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Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen. Salat wa Salam ala ashrafil anbiya’i wal mursaleen. Muhammadur Rasoolullah sallallahu alaihi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathiran. From Mubadhu. I remind myself and you there are four things to do before we enter Ramadan. Number one, clean our hearts. Clean our hearts. Because Allah said, يَوْمَا لَا يَنْفَرُ مَالٌ وَلَا بَنُونَ إِلَّا مَنْ أَتَى اللَّهَ بِقَلْبٍ سَلِيمٌ In Surah Al-Shura, Allah SWT said, The day when neither wealth nor children, meaning neither money nor power nor any affiliations will be of any benefit except Him who brings to Allah SWT kalbun saleem. A clean heart, a sound heart. Clean from shirk, clean from hypocrisy, from rifah, clean from all sorts of evils. I remind myself and you that on the day of judgment, the only thing that will benefit the slave is a heart that is sound, whole, complete, pure, filled with the love of Allah SWT and His messengers sallallahu alaihi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. A heart that Allah SWT guided to Himself and therefore that we have to beg Allah and which remains steadfast on that path by following the sunnah of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, which is the best of guidance. خير الحدي, حدي محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم. The best of guidance is the guidance of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. A heart that is free from hatred, enmity, jealousy, greed, envy, fear of anyone other than Allah. A heart that is filled with the glory and majesty and kharshith and the hubb and the love of Allah SWT and the love of His messenger Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. May Allah grant us such hearts. They have to be worked for. Dua alone is not enough. And the first thing to do in this case is forgive everyone. Whoever you are carrying rancour about in your heart, forgive them. It does not matter what they did. Forgive them for the sake of Allah. Say to them, if they are alive, if they are not alive, go to their khabr, go to their grave, stand there and say, I forgive you for the sake of Allah. Not that they can hear you. Don’t say that now this is the dhaleel that the people in the grave cannot hear you. Somebody asked me then why do we say, Assalamu alaikum ya ahlul khubur. So I said that is a dua. May peace be upon you, O people of the grave. Because if you get a reply saying, wa alaikum wasalaam ya abdul ghafoor, you will be in trouble. Right? Forgive. It doesn’t matter what they did. It does not matter what they did. Forgive for the sake of Allah. And then say to Allah, Ya Rabb, you know what this person did. You know I have been wrong. You know I am not at fault. You know this person has aggressed against me. But I forgive this person for your sake, so you forgive me. Nobody said it’s easy. But that is the solution. That is the solution. That is the key. So ask yourself, do you want Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to forgive you? Forgive people. You want Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to cover your faults? Cover the faults of people. Don’t point fingers. You want Allah to hide you and cover you with His lihaf, to cover you with His glorious cover that people see and they praise and they are praising the cover, they are not praising you because Allah has hidden you. You want that? Then hide people. Hide the faults of people. Fasting in what comes out of the mouth, not just what goes into the mouth. Because it’s not only about not eating and drinking, it’s about reba and slander and brutan and namima and innuendo and casting aspersions and foul language and all of that. And Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala warned us against all of this. You know the hadith of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam where Abu Hurairah radiya allanhu narrated and this is in Sayyid Muslim where Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam asked, do you know who are the bankrupt of my ummah? And they said, Ya Rasulullah, the people who have no dirham or dinar and no money and no property. He said, no, he said the bankrupt of my ummah are people who will come before Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala with good deeds the size of a mountain. But there will be a long line of people waiting. The people they slandered and the people they backbited and the people whose rights they took over, the people they killed, the people they beat up and the people they insulted, all a long line. And each one will ask for his due and this will be given from the deeds of the person until the whole mountain is finished, but the line will still be there. And then Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala of course Allah knows, but Allah will ask them what do you want me to do? His deeds are finished. They will say, Allah give our bad deeds to that person. And Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said this will be done and the person will go into the hellfire with the deeds of somebody else. In the world of social media, when I first read this hadith many years ago I used to wonder we believe the word of Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam there is no doubt about that. I used to say who can do so much of evil that a mountain of good deeds gets exhausted, not even one is left until I discovered social media. One post has eternal life. You will be dead and gone a hundred years from now, the post will be circulating and earning for you. Please stay far away from these things. I always say to people if you want to criticize somebody, if you are seriously interested in that person, if you want to criticize them, go talk to them face to face. Because the only one who can change me is myself. So if I do something wrong, please come and tell me. Don’t tell my brother, don’t tell my wife, don’t tell my friend, don’t tell this one. What can they do anyway? They cannot do anything. What you are doing is ghiba. When they are listening to you that is ghiba. So two of you now are earning hellfire while I am still as bad as ever. If you are really interested go talk to the person. If you say no, no, I don’t have the time then keep your mouth shut. Make dua to Allah subhanu wa ta’ala. Say Allah please change this brother, make his faults go away. Stop criticizing people. No criticizing people. Number three, forgive everyone no matter who, no matter what they did. Number four, do something special for Allah and keep it secret. Don’t post it on Facebook. Secret for Allah and keep it secret. We have got so used to making public things which should be private, it is unbelievable. Simple thing, somebody says, sheikh please make dua for me. Yes I will make dua for you in tahajjud, in sujood. Did he ask you to do that? You want to do that? Do that. Why are you saying all this? Tahajjud is for you and between you and Allah. You are saying this so you know this sheikh also prays tahajjud, mashallah, very good. Trust. Do something for the sake of Allah, keep it between you and Allah because this then becomes inshaAllah the asas, this becomes the wasila for you when you need something for Allah subhanu wa ta’ala. As we know the hadith of the three, you got trapped in the cave, they did something only for Allah and when they needed the help of Allah subhanu wa ta’ala desperately, they asked Allah subhanu wa ta’ala using that and Allah helped them. In conclusion, I demand myself and you, this Ramadan, any Ramadan is a boot camp to change our lives. It is not a starvation program, it is not meant for you to improve your glycemic index. It is meant for you and me to change our lives. It is a boot camp to change our lives. Let us use it, let us leverage it. Ramadan is not for Ramadan, Ramadan is for the rest of our lives and Ramadan is and can be the game changer provided we work for it. Allah subhanu wa ta’ala gives us a lot of sohula, gives us a lot of ease, a lot of multiplier factors but nothing comes without effort and therefore we need to make the effort. We ask Allah subhanu wa ta’ala jalla jalaluhu to help us to make this Ramadan the best Ramadan of our lives yet. We ask Allah subhanu wa ta’ala to accept all that we do and to forgive us for all that we do and we don’t. We ask Allah subhanu wa ta’ala to accept all our duas and then give us what we ask with khair and aafiya and to add to that from His Majesty and His Grace and to add to that from His generosity in a way that only He can add. We ask Allah subhanu wa ta’ala to give us that what we ask and to save us from what we seek protection from and to save us from that which we do not seek protection because we don’t know but Allah subhanu wa ta’ala knows. So we ask Allah to save us from that which we know and we don’t know. We ask Allah subhanu wa ta’ala to relieve the suffering of our brothers and sisters wherever they might be if you could leave a can especially what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in Palestine, in the other parts, what is happening in the Muslim world. SubhanAllah it’s like an open season on the Muslims. May Allah have mercy on us. We ask Allah subhanu wa ta’ala to have mercy on us and not to make us those who contribute to their problems because we will not repent from our sins. Remember if you eat something wrong the result of that doesn’t happen only in the stomach. If you eat too much of cholesterol, nice stuff, the heart stops, not the stomach. So what we do in different parts of the world can show its effect in some other part. So in some way because of our evil deeds we are contributing to the suffering of people, of Muslims and other people elsewhere. Let us not do that. Let’s make sure that we are clean. I say, Allah, I’m that. What is happening not because of me. I have become clean. I’m trying to be as clean as I can. Let’s do that inshallah.
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