Paradise Has 8 Gates, Hellfire Has 7
The Vastness of Paradise: Spiritual Hope and Ramadan Preparation
Summary
This is an inspirational Islamic sermon delivered to young people at the Muslim Community Center of Tucson, focusing on increasing hope and motivation for paradise (Jannah) during Ramadan. The speaker uses narrations about the gates of paradise and hellfire to illustrate that Allah has made it easier for humans to enter paradise than hellfire—paradise has 8 gates while hellfire has 7, good deeds are rewarded at least 10-fold while sins are recorded only once, and paradise is so vast that even all of humanity combined could not fill it. The speaker emphasizes that paradise is so enormous that Allah will need to create additional people just to fill the remaining space, while hellfire will be shrunk to accommodate those who insist on going there. The sermon pivots to practical Ramadan advice, encouraging listeners to make one meaningful spiritual change rather than trying to transform everything at once, focusing on either abandoning one sin or consistently practicing one good deed in their relationship with Allah.
Note: This transcript was generated using YouTube's automatic captioning, with AI-assisted cleanup for readability. It may contain inaccuracies due to background noise, audio quality, or limitations of the transcription software — particularly during Arabic recitation. Listener discretion is advised; please refer to the original video for precise wording.
See, I'm happy. If you weren't here, I'd be sad. My my little heart would have broken.
[Silence]
What young guys come up sit right here. Front and center. Come on, tough guys. Right in the middle there. There we go.
[Silence]
There is a narration of our prophet Alayhi Wasallam that in this narration, it tells us how many gates there are to paradise. Who can tell me that number? How many? Eight. Very good. Correct. How many gates to the hellfire? Mhm. Seven. Perfect. Seven gates to the hellfire. Eight gates to paradise. Do you know what that means? What do you understand from that? Allah is expecting more people to go to Jannah than hell. Allah is expecting more people to go to Jannah than hell. Very good. And also, what does that mean for you and me? What does that tell us about our chances? So, we have a stronger chance of going to paradise than we do of going to the hellfire. Isn't that amazing? When a person does one good deed, just one, at least how many is it counted as? Mhm. 10. Is it only 10 or could it be more than 10? It could be hundreds, right? Could be thousands. As a matter of fact, there are some people that have entered paradise because of a single good deed that they did. But what about when a person commits a sin? Someone disobeys Allah. They lose their battle with a Shaitan with that particular thing. How many sins is written? For paradise, it's it's one. for paradise, it's 10, at least. Always. Every good deed is always written at least 10 times. When a person does a sin, how many is it written as? Tell me. One. Is it ever written as more than one? Yeah? So, a person could commit one sin and it would not be written as just one, it would be written as more than one. No. This is why we're doing this, so we learn. You can never commit a sin and have it written more than just one, ever. You can never do a good deed and have it written any less than 10, right? But you can never commit a sin and have it written any more than one. So, what does this tell us about our chances of going to Jannah? High or low? Higher and higher, right? Eight gates to paradise, only seven gates to the hellfire. I do one good deed, at least 10 times. I do one bad deed, never more than one. And it could just be erased just because just because Allah is forgiving. Just because Allah decided to. Just because Allah is a Rahman Raheem. Now, we want all of the youngsters off the walls. We want them in the front. Come. Come. Come sit up here in the middle. This is for you guys. Now, how big is the gate to paradise? Who can tell me this? There's a narration that tells us how wide the gate to paradise is. It's not just eight eight doors. Each door is how big? Anyone know? Anyone even 40 years of travel. 40 years of traveling. You know what that means? That means if you jumped in your car today and drove as fast as you can for 40 years, that's how long it takes to get from one side to the other of the door of Jannah. That's how big the door to Jannah is. Amazing, right? How you going to fill up such a place? If that's just the door, how big is the actual Jannah itself? So, if we took all of humanity right now on the earth, all of us, how many human beings are on earth right now? Approximately. Well, aren't you the little scientist? Our little statistician. Good. Around eight billion people. Now, the earth is a big place. If I were to jump in my car and drive straight over the equator, keep driving, would it take me 40 years to go across the whole earth? 40 years? How long would it take? Maybe a couple months, something that? So, imagine how many times I'd have to travel to go for 40 years. Now, there's 8 billion people on earth. That sounds a lot, and it is a lot of people. But if we were to take all those people and put them in one place, they would fit in a pretty small area. They couldn't live that, obviously, cuz you need room to sleep and sit down and walk around and so forth. But if we were to just collect them all, they could all fit in California alone. So, why do we need such a big gate? And why do we need such a big place? How could that ever get filled up? If we took all the Muslimin from the time of Adam until the last human being, all of them, we would have billions of people, right? Would that fill paradise up? Even if we took all of them, would it fill paradise up? Nah. It wouldn't just not fill it up. There is a lot of leftover space. So, here's the question. If Jannah is really that big and humanity, all of us going in there, even with the jinn, we can't still fill it up, how is Allah going to fill up the rest of the places that are open in Jannah? Who can tell me this? I will be blown away. Who's going to blow my socks off? I I have any socks on. So, who's going to blow my hat my hair back? Yes, Asim, tell me. What was the question? Tell me. How is Allah going to fill up all of paradise, all that extra space? How's he going to do it? Tell me. So, the So, the all the other people are going to spread the spread them out. Mhm. And they try to look after their family on Earth. Mhm. There's going to be a lot of leftover space, man. We got to fill it up. We got all this space. How's Allah going to fill it up? Yes. Whatever you want. Even if he gives you whatever you want. Because there are thousands and thousands of levels of paradise. And each two levels is how far apart? Anyone know? How far is one level to the next level of paradise? Tell me, somebody, anybody. We don't even know. As far as you can look and see the furthest star in the sky. That's how far between one level of paradise and the next. That's how big Jannah is. That's how huge and enormous Jannah is. Are 8 billion people going to fill that up? Are 80 billion people going to fill that up? No, it's way too big. Yes, young man. You will see Allah, inshallah, all of us. So, back to our question, how's he going to fill it up? I'll tell you how he's going to fill it up. Does anybody else know? Somebody tell me. Anyone. For our good. Allah will fill up all of paradise. And then there's all this extra space left. He's going to create new people that have never done anything wrong, have never done anything right. Just to fill up the rest of paradise. That's amazing, isn't it? Now, what about the hellfire? How is he going to fill that up? This is an important question. Yes, sir. Mhm. No, he's not going to create new people to fill it up. There's a way to make the hellfire it's too big. It's already filled up. He's going to now find a different way to make it. Now, remember the pattern here. One good deed, 10. One sin, just one. Eight doors to paradise, only seven to the hellfire. There's leftover room in paradise, he creates people just to put them into paradise. Does Allah want to punish people? Now, this this tells us something about Allah, right? So, how is he going to fill up the hellfire? Tell me. He's probably not going to fill it up because he doesn't want to punish No, he's going to fill it up. He's going to fill it up. You know why? Because there are people who insist on going to the hellfire. Doesn't matter if they receive messengers, doesn't matter how many chances they're given, whenever they feel comfortable or get the upper hand, they will oppress and transgress and cross boundaries, they insist on going to hell. So, they will go. And the hellfire is going to be filled up. But how is it going to fill up? Anyone else know? Yes. Huh? No. Asim, you know? You don't know, you just raising your hand. Okay. What did you say? He's going to make it smaller. What do you think of that? If I have it filled up and there's still room, I can do one of two things. I can either add more people or I can make the place what? Smaller. So, he's going to shrink the hellfire, he's going to smash it together until there's no more room left over. Do you guys notice here what we're talking about? This is telling us about our chances cuz every one of us has to go to either Jannah or the hellfire. We have to. You can't go there's no middle place, there's no I don't want to play this game, there's no I just don't want to exist. No, you have to go to one. You have to. You're a human being, you're not an animal. Allah chose you, put your soul into a human body, you have to go to one of those two places, either paradise or the hellfire. So, we got to look at our chances. What are the chances I'm going to go to Jannah? What are the chances I'm going to go to Jahannam? This is a question we have to ask ourselves. So, what does that tell us about our chances? What is the chance that we are most likely going to go to Jannah? High or low? What's the What's the likelihood? More likely to go to Jannah or more likely to go to a Nar? Yes. To Jannah. Jannah, right? As a matter of fact, it is so likely to go to Jannah that you have to go out of your way and try to go to Jahannam. You have to put in effort, consciously put in an effort to go to Jahannam. So, Jannah is right there. Everybody, every one of us can go there. And so, what does Ramadan do for our chances of going to Jannah? Tell me, Asim. Fasting. What does it do? Your chances go from regular, already good chance, to extremely high. That's why. Listen to this narration. Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam, he tells us that the real loser You want to know who is a loser? A real loser is someone who lives through Ramadan and still doesn't get forgiven. That person is a total loser. You know why? Is a total loser? Because how could you mess something that up? You just have to try just a little bit and you will be forgiven. Yet in spite of that, you still went out of your way to avoid being forgiven by Allah. So, Ramadan is in a few days. All we have to do is try a little bit. By a show of hands here in this room, how many people have fasted 20 Ramadans? 20. Akeem, right? Okay, how about 10? 10 Ramadans. How many have fasted 10 Ramadans? No. 10. What about five? Five Ramadans. How many of us have fasted one Ramadan? Obviously, the whole masjid. Now, I want to ask you a question. Can you think back to yourself before that first Ramadan, that first day? Did you notice that you were a different person at the end of that month than you were from the first one? Or were you the same person largely? How many of us still have habits from last Ramadan that we haven't given up yet? We still have them. I started them last Ramadan and I did not believe it. Now, imagine if we did that with just one thing every Ramadan. Just one thing. Not a hundred things. I don't want to wear 10 hats. I don't want to become the saint of Tucson in Ramadan this year. No, no, no. I'm not trying to do that. I just want to change one thing about myself in worship. I'm not talking about I want to lose weight. I want to, you know, sleep better. I'm not talking about that. I'm speaking about your relationship with Allah, the thing that matters, the only thing that matters. Really? One thing that you either leave off and will never go back to it again for this Ramadan. Or one thing that you are failing to do. Questions are over. One thing that you are failing to do that you will never stop doing again once this Ramadan is completed. Just one. And you know what? I know that every one of us knows exactly what that one thing is. We all have a list of things we shouldn't be doing, right? Every one of us. We all have a list of things that we should be doing. And you know, often times the idea is like, "Oh, we need more knowledge." It's not an issue of knowledge. It really isn't. Because if I told you today tonight, in 5 hours, you are going to die. It's going to happen tonight in 5 hours. You have 5 hours. You make the best out of it. I'm sure every one of us would know exactly what he would do with those 5 hours. Correct? Would any of us be confused as to what to do in those 5 hours? Absolutely not. 24 hours. Of course, if if you learn from movies what to do before your death, the movie is going to tell you you got to go find your family and spend time with them. Tell them you love them. Right? Your family's not going anywhere. When you die and they die, you're going to meet on the other side. This is just a bump in the road. That is the psychology of people who do not believe there is a hereafter. And spending time with my family, that's great. I'm not saying that that's wrong, but that's not something I can put in my pocket and take with me to the next life, now is it? No. So, there is a story. I'm going to tell you this story. We're going to stop there. Al-Hasan al-Basri, one of the great fuqaha of al-Basra, he went to a janazah funeral. And a man was being buried. And he had his students around him, of course, as you would at a burial, right? People come. Everyone is watching the body be lowered. And he asked a very a very interesting question. He said, "If you all were in this man's place right now, you were being lowered into your grave right now. And you had a chance to come back miraculously, a second chance. Air fills your lungs for another time. You rise from the dead and you've got another chance at life. What would you do with that chance?" And so, they all said exactly what we all would say. "Oh, I would I would just I would pray more. I would be more truthful. I would be more this. I would not lose these etc." All the things that we know we should be doing or those things which we shouldn't be. And so then, after everyone thoroughly imagined this situation, he said, "Well, here's your second chance." Look at that. You have that chance right now. He's dead. He's gone. But we still have that chance. We can still make that decision. What we do not want to see this Ramadan is we do not want to see the same old story. I want to start out at the beginning of Ramadan hot and sweaty and I'm going to do everything and then the second day, third day, the body gets used adjusts to the fasting. Everything gets back into routine and then slowly it's just another day of the year again. And then a shaytan comes and says, "Man, you messed it up. , you you messed up this time. It's not perfect. The whole 30 days, you messed up. Next Ramadan, inshallah." Okay, this Ramadan is it's done. It's it's blessed. For- forget it. It's it's it's over. You already messed it up. Next Ramadan, inshallah. You know, we're smiling because every one of us has exactly that exact same whisper. How do I know about it? Cuz I hear that same voice with that same reasoning. However, if we reset every time we go to Ramadan, how are we going to get better? It's never going to happen. And that's why we see people who fast 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 Ramadans and they are still the exact same person that they were. As a matter of fact, they might even be a little worse. Their heart might be a little bit harder. They might be more stuck in their ways now. They might be more stubborn and impatient. You cannot give up on your soul. It's your soul. You can't give up on it. You have to continue to fight, to walk down that path. You choose one thing. One. Don't change anything. Just one thing. And that can be as simple as, "I will never speak a lie again." Start with that one. "I will never utter falsehood again for the rest of my life, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I will never speak bad about my Muslim brother again, ever. And I will never tolerate it again." That's your only thing. And then you're going to fight with yourself through the whole month to stay on that bucking horse until it obeys. One thing. If we do this, we will never be the same people again. We will And there we have lots of activities for the youngsters. Inshallah, I want to see every single one of you in the masjid in Ramadan, right? You going to be fasting? Is everyone here fasting? Are you fasting, Hassan? You're not fasting. Are you fasting? Okay. Well, I'll be watching you. I'm going to check you when you guys come in. Make sure you're fasting. All right, guys. Let's go get some Let's go get some candy from my office. What do you think? Mhm. Let's go.