Qualities of the Pious: A Journey of Love and Learning | Mufti Abdul Rahman Waheed

Shaytan Has No Jurisdiction Over the Heart

Shaytan does not have jurisdiction of your heart. He doesn't control your heart. Who controls your heart? Allah controls your heart.

So all the things that happen within our heart, shaytan doesn't control it.

"O Turner of the hearts, keep my heart firm upon Your religion." Allah is the one who controls hearts.

No one has any access to our heart. And to me, that's such a beautiful thing. So we need to sort of trick shaytan into places and positions where he doesn't have jurisdiction. Get him from there. My heart — shaytan doesn't have jurisdiction towards that.

So loving who I want to love — shaytan doesn't have access to that. Does that make sense? Shaytan cannot make my heart love somebody. Yes, shaytan can access our heart, but cannot control our heart. He can make us do things, say things, see things, hear things, think of things. These are all channels to the heart. Yes, he can contaminate the channel to the heart. He can do that, 100%. But the heart itself belongs to Allah.

The Story of Abdullah ibn Zayd and His Love for the Prophet

And to me, this hadith has a completely different meaning. The hadith of the person who continues to come to see the Prophet of Allah. In most narrations, his name is Abdullah ibn Zayd, رضي الله عنه.

Abdullah ibn Zayd is the one who saw the adhan in his dream. Remember the Prophet of Allah comes to Medina and he's trying to figure out how to call people to salah. Abdullah ibn Zayd and another sahabi both saw the adhan in their dreams. Who was the other sahabi? Umar ibn al-Khattab.

There are going to be some ilmi nuggets that we're going to be speaking about. Just write them down — names and such. But even if you just pay attention. This is not a class where you take notes. Even if you come with wudu, pray salah, pray two rak'ats of hajah — you always pray two rak'ats of hajah before you sit in a talk. And I've never given a talk or any session in my life without praying two rak'ats. You pray two rak'ats and say: "O Allah, I'm sitting in this talk — maybe benefit from it. Make me memorize everything being said. Make me able to convey it to others." Ask Allah. You don't have to even write anything, and you'll remember it.

This person — his name is Abdullah ibn Zayd — he saw the dream about the adhan. He was also the same person who used to always come in the middle of the night to the masjid of the Prophet to see if he was sitting there praying salah. He would just look at him and go back home, trying to keep the image of the Prophet, صلى الله عليه وسلم, in his mind. He'd come back again and again.

The Prophet said, "What's wrong with you?" He said, "Ya Rasulallah, right when your image leaves my mind, I come back to get another image of you. I can't live at home without seeing you, without having you in front of my eyes all the time. I can't. So I keep coming back to look at you, to see you."

Let me finish this story before I tell you what the hadith is. This person got the news of the Prophet's passing away while he was in his garden after Fajr salah. His son came to him and said, "You know what happened today? The Prophet passed away," صلى الله عليه وسلم.

I actually have a keen curiosity about how people reacted after they heard the Prophet's passing. The Prophet had a donkey that he used to ride upon. This donkey — the Prophet, when he had no one there to send a message, he would tell the donkey, "Go get Abu Bakr." And the donkey would walk to Abu Bakr's house and knock his head at the door. When Abu Bakr would see the donkey, he would know the Prophet had called him. So the donkey was like the Prophet's messenger. And when the Prophet passed away — animals have senses too — he just walked into a well and died. As if to say: how can I live without the Prophet? He couldn't live.

So this man — Abdullah ibn Zayd — when he heard the Prophet had passed away, he raised his hands and said, "O Allah, make me blind, so that I would never see anyone in this world after I saw the Prophet." And he became blind at that very moment. Instantly. He could not tolerate ever not seeing the Prophet again. The last image he wanted to have in front of his eyes was the sight of the Prophet — the sight of his smile that he saw the night before. "I don't see anything else after this."

You Will Be with Those You Love in Jannah

So when he kept coming back and forth, and the Prophet asked him why, he said: "Ya Rasulallah, tomorrow Allah is going to raise you among the Prophets, and we're never going to be able to access you, to see you, to listen to you. What's going to happen to us? I'd rather just live with you in this dunya. In Jannah I'm not going to be able to see you."

Then the Prophet said:

"A person will be with those whom he loves."

You will be in Jannah with those who you love. Today's entire session is about something that relates to this. Your actions are not going to determine your status in Jannah. Your a'mal will not determine your status in Jannah. Your tahajjud will not determine your status in Jannah. My tahajjud, my tilawah will not determine that. Allah will look. Allah knows the depths of our hearts. What do you love the most? Who do you love the most? And those you love the most — you are going to be with them in Jannah.

When the Prophet said this, not that you will be with the ones whose footsteps you follow, whose actions you imitate — no, not that. Those who you love the most.

The sahaba sitting there — for us, some of us can falsely claim that we love certain things or certain people. But the sahaba were very confident about who they loved the most. So how do you think they reacted?

Anas ibn Malik said: "After accepting Islam, no day on this earth was better than that day when we heard that from the Prophet. That was the best day of my life. That's when I knew — I'm sorted. We're good."

He said: "Bear witness — I love the Prophet. I love Abu Bakr. I love Umar ibn al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with them both. And I am confident I will be with them in Jannah, even though my actions are not similar to theirs."

Falling in Love with the Pious Predecessors

So when we speak about the pious predecessors, the salaf as-saliheen, the idea is to fall in love with them. And it's very easy to fall in love with them. Wallahi, it's so easy. You know, the gap between loving them is just learning about them. Because it's not hard to love someone who is so nice. Is it hard to love someone who is generous? Is it hard to love someone who is forgiving? Caring? Someone who is just so compassionate? It's not hard to love them. Every time you hear something about them, you love them even more. But the problem is we don't learn about them enough.

And so, the more we learn about them — that's why Imam Shafi'i, رحمه الله, has a poem. And I want the Miftah secret students to definitely memorize this by the end of the year.

You know, there are seven doors of Jahannam and eight doors of Jannah. I believe — and I want this recorded — the eighth door of Jannah is like the back door for people like us. We're going to sneak our way in through love for the elders. "Hey, how'd you make it here?" "I love you guys." We're not going to make it because of our good deeds. There are people who sneak into Miftah programs — they make it too. I believe in shortcuts and detours to Jannah. And I think that eighth door is for those people.

And the biggest shortcut — bang, boom — is just loving the pious people. Just loving them. You have to fall in love with them. You fall in love with them so much that when you hear about them, you can't wait to hear more. When you hear about them, you cry. "Man, these people are so amazing. I just want to meet them."

The Poem of Imam Shafi'i

Imam Shafi'i has a poem. Say it with me:

"I love the pious, and O Allah, I acknowledge that I am not among them. Maybe Allah will give me their intercession. I am hopeful that because of my love for them, Allah will accept their intercession for me."

"Imam Bukhari, I love you so much, I touch your books. Really? Come, let's go to Jannah. I'll go from the back door, you go from the front. But we're both in the same place."

Then he continues: "O Allah, and I despise — I dislike, I hate — the sin of sinners. I don't like the company of sinners." تِجَارَتُهُ بِالْمَعَاصِي — meaning, all day these people are just talking about dunya, talking about sins, planning sins. I don't like this.

And basically he's telling Allah: "You know the depths of my heart. I can't front this. This is my heart's condition. This is who I am."

And then: "O Allah, I acknowledge possibly I am also a sinner, just like them. I'm a sinner with the sinners. But I like those who are righteous. I love those who are righteous. And I am hopeful that because of my love for them, Allah will give me Jannah."

So our heart — shaytan does not have jurisdiction over it. We have to love them, and we're banking on the fact that if we love them and fall in love with them, we will make Jannah. Say insha'Allah.

Scholars Longing to Meet Their Predecessors

You know, Iqbal in one poem says — towards the end of the lives of pious people, what they're actually feeling is they just can't wait to meet their pious predecessors. They just want to leave this world and finally be with them.

Like imagine — Sheikh Yusuf Muttala has been teaching Bukhari for 30, 40 years. The book. Don't you think he wants to meet the author? Sometimes you meet someone and you've been reading their books, and you get so excited meeting the author. Now imagine that scholars want to meet Imam Bukhari.

Mufti Taqi Uthmani, a great scholar — he went to Imam Bukhari's grave for the first time a few years ago, in Bukhara. His student was with him. He says, "I've never seen this man cry this much in my life." The moment he went there, he just started crying and crying. Someone asked him, "Why are you crying so much?" He said, "Because of this man. I've been teaching his book for 50 years. Allah gave me honor because of this man. I owe this man so much. I can't wait until I meet him."

We are elevated because we are teaching about them. Any school you go to, brothers and sisters — any seminary — if you walk in and the seminary is only teaching you books authored by the scholars currently there, you should just walk out. These guys are full of themselves. Usually when you walk into a Darul Uloom, a madrassa — seven years, every year there are seven or eight books at least. So seven years, at least fifty or sixty books you're studying, that's just the textbooks. And those textbooks have commentaries. All together, probably 150 to 200 books you have access to. None of them are written by anyone who is teaching you. None of them. They're written by people who came many years before us. Don't you think you want to meet them?

So Iqbal says: now the days of me being alone. Because people like that actually feel lonely here, and they feel like they're part of their own family there. They feel lonely here. He's like, "Now I have people who I can tell secrets to that won't expose me." Because in dunya, you tell something to someone — khalas, everyone knows.

About These Sessions: Learning Through Qualities

These sessions after Maghrib on Thursdays, 20–30 minutes max. And I'm probably going to speak 20 minutes and make you guys speak to each other for 5–10 minutes. These sessions are going to be a little bit different. Usually when you speak about the pious predecessors, you speak about them as individuals in their life. But I'm not going to do that. These sessions are going to be about qualities. At the end of the day, we love them because of the qualities they possessed. And we learn about those qualities so that maybe we can get those qualities.

For example, next week's session is going to be about the quality of buka — you know what buka means? Crying. And crying is an art. And crying is a hibah from Allah. Wallahi, it's a gift from Allah.

(Sunan Abi Dawud, Hadith 4942)

"Mercy is not taken away except from a wretched person." That person is wretched if he — or she — can't cry. So how did the people of the past cry in front of Allah? We're going to speak about crying in the light of those people. And so for 15–20 minutes, insha'Allah, you'll learn the art of crying. And you'll also fall in love with them because of how much they cried in front of Allah.

"Man, this person cried that much? Let me try to cry a little bit." You get what I'm saying? And insha'Allah, until the end of the year, as long as Allah gives us life to do this, this will continue. Different qualities, every week.

Because at the end of the day, the human being is not honored by Allah because of their looks or what they possess. The real treasure in a human being is based on the qualities that person possesses. Your value in the eyes of Allah increases as qualities increase. And your value in the eyes of Allah decreases the more your qualities decrease. So you want to increase your repertoire of qualities, of characteristics.

The Parable of Sa'di: The Fragrant Soil

And so I conclude with this poem. This poem of Sa'di. It's a Farsi poem. People always ask about these qualities — how do we develop them? He says a very interesting thing:

"I walked into a garden — it's a metaphor — and I picked up the soil, the dirt around the flowers that were in the garden. And there was this beautiful fragrance coming from the soil of the garden. This is just dirt. It's not the flower. It's not the roses. It's just the sand, the dirt, the soil around them. So I picked it up. It smells so beautiful. I said: are you dirt? What are you? Are you some sort of amber, some sort of fragrance? The dirt replied to me and said: Habibi, I am dirt. What you see is what I am. I'm nothing. I'm dirt. I'm just like a particle of dust. But I have spent so much time around flowers that their fragrance has come into me."

So if dirt and soil, by spending a lot of time around flowers, can develop that fragrance — maybe we're not going to change. Remember this whole class is going to be about shortcuts to Jannah. Maybe we're not going to change. And I'm saying — even if we don't change — but the more we are introduced to these qualities, you're going to start getting the fragrance of them. Just some reminiscence of them. And since we love them, and we're going to have some of that, subhanAllah — you're going to be with those you love.

The Best of Companions

I'll give you an example. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was asked:

"Who are the best companions on this earth? If I want to become someone's friend, which friend should I choose? If I want to marry someone, who should I marry — what's the first thing I should think of?"

And he said:

(Musnad Ahmad, Hadith 17734; also referenced in Ibn Majah, Hadith 4119)

"The best companions on this earth are those when you see them, instantly you remember Allah." You see her, you remember Maryam, عليها السلام. You see a sahabi, you remember a Prophet of Allah. Not that you are like that person — you're never going to be Imam Shafi'i. It's not going to happen. But you have some fragrance, you remind people of that.

The Scholar Whose Gas Runs Out

I was driving on the 75 one day and I saw a car stuck in construction — one lane, no shoulder. So the car is stuck, and the line behind him was never ending. My curiosity peaked, so I took the next exit, made a U-turn, went all the way to the other side. I waited there — "I want to see, maybe I can help this guy." And then I saw the guy walking from his car with one of those little gas canisters. This fool was driving through construction and his gas ran out. And because of where his gas ran out — in the middle of a one-lane construction zone — a tow truck couldn't get there. Everyone behind him was stuck. They had no choice. The only way was for someone to be smart enough to go around and bring him gas.

I asked the dude, "Yo, how long have you been stuck here?" "Like an hour." This guy all the way in the back — stuck. What did those guys behind him do? They didn't wake up in the morning and say, "Today I'm going to drive behind this guy who ran out of gas." There are gas stations, so many exits — it's not like the middle of nowhere.

When I saw that, I'm like — man, that is the example of a scholar who doesn't act upon his knowledge. A leader. Because if you're a leader and your gas runs out, there are a lot of people following you. And then you become a hindrance between them and Jannah. Right there — you're stuck, they're all stuck behind you because they're following you. Until you don't move, they can't move forward. May Allah protect us from that. Parents too — sometimes your gas, the example I thought of is your ilm, your dhikr, your spirituality. You cannot run out. If it runs out, there are a lot of people following you, and they don't deserve that. They want to come listen to you, they want to be with you, they want to benefit from you. So you've got to keep filling your tank up and keep coming to gatherings like this so you're full all the time.

The Fragrance of Resemblance

I was in Scotland and I was with someone who noticed something about me. What I do when I talk on the phone — which I hardly pick up — is I hang up very quickly. Boom. I'm not good with awkward moments. I say my salam, I don't wait for them to say salam back. And if I'm sitting with somebody talking to them, I'll abruptly just get up and say, "Alright, assalamu alaykum," and just leave. So this person saw me do it a few times, and he said to me, subhanAllah — "I love Mawlana Yusuf Muttala Sahib. I love this man to death. He's the Sheikh of Hadith at Darul Uloom, passed away — an amazing man, he's Mufti Asim's teacher." And you know what he said to me? "Sheikh Yusuf Muttala used to do the exact same thing. You just remind me of him."

I was so taken aback that I had to excuse myself to go to the room. "Did this guy just say I remind him of Sheikh Yusuf Muttala?" Habibi, that is so powerful. And he also said, "You know, Sheikh Yusuf Muttala never had an office in the madrassa." And I'm like, really? I don't have an office in the madrassa either.

Wallahi — imagine you hear about the Prophet, you hear about the quality of his, and you're like, you know what, I know someone like that. Or you read something somewhere and you saw someone and you're like, "Oh man — I read that about the Prophet." The Prophet said the best people are those who, when you see them, you are reminded of Allah. You sit in gatherings, they remind you of the people who passed.

The Goal: Bridging the Gap Through Their Qualities

So insha'Allah, in these sessions that we have together, we are going to bridge the gap between us and them through their qualities. That's the goal — between us and them through their qualities — so that we fall in love with them, and perhaps we can get some fragrance. I'm not saying we will develop that, but we'll get some fragrance of it.

So that when people walk around us and are with us, they can smell it from us, and then they will get closer to Islam, they will get closer to the Deen. May Allah make us beacons of hidayah. May Allah make us among those who are guided ourselves and are a source of guidance for others.