The Book of Assistance with Imam Khalid Latif | Session 1

The Book of Assistance — Session 1: An Introduction to Islamic Spirituality

أَعُوذُ بِاللهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ، وَالحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى رَسُولِ اللهِ، وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَمَنْ وَالَى

All praise is due to Allah. We thank Him, we praise Him, we glorify Him, we beseech Him to send His choice of salutations upon His most beloved, sallallahu ta'ala alayhi wa sallam, and upon all those who choose to tread in his path until the last day.

Alhamdulillah. Hope everyone's doing well and having a blessed Ramadan thus far. Ramadan Mubarak. We are going to be discussing a text in these coming weeks, insha'Allah ta'ala, that's called The Book of Assistance, written by a great spiritual master in our religion's tradition by the name of Imam al-Haddad, rahimahullah.

At any point in time, if you have questions, feel free to type them into the chat box and I'll do my best to keep an eye on there and take a look. Because it's a scrolling chat function, if I don't come to it, it might just mean that it's gotten drowned out by messages on top of it. So please do share.

We're going to be looking at a PDF of The Book of Assistance. If you don't have it, you can just Google "The Book of Assistance Imam al-Haddad PDF" and it'll pop up. I'm also going to be using a whiteboard function to write out notes and keep track of where it is that we're going.

When we look at this text, we are going to be going through the first initial chapters, but you'd want to build a relationship with the text itself. It's really amazing, and in a bit I'm going to talk about it in particular.

The Importance of Definitions: Names and Meanings

To start off, I wanted to give an overview of what it is that we're going to be discussing, because this is a text on spirituality — and we're looking at spirituality within the prism of an Islamic paradigm, and not necessarily through more of the contemporary connotations that the word gets, especially within a Western framework or within Western society.

One of the important principles — if anything that you take away from our discussions — that I want you to be able to have in your day-to-day life is that words have meanings. And that might seem like a very obvious statement, but the way that we understand things is through its name.

So right from the onset of Surah Al-Baqarah, when Adam alayhis salaam is created and the angels engage in conversation with Allah — "I am making a Khalifa, I'm sending a representative onto the earth" — and they ask, "Why would you do that?":

"Why are you doing this? You're going to put someone on the earth who carries fasaad and creates all kinds of corruption, and we praise You and glorify You and sanctify Your existence." And Allah says:

"Indeed, I know that which you do not know." And then, as it goes on within this creation narrative of Adam alayhis salaam in Surah Al-Baqarah, Allah tells us:

That Adam was taught the names of everything. One of the big challenges in working towards goals or objectives that become concrete in our pursuit of them is quite often that there's ambiguity where there shouldn't be ambiguity.

So when I say the word "phone" to you, for example, you know what a phone is. When I say "computer" or "laptop," when I say a word like "beard," or you see a book behind me and I say the word "book" to you — I don't say to you, "Can you hand me the cellular apparatus that connects me to a mobile network of millions of people around the world?" I say, "Give me the phone," and you know what a phone is.

Someone has taught you concretely that two plus two equals four. You have information that is definitive. It has specificity and it's concrete. And through that concreteness you then draw meaning. So if somebody said to you "two apples," you would know there are two separate apples. If someone said "two apples and two oranges," you would look for four things, because someone has taught you that two and two equals four.

But what happens when somebody says to you a word like "forgiveness," or a word like "mercy," or a word like "love," or "character," or "spirituality"? If we don't have working definitions for these things — and some of them we are able to let ourselves be malleable in, but still nonetheless a baseline definition of what it is — we're not going to be able to pursue something, mostly because we won't know exactly what it is that we're looking for.

And so as a starting point, what you want to get into your head is that words are what give us meaning to things. The names of things are what give us a deeper sense of meaning.

Point #1: The Names of Things Are Important

This builds into an idea that words have meanings to them, and the way that we learn things are through the names of things. And so if we were to start creating now some points of definition around things that at times have ambiguity — sometimes the way that we can better understand what something is, is by understanding what it is not. So if you want to know what goodness is, you start to know what goodness is not.

Defining Spirituality Within an Islamic Framework

When we have words that we're trying to attach meaning to and we're trying to build a relationship with, we can have it within our own frame of language. So for example, in Ramadan right now you're hearing a lot about taqwa. People will use words like "piety," "God-consciousness," "fear of God" — it's not language that is embedded within our day-to-day jargon.

The way the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam had a definition of taqwa, and then Umar ibn al-Khattab radiyallahu ta'ala 'anhu had a definition of taqwa, and people like Sufyan al-Thawri rahimahullah — they had a definition of the word taqwa and so many more. And they weren't saying, when someone asked "What is taqwa?" that this is what the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said — but they took that definition and it informed for them an ability to have perspective for themselves, to now render meaning that they had connection with, still based in what it actually was, but in language that spoke to them.

And so too with spirituality — we want to have a working definition. If we start to bring everything here together, we can piece that definition together.

Spirituality in and of itself, in its most basic framework today, quite often separates spirituality from religion. But in Islam, religion is not separate from spirituality. Quite often people who speak about "being spiritual" these days are individuals who seek to move away from systems of organized religion and structured religion. But in Islam, that's not what's being referred to when we think about Islamic spirituality. The mode through which it's understood is that there is a synergy of that which is external and that which is internal. But fundamentally, what spirituality enables an individual to do is to process what exists around them for the goal or objective of finding meaning, finding purpose.

Meaning and purpose within the framework of Islam gives to us — unlike a lot of the challenges that come in society today — not what tells people to "go find your purpose," to be in pursuit of individualism. I have a lot of students at New York University in courses on leadership. I teach at our School of Public Policy, and my students come from all backgrounds and many of them get quite flustered because they're constantly bombarded with this idea of "go find your purpose." And what Islam does — as many other systems of religion do — is it provides a sense of what purpose is. Why were you made, essentially?

And so that sense of connection to God is critical. But what spirituality does, and spiritual increase does, is it creates now opportunity for us to find that much more of a sense of deeper meaning in what exists around us — to draw meaning and further make concrete our sense of purpose through the world that's there with us.

The Four Adversaries: Nafs, Hawa, Dunya, and Waswasa

In Arabic, you have the word dunya. And in spiritual senses, there are four main things that become adversarial to us as individuals — may Allah protect us from them. You have the nafs, the ego. You have hawa, like desire. You have what is called dunya, the material world. And you have waswasa, like Shaytan's whispers. May Allah protect us from these things.

Dunya is rooted in an Arabic root that means at the same time "to be close" as well as "to be low." So dunya is that thing that is lower — beneath — meaning in relation to the akhirah it's its opposite, but it's also very close to you and I; it's right there with us. It gets translated as "world."

But when we call upon Allah every day in Surah Al-Fatiha, we call Him Rabb al-'Alameen — the Lord of the Worlds. But that word "world" — alameen — is rooted in the root of knowledge. And the idea and distinction between what we evoke every day — al-'alameen — versus dunya is within its fundamental root of knowledge: that this world can be a means of knowing, of understanding. And every step can be a step of understanding, a step of knowing.

These things become important because in a ritualized religion like Islam, the purpose can seem to be ritual, and everything becomes ritualistic. But in our religion, the way a body that has no soul to it is likened to ritual without an inner component — the body that is without a soul is lifeless; it's a corpse. So too the ritual that has no inner component renders itself without vitality. It's a corpse. And that inward-outward relationship becomes quite important, especially to have depth of perspective.

The Hadith of Jibril: A Framework for the Dimensions of Our Religion

So if we were to look at this now in the framework of the foundations of our religion — where we have in our tradition what is called Hadith Jibril — the angel Jibril (Gabriel) alayhis salaam comes and asks the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam: What is Islam? What is Iman? What is Ihsan? Tell me of the Hour. But it presents to us a framework through which we can understand our religion more concretely.

(Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 1 — Hadith Jibril)

If we were to look at it dimensionally — on one dimension, the horizontal, we have what we call Islam: our ritual, our practice, our essential prayer, fasting, charity, pilgrimage. This is what most of us get — do's and don'ts, right and wrong, everything is about fiqh. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying it's just a thing.

For example, if you knew somebody who just converted to Islam and you were now positioned to teach them religion, a lot of us would only give to them mechanics. And that's mostly because you can only give to someone what you have in the first place. And where we have just a mechanic, just that one dimension — which is ritual — if we have it and there's just one dimension to it, regardless of how we're looking at it, everything looks like a straight line. It's quite simplistic. And the ability to draw meaning from this now is going to be limited, because all we can see is what is just here in one dimension. You can't see somebody beyond the color of their skin or how they dress. There's not depth of perspective there — that renders difficulty in creating more meaning.

And so what our religion then does is it adds in a second component, which is called Iman — our theology. When you add in this vertical element, what it does now is take the line that is one-dimensional and bring it to two dimensions. But that's where you get shape. So it becomes a rectangle, it can become a diamond, it can be a square, a circle — but you start to bring a different sense of meaning from this, because you start to be able to see it in a different way.

The third prism through which we engage — using the Hadith Jibril as a basis — is what our religion adds in: this third dimension that we call Ihsan. In this third dimension, on this third plane, what we're getting now is depth. We're getting volume. We can see things in multiple facets. And all of us can see what something is, but we see it in multiple ways. And what Ihsan does in that frame of volume is that it helps us to understand that most things can be seen on 360 degrees of perspective, on almost an infinite number of planes.

And the ihsan of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam was such that he could see something from the way he saw it, but also understand why somebody could see it from their own point of view — without him having to become them. And it didn't negate their perspective. That most things in our tradition are able to be approached in multiple ways, especially as we start this conversation tonight and go into the first chapter of this text.

It's going to be about recognizing that you can see something, but how you see it is not indicative of what it is. But how you see it tells you a lot about yourself — what's going on within you.

And then the fourth frame of this goes into a relationship with time. What envelops all of it is time as a fourth dimension. We don't control it. Allah has given it to us, but it's what's there as the last variable through the Hadith Jibril. May Allah make us from amongst those who use our time in the best of ways.

Now, when we have just that horizontal — which is what most of us have, and we don't even have all of it — that's not to knock anybody or be judgmental. You want to go through a place of increase. Nobody grows spiritually by telling themselves they do everything correctly. Spiritual increase necessitates admitting and acknowledging, with a growth mindset, both what you do well already and where you have areas of improvement.

So if you just have mechanics, do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs, you're not going to be able to get to that depth of volume. And where Islam and Iman is something that can be memorized rotely — like, you just saw my son — he's memorizing some Quran, he spits out words quite often, but his ability to grow with it is going to be in how he engages it as he moves forward in his life.

Ihsan is not memorized. Ihsan is experienced. It's a part of you that necessitates growth and movement. And that's what we're going to also talk about in a little bit.

Spiritual Definition: The Vision of the Heart

This depth of perspective that we utilize as our spiritual definition — what is spirituality? The ability to draw meaning and perspective from our surroundings, the world around us, to process what's taking place around us, and to then gain understanding from it.

Within modernity there is a big challenge, as much as there's immense opportunity. Because right now, you all are joining from Philadelphia, Michigan, Germany, Brooklyn, Ontario, Virginia, Macedonia — it's amazing what we are able to do in this time via technology. But also in modernity, there becomes a lessening of places of stillness and reflection. The opportunity to find depth of perspective becomes limited. And so people just see from here, but they don't see from here — a vision of the heart, real basira.

The Narration of Dajjal and the One-Eyed Vision

In our tradition we have, in the eschatological and apocalyptic narratives of the hadith — meaning the end of times, the last day — may Allah make us from those whose best deeds are the last of their deeds and not let any one of us meet Him other than in a state that is most pleasing to Him. There is a character in the apocalyptic narrations of our hadith known as Dajjal. May Allah protect us from his fitna. And Dajjal, he is said to be — among his many descriptions — one-eyed.

But the Quran tells us that we have two eyes. In Surah Al-Balad, it says:

"Did We not make you with two eyes?" And in the most literal of senses, Dajjal is a being that has one eye. But in an esoteric sense, what is understood from the idea of Dajjal — a character who comes at the end of time, meaning as the world is coming to its end, in modernity — is that that one eye is not the physical eye, but esoterically it's understood to be the vision that is outward and inward: that one eye is that you can only see in one direction, either outwardly or inwardly. And we're meant to be people who have the ability to see in both directions — not just outward or inward, but together.

Meaning that as time goes on, people are going to lose the ability to see with depth of perspective. This is where you see problems around racism, hatred, and xenophobia. This is where you can go into a lot of mischiefs — it's just mechanical and formulaic. But also communities cannot connect at levels of internals, and so people sociologically require everybody to be of the same race, the same culture, the same class as them. And it's hard for them to know how to connect in meaningful ways.

And on the opposite end of it — this is where if you've ever gone for Hajj or Umrah and you see the diversity of this ummah, subhanAllah, in all of its beauty — I have not met a person who I've gone for Hajj or Umrah with who has not told me that they've met someone who came from a totally different country or culture but still felt warmth in their greeting and extension of salams. Or on Hajj, there are always people who meet people from different backgrounds and they can't speak the same language, yet they still find a means to communicate. Because in that sanctified state of ihram, you're in a space where the ego has pushed itself down, but your connection is not about externals — it's about internals.

Stories of Spiritual Sight

Isa Alayhis Salaam and the Carcass

A story I want to share with you before we start to get into the text is to outline this with a couple of examples from our teachers.

Isa alayhis salaam — Jesus, peace be upon him, the son of Mary, peace be upon her — once is walking with his disciples and they come upon the carcass of a donkey. The donkey is a carcass. It's a dead animal. It smells bad. There are flies coming around it. And the disciples comment on these characteristics. Isa alayhis salaam, when he sees this, says: "Look at how beautiful its teeth are. Look at how straight its teeth are." They're all looking at the same thing, yet somehow he sees it differently.

The Prophet ﷺ and the Gift of a Goat

The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam on one occasion gets a gift of a goat to his home. And it's a gift — it's not sadaqa, it's not charity. He can take from it whatever he wants to. But rather than taking it for himself, he starts to distribute it to his companions who are more in need, until he has given all of it away except its shoulder.

Now, to understand the magnitude of this, you can't look at hadith in isolation from each other. You want to see how they connect and synergize to paint an entire life that was lived by this beautiful man sallallahu alayhi wasallam. We have narrations in the Prophetic tradition that say that days would go by without a fire being lit in the home of the Messenger of God sallallahu alayhi wasallam because he had nothing to cook on a fire. We have narrations that tell us that the Prophet of God sallallahu alayhi wasallam would strap rocks to his waist to balance himself out from the weight loss he had from not eating so much, and to also silence the pangs of hunger that came from near starvation.

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 6455; Sahih Muslim, Book 36, Hadith 6462)

And now when a gift of a goat comes to his home, rather than indulging in it, he takes it for others — he gives it all away except its shoulder. And his wife Aisha radiyallahu ta'ala 'anha comments on this and says that none of it is there for them but its shoulder. But our Prophet peace be upon him does not see the world in this way. It's not about what he loses, but where someone else has gained. And when his beloved wife says to him that all of it is gone except its shoulder, our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam says to her:

"Ya Aisha, all of it is there for us, but its shoulder."

What a beautiful way of looking at things. That where people cast out individuals because of their race, their skin color, their class — the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam was able to inherently find what was good and beautiful with others, and remind them of that and empower them through it.

And if we were to say as a baseline definition what this thing is about — it's about us being able to see real goodness and see real beauty. It's about us not being people of forms and externals alone, but being able to recognize that the vision of our heart and the state of our heart is attached to how we start to cultivate and nurture a relationship. And so we build from the horizontal of Islam, the vertical of Iman, and we incorporate the depth that comes from Ihsan — and understand it in the broader framework of time, as per the dimensions given to us by the hadith of Jibril alayhis salaam.

A Story from Hajj: The Heart That Sees

I went for Hajj last year, alhamdulillah. May Allah accept it from us and grant us all the ability to once again visit His house in Makkah, and to visit the illuminated city — the city of His beloved. And where any injustices or inequities that come from these cities or the people who oversee them — may Allah end those injustices and inequities.

And so we went for Hajj last year and in our group we had a lot of amazing experiences, alhamdulillah, the same way as other people had amazing experiences throughout. And in particular, one of the most remarkable things from that Hajj was how much it rained. It rained in Makkah, it rained in Madinah, it rained in Mina. And one of the most beautiful rains was the rain in Arafah.

The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said:

(Sunan Abu Dawud, Hadith 1949; Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 889)

"Hajj is Arafah." The ninth of Dhul Hijjah — that standing in Arafah is an integral component of the Hajj for everybody across schools of thought and opinion. And on that day, the rains started to fall. It was most majestic, because you suddenly had this deep silence go across the plain of Arafah. And every pilgrim became quiet and turned their direction to face the Qibla towards the Kaaba, with their hands raised to the skies. Because nobody wanted to miss out on that opportunity of barakah and blessing. And it felt as if, with every raindrop that was striking the roof of every tent, Allah was affirming the acceptance of another dua being uttered from His servants from that plain. May Allah accept it from all of us.

And once it had finished, I went with a young man from my group to refresh in our wudu before we moved to our next space. And as we were walking back from our place of wudu, there weren't millions of people in our area — it's an entire plain — but there were definitely hundreds in the spot that we were in.

And there was an elderly man standing near a tree who had also just made his wudu, and he had removed his ihram completely — it was hanging from the branches of the tree — meaning he was wearing no clothing. And there were people standing there looking at him: some in disgust, some with anger on their face, some smiling, some laughing. There were some people who were scolding the people who were laughing or even the ones who were getting angry. And there was a good number who just sat, watched, and did nothing.

And the young man that was with me said to me: "You take off the top of your ihram — I'm going to take off the top of mine. Let's go and give this man some privacy."

Think about your grandfather — whether he's alive or if he has passed, may Allah grant him peace. Think about your grandfather in your head. This man was just as old as him if not older. And all of these people are in a place where they see what's going on. But this one person has a heart that is awake enough to be able to then, with wisdom, make a decision — to act, to choose. And he sees what everybody else sees, but he just sees it differently.

That's what spiritual increase does. If we were to create a definition: you synthesize through your sensory organs of perception — eyes, ears, taste, touch, thought, smell — and you have your spiritual heart be what processes it and casts meaning upon it, to understand it. Ultimately, spirituality is linked to choices and decisions. And your level of spirituality is going to impact the choices and decisions that you make.

If you want to know where your heart is right now, you see it based off of the actions, the deeds, the things that come from your entire body and being. Because the way you gauge is off of the etiquette of interaction you have with the rest of creation around you.

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 52; Sahih Muslim, Book 22, Hadith 1599)

Indeed, in your body and your being there is a morsel of flesh. If it is good, the entire being will be good. If it is not good, the entire being will not be good. Indeed, it is your heart.

When that young man said to do those things, I stopped and I said: "Ya Allah, give me a heart like this person" — somebody who is walking in the footsteps of the beloved sallallahu alayhi wasallam.

Your Personal Goal Before We Begin

And so at the onset of our discussions on this, you have to affirm for yourself firstly how you will be committed to wanting to see things like that for yourself — to say that there is goal and objective. And every single one of you should have a notebook that you are writing in, not just for mine but for every session, and you put down to yourself: What do I want to achieve? What do I want to have?

In your own goals — if you want to take anything from these discussions, or you will compel yourself to act upon the advices, the concepts, the lessons that Imam al-Haddad puts into this text — you first have to affirm for yourself whether what this can give to you is something that you want in the first place.

Do you want to be the person that, when they see people of different skin colors, engages in microaggressive behavior or racist things? Do you want to be the person who feels angry when you see injustice, or the person who sits back and does nothing? Do you want to be the person who, when you see yourself — because vision of yourself is also a vision — that you can see your own potential? Or that you become the most paralyzing voice in recognizing what Allah sees in you, and living and fulfilling the purpose that He has ordained and identified for you?

Do you want to see beauty and goodness? Or do you want to be in a sphere where negativity becomes pervasive and everything is just rhetorical? Do you want to do, or do you want to simply just sit and not move?

That's a personal goal, a subjective goal. You've got to want to see it like that. You want to aspire towards wanting to see the way the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam saw things. And the benefit is for whom? It's for us ourselves. Because that's what contentment renders.

Balance of the inward and outward — that doesn't mean we're not human or emotional, that we don't get sad, or that we don't exist in a sphere of responding normally. The world is in a pandemic right now. It's normal to feel down. It's normal to feel grief. May Allah make things easy for us. Spirituality as a science creates for us opportunities to know how to still find meaning and to remain balanced in the most difficult situations — or to not be reliant upon things that exist external to us for our sense of self and contentment, but to draw from an inward sense of who it is that we are, so that we can be who it is that we know we should be, regardless of what's taking place in the world around us.

And so between this week and next week, I want you to sit for a bit and spend some time thinking about this for yourself. Do I want that kind of vision? Do I want to be in a place where I work towards it? And do I believe that it's something that I can harness? And it is — insha'Allah ta'ala, you can. But the obstacles that come in the way are things that we want to be able to engage.

Introduction to The Book of Assistance

This text is called The Book of Assistance, and we're looking at an English translation mostly because my assumption is that the baseline language you all share is English. And pedagogically — my teaching style is to cater to the most common denominator, but also the lowest common denominator. So I'm going to go in with an assumption that everyone is starting from scratch, whether you are or not.

And as sisters and brothers who share space, we want to be affirmative of that. If there are things that I say that you already know, then be patient with that. Because even in the adab of our ta'lim — the etiquettes of our learning — revision is something that's important. And part of spirituality is recognizing that even if the text is there, even if it's the same thing you're reading over and over again, it should be different because you are now different.

Why do we read Surah Al-Fatiha at least 17 times a day in our prayers? Why in particular was that chapter given to us to read over and over? Why is Surah Al-Ikhlas something that most people memorize? Surah Al-Kawthar — small verses with deep meanings, but we can still extrapolate as we grow and have our own maturation and spiritual evolvement over the course of our years and our own existence.

Some things to know about this text: you want to spend some time between this week and next week just looking at the different chapter headings — not seeing them as separate, but understanding how knowledge becomes something transformative by knowing how to apply it in relation to new knowledge that you acquire.

We're going to try to go through as many of these first few chapters as we can, but you want to see how all of the chapters relate to each other. And to read them and see: What does yaqeen have to do with niyyah? What does certitude have to do with intention? How does it relate to muraqaba — vigilance, oversight of the heart — and not see them as separate from one another?

What Imam al-Haddad rahimahullah is doing with all of these chapters is creating a road map for spiritual growth. They are going to discuss ritual practice, theology, spirituality, give practical advice, personal development strategies — so much more. But where again you gain from it is by acting upon what it is that's being given to you. And so reading, reflecting, pondering upon it — that is what transforms.

I don't like teaching in a way where it's just me lecturing at people. I like teaching in a way where you all get to speak to each other also, so that you can hear from one another — ideally in groups of two, or dyads. Quite often learning for us is somebody front-facing and we take what they say. But there are over 200 people here, and we can process and deepen from each other's perspectives.

You don't want to be only asking questions or giving comments if you feel like it's the "right" thing to say, or avoid saying the "wrong" thing. The way that we gain and learn is through hearing from each other's perspectives.

Chapter One: Yaqeen — Certainty

So where we start now on The Book of Assistance — the first chapter is on yaqeen, certainty. Imam al-Haddad rahimahullah is giving to us easily digestible formats in very short, succinct chapters. Chapter one — on certainty — is literally two full pages and a quarter of a page. He's putting a lot of information in easily digestible chapters to make it succinct.

With this chapter on certainty — what we call yaqeen, with the letters ya, qaf, and nun — if you were to spell it out: يَقِين — meaning certainty.

What Imam al-Haddad is doing in this road map — if we were to remove all of the noise and think about it — is that he is creating for us an understanding where certitude is what he puts as the starting point, but in reality what he is doing is making certitude the destination. Because a book like this assumes that everybody is not starting at the same place.

So if yaqeen is the goal — and it's not the beginning, but the end — why is Imam al-Haddad telling us "this is where you want to get to"? It's because we are all — even in the physical sense — in different places. So if I said to you right now that all of you, from wherever you are in the world, walk to where I am — not one of you would take the same exact steps as somebody else. We don't have movement in uniform ways.

In our religion, where we say "guide us to the straight path" — that is not necessarily "here is point A and point B, and that's the only way that you go." But just like whoever is here from Germany, and whoever is here from Texas, whoever is here from Michigan, whoever is here from Brooklyn — they would literally take different steps to get to where I am in Manhattan, New York.

Two Key Concepts

Your ability to reach certain destinations is going to require understanding not just what common goals are, but also what unique beginnings are. And how you map out a trajectory for yourself is going to require you not just knowing where it is that you want to end — where here Imam al-Haddad roots it in yaqeen — but you want to also know where in fact you are beginning.

Because if we just follow everybody else's flow — someone is starting from here trying to get to yaqeen, and I do what they did but I start from here — I'm not going to get to yaqeen. I'm going to end up somewhere that is not yaqeen.

Or, if my goal is to get from wherever it is I am — or each one of you getting to wherever it is that you are — to get to certitude, we can still gain and be supporters and companions of one another. And we can be comfortable with the fact that how some of us get there will have uniformity. Our prayer is our prayer. Our fast is our fast. We're not creating it. But everybody has distinct life experiences. Everybody has distinct moments of difficulty and tribulation. Everybody's hearts carry different things.

You want to understand two concepts here:

One: Everyone starts in different places, but the goal is the same — so that it's easy to understand that different beginnings can still render common destinations. But it's not going to look the same for everybody.

Two: You want to now understand that also in knowing where you actually begin — and this becomes one of the harder points of spiritual increase. Imam al-Haddad rahimahullah says yaqeen, certitude, is the station we want to end with. But you want to know also where you begin. And why you want to know where you begin is because if you believe your starting point is one place, when in reality your starting point is somewhere else entirely — your ability to map out a path for yourself to get to certitude, assuming your starting point is where you think it is but in reality your starting point is elsewhere — the path becomes distorted.

What ends up happening with a book like this is that it helps us understand that sometimes the path that we take is not going to be the most straight. But movement can go in all directions. It's not limited to just what is most linear and most apparent.

So I hope this makes sense. We're going to get more into the text itself next week. For this first session, I wanted to give you an understanding of what it is that we're hoping to gain from it. And I hope, insha'Allah, that you all took from this something meaningful.

A Note on Supporting This Institute

I've been blessed to know this team at Miftah for a few years now, mashallah, and they do amazing work. And I'm doing this on my own accord, just so you know. These brothers and sisters, mashallah, work hard to provide not just religious knowledge and instruction abstractly, but they're building other social services — in Michigan and for others elsewhere — around counseling, creating space, food services, and other things for people in need, to help them be centered as a whole person.

And so as you go through these programs, one of the things you want to know is that it's our responsibility as a community to be able to fulfill communal obligations. I want you to spend some time this Ramadan also thinking about how you can support this institute that is supporting you.

They have a goal of a thousand sustainers, and there are more than 2,000 people signed up for this free program. A sustainer is just somebody who is making a monthly contribution of some kind to their work. And they want to get to a thousand people, and we should be able to do that quite easily.

If you don't want to be a monthly sustainer, make a contribution of some kind so that they can continue to provide the work and resources that they do — both to people enrolled in their regular scholar programs, their other programs, as well as the social services that they are building out to really help people in need.

Don't miss out on that as an opportunity to be a part of growing something, because the ajr is going to come back to you. You help facilitate the establishment and institutionalization of this institute and its longevity — everyone who benefits from it years and years from now, you'll get part of that reward, because you helped to build it. And they're doing it well. They're doing it good.

If you're drawing benefit just even from this immersion program mashallah, that they've set up to give you access in a moment of social isolation and distancing — so that it can become solitude and a means of growth — then consider being a contributor to them. You can't do this kind of work without actual operational budgets and resources to staff and provide meaningful salaries. And these are the type of people that we want to do a lot for.

At the bottom of your screen there's a button that says "Become a Sustainer." Don't leave from here without pushing that button — at least to acquaint yourself. And if you can give, give, and continue to give more, because you know it's going to a meaningful project.

Closing

I'm looking forward to seeing you all again next week. If there's anything I can do to help you — whether it's on this subject matter or anything going on in your lives, you need someone to listen — feel free to reach out. I'll be happy to help in whatever way I can.

Feel free to send over questions, insha'Allah, and we'll take it from there. Jazakumullah khair.