Five Life Lessons from Prophet Joseph's Story

Okay h Sal.

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Can I speak to you after you can straighten out the mic can you do is that okay okay.

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SM.

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Asbar.

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Ahbar ASU ASU Allah.

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Ill ASU.

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Asham.

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Sal.

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He.

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Allahar.

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Alhamdulillah alhamd.

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All.

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Dear brothers and sisters in Islam May the peace mercy and blessings of Allah Almighty be upon each and every one of you this beautiful day when We Gather in this beautiful place in the house of Allah tal to reflect upon Allah tala to Express gratitude for all all the bounties that Allah tal has provided us to seek forgiveness and to ask for guidance and help among many other things alhamdulillah in the Holy Quran which we Muslims are so fortunate to have to have access to in the original Arabic and the original verses that were sent down to our beloved Prophet s. wasam 1446 years ago alhamdulillah there are many different types of ways that Allah T communicates The Message of Islam sometimes Allah T tells us something directly pray just pray other times Allah T gives us Parables or or examples and sometimes Allah T gives us Beautiful Stories because Allah T knows human beings love stories we love love stories we've always loved stories and we'll probably always love stories until the end of time and so many of these stories are about very ious prophets who faced adversity and challenges during their lifetime and sometimes the stories are short and sometimes they're rather detailed and long and so today we're going to reflect a little bit upon probably the longest story in the Quran of a single prophet and that's Prophet yfam The Prophet Joseph in Surah 12 so I know I always give homework when I'm up here that's your homework for this week try to look at Surah YF sometime because I'm only going to have time to talk about a few of the amazing lessons that are in this Surah there are so many lessons there's so many things one can learn from this Surah I'm only going to focus on a few of them in so the first one is the very first verse in which the in which the Story begins in which Allah says.

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Sorry we could please turn off our phones too that would be wonderful so Allah says remember when Yousef said to his father his father being oh Father I dreamt of 11 stars and the Sun and the Moon I dreamt they were bowing to me now his father masallah had great perception great wisdom and what was his reaction after s Yu said this to him don't tell your brothers about this right don't tell your brothers I'm worried something bad might happen if you tell your brothers about this they might be even more envious than they already were of him and so the first lesson we get here right at the beginning of the story is the importance of Consulting our elders Consulting our parents right if there's something we're not really sure about something kind of strange happens it's okay in fact it's recommended here to follow the example of yfam and to let our parents or someone we really really trust know about this before sharing this information or this dream or this Vision with the whole world or on social media or some other way so that's the first lesson we get right at the beginning of the story of s yfam now you all probably know the story despite not sharing this Vision yousef's siblings cast him in a well right they they get rid of him and Yousef alisam gets picked up from the well he gets sold into slavery and where does he end up he ends up in Egypt right in a prosperous person's house and there he reaches maturity but what happens when he reaches maturity he's an extremely good-look young man right and so we get our second big lesson or another big lesson here is the power of physical attraction I see some young folks here it happens to older folks too but especially when you're younger this power of physical attraction is very very strong in the Quran Allah acknowledges this that's how we were created right that's how one of the many ways we're tested is how do we handle this intense physical attraction that can occur between and does occur between the Sexes and so ultimately the situation grows and grows and you can read about it and in your homework I'm not going to go into the details from the minbar But ultimately yuam is given an ultimatum either you do what you're not supposed to do or go to prison and here it's remarkable.

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Saysf says prison is more attractive to me then what what this woman is summoning me to do prison prison is more attractive to me and he evinces a real concern that he doesn't know if he doesn't go to prison how long he can hold out because of all the intense pressure that's going to be him on him trapped trapped in this house and so that is the reason YF Alam goes to prison he didn't do anything wrong in fact ironically the reason he went to prison is because he didn't do something wrong right that's that's why he us went to prison cuz he didn't do the wrong thing he didn't commit the crime and he ended up m going to prison for a period of time and after a while he gets released you can read all about that in Surah yusf and we get another lesson which is related very closely to that power of physical attraction between males and females between men and women because as he's released either he or the wife of his owner it's ambiguous who said this but it's a very important statement Allah T says and puts this in the mouth of either the wife of aiz or in the mouth of YF.

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In this ay Allah T says or I do not puts quotes either yfam or the wife of aiz saying I do not declare my soul innocent the soul ever urges to evil except when my Lord shows Mercy truly my Lord is all forgiving all merciful now Allah in his infinite mercy and generosity identifies three types of souls in the Quran itself in the Quran and this is the first one that gets identified if you start from the beginning of the book of Allah and work your way through it and S right the soul that urges to evil this is the the Locust of anger sensual desires and it's the one that constantly is in need of Restraint of discipline and of it's often described as the blameworthy soul now the soul can be confusing we're not going to try to explain every detail of the Soul here I'm just going to focus on the three states that a soul can be in according to the Holy Quran according to Allah tal and the lowest of the the states is the that is the lowest and that's the most tough most difficult to control a spiritual Master almost a thousand years ago wrote this following or taught the following lesson and it is just as applicable today I think as it was back 900 years ago in Baghdad he wrote the signs of this Soul are greed and pursuit of carnal desires and Pleasures as soon as it gratifies one desire it goes after another belittling it's what it the blessings it already possesses such as food drink clothing spouse dwelling and means of Transport are these all blessings we still have today these are the things and do we still sometimes say wish had a better car a better house or better this or better that right this is the same same that's the that's driving us to do that that which requires control and that Allah tal warns us about and introduces us to in Surah yusf now the second type of Soul we don't run into until says this is the this is the blaming soul the reproachful soul this is the soul that says man why didn't you wake up the pray fure right what happened your alarm went off you turned it off you had snooze three times what's wrong right the is happy you missed f it doesn't care that's great good job right but the is what gets us into shape that's how our progress on the path of drawing closer to Allah tal acting in a way that is pleasing to Allah tal that is from the so we should never underestimate that aspect of the soul and this is what inshallah will help us all increase in our closeness and our Iman toal and then the highest level of soul the aspirational soul which is very very hard to get to right is called the the Tranquil Soul this is in at the end of says Allah refers to the Tranquil soul the soul that's at peace that's the aspiration that's what human beings excuse me that's what human beings are supposed to aim for that's how we were created with all these possibilities with all different three possibilities but the highest form and we ask all to give us strength and guidance to draw closer and ever closer to that state so that's the third lesson about our soul that we have a soul and that it can be in one or three different sort of situations according to the Holy Quran a fourth lesson which I only came across recently is that after yam was freed from prison and why was he freed from prison he interpreted the King's dream the King was impressed right and instead of just saying thank you for freeing from prison I'm going to go into the desert and just pray and have a nice time what did yuam say he said to the King right at told the king appoint me over the storehouses right there was going to be a need if the people of Egypt were going to survive you needed a good leader who would control the granaries make sure there was enough food stored during the good years so that when the drought and other challenges came there was plenty of food and YF recognized Alam that he was someone who could do this and so he felt an obligation to say hey appoint me to do this and then he said right this is an emphatic form of Arabic he said I am truly a careful guardian and very knowledgeable and so two subtle points come out of this a if according to many of the Muslim Scholars who came long before us right the first is that they said wait a minute the king is he a monotheist probably not probably a polytheist and do kings often do bad things yeah they often do right no matter where they are so why does Yousef want to work and put himself in a situation for someone who's probably got some not so Savory things on his hands and so they understood this to mean that it's okay to work for a ruler or presumably any ruler any boss even if they aren't the most Pious person as long as you are doing that in order to increase Justice in the world as long as you're doing it to increase Justice to restore rights that have been taken or in the case of YF alisam he was doing this to try to prevent massive famine which would result in a horrible horrible situation and so this as long as one's intentions are good working in a potentially morally compromising situation which certainly in many parts if not most of the world people find themselves in that situation quite frequently as long as one's intention is good and one is constantly working towards the betterment of society and the people around them then the scholars say this is a lesson we can derive from this from this Ayah of in the story of Surah Yousef and then the final one final point I'd to touch on after you know there's a long back and forth between YF and his brothers and all during the famine then ultimately what happens yfam reveals himself as Yousef as the brother that his 10 other brothers had cast into a well many many years earlier right and so you might say oh this is a chance when he's going to get revenge right he's really going to get revenge on his brothers but what does he do instead he says something remarkable quotes him as saying Subhan Allah Subhan Allah after all those years and the horrible things his brothers did to him what did YF alisam say he said said no blame shall fall on you today Subhan Allah what was youse of looking to do to bring his family back together and that was his one request bring bring my father my father hasn't seen me in a very very long time right bring bring my family we're going to move out of the land of Canaan and bring them here to Egypt right and so this wasn't the time for revenge or settling scores and of course Yousef is a prophet Alam so he has extraordinary abilities but I think it's a great lesson nonetheless on the importance of doing whatever we can to bring our families together to keep our families together and in the event God forbid Strife or something is happen that serious to give us the strength to forgive our family members when the opportunity arises so we covered only five of many many possible lessons from Surah yussef as I said that's your homework this week please try to check out the Surah and reflect upon it and if you find five more let me know that's great if you find 10 more masallah there are lots and lots of lessons in there we talked about the value of Consulting parents we talked about the dangers of physical attraction between the Sexes we talked about the states of the Soul we talked about Muslims working for corrupt or morally compromised people and we talked about the importance of bringing family together and these are kind of specific lessons and I think they tie into much bigger lessons about some of the core virtues and values of Islam the value of forgiveness the value of steadfastness we didn't even talk about yah Alam and his steadfastness his hope that he was going to see his son again at least his son Yousef again and the importance of trust in Allah tole that even when things are looking very very bad and it's not hard to find situations where things are looking very very bad we have to have faith and trust in Allah that things will get better there's a purpose for all this and as long as we keep doing the best we can and not despair things will in fact get better.

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Alhamdulillah alhamdulillah Brothers if you could please come forward a bit mallah we have a great great attendance today so I see a fair number of gaps in the front for doing that so none of our brothers have to wait outside in a rather warm Courtyard alhamdulillah Allah T doesn't just tell us about the three types of soul in the Holy Quran Allah also gives us guidance for how to control the soul how to discipline it and there's a very beautiful verse in anab anab meaning the Surah of the spider in which Allah says.

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Allah says in this beautiful Surah recite what has been revealed to you he's addressing our beloved Prophet.

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Recite what has been addressed to you and uphold the prayer truly prayer repels debauchery and vice it repels wrongdoing the remembrance of Allah the vocation of Allah is the greatest of devotions and Allah knows all that you do so in just these few Clauses we have tremendous guidance Allah tal is telling us if we uphold our prayers our Salah that is already going to help us command what is good and forbid what is wrong and then in those times between Salah which can be quite long right Allah T tells us there something even better which is right the remembrance of Allah tal the invocation of Allah tal that's something we can do at any time right that's something we can do anytime we're awake so Allah T is guiding us here these two ways Salah and as ways to help us improve our character to become more and more to become closer and closer to Allah tal and then finally Allah reminds us Allah knows everything we do everything we do Allah tal knows right what we do what we think we're doing privately Allah T knows and that's a very helpful reminder and hopefully inspiration for us to keep that in mind and do the best that we can we ask Allah to guide us we ask Allah tal to increase Us in forgiveness to increase Us in steadfastness and to increase Us in trust in Allah Tal Ford.

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Illu.

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Allahar ill.

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Just stuff.

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Allahar.

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Alhamdulillah.

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For.

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For for.

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Allahar allahar allahar Allah Allah ald.

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Miss allahar.

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Allar allahar allahar.

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Allahar heavens as.

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Brothers and sisters asalam alikum first I want to thank our beloved scholar here Dr Scott Lucas for taking the time for giving us a wonderful lecture and inshallah we'll continue benefiting from your knowledge and your experience in the in the IM circles now continue with that inshallah we'll be hosting an Imam next week Imam Muhammad Shadi and the detail of his visit will be posted in our on our website so inshallah please keep take a note of it and try to be here for next inshallah to benefit from his presence also the school has started and we have the preschool to the fourth grade all classes are in session alhamdulillah and if you have a child in that age bracket please talk to brother ahed ja for a possible placement in that school we also are looking for the elementary school teachers so if you have somebody who may be interested please pass the word along and please donate generously on the way out I it it's.

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That I'm take my.