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*This transcript was automatically generated by AI and may contain errors. *
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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. May His peace and blessings be upon His honored messengers. Muhammad was the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and upon his family and his companions, peace and blessings be upon them. My brothers and sisters, Abu Ghulayr reported in a hadith which we have all heard many times that Rasulullah said, Allah has caravans of angels who have no work but to follow gatherings of remembrance, gatherings of Zikr of Allah. When they find such gatherings in which there is remembrance, they sit with them and some of them surround the others with their wings until the space between them and the heavens is covered. When they disperse, they ascend to the heavens and Allah asked them, although He knows better than them, from where have you come? They say, we came from your slaves on the earth who are glorifying you, declaring your greatness and oneness, praising you and asking from you. Allah says, what do they ask from me? The angels say, they ask for your paradise. Allah says, have they seen my paradise? They say, no. Allah says, what if they were to see my paradise? They say, they seek your protection. Allah says, from what do they seek my protection? They say, from your hellfire, our Lord, our Rabb. Allah says, have they seen my hellfire? They say, no. Allah says, what if they were to see my hellfire? They say, they ask for your forgiveness. Allah says, I will pardon them, give them what they request and grant them protection. They say, our Rabb, there is one among them, a simple slave who happened to pass by and sit there along with them. Allah says, I will also grant him pardon for whoever sits with these people will not suffer misery. And this is in Bukhari, Sayyid Bukhari and Sayyid Muslim, Muttafakoon Aalayh. May Allah have mercy on us and may Allah grant us the tawfiq to do what benefits us and to save us from what does not benefit us. And grant us to do what pleases Allah and save us from what does not please Allah. My brothers and sisters, think about this. If you want to learn swimming, what do you need? You need a place to swim. You need a swimming pool. You need a lake. You need a river. You need a body of water. If you want to learn to play cricket, what do you need? You need a cricket field. If you want to learn tennis, you need a tennis court. Right? If you want to learn golf, you need a golf course or at least minimum you need nets for practice and then of course you need a course. If you want to become a doctor, you need a hospital. You can be anything, to prepare yourself for anything. You need a place. Where do you go if you want to learn to become a human being? In insan. Insaniyat in Arabic and Urdu is not a term which is biological. Insan does not mean the mammal who walks on his hind legs. Insan is somebody with a character, somebody with the qualities which bring him close to Allah. Now, where do you go to become an insan? This is what Prophet Muhammad did with Masjid and Abu Ayyub Sharif. People like to talk about the Jamia Muhammadiyya. They say the sofa was a university. But my submission is that there was no such thing as Jamia Muhammadiyya. There was no sofa, was not a university. Rasulullah was not teaching a curriculum with a syllabus for a certain period of time. He did not do any dastarbandi, did not qualify people and call them alims or something. The people who came to Rasulullah and benefited the most from him were the people who spent time in his sohba, in his company. And they did not just spend time in his company by just being bodily present and their minds somewhere else. They were there consciously. They were there with great shaukh, with great love. They were there with great desire to learn and to imbibe from him every little thing which seemed, we say little only because maybe it takes a short duration of time or maybe it seems very, as a matter of habit, adatan. But in terms of significance, in terms of the fact that this is the action of the Nabi Ali, it has huge significance. So we have, therefore we see this in the life of Rasulullah. That people, these are the people who learnt and became rijal, Allah SWT called them al-rijal, who were, who changed the world and that they learnt in the masjid. I take this hadith which I mentioned to you and may Allah SWT make it that these are hadiths which we hear so many times and we read, may Allah grant that they do not become a witness against us. In this hadith, two things. One is the action of people to gather to listen to the mention of Allah SWT, His rasul, His deen, majlis of dhikr. And by dhikr is not meant only repeating the names of Allah SWT or something, but anything which comes in the description of remembering of Allah, which could be recitation of Quran, it could be a khatira, vaaz, khutba, speech, lecture, whatever, which remind us of Allah SWT, remind us of His rasul, which remind us of the akhirah. So not only did Allah SWT in this hadith, not only is Allah SWT praising those people who are engaged in the dhikr of Allah SWT, who are sitting in that majlis, but even a person who was passing by, meaning that this person had not been invited to that majlis of dhikr, he just happened to pass by, but that person stopped there. He sat there. He didn’t pass away. He didn’t just stop for a second, couple of minutes and decide that it was not for him and he moved on. No, he stayed there. That person is also included in those who were blessed by this majlis of dhikr or blessed in this majlis of dhikr. Now think about this, that today we have reached a stage, SubhanAllah, sometimes when I think about these things, I say, well, you know, there’s some questions that if you want to ask for answers to those questions, there’s no direct answer because people didn’t ask those questions. People didn’t do those things. So if you say, well, you know, what will happen, for example, if somebody stops a dhikr of Allah, if somebody wants to reduce the amount of time that is being spent in the dhikr of Allah, then there is no answer because there were not people like that. Apart from, of course, in the time of the Prophet, apart from the initial stages of that also, the Quraish were open enemies of Islam. But other than that, there was nobody there who stopped the dhikr of Allah or who said to the Prophet, you know, you are this majlis that you are that you are that you are having or this gathering that you’re having is too long. Right. Shorten it. We don’t have time to to sit here for this long. And not only do we not have time to sit here for this long, we are so arrogant that we don’t even just politely move away. We want the majlis itself to stop. They didn’t do these things. So if somebody says, what is, you know, what should we do if you have that situation, if you phrase a situation, all I can say is that take this hadith of Rasulullah and imagine the opposite because this is the Bashara. This is the good news that is promised to the one who indulges in the dhikr of Allah and who encourages the dhikr of Allah and who supports the dhikr of Allah and who comes and stops for a little while and stays when he sees the dhikr of Allah. He says, Hamdulillah, he stays there. Imagine the opposite. If one thing is true, the opposite is also true by inference. So what will happen to the one who stops the dhikr of Allah? Today you think about this. We are, there is literally nobody who is happy with the way the world is, with the way society is. Right? I can say this probably as a blanket statement. Not a Muslim, not non-Muslim, not anybody. Everybody is unhappy with the way society is. The fact that people have seemed to have no ethics and morals, people are completely, you know, oriented only and only towards materialistic things. There is no compassion. There is no kindness and so on and so forth. People are sick and tired of society. But my question is, society doesn’t happen by itself. This society happened because of what we did. We created a society like this. Now how do we change that? We change that by spending, not by spending more time in that society, but by spending less time in that society and more time in the presence of the malaikah, the presence of the angels in the house of Allah, engaged in the dhikr of Allah. Right? That is what we need to do. So on the other hand, today we have situations where people want to reduce the number of minutes or the duration that somebody spends in the masjid. And you say, no, no, no, people have to go and do what? Think about this. Any, in any situation, any person with any intelligence will choose that which is beneficial or that which is not beneficial, that which is beneficial or that which is harmful, that which has more benefit or that which is less benefit. Yes? And this is a sign of intelligence. If you are choosing the opposite, then it’s a sign that you do not have intelligence. So which has, as a Muslim, which has more benefit? The dhikr of Allah or whatever else you are going away towards, you are leaving the malilis of the dhikr of Allah and you’re going to do something. That thing which you are going to do, does it have more value? Right? Illa mashallah, unless you are going for some emergency. For example, there was the incident in the seerah of this sahabi who would come and pray Salatul Fajr and then he would rush off. He would not stay for the, the, the, Nabi Salah used to sit after Salatul Fajr and he would talk, sometimes he would talk for a while, he would ask people if they had seen any dreams and so on. And he would interpret those dreams. This sahabi did not stay for that. He would, as soon as Salat finished, he would go away. So somebody commented on this and Nabi Salah asked him, he said, why do you rush off? He said, Arsula, between my wife and me, we have only one piece of long cloth in which we can pray. So I come here, I pray and I rush home to give the cloth to my wife so that she can pray. Right? Now there is an emergency situation there and they prayed Salatul Fajr immediately as soon as the time started. So she couldn’t pray Fajr before he came to the masjid. So here he was in the masjid before that. And so he was doing that to help his wife. So the point is, unless there is an emergency, if a person is leaving a majlis of zikr and going somewhere else, then the first question I would ask that person or the first question I would ask myself if I was doing that, is whatever I’m going towards, what is the reward of that? The reward of being in the majlis of zikr is that Allah swt promised to forgive me. Allah swt promised to give me Jannah. Allah swt promised to save me from the hellfire. Now whatever I’m going to do, leaving this majlis, do I have a promise of the forgiveness of Allah for doing that? Do I have a promise of Jannah for doing that? Do I have a promise of freedom from the fire for doing that? Now I mean this is a dumb question, but you know sometimes you have to ask dumb people dumb questions. If the answer is no and the answer obviously has to be no, then ask yourself why are you leaving the majlis? Why are you leaving the majlis of zikr and going out somewhere else? When obviously you consider yourself to be intelligent, but you’re leaving something which has the maximum possible benefit which is the result of Allah swt and going towards something which either is Mubah, it has no value because there is no benefit, no harm or it has negative value. It is a sin. Why are you doing that? Now the problem is today we have stopped asking these questions. Instead of that we pressurize the people who are doing the majlis of zikr to curtail and to stop their majlis. Make it short, stop it, don’t do it or do it just to show. Two minutes, five minutes. Remember on the day of judgement if you are among those, if you leave the majlis and go away for whatever it is, that’s certainly not commendable, it’s not something to praise. But at least it is not as bad as those who are, who try to force others to stop, who try to force others to make it short so that they can go off and do whatever the hell they want to do. That is really an amal of firavuniyat as far as I am concerned. It’s an amal of using force to stop the zikr of Allah. It is so evil, it is so evil. Subhanallah my brothers and sisters, please wake up before you are woken up. Wake up before you are woken up. Because the time will come when we will stand before Allah and Allah will ask us, how is it that you forced somebody else to stop my zikr? How is it that you forced somebody else to shorten my zikr? If you are among those who are doing this job, believe me that day will come. So get prepared. Get prepared for your answer. What will you ask? What will you answer Allah? How will you answer Allah? May Allah save us from ourselves and save us from shaitan and save us from being among those who will prevent themselves from getting the riza of Allah. And may Allah bless the Prophet, his family and his companions with mercy and mercy.
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