How to Open Your Heart to True Learning

Bismillah.

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Reciting the book of Allah and studying its meanings amongst each other except that the the tranquility of Allah will descend upon them and the mercy of Allah will envelop them and the angels will surround them and Allah will mention them with those who are close us to he. The word, the book of Allah is one of those words in the Quran and Sunnah that if they are mentioned together, they have two separate meanings and if they're mentioned separately, they have, they have, the same meaning, okay? So, ali Imam Abdul Qayyim Rahima Allah mentions in his his book, Al Al yeah. He mention that in the language of the companions and in the language of the the prophet when the book of Allah is mentioned it includes the of the prophet in the book of Allah is mentioned and includes the so when he discusses the book of Allah, he's speaking about the revelation of Allah because the is part of the book not part of the Quran but part of the broader meaning of the book of Allah. Meaning, the book of law of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So, when Allah mentions in the Quran that he gave Musa the book, he gave Dawood the book. He gave the prophets the book, right? Every messenger he gave the book. What is meant by the book? Meaning, the revelation of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and that revelation has three branches of knowledge. Quran, the Sunnah, all the revelations of Allah to the to the prophets and messengers consist of three branches of knowledge. What are those branches of knowledge? Number one, the description of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The first branch is the knowledge of Allah. The second branch is the knowledge of Allah's will. Meaning his laws. Right? The third branch is the the ruling of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So, the first branch is is anything having to do with Allah's names or attributes or descriptions or actions or that's one branch of knowledge. The next branch of knowledge are the laws of Allah. Do this, do not do this, etcetera. The third branch of knowledge is the judgment of Allah. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is good This is bad. This is this is good. This is evil. This is right. This is wrong. This is filthy. This is clean. Right? This is the judgment of Allah. If you do this, you are prone to these consequences. Allah will judge the one who does this by punishing him this way. Allah will judge the one who does this by rewarding him this way, etcetera, etcetera. These are the three branches of knowledge that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent down to humanity Alhamdulillah, everything relevant to us to the end of time. from all of the revelations of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to all of mankind have been included in the Quran and Sunnah. Everything. Everything relevant to us. There may be little details that are not relevant to us that are not mentioned in the Quran and Sunnah. But everything relevant to us. The gist. Of what Allah sent to mankind as guidance. in the form of revelation is all found in the Quran and in the of the prophet so the point here that we're making is that the book of Allah is more broad in meaning when it's mentioned alone than merely the Quran. When when the companions or the prophet says the book of Allah, he's referring to the Quran and the and the of the prophet However, if he mention them together. He says the Quran and the now we have separate. They're separate. Right? So this is an important thing to know and a very good fact about learning the Quran and the Sunnah. Another example is Al Fakir and Al Muskin for instance. Iman and Islam. These are also words that carry these same meanings. If Islam is mentioned alone, it includes a man. If a man is alone, it includes Islam, right? If they're mentioned alone, if they're mentioned together, Islam refers to outward actions and Iman refers to actions of belief and actions of the heart, right? Another example of this is righteousness and god fearing. Right, when they're mentioned together, Albir is doing good deeds and a taqwa is refraining from evil deeds but when taqwa is mentioned alone, it includes doing good deeds and when is mentioned alone. It is including refraining from evil deeds. This is an important list. There's a long list actually that some of the scholars have tried to point out throughout their Tefacia throughout their works of this type of word where it's two words or three words, sometimes four words, right? So, for example, the word Edine, the religion, it carries the meaning of and Iman and Islam. right? It carries all four of those meanings and all of those words carry those meanings as well when they're mentioned alone but when they're all mentioned together, they have different meanings which will be what we'll discuss tonight after Isha inshallah. We are continuing in the 10 points that Ibn al Kaya mentions with regards to the issues and the things that a person can do or that Allah does to open the person's heart. We mentioned the heart has a has a surface to it and in order for that surface to be penetrated and in order for a seed of a man and faith to be planted firmly in it, it has to be dug up. Just when you plant a seed in the ground, right? You have to disturb the earth. You can't leave it it is. You have to dig it up and that's a violent action, right? It's unpleasant and the same thing with learning When you are learning and you have an open mind, your what you think you know is constantly being tested and constantly being reformed. Because as some of our scholars have told us knowledge does not accept that a person be that a person be rigid. It does not accept rigidity. Meaning that a person no I believe what I believe and that's it. Nothing else can change it. That can't be the way that your mind works. There are certain things that yes. I believe Allah and his messenger and the books and the angels and so on and so forth but there are also details that for 40 years, 50 years you may maybe a Muslim and always knew it to be this way and then you come to the class and your mind is blown because you find out that this was actually incorrect or that it was actually something that you had misunderstood. That's the process of knowledge and the students of knowledge, scholars, Shiyuk, people that spend their life in they are constantly digging and planting. Digging and planting and that process is continuous. So, if you are not willing to dig, if you are not willing to allow your mind to be open and your heart to be opened, then, you will never, you will never learn. This is the process of learning. Learning comes with, comes with that, action of friction, of discomfort, of violence that happens where you have to open your heart and open your mind a little bit. Now, we're not talking about opening your mind to everyone and anyone. We're talking about opening your mind and opening your heart by saying this is something I may not know. This is something that I may be ignorant of. This is something I may have misunderstood. This is something, I know this narration for all these years. But now, I've understood it a different way. I've actually misunderstood it for many years, right? It etcetera. There there are examples of this. so, this is why we come to class. This is why we come to lectures. This is why we go to people who study and spend their time and their lives studying. We come to learn from them. Because this is what they specialize in. And we come to take from their knowledge. They work hard behind the scenes. So, for example, for me to give a class this, this is a combination of of of 15 years of studying. So, so I am boiling it down and giving it to you and dispensing it to you. Not everybody has that time or has that dedication or has that knack to go and a scholar. That's why we have scholars and that's why we have to respect them. We have to revere them and we have to protect them and we have to defend them. right? Because they are the our sources of knowledge. They are our connection between us and the prophet and our connection between us and Allah. Knowledge wise, not in in in worship. Not in worship. Scholars don't have any special powers to forgive you. They don't even know if they're Going to be forgiven, right? We do not hollify scholars rather we revere them and we respect them because of the effort that they have given and because of the specialties that they have and the gifts that they've have. So, of these things, mentions and we're here on the last two. Says, if how.

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Important and paramount things that opens a person's heart to the Quran and Sunnah. Is that a person not only open his heart but that he clean his heart out of the things which are rejected and frowned upon and denounced by Allah and his messenger What a what is this mean? our ears and our eyes. They are direct paths to our heart, right? And whatever we subject our our our focus with our eyes with two, this goes directly into your heart. You've opened your heart and it's going directly in there. Whether it is you agree with it or disagree with it, it's still going into your heart, okay? The same thing with listening. There's a difference between hearing something and listening. When you Listen to something. Meaning that you are giving it your attention. You have now opened a direct path through your hearing to your heart. Now, society around us, the time and place and and and and, and the, and the time and history that we live, what is the majority of things that go into our heart from the outside world. If we're honest, they're not good right? They're bad things. You you know, the majority of society is on a verge of pushing towards evil, pushing towards decadence. If a person can't see this, then, they can't see, right? Things that are, things that are considered to be very grave in the book of Allah are considered to be not a big deal in the in the society and in the time that live in. I'm not just pointing out and saying only in America. Yes, America is a beacon of this in a way. However, the rest of the world is followed in suit, right? And Islam started strange and it will return to being strange as it began. The prophet said, So, all day, when you are listening to things and when you are looking at things, even if they are Simple things, right? Let's take an example. Everything that you see is a lesson. Everything that you see. It's a consequence. It's a lesson. What does that mean? Let's say you look at a little silly video, right? Some little TikTok video or YouTube or whatever is going on today and and you see some little funny video, right? Some kind of prank or some kind of you are subjecting yourself to something that either in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah or against the Quran and Sunnah. Whether you agree with it or not, you are you are willingly subjecting yourself to it. So, you're not rejecting it and these things are getting worse and worse. and that's what the prophet said would happen near the end of time. He said in the narration of Abdullah bin al Az which is in Sahih Muslim in the book of Imara. He said.

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Allah.

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Each one of these will dwarf the that preceded it. What does that mean? It means that what came before will seem to be minimal compared to what is now and what comes tomorrow of evil will make today's evil seem minimal. It will dwarf it. Right? We can give examples of this. A good example of this is sexual perversion that is taking place in society today. Just even in this country. A non-Muslim country. a Christian country, non-Muslim country, 50 60 years ago 70 years ago a woman would never be seen pregnant from from unwed and have a bastard child. This was something that was outrageous and many documents and documentation, many cases have been documented of women going to secret abortion clinics in order to abort these, these children, and these fetuses because of the shame that would incur them for having premarital, premarital relationships outside of, outside of marriage. Now, that's nothing. Why is that nothing? Because we had first, women would dress a certain way and then we had dating and then we had bastard children. We tried to hide that and then we added another layer of perversion and then we had singers and movies and all these things that came along and glorified and romanticized to us these things. Until we another wave such as homosexuality and then another wave that will come such as such as other types of sexual perversion which I'd rather not mention, right? And these things continue to come in waves and waves to where now we look at a man and a woman, a man has a girlfriend. They've been living together for 10 years. They have four kids. They have five kids. They're a lovely couple. We don't even look at it as being anything anymore. Why is that because that is the nature of the fit end, the waves of that will come upon this as the prophet mentioned. And so, a lot of what we see, a lot of what we hear are bad things. They're, they're, they're, they are not in align with the Quran and Sunnah. Whether it be how people speak, how people walk, how people conduct themselves. , pranks that play on each other are totally inappropriate, right? Lies that they tell certain things. It's supposed to be funny, right? But what you, when you're subjecting yourself to it, you are desensitizing your heart to this thing that is evil. It is evil. Even if all of society says, not a big deal. What's the big problem? Right? when I was growing up back back in in in in Palestine, even here in America, in my in my mother's time, right? In the 50s, in the 60s, when Elvis Presley was a big thing, he could only get on TV and only this portion of his body here from the stomach up could be shown because what his legs were doing in his hips were considered to be inappropriate. We cannot show that on television. Right Compare that to where we are today. right? Now, we say, Elvis, please come back compared to what we see today, right? This is the nature of fitna. So, we have become desensitized. You'll read things of the Quran, you'll read things of the sunnah and they seem minutia and they seem little things but in reality, they are major things with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and the knot is becoming untied and loosened in our hearts So, we have a lot of things that are in our hearts, all of us, that are in direct conflict with the Quran and Sunnah, in direct conflict with what good is by the yardstick and the measurement of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And so, in order for good to come into our hearts, we have to get rid of the evil that is in it. How do we get rid of that evil? That's the question now. he says these things that are in the heart. These things that have found their way into our heart and settled in our heart. A direct consequence of these things, of this evil, of this filth that is in our hearts, a direct consequences that the heart will become, tight, and restricted, and only partially open. Another consequences that the heart will be in constant torment. It will be torn between good and evil all of the time because you are exposing yourself to good and you're exposing yourself to evil and constantly the heart is being, is being, is is going through a type of punishment, all of the time. So, we distract ourselves from this but when we sit down by ourselves and and be quiet and don't listen to anything and don't watch anything, that feeling of discomfort starts to manifest itself. uncomfortable. Let me grab my phone. Let me look at something. Let me watch a funny video. Let me go watch a movie. Let me let me listen to something. Why? Because that is part of the punishment of the heart that goes on in the heart. That literally causes torment and pain in the heart because good and evil are battling inside of inside of this heart which is not yet pure enough. He says, and these Things that are evil that we find in our hearts, they may stand as a hindrance and a barrier between the sick heart becoming well. It may stop the medicine. So, we will read the Quran, We will read the we'll act upon some of the things but if we expose ourselves to evil more so than we do to good, what will happen, what will happen is, is that we will start to we will start to block the medicine which is the Quran and Sunnah because of the amount of illness that we have pumped into our hearts and dumped into our hearts. it, you know, evil is it's it's a bacteria. If you, if you, if you continue to expose yourself to the to to the bacteria and it grows and multiplies and and flourishes, right? And then you try to enter use antibiotics It might it might work. It might not work, right? The it's nothing wrong with the antibiotics. It's just that the that the body is not accepting it. The bacteria is too powerful. So, we have to up the the the antibiotics and we have to keep making them stronger and stronger because the evil is mutating. And so these things will be a hindrance for the heart to become pure and the heart to become healed. this is important for us to heal our hearts, Heal our hearts from what? Heal our hearts from the evil that has has found its place in them. Whether we notice this evil or not. Whether we recognize it as evil or not. And that's that's one of the worst case scenarios. Is that a person have evil in his heart and not even recognize that this is evil. That a person be ill and not even know that he's ill or sick. This is the biggest problem because identifying the illness is half of the cure. As the scholars of Islam have mentioned. He says that if a person does all of the things that we have just discussed of the things that open the heart. But the does not work to rid his heart of the filth and evil that is in it and does not clean his heart and cleanse it and purge it, then, he will not end up with a very open heart at all. And all of these work to beautify and embed better his heart may be in vain. Ibn Al Kaim says, he says And then a person will find himself in a situation where there are two things which are fighting for his heart. He has the evil that he has allowed into his heart and then he has the good that he has put into his heart. And so now they are fighting constantly. And this is what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. He says and eventually one of them will win. By the time of his death, one of them will eventually win and overcome the other. Either completely or partially. and he will belong to whichever of those two wins that battle. He will belong to whichever of those two wins that battle. So, the heart has these, has these two things in them. How do we purge the heart? This is the question. Number one, the first important thing to do is to stop whatever it is that is injected, injecting, excuse me, injecting evil into your heart. That's the first thing. Stop the flow of sewage that is going into your heart. and when you do that, the heart has become addicted to it It's because you repent from doing something doesn't mean that you won't suffer withdrawal from it. You will because the heart is become dependent and and and has come to enjoy and fancy this evil thing. So, you're going to go through a period of withdrawal. Just you do from a drug. Same thing. and if you'd to test this, erase Facebook off of your phone. Try it. That time that you take, that half hour, every three, four hours where you scroll through Facebook, erase Facebook, and to spend those times reading the Quran and Sunnah. Not from a phone. Open a book and read from the book and see what happens. You'll start to go through withdrawal. Literal withdrawal. You'll have depression you'll have anxiety, you'll have this, you'll have that because the illness is fighting back You're going through withdrawal. That's what's happening right? Try to turn off this program and open the Quran. Try to turn off this song or this music and turn on the recitation of the Quran or a lecture of a scholar or something of the sort. What will happen? In the first few weeks, you will find yourself in the state of anxiety. but when that subsides and the more you continue to put in good into your heart and you've stopped the influx of evil into your heart. what will happen over a month or two or three or five? You will start to look back at what you did and say, my god, what was I doing? And you will start to see the things that you looked at and enjoyed and laughed at all the time and took for granted as being things that are unholy and unworthy. Things that are uninappropriate. Am I making sense here with what with what I'm saying? This is the process of, this is the process of rejecting evil. Right? It's the same thing. If if a person goes on a diet, so let's say. This is the, the, the, the spirit and the, the body are very similar in these ways. Let's say you go on a diet. You say, you know what, I'm going to cut out sugar completely. You're going to go through real physical withdrawal from sugar. Right? and you're going to spend a month, maybe two, where you're actually craving sugar and you wish you could have it and this and that but after that subsides, when you actually go back and have something sweet, you won't even enjoy it. So, this is some kind of sugar cone. It's too, it's too sweet. Right? And the same thing happens with the heart. So, how do we purge the heart? Number one, we stop the flow of sewage into the heart. We stop it. don't do it anymore. Whatever it is, I I don't know what it is. For different people, it's different things but I will say and many people will will disagree and come up with all kinds of things that they rebuttal with. When I say things Facebook is not a good place to be. It's not. Instagram is a terrible place to be, okay? TikTok is the worst place you could be on the internet. One of the worst places, right? but then, a person will say, well, Sheikh, your lecture is being streamed on Facebook right? Your lectures being streamed on Facebook. How are you denouncing Facebook when it is actually something that you utilize? This is this is something that we've kind of been forced to do because if we leave a platform completely open to evil, it would be completely overtaken by evil. And so, the scholars of Isla have chosen to enter a platform in order to try to minimize the damage and the evil that flourishes therein. It's a different thing. If you have it, let's say you have Facebook and you just you know, you use it just to watch this lecture or this lecture or this lecture. That's fine, right? Use it very sparingly but to turn it on and just scroll through it, scroll through it. Oh, just 10 minutes. It just takes five minutes before you know five hours is going by throughout your whole day. Five hours In five hours, you could have learned archaic Arabic. You could have memorized entire chapters of the Quran. You could have spent that time with your children. Right? And so, because of this social media issue that we have, TikTok and all of these things. It's just a thirty2nd video. Yeah, it's a thirty-second video of nothing but pure garbage or if it's not harmful, the best case scenario, it's not beneficial. So, it's just 32nd video but when you add it up and you watch 300 videos, how many seconds do we have now? How many hours have gone by now? we've all been there, right? We've all been there where you're surfing on YouTube and you find yourself three hours later in some strange, obscure part of YouTube and some rabbit hole watching something you have no business watching and the prophet would make dua and part of his dua Right? He used to make dua. Oh Allah, I seek refuge in you from knowledge that is not beneficial. There is knowledge that is not beneficial. I seek refuge in you from knowledge that is not beneficial and an eye that does not tear up with your remembrance and a heart that is not focused and concentrated on your remembrance and your worship And devout. And I seek refuge you from a stomach that cannot be filled, right? This is the kind of dua the prophet would make. So, in closing, it is time for then now. Just to kind of review what we've spoken about today and that is, you know, a lot of people will rebuttal and say, oh, you know, social media were able to do things and so on. So, that's fine. What I'm saying is, these things, yes, they are a double-edged sword but one edge is sharper than the other and the major of it is not good. We can admit that. It's not good. And every time your finger goes to erase the Facebook app or the TikTok app, you get a little voice in your head that says, oh but wait, Sheikh so and so is on this app. Oh, wait. I use it for this. Ignore that voice and erase it. And selectively choose and vet exactly what you're going to allow your ears to hear and what you're going to allow your eyes to see. If you do that your heart will become purged eventually but it won't become purged only by doing that. You have to as well continue to enter and flood it with the light of Allah, the Quran, and the Sunnah and the good things that are good and be around good people and listen to good things.