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In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the Universe. And peace and blessings be upon the Prophet Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah. And peace and blessings be upon the family of the Prophet Muhammad. Muneer and I have reached kind of halfway mark also in this trek around this beautiful lake. And we’re having a discussion and talking about certainty. And I was saying to Muneer that just walk, take slowly, walk slow motion. Just see Muneer’s steps. What is he doing? He’s taking a step forward. Now, when you’re taking a step forward, ask yourself, what am I doing? What you’re doing and what anybody is doing is you are consciously taking a decision to upset your equilibrium. Because the safest position for a person is to stand squarely on his feet, the width of his shoulders, his feet apart, the width of his shoulders and stay there. Don’t move. That is the safest position. But if you take that safe position, then you are not going anywhere. You’re going to be standing in one place until you drop dead. So that safe position is safe, but it’s not of any use to anybody. So what do we do? We consciously lean forward. Just walk and see. You can practice this yourself. When you’re walking, what are you doing? You’re consciously leaning forward, knowing that you will fall, knowing that there is a chance of you falling. And then automatically, it has become automatic. When you were a little kid, one year old, one and a half years old, it was not automatic. You had to do it. You did it consciously. But automatically, your leg comes forward and stops you from falling. That is called the process of walking, to consciously choose to lose your equilibrium. Put yourself in danger of falling and then move the other leg to stop yourself from falling. If by some chance, your other leg gets caught in the carpet or somebody trips you or something, you will fall. You will actually fall flat on your face, right? But you walk because that is the only way that we can get ahead. Nobody says, be safe, don’t walk. No, you have to walk. So we were talking about the attitude that we have to learning Islam. And I am talking about people like me and people like probably most of you who are listening to this podcast, people who have been born Muslims. In my family, I know that my ancestors have been Muslims practically from day one. From my mother’s side, they came from Madinah and from the time of the Vizier Salaam. So they have been Muslims for 14 plus centuries. On my father’s side, they came from Central Asia. So they were probably Muslims from maybe what, a thousand years or something like that, 1200 years. So Muslims for generation after generation after generation. We never saw anything else. We never saw anything other than Islam. We never saw our parents, grandparents, whoever worshipping anyone. Now that’s a good side of it. But the problem side of it is that therefore we don’t have enough value for Islam that Allah Almighty is going to give us. And by enough value I mean that we think it just, it’s like the air you breathe or the culture or the mother tongue we speak or something, it just happens. And it’s okay if I, you know, don’t know all the ins and outs of the culture, it doesn’t matter and so forth. So we don’t take trouble to learn. One of the simple things that we were talking about is that we see in our mothers are here, children of the Afghan refugees who are here, small children, we’re talking about little children who are, you know, seven years old or something. Those kids, they read Quran much better than the children of the Arabs. Even though the children of the Arabs are listening to, hearing Arabic all the time, their parents, grandparents all speak Arabic, they have Arabic channels running on the TVs and everything else. But they have not learned to read Arabic. Nobody taught them, they just send them to the school. Alhamdulillah there is a school, Alhamdulillah there is somebody to teach them here. But if that hadn’t been there, they would just not know. And I know this for a fact because I know and I have, I know people and I have met people who were in their 30s and 40s, 50s even, who could not read the Quran. Just Nazir, I’m not even talking about reading it, understanding the meaning and what, just Nazir, Alif Lamim, they don’t know how to read that. They don’t know the letters. And it is not surprising, it’s not a question of saying, how is it you are an Arab but you don’t know. Learning doesn’t come by osmosis, learning doesn’t come through the air. A person who studies knows, if a person doesn’t study, he doesn’t know. So that’s why we have people who are old enough but they have no knowledge. Now, Maudid Alhamdulillah is studying medicine in Lansing in Michigan. Family lives here in West Springfield, Michigan is a couple of thousand miles away. And I was saying to him that, why are you there? Why are you studying medicine? Because I want to become a doctor. Why do you want to become a doctor? Because that’s a great career. Insha’Allah, I look forward to having a successful long career. We make dua for him and I ask you all to make dua for him. May Allah grant him. Make him a beautiful doctor with the best values who is in it, not for the money but for bringing relief to his patients who ever comes to him. May Allah put shifa in his hand insha’Allah and make him a great diagnostician and help him to help others and make his work a source of sadqa jariya for him. Now, so he goes from here, leaves his family and studies in Michigan. Obviously he comes and visits but you know, that visit is once in several months because there he is studying from morning till night. There’s no time to do anything else. All of this because he hopes to have a long and healthy life. He hopes to have a good career. He hopes that what he is studying will still remain relevant and valid and that AI won’t take it over and something else won’t take it over. And you know, he suddenly finds himself with a bunch of knowledge that is useless. He doesn’t believe all that. He believes that this will not happen. He believes that what he is studying will remain relevant and therefore he is making all this effort. Now, question. As I said, may Allah grant him, keep him safe and grant him a long and healthy and productive life in the service of Allah’s most high talent and his deed. What is the guarantee that he or I or anybody will even be alive? You know, ten minutes from now, forget ten minutes. Nabi Salah said, don’t even believe that you will make the salaam, the two sides of the salaam. You make one and you are dead before the other one. Alhamdulillah, if that happens, it’s a good way to go because you’re going in salaam. But the point is, it is showing the impermanence of this life. So what is the guarantee if I’m going to medical school, if I’m going to engineering school, if I’m going to anything, studying for a career, what’s the guarantee that I will be alive to take advantage of that knowledge? There is no guarantee. It’s all based on a hope. It is all based on probability. It’s all based on a hope. And you say, what is this hope based on? It’s based on nothing. It’s just a hope, period. I hope it will happen. Based on what evidence? No evidence. Right? Yet we do it. Whereas, the fact that I will go into my grave, is that a hope or is that a certainty? The fact that I will be resurrected, I will be brought out of my grave, is that a hope or is it a certainty? I’m asking Muslims, I’m asking people who said, La ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasoolallah, the fact that I will be called before Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala on the Day of Judgment, is it a hope or is it a certainty? The fact that there is janna and there is jahanam, is it a hope or is it a certainty? Right? And I know the Sunday School answer to that. That’s no good because obviously I will say yes to all of this, it’s certainty. And suppose then you put a, you know, you take a video of my life and you find that my life I’m doing things, I’m disobeying Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala from morning till night, what Allah made ford I don’t do, what Allah made halal I don’t eat, what Allah made haram I eat, I earn my living in ways that Allah has prohibited and my excuse is, oh you see this is America, this is Europe, this is this country, this is that country, here unless I sell haram stuff I cannot eat, I have to feed my family and all the usual stuff, you know. Then where is this, where is the truth when I say that I believe with certainty that I will die, that I will be resurrected, that I will be called to haram before Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, where is the evidence of this? Because with Allah, jalla jalla, as we know, jalla jalla, as we know, this chattering like monkeys that we do in this world won’t work. We have to show evidence and our body will speak and our hands and feet will speak and our eyes and ears will speak and our tongue will remain silent. So what are they going to say? We are writing our own books. This walk that we are doing, May Allah make this part of his Ibadah, May Allah put this into our scales and may Allah bless Munir because thanks to him I am making this walk. He comes and picks me up and he spends his time with me. Mashallah Allah has given me these sons, Alhamdulillah. I won’t name others because then others will say I forgot them so, Alhamdulillah Allah gave me so many of them, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. And I say to them jokingly and sincerely that the best part of it is that I didn’t pay any of their bills. So I got all these sons of mine for free, Alhamdulillah. And I hope that when I am dead they will make dua for me inshaAllah and that I ask Allah to accept their dua for me. So the point I am making is that this is being written. This is, Munir is writing it in his book, I am writing this in my book and this is being written by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. In our books around the day of judgment we will see this. We will see us, we will see the two of us walking in this place, this beautiful khudrat of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, walking through snow, everything is white, all the streams have turned into ice, Alhamdulillah, and be remembering Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. So I remind myself and you, let us get real. Because Allah said, Allah said from the people, there are those who say, who say, Allah is not saying they deny, Allah is saying they say, that we believe in Allah and we believe in the day of judgment. And Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala is guaranteeing and saying, wa ma hum bi mu’minin, but they are not Muslims, they are not from the believers. May Allah save us from this and not make us among those who have mentioned this ayat inshaAllah. You are looking at the stream which is, flows into the lake and it’s frozen but if you see here, it’s not entirely frozen. If you look carefully that hole, the water in that is, you can see the water flowing under the ice. So there is a certain amount of ice but under the ice, the water is still flowing. Here you can see it like ghostly going under the ice, right? And there you can see it also clearly, water flowing under the ice. So there is a layer of ice in this water under the ice. And this is also, bin Allahi ta’ala, this is also the khudrat of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, that is for the benefit of those who live in these waters, the underwater creatures, the fish and the amphibians, others, who still have liquid water to live in. If the thing froze solid from the top to the bottom, then they would just freeze to death but they don’t because Allah has kept them alive and gives them the rizq in an environment which seems completely devoid of anything to sustain life. SubhanAllah. Wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
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