything else, what you see is what you get in terms of requirements. So I actually feel pretty good about this. And if you look at the rather ecumenical nature of requirements worldwide, we do a really good job of meeting market needs. This is a, it's not like the fighter market where there are too many players vying for the top end.  Here you have a bunch of folks who are selling, say, squad lifters, attack helicopters, naval ASW, what have you, and a very eager, very broad-based market of about 40 countries or more that wish to buy those products. This is a pretty good functioning market. Thank you so much for this interview. Pleasure. Thank you.