Rise & Reflect | Mufti Azeemuddin Ahmed | Winter Intensive 2023 | Sat, 12/23

Opening & Welcome

InshaaAllah everyone, please can you move forward, kindly, come close. Let's try our best to ensure there's no gaps. Allah reward all of you for coming from far and wide.

Let's sit close together. BarakAllahu feekum. Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem.

Allahumma salli wa sallim ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi Sayyidina Muhammad wa alihi wa sallim. Rabbishrah li sadri wa yassir li amri wahlul 'uqdatan min lisani yafqahu qawli.

Allah said:

Beloved, respected guests of the house of Allah, brothers and sisters, elders, students of knowledge, our visiting guests from different parts of the country, and our online listeners — السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

The Blessing of Salatul Fajr in Congregation

We thank Allah who has given us the blessing of performing Salatul Fajr today, especially in such a large gathering — alhamdulillah — even though the students have gone back after their final exams yesterday of the semester. We are missing, of course, a good number of sufoof because of their absence in the madrasa. Still, it is very nice to see such a huge attendance for Salatul Fajr, and this is a blessing in itself to be so thankful to Allah for.

To be blessed to be praying with those whom the Prophet ﷺ has given glad tidings — those who pray Salatul Fajr with jama'ah, it is as though they have stayed awake the entire night in ibadah. Every one of you who is here for Salatul Fajr — imagine you are walking away with the reward of staying awake all night in qiyam. And every one of you who prays Salatul Fajr with jama'ah has gotten the reward of being under the protection of Allah for the whole day. You are, as it were, insured with Allah.

And number three, the Prophet ﷺ has said that those who make it a regular habit of coming to the masjid in the hours of the night and hours of the early morning — when it is dark like it is now — the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sunan Abu Dawud, Hadith 561; Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 223)

Give them the glad tidings of complete noor on the Day of Judgment — Allah will give them complete noor on the Day of Judgment. This is something we should congratulate one another on. That is what the hadith is saying: بَشِّرْ، بَشِّرْ — give them the glad tidings.

So this is the group of people we should all aspire to be. Any community you go to, you want to see what type of people you should be friends with, who your children should be connected with, which families you should connect with — go for Salatul Fajr and see who is there. That, inshaaAllah, is going to build your crew. Those are the people we want to hope we are all connected with.

And so, alhamdulillah, this is the blessing we are all enjoying today. Additionally, as Mawlana Farhan mentioned, many of our guests came late last night — 2am, 3am — so inshaaAllah there is time to rest after breakfast. InshaaAllah you can sleep for a few hours before the winter intensive starts at 10 o'clock.

The Winter Intensive Program

For the locals, I encourage you — if you did not hear about it until now, or you heard about it but just did not muster the courage to commit — well, now is the time. Alhamdulillah, it begins in three to four hours. The topics and workshops, alhamdulillah, as always our team does an amazing job of trying to be as relevant as possible, and as much as possible they try to provide programs that may not be found elsewhere — in terms of topics, in terms of theme, in terms of the depth with which certain things will be covered.

These are things that are creating confusion in a lot of people's minds, and these are not small little things — these are the fundamentals of our deen. We are talking about halal and haram. We are talking about your sustenance, your money that you earn, money that you spend, your investments, your risk, what you put in your stomach, your education, where and how you work, what the environment of your workplace is. We are talking about sunnah and bid'ah. We are talking about riba. We are talking about halal and haram. We are talking about zabiha and the explanation of that. We are talking about Islamic financing. We are speaking about the unfortunate case when divorce does happen — alimony, childcare. We are talking about the fiqh of practicing fiqh in America as minority Muslims.

Where does that leave us? How flexible is fiqh when you are in a non-Muslim country? Why are there so many differences in our masajid, and how do we understand the reasons for those differences and the way forward in resolving them within our communities? We are talking about a lot of fiqh differences as well. Look at how many different colors and ethnic backgrounds and different schools of thought are present right here — that is America. It is not homogeneous. There are people from very different backgrounds. So what is the way forward in dealing with the various differing opinions that people hold, or that their schools of thought hold, or that scholars hold? That is another very important topic.

And then there is the issue of sunnah and bid'ah — what is bid'ah, what is not bid'ah, is there something called a good bid'ah or is all bid'ah wrong, how does that come about, what about changes that are required as we move into a continuous new era of new technology, how do we adjust to that. These are some of the many outstanding topics that alhamdulillah are being covered over the next three days: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We also have a parallel session for ages 7 to 11 and 12 to 15, for boys separately and for girls separately. So there is a lot going on, alhamdulillah.

It is a lot of effort — honestly, try to do a small little program and you realize how much effort it takes. But to have basically four parallel retreats happening at the same time, while we do not have our usual staff and we do not have our students to assist — there are volunteers from the community, volunteers from our teaching staff, guest scholars, and may Allah reward the students who stayed back to help out. A lot of effort is taking place. So we need you all — inshaaAllah, we are asking you to simply be present, and bring your sons and daughters from all ages and enroll. InshaaAllah there will be an online option that we are going to open up today for those who are out of state and cannot join in person. The rest who are in the Chicagoland area, please try your best to join today.

Making the Winter Break Beneficial

I wanted to mention, since we are at the beginning of winter break, a few points about how we can try to make this break most beneficial, inshaaAllah.

There is a beautiful statement of Abu Darda رضي الله عنه. He says:

(Abu Darda رضي الله عنه, as reported in various collections of the athar of the Companions)

Abu Darda رضي الله عنه, whose statements are just amazing — one of his statements here says: "How nice is the monastery of a believer — i.e., his home." You know, a monastery is where a monk sits and does worship, ibadah, away and disconnected from society. He said: for a believer, how amazing is his house — his house is his monastery. يَحْفَظُ فِيهِ لِسَانَهُ وَبَصَرَهُ — he protects his tongue and he protects his eyes from falling into haram while staying at home. وَإِيَّاكَ وَالسُّوقَ — and ensure you protect yourself from the outside marketplace. فَإِنَّهَا تُلْغِي وَتُلْهِي — for indeed the marketplace environment creates within a person heedlessness, and creates an environment of useless talk, vile talk.

Abu Darda رضي الله عنه is basically explaining to us that for a believer, his house itself is, in one sense, the masjid — and the madrasa, and the khanqah, and the zawiyah, along with everything else that is provided in the community. He benefits from and is most definitely present in the masjid of course, but it is not like his environment at home is so bad that he has to run away from it to come to the masjid. That is not how it is supposed to be. Rather, he goes from the beautiful environment of the masjid to the beautiful environment of the home, from the beautiful environment of the community center to the beautiful environment of the home, from the beautiful environment of the seminary or madrasa to the beautiful environment of the home. That is how it is supposed to be.

And what happens when you are at home? What are you supposed to be doing? Well, staying at home is supposed to be a means of protecting yourself from falling into haram, because when you go outside there is a lot of stuff that is happening.

The Fitna of the Phone

Remember, everything I am speaking about in this discussion is from a pre-cell phone era. That is why we are in the masjid also — please, if you are in a talk, do not be on your phone. Unless you are taking notes. If you are taking notes, that is fine, but do not make a habit of being on the phone while you are in the house of Allah. If you have to be on the phone, please go outside, take care of it, and come back. And throughout the day also, when you are here in the winter intensive, do not be on your phone. There is no point. You are deceiving yourself thinking, "Oh, I am here for Fajr — wow, everyone thinks I made it for Fajr at 6 AM, alhamdulillah." But you are on your phone. You are not really in the masjid — you are somewhere else. You are in the metaverse. God knows what verse you are in. You are not in the house of Allah.

So this discussion is from before this fitna came into our homes. When you stayed at home, you protected your eyes and tongue from haram. Now you could be in the Haram, in Masjid al-Haram, and you are not protecting your eyes. You could be sitting in the masjid, Baytullah, in i'tikaf, and not protecting your eyes — because this mal'oon, the cursed phone, is in our hands everywhere, all the time. And it is very difficult to stay away from falling into sin.

That is why, when we talk about the benefits of staying at home, understand that those benefits are there for people who actually utilize their time at home properly. The purpose of staying at home, as he is saying, is that you stay away from a lot of the filth — because outside, as soon as you step out, your eyes and ears, hands and feet are exposed to a lot of wrong. Summertime comes, everyone wants to be out. Wintertime comes, everyone wants to travel to hot destinations. What we do not realize is that when we travel to these hot destinations and warm vacation spots, how much exposure to sin we are getting. That is something people do not think about. Everyone is rushing to these vacation spots, thinking we are spending family time. But in the process of family time, how much of the wrath of Allah has a person incurred by looking at that which he should not, by being exposed to environments he should not be in? And instead of building an amazing relationship with family, we build an amazing relationship with haram. How often does that happen?

That is why Abu Darda رضي الله عنه, 1,500 years ago, is telling us the importance of staying at home. If you are going to seek knowledge, go. You are going to the Haram, go ahead. You are going on the path of Allah, go ahead. But other than that, be careful when you step out of the home — because anytime you step out, you are exposing yourself to opportunities of falling and tripping.

And I would say that going on to your phone is another relevant, very contemporary example of that — that going on to your phone is like going out of your house. That you need to do only when needed. When there is a curfew — when there is, Allah forbid, a civil war happening, or what we hear happening in other parts of the world, when there is fitna, people being shot left and right — we do not need to go far. We just go to our own city here, the city of Chicago, and certain portions of it, portions of East St. Louis, and Baltimore, and New Orleans, and different parts of the country which are crime-ridden. A person would be crazy to just walk out and literally go to a 7-Eleven at 7 pm or 8 pm.

We had such a sad story about two to three months ago. A young brother came here, came to one of the local madrasas here from Minnesota, came to drop off his younger cousin for hifz class — and he is a hafiz himself. And he was driving back, stopped at a gas station on the way back to grab water and fill up his gas. Shot dead in a gas station. رَحِمَهُ اللهُ رَحْمَةً وَاسِعَةً.

That is Chicago, or any of these crime-ridden places — and I am not saying all of Chicago. Those of you who came from out of state: yes, we want you to stay in the masjid. We do not want you going out, but if you want to go tour the city, by all means, I would encourage you to do that after the program ends — but not in the middle of the night, 1am or 2am, and especially not in those crime-ridden areas.

I do not know why I am remembering these stories, but I am just going to say it. One day I got picked up by an Uber at Midway Airport. I was sitting there, my family was in the back, I was in the front. The driver said, "Hey, so where are you going?" I said, "I am going to Lombard." "Oh, okay, good." Then he said, "Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago, I was with a gentleman who was going for his son's graduation. Poor guy came all the way from Texas." He said you can add other passengers in Uber to reduce the price, so the passenger did it. But then the driver looked at the location where the next passenger was coming from and said, "No, this place is not a good part of town." The guy from Texas said, "No, man, it is late, it is 11:30, someone needs a ride. Come on, you want to save a couple of dollars." The driver said, "That is not a good part of town, we should not go." But the app is such that he had no choice — he had to follow through. SubhanAllah.

He said, "We went to that area and it was 11:30 or so, close to 12 o'clock. As I was waiting at the stoplight, I started seeing people walking towards my car. I knew this did not look good. I started gunning it, and shots started getting fired. I screamed 'duck, duck!' — the driver, because he is from Chicago, he knows. And the guy from Texas had no idea what was going on. 'Duck? What? What are you talking about?' He did not understand, because he had not seen the shots being fired. The driver had already seen the man walking and knew this was an ambush. SubhanAllah." He put his head down, and subhanAllah, shots were fired. He said, "The seat right behind where my wife was sitting — yeah, that is where he died. He was sitting right there in the back seat and the bullets went through him and he died, subhanAllah, on the spot."

It is about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you hear these types of stories or you are exposed to it, you know better than to be walking around even at 9pm in that part of town. This is not the time. If you are in that part of town, you do not even sit in a car. We know that — you do not even sit in a car listening to a nasheed or just waiting. There are so many instances you can see on live cameras of people coming up and just point-blank shooting the driver. It is part of gang initiation rites — you have to go kill someone, so they just randomly do that. SubhanAllah.

The world of the internet, as bad as these stories may sound to you, is worse than this. Because when a person dies — like this young hafiz who died — inshaaAllah he died as a shaheed. A person who went out to serve his wife and kids, who went to get milk, who died protecting his household — he dies, inshaaAllah, as a shaheed. Anyone who has been killed protecting his family, his land, in his house, is a shaheed.

But subhanAllah — the one who is on the internet and falls into sin, he is no shaheed. He was a fine, upright believer. But he ended up visiting a certain Islamophobic website, visiting a website of ex-Muslims, reading Islamophobic trolls talking about the seerah, talking about the tafsir of the Quran. And he read all that, and he started scratching his head and thinking, "Oh man, this kind of makes sense." He had iman, and unfortunately, he lost it. How can we not say that this person's situation is far worse than the one who died in the path of Allah or died protecting his family? Those are inshaaAllah in paradise. And this person — he could have been in paradise, but unfortunately lost his iman, got hijacked. His iman got jacked from him. That is what the world of the internet is.

When a person is surfing on these social media apps, when and where he will lose his iman, he has no idea. It might not happen suddenly — or it may happen suddenly. So this idea of staying at home, and making sure your home is a clean, nice place, is more important now than ever. Because previously, it was a very clear line: I am in my house, I am outside the house. Mom and dad would say, "Okay, kiddos, be home by Maghrib. Children, be at home by 8pm." There is a curfew. Everyone has to be at home. You lock the door, everyone has dinner together, you spend some quality time with your parents, maybe relax, do some things, then go to sleep.

Right now, you can have a curfew at 3pm and the children do not even want to leave the house. They will not even leave their bedroom. You are lucky if they come out to grab a bowl of cereal before running back inside. So they are not leaving the house, they are not even leaving the bedroom — but they are in a far worse state than the one who is up and about. Because they are on their phones, on their gadgets.

So there has to be a curfew — a curfew away from the internet. A curfew away from the phone. Just as they say, "Be home by 4:45, Maghrib time" — similarly, Maghrib time, you are off the phone. Or 7pm, you have to be home. Alright — 7pm, you are off the phone. Just like loitering around outside in the dark streets of the city at night is a bad thing to do, similarly, being online at night is a horrible, horrible place to be.

And the chance of getting shot, as the stories make it seem — it is not 100%, maybe 2%, maybe 1%, maybe less. But the chance of falling into some sort of sin on these apps is much closer to 90 to 95%. The problem is our community has become desensitized to sin — our community and the world. What we would have recognized as a sin in the 90s, that is now practically considered praiseworthy. People do not realize it. When a person sees a non-mahram, male looks at female, female looks at male, in a state where they are uncovered more than is allowed — that is haram. Whether it is arms, whether it is a back, a nape, a neck, legs, hair — all of those things are haram. How accustomed we have become. Just because something has become so common in the world does not mean we are allowed to fall for it and say it is okay.

Then we have the music that unfortunately no one thinks about anymore. That is all over. And then we have the Islamophobic or ex-Muslim atheistic lectures, talks, chats, and comments that infiltrate a person's psyche as he reads through them. Initially, you are reading through it saying, "AstaghfirAllah, it is crazy what people are saying." But then you start thinking — maybe there is some truth to this. People start thinking, "I am also not feeling very comfortable with the deen nowadays."

Everywhere you go, you will see this is the story of the youth — their friends who were Muslims before are no longer. I mentioned that one of our students here in this madrasa, an amazing young man — he told me, "When are you going to come to my city and visit my friends?" I said, "InshaaAllah, sometime. How are your friends? Why do you not invite them to the winter intensive?" He said, "No, these friends of mine will not come." I said, "Okay, inshaaAllah, next time I come you can bring them to the masjid." He said, "No, they will not come to the masjid either."

I immediately thought, what does this guy do with these kinds of friends? Because I know him — he is a good kid. Why would he be friends with people who will not come to the masjid, will not come to Chicago, will not come to meet me? He wants me to go meet them. I said, "Who are your friends?" He said, "I have ten friends. All ten are hafiz of the Quran. And out of the ten, five have become atheist." How old are they? Eighteen years old. They have not even started college yet. This is from Texas. From ten hafiz, fifty percent have become atheist — and they have not even begun college, it is not graduate school in philosophy. They are still in high school, or just finishing high school.

But that is what the world outside is. If they are 18, they finished their hifz maybe two or three years ago. But so quickly they have left their Islam — not that they are not practicing, they outright deny belief in faith. What can you say? We can say with absolute conviction that this fitna most definitely began from their phone. There is no doubt about it. You look at people who are addicted to vapes, e-cigarettes, marijuana — where did it come from? From their phone. People who are in haram relationships and zina — where did it come from? From their phone. People who are confused about their deen — where did they get it? From their phone. People who have all of a sudden become disrespectful and obnoxious to their parents — when did this change happen? The mom and dad can trace it back to the day they got them the latest phone.

All of this filth that you see in society — you cannot run away from this. The phone is where it starts from. Social media is where it starts from. The access they have to that filth is where it starts from. Everything then grows from there.

The Home as a Sanctuary

We are so content many times that "My child, mashaaAllah, does not have many friends, he is a quiet kid at home." That is what I am worried about the most. The one who is up and about, always with friends, never at home — because he is playing basketball, then after that he is in karate class, then after that he is on track, and after that he is going bodybuilding, after that he is going for a hike — he is busy, always never at home, busy with friends. Maybe, as long as he is with certain okay Muslim guys, it is not too bad. There is a chance he is surviving.

But the quiet kid — whom every mom and dad thinks is off the radar because he is very quiet, would not hurt a fly, so soft and sweet and quiet, only at home, just in his room — what is brewing inside there, Allah knows best. If he is only in his room without his phone, okay, he will come out eventually. But if the phone is there in the room, that is not called khalwah — that is not seclusion. That is the worst type of suhbah you can have. The worst type of companionship — hours on end with our devices.

Dear students who are here visiting today for Fajr, and dear parents who are listening — we need to understand that we need to start making effort in our homes, in our bedrooms first. You may come from a community that is not blessed to have a program as extensive as our winter intensive, or Team Fajr, or whatever the case may be. Fine. You may come from a community that does not even have a masjid within 30 minutes of you. That is possible. But what you do have is your house. And you have to ensure that the environment of the home is beautiful.

When the environment of the home is free from technology overload, and it is an environment of mahabbah and love, compassion and understanding, then we will have amazing children grow. I can think of some families right now whose every single child of the family is outstanding — in terms of their character, their spirituality, their knowledge, and the way they deal with one another. Many times these families come from places where there is no large masjid, no programs. Small-town America. But what they have done is mastered the environment at home. They created an environment based on love and understanding, empathy, sympathy, and good character. Children are modeling parents who also have excellent character. Husbands and wives have a beautiful relationship that children can enjoy the company of. And they have had control over their devices.

Because of all this, they have graduated from their madrasa at home — such people that we wish Islamic schools and Islamic madrasas would have the honor of graduating. But they never went to any madrasa, never went to any Islamic school. They simply studied at home. They went to school — even maybe public school — but they had this continuous environment at home which allowed them to grow into outstanding human beings. This is where we need to focus. Community building starts with home building. A community is nothing but a collection of a thousand, two thousand, five thousand Muslim homes. If we want a beautiful community, we have to have a beautiful home.

What better time than our winter break, when you have two to three weeks with your college-age students, with your high school-age students at home, to make an effort on this? This break, my appeal to all of you, is that we try to make it a point that we are going to spend some time at home with our family and try to clean up our act. See how we can immediately bring some positive changes at home that will make the environment not toxic.

One of the major reasons why people are leaving Islam today is honestly because of the toxicity at home — because of the broken relationship between parents and children, and between siblings, and husbands and wives. This broken relationship is pushing people away from wanting to be practicing Muslims, even if their parents are practicing Muslims. And so that is something we as adults have to take responsibility for.

Every single member of our household should be super excited to be spending time at home. We were raised in an environment, subhanAllah, long ago, where going out was quite the occasion. The home was where you would be — home sweet home. You need friends? You have your siblings. You need company? You have your parents. You want something to do? Figure it out in the backyard. But you are going to spend most of your time at home. And subhanAllah, that was such an amazing environment.

If you reflect upon it — all these beautiful programs happening nowadays were not available, even a tenth of them, thirty plus years ago. But the home environment that existed then, all these outside environments cannot match that. And so, there is no reason we cannot recreate that today. There is no reason we cannot recreate that today.

The Tongue at Home

How are the ways to do that? Start with our tongue. يَكُفُّ لِسَانَهُ — we have to be careful of how we use our tongue at home.

Just yesterday, a father was getting upset about his grown son not getting up for Fajr. So I told him, "Listen, it is not going to work now. By berating your son like this, it is simply not going to work, especially in front of a stranger." But that is the type of old-school attitude that parents have. It is not going to work. I said, "Do you think he does not know he is supposed to wake up? He is a married man, he is a father himself. He knows. Obviously, it is his nafs and shaytaan that is not allowing him to do it. So by you berating him, getting angry at him in front of a stranger or in front of someone he respects, is not going to help anything improve."

The better thing is that you bring him to an environment like this for two days. Let him listen to the talks. Let him meet other practicing Muslim youth who have traveled from the other end of the country to be here. Staying in the company of the masjid, the angels, and other youth — that itself will make him realize, "Man, I have got to wake up for Fajr." He himself will realize it.

It is like a person sitting in a smoker's lounge who eventually becomes desensitized — his lungs get ruined, and now he does not even cough. He does not even close his nose and say, "Man, this is stinking." He is just reading his paper and doing whatever he is doing. Now you bring him outside to get a breath of fresh air — crisp, clear, nice morning air. And then you send him back into the smoker's lounge. He is going to start coughing. You do not need to tell him anything. He himself will run out of that lounge saying, "This is horrible here. What is this?"

When we come to righteous, good, salih, nice environments, and then we go back to our homes, we will ourselves immediately realize what is evil and what is not. Our mom and dad do not need to tell us. They already taught us when we were young. But because we became desensitized, we can no longer figure it out. You do not need to get mad at anyone. Just bring them to a pious, clean, deeni environment. That will awaken them. That will remove the veils from their eyes, veils from their hearts. And when they go back home, inshaaAllah, they will start looking at their home and saying, "Okay, these are the things I am doing that are toxic and unhealthy. Let me delete this app, and this app, and this app. Let me clean up my bedroom."

The Bedroom Reflects the Mind

That is another thing. Many of the youth have the most disorganized rooms — six, eight days worth of leftover cereal bowls, dirty laundry all over the place, open Coke cans and Slurpees and 7-Eleven drinks all over. This is, I think, unfortunately the norm. If a person has such a cluttered, dirty, disorganized bedroom, that is a reflection of what is going on in his mind. That is what the psychologists say: a cluttered desk is a reflection of a cluttered mind. We are not talking about cluttered papers here — we are talking about filth, about dirt, about disgusting laundry all over the place, dirty things all over the bed where you cannot even walk. Some parents have literally sent me pictures of their children's rooms, and I said, "Well, this is not just him being lazy. There is a problem here."

Too many of the youth of our community are in that problem. They have serious mental, emotional, and spiritual issues. And the bedroom is a small reflection and manifestation of those issues. So ask yourself — how is your bedroom? Think about your children — how is their bedroom? Do not think he is being lazy. This is not laziness. He is screaming for help.

I have had children come and say to me, "Four years in high school, I stayed locked up in my room. I literally would eat a dark bowl of cereal at night inside my room. I would not come out. Yet my mom and dad never once asked, 'Are you okay?' All they were worried about was why I was getting a C or a B — not realizing that I was actually suffering a huge bout of depression throughout all of my high school years. And instead of getting sympathy and empathy at home, I was berated for my low grades."

People not realizing that he is sick and needs help — not this type of so-called tough love. This is not love, this becomes what? Hate. Because you are not understanding. It is like a person is on crutches because he just broke his leg, and you are making him walk a hundred flights of steps and screaming at him, "Hey, why do not you catch up man, you are taking so long?" Children today — many children — need emotional, psychological, and spiritual help. But if we as caregivers, older siblings, and parents are not realizing that, that is very sad.

So there are many manifestations of our unhealthy lifestyles, and we need to start working on those things today. Reflect — let us use this winter break to reflect: how is my life? From the wardrobe to the bathroom, to the bedroom, to our car — see how things are going in our life. Let us use these two to three weeks to work on improving.

As soon as a person makes this niyyah — that I am going to climb out of my own problems, and I am going to have resilience — inshaaAllah, Allah's help will be with you. There are some of us who do not have understanding parents, some who have lost their parents — whatever it may be, you have Allah with you.

A Wake-Up Call: Gaza

If you are feeling a little down and saying, "Oh man, my life, my problems are too bad" — take a moment to read and watch what is happening in Gaza. And hopefully within a minute you will realize you do not have it that bad. Your challenges and my challenges collectively put together cannot equal the challenges of any one family of Gaza.

Many of us may not have been reading or watching since it has been over two months. I agree — too much watching, too much exposure is no good. It desensitizes a person and may make him even further depressed. However, when you find yourself in a bout of heedlessness, then I would suggest that you watch and read something as a wake-up call to see the true nature of the challenges our children and our youth are facing.

The other day I read on the front page of BBC, a BBC reporter reporting from Gaza — I do not even know if he is Muslim or not. He wrote about his journey as he was trying to escape Gaza while there as a reporter. I have never read a more disturbing news article, especially on BBC. He describes, out of fear, what he sees as the Day of Judgment. That is what he calls it. If you can, read that article. He talks about, subhanAllah, seeing cars with people holding on to the steering wheel — decapitated bodies. He speaks about literally limbs, with animals and birds in front of his eyes coming and pecking. He talks about flies and all sorts of insects, dogs and other animals devouring dead bodies — sometimes the bodies of children. He says he was walking and then the soldiers started just indiscriminately firing. He was screaming and pointing upward so that his children, who were with him, would look up and not see what he was describing, because he did not want to traumatize them for life. And then suddenly shots were fired — and this is an actual, so-called legitimate army of a so-called democratic country, committing the worst, most hideous genocide that has ever been live-streamed, subhanAllah, ever live-reported.

He said, "We started running, and me and my children, we were literally trampling over dead bodies." And he said only later did they realize that what they had just stepped on was someone's stomach, someone's head, someone's hand, as they were running for their lives. That is happening.

We have no doubt — we have full yaqeen — that all of these, they are lifeless bodies, and their souls are enjoying the highest levels of Jannah right now. We have full yaqeen that you can trample those bodies and desecrate them and not give them a spot to be buried, and the animals may devour them — but their souls are in the best possible places that we would only dream of ever one day achieving. Allah says:

Do not think those who have been killed in the path of Allah are dead — rather, they are alive with their Lord, being provided sustenance. They are extremely happy and elated over what Allah is giving them. And they are waiting in excitement to meet those of their family and friends who have not yet joined them — waiting to see their relatives, as if to say: "You thought the dunya was tough and bad, and that there could be nothing good after this. Look at what Allah has given us in Jannah." That is the shuhadaa.

And here we are, losing our deen left and right by misusing our phones. So let this be a wake-up call. All the youth who are listening to me — Allah brought you here. From the millions who could be here, those of you listening online and those here in person — you are a select group of people.

The Six-Week Fast from Social Media

I honestly encourage you — those of you who know me, know what my schedule looks like. You know the role I play for the madrasa, for the Majlis, for the community, traveling continuously across the country and being available to youth and adults for whatever is required. But I do not have a social media account. I have none of that — no Facebook, no Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, none of that. Life moves on. I am able to still interact with hundreds and thousands of people and be of assistance to them — and we hope Allah accepts that — without having those things. People text, people call, people WhatsApp, people email.

This is a pretty large institution. We have over 105 employees here, 550 full-time students, 750 part-time students, and then thousands who come to these programs. It is a massive institution. And none of the teachers here have any personal Instagram or Facebook or other social media apps. And are they leading beneficial, successful lives? I would say yes — because they are not on it.

So for those 18, 15, 12-year-olds who think life does not exist outside of social media — you are being deluded by shaytaan and nafs. I encourage you, as this talk comes to an end: if you really want to bring a change — at least for these three weeks, try it out. Delete those apps. Go give your phone to your friend sitting here, or a sibling, or whoever, and say, "Can you please lock the App Store or Play Store, put in a password so I cannot download again." At least try that — three weeks.

Because otherwise, these three weeks are going to be three weeks of misery for you — three weeks of no school, no college, just at home scrolling, mindlessly, continuously scrolling. This is what is turning us into the zombies that our society has become. So this is a message to students of the seminary and to the community as well — if you want to make your break beneficial and successful, get off of social media. Whatever you need to read and search, you can go find it online. But this mindless scrolling from one place to another is destroying you in ways you cannot imagine.

One of our teachers of the winter intensive — you are going to benefit from him inshaaAllah, he is flying in from California — he is a graduate of the seminary and now doing his master's. I remember he was saying that the biggest benefit he got when he joined the seminary, nine years ago, was that he heard in one of the classes the importance of staying away from the smartphone and just getting a flip phone — a dumb phone that will make you smart. He said that advice, he took it to heart. Within the first year, he turned in his phone to the office and got another one. He said, "Literally I created multiple hours within my day that I never had before." And when you are sitting with an extra three to four hours — what do you do now? What are you going to study? What are you going to read? That inspired him, alhamdulillah, to start reading. After having a grueling nine periods a day of studying, he was able to find time to study four hours a day of Islamic philosophy and logic — year upon year upon year. He is the only student who, mashaaAllah, began to teach here while still being a student, thanks to the fact that he had the self-discipline to get rid of that smartphone at the end of the first year and dedicating those extra hours to studying.

I have hope that every one of you can become like that. Every one of you can actually achieve something great — whether it is in engineering, law, medicine, aqeedah, fiqh, Arabic, tafsir. Whatever it is, you can definitely become an outstanding contributor to that science. But that is if you get rid of these extra useless things that are, if not involving you in haram, at the very least making you waste time. Such beautiful minds that Allah has given you and me are being destroyed by our own hands through all this filth.

So I implore every one of you to make this niyyah now. I want to hear it loud — that we are going to get rid of this at least for two or three weeks, through the barakah of this gathering. And then see how your life changes. Message me afterwards — not online, not social media — text me. The good old way. Say, "Alhamdulillah, for three weeks I have been off of it." That is the actual habit-building.

We had an expert psychologist from Stanford come here. Honestly, mashaaAllah, it was a very nice presentation on addiction. But also a lot of the things you hear from your mashayikh and scholars were the same things. One of the things — the magic number is 40 days. Six weeks. Six weeks, 40 days for the different stages of the formation of good habits. And six weeks, 40 days to break bad habits. So that is what we should make a niyyah for — six weeks off of social media. Six weeks of deleting those apps, with someone typing in a password so you cannot install them again.

Have a spiritual buddy with you — someone else who is joining you on the six-week fast from social media. And then write your reflections on what happened in those six weeks. You are going to have your withdrawal symptoms, most definitely. You are going to start twitching — it is just going to happen. Because this is addiction. This is addiction. As soon as you lie down on your bed, you have to lie down with it. As soon as you wake up, you have to be on it for the first 20 minutes. We know that. The vast majority of the world is like this.

So now when you are not on it — what should you do? Go to sleep listening to the Quran. Wake up, subhanAllah, and read your morning du'as. If you have not memorized them, you can read them on your phone. Those are good ways you can start using your device. Six weeks — not three days — six weeks is what is required to break those habits.

And while you are at it, I encourage you to delete your music player as well. Because if you are listening to disgusting rap and all these other horrible artists who are nothing, nothing, nothing less than the voice of Iblis on earth — that is what they are. They are amplifying Iblis' voice. And they create completely uncontrollable levels of lust within a person. That is not a human being in that state, that is an animal. A lust-thirsty animal. Where did that come from? From the disgusting music they are listening to. The desire to sin in the most hideous, haram manners that no sane, clean, fitrah human being would think of — where does that come from? It comes from this music. It dehumanizes women and men. It makes you not look at the opposite gender in a normal state anymore. Every single person becomes an object of the most disgusting objectification, to fulfill the most lowly, inhuman, lustful desires. That is what that music does to a person. It creates within them a rebellious nature towards authority, towards their parents, and towards Allah.

People say, "I only listen to it at the gym. I only listen to it when I am going to the masjid in the car." Allahu Akbar. This is what we are doing. These are the pain points. That is why we as a community are suffering. Do not expect your mom and dad to know what to do about this stuff — they have never experienced any of this. They have no idea what type of challenges you are going through. So listen from me — I know what you are going through. These are the things we need to learn how to self-censor and self-discipline. And the best way to do that is with this group of brothers here. Find friends here. This is it — you are at Darussalam, find amazing friends here. It could be someone from California and you are from New York — no problem. Find a spiritual buddy you can connect with.

I ask Allah to allow us in this winter break to make some serious changes and allow us to get on to the six-week fast. And I hope our winter intensive will be the first step towards that fast.

In your area, if there are any jama'ats of Dawat and Tabligh coming to your masjid, do i'tikaf with them. Spend a couple of days with them in the masjid. If you can go out with some students, go ahead and do that. That is another powerful, powerful way to get a breath of fresh air, to stir up the iman in your heart, and to yourself start realizing what is evil in your life that needs to change. There are hundreds of jama'ats going out this winter break from Chicago — they will be going all over the country. If you want to go out after the winter intensive, come talk to me or one of the brothers. I will connect you with those who are responsible for these jama'ats. InshaaAllah, you can participate, and it will be very beneficial for your iman as well.

Making the Home a Sanctuary of Noor

I ask Allah to allow all of us to be able to gain more than we are expecting from this program, and inshaaAllah from the winter break itself. May He allow our home environments to become صَوْمَعَة, a monastery, where we actually get inspired by staying at home. Let the environment of our home become so nurani, so blessed, that a person's iman increases when they go home. InshaaAllah.

How are you going to do that? First: Recite Quran out loud every single day in your home. Every single day, sit in the family room — a public place — and read Quran out loud. Ideally with the family. Second: Do dhikr. Do dhikr out loud at home for a few minutes:

Third: Read through a book that has some encouraging words of Allah and His Rasul ﷺ. Like Riyad al-Salihin — all of you know it. Read a chapter from it every single day at home. Or read the stories of the companions — Hayatus Sahabah by Shaykh Yusuf al-Kandhlawi رحمه الله, which is translated into English. It is just hadith — three volumes, stories of the Sahaba. Or read Fada'il al-A'mal by Shaykh Zakariyya al-Kandhlawi رحمه الله. Millions of lives have changed through that book.

Or we have downstairs in the bookstore — mashaaAllah, I went in to give a tour to someone two days ago and saw so many beautiful new titles that have just come in. One of the books is called Downpour of Blessings, which we also read after Isha here. It is a great two-volume collection of hadith on every topic, meant to be studied at home. There is a beautiful English translation with commentary — you do not need to talk about it, just read. It is all explained. He systematically goes from cover to cover, from the seerah, to the Sahaba, to qiyamah, to tahara, to spiritual dimensions — all covered there.

Fourth: Collectively make du'a. Make du'a at home — let the mother make du'a, the father make du'a, the sister, the brother, like this. If we can wrap all of this up in 15 to 20 minutes — can do 20, do 15. Can do 15, do 12. Do something. Two to two minutes each. Like the 10-minute exercises on each machine at the gym — like this, two to two minutes on the spiritual exercise at home. You will start seeing huge differences in the environment at home. People will become naturally inspired to want to be better, when they come to your house or when you yourselves go back home. InshaaAllah.

Q&A: Why Are Muslims Not United?

The brother is raising a question that he received — from a world religions professor, who says that Muslims preach unity, or at least their faith teaches them to be united. So how is it possible for Muslims to see Muslims suffering across the globe and not be united to do something? And he says his own Muslim students in the class have a hard time with this. Alhamdulillah, thank you for asking the question.

From amongst the many reasons why people are leaving Islam, there are usually three big ones. Weakness in spirituality, weakness in knowledge — not being strong enough to handle tough questions — and weakness of environment, especially at home. So he is raising a question that pertains to weakness in knowledge.

The answer is very straightforward. The Prophet ﷺ, who told us and encouraged us and pushed us and exhorted us to be united, also explained to us that we are not going to be united. That same Prophet — exactly what you see happening now — is vividly described in hadith from amongst the signs of the Hour. The Prophet ﷺ said that the ummah will become so fragmented that the kuffar and disbelievers will be capable of devouring the Muslims. And he explained it so vividly — you know this hadith:

(Sunan Abu Dawud, Hadith 4297)

The way people sitting around a big platter of food sit there — here, have the chicken, have the meat — that is how the disbelievers will surround the Muslims from all directions and cut them into pieces and sit there and enjoy it. The way the 'Uthmani Khilafah was broken just a hundred years ago — how bit by bit they compartmentalized and cut each and every single piece of the Khilafah. All this fitna came in after the fall of the Khilafah.

So the Prophet ﷺ, when he said that, the companions were shocked. They were like — dare anyone tries that now, we have not eaten for three days but try to mess with us. How is this going to happen?

(Sunan Abu Dawud, Hadith 4297)

They clearly said, "Ya Rasulullah, is it because our numbers will be so few?" He said, "No — your numbers are going to be huge. But you will be useless, like the foam on top of the ocean. You will have absolutely no value in the eyes of anyone — not even in the eyes of disbelievers, and not even in the eyes of Allah. And that is why Allah is not going to come to help you." They said, "Why? What happened?" He said: "Allah will take away your awe and fear from the hearts of your enemies — they will not be afraid of messing with Muslims. And Allah will place wahan in your hearts." They said, "What is wahan, Ya Rasulullah?" He said: "The love of the material world — and the fear of death."

What you see in the grand scheme of things is a manifestation of our spiritual disease. When we talk about tazkiyah, brother — you think that Palestine issue happened for no reason? It happened because there is no tazkiyah. Because the hearts are messed up. If we cannot get ourselves to Fajr, wallahi, we can never figure that out. Never figure it out. If we cannot get our Fajr crowd to double or triple in the past two months, then there is no way we are going to be able to resolve that issue. Because that means our hearts are sick. And Allah is not going to help a sick ummah with sick hearts.

We have willingly decided to give preference to this dunya over akhirah, to give preference to the fear of creation over the fear of Allah. So the answer you can tell them is: you are right. And alhamdulillah, we have our answer. The fault is within us. I do not even blame the non-Muslims — I blame ourselves. We honestly have to say that. We cannot blame the non-Muslims — they answer to Allah in their own way. But the reason this is happening is because of us, because we have not been able to do that which was required of us.

When a father comes and tells me, "My son did this crazy thing — he scolded me, he pushed me" — many times I say, "I think the problem is with you." "What?" "How in the world did it mature to this? It did not happen overnight. If your son has the audacity to push you, to curse you out — this has been brewing for years. And you did not do anything about it. You did not see the Frankenstein forming all along." So the fact that the disbelievers can do this to us — I blame ourselves for it.

The Story of Mu'tasim Billah

Ibn Athir رحمه الله mentions in his Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh:

(Ibn Athir, Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, events of the year 223 AH)

He says: When the king of the Romans attacked the countries of the Muslims and did whatever he did, the news reached the Khalifah Mu'tasim Billah. When it reached him, he regarded this aggression as a tremendous crime. And the news reached him that a Hashimi woman had cried out while she was a prisoner in the hands of the Romans — and she said: "Wa Mu'tasimaah!" — "Oh Mu'tasim, where are you?!"

He heard that some lady in a far distant land had called out his name. He sat on his throne and said: Labbayki, labbayki — "Here I am, here I am." And he stood up at that very moment. He screamed out in his palace: "Al-nafir! Al-nafir!" — a general mobilization, red alert, everyone out of the palace. He himself got onto his horse. He sat and began to gather all the arms and the armies — and subhanAllah, the provisions — and he set out to free that one lady.

This is not just a story in the history books. It tells you what the Muslims were before. When the Muslims were united, you just needed one woman to scream, and you would see the wrath of the united Muslim ummah. And when we have spiritually destroyed ourselves through going back to social media and filth and phones — then of course this bloodbath will continue, until we repent and until we realize that the help of Allah is intentionally being withheld.

Wallahi al-'Azim — if there are superpowers in the world, as Mufti Taqi has said, Allah is the Supreme Power. The only reason anyone is a superpower is because Allah gave him that power. It is less than a second for Allah to destroy any power and to show who is actually in power. But He is not — intentionally He is not. Why? That should bring a change within us. We have gone away from Allah to such a degree that Allah is watching all of this. Yes, of course Allah is watching. Why is help not coming? Because we have turned our backs to Allah.

May Allah give us the tawfiq to make tawbah.

Closing Dhikr

Let us do a few minutes of dhikr.