7 Habits of Truly Successful People Part 1 - Dr. Bilal Philips

indeed all praise is due to allah and as such we should praise him seek his help seek refuge in him from the evil which is within ourselves and the evil which results from our deeds for whomsoever allah has guided none can misguide and whomsoever allah has allowed to go astray none can guide and i bear witness that there is no god worthy of worship but allah and that muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam is the last messenger of allah as i mentioned earlier the topic of the lecture is seven habits of truly successful people and this work as i this presentation that i uh put together is based as a concept on a book by steven covey called the seven habits of highly effective people and there are a number of other books like that on the market where people who are into motivating others in companies and in various walks of life you know have made it a business to study the lifestyle the way of thinking etc of the successful people of the society and then extract from their behavioral patterns certain guidelines which people would take and then utilize in their lives to achieve the kind of successes that they achieved however these various books are based on a particular world outlook one in which the material world is all that is being considered so these principles generally speaking will benefit people in the material world it will help them to be successful etc however for those who believe that there is a life after this and that one will have to stand to account for what one does in this life a number of the principles and habits and traits and characteristics which have been identified are unacceptable they're unacceptable because they involve deception uh aggression exploitation etc etc as for those whose goal or whose understanding of this world is that it is a stepping stone to the next and that the goal is actually the next life and not really this one then their criterion of success or what constitutes success is not a material one but one in the life to come success and ultimate success is success in the hereafter not necessarily in this life if one is able to achieve success in both this life and the next then of course this is the better situation or the better way to go however if success in this life means failure in the next then it's better not to succeed it's better not to succeed it is more important that we succeed in the next life than in this so what may be deemed or what may be concluded as being failure in this life which in fact produces success in the next life is not really failure it only appears to be failure based on the material standards of this world but in fact it is ultimately success and allah subhanahu ta'ala has told us in the quran that we do and we should strive for that balance between the two our lord grant us good in this world and in the next and shield us from the hell fire and we also have another verse where allah says there for us to as a reminder to us that is don't forget your portion of this world however people oftentimes use that as an excuse to spend all of their lives getting that portion of this world and that is only a piece of the verse actually the verse begins with fema attack that is seek from what allah has granted you the next life of the things that allah has granted you in this life seek the next life but don't forget your portion in this life so we have to keep that within the context of the verse and not take it as an excuse to spend all our times trying to get our portion of this word and as i said ultimate success is success in the next life what is that in simple terms it's paradise that is the ultimate success and in order to achieve that there are a number of principles which have been given to us by the prophet muhammad been mentioned to us by allah in the quran and among them for example is that this world is a prison for the believer and paradise for the disbeliever this is a principle a general principle a dunyas kafir it means that we should have a particular outlook when we look at this world and how we approach it we should approach it as a prisoner approaches prison life he is restricted or she is restricted in this life because they are looking for release from this life ultimately in the next life the paradise will be there but for the disbeliever of course there is nothing coming afterwards so this life is all that there is so they will seek to get from it everything they can at any means or by any means necessary so we have a situation of disbelievers looking at this life basically are materialists looking at this life basically as paradise now what we're going to be looking at the seven habits of truly successful people as i said the truly successful are those who attain paradise prophet muhammed based on divine revelation did mention some of his companions as being among those who would be in paradise he told them in this life that they would be among the people of paradise there are ten of them commonly referred to as al-mubashiruna and janna the ten promised paradise but actually the number is more than that the ten include abu bakr umar ibn al-khattab ali bin abi talib these are the well-known ten however prophet muhammed did mention a number of other companions some of them by name some of them on occasions where even their names have not come down to us on one hand one might say well if prophet sallam told them that they're going to paradise so that they would end up in paradise wouldn't that discourage them from efforts here in fact it didn't they strove even harder because of their level of iman their striving that knowledge did not deter them or weaken their desire to strive to do what allah had commanded in this life now what i have done in preparing this topic is i've looked at the lives of these companions those whose names are mentioned as well as those who haven't these names haven't and i tried to extract from them certain characteristics and principles that they lived their lives by which hopefully would benefit myself and yourselves in guiding us towards the kind of characteristics traits or habits that we should have if we want ultimate success the ultimate success of paradise now the first the first principle would be to correct your world outlook to correct your beliefs this is the starting point prophet muhammed had said whoever sincerely believes from his or her heart and says there is no god worthy of worship but allah la ilaha they will enter paradise so that's a general promise a promise from allah now that promise is basically a statement of the foundational belief which everyone must have in order to attain paradise it was the same foundation which was given to adam and was given by all of the prophets of allah down through the centuries belief in allah first and foremost and that he is the only one worthy of worship now what we're starting with then is the concept of god's existence for those people who are not believers then or they're non-muslims or whatever this is the first question that has to be asked does god exist and they need to come to the conclusion that he does exist and that it is not only a belief taught by the world leaders spiritual leaders throughout history and the true prophets of god it is also a logical belief arrived at by philosophers greek philosophers of the past through reasoning etc came to the same conclusion and when we look at the alternative the alternative that this world came about by chance and modern science now speaks of the big bang everything starting with the big bang and nobody speaks about what was before the big bang the point is that if we think of this world as coming into existence with this big bang big bang is like what is an explosion it's an explosion matter exploding out into the space think about this to arrive at this earth with all of its complex life forms the ecosystems and everything this planet revolving around the sun at the right distance and everything from the sun to sustained life and all the different factors that are involved to say that this was a product of an explosion you know which involved matter expanding without any kind of direction and programming that is like saying i will drop a bomb in a junkyard and when it explodes i'm gonna find in it a car but i can get in and drive off with you know or a toaster that i can put my bread in and toast or anything a refrigerator just as common sense tells us no matter how many bombs you drop in a junkyard you're never going to produce a car or a refrigerator or even a toaster from a bomb dropping in a junkyard well that is as stupid and as foolish as it is to say that this world was a result of the big bang no scientists who are open-minded admit that that early compressed matter that was there before that big bang actually took place or within seconds of its taking place within nanoseconds of it's taking place already each and every atom was already told where it had to be to produce what we have it had to already have known where it had to be that is the reality otherwise it couldn't happen any more as i said than a bomb in a junkyard producing modern science has told us a couple of years back scientists uh researching in mental cases people who have schizophrenia and other mental illnesses experimenting putting probes into people's brains all right they would bore holes in the skull and stick a probe in and wiggle it around and see what happens maybe it will cause a change it's like western experimentation what they found was that there was a spot in the front of the brain which each and every person that they put the probe in and they wiggled it around there the person would have these massive religious experiences you know a sense of god being present kind of thing so they they named it and this was in an article this is produced by scientists in america they call it the god spot it's a big article i have the article and if you want it i can fax it to you they said god spot found in the brain they put it another way one of them were saying the brain was is hot wired for belief in god these are the evidences modern sciences is finding it itself and if we look in the quran there's a recent fairly recent discovery uh which i think is worth reflecting on for a minute and that is surah al-hadeed the 57th chapter of the quran in verse 25 allah says there wa anzalna hadid sun shadeed women that is i have revealed that's how it's usually translated i've revealed or i've sent down iron which has great force in it strong force and benefit for humans now the term anzelna was translated as revealed interpreted as revealed from the early generation of interpreters because the word anzelna does also mean reveal but even when allah uses the term you know anzalna elect zikra for example the quran and we reference the prophet that allah revealed the quran to him it did actually involve a coming down the quran was sent down from the law in the first heaven and from there gabriel used or jibril used to take verses according to allah's instruction down to the prophet sallam so there was a process of coming down now modern science in looking at the issue of iron in the world they came to the conclusion that the origin of iron was from the core of the earth because the core of the earth is is approximately 35 iron and then nickel this is the core the molten solid followed by molten core of the earth and as you go farther away from the core you get less and less iron until you get in the crust of the earth some 5.6 percent iron still it is amongst the highest elements in the crust percentage-wise but still it appears to come from the inside outward so where does the idea of the coming down of iron fit in again the conclusion was it was revealed that is knowledge of its use was revealed to human beings allah gave them the capacity to understand and to utilize iron this was the explanation given however more modern research came to the conclusion that in fact iron couldn't have begun in the core of the earth it couldn't have begun there why because the sun of our solar system which is the hottest location in the whole solar system in its own core it only reaches according to their calculation approximately 15 million degrees celsius 15 million degrees i mean of course this is quite hot however it is not hot enough to produce iron the most common element in the universe is hydrogen and that's number one on the periodic table for those of you that remember your physics and science that's number one first element hydrogen helium is number two and everything else is a combination fusion of the atoms of hydrogen helium to produce the other elements iron is way down the line it's way down the line it is 56. and as such the the heat which was necessary had to be in the billions of degrees they estimate someplace around 5 billion degrees to produce iron so our sun could not produce the iron so then where did the iron come from this was a question puzzling researchers in the 80s the late 80s studying stars they came to realize of course that the stars huge much greater stars than our stars did in fact in their degeneration and their evolution their development produce the kind of heat which would produce in fact iron when they turned into novas and what they called supernovas then iron was actually produced they exploded and iron is shot out into the universe in the form of meteorites etc most of the meteorites which hitch the earth here they are made up mostly of iron so in looking back scientists then in the late 80s they began to re-examine their view of the development of the earth and they came to the conclusion that in fact what happened is that the earth which came off from the evolution of the sun was like a ball of ash and that the meteorites hit the surface of the earth and in hitting the surface of the earth it increased the heat of the earth because with the impact there's energy released so meteor showers hitting the earth increase the heat enough to melt that iron not to produce iron but to melt that iron and then it would then sink through the surface towards the center of the earth and became concentrated in the core of the earth and that's how they explain it now hawkins you can find it in hawking's book you know as well as his book is called a brief history of time this is one of the biggest atheists out there you know he argues against beginnings there's no beginning and no end you know he has a whole set of he's a crippled individual who's as i said one of the leading atheists out there there's also another book called the first three minutes by stephen weinberg both of them present the exactly the same picture of how iron came to the core of the earth so from that we have iron actually coming down as allah described it he sent it down to the earth and of course it is the most stable element the bonds which holds its atomic structure together are the strongest bonds of all of the other of the elements so it does have that shadeed and of course its benefit is that being in making up most of the core it produced the basis of the gravitational pull of the earth which holds the atmosphere and the biosphere around the earth without that iron core to produce the the gravitational field we would not have any atmosphere on the earth they would know no life would survive on the earth critical furthermore when you go into human beings hemoglobin when you go into plants chlorophyll all of these are the essential elements which transform energy uh from from uh material sources from the sun etc to uh chemical energy in our bodies which allow the cells to grow and everything both human beings and plants iron is essential for their development and this was described in the quran some 1 400 years ago these are among the signs you know for those who would reflect that there is in fact a god one of the problems which people are faced with who end up in a state of atheism they may have started off traditionally as believers but then they ended up in atheism because of the issue of what they call evil in the world you know where does the evil come from and i've had discussions with atheists before and usually the atheists will come up with these very powerful kind of arguments in the beginning but when you listen and listen carefully to what they're saying usually they will end up saying i'm an atheist because my best friend died when i was a kid my mother died hawkins i'm born crippled this is evil why so what appears to them to be evil this is what has led them to say there's no god meaning that as atheists used to argue or they do argue if god is all-powerful and god is all good then why is there evil in the world because if it's all good then he must and he's all powerful then surely he can create an a world without evil and if he's all good that's what he's going to create so the fact that there is evil means according to them there is no god this is this is the line of reasoning used by many of the atheists however one thing needs to be pointed out get this point clear why is there evil in the world first we need to realize that we only recognize things through their opposites as they say in arabic we don't know sweet unless we know sour if you don't know what sour is you can't know what sweet is you don't know left unless you know right left only has validity because there is a right similarly with up and down if there's no down then up means nothing this is the reality and similarly we only know good by knowing evil knowledge of good comes through knowledge of evil the second point to note is that yes allah is all good and whatever he has created is good however the things which allah creates they may be good in and of themselves that they're purely good the intent of their creation was good and the actual thing which is created appears only to be good there doesn't seem to be anything evil from it that's one aspect then there's another aspect of things which allah creates not for itself but for the good that it causes meaning if you look at the thing itself that thing may appear to us to be evil however it causes certain good which is far greater than the evil so allah created it for the ends not for the means and we function like that in our lives if you go to the dentist right and the dentist pulls out that syringe he's going to give you that shot of cocaine right to dead in your uh not cocaine what do they call it xylocaine or whatever they give it to you to dead in your gums shouldn't be giving you any cocaine sorry okay anyway um xylocaine or whatever this deadling now the needle that they give you it's about this long right you see him he pulls it out of his tray and he puts the stuff in his oh my god you know that's the worst experience you know nobody can get over it going to the dentist okay now we bear it why because as a result of that pain of that injection it deadens the pain and he can extract that tooth if we didn't remove the tooth the harm to us was so great so for the sake of removal of the tooth the greater good we accept that needle because if anybody came along with a needle that long and said i'd like to stick you with it you're gonna say please don't you know you would not accept anybody sticking you with this thing except in that circumstance same thing with medicine you're sick and the doctor pulls out some castor oil you know castor oil is the worst one i can think of right i don't know if they still have it around now when i was a kid it was that was the nastiest medicine out there right castor oil just when he opens it the smell of it just makes you ugh you know but the doctor tells you take this you're gonna get well so in spite of how nasty it appears it smells it tastes you're gonna take it why for the greater good that you're gonna get from it so similarly allah has created certain things which relative to our point of view may seem to be evil but there is a greater good behind it sometimes the good is very obvious it may be very obvious sometimes it's not but the point is we believe that allah has created nothing purely evil nothing we as individuals we may commit what may be called pure evil meaning we have an evil intent and we do that evil act that is pure evil relative to ourselves allah does not have any evil intent and whatever act we see that may contain something of evil there is a good aspect to it that maybe we cannot grasp so even that evil pure evil act of that human being with that evil intent the fact that the law allows it to take place it means that there is some good behind it that we can't see so you'll see for example just recently in um the gulf gulf air had a crash flying to bahrain many egyptians were on it teachers coming back they died everybody on the plane died that's about a month ago the next day there was a picture in the newspaper of this egyptian right his father was kissing him on one cheek and his sister was kissing him on the other cheek and what was the caption under here the caption was he had a big smile on his face the caption was that he was supposed to have been on that plane when he went to the airport he didn't have his visa stamp in his passport now this meant he was going to be late to go back to classes maybe he might lose his job or whatever he was upset screaming at the officials that they're at the counter you know why you know i should be able to get on the plane i have to get on my plane you know this is wrong you shouldn't very upset but then the next day the plane crashed and there he was on the front page of the paper big smile from ear to ear right his father kissing in one cheek sister kazan because at the time when he couldn't get on the plane he thought he was a great evil he might lose his job he's going to be late terrible situation but then the next day it turned out to be the best for him that's life that's the reality so we don't have a problem with evil in the world now the next point is that okay if there is a god and you have people who say okay i can accept there is a god but prophets no no no god didn't reveal anything to any prophets all this stuff is just fairy tales you know it's not really true well the point is again if god created this world if god was wise then he would not create this world put beings in it and not tell them what they need to do that's not wisdom this is ignorance just like you for example if you send your kids to school and you don't tell them what they're supposed to do at school they don't know i'm supposed to go into the class when the bell rings sit down in my classroom in front of my teacher get my books out and just do what the teacher tells me do my homework everything if you didn't tell the kids to do that do you think the kids would go and sit in the classroom no they'd head straight for the playground they'd be on the playground swinging in the swings and sliding on the slides all day till the final bang rings and they go home that's reality they had to be told what to do similarly in a company if you hire people to work in your company and you don't tell them what they need to do what are they going to do they're going to go into the offices and just find out what to do and just go and work no no they go to the lunchroom they go to the lunchroom have a chat and eat and you know they'd spend the day in the lunchroom you have to tell them what to do otherwise it doesn't work that's very basic so don't tell me that we have enough sense to tell our kids what to do when they go to school or tell our workers when they work in our factory or whatever but allah is going to create us and put us on the earth and not tell us what to do that's stupidity that is nonsense no if there is a god and god created us then he told us what we are supposed to do here so therefore the purpose of our creation the purpose of our being here had to have been made known to us and that is of course through the prophets of allah they're the ones who conveyed that purpose to us now with regards to this correcting our beliefs we can only do that with knowledge so it means that the first habit of first principle that one who hopes to attain success the ultimate success out of this life has to develop is that of seeking knowledge because we have to know who a god is for us to do what we're supposed to do in regards to him if we don't know who god is then we can end up worshiping god as a man as christians say or we worship him as hindus believe god became carnet incarnate in the form of a fish of a frog you know they have the elephant head god ganesh or whatever you know where do you stop cow if you don't know who god is then that's where you end up so it is essential that we know who god is so we have to have knowledge knowledge is essential and that we have to be in the process we have to be in the habit of seeking knowledge and when we look for example uh with look looking at omar ibn al-khattab all right who was one of the people promised paradise and specifically in a hadith narrated by jabir ibn abdullah he said that he heard prophet muhammed saying i entered paradise in a dream and i saw in it a house when i asked who it was reserved for the angel said it is for omar ibn al-khattab this is this hadith is found muslim authentic now in another narration of abdullah bin umar he related that prophet sallam and said while i was sleeping i saw a cup of milk offered to me in my dream i drank from it until its freshness was reflected through my fingernails then i gave the remainder to omar ibn al-khattab the people asked o messenger of allah how do you interpret that dream and he said referring to the milk which he gave to omar it refers to knowledge knowledge this is what omar one of the things that omar was noted for um he was noted for his knowledge he advised prophet sallam in a number of different occasions and though the prophet sallam didn't take his advice revelation came confirming the advice of omar for example in the prisoners after the battle of badr when the prophet sallam asked his companions what should we do with them omar said kill them all let each person take a prisoner who is from his family his relative maybe his uncle maybe his father maybe his brother and he killed them that was omar's suggestion to make clear our break with kufur this belief abu bakr's suggestion was freedom for ransom or whatever and the prophet sallam took abu bakr's suggestion abu bakr said they're our relatives you know perhaps if we treat them kindly maybe they'll come up come up over to islam afterwards so the prophet muhammad being soft-hearted person that he was made the age jihad here and chose the suggestion of abu bakr however allah revealed in the quran that it was not befitting for the prophet to take prisoners until he had established himself in the land because these people that they were fighting were people who killed muslims in mecca the only thing that would bring them to their senses is like for like this is war this is battle they're caught execute them they killed how many muslims in mecca before that was the better choice also abdullah bin salam a jewish rabbi and scholar from the kainoka tribe who converted to islam when the prophet sallam first came to medina sa adibna biwakas related that he heard allah's messenger say he said that he didn't hear allah's messenger say about anyone alive and walk in the earth he will be in paradise except in the case of abdullah ibn salam so this individual he was noted for his knowledge again he was knowledgeable as a jew as a rabbi a scholar amongst them when the truth came he accepted it and increased the knowledge he got the reward of having followed the religion that he was exposed to of prophet musa and then double that reward by accepting islam so the first principle is that of knowing allah knowing about allah believing in him testifying to that belief that is the first step to paradise because in knowing allah we know what allah is not the confused ideas which are out there like the belief that allah is everywhere this is one of the confused ideas that people have and although it has become very widespread it is a confused idea it is not from the teachings of islam not the teachings of the prophet or his companions the correct belief is that allah is beyond his creation because when a person says okay allah is everywhere allah is in you allies in me you have problems because somebody was going to come along and say to you yeah allah is in you and me but allah is more in me than he is in you so what does that mean that you should worship me and you've got people who have made this claim throughout the ages people inviting others to worship themselves you have eight million people in india believing that this guy by the name of sai baba they believe that he is god walking the earth eight million people including some of the people in the top echelons of the government and even some muslims and also issues of intermediation you have people who are promoting the idea that we can pray to others besides allah we can pray to prophet muhammad or we can pray to the saints and ask them to carry our prayers to allah for us we have people teaching this but this is the wrong belief about allah it's a belief of ignorance because if we can pray through individuals to others besides allah then what is the difference between us and the catholics who have a saint for every occasion you lose something you pray to this saint you want to get married you pray to that saint you want to you know get a big house you pray to this saint you got a saint for everything and unfortunately there are amongst muslims who have a similar thing going they have these saints that they pray to saints who are human beings who died on the earth who are buried the places of their burial have become shrines where people make pilgrimage to thousands and thousands of muslims this is all misguidance so we need to believe in allah and believe in him as he deserves to be believed in so first step is correct your world outlook you need to have the right one the second is to commit ourselves emotionally if we've established this belief we know what it is we have knowledge of it we know what's right about it then we need to commit ourselves to it emotionally what happens is that people usually have this backwards people are committed to something emotionally without having knowledge about it the average christian you know hindu and others they are committed emotionally to their system i was born or whatever my parents or whatever my grandparents or whatever there's no way i'm gonna be anything but that that is that strong emotional commitment to the thing but no knowledge so where we commit ourselves emotionally to something without having knowledge first we then get locked into misguidance this is satanic traditionalism is a satanic force amongst us where people hold on to traditions traditions which don't have their origin in divine revelation so they become sources of misguidance so we have to be committed emotionally but following knowledge and when prophesy said no one truly believes until allah and his messenger becomes more beloved to them than this world we're talking about an emotional commitment one of loving allah of course loving allah and his messenger is manifest in obedience in action in terms of obedience but it is fundamentally an emotional commitment and we find for example love of allah one expression of it is love of the quran there is a particular narration found in sahih al-bukhari in which anas narrates that a man from the ansar used to lead them in prayer in cuba whenever he began to recite a chapter in prayer after the fatiha he would first recite the whole of surah iqlas hulhua and then he would recite the other chapter from the quran when he finished the prayer those who were praying with him told him maybe he shouldn't be doing this you know they advise them not to do it but he continued to do so eventually when the prophet saw sallam came to visit cuba they told him that this man was doing it so the prophet sallam called him and said what prevents you from doing what your companions asked you to do those who are praying along with you asked you to do and what is causing you to recite surah al-ikhlas in every single uh raqqa every single unit of prayer the man so as a man said o messenger of allah i do it because i love it i love surah iqlas and the prophet said to him your love has put you in paradise your love of surah class has put you in paradise so that love this is that emotional commitment to allah and his messenger expressed in the love of the word of allah the quran that where it is sincere and solid of course based on our foundation of knowledge of allah can put us in paradise so we have that commitment that we have to work on committing ourselves emotionally connected to that is the concept of crying for the sake of allah when i looked into the lives of a number of the companions who have promised paradise uthman for example radiology it was said that uthman whenever he stood at a grave he would cry until his beard became wet and on one occasion he was asked why he didn't cry at statements from the quran or from the sunnah which spoke about heaven and hell but he cried at the grave he said that the prophet sallam had said to him that the grave is the first abode of the hereafter if one is saved from it then what follows is made easier and if one is not saved from it then what follows is more severe so he would cry whenever he stood by graves we also find amongst the other companions it was mentioned by some of the companions who prayed with him that they could hear him crying in his prayers all the way to the last rose of the salah whenever he recited the verse through the statement of prophet yaqub when he found out that his son yusuf you know had been uh killed according to what the uh his sons the other sons had claimed i only complain of my grief and sorrow to allah so whenever omar is to recite that it used to lead him to tears similarly when the prophet sallam was on his death bed he instructed aisha to go and tell her father abu bakr to lead the salah aisha said to him o messenger of allah if abu bakr stands in your place the people won't be able to hear him due to his excessive crying he was known to be crying all the time when he was praying but the problem said tell abu bakr to lead the prayers so ayesha went to hafsah the daughter of omar wife of the prophet muhammad and told her tell the prophet sallam that he shouldn't choose abu bakr because if he leads the prayers nobody's going to be able to hear him in prayer because he cries so much so hafsah went and told the prophet sallallahu and the prophet sallam said stop you are like the women of yusuf the women around prophet yusuf tell abu bakr to lead the prayer so abu bakr was told and hafsa then told aisha you've never done any good for me you know you got me in trouble with the prophet saws not knowing that the same thing happened to her also anyway the point is that abu bakr omar uthman all of these illustrious companions promised paradise all of them were known to cry in their prayers and we have a number of statements from prophet muhammed to that effect the fire for example narrated by abu hura found in sunan eternity the fire will not touch a person who cries out of fear of allah until milk returns to the breasts and another narration also by from abu hura he quotes prophet salem two eyes have been forbidden to the hellfire an eye which wept out of fear of allah and one which stayed open throughout the night standing guard for islam and for the family from kufur we also have another narration from abu hura in which he said seven people are shaded by allah's throne on the day when there is no shade the seventh one was one whose eyes fill up with tears when he or she remembers allah in private so this is one of the qualities that those who are going to be successful in this life must have a soft heart a heart which when it hears the quran recited tears comes to their eyes when they reflect in their prayers or when they remember allah privately tears come to their eyes these are people people who like omar and abu bakr who were involved in jihad having to make very critical decisions but at the same time there was this other balance a balance of softness with regards to allah and his messenger and with regards to the words of allah the remembrance of allah so it is very important for us to develop this is again part of that emotional commitment where the faith is real and the hearts are soft and allah warns us in so many verses in the quran you know about those whose hearts become hardened we have to be very careful about that because the hardened heart the hardened heart will not make it to paradise now how to develop that we develop it by working on taqwa fear of allah consciousness of allah as allah said in surah al-baqarah will teach you fear allah and allah will teach you and also in surah and kabut the 29th chapter verse 69 allah says there was and for those who strive in worship for our sake we will guide them to our paths so we work on our taqwa by striving to obey allah because taqwa is obedience ultimately doing what allah has prescribed and avoiding what allah has forbidden we build our taqwa by seeking to please allah in our in all of our actions we also build it we also build softness of the heart an emotional commitment by knowledge by listening to the quran listen to it regularly reading the quran regularly by reading about the different statements of the prophet sallam with regards to crying for the sake of allah by remembrance of death this is another way remembering death because prophet sallam said the remembrance of death will destroy these feelings of great pleasure in this world and also visiting the graveyards going to the graveyards when somebody dies usually we don't think about going to help to wash the body if we have the opportunity to do so we should do so because this will help us get closer to the realities of our own lives a reality which ends in our death we should seek forgiveness from allah do it regularly recognize our sins repent because real repentance can only take care take place when there is remorse sadness so these are among the roots to soften our hearts one of the companions abu ayub had said that a man came and asked prophet sallam to teach him a few brief words and he said to him when you stand in prayer pray a farewell prayer don't say words you will later regret and don't wish for what others have but when you stand in prayer pray as this as if this is the last prayer you're making in this life so by trying to be more sincere in our prayers making it real this can help to soften our hearts and the prophet sallamus said in the hadith narrated by herrera don't laugh too much because excessive laughter kills the heart it's not to say we don't laugh at all because of course some people you know do kind of promote that the prophet saws never laughed or his laugh was no more than just a smile but no in fact his wives and companies narrated that he laughed on some occasions so much they could see his back teeth so yeah he did laugh and laughing is okay but not all the time you have people who everything is a joke where you're always you know people they're just joking joking joking like this where the whole life becomes a joke this is no good it destroys it deadens the heart and the prophet sallam had told us in a hadith which is found inside oh people cry and if you can't then make yourself cry if after all that we still can't cry then we need to make ourselves cry in other words we force ourselves to cry and if we do that enough times of course it may feel very artificial initially but if we do that enough times then there is this barrier that we break that we go past and then when we should be crying inshallah we will be crying the third habit that those who seek ultimate success the success of paradise must develop is complete trust we need to have complete trust in allah stokul there's a companion of the prophet sallallahu by the name of akasha or kasha bin now he was promised paradise by the prophet muhammad but he was promised paradise as a part of a group who had this characteristic of trusting in allah abdullah ibn abbas narrated that he heard allah's messenger say the nations were presented before me and i saw a prophet with a small band of followers and another with only one or two people and yet another with none along with him when i saw a large group i thought it was my nation but i was told it was moses and his people then i was told to look at the horizon where i saw a very large group and i was told this is your nation there are among them 70 000 persons who will enter paradise without any reckoning and without any punishment and when the prophet saw was asked who are they he responded saying there are those who do not make incantations on themselves nor do they ask for it to be done for them nor do they read bad omens into events and they place their trust in their lord when the prophet sallam said this then akasha ibn marsan stood up and said pray to allah that he make me one of them and the prophet sallam said you are one of them and then another companion jumped up and said o messenger of allah i pray that i am one of them also and he said okasha beat you to it the door is closed but that group was a group of people 70 000 who put their trust completely in allah abuzar had said he's another companion who was promised paradise he had said allah's messenger called to me on one occasion and said will you make a pledge for paradise will you make a pledge for paradise oh gosh um abuzar said yes and he said i stretched out my hands to take the prophet sallam's hand in the pledge for paradise and the prophet sallam added this condition he said that you will not ask anyone for anything and i said yes and he added even if your whip falls if you're on your camel or your horse and your whip falls you will dismount and pick it up yourself you will not ask anybody for anything and that's what abu dharr was known for he never asked anybody for anything another companion by the name of sauban he quoted the prophet said who will guarantee said it to a group of them who will guarantee me that he will not ask anyone anything and i will guarantee him paradise and he said i will and he also never asked anybody for anything okay this is a level it's not to say that that's what everybody has to do now if you feel you're ready for it then go for it abu bakr did ask people omar did ask people osman did ask people ali did ask people you had leading companions were the top they did ask but some among them chose this route there are other routes this route which was that they didn't ask anybody for anything or the other one is trusting in allah in the sense that we don't read bad omens into anything this is a part of trusting in allah that we don't see anything and think something bad is going to happen because that happened you know which is widespread in various societies we have omens and amulets people get taoise these type of things to protect them from evil and as allah said in surat talaq chapter 65 verse 3 and whoever trusts or puts their trust in allah allah is sufficient for them now the question is if we don't take the root of never asking anybody for anything how else can we develop this sense of trust in allah one we have to start off again with correct belief in allah and knowledge of allah knowledge of things which allah has informed us about this life and about our self first and foremost it is knowledge that allah knows best as allah said in suel baqarah verse 216 that perhaps you will dislike something which is in fact good for you or you may like something which is in fact bad for you and allah knows and you don't know so we have to believe that allah knows best that whatever happens is for the best whatever good we wanted that we didn't achieve it is for the best that we didn't achieve it whatever evil befalls us there is good in it we have to believe allah knows best also we have to believe that allah is just that whatever befalls us is not beyond our capacity it is not unfair when allah said verse 49 it means what it means that allah is not unjust your lord is not unjust to anyone that's allah's statement also when allah said law you know and allah does not burden any soul greater than its capacity this is the promise of allah we have to believe that allah is fair he's not going to put a burden on you which is really too hard for you but i could handle it no whatever burden he puts on you is what is suitable for you whatever burden he puts on me and for others is what is suitable for them allah taylor makes for each and every individual the burdens that he puts on each person in this life and this is why suicide is haram because suicide is a person saying god is unfair unjust it's too much this life is just too much for me to bear i can't deal with it no this is not the case and this is the basis of the kuffer of satan because a lot of people think that satan became a kafir when allah said were kind of caffeine because he didn't bow to the angels i'm sorry bow along with the angels too adam but this is not true yes he was disobedient in not bowing but disobedience doesn't make you a disbeliever because if he became a disbeliever then every act of disbelief of disobedience that we do would make us all disbelievers allah told us don't do this and we did it then we then become kafirs it's not the case we don't believe that an act of disobedience makes a person a disbeliever no what made satan a disbeliever why allah called him ukana middle cafe was because of the fact that he attributed to a law injustice he attributed to allah in his arrogance he attributed to allah injustice he said allah you are unjust how he said it by saying i am better than adam you created me from fire and you created him from clay meaning what meaning that i'm not supposed to bow to him i'm better than him it's wrong for you to tell me to bow to him so he isn't attributing to allah injustice and error and that is the essence of his disbelief so to put and to develop the correct trust in allah we have to know that allah is just and that he doesn't burden any of us greater than we can bear and further that with every difficulty comes ease in that whatever burden we're facing now it's not going to be forever it goes on for a period of time and then it goes there's a break because if there was no break we couldn't handle it and allah is fair and he's just and he's merciful so he gives us a break principle is patience and perseverance patience and perseverance we usually associate patients with calamity that's the most obvious time for patience and there are a number of occasions in the time of the prophet sallam where people who suffered were promised paradise for patients with that suffering one of the well-known examples is that of a woman known as um zafar her once asked him may i show you a woman of paradise and when she said yes ibn abbas said this black woman pointed to a woman came to allah's messenger and said i am suffering from convulsions which knock me down and cause my body to become exposed could you pray to allah for me and he replied in if you wish you can be patient with it and paradise will be yours but if you wish i can pray to allah to cure you she said i will be patient but i become exposed so can you ask allah that i not be exposed and the prophet sallam prayed for her but she accepted that trial the trial which appeared to be something like a possession but actually it was something which had a medical origin to it a biological origin it wasn't possession because whenever cases of possession were brought to prophet muhammad he dealt with it directly he didn't tell people to bear it he dealt with it so in this case knowing that it was biological he told her she can be patient and allah will give her paradise she chose that um she was also promised paradise when the prophet sallam was going out with the companions for the battle of badr she asked permission to go with them so that she could treat the sick and wounded that perhaps she may be granted martyrdom shahadah prophesy said stay at home for allah will grant you the shahada that you're seeking she freed a young female slave of hers and a young male but she did it by them earning their freedom that means they would pay their way out and it was taking some time for them to get free so they got impatient and one day they conspired together and they wrapped a cloth around her head suffocated her and strangled her to death then they fled omar ibn khattab brought them back and said allah's messenger used to visit um and say let's visit the martyr and then he instructed that the two be crucified how to develop patients patients is developed again based on knowledge but before looking at other issues of patients i'd just like to mention also another narration of a woman known as al-ramidiya this woman was one married woman who committed adultery and she got pregnant she went to prophet muhammed asked him to purify her so he instructed her to go back first he told her you know just to go home you know don't say this just go home but she told him no i'm pregnant and i want to be purified so he told her

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Id: WZ3POr750T0

Length: 75min 25sec (4525 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2011