As the Sun set, we entered into one of the odd nights from
among the last 10 nights of Ramadan;
Do you realize the value of the night?
Did you know that laylatul qadr could be any night of Ramadan?
So we're taught, take every night seriously,
The dua if I were to ask you, that would be....
Today is one of the days where we've been blessed by Allah,
to be in His house, in the house of Allah (swt).
People choose to be where they want.
A believer chooses to be in the right place.
Remember that, at any given time, Ramadan or out of Ramadan,
a believer chooses to be in the right place and always asks
Allah to guide him or her to be in the right place at the right time.
While we have the energy and capacity to do things, we need
to realize that it is only by the acceptance of Allah that
a person will be at the right place.
We are in the house of Allah.
Yes, because we made an effort to come here.
Without having made the effort, we would not be here, but
over and above that;
It's because Allah wanted us to be here.
It's because Allah chose us to be here.
It's because we have asked Allah subhanaw Taala to grant us
from His goodness and to guide us part of the guidance
that we seek whenever we read surah Fatiha
that is that Allah Almighty will always guide us to be
in the right place at the right time.
May Allah (swt) Open our doors.
my beloved brothers and sisters,
Then this evening as the Sun set, we entered into one of
the odd nights from among the last 10 nights of Ramadan.
Do you realize the value of this night?
Did you know that laylatul qadr could be any night of Ramadan
to start with, from the beginning to the end?
But there is a greater likelihood that it is one of the last
10 nights any one of them.
Did you know that?
And then did you know there is a greater likelihood for it
to be one of the odd nights from among the last 10?
And then did you know that there is a greater likelihood
for it to be from the second half of the last 10?
Subhanallah, but a greater likelihood does not mean that
it is not one of the other nights.
So we're taught take every night seriously,
the dua if I were to ask you that would be most loved by Allah on
an Eve like this, what would it be?
o Allah, you love to forgive.
You are forgiving, you love to forgive.
So forgive me.
That is the Dua of the night of decree, over and above that
Allah creates within us needs.
Allah creates within us certain things that we want.
And Allah says I created those things in you so that you
can ask Me.
Imagine if life was just flowing so beautifully.
Many people would not find the need to ask Allah for anything.
But Allah says, Oh, believers dig deep into the favors that
I have bestowed upon you and thank Me for them.
Because if you are going to thank Me, two things will happen to you.
Number one, I won't take away what I gave you.
Number two, I will grant you increase in what I favored you with.
So if you are breathing today and you want to continue
breathing without difficulty, have you ever and in thank Allah?
o Allah! I breathe thousands of times a day.
You don't charge me for it.
I thank You.
Oh Allah! Praise be to you.
Glory be to you.
You are the greatest.
You are the Lord of the throne.
You are the Lord of the universe, the world, the creation.
You are the Lord of the Angels.
Subhanallah, the Lord of the Spirit, the Lord of everything.
You created everything, O Allah, we owe it to you.
So on an Eve like this, don't ever be lazy.
Don't ever let the night pass without having sought the
forgiveness of Allah.
Because if you are to make a dua and you are to stand in
prayer at night, even if it were two units known as two rakat
Wallahi. If Allah accepted it from you, the value of it would
be equivalent to having done that for a thousand months.
We've read that so many times, laylatul qadr.
The night of decree is better than a thousand months.
May Allah forgive us.
Part of the mercy of Allah is He knows we are human.
He knows we will falter.
He knows the world will consume us.
He knows that occupation will overtake us.
He knows that earning wealth and money will become a concern for us.
He knows that some of our lusts and desires we may fall for them.
He says, I will constantly give you moments and seasons
and times where you can reset your relationship with Me.
Come back, I love you all, Allahu akbar.
Have you thought of that?
Why does Ramadan come back all the time every year?
Why does Every night,
Allah says, You know what?
You get up, you make tahajjud, you ask, I will give why every night?
Why are ther blessed moments every Friday?
And why does a Friday come back once a week?
Subhanallah, Allah says, We allow these to come back every
single time in order for you to be given an opportunity to
reset your relationship with Allah.
The losers are the ones who allow their lives
to pass and they have not yet made peace with Allah.
Oh my brother, who's on drugs.
Make peace with Allah.
Quit your bad habit.
Oh, my brother or sister who is committing adultery,
Make peace with Allah.
Cut your bad habits.
It will get you nowhere.
Oh, my brother, my sister, who is addicted to pornography,
Cut your bad habits.
Make peace with Allah.
Reset your relationship with Allah.
A warm tear that were to flow down your cheek on a night
like this would result in eternal bless.
May Allah grant us goodness. May Allah forgive us.
My brothers and sisters, remember, you have a bad habit.
Quit it for the sake of Allah.
Oh my brother,
My sister, who's hooked onto gambling.
Who's hooked onto Haram.
Who's hooked onto the bottle.
Who's hooked onto whatever it may be.
This is your moment.
This is your time.
This is your season.
This is your opportunity.
Quit it.
Cut it.
For the sake of Allah, you may never see another Ramadan.
The way things are going,
People are actually fear mongering across the globe at the
moment and some as soon as they are diagnosed and tested positive
for this virus that we all know about, they panic immediately,
sometimes dying because of anxiety and panic rather than
of the ailment itself.
May Allah protect us.
Our lives are in the hands of Allah.
We trust in Allah.
We will be responsible.
May Allah make it easy for those
who've lost their loved ones more than one in some families.
I know of families, tens of families who've
lost their entire income and business because both breadwinners
are gone.
What to do?
Are we going to reach out to those children?
Those widows?
Young widows.
What's going to happen to them?
The widowers, what's going to happen to them?
You find a man.
He's alone with all his children trying to fend for them.
Look after them, at the same time
go out to work.
Life has changed suddenly.
No one predicted it.
This was all in the plan of Allah.
Allah says, oh community, Oh Muslimeen,
We call ourselves Jamaat al Muslimeen / The Muslim Community.
In this community, what I love is
that phrase Jamaat al Muslimeen is so common.
But do we really mean it?
Are we really Jamaat al Muslimeen?
Are we really a group and a family of Muslims?
Would we care for one another solely for the sake of Allah?
You help a widow solely for the pleasure of Allah.
I had a young man telling me I'm helping her for the pleasure of Allah.
But I want it soon to be for my own pleasure too.
I said, Brother, you can't say that.
He says, I'm not saying Haram.
I'm saying halal, Subhanallah.
Look where the mind goes.
But getting back to what we're saying, my brothers and sisters,
we have to reach out to those who are struggling in our midst,
even if it's just by a Kalima Tayibah, by a good word
that you utter to them.
My sister, everything will be okay.
Don't worry.
We are here.
We are praying for you.
We will try our best, Tomorrow, It could be myself yourselves.
We can leave our families and go or part of our families.
I wanted to say wiped out, but no return to Allah.
And we are still on Earth, beloved brothers and sisters, if
you've lost loved ones, here is the dua
Oh Allah! We ask for them jannatul firdous.
May Allah grant you a beautiful patience.
So my brothers and sisters, these days are days filled with
merit, filled with virtue.
Do not waste them.
Ask Allah what you want.
And there is one major difference that we need to realize
when we ask Allah,
And when we ask people if I were to ask you something, I
know you have.
And I say, Brother, can you please do this for me?
And I call you back five minutes later.
Brother, don't forget to do this for me and I call you back
the next day.
Brother, don't forget to do this for me and I call you back
the following day in the afternoon.
Brother, don't forget to do this for me.
And I get up at two in the morning and phone you.
You won't even answer your phone.
You'll block me off.
And at the same time you tell me, are you not ashamed of yourself?
Because I asked you four times in two days.
Allah says you ask Me a million times in a day.
The more the merrier,
I love it when you repeat it because it shows your desperation
and it shows that you worship Me.
You believe in Me,
you know that I have the solution to your problem,
Allahu akbar.
That's why repetition in dua is an Act of worship.
The prophet (pbuh) used to repeat it thrice important dua,
he used to say thrice, tonight in salatul witr, we repeated the Dua:
do you know why that is the dua?
The closest that we have to protect ourselves from the
virus that has overtaken this globe.
So we repeated thrice and we ask Allah with conviction.
But at the same time we will be responsible.
We will definitely make sure that it does not make us irresponsible
May Allah (swt) grant us good guidance.
Then my brothers
and sisters, one thing we need to know on a night like this,
If your heart is filled with enmity and hatred,
then you are far from the mercy of Allah.
Clean that heart of yours.
How? Well you need to know how.
Release things, let things go.
Your life is not going to be affected.
Subhanallah, you might at times not want to associate with
the person who's hurt you and harmed you, but let things fly.
Let them go.
Forgive.
But don't forget. Forgive and forget is not an Islamic teaching.
No, Islam tells you forgive and do not forget.
Why? the Hadith of the prophet (pbuh), he says,
A true believer is never bitten from the same source twice.
Never.
Which means you are bitten once.
Okay, I forgive you, but I'm remembering it because next time
when I see the same Scorpion coming and turning around
and preparing its little, you know, sting,
Whatever I will know, I will walk away the other side because
I didn't forget.
But I forgive you.
Allah protected me.
What was it?
The favor of Allah.
If you want someone to forget what you did for them,
you will have a lot of patchwork to do.
People can forget.
But forgetting will only happen after a long term beautified,
repaired relationship.
That will then make the person oblivious of what happened before.
When trust is broken in a marriage in order to build it,
you need to work hard.
You know, when someone has slice the hand now it will heal.
But there'll be a scar, right?
But if you put Vaseline every day and you get a little bit
of the patch every day, and nowadays you have these people
MashaAllah, they can help you with a little bit of collagen
and whatever else.
And sometimes they can do a bit of surgery for you.
Mashallah, then what happens?
The Mark slowly but surely fades away.
But if you were to be gashed in the same spot again, what will happen?
Subhanallah, is going to leave a Mark for sure.
They say, the cesarean section.
You shouldn't slice the same place more than once.
Why?
It becomes dangerous.
May Allah grant the mothers of the ummah jannah by virtue
of their patience that they bore through childbirth.
ameen, amazing.
Our own mothers,
We pray for them.
Why don't we pray for the mothers of our own children and respect them?
Those are our wives.
Mashallah, my brothers and sisters, today is a day of peace.
Did you hear the pitter-patter as we were fulfilling Salah,
the rain.
Subhanallah.
I thought, What is the sound?
And thereafter I told myself, these are some signs.
They are certain signs we don't know and we won't know for sure.
But there will always be a sign, Allah
gives you a peace of comfort, of change of heart,
of the feeling that my life is transforming.
That's laylatul qadr.
Your life is transforming is changing.
Something's happening to you.
You're feeling like a rejuvenated person.
That's laylatul qadr.
But if a person is sitting at the shisha lounge, puffing away,
asking, Is it halal,
my brother, relax,
It's the wrong day, the wrong night, the wrong season while
we are supposed to be in the houses of Allah.
You're busy puffing and asking, Is this okay?
Minimum, I can tell you is you're wasting your Ramadan.
You're wasting the moments when the Angels are saying Amen
to any dua you make.
So make some good dua.
Another point that we need to learn for this eve is
My brothers and sisters don't make a negative dua,
It doesn't work.
It won't help you, make a positive dua.
Imagine you have a person you had a problem with.
You can say, oh Allah! break him.
Destroy him.
Kill him.
Make him this.
Make him that, Allah will only do what that person deserves.
But better than that was for you to say, oh Allah! soften his heart,
make him steadfast.
Make him a better person.
Let him realize his problems.
Let him come and let him apologize.
if you really want, Oh Allah! let him come.
Let there be a good friendship between us.
I want to read for you a verse that we read this evening in Taraweeh,
extremely powerful.
You know, the people of Macca, they fought each other because
the Muslims on one hand and the non Muslims on the other
of makkatul mukarramah.
There were battles that took place.
Allah says to Muhammad (pbuh), watch your heart,
Understand that Allah is the one who will grant goodness
and He can change the hearts at any time.
Allah is all capable and all able of creating the highest
level of love between you and the one whom you are the enemy
of right now.
May Allah grant them Mawaddah.
Mawaddah is one of the highest levels of love.
... is also a high level of love...
The highest level of love of a different type....
Mawaddah is love and affection.
Allah says we can create an affection between you and the
one who is your enemy right now,
Tomorrow it can happen.
Allah is al-Khaḍir, Allah is All-able,
Allah forgives, Allah is most forgiving, most mercy.
Look at how powerfully Allah words is for us.
My brothers, my sisters.
What a lovely evening, we ask Allah to accept it from us.
We want love
Not because of money, not because of power, authority, position,
No.
Love, because you are my brother, my sister in Allah.
In the Arabic we say Filillah
That's why I'm translating it as in Allah.
But it means in the cause of Allah,
in the sake of Allah.
Why do I love you?
Because you say the Shahada, I say we're connected.
May Allah (swt) grant us Ramah.
Wallahi, my brothers and sisters this evening.
Let's spend it with a little bit of dua:
It's okay.
Those are the qualities of Allah and His names.
So remember that it's the mercy of Allah,
and not only this night, all of the 10 nights of Ramadan,
more so odd nights.
I think today I said something that many people probably
didn't know.
And that's why some people were just looking at me
when I said laylatul qadr can be any night of Ramadan.
People are just looking.
Yes, it can be any night from the beginning to the end,
but more likely one of the last 10 nights.
Any one of the last 10.
More likely one of the odd nights.
And I want to answer one quick question before I go.
laylatul qadr, tonight, It might be 25th here.
It might be 26 somewhere else.
It might be 23Rd somewhere else.
Sorry, not 23 Rd, I don't think.
But maybe the next day.
One day disparity usually.
So who is right and who is wrong?
My brothers, don't worry about that.
Trust Allah, when you are doing your tahajjud,
It's already juhmmah time perhaps in America, right?
When you are in Australia, it's already the following day.
You see, by the time we are doing Salatul fajr,
they are coming out of Jummah in Australia.
But our fajr did not coincide..
Allah accepted their fajr differently from ours.
Allah accepts their tahajjud differently from ours.
Allah works in His own unique way.
You follow instructions and Allah will grant it to you and
to them and to everyone.
And it's possible different time zones could be different days altogether.
There's no harm.
That is the will of Allah.
It's the same rule that applies when it comes to the timings
of opening your fast and breaking your fast.
You will follow your time in your area.
When you are following your time in your area, someone somewhere
on the globe is starting their fast.
What are you doing?
Opening it or breaking it, as we call.
Is there anything wrong?
No.
You're following your time zone where you are.
So Allah says, I'll give you.
Because if Allah says a blessed moment is the time of iftar
in which time zone He didn't address that,
Which means, wherever you are, that's the time zone
May Allah open our doors.
My brothers and sisters, if I could, I would be here again and again.
But life is such that we have to continue doing whatever we have.
And Allah will gather us again in His obedience and ultimately in Jannatul firdous
with the most Noble companionship of nobi Mohammed (pbuh).