RETURNING TO ALLAH 'PART 2'

Bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim

Assalam alaykum warahmatullah wabarakatu

What does He say?

[Continuation...]

My slaves who have crossed the limits, only harming their own selves, who have transgressed against their own selves. You know, when you break the rules you figure you harmed the one who set those rules like you parents told you don’t do this or the other and you do it, you figure you hurt whose feelings? Your parents. You’ve harmed your parents. So when you cross the limits and you break the rules and regulations and you disobey, you are hurting someone else. But according to Allah in this case whenever you sin, whenever you cross Allah’s limits, who are you hurting? You’re only hurting yourself. So Allah tells you “My slaves” - who is so bent upon not hurting Me, but hurting himself. You can’t harm Allah, you can’t take away from Him anything. So when you and I … who are we harming? Our own selves. You’ve only harmed yourself. By the way, I want to tell you what this harming yourself – some practical examples of what it means that you are harming yourself. Since there are a lot of young people, since...there’re really young people here too…but let me just share this with you. When you see something shameless, when you see something shameless, you’ve actually harmed yourself. Every time you see something shameless, your heart becomes harder. You lose a part of your humanity. Animals have no shame but Allah gave human beings a sense of shame. And the more you see something shameless the closer you start becoming to what? Animals. The closer you start becoming to an animal until the point comes that there is no difference between you and an animal. What makes an animal an animal? An animal has no control over its urges. It’s hungry, it bites. It sees a mate, it goes after it. Squirrel running after a squirrel around a tree. And it has no control over its urges. No control over its tongue, no control over what it eats, no control over where it goes. Whenever it feels something it does it, right? Which is the contemporary equivalent of saying: “I do whatever I feel like doing”. You ever heard that expression: “I do what I feel like, I do what I want”. You know what that, by definition, what behavior that is? The behavior of an animal. When you become accustomed to shamelessness, you are closer to being an animal. When you don’t care what you eat, those are haram or halal, you don’t care, whatever those are, you don’t care if it’s okay, then you are no different from an animal. So who are you harming?  You are harming yourself. Allah gave you the status of human beings and you want to reduce yourself to an animal. Subhan’Allah. You are only harming yourself. And by the way, those of you that are a little bit older, especially when it comes to shame…there are two problems I believe personally, there are two problems Muslim youth have. If they solve these two problems they have no other problems, as far as I am concerned, they got no other problems. First problem that we have is they are not respectful enough to their parents. The second problem they have is they are overexposed to shamelessness. Two problems. If you can solve these two problems you got no other, everything else will be solved, everything else will be fine. You don’t make Salah on time, it will be fixed, don’t worry about it. Everything else will fall into place. But these are two things that are eating away at the life of the Muslim youth and reducing them not just from believer but from even human beings to animals. Even Muslim kids are being reduced to the likeness of animals. Then the other thing was what? Yeah, not enough respect for your parents, not enough respect for your parents. So you know when Allah is talking about the slaves who went beyond their limits, you know what the number one limit you are crossing is? What you owe your parents. How much respect, how much dignity, how much regard, how much obedience, how much love you owe your parents. That’s the first thing. By the way, when somebody does you a favor what’s the least you should do? Thank them. You’re walking to school, a friend of your pulls over, says ‘I’ll give you a ride”. He gives you a ride. And it’s snowing and you know, it’s freezing, he gives you a ride. When he gives you a ride, when you get out, what do you say at the very least? And what kind of indecent, despicable person would you be that they did this for you and you don’t even thank them. What kind of ill-mannered human being. You don’t even have that much dignity to say ‘thanks, man’? Now just think about…you know, a lot of you have this conversation among yourselves, at school or among yourselves: ‘My parents, man, they just don’t understand, bro. I’m trying to explain to them but they just don’t get it.’ Or you know, in…those of you that are at the public school…hear this from the other kids all the time: ‘My parents got a funny accent’. Or they call their mom by their...her…first name: ‘Hey, Johann! How’s it going?’ or ‘Hey, Clark! You’re late to pick me up from school’. They talk about…to their parents with their first name and we pick up somebody’s model from a…there are a lot of TV shows. I mean, you guys don’t watch cartoons but I do them, okay, so I’ll tell you. You watch cartoons and a lot of cartoons are dedicated to depicting parents as idiots. Ever seen “Jimmy Neutron” ? Ever seen it? The parents look like a bunch of morons, the kid is a genius and they are idiots. You ever seen, what’s that, “Fairly odd parents”. You ever seen that? Same thing again. The parents are morons and the kids are really smart. Now who’s watching that show, by the way? Parents or kids? And what’s being gutted in their minds, in their subconscious? That they are really smart and their parents are stupid, they are dumb, they don’t know anything. They don’t know anything. What’s that African American family on Disney TV? "Pryo cat"? The same thing. The same thing again. Over and over. And these are cartoons. You know back in the day in the cartoons there was a cat and a mouse and they’re trying to kill each other and everything was cool. But now… that was good stuff… but now you know, there are these messages inside a show and these cartoons even, right? And you don’t even realize the next time you talk about your parents a certain way it’s because you saw some garbage. It is stuck in your head and it makes you less of a human. Less of a human. Subhan Allah. So the first thing I say to you is there are you know, after the rights of Allah in the passage in Surah An-Nisa, after the rights of Allah, are whose rights? The parents. I won’t go into the grammar but this is amazing over here and especially when it comes to your parents you better be the best. Forget everyone else when it comes to your parents. Take extra cautions when you deal with your parents. Because that will…not dealing with them properly...I’m being blunt with you guys because I’m not gonna flower this up…that is your one-way ticket to hell. You’re gonna mess up with your parents, doesn’t matter you go to hajj every year, slaughter, give charity and make qiyam... none of that matters. You mess up with your parents it is a straight ticket to hell fire. Watch it.

So in this ayah it says if you have messed up before, who have you harmed? Yourself. Then what does He say? He says… la (Arabic)… “Don’t lose hope in Allah’s mercy.” ‘Alaqa’ in Arabic is to lose... to become depressed and sad to a point where you expect nothing good anymore. Allah is describing a person who has done so many messed up things, shaytan comes to them and says "man, you’re so messed up, you call yourself a Muslim? You’re so messed up. You shouldn’t even pray anymore, you’re a hypocrite. How you’re going to stand there and recite Quran and pray when you know you’re such a messed up person? You don’t, you shouldn’t even, you know… you shouldn’t even do any of these things you know, hang out with Muslims or this or that. Cut yourself off because you are a filthy person. You’re a terrible human being". And shaytan comes to you and uses your what mistake? To trick you into doing more mistakes and taking you even further away from Allah (Subhanahu wa’taala). On this, I’ve talked about this elsewhere but I want to just bring this point to your attention because this is very important for you guys. When you make a mistake…what when you walk in late to class? This mistake, you walk in late to class. You make eye contact with the teacher or you avoid eye contact with the teacher? You avoid eye contact. You make it late to work, you make eye contact with your boss or you sneak in to your cubicle or your office? You sneak in.  When you get a really bad report card and you walk home, you enter the house are you “Assalam alaykum, I’m home!” or is it that you barely notice…the door’s open, you kick the shoes off before you walk the stairs, go inside the bed and pass out. Right? In other words, when you disappoint someone, you try to avoid them, because it is embarrassing, you know, it’s humiliating. When you sin, who are you disappointing? You’ve disappointed Allah. Shaytan comes and says what should you do? Avoid. The natural instinct of a human being, when you disappoint someone, shaytan comes and says “avoid the prayer. Avoid the company where you’re going to be reminded of Allah because how can you face him now? What kind of a person are you?” And the further you get, the more you listen, you listen to one thing then you listen to two things then you listen to three things and the door, the floodgates to sin are open. And when they open up, you become so immersed in it that you say “God, I’m so messed up there’s no hope of Allah forgiving me. You don’t even know the things I have done, how messed up!” This brother came to me one time, “Bro, I know you’re talking about like forgiving and everything. But you don’t know man, I’m bad. I’m bad. You don’t even know. I was like “Don’t tell me how bad. Tell me this. As bad as you are, can you compete you evil deeds…the power of your evil deeds…with the power of Allah’s mercy?” What’s stronger? What do you think? Allah’s mercy. You know the worst thing you can do is lose hope in Allah’s mercy.

(Part 3 on the next post In Sha Allah)