We're here yet again for another Jumu'a, Mubarak'a, where Allah Ta'ala allows us to gather and Allah Ta'ala, his name manifests on the, his name Al-Jami'a manifests on Yawm Al-Jumu'a. One of the Dr. Omar Farouq, Abdullah Mi'Allah Preserver, he said that the name Al-Jami'a is also manifest in, the greatest manifestation of that name is in a tree, because of how all the branches are gathered into one trunk, and so that's the gathering, right? And as well as on the day of gathering on Yawm Al-Qiyamah, it's also a manifestation of Allah Ta'ala's name. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, من حسن الإسلام المرء تركهما لا يعنيه. And the beauty of a person's Islam is that he leaves off what has no meaning for him. In other words, in English we say, you mind your own business. That's actually an Islamic principle, that you mind your own business. Things that have absolutely no relevance for us, we leave it alone, right? That's part of the حسن الإسلام المرء. It's from the beauty of a person's religion, right? So it's from إحسن that a person does that, right? And it's a beautiful thing to do, to leave off things that have no meaning for us. And it also indicates that it's also a beautiful thing to busy ourselves with things that do have meaning for us. That also we can understand that from that statement, is that we busy ourselves with things that have meaning for us. Allah Ta'ala says in the Quran that from his ayat, from his signs, are that he created the heavens and the earth. وإختلافوا السناتكم وألوانكم, right? And from his signs are that the differences in your tongues or in the languages that you speak and the differences in your skin tones, right? So those are the ayat of Allah Ta'ala, the language that we speak and the skin tones that we have.  These are all signs of Allah Ta'ala. When you look at all the languages, Allah Ta'ala chose the final revelation to be in the Arabic language, right? It's قرآن العربية. إِنَّا انزلَّهُ قرآن العربية لَعَلَّكُمْ تَعْقِلُونْ We revealed it as an Arabic Qur'an so that you can, so that you may use your intellect. And so, in addition to that, and so what that causes is that it causes the Arabic language to be elevated above all of the languages. Because, you know, the Qur'an also says وَخِتَامُهُ مِسْكِ and the ending is, it's a seal of musk, right? It's a, which is to elevate the ending. Well, if Allah Ta'ala is going to end with Arabic as the last revelation, that means it has some significance and some import. And in addition to that, our Prophet ﷺ, he's an Arab prophet, right? He was an Arab, right? And so these are all reasons that Arabic has been elevated amongst all other languages. During the caliphate of Sayyidina Omar, رضي الله عنهو, Islam spread in several different directions out of the Arabian Peninsula. But one of the directions that it spread in was into the western Asian countries and into Central Asia. And this has an amazing impact on the Central Asian countries. So much so that wherever Arabic went, it actually changed the languages that Arabic went into. It changed the cultures. And a lot of the languages that we speak in here, the grammars, the vocabularies, they've all been affected by Arabic. And so much so that the six men who preserved the sayings of our Prophet ﷺ and books referred to as the Sahih Sitta, the six sound collections of hadith, all of them are non-Arab. Those six men, right? So you could say that it's definitely that, you know, this is from Allah Ta'ala's Qadr that he's, this is how it worked out. This is what happened. This is what he did. And he also says in the Qur'an that, We sent it down and we're going to protect it, right? And it could refer to the Qur'an. It could also refer to this deen. This deen is protected. There's no, this deen, right? Orthodoxy of this deen, it's known. And if anybody wants to know what it is, they can figure it out. And if anybody doesn't want to know, be Orthodox, they can, they have the free will to do that as well. But this deen and we can point our finger to those six men who devoted their lives to preserving the words of our Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. And they were all non-Arab. And they learned this deen, and in addition to that, they mastered this language because they wouldn't be able to preserve the words of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam had it not been for their understanding of Arabic. Had they not known what Arabic was, they wouldn't be able to preserve this deen. They wouldn't be able to collect the sayings of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. And so what I want to do is I just want to go through a list of a few people. And they say that with the mentioning of SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, it mercies befall upon us. And in light of that, and also in light of just these names that we've always heard over the years and just to revisit these names and revisit these men who spent their lives preserving this deen for us as a way of perhaps us also being somewhat of a means of preservation of this deen for the next generations as well. Because whether we recognize it or not, we all have a responsibility of this. When we become mothers and fathers, we are responsible for passing this deen down to our kids and we get asked about that on Yom Ul Qiyamah. So we each one of us, we bear responsibility of preserving the deen. And if it's not preserved in the homes and in the households, then if we still adhere to the idea, oh, you know, Hamdulillah, masha'Allah, my kids go to Sunday school, as if it's not clear that that's not enough, that's not sufficient, then, you know, maybe in a few more years, it'll be clear that that's not sufficient. So the six, let's start off with the six scholars of hadith first. Imam Abu Khadi, right, the first one. His title is the city that's, it's in Uzbekistan, right? Imam Abu Khadi, he was born there and he's also buried in Uzbekistan, radiullahu anhu. Imam Muslim was born in Nisharpur in Iran. Imam Abu Dawood, a Sijistani from Sijistan in Iran, modern-day Iran. Imam Tirmidhi from Tirmiz in Uzbekistan. Imam Anasai from Nasa, which is also in, it's in Turkmenistan. Imam Ibn Maja, who is from Qazween in Iran, modern-day Iran. None of these countries or cities are in the Arabian Peninsula or even close to the Arabian Peninsula. It's a several-days journey to go to the Arabian Peninsula from these countries. And yet these are the six men that are responsible for preserving the words of our Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And the majority of our deen, it's, we recognize that the first and primary source is the Quran. If there's hadiths warning about people who just say that at the end of time, don't let me find you, just reclining on a pillow, just holding the Quran and saying, this is it, this is the deen. Because the Quran, only the Quran is not the deen. We recognize the hadith as a source of law in our deen. It's one of the sources of law, the second source of law, right? The primary source is the Quran, second source is the hadith. And these six men, they spent their lives preserving that for us, right? Ralli Allahu anhum. And not only that, that's just hadith, all right? That's just al-mahadith. What some of the most well-known Arab grammarians were of non-Arab descent. The Arab grammarians, they're of non-Arab descent. Imam Sibaway was born in Shiraz in Iran. Imam Sibaway, one of our leading grammarians and linguists who, you know, our linguists, they did amazing works. And, you know, you get, when you have differences of opinion, that's usually due to because of the breath of knowledge that a person has. When you have differences of opinion, we had two schools of grammar in Arabic. Two schools of grammar because they differed amongst each other of where language comes from. They had linguistic differences with each other. Schools of opinion don't arise from surface level knowledge. It arises from having deep knowledge in something. Right, it arises from having, that's why we, you know, four math hubs, you have deep disagreements with people because they went deep into the knowledge and there's four schools of law. And we had, we have schools of grammar. We had people that disagreed on grammar. That's how deep they went. Whether the basis of language is a noun or a verb, that was the difference they had. Cough, cough. So Sibaway, Imam Taftezani was born in Taftezan and then he's buried in Samarkand, one of our leading scholars of the rational sciences of Aqidah and of Arabic. Mullah Ali Al-Qari from the border of Iran and Afghanistan is buried in, he lived a lot of his life in the Arabian Peninsula. He wrote a very famous commentary on the Shemail of Imam Tirmidhi talking about the character of the Prophet ﷺ and it's all in Arabic. Imam Anasifi and let us not forget about Imam Al-Ghazali born in Iran and buried in Iran as well. Imam Al-Ghazali and he knew both languages. He knew Persian and Arabic and his longest work is in Arabic and the summary of that work is he wrote it in Persian and it's available. People can actually, they have access to that. It's written in Persian. We have Hul Tafseer is written in Persian by some of our great scholars who were, they didn't just write it in Persian because they were limited to it. They wrote it in Persian because they saw there was a need for that. But if they wanted to write it in Arabic they could have as well. And then let us not forget about Imam Buhaneefa who his father was not from the Arabian Peninsula. Imam Buhaneefa, he wasn't from Arab descent. And then also the great scholar, Mohammed Zakaria Kandahlawi who he's buried in Al-Baqir. He died in 1982. He's buried in Medina right outside the Masjid of the Prophet ﷺ. His first language was Urdu. He is the author of the books that we have the Fada'il-A'mal, Fada'il-Zakat, Fada'il-Al-Hajj. He's the author of those books. And he wrote a 15 volume commentary on Imam Malik's compendium of hadiths. It's a commentary all in Arabic. So that's his contribution to the preservation of this deen. 15 volumes, right? So these are, right, these are, and none of, we're not talking about Arabs here, right? We're not talking about Arabs. These are the non, this is the non-Arab contribution to Islam. And then obviously now that Islam has come here to the, to these shores here, we have people preserving this deen here as well in English too, right? Who also, they're fluent in Arabic and they're also doing their own work in Arabic as well. So we learn a lot of things. Arabic is one of those things that has to be learned. The Quran is in Arabic. If you have always been attempting to understand the Quran through translation, you're only getting part of the message. You're not getting the whole thing because as anybody knows translation is just only a translation. You can, it's never going to be 100%, right? It's never going to be 100%. You're, you lose part of the meaning in translation. So, and then, and then we have people who read Quran translation and they talk about Quran. You know, there's ISIS, there's like, how could you do that? You didn't even get the whole meaning and then yet you're still talking about it. How could you, right? Or about Hadith or the Prophet's son? There's a lot of intricacies in these things and once you, once you go into this, it just, it just, it doesn't end, right? It just doesn't end. It keeps going on and on. So Arabic is one of those things where it's, but it has to be learned. The Prophet's son said, Al-Mu'min al-Qawiyi khayrun wa ahabbu ila Allahi min al-Mu'min al-Da'eeef wa fi kullin khayr الي حرس على ما ينفعك ولا تعجُذ. The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah Ta'ala than the weak believer, but in both of them there's goodness. There's goodness in both of them. يحرس على ما ينفعك. Be, be covetous over what's beneficial for you. Be covetous for what's beneficial for you, right? Where your benefit lies. And And if understanding the book of God is not a beneficial thing, then, right? And then, don't deem yourselves incapable. How many times have you heard, oh, that's Arabic. Who has time to learn that? I'm busy. Who's going to deal with Arabic? It's too hard. And then we have people who, you know, one of our teachers used to call them the Alif Badtah students, because every year they take Arabic classes, there's always the alphabets, just from Alif to Ya, Alif to Ya. That's all they did, because after they got to Ya, they said, oh, I'm dropping, I can't deal with this stuff. Wa la tarjahs, don't deem yourselves incapable. That's not the way of the believer. When the believer comes up across an obstacle, it's telekultwa ala Allah, and then, bismillah, you go ahead, you strive forward. That's, we don't, there's no such thing as, oh, it's too. Too hard. Oh, what is that? It's too hard? Really? I mean, the Prophet ﷺ never complained about anything being too hard. It's telekultwa ala Allah, and then you move forward, and you do what needs to be done. And then when you're done, wa ma tawfiqi illa billah. My tawfiqi isn't, it's only by God that I was able to do this, and that's what you ultimately see, ultimately see is that, this is, you know, Allah's, His tajalli of manan upon us, right? He's al manan, he's the bestower of favors, right? Alhamdulillah. I'll tell you, I'll tell you this, wa astaghfirullah li walaykum wa lisa'iril misli min yaqam, astaghfiruhu innahu wa l-ghafuru r-raheem.


Yeah, we on Boss Talk 101. Yeah, it's this, being that you spar with Earl, Earl Spence. How did that happen? Yeah, Spence, Junior, how did you end up doing that? Oh, man. I mean, how many times you them got whooped over there trying to get that ring right there? A lot of times, man. A lot of times. I got my good days, too, though. All right, no, you can't tell Lowe's because he a champion. You can't even talk about this. If you ask Tim, he ain't going to say, oh, he'll push over and then he going to say, dude can fight. Like, that dude can fight. But this the thing, we've been fighting each other all our lives. Like, he's been a rival of mine since we was kids. The rivalry broke by the time he went to the Olympics then because I quit boxing. Oh, so you used to box him on the streets. I know. We fought amateur together. Oh, amateur.  I feel like I beat him the first time. They took it from you. I feel like they took it from me. They niggas took it from you. You got the tape? I feel that I ain't got the tape. Damn. He say he got the tape, but I say he put it out. Put the tape out then. It was a pretty close fight. It could have went either way. Like, he say he went one. I say I won. It is what it is, but it was a good fight. It was it was crunk. But like the second and third fight, by the time he started going to go sport with Floyd, make one out of the other guy, he came back and he beat the snot. I'm talking about you beat me bad one time. I was like, he beat me up so bad, we fighting. Like we in the ring, this is a real fight. Judges, everybody around. We fighting. We going at it the first round. By this time, I'm like, man, this dude different. Second round. Second round come out. He hit me to the body and I'm just like. He walk you down. I see that nigga walking people down all the time. He hit me to the body. I'm losing stamina. I can't breathe by this time. I'm like, God, he's like in the middle of the fight, no joke. I am not lying. He jabbing me. He's like, Judges, I said, what? You ain't been training right? I said, in the middle of the fight. In the middle of the fight. We fighting like in the middle. Everybody knows this much out. And he's jabbing me right here.  He lean in, boom, drop. I say, what? You ain't been training right? I said, nah. I said, don't take it light on me though. Come on. He kind of took it light on me, backed off me a little bit. Yeah. That's dope, man. But it was some times after that where you figured it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it's like, I didn't really figure him out. I never got a chance to figure him out in the amateurs. Like in the amateurs. He was just a better. I ain't going to even say he was the better fighter. He was just more. He had a better trainer? It wasn't even that. He was more hungrier. Like he started doing things that we wasn't doing. Like we started getting our minds. I think what messed me up was girls. There it is. Every time. I think the first time a girl called me cute, that's what. It was over, it was over. He is, he's cute. I think that's what messed me up. Because I started like just trying to talk to girl after girl after girl after girl. And he kind of stayed focused. Yeah, yeah. And he was doing the extra miles, the extra running. Running, yeah, y'all had to run all day. Yeah, he was doing it.  I had my brother. But by the time I figured out he was my brother, it's like, I ain't got to listen to this dude more. You got to listen to this, man. I'm the baby boy, Todd. Man, come on. And then like he got his dad. So it's just like, it's a different thing. Like it's a different feel. You got your dad. Like that's your dad.  My brother, he snatched me up. Mama! Yeah, yeah. So let me ask you about... But why did you stop? Why didn't you try to pursue boxing and come? He's still boxing. So I started back. No, I'm talking he stopped at that time because what he was saying, you said you stopped. Yeah, I stopped because like, it was a few fights that I thought I won as an amateur that I didn't get the decision. And I was like, man, this is politics. Like it's just like either, I'm fighting somebody whose fighter is cool with the refs or this and that and this and I know I'm beating these guys. How am I not getting the decision? So like tournaments that will qualify you for certain things, I didn't get the competing. EJ got the competing in it. And I was just like, I forget boxing. But I always stayed around some type of way, whether I was still hitting the bag or running or something like that. So like I retired like from amateur boxing. I was like 20 years old, probably like 19 years old. EJ went on to the Olympics. Yeah, he went on everywhere. Went on to the Olympics, turn pro. This is crazy. I quit boxing because of this guy told him this. I quit boxing because of this guy because I couldn't beat him as an amateur. I just quit boxing. I was like, yeah. My Earl spent, you don't say his name. Yeah. That nigga made you retire. That nigga made you retire? I couldn't beat him.  It wasn't a thing that I had to retire. It was just like, okay, like in boxing you have regional, state, and nationals. My nationals was Dallas because he was here. You know what I'm saying? He would go out and beat the whole national team. So it was like you were regionals, then the state is then, that's all the people from the regionals that won in they part and then they meet up at state. Then all the people at state meet up at nationals. That's when everybody's right. That's all the good people from each state. He beat everybody, but he was also in my city to keep me from going. So like, so I could never meet this guy at state or meet this guy at nationals or nothing. So he kept me from going. I feel like I could have beat anybody and possibly been ranked number two at least. But I couldn't get past the nose ring guy because he was here.