Making the Changes

Making the Changes

by Nouman Ali Khan

Introduction and Time Constraints

I have a difficult task because I have a flight to catch and we're kind of behind schedule so I'm going to try to keep my speech limited to 11 minutes or less and I actually mean that I have a flight to catch. I have small children. Okay, all right.

The Problem of Constant Complaining

So what I wanted to share with you is fairly straightforward and it actually in its shorter times actually forces speaker to be more precise in what they want to say anyway so I'm grateful for that. What I essentially wanted to share with you is the idea of change, something about the idea of changing ourselves, changing the condition of the Ummah. It's very easy to complain about change.

It's very easy to complain about the lack thereof. People love, you know, we talk about some of our elders and they've done so many great things for us but at the same time one of the hobbies they have is sit around talk about how corrupt governments are and what's going on in Pakistan. You know what's going on in Pakistan? Oh ho ho, it's really bad.

And it says, oh you think that's bad? Let me tell you what's going on in Egypt. That's even worse. Oh you got nothing on us.

We got something bad going down in India and they're just everybody's bragging about how bad things are. It's like an entertainment session for them over chai. They're going to change, they're going to talk about all the problems of the world and nothing will change and then you go back and do the same thing again.

And you know what? They're not the only ones. You've do it. You know what? Our masjid, nobody understands us. Nobody listens to us. We can't do any programs there. Our imam doesn't understand. Our board doesn't understand. Our scholars don't understand. Everybody's complaining constantly.

We're all just complaining, complaining, complaining, complaining. We become really really good at it and our pastime has become just to complain. Their entire khutbah is dedicated to what all the problems are and how bad things are and we just get stuck in this rut of constantly looking at the world around us as a gloomy place.

Hope Through Observation and Travel

I used to think like that only because I lived in New York and it's normal for people in New York to be depressed. But as I started traveling, I started seeing so many amazing things happening across the country and so many creative efforts and so much new stuff coming from Muslims. I just never expected that it just makes me hopeful.

Altogether it just makes me hopeful and it makes me personally say change is coming. You know one of the most common things I've heard at the end of a khutbah, at the end of a talk from people? Brother, you know we try so much to remind people and give talks and khutbahs. That's all well and good.

Nothing is changing. Nothing ever changes. You know how many times I've heard that? Like why are you so depressed? Don't be depressed.

Change is in Allah's Hands

First of all, change is not in our hands. Change is not in our hands. It's in Allah's hands.

"Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."

In that ayah even, the famous ayah, no doubt it is Allah. He does not change the condition of what afflicting a nation until they change what is within them, what is afflicting them on the inside, what's affecting them inside of themselves. Even in that ayah, Allah attributed change itself to Himself.

Allah didn't say people will change things. Allah said He will change things for them. They just have to make a change inside of themselves.

The Battle Against Our Own Self

So that's really what I want to focus on. How is it that we can bring a change inside of ourselves? You know the real battle all of us has is against our own self. Your worst enemy is like your best friend, it's yourself.

No one else. No one knows you better than yourself. If there's one person that knows all of your flaws, all of your weaknesses, all of the things you could be doing better, all the times you waste, all the things you shouldn't be involved in but you are anyway, all the bad habits you have, the ones that are known to others and the ones that are not known to others.

If there's someone who knows that really, really, really well, it's you. It's you. And you have to learn and I have to learn to be hard on myself.

The Danger of Pride and Self-Deception

It's very easy for someone in my position to get used to people saying, brother, great speech, thank you so much. Alhamdulillah. And then shaitan comes from behind and says, hey, pat yourself on the back.

And you say, yeah, that was a great speech, wasn't it? That's right. And that might happen to you. You're at an MSA, you're at a masjid, you're helping out, people appreciate what you're doing.

Then you say, yeah, I'm pretty good over here. I'm doing all right. Everybody appreciates what I'm doing.

We have to learn to constantly be hard on our own selves, to constantly look in the mirror. You know, psychologically speaking, people present a picture of themselves to the outside world. People, you know, especially it's problematic for public speakers because, you know, most of the time, most of you see me and people like me on a stage, we're giving a talk about Islam, but I don't always do that.

I switch it off when I'm off of here. I play with my kids. I don't give them khutbah.

You see what I'm saying? But then people see you because they've always seen you in a certain light. They see that's all this person is going to be, right? And that kind of, on some people, it puts a pressure on them to act a certain way in front of others, to look a certain way, act a certain way. And that might be you.

You're so used to impressing people with how, whatever, religious you are, knowledgeable you are, committed you are, etc., etc., and you're constantly putting up this face that you start convincing yourself that's who you really are.

The Need for Self-Honesty

We have to be able to be honest to ourselves if we're going to talk about change. One has to be able to stop complaining about the world and start complaining about themselves.

What is wrong? What am I doing wrong? What are my shortcomings? What are the things that I look at myself and I say, well, if there were four or five things I could change about myself, if I could just do four or five things differently, what would they be? What would those things be that I wish I changed? What are the some things I wanted to accomplish last year and I never got to? I really wanted to though. I wanted to memorize like two more surahs. I wanted to study something.

I want to finish reading that book. I never got around to it, but I really wanted to do it. What is keeping us from making those changes? That's the real bit of advice that at least I'll share with you what I do for myself.

It works sometimes, it doesn't work other times, but I'm hoping inshallah you'll be better at it than I am and we're all going to be making changes for the better in our own lives.

Personal Strategy: Two Types of Days

What I do for myself is basically ask myself a very simple question. I have two kinds of days.

I have days where I'm home and days that I'm traveling. I've divided my life into two kinds of days. Days when I'm traveling and days when I'm home.

And there are failures because days that I'm home are all the same. Whether it's last week or the next week or two years before or two years after, it's going to be similar. They're all going to be the same.

And the days that I'm traveling are all going to have similar things in them. There's going to be going from home to the airport and getting onto the plane and passing out and then the flight attendant waking me up to get off the plane. All that's going to be the same every time.

There's going to be repetition. And in each of those two kinds of days there are some things I could do better.

The Power of Fixing One Day

There's some way I could use my time better. I could be more productive in something. How do I make more use of that day? How do I make it more productive? That one day. You can fix one day, you've fixed your whole life.

If you made one change to today, that means you've made that change for the rest of your life. For many of you it's like weekdays and weekends. Your weekends are the same way every time.

Your weekdays are the same way every time, right? Fix your weekdays. This time is for Salat. Right after that there's time for Quran.

There's this time for me to learn something. There's this time for me to you know get my homework done or whatever it may be. Discipline your life.

Make that change in your life.

The Challenge of Maintaining Balance

You know what else people fail to do? That's coupled with that. That's most common and I personally have trouble with that also.

It's one of the hardest things to do is to maintain balance in your life. To maintain balance. Because we're pulled in many different directions.

Our parents want our time. Our husbands and wives want their time. Our children want their time.

Our career wants its time. Our friends want their time. Our masjid wants its time.

Ourselves, we want to just be left alone. We need some time to ourselves. We have all these different poles, right?

And it's really important that we maintain a balance between all of these different poles.

And a lot of times we fail to do it and when we do we end up wronging one thing or another. This is the biggest change you can bring in your life to create balance. There are people who give their wife a lot of time and their parents no time at all.

There are people who give their parents a lot of time and they spend no time with their wife. There are people who are so bent upon fixing their career they are almost not even existent in the lives of their children. It happens.

And then there are those interesting characters who don't want anything to do with home so they volunteer at the masjid all the time. I love masjid volunteers but the guy says, hey I'm gonna put up the chairs three days before the program and I'll even sleep here. There's a problem at home.

Go home. Get some balance in your life, right?

Time is Our Real Asset

We need to make these, we have to really assess honestly in our lives what changes do we have to make. And really changes to me is what you give time to.

I mean the real asset all of us have is time. That's really all we have. And if we're utilizing it properly our lives have moved towards the better and if we're not our lives are moving towards the worse.

That's essentially what it boils down to. We have to become people that make productive use of their time. That don't become people that waste time.

Even if you want to play sports or relax or whatever there should be a time for that. It should be specified. It should be something disciplined.

Divine Order and Personal Discipline

Allah tells us the sun and the moon they follow an order. All of the acts of worship that we do in Islam somehow fall upon the sun and the moon. The prayers dependent on the positions of the sun.

Eid and Ramadan and Hajj on the moon. And Allah tells us the sun and the moon follow a precise order. Our worship follows a precise order.

What we're learning from that is your entire life should follow a precise order. You should have some kind of discipline laid out a sketch in your life for yourself. Otherwise you'll keep thinking I should get that done and you'll never get it done because it never made time for it.

You never found a specific time for it. And for each of you this is going to be a very personal affair. You're going to have to look at your own life and see where can I make this change.

Lesson from Students: The Power of Discipline

You know our students and one minute left I'll tell you what I told my students. Our students they come from all over the United States and they come you know to our 10-month program and it's very different. You know it's not like being at home.

It's very different. So I have to orient them and part of their orientation is look the way you wake up and the way you go to sleep is different now. It's not like when you were home.

You really have to be careful when you wake up, when you're going to go to masjid for fajr, what are you going to do after that, when you're going to eat, when you're going to get to class, when you're going to do your homework, when you're going to hang out with your friends to keep your sanity, when are you going to go to sleep. You're going to have to discipline yourself if you're going to get through this successfully. And if they can create that kind of discipline in their life in these 10 months, wallahi it will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

They'll be the better for it if they can have that kind of discipline.

The Problem of Time Wasting

We're just the people, once we get start playing a video game, we lose all track of time. Once you start texting someone and start drooling, you just forget the sun goes up and down.

It doesn't matter to you. But once you hit the ps3 or xbox controller and you start sniping people off the rooftops, right, that's it. Regimes could change, the world could change, the stock market could grow, you wouldn't know you're in your room going that's who you are.

We have to show respect to time. That's the real change we bring in our lives.

Conclusion: Personal Change Leads to Universal Change

So stop complaining about stuff. All of that will happen when you personally bring a positive change in your life and that of disciplining yourself.

Closing Gratitude

As I'm leaving you guys, first of all, I'd like to express my genuine gratitude for this opportunity. And I don't really get a chance to come to the east coast much anymore.

And when I do, I'm very grateful. Alhamdulillah. And I'm hoping that all of you benefited from some of these talks also.

And I pray that Allah accepts that from me and all of you and especially grants my family immense reward, who show a lot of patience when I'm away from them. Especially my wife, she's like extra patient.