RETURNING TO ALLAH 'PART 3'

Bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim

Assalam alaykum warahmatullah wabarakatu

You know the worst thing you can do is lose hope in Allah’s mercy.

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And in this ayah He says: “My slaves, those who have violet against their own selves. Don’t lose hope in Allah’s mercy. Then He says (Arabic). “There is no doubt, for sure, Allah will cover, forgive, all of the mistakes, all of the sins, altogether. He will take all of your prior evil deeds and get rid of all of them. All of them, in one shot. The first thing you need – in this ayah – is not lose hope. Right, the first thing you need to do is not lose hope. And by the way before I talk about not lose(ing) hope, that was the final stage. What was the first stage? You start doing what with Allah? Avoiding Him. You start avoiding, you don’t talk to Him. By the way, all of you, you should talk to Allah. You’ve memorized lots of duas, the prayer’s done, you raise your hands and make some duas you have memorized. When you’re walking to school, when you’re walking downstairs, you’re by yourself, talk to Allah: “I really messed up. I’m sorry.” You know when you talk to someone you know they can hear you? You know when you talk to someone you know they can hear you. When you talk to Allah do you know He can hear you? Do you know He can hear you? Yes. And if you feel weird if you feel like ‘I’m talking to myself, that’s kind of weird.’ You know what that means? That means you’re not really a strong believer. Because you have to believe that Allah hears you. So you have to learn to talk to Allah. You probably do this, you talk to Allah. You have to believe that He not only hears you, He also sees you. And you behave differently when someone sees you and hears you and you behave differently when they don’t see you, or don’t hear you. Isn’t that true? We have to develop a consciousness. And this one ayah Subhan Allah, those of you that try to advise others about deen, what’s the first step for these people? You know…Muslims who are immersed in sins and they’re doing all kinds of haram things…where, where do you start talking to them? If you tell them this is haram, they already know that it’s haram. When you tell them they shouldn’t do that, they already know they shouldn’t do that. It’s not like they don’t know. They’re doing it anyway. What is this ayah teaching us? Where do you start? What do you tell them first? Listen, you’re still Allah’s slave. Even if you disobey Allah, you’re still His slave. And that Master of yours He’s saying don’t lose hope, even If you’ve sinned. And don’t try to tell me ‘you don’t know man, I’m bad, I’m real bad’. Allah knows more, Allah actually knows how bad you are. Despite all that you are He still says “don’t lose hope in My mercy. No doubt Allah will forgive all of the sins, altogether.” This is by the way the concept of Tauba in Islam. You’ve heard the word for it, right? Tauba.

There’s one thing I want to tell you about, I won’t give you a long lecture, and I want to just pen this discussion with you, two things I wanted to highlight: the rights of your parents, and then shamelessness. Two problems that you have and when I’m saying make tauba and don’t lose hope in Allah’s mercy…go back and do?...you change your ways in regards to two things. You change your ways in regards to how you deal with your parents and you change your way in regards to how exposed you are or how desensitized you are to shameless things. Shameless words, shameless language, shameless company, shameless things on the screen, I don’t care what screen, whether it’s your cell phone screen, or it’s your laptop screen or some TV screen, , I don’t care, your cell phone screen you watch it. Shameless things in the hallway when you’re walking down. The high school, the hall way in high school or in class, you’re exposed to shamelessness and you know it. And you’re exposed to some of the shamelessness that your parents don’t even know it can exist. So you know about it but you should know of animals too. Save yourself from becoming an animal. People around you are animals. They are. You’ve seen them. They’re worst than animals. They can’t even control their mouths. They don’t know how to respect or to show respect. They don’t. That’s what animals do, they bark, it barks, they have no control, you know. We shouldn’t be reduced to that. The last thing.

This is something you read all the time in the Quran. Probably you’ve heard it…you may have heard it discussed in a little bit more detail. Allah Subahanhu wa’taala says “It is He who is Forgiving and Merciful.” But the way He said forgiving – the word zahuruhu, there’s a wow in there. You hear that, zahurahu? What is that, Raheem. What lies in the middle? The ‘Ya’. The ‘Laam’ in Arabic, it does something to the meaning of a word. I won’t get technical with you but I will tell you it does something to the meaning of a word. It makes it excessive. So what He is saying is that He is extremely Forgiving. He is extremely Forgiving. The ‘Ya’, it doesn’t make the word extreme, it makes it permanent. So ‘Al-Raheem’ means He is always merciful. So the meaning is He is extremely forgiving and at the same time, He’s what? Always Merciful. So why not say always Forgiving? The question is He said He is extremely Forgiving but He didn’t say what? Always Forgiving. You know why? Because He’s not always Forgiving. He’s not always Forgiving. If He’s said always Forgiving then you have no wrong. You do whatever you want. And when you get into trouble what can you say? “Hey, Allah is always forgiving.” But He’s not always forgiving. He’s extremely Forgiving but even when He punishes He’s still, what? Always Merciful. Even then He’s Merciful. Subhan Allah. So don’t take advantage of thinking Allah’s always gonna forgive. That door is wont always open. Now this one ayah is one of opening the doors of your relation between you and Allah again. Now the rest of this ayah…let’s see who remembers which ayah number this one is (Az-Zumar) Q39:53. That’s correct.

The next ayah tells you ok now that you have revived your hopes and you are hopeful that Allah will forgive you, what should you do next? I’ll tell you only little bit of … then I am done, in sha Allah. Turn back towards your master. You remember what I said about so many sins and what do they do? Avoid. Allah says quit avoiding and now turn back. It’s such appropriate language. And this time, give up before it. Completely give yourself up. Surrender. Surrender your ego. Surrender your temptations. Surrender your bad habits. Surrender your tongue, surrender your eyes. Right. Surrender your wasting of time. Surrender, you know, your misbehavior, all of that, give it up before Him. We’ll rush through it quickly, In Sha Allah. And you better do it before the punishment comes and then you won’t be helped. In other words, Allah is saying this my way of what for you? Figure it out. What is Allah doing right now, in this verse? He’s helping you. And He’s saying that once the punishment comes and you didn’t take advantage of this help, at that point you will not be helped. When that happens, it’s too late. You won’t get helped. You’re getting help right now. So if somebody’s saying ‘Allah hasn’t helped me’…Yes He has. Here it is. He said don’t lose hope. He said the door of forgiveness is open. He said turn back here and this time, surrender. This time surrender your will before Him. You can do that much and that is Allah’s help for you. And if you don’t do that you just wait for the punishment and when it comes then there is no matter how much you cry and scream and say I’m sorry, I believe, I won’t do it again, doesn’t matter now.

At that point you will not be helped. By the way, the word ‘nasra’ in Arabic is not just small help, it’s a huge amount of help. Aid. You know, when somebody gives somebody a penny that’s not nusra, that’s not nasr. When a country gives another country millions of dollars in like, food supplies and medicine and things like that, that’s called nusra. What the word here suggests is you’re going to be in such a heap of trouble that a little bit of help won’t even do and you’re going to ask for what? Huge amounts of help, and you won’t get it. May Allah not make us from these unfortunate people.

Now the last thing is excuses. What excuses does a person make of not turning back to Allah. On the Day of Judgment, the person says "Oh! If only Allah guided me, I would have been good. Had only Allah guided me, I could’ve been from the people who have taqwa, people who fear, people who are (….), who are conscious of the rights and wrongs, I could’ve been from those people, and it’s just that Allah didn’t want me to be guided. Allah decided that I should be a messed up person, it’s just my fate”. This is what a person will say on the Day of Judgment by the way. Persons about to be thrown into hell, he says “Man, I wish Allah had just guided me, I would’ve been good, I just…He didn’t”. So, in other words, he’s saying ‘it’s not my fault’. What’s he saying? ‘It’s Allah’s fault, it’s not my fault.’ How does Allah respond to that?

He says ‘My ayaat, My ayaat’. You know what ayaat means? His miraculous signs, these revelations. They came to you. In other words when you say Allah didn’t guide me, Allah says ‘No, I did, I sent ayaat’. In other words, what is the guidance of Allah? The ayaat. So you can’t say Allah didn’t guide me. Yes, He did. Here is the Quran. Here it is. Did you take it? There’s one thing you didn’t feed me, the plate was full and you didn’t eat it. That’s not my problem, you didn’t take. So Allah sent the Book and He’s saying, ‘No, you’re lying. I did send you the ayaat.’ ‘Then you lie against them.’ In other words, when you say Allah didn’t guide me, you’re lying. You’re lying but I did send you the ayaat. First of all you kept sinning your whole life. Now you come in front of me and say ‘You didn’t send me guidance’, you’re gonna lie at my face, too?’

And this is the most important word for you guys. Remember I told you there are two major problems you have to worry about? What were they? Parent and what? Shamelessness. That’s on the outside. You know what you follow on the inside? Ego. You know, me too. We are full of ourselves. We are obsessed with ourselves. We are egotistical maniacs. We are so self obsessed and self absorbed uh…that if somebody so much as looks at you for a long time you say ‘You want to look at me? What do you want? What’s up? Got a problem?’ You know what that is? That’s arrogance. That’s kind of Firaun. Kind of. We are all so very self absorbed. You know you can’t deny this, a lot of you listen to hip hop music I know. You don’t have to accept it, it’s okay, you can accept it in your heart. You know a lot of things…I personally believe all music is messed up, but hip hop music particularly is by and large is taking these people and making them not just animals but worst than animals. Why? Self - obsession with the self. My chain, my hat, my car, my rings, my golden tooth, my…my, my, my. You can’t touch me, you can’t do this, you can’t do this like me, you can’t act like me and talk like me and walk like me. The pronoun ‘me’ is all over the lyrics. What does that show you? Ego. ‘I am number 1, nobody can touch this, and I’m above everything else. I, I, I. Me, me, me.’ Ego, ego, ego. And that’s your biggest problem. The ego manifests the worst way in which ego comes up in youth nowadays that I’ve seen, this is a big English word, I won’t show you because this is the last part of the ayah…you show arrogance. You’re from those who deny. This word, the English word is ‘apathy’. You know what apathy means? Apathy means you don’t care. Somebody talks to you about hell-fire and you’re like ‘I’m too hard to… you know, I’m too rough around the edge, you can’t touch me with that. Scared of that? C’mon! Look at that guy cry coz he’s afraid of hell. That attitude where you’re like, too hardcore a thug to, you know, let hell fire scare you or for your consciousness to wake up that maybe I have been messed up to my parents, I’m not gonna let you show that, I’m not gonna let you see that, I’m too rough around the edges, I’m too big and strong and whatever. And this is by the way, ego problem for sisters as well. When you’re like that, it is called apathy. And this is all a manifestation of arrogance. And the word that illustrates the arrogance of our youth today, its one word that they use a lot, what is that word, ‘whatever’. Whatever. That word is the contemporary manifestation of an obsessed and inflated ego. When you get good advice what do you say? Whatever. Someone tells you did something wrong, what do you say? Whatever. Your parents say ‘Can you come down for a minute?’ ‘Whatever, mom.’ You know whatever nowadays and how you use, how you use it, is an easy check for yourselves to see how hard egotistically you have become.

On the outside there is the problem of shamelessness and the problem of not respecting our parents. On the inside, what’s the big problem? Ego and by the way, on the Day of Judgment, if everything is good but your hearty has an ounce of ego, paradise? No. Nope, nope. And we become a culture – and I’m not pointing at American society or Western society – all of us are in this culture, we’re in it. We have become a culture that is obsessed with ego, we’re obsessed with ego – ourselves, our own selves. Give over yourself. A slave doesn’t have ego. A slave has humility. Remember when this passage began what did Allah call us? ‘My slaves, my slaves.’ A slave doesn’t know what he’s got because he knows ‘it’s not mine’. Whose is it? The slave’s wearing these very nice clothes; he doesn’t say ‘These are my clothes. My, my, my.’ Whose is it, does he say? A gift from the master. This is his. I have to be grateful. He gave me. It’s a different attitude, it’s a different attitude. And if you have an egotistical attitude it actually suggests that you haven’t accepted yourself as a slave. You haven’t accepted yourself as a slave. That is the demand of the Quran. Accept Allah as the Master, accept yourselves as slaves. That’s the only thing, it kills the arrogance, on the inside. On the outside, it becomes easier for you to avoid shamelessness because the Master said ‘Don’t be shameless’. It becomes easier for you to listen to your parents, no matter how illogical and how irrational and how unfair. You know for you guys just, I don’t want to get angry at you guys because I don’t know you, but I do want to say, the things you get angry at your parents, it’s pathetic. You want to have a sleepover at your friend’s house and they say no, ‘You never let me do anything’. There are people like, you know, across the Atlantic, children that haven’t had food to eat for three days, right, and you’re crying all night about sleepover. What’s the matter with you?

Wahadha Assalam alaikum warahmatullah wabarakatu.