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In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful. All praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honor of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, and upon his family and companions. And peace be upon him. Now, brothers and sisters, this is the year 2025. Right? We just came into the year 2025. If I change one number and make it 21, 25, we are looking at 100 years from now. 100 years from now, if somebody takes a picture, of course we don’t know whether the building itself will be there, inshallah it will be there. But one thing for sure, that everybody who is here in this room, whether they are young, whether they are old, small, big, anything, not a single one of them will be there in their pictures in 2020, 21, 25. 100 years from now, we will all be dead. Our children will be dead. Probably grandchildren will be dead. Maybe some will be there. Great grandchildren may be there. Now let me ask you another question. How many of you know the name, name? Not Jeddah, name of your great grandmother? Either side. Mother’s grandmother or father’s grandmother? You and who else? Who but you? Great grandfather maybe. Some people will know. Some won’t even know that. So what do you think I’m saying to you? I’m saying to you that in 100 years, even your name will be gone. Your own, your own descendants who have your blood in their veins, who have your genes, they all know that you existed. So if they don’t even know you existed, do you think they are making dua for you? Logically no, no? They don’t even exist yet. If somebody is sitting in my place 100 years from now and he says, you know to Asad’s great-great-grandson or by, well I am the last on my line so I have nothing, no one to come behind me but others, what was the name of your great-great-grandfather? Now why is this important? It is important because all of this will go, including our name. Our name goes very fast. Believe me, our name goes so fast. I’ve said this so many times. You know when our name goes, the minute our eyes close. I’m sitting here. If you want me to move, you will tell me, Shekh Yawar, please move here. Or you will say, move Shekh Yawar from here to there. Yes? But tomorrow if I die in this place and my janaza is done in this masjid and I’m lying there, and you need to move, what will you say? Will you say move Shekh Yawar? No, move the body. Move the janaza. Move the bayt. And if somebody says, ya Shekh, this is your brother, this is your friend Shekh Yawar. Shekh Yawar, Shekh Yawar Khas. This is the mayt. Our name goes very fast. Some memory will remain, some people will remember you for some time. After that their memory also gone. But you know what remains? What will remain until the Day of Judgment? What will come out on the Day of Judgment? What will be with us when we stand before Allah? You know what? Our actions, our deeds, our beliefs, our akidah and our amal, they don’t go anywhere. They stay with us. Your car will stay here. How you bought that car will go with you. Your house will stay here. How you bought the house, whether you took an interest based loan and a mortgage to buy the house or not, that will go with you. Your job will stay here, your shop will stay here, all the goods in the shop will stay here. But your decisions, your actions, my actions, my decisions, they will go with us. They have eternal life, they don’t die. They will be with us. And they will not only be with us, we will be answering for them. We will answer for them. We have in my city, in Hyderabad in our whole country, one of the prime ministers, was a man called Nawab Salarjung, Salarjung the third. Because the father and grandfather all had the same title, so Salarjung the third. So he wanted to marry a particular girl, his grandmother refused to agree, so he never married anybody. And he spent his wealth collecting things. He was very fond of the wealth. And he spent his wealth collecting things. He was very fond of different collecting different things. So he collected all kinds of paintings and jade, diamond cups and jade cups and saucers and different kinds of clocks and millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of collection. It is the largest collection of things, of artifacts of a single person, in the whole world. There is a huge museum called Salarjung Museum. And people say that in the, you know, many, many things were stolen, watered, but still there is a whole big building full of things. But where is Salarjung? Gone. Things are all here. People are paying a ticket every day to go and see it. This is the clock, this is the clock. Somebody sent me a thing saying that, what is the Facebook guy’s name? Mark Zuckerberg. The guy looks like a fish. Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg bought a latest watch which he bought which has a hand. It’s like a hand. And it shows the time with the hand. So five, four, three, two, one, like this, right? Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And if you think that is a lot of money, he bought one before that for eight and a half million dollars. Karvash. Now watch. He has, New Year’s Eve, everybody else went to some place. He went surfing to the Bahamas to Tahiti. So he sent his super yacht, which has a companion yacht as a support vessel. And they burned four hundred and four hundred thousand gallons of water. And they burned four hundred and four hundred thousand gallons of gas, of diesel. I’m telling you, this is unfortunately these are the influencers, these are the icons, these are the role models. Innaar illahi wa nathar hazeem. That’s why I say read history. If you read history then you’ll know that this is peanuts compared to what others had before this. But they have also gone, these will also go. But what remains is actions. What remains is whether we please Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala or not. And especially in this country, we live in a country where, alhamdulillah, we have the freedom to practice our religion. Not only do we have freedom, every time I tell you, every time I think America is surprising, America surprises me even more. Yes, last night I got a call from a friend of mine who is a priest. He called me and he said there is a man in the country who is a priest. A friend of mine who is a priest, he called me and he said there is a man here in Holyoke Hospital who is a Christian. And he says to me, Christianity doesn’t make sense to me and I’m drawn toward Islam, so I want to talk to somebody about Islam. So this priest called me, he’s telling me this, the priest is saying this. He said, can you meet this guy? I said, sure. So I met him, I said sure. So I met him, I said, we went last evening. We sat and talked to him, he asked many questions and so on. We spent about 45 minutes, I think it was something, maybe one hour. And at the end of that he took Shadr. Alhamdulillah. If I tell you the story, it sounds like a bit of a story. A Christian priest is calling me and saying that the man is a Christian and he said Christianity doesn’t make sense to me. So please come and speak to me about Islam. I said, what? Can this happen in any country, tell me? So what must we do? What must we do? We must make sure that we practice our religion in the most beautiful way possible. Number two, we must make sure that we take this religion to other people. If people are hungry, they want to know. They want to know who is Allah, they don’t know who to ask. Right? Take the message to them. Introduce Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to them. And remember that it’s not only about giving lectures. That is the least important part of it. It’s about our manners, about our akhlaq, it’s about how we treat people, how we deal with people. It’s about our own practice of honesty and integrity and kindness and compassion in our lives. This is what changes hearts. Not some complicated, you know, mathail or fiqh. Not some complicated questions of Islamic law. No. It’s our daily dealing. How we talk to people, talk to people with sweetness, with a smile on your face. Be generous, be kind. And people’s hearts turn. That is the whole, this is the whole… And very simple things. Do what nobody else will do. That’s my principle in life is that do what everybody else does not do. In a positive way, do what nobody else will do. For example, I’ll be really, really give you. Your postman, the male, what is the name of the postman? The mailman, the mail… What do they call them in America? The postman is called something else. Mailman or mail delivery person or some such thing. Mail carrier, yeah, mail carrier. How many of you have thanked the mail carrier? How many of you, for example, this season time, this end of December or something, right? Don’t get into the fehli maasala maasala. If I give him a Christmas present, I will become a caffer. No, nothing will happen to you. Believe me. Don’t give a Christmas present. Give it on the first of December, who cares? But do you give them something at the end, once in a year, right? A box of chocolates or something and say, thank you very much. You bring the mail to me, you know, summer, winter in the snow, whatever. Do you do that? What do you think will happen if you do it? Because believe me, nobody is doing it. You do it, you stand out. What about the garbage truck drivers? You got two. You got the trash truck and the recycle truck. What do you think happens if you give it to them? I’ll tell you what happens because I’ve been giving from the time I moved into this house. Last four years. They wait for it. And it’s always in this time, so it’s usually it is snowing, it is cold, it is, you know, and then you don’t know what time the guy comes out to wait there and sort of watch for him. Otherwise he goes away. But when I gave him that thing, he was seeing a smile on his face. Simple things. Please do it. What does it cost you? One box of chocolates or something? Get it, give it. Neighbours, people like this makes a huge difference. Our actions. This is what lasts. This is what people remember us by. And so I remind myself when you let us make the most of what time Allah has given us. We don’t know when that time ends. We don’t know when we will meet Allah. So let us make the most of the time. Earn the Amal. Because the mal, the wealth will stay here. The Amal will go with us. Action will go with us. Earn those actions. I ask Allah SWT to make it easy for us, to help us to do it and to be pleased with us. I ask Allah SWT to make it easy for us, to help us to do it and to be pleased with us.
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