Hassanain Rajabali
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I am impressed with this brother's clarity. I would like to share my own transcript of a talk he gave during Ramadan......
I begin in the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Allah is worthy of praise for having giving us this blessed month of Ramadan. A month in which a lot of good has taken place. A lot of good always takes place. A month which teaches us how to be good human beings. A month which tells us how to be moral with practical training by abstaining from the worldy pursuits and by strengthening our free will, and by strengthening our desire to go towards that which is good and to forbid that which is evil. As Allah says, you are the best in the community, those of you who promote good, forbid the evil, and you believe in Allah. And what better way to have that practical example from Allah than to enjoin upon us fasting. O you who believe, we have enjoined upon you fasting as we enjoined upon those who preceded you, so that you achieve more God-awareness, meaning you become God-conscious, which actually means you become spiritual, which means you become moral, which means you promote good, which means you forbid evil, which means you reach a higher level of existence.
The need for religion, I will summarize it very briefly. Allah in a summary is testing us. Allah said, He created us to test us, and therefore he granted us this ability which we call intelligence. And the sensors for intelligence to work, the ears and eyes, these are the two sensors in a metaphorical way of how intelligence is activated. And the intelligence has placed. We are being tested. We are commanded to worship Allah, not because Allah needs our worship, not because He wants to do a game upon us. He has not, and I repeat, He has not predestined our lives completely. We have free will. There is a mixture of free will and predestination in our existence. It's simultaneous. It's not total free will. It's not total predestination. It's a mixture, but all of these is really driven, and Allah created us, not because He wanted it in the sense that He needed it, but He willed it out of his infinite mercy. My existence, your existence, the Universe's existence is purely driven by the rahmah of Allah. Rahmah. Allah repeates this verse a few times in the Quran. He says I have made it obligatory, incumbent upon myself, mercy. Therefore these trials that you have to endure is not to punish you, not to make your lives hell. We were not created for Hell. We were created for Paradise. We have been endowed enormously. Allah says, which of the bounties of Allah can you belie him for? So as a brief introduction for you and I to understand that the gist of our existence is precisely for us to engage in this merciful existence and to utilize these great systems that Allah has laid for us like fasting in the month of Ramadan, so that our free will is strengthened in the right direction, because our self has a tendency to deviate, and therefore we need help. He sent prophets, messengers from among yourselves. He guided us. He showed us signs. He purified us, taught us the law and gave us wisdom. And Allah says, before this you were in utter darkness. This is the gist of the discussion. In the month of Ramadan, when we reflect after having fasted during the day and abstained from that which Allah wants us to abstain, not because it is bad, because food is good. Sexual relations are good if they are done in the halal way. Earning a living is good. All types of things that we do in general lifestyles are all good. They can all be abused, and they do get abused, but in general, it's existence is precisely because it is good, not because it has an evil nature in it.
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So therefore Allah has blessed us with this month of Ramadan, with a book. When there is hope, when our hearts get energized with the remembrance of Allah, which is what gives us tranquility. Allah says, indeed in the remembrance of Allah do you get tranquility, and therefore your morals become better. You will find when a human being is agitated, when they're angry, when they're disturbed, their morals go out of whack, it goes out of focus. Your hulk becomes different. You become an annoyance. You start saying things you should not. You may not mean it. I may not mean it, in a state of anger, but people have witnessed it and therefore it's a disturbance in the nature that I'm presenting myself with. It disturbs my surrounding, and people tend to judge us on the basis of how we behave or misbehave. Therefore it's essential for us, that if we're going to win in this world, then there's nothing more important to us than for our selves to be elevated, and the world should respect us. Why do people go for money? Why do people buy expensive cars? Why do they buy fancy homes? They want to be comfortable, but they also want to let the rest of the world know how good they are, so that they should be respected. At the end of the day, nothing is more important to an individual on a practical level, than being respected. Even children, many times children misbehave in our communities, even within families, it's because they're not respected. Parents and adults do not respect the children. By the same token, of course, children in turn don't respect their parents. But wisdom dictates that the first one to initiate respect should be the adult, because the adult has already learned the ways of respect. A child that's disrespectful, you can't expect them to be respectful, because they don't know the right way. So it's up to you and I as adults to respect them well, to talk nice to them, to welcome them properly, to speak with them with a kind tongue, and to teach them the art of respect. All of these are practical, pragmatic lessons in Islam through this level of fasting and remembrance of Allah.
Therefore you see Allah has blessed us. When damage takes place, when wars take place like what's happening today, when lives are being taken left, right and center by the thousands, these are trials and tribulations, that if you and I don't have a long term vision, if we're not pegged properly, if we're not grounded properly, and if we don't have a long term vision, our iman will go astray. Our faith will lose its direction. We will become angry with the world. We will become very annoyed. And then the minute we become angry, it vibrates in us, it causes diseases in us. You will see so many studies done, psychological studies, that one of the largest causes of most diseases is self-inflicted. The mind is a very powerful thing. It's so powerful, it has its own ways of curing itself. It's a masterful creation. And Allah is saying to us, you want to be healthy, don't you? You want to be respected, don't you? You want to be calm. You don't want to lose your temper. You want to be respected, don't you? Sure. Allah says, we created man in the best of form, meaning your disposition and mine has been designed to be very healthy, very moral, very beautiful, inward and outward. It's full of energy, positive energy! A smile. Look at the smile we put on, when we show our beautiful teeth. Allah made our teeth good. Take care of it. Brush it. Look at the animal kingdom, there's no animal that can smile. Only humans can smile, and what a powerful thing. Just a smile, wireless, it changes our hormones, it affects our chemistry, it makes us feel different, it changes our thinking pattern. It shocks us, yet it's only just a movement of muscles in one direction.