As-Siddiq Institute & Mosque (ASIM)
Allahumma salli `ala Sayyidina Muhammad (s).
Imam Sahib recites Suratu 'l-Hadeed:
Know that the life of this world is only play and amusement, pomp and mutual boasting among you, and rivalry in respect of wealth and children, as the likeness of vegetation after rain, thereof the growth is pleasing to the tiller; afterwards it dries up and you see it turning yellow; then it becomes straw. But in the Hereafter (there is) a severe torment (for the unbelievers, evil-doers), and forgiveness from Allah and (His) Good Pleasure (for the believers, good-doers), whereas the life of this world is only a deceiving enjoyment. Race one with another in hastening towards forgiveness from your Lord, and towards Paradise, the width whereof is as the width of Heaven and Earth, prepared for those who believe in Allah and His Messengers. That is the Grace of Allah which He bestows on whom He pleases. And Allah is the Owner of Great Bounty. No calamity befalls on the Earth or in yourselves, but is inscribed in the Book of Decrees (al-Lawh al-Mahfooz), before We bring it into existence. Verily, that is easy for Allah. (57:20-22)
As salaamu `alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh. Dastoor yaa Sayyidee, madad. Alfu, alfu salaat was-salaam `alayk, yaa Rasoolullah! Alfu alfu salaat was-salaam `alayk, yaa Shafi`ee al-Mudhnibeen! Dastoor yaa Sayyidee, madad.
Most important for both you and me, it is not just advice for you, but for you and me, is that we need to have a goal to reach or look for something that gives us happiness and satisfaction. Without that we will feel we are lost. That is why people today do not have enough spiritual education besides their Islamic education, because they are not interested in it. What they are interested in is how to be a lawyer or doctor or engineer or important businessman or businesswoman and dropping completely what is necessary to do to make Allah (swt) happy with us in dunya and akhirah.
There are too many forbiddens that Allah (swt) asked us to leave behind, through the guidance of Sayyidina Muhammad (s). (Mawlana stands and sits.) But when Shaytan comes, we never remember what Prophet (s) told us to do. Shaytan is so quick, quicker than big search engines that pull any information you like, such as Google. The bigger the search engine, the quicker you get the information, now in one second. Shaytan is quicker than Google, to bring you immediate gossips into your ears that takes us away from the way of Allah (swt) and the way of Prophet (s) (Mawlana stands.) Allahumma salli `alayk yaa Sayyidee, yaa Rasoolullah, yaa Rahmatan li 'l-`Alameen!
It took him seconds to whisper in the ear of Adam (a) and make him eat from the forbidden tree. Do you think you are stronger than Adam (a)? No way. So it doesn't need seconds, but it might be a fraction of a second, because as soon as you do something for Allah (swt), Shaytan comes. For example, when you say Allahu akbar and enter the prayer, Shaytan sends messages to your heart. Are his messages for dunya or Ahkirah? They are for dunya. And depending on how big our ego is, we will receive big messages of egoism that might take you away more and more from Allah (swt) and His Prophet (s).
Our Grandshaykh (q) said there are 800 forbiddens which awliyaullah are able to count, 800 issues that if you do them you sin. Anything that you know which is not acceptable in Shari'ah and you do it is a sin. And there are 500 orders that if you do them, you get good tidings, hasanaat, rewards. So it is up to you, up to us; either take from the 800 forbiddens and get sins, or take from the 500 orders and get good tidings. Of course we like to do the 500, but awliyaullah say if you do good tidings, Allah (swt) will reward you for sure, but if you leave the forbiddens, Allah (swt) will reward you more and more. And he said, "If you take away one forbidden from your heart and your lives, Allah (swt) will reward you as if you dropped 800 forbidden actions! And when you drop one for Allah (swt) and His Prophet (s), Allah will reward you with something that you cannot imagine!"
For that reason they advised us and spoke about the major problem or main root of committing forbiddens: there is a major trunk from which all the branches come with all kinds of sins, like branches like a tree. If you cut the trunk of that tree the whole tree will fall down. If you cut the branch, you will still have a lot of other branches of forbiddens. So what you need to do is to cut the branch or the trunk? Cut the trunk. How do you cut the trunk? It is so simple, so easy, and yet so difficult. Prophet (s) described the main trunk of all sins to Sayyidina Abu Bakr as-Siddiq (q), الغدب كفر يا ابا بكر , al-ghadabu kufrun, yaa Aba Bakr. "O Abu Bakr, anger is unbelief." And all people today are full of anger; everyone, even a child is full of anger. If a child wants a toy and you don't give it to him, he will cry and cry out of anger until you submit to his will and give it to him. Is it not? Do you buy them something when they cry? Whenever you don't give your ego what it needs, it will be angry with you. When the ego gets angry it will destroy you, or you destroy it, but in many cases it destroys us.
(Mawlana stands.) There is no one who can ride on his ego except Sayyidina Muhammad (s)! He said, "I was able to ride on my ego, (my Shaytan)," because Shaytan is everywhere and he came to Prophet (s), who was able to make him under his command. (Mawlana sits.) Are we able to make Shaytan under our command today? No. If you ask someone to do something everyday, he will do it for two or three days, get angry at the end, and he doesn't continue. That is from Shaytan. One day Jibreel (a) came to Prophet (s) and said, "Yaa Rasoolullah (s)! la`anat Allah `ala Iblees, Allah cursed Iblees, who is now asking permission to come to you." He is not able to come to Prophet (s) without permission from Allah (swt). Look, Shaytan is asking permission! Are we asking permission to do anything? No! He asked permission to come to Prophet (s) and ask questions; he came by Allah's permission. Jibreel (a) said, "Yaa Rasoolullah, these are his questions and these are the answers."
So when Iblees came, la`anatullahi `alayh... when you say la`anatullahi `alayh you get a reward; don't forget that our bad ego is partner with Iblees, so when you throw la`nat, curse on him, it will clean the partnership in you. And Prophet (s) said, "Yaa Iblees, la`anatullah `alayk, may Allah curse you! Your questions are this and your answers are this." Iblees was shaking! And then Prophet (s) blew on him and it threw Shaytan the distance of seven months away! Seven months in that time was not like today, that is a very long distance, seven months of riding a horse or walking. How many kilometers do you walk per hour? Six or seven, divide by 24 hours, multiply by that rate and get 150 and by seven months you get 1000 kilometers or a distance of seven months.
Grandshaykh, may Allah (swt) bless him, in explaining that hadith, said when Prophet (s) threw Iblees he went into a ditch and fainted. He was unconscious for many, many months, because when Prophet (s) blew on him it was not to reach the Sahaaba (r) anymore; he cleared them from Iblees. Are we cleared from Iblees? No. Are Sahaaba cleared from Iblees? Yes. This is Grandshaykh's (q) story. And then after many months Iblees woke up and found himself in that ditch, vomiting from the time he was thrown there and peeing and doing everything in that ditch, so he was immersed in it. And all this is the waste of Iblees, the bad characteristics coming from within himself there. He was looking around and he is full of that stinky waste.
Today in the west in order for vegetables to become fat, they say it's "organic," but they give them all kinds of manure from animals. So really what you are eating is mixed with garbage that comes from animals. And not only that, they take pork and put it for you as a vitamin or hormone for these vegetables in order to tell you, "These are organic, buy them." And everyone runs to these beautiful colored vegetables which, because of Shaytan, you are buying and eating. Before there was no such thing in old villages, they didn't have anything to throw away; they planted and ate. We never saw in villages that they are putting chemicals.
So what happened? When you put manure on soil, you begin to see a plant growing. And Iblees saw a plant coming and he was so happy with that plant, as he knew the secret of that plant. And Grandshaykh (q) continued saying and I'm quoting him, "Iblees was so happy that he took that plant and began to plant it everywhere, in Arab countries and around the world." And this is from an inspiration to Grandshaykh (q) about this issue. And so Iblees was busy with planting and left the Sahaaba alone because he was busy. And he prepared a nice "gift," nice according to his understanding. So he planted it everywhere and when the Prophet (s) left dunya, Iblees came after the period of Sahaaba (r) to give the "gift" of this plant. So he began to take the leaves, crush them, roll them together and smoke them. And Grandshaykh, may Allah bless his soul, said, "This is the plant of cigarettes." Cigarettes come from the waste of Iblees. All bad characteristics are embedded in cigarettes. The one smoking cigarettes is smoking the waste of Iblees. In the honored, blessed human body, he is putting what Allah (swt) does not like. It is a test for Ummat un-Nabi (s).
So is anyone here smoking? Inshaa-Allah not. And all kinds of drugs come from the waste of Iblees. That is why firqat al-hashaashiyoon, forty years after the Prophet (s), there came a group of people called the hashaashiyoon who took hashish, wrapped it, smoked it, and felt high. Like today there are shaykhs, in Egypt for example, who drink or smoke marijuana before reciting Qur'an. So the trunk of all this is ghadab is from Iblees, who wants everyone to have anger, because with anger he can destroy everything. Bloodshed and cheating around the world is because of anger. Why do people fight and argue? It is anger. Why does a husband fight his wife and the wife fights her husband, and children fight their parents, and brothers fights with sisters? If you control that anger for forty days you can stop that anger, but you must really stop that anger.
One time in 1967, I was with Mawlana Shaykh (q) in Hajj in Madinatu 'l-Munawwara. He was with thirty very old pilgrims and he has to carry all their difficulties. He was tired that day and wanted to change some money to Saudi riyals. We went down from the hotel and asked a money changer the exchange rate, and he quoted the price and we went. We asked another one and he said a price higher than the first (lower exchange rate). Mawlana Shaykh said to him, "That one gave a better price," and he looked at Mawlana Shaykh and said, "All of you come to make us angry and you have no reasoning!" Then he spat on Mawlana Shaykh's face! What do you think at that moment? I wanted to jump on that man and fight with him, but Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (q) pushed me down and said, "May Allah (swt) forgive you."
If that happened to one of us, what would we do? We would punch him and not only that, we would spit on him. So controlling anger is important. If we control our anger Allah (swt) will give us a power to eliminate our sins, one after one, one after one. But if we are going to let that come out and fight, that anger is there. Everyone of us is like that; we get angry so quickly and we shout. It is better to leave the house. Go to China. The Prophet (s) said:
اطلب العلم و لو في الصين
Utlubu 'l-`ilm wa law fi 's-seen
Seek knowledge even if in China.
Go to China; there is no one to fight with there! (laughter)
May Allah (swt) forgive us and may He keep our anger away. He said, as we said, that if someone tries to control himself for forty days, haalan wa f`ilan, حالا و فعلا , means you cannot show an expression of anger even from your face. Some people might not fight but they show anger on their face. If you can control that, you can cut the tree of anger from its roots. Not with an axe or a sword, but with your hand you can take it away. May Allah (swt) take it away from us!
Mawlana Shaykh said, mainly it will be taken away in seclusion and through mujaahadah, struggle against ourselves, to not let that anger come out. When anger comes, remember that Shaytan is there with you at that moment. So to whom are you going to listen, Allah (swt) or Shaytan? Are we listening to Allah (swt)? No, we are listening to Shaytan, so we immediately respond to anger with anger. What will happen? Anger multiplied by anger will be more negative and explode, whereas negative with positive will cancel each other. If someone is negative with anger and the other is positive and able to control their anger, then negative and positive even out. But if that one is negative and you are negative, then it becomes negative multiplied by negative, which is negative squared. So negative and positive will be as if nothing happened.
O Muslims! O Believers! Try as much as possible to be positive and to throw negative activity from your heart!
Bi hurmati 'l-habeeb, bi hurmati 'l-Fatihah.