What is Jealousy?
Alhamdulillah, this blessed, illuminated, illustrious month of Ramadhan is full of Allah’s grace and mercy. Gradually and slowly, it is moving away from us, in the same way that if a human being is from a certain city and he goes to the station to make a journey, when he sits on the train and it starts to move, that city gets further and further away from him. The person looks out of the window, and gradually, all the things connected to the city move further way. He keeps looking back at the buildings, the marketplaces and the features of the city, and they are getting further and further away. In the same way, this beautiful and excellent month that Allah ta’ala has given to us, with its lovely memories, is slowly leaving us - whatever comes also leaves. Through His bounty, Allah ta’ala has favoured us in a massive way by giving us this month – Allah ta’ala has given us this opportunity. Is this the last that we will get or will Allah ta’ala give us more such favours? Allah knows best; nobody can say.
Allah ta’ala gave a Hukm along with this month that He has given to us – or, rather, He bestowed a favour upon us. Allah has told us ‘When you leave Ramadhan, then leave as a Muttaqi.’ This is the message Allah ta’ala has given, and nothing else. Allah is saying ‘I gave you Ramadhan for this reason, so that you become a Muttaqi by the time you leave the month.’ This is the target. Allah says ‘When you leave Ramadhan with this objective fulfilled, then you have attained. I didn’t tell you to lose weight or give you this as a punishment. It was not an Adhab that I stopped your food and drink and your sleep – none of this. I have not been harsh to you – this was not a punishment. Rather, I have given you Thawab for the difficulty that you went through – I am giving you rewards for the hardship and the striving, so don’t worry about that. But this month that I give to you is given for this reason - that you become a Muttaqi by the time you leave this month. When you come out of the month, you should have become totally refined and improved and changed. That is the measure of whether you utilised this month.’
Allah ta’ala has not put any other demand into this month. It is not stated that you should leave the month as a worshipper, or a generous person – Allah has made just one demand. And what is that? {لَعَلَّكُمۡ تَتَّقُونَ} ‘In order that you gain consciousness and fear of Allah.’ If we don’t meet this target, how can we celebrate Eid and say ‘Eid Mubarak’? Eid Mubarak is for that person who has left Ramadhan as a Muttaqi. Allah ta’ala says ‘Then you can depart Ramadhan happily.’ If, for example, you go to the bathroom for a shower and come out an hour later still dirty and smelly, then what would a person say to you? He would say ‘You went to have a shower, but you have come out the same as you were before.’ In the same way, when we come out of Ramadhan in a few days, Allah will ask us, saying ‘I sent you into Ramadhan so that you could become a Muttaqi and attain Taqwa, so have you attained Taqwa?’ What will our response be? ‘No, no - I was busy doing this, and I did a lot of that.’ Allah will say ‘But what about the purpose for which I gave you Ramadhan? Give Me the answer about that. If you had done nothing else apart from attaining Taqwa, then your Ramadhan would have been accepted - you would have met the objective that I gave you. You would have attained the reward and also the objective.’ SubhanAllah.
So what is this Taqwa for which Allah ta’ala gave us Ramadhan? This month is going – most of it has gone. A person cannot become a Muttaqi until he shuns the sins; a Muttaqi is a person who is always saving themselves, who is always cautious. If a person doesn’t save himself from sins, if he doesn’t leave sins, then he cannot become a Muttaqi – he cannot be a Muttaqi. To be a Muttaqi, a person has to discard sins. Allah ta’ala is saying ‘I have given you these thirty days and you need to leave sins. I have given you this Amal of fasting so that you eat less, sleep less, have more hunger, and have fewer desires and less passions and lust. Your base desires will be weakened so that you cannot go towards sin.’ When a person is weak so that he can’t raise his hands and he can’t walk, in the same way, Allah ta’ala has suppressed the desires. Allah knows best that desires are created more than anything else by the stomach. When the stomach is full of food, a man carries out more wrong actions; there is more passion, desire and lust, and the drive to do wrong is stronger within him. So Allah ta’ala, in His mercy and Karam, has withheld food and drink from us so that we can attain the objective and reach the objective. This is Allah ta’ala’s great favour in that He made it even easier for us to attain Taqwa and become Muttaqis. So who is a person of Taqwa? Taqwa is that state in which a person saves himself from sins – then he has become a Muttaqi. A person who has left sins, who shuns sins, has become a Muttaqi.
Now there are two types of sin – one is Dhahiri sins, and the other is Batini sins. These are the two types of sin that are committed by a human being. Dhahiri sins, external sins, are more easily controlled, because we can see them physically, so you try to leave such sins. You think ‘What will people say?’ and because of the worry of what people will think or say, then obviously, a person controls himself and leaves the sins. However, the inner sins, the Batini sins, these are the ones that we do not control, even in the state of fasting, because they are hidden. A person doesn’t really care about things that are hidden, even though the Batini sins are more dangerous than the Dhahiri sins. The effects of the Batini sins are very dirty and they are extremely dangerous and hazardous, and that is why Allah ta’ala has selected these thirty days of Ramadhan for us. ‘You can’t control your inner sins, so I am giving you thirty days and giving you the hardships of staying hungry and thirsty, and pushing you more towards Ibadaat so that your self-control increases.’
It is not easy to control the Batini sins. Look at the preparation Allah has made so that we can rein in and control the inner desires - so how dangerous the Batini sins must be. What dangerous sins these Batini sins must be. Is this not the case? We don’t pay attention to this all year long, so in the thirty days of Ramadhan, Allah says ‘I have instilled Barakaat and blessings, so practice leaving the sins and shunning Batini sins; you have to pay attention to that.’ During the fast, we need to pay total attention to our inner sins - and that is why Allah ta’ala has given us Ramadhan. There is no other objective or purpose. The objective of Ramadhan is that we pay attention to our internal sins and focus upon them. Allah says ‘I have given you thirty days, so start trying to leave every sin.’ The Barakah of Ramadhan is such that the effect will be that Allah will make you able to control yourself after that, and your name will be included in the list of Muttaqis after Ramadhan.
All too often, a person doesn’t pay attention to this and doesn’t try, and instead works hard on other things - don’t take what I am saying badly. I was thinking yesterday while I was fasting that we need to eliminate these internal sins. Have we thought about this? If I don’t have this Niyyah, how will my fast be accepted? Tell me. We don’t even make this Niyyah. For example, the Ulema-e-Kiram say that if you don’t recite Qur’an, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of the fast. In reality, this is not part of the Dua for keeping the fast - it is not a Sunnah. We say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’, but the real Niyyah is ‘Oh Allah, I am keeping this fast with Your Karam and Your grace and Your mercy and Your Fadhl. You have given me this opportunity to attain Taqwa and alhamdulillah, with Your Karam and Fadhl, I will try all day long to shun the Batini sins just as I shun food and drink.’ Make this Niyyah, and Allah will say ‘Yes.’ When you make the intention ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’, this will not be the means to the acceptance of your fast. The Niyyah that I am telling you will be the means to the acceptance of our fast, so let us correct our Niyyah. As soon as you start the fast, turn to the objective for which Allah is making us fast and keeping us hungry and thirsty and sleep less. Make this the Niyyah and objective; leave the meaning of ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’ and come to this intention: ‘Oh Allah, by your Karam and Fadhl, You are taking me towards this effort. I am striving and working hard by stopping eating and drinking and sleeping, and now I have come to the real playing field: I am going to fight with this sin today – I am not going to let it come close to me.’ So we need to make intention to shun at least one Batini sin.
Listen carefully and attentively to what I am saying – although I am speaking to myself here, in reality. I am explaining this not to you, but to myself. Do you understand what I am saying? Understand this – this is totally, one hundred percent, the reality of Ramadhan. We just get up and eat and then say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’, and then we think ‘Now we will just wait for the evening and we’ll make roast chicken today and Pakoras and Bhajis.’ Until the evening, all this just floats around in our minds. Okay, eat – I’m not saying don’t eat. Eat nice things and good things, but keep the objective in front of you, and remember ‘Oh Allah, everything You are making us do this for a reason and a purpose.’ Allah wants us to attain something by practicing fasting, and Allah is saying ‘I will help you and assist you through this striving and working hard and leaving food and drink. Don’t worry – you are doing this for My sake, and you want to leave your sins for My sake.’ Why do we leave sins? For Allah. Why are we leaving sins for Allah’s sake? Understand this point as well. We are leaving sins, and this is for Allah’s sake because we want to meet Allah – that is why we are leaving the sins. We are desperate – we are keen! There is a Dua: ‘Oh Allah, make me eager for Your Ziyarah!’ Say SubhanAllah. ‘Oh Allah, make me a lover, ultra-keen to meet You. Oh Allah, make me desperate, always thinking that I am going to meet my Lord.’ Say SubhanAllah. What a great way of thinking.
So my brothers, these are stages of Ramadhan. So we should think ‘Oh Allah, I am doing this for You – that is why I am leaving everything and shunning everything.’ What is our destination and objective? We say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’ – but this will not give us success; this is not enough. We need to make Dua and plead to Allah: ‘Oh Allah, through Your Fadhl and Karam, we have picked up the tools and resources You have given to us, and we are ready for our stomachs to be empty for a while; we will not eat and drink, and we will be thirsty and hungry and dizzy, and in this way we are going to fight our Nafs, our base desires. We are going to shun our sins and become free of them.’ Allah will say ‘Fine – you are going to stay hungry and thirsty and everything, and you are doing all of this to meet Me. You doing everything because you are keen to meet Me. You love makes you want to meet Me, so come – just as you have this love, your love has its effect on Me also. I also want to meet you and am also eager and longing to meet you. So I will assist you in order that you are able to leave these sins!’ This is fasting, SubhanAllah.
And then, when we do not commit that sin until evening, all the angels gather together and affirm ‘You did Mujahidah and you strove, and you established goodness – well done, MashaAllah.’ For this Allah ta’ala says ‘Tell My servant that we consider that he has truly fasted, and he will get the reward for that.’ What reward are we going to get for just leaving food? This is a little thing – even a sick person doesn’t eat. If the doctor says ‘Don’t eat for twenty-four hours because your stomach is upset, will you eat? Nobody would, because their stomach is upset. So this is not the reason that we are fasting. Allah will be happy when a person has done Mujahidah and has made effort, so then the angels gather and say ‘O Allah, from the morning he tried his best and said he was going to fight this sin. He has fought himself and opposed himself.’ Then Allah says ‘When I give him the rewards for this one fast at the end of the day, the first reward I give him is Maghfirah – forgiveness.’ SubhanAllah.
We think ‘We kept the fast and did not eat and drink all day, so Allah has forgiven me,’ but in the meantime, we carry on doing all the other actions that we want. A person says ‘I did this and I did that, but I didn’t eat or drink.’ The women didn’t stay at home within the four walls, which we should be doing as part of our routine; and we wore clothes that showed us off, and our hair was flowing and showing. We did a full mix of Halal and Haram actions – we don’t know what the difference is - and we just kept a fast. We didn’t eat or drink and think Allah has given us Maghfirah. SubhanAllah! Oh servants of Allah, is that it? Is that the target that Allah has given us to attain Maghfirah? The target is to do Mujahidah to leave your sins; you have to work hard to leave your sins, and for that work, Allah ta’ala says ‘I have given you Maghfirah.’ Say SubhanAllah. When every fasting person breaks the fast, he is forgiven, SubhanAllah.
And on top of that, Allah ta’ala says ‘I want to give you another reward in this world where you are now. I have told you the reward of the Hereafter and I have forgiven you, so if you were to die now, the doors of Paradise are open for you.’ A person may say ‘Oh Allah, but I did this and that and the other sin,’ but Allah says ‘I have forgiven you! I have detached you from those sins – they have been wiped away and you are clean. You worked hard and made effort because you wanted to meet Me, so your sins have been eliminated and evaporated. I am your Rabb – if I want, I can wipe away all of your sins. They have gone – forget them!’ This is for one person who fasts – why? This is not due to the hunger and the thirst, but because we shunned sins, because we fought ourselves; we fought our Nafs in order to make it shun the sins.’ Say SubhanAllah.
This is the objective, not that this or that happened – no. We fought our Nafs, and Allah says ‘The first reward that I will give you is that in the Akhirah, you are forgiven beyond forgiven; Jannah is open for you, the palace is made for you, the Hoors are ready, the Ghulams are ready. When you pass away, you will get this reward. And if you sin again but then fast like this again, I will forgive you again!’ Say SubhanAllah – this is the relationship between the servant of the Creator and Allah the Creator. Allah says ‘That is your reward in the Akhirah, but now, if you have a need in the world, I will also give you the full reward in this world.’ This is the reward for just one fast. We say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadan’ – but this is not the Niyyah that Allah wants. What Allah wants is the Niyyah that I have explained to you – will you make that Niyyah from today when you fast? Yes? Change the Niyyah you make for keeping your fast from today. Don’t put a Fatwa on me, but I am telling you the truth, the fact. Ask any Alim or Mufti and they will confirm. Phone Mufti Taqi Sahib and say ‘This person has said this – is he right or is he wrong?’ If he doesn’t say that this is the right Niyyah, come and tell me and I will meet him as well. What I am saying is the right Niyyah. Yes? We must understand this point, the objective of the fast.
So Allah ta’ala says ‘I will also give you something in this world’ – and what is the biggest reward for me and you in this world? That, oh Allah ta’ala, our desires are fulfilled. Say SubhanAllah. What is the biggest desire that we have? We might think ‘I know what it is. Oh Allah, I want to buy a house – finances are tight, and we can’t afford it.’ We live in the Dunya so we have these needs - I’m not saying don’t earn Dunya. Let’s look at the Dunya now, for Allah ta’ala has given us Akhirah, because He has given what? Forgiveness – Allah says ‘You are free now – forgiven.’ But we also need something in the world, and we have desires in the heart. We may think ‘Oh Allah, I want a house; I don’t have the money, but I want to buy a house. I want to buy a car because mine is old and it is not working properly.’ So the desire is in the heart. Allah is saying ‘It is your turn now – ask what you want. Whatever you ask, I will accept your Dua.’ SubhanAllah! What else do we want?
So for the sake of this desire of meeting Allah and wanting to see our Rabb, we did Mujahidah for ten or twelve hours, leaving food and drink, and after that you ate to your fill – remember this. But due to that little target of ‘Oh Allah, I want to meet You, and the barrier between me and You is my sins in my Batin, so I will shun the sins and have no link and relationship with my sins so that this veil, this barrier between me and You is dropped, and we are able to be together. Oh Allah, this is my objective.’ Is this the right definition of Ramadhan, my brothers? Are we keeping the fast with the Niyyah of meeting Allah?’ What will happen when you come to pray Eid? Why would you go for Eid Salah? What is the happiness for on Eid? If you haven’t had the desire to meet Allah when you go to pray Eid Salah, then Allah ta’ala doesn’t need your Dua. What does one fast give the human being if he keeps it correctly? Then what about if he keeps thirty fasts like this? Allah ta’ala says ‘Then he will be light upon light – Noor ‘ala Noor. He becomes filled with the light of wanting to meet Me – he tried, and he made effort to see Me, to get to meet Me. He dropped the veils and overcame the barriers and the obstacles between him and Me.’ Say SubhanAllah. This is the fast – this is the definition of the fast.
These sins of the Batin are there, so now let us consider these hidden sins that we cannot see. Do you see cancer? Do you see TB? Do you see any of those old sicknesses? Astaghfirullah, I can’t remember any of their names. Do you see Corona? No. So what is that then? I come to the Masjid and they take my temperature on the way in. Has he got a temperature? Is he ill? Does he have a fever or a cough? So what we realise is that if a person has a fever and a cough, the people will say ‘Oh go away – you’ve got Corona virus.’ So what we realise is that there are symptoms of sicknesses. When you see the symptom, then you realise what the sickness is. It is the same for Batini sicknesses; the inner sicknesses have symptoms. When you see those symptoms, then you will immediately realise that there is a sickness within. Say SubhanAllah.
So I am telling you now how to identify and grab the Batini sins. We don’t have the desire and we don’t have the passion to look inside ourselves and see what dirt is there; all we do is decorate our Dhahir. We put on nice clothes, a turban, grow a nice beard and put oil on it, and we wear Surma – we make our appearance like a Muttaqi person, and see ourselves as a first-row worshipper. When we come, people say ‘Oh Hadhrat Sahib has come, Pir Sahib has come – he is a pious man.’ But look inside yourself to see what the defect is; look at the situation within; look at the dryness and barrenness within. At least decorate your Batin and come, just as you decorate yourself and make yourself up externally. You are here to meet Allah, and Allah says ‘I have no need for external decoration and make up. I like the Faqir who has torn clothes, whose hair is dishevelled and too matted to comb. He doesn’t even wear his clothes properly, but his internal Batin is such that if you look inside at his Batin, you see the earth of Paradise there! If you look inside at his Batin, you can see in his state the flashes of Paradise, the reflection of Paradise and the palaces of Paradise within him.’ Allah says ‘That is the one who is deserving of meeting Me and of seeing Me - he has the longing and the eagerness.’
If we have these internal diseases and sicknesses, we can carry on doing Ibadah with that – Allah says ‘Okay, fine – carry on doing Ibadah.’ It is just like a wall which has damp within, so to hide the damp, you say ‘Oh, let’s put some wallpaper over it.’ But after six months, the damp becomes evident again – so then you put another layer of wallpaper on top, and you keep on putting on layer after layer but the damp is still there inside. Within, the dirt is still there. I recite the Qur’an and pray Salah and do Dhikr, but the dirt is still there within – but I still keep putting wallpaper on top. When we are presented in front of Allah, when you are presented to Allah, Allah will say ‘Remove the wallpaper and see what is inside. Show Me what is inside yourself.’ When you go to buy a house, first you will say ‘Remove this wallpaper – let me do a survey first. Is there damp in these walls?’ If this is the case when it comes to the world, Allah will do the same. When you present your Salah, Allah will say ‘Leave the Salah – first, is there any damp inside you? First, remove that dampness.’
What a logical explanation – remove the dampness that is within first. Otherwise, if you were to sell the house, the buyer would come to you tomorrow and say ‘You are a fraudster – you sold me the house as good, but there is damp inside it. You just wallpapered over it and didn’t tell me anything, so are you not a fraudster? This is deception.’ But you cannot deceive Allah. First, Allah will say ‘Bare him – remove the wallpaper. Let me see what the core Salah was – that is what I want to see.’ Say SubhanAllah. He will be lost, and Allah will say ‘I gave you thirty days to help you remove that damp-rot, a full thirty days, and I was there to help you – I was with you. So why didn’t you use those thirty days to take action to remove that damp-rot? If you had tried and made an effort, it would have been My job to remove that dampness from within your life - My job.’ But we just leave food and drink and don’t do anything else. Do you understand what I am saying?
So there are symptoms of these faults; there are signs. Look at this example. A man comes to someone – a friend, a very good friend – and says ‘Assalamu alaykum.’ ‘Wa alaykum salam,’ he replies. Then he says ‘Oh, I have had such good news today – I have bought a beautiful house.’ Now observe the symptoms. He replies ‘Oh, so you’ve bought a house.’ When he hears the news, whether about the purchase of a house or a nice car or attaining some rank, this now has an effect on the friend who he has told. After he has been told the good news, his heart becomes twisted and develops a crack, and he starts to get hot inside and a bit annoyed, and a change becomes visible on his face. He gets hot and bothered inside, and thoughts start developing within him, even though the other person is his friend. He gets a weird feeling and emotion inside, and rather than being glad at the news, he starts becoming frustrated and upset. Instead of showing his happiness to his friend, he thinks ‘How did he get this house? How did he attain this?’ An Ajeeb dislike and hatred begins to develop, and when this emotion starts inside, then consider that you have an internal sickness, a Batini illness inside you. When you hear of someone’s happiness or fame, or money or beauty, or somebody’s speech or ‘Ilm, or somebody’s Darajaat or status, or somebody’s riches and wealth, if, when you hear this, you start to burn inside with hatred which increases, and your heart doesn’t complain but rather feels that it would be happy if he lost whatever he has gained, and if you think ‘Why did he get things? And why don’t I get these things? How did he attain this? How can this be?’ to this extent that if he finds out that that thing has gone from the life of the friend, he starts getting happy, then, my brothers, this is the biggest disease of the Akhirah, and it is called Hasad – envy. That thief has been caught.
On the other hand, if you hear such good news and you feel happiness, look at the difference. If you feel happiness, it will show on your face in the form a nice smile; you will say ‘MashaAllah, alhamdulillah – you’ve got yourself a nice car there,’ and then you’ll say ‘Make Dua that I also get a car like this.’ Say SubhanAllah. ‘You got a car, and I need a car too, so make Dua for me that I get one too. You have got a house, so make Dua that I get one too. Mubarak – congratulations!’ Allah ta’ala says ‘This man is deserving of praise – this is a good response that you have made, and you are showing good feelings – so I will give to you as I gave to him.’ So we need to turn our malice into positive appreciation. We have been given these thirty days of Ramadhan to change our malice and hatred into positive admiration and gratitude and being happy for whatever that person has got. This is the objective of Ramadhan. Am I right or am I wrong? This is fasting, isn’t it? Is this the first fast that you are keeping? Is it the first fast? I am laughing at our destruction! What a beautiful time of life we are wasting. How many days of Ramadhan we have wasted! We have wasted 70 years of Ramadhan, 30 years of Ramadhan – year after year, we keep on wasting, wasting.
Allah says ‘How great is he who spends just one fast in this way, just one fast spent with the desire to meet Me and therefore trying to shun the sins.’ What sin must we avoid? What is it called? Hasad! Hasad is such a severe sickness of the Akhirah that an Insan is not Insan if he has Hasad inside him – rather, he is a ball of fire! Every illness has a condition. Corona goes into the lungs – it is a respiratory disease which annihilates the lungs; cancer burns away that organ or portion of the body where the cancer is. This sickness of Hasad is such a severe sickness that it is stated in Hadith – and I am sharing the words of the Hadith with you – that what does it do? It twists a person. The Prophet of Allah sallallahu alayhi wasallam said this point in an Ajeeb Hadith. What does this sickness of malice and hatred do?
This is not a sickness you should have – Hasad is not the sickness of a Mu’min, a person who recites La ilaha illa-llah Muhammad-ar-Rasoolullah – not someone who recites La ilaha illa-llaah Isa Rasoolullah or some other Rasool, no. They are all Rasools, but whoever has La ilaha illa-llah Muhammad-ar-Rasoolullah within him, he should not have this sickness within. This was the sickness of the previous nations, and it continued and continued, transferred and transferred, and has now come to you. Why? These are not the words of the Hadith – I am giving you the explanation now. It transferred and transferred to you because you have left the following of your Deen and have taken on their Deen. We think Libaas should be like theirs, walking should be like theirs, eating like theirs, my child should be like theirs. Everything in our lives should be like they are. We have cut off the concept that everything in our lives should be like he was sallallahu alayhi wasallam. Our colour has changed – and when we change our colour and absorb ourselves in the other way, we become immersed in the other way, and take on, knowingly or unknowingly, the things that the previous nations had, their bad and negative states.
May we give our all for the Sadqa of Rasoolullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam – Allah ta’ala washed all of that away for us and gave us a plain, simple Deen. He gave us the Qur’an in our hand and said ‘Here – this is the way of life for you.’ Within it are the enjoyments of the Tawrah and of the Injeel – Allah has put all the enjoyments of the previous Deens within it. Imam ul-Ambiya sallallahu alayhi wasallam brought the Kitab of the Qur’an, and Allah has allowed it to come into our hearts, and He has given us Ramadhan, MashaAllah. Allah says ‘When Ramadhan comes, pick up the Qur’an and read! Read!’ What a great honour Allah ta’ala has given to this Ummah – what an honour! Do you realise this? If so, what is our excuse then?
This is the situation. Allah has given us this Karam and this mercy and this great favour – and what have we done? Allah has given us Ramadhan, such a beautiful Ibadah, and we have destroyed the greatness of Ramadhan via our sins. Yet Allah is saying ‘This sin is not even yours – it has been transferred and passed on and has now come into you. You are doing so much following of them, and as much as you follow, the more it penetrates your lives.’ If we do Tawbah today, then henceforth we will not follow and imitate them. Our Masjids have become like this; we go into Sujod like this; we do Tawaf like this. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon. What a big punishment Allah has give to us – a big disease has come into us due to this. Allah says ‘I dislike that way.’ We have taken on their ways and have left the way of he who Allah ta’ala loves, the way that gives beautiful thoughts - we have left that way. We have shunned and discarded that way. Take the turban; who likes this? Our Rabb, Allah. Who likes the beard? Our Rabb, Allah. The colour white – who likes it? Our Rabb, Allah – and why? Because His Habeeb sallallahu alayhi wasallam likes these things. Allah likes these things, but we say ‘Oh no, I don’t want to do this. I want to do what they do – but I do want to earn Paradise, and I do want to get Shifa’a’ – from who? From Rasoolullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam! The one who we don’t like to imitate - women, men and children, they all don’t like to imitate him sallallahu alayhi wasallam – we don’t want to imitate him, but we want him to intercede for us.
SubhanAllah – oh servants of Allah, what a strange choice you have made there. What a contrast. What is this way in which you are bringing up your children? With your eyes, you are looking at them and imitating them, playing the games and dramas of their lives - day and night, you are lost inside them - and then what will you ask for? Shifa’a - Shifa’a from him whose way we are opposing in our daily lives. We give weird excuses for not practicing and for the imitation that we do – strange excuses. “من احب سنتى فقد احبنى” – what greater guarantee can there be than this? ‘You just have to do Amal on my Sunnah, and then I will love you, and then “ومن أحبني كان معي في الجنة” whoever I love, I will take him with me into Paradise!’ SubhanAllah. But we say ‘No, no, I like imitating other people.’ And then they call those who do imitate him fundamentalist or backward, saying ‘Does he have no sense? What backward path has he gone onto?’ Then they laugh at them and mock them, saying ‘He is destroyed!’
So brothers, this Hadith clarifies that this sin has come into us due to this imitation – the sin gets passed along and passed along and comes into us. And Hasad is such a big disease. It is stated that whoever has Hasad inside him is twisted and changed. Two meanings come out of this. One is twisted and the other is shaven, like someone whose hair has been totally removed and shaved off. So if a person has been shaved, will there not be a difference in his appearance? Of course. If I have a nice, full head of hair and then go home and shave it off, I will then be bald. People will say ‘Oh, you have suddenly changed. You look so different.’ So the person who has Hasad is said to be like this – shaven, totally transformed. What is the punishment that comes with the disease of Hasad? It is that he will be totally transformed – his Deen will be spoiled and disfigured. Allah is saying ‘He doesn’t have the Deen that I gave him anymore.’ Due to the Hasad that has passed into him through the centuries, the Qur’an has gone, the Deen has gone, his Salah has gone – his appearance has been disfigured and changed. I am telling you about a Hadith here – you can read this Hadith in Mishkat.
So should we have Hasad or not? Tell me. A person who is a Hasid, his Deen has transformed – everything has changed. Everything is Jaa’iz, Haram becomes Jaa’iz – the Deen has changed. He changes the Deen, twists the Deen, disfigures the Deen so that everything becomes Jaa’iz. He says ‘Oh, what difference does it make? Never mind – I can do this action. What difference does it make?’ Haram become Halal - the boundaries of Halal and Haram come together, the limits are transgressed and he learns how to make excuses when it comes to the Nafs and the stomach; he takes shortcuts. Where is all this coming from? From which illness? From Hasad. Now we are getting the opportunity to eliminate and extinguish this, so make the Niyyah. Allah says ‘If you make this Niyyah, then you can get rid of Hasad. That is why you are keeping the fast.’ And that is when a person will have this desire to meet Allah. He will think ‘I am keeping this fast so that I can meet Allah.’
So this is a weird illness. The meaning of what Allah’s Nabi sallallahu alayhi wasallam said in this Hadith is that when a person has Hasad, this creates fire within him. He has malice and deep envy as if a fire is burning within him. If you speak to someone who has Hasad and tell him some good news, then he will suddenly get a burning sensation inside and his face and ears will go red. Shortly after hearing your good news, his ears and face will go red because there is this fire within him. Hasad is a disease that generates fire inside, and what does that fire burn? I will tell you a little bit later, but that fire burns. Fire heats things up – it never cools anything. What does water do? It cools the heat of the fire. So when he feels that heat, something is burning inside him. And what does it burn? Tell me. What does the hatred and malice and envy burn? It burns that thing which is linked to the Akhirah within us, that thing which is linked to the heavens – that is what gets burned. There is no fire of the world that can burn the connection that we have to the Hereafter, so that fire within is the fire of Jahannam. I am telling you about Hasad here, about envy, hatred and malice.
So don’t be a fake person after these days of Ibadah. Correct the internal sins – Allah is giving you an opportunity in your life. Go to a Khanqah, sit in the company of a Wali of Allah, and say ‘I have got these sicknesses’ - without that, you cannot eliminate those sins. The symptoms are present – I have told you the symptoms. If you see these symptoms within you, then run to a Wali of Allah. Hasten, thinking ‘I am finished, I am destroyed. I do all these things externally, but the fire is raging within me. Why? Why do I get this burning sensation within me and feel this envy? Why do I feel jealousy and hatred when someone tells me his good news?’ This is a very lengthy subject, but I am giving you a short, concise summary because we have not done Dhikr yet.
So what will that fire do that has been generated within? Allah’s Nabi sallallahu alayhi wasallam tells us that his eyes could see what is happening inside. He said ‘My eyes can see what your eyes cannot see, which is that you have a fire within that is burning you, burning up the collection of good deeds that you have gathered for the Akhirah.’ When a fire burns and rages in someone’s house, all of his valuable possessions get burnt. The fire doesn’t say ‘Let’s only burn his old clothes and his cheap belongings. We will leave the gold and the valuable items.’ No, when fire takes hold in a house, it burns everything, whether valuable or cheap. SubhanAllah, when the fire of Jahannam burns, it burns all of the jewels of the Hereafter and all of the piety within us that is connected to the Hereafter. Everything is burned and destroyed. So what is the result if we are envious, my brothers? What have we attained? Fire – a fire that burns away all a person’s deeds for the Akhirah. By doing Hasad, his Deen has gone, his way of life has gone. By being jealous and having malice and hatred, what do you attain? Nothing at all.
So what a big disease this is. Have you ever tried to get rid of jealousy, this sin of malice and envy? We actually cultivate it – we grow it and tend it. And after that, in this Hadith that Abu Hurayrah radhiAllahu anh narrates in Mishkat, Allah’s Nabi sallallahu alayhi wasallam stated ‘This sin of jealously and malice not only burns away your good deeds, but it also disfigures you in another way, creating a very bad condition within you of Fasaad and Fitnah.’ And this gets worse and multiplies, causing you to commit more sins – you get anger, you get backbiting. The person who is jealous of someone else will start treating that person in the wrong way, and he will be angry with him and will try to give loss to his assets. And if the malice and jealousy grows and grows, he will physically try to affect the person he is jealous of, to the extent that he won’t even want to see that person. As soon as he sees that person, he feels dislike without any reason. And there is a bigger sin than this – may Allah forgive, may Allah forgive, and save us from this sin – which is that he stands in front of Allah and says ‘Ya Allah, You have apportioned wrongly! This should have been mine, so why did You give it to him?’ Allahu Akbar - he starts to complain.
Do you understand these words that I am saying? These are the words of the Faqirs – this is what they discuss, my brothers. May Allah ta’ala improve me and correct me and make me a good Muslim. May I not be a person who shows off – may all pretentiousness come out of me. Ameen.
So this person who has jealousy and malice says to Allah ‘You have wrongfully assigned this to him – why didn’t You give it to me? He shouldn’t have received this.’ Allah says ‘When you complain and challenge My distribution, then come to Me and will grab you by the neck in such a way that you will see what you earned from your fasts, and you will realise that you played games with Ramadhan.’ Allahu Akbar. There is such a big punishment for this sin – your goodness has gone, and your deeds have gone, and Allah says ‘These effects are what you are getting in the Dunya, but when you come to Me in the Akhirah, you will have so few deeds left.’ Allahu Akbar. One other effect of this sin that is coming to my mind is that when we have Hasad and are jealous or feel malice to somebody, then we are consuming his rights; we are taking possession of his rights. Shari’ah tells us that when you have jealousy for someone, you are trampling on his rights and treating his assets as if they were yours. Taking another person’s rights is such a big sin that Allah says ‘I will not forgive this sin until you first go to that human being and ask him to forgive you for the sin you have committed against him.’ Allahu Akbar – say SubhanAllah. Allah says ‘I won’t forgive you. Whether in this world or the Hereafter, you will have to go to him and plead for forgiveness.’ Where has this sin of taking his rights come from? Also from Hasad.
So Allah is saying ‘I am giving you an opportunity with this fasting’ – but we are wasting these fasts. Allah says ‘All you need to do is try and make effort. If you had made Niyyah in the morning when starting the fast, then I, your Rabb, would have removed the Hasad from your heart by the evening.’ What number fast are we on today? This is the seventeenth fast. Seventeen sins should have come out of our lives up to now. Imam Ghazali rahmatullah alayh mentioned twenty sins – so how many should be left to deal with? Three – SubhanAllah. Yes? ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’ – we make this Niyyah in the morning, but did we make Niyyah to remove one sin? Or did you just make Niyyah to lose weight? Do you understand what I am saying? Do you? Is your Ramadhan going correctly? Is it? Maybe it is – I am speaking to myself. Your Ramadhan is probably good – you probably make good Niyyahs – but I am speaking to you about my mistakes. I am like a monkey, like an animal. Seventeen of my fasts have been wasted. What have I done? I couldn’t make Niyyah to leave sin in even one fast.
And we shouldn’t talk of leaving sins ourselves, for it is about {سَعۡيُكُم مَّشۡكُورًا}. Allah says ‘Who are you to leave a sin? How can you practically and physically leave a sin? Do you have any energy of your own? La hawla wa la Quwwata illa-bi-llah. If I want, then I will enable you to leave everything, so you have to make a special request to Me, to Allah. Who are you, you big-headed man, to say that you will leave your sins? You don’t even have the strength to take Hasad out of your life.’ You need your Rabb – your Rabb. You have to present your request and say ‘Oh Allah, I am leaving food and drink and my sleep, and I am doing this due to Your Karam and mercy; You have enabled me to do this so that I can leave my sins. Oh Allah, I am not able to do this. It is only Your grace and Your mercy and Your selection, oh Allah. I just want to make an effort, but it is You who are able to remove the sin from my life.’ We just have to try, to work hard, and in return for that, Allah will give you the payment that He will pull that sin out by its roots and end our impurities.
But if we consume the rights of others and break their rights, then Allah says ‘I will not forgive that sin – rather, the one whose rights you broke needs to forgive you.’ So in the Hereafter, when the envious person stands in the Court of Allah, that person who he was envious of will have the veils removed and the matter will be laid bare. He will say ‘What? I thought this man was my friend, and yet he used to burn inside due to my money and fame and status. I am not going to leave you now – you are in my control.’ Allah will say ‘You broke his rights by having Hasad for him. You trampled on his rights.’ It will look as if he was about to go into Paradise, but he will stand in front of him and say ‘I won’t forgive you until you give me the few deeds that you have left to your name. Give me those good deeds.’ So the good deeds that he tried hard to gather up will be removed from his fortune. That Salah and that wealth of the Hereafter that he had gathered will go to the person for whom he had Hasad in the world. Just due to that Hasad, the wealth of any good deeds that he had done will get transferred to the man he was jealous of. He has to give the wealth he had brought for Paradise to that person he was envious of, while he goes towards Jahannam. Why? Because he committed this sin of Hasad.
This subject is very vast and broad, so I will make it concise. This is an introduction to this sin, and what a big sin it is. Never have Hasad for anybody – don’t do it. So shall I tell you the cure? You are sitting in front of a Faqir – so how will it come out? Whoever wants to learn, raise your hand. Okay, now I will tell you. Obviously, I am keen to tell you – I am not saying all this for any other reason. Someone might say ‘Oh, what has he come here to do? He has come here with his humble blanket wrapped around him just to make a few announcements’ – no. Listen to what I am saying and inshaAllah, in the Hereafter we will all be in Jannah. We will not be people of Hasad, rather we will sit with each other and discuss and eat and drink. MashaAllah, we will eat meat – say Ameen! This is the time of acceptance, so Allah will accept inshaAllah. We will sit together there just like we sit together here, talking in the Masjid; inshaAllah this same group will gather in the Hereafter, with the Fadhl of Allah, MashaAllah.
So Hasad can come out, and I will quickly tell you how, and then we will do Dhikr. To get rid of Hasad, number one, first and foremost, as with an illness in the world, you have to accept that you are sick. That is step number one – I am sick. The doctor always gets angry about this. When you go to the doctor, he sees the symptoms and makes the diagnosis and says ‘It looks like you have had this sickness for quite a while. Why didn’t you come to me before? Why didn’t you tell me that you had this problem earlier? If you had come earlier, I could have cured the sickness more easily and quickly. You have delayed too long – you should have told me long before this.’ Don’t doctors say this? Yes, this is the case. So when you get the signs and symptoms of this sickness, immediately recognise that the sickness is there within and say ‘I don’t need any other medicine’ because if you catch this sickness in its early stages, you can cure it yourself. Say SubhanAllah. If I have a stomach-ache, I just need to control my diet and eat less – I don’t need to go to the pharmacy to get medicine. But if I don’t accept that I am sick, and say ‘No, I don’t have cancer – I am totally fine’ then I will keep getting worse and worse because I wasted time and delayed finding a cure. So the first thing to do when you see that the signs of jealousy and malice are there is to accept that we have got that sin and that sickness within and say ‘Yes, I am a Hasid.’ But we never accept that we are a Hasid. Just accept it within yourself. Don’t worry about others telling you – when you have these feelings within that you are jealous about someone’s car or his house or his fame or his ‘Ilm or his status, then consider that you are a Hasid.
So step number one is to accept that you are a Hasid and that the sickness is within and that you are a patient. When you accept that you have got this sin, when you realise that you are jealous, then you move to step number two to solve the problem. There is a great Ni’mah that Allah ta’ala gives to you in step two, so do this. Whenever you get an opportunity to do good, when you have prayed Salah or done any form of worship, straightaway raise your hands and make Dua for that person, saying ‘Oh Allah, from the depths of my heart I request that You give even more to that person of whom I am jealous. I was jealous of his car, so give him an even better car; give him more wealth.’ Whatever you are jealous about, pray from depths of the heart that Allah gives him more. The more you do such Duas, Allah will give you the remedy and increase that remedy. Say SubhanAllah.
This is such a great cure and remedy that, for example, when a body is operated on physically, the doctor gives you an anaesthetic to make you unconscious so that you do not experience pain when the cure is being enacted – as when something needs to be removed from within by means of an operation. In that case, an anaesthetic is used. So when you raise your hands to make Dua for the person you are jealous of, you will undergo a high level operation at that time. The jealousy gives the pain of the burning inside as the fire rages and the ashes swirl around, but when you raise your hands to be saved from that Adhab, Allah says ‘No, give to him, give to him, give much more.’ A great contrast takes place at that time because the operation is taking place within. This cure of step number two causes the Hasad to be removed by its roots.
Step number three – The Qur’an tells us about Hasad, doesn’t it?
{قُلۡ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ ٱلۡفَلَقِ (١) مِن شَرِّ مَا خَلَقَ (٢) وَمِن شَرِّ غَاسِقٍ إِذَا وَقَبَ (٣) وَمِن شَرِّ ٱلنَّفَّـٰثَـٰتِ فِى ٱلۡعُقَدِ (٤) وَمِن شَرِّ حَاسِدٍ إِذَا حَسَدَ}
Allah puts {وَمِن شَرِّ حَاسِدٍ إِذَا حَسَدَ} at the end because it is such an important point. Allah says ‘The best remedy for Hasad is to turn to Me. Come under My protection.’ And what is the greatest protection? What is the refuge? We call on Allah ‘Oh Allah, save me from Hasad. I am doing these sins, so save me from this fire of Hasad.’ When a person feels his incapacity, he seeks refuge in Allah - {وَمِن شَرِّ حَاسِدٍ إِذَا حَسَدَ}. This is such a big sin that the final remedy is to come to the refuge of Allah. Hadith explains that the greatest protection of Allah is what? When the servant is being pursued by shayateen and is running away from evil and from the darkness, as soon as he sees a castle or fort, he runs inside and closes the gate so that his enemies outside cannot get to him. Allah says ‘When you come into My protection, you have come into the best protection, and that is Remembrance of Me, Dhikrullah! When you do Dhikrullah, you have come into a great fort in which you are protected from all vice and evil.’ SubhanAllah.
That is why we do Dhikr in the Khanqah day and night, oh Sufis. This is the greatest fort and the greatest protection for a human being. No darkness comes to him and no punishment comes to him. {وَٱذۡڪُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ ڪَثِيرً۬ا لَّعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ} This is the success that Allah ta’ala is mentioning – and this comes not from occasional Dhikr. Allah is saying ‘Do Dhikr all life long – with every breath, do Dhikr. There are so may sins and obstacles and barriers to meeting Me, and so many bad paths, and so many shayateen and evil spirits and wretched things in the world that don’t allow you to meet Me. Oh My servant, I have prepared something for you, and if you grab hold of that solution of {وَٱذۡڪُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ ڪَثِيرً۬}, of abundant Dhikr, then whoever comes into My protection will be saved from all vice and wrongdoing, and in the Hereafter you will definitely meet Me.’ People say ‘Why do you do Dhikr? Why? What is the benefit of Dhikr?’ Oh my brothers, Dhikr is everything – there is nothing else! This is the biggest protection and security and means of safeguarding. The people who do Dhikr are not mad – Allah has put a condition here which is that you need to do Dhikran Katheeran. There are great barriers against you in the world and you cannot be saved from those barriers without doing Dhikrullah.
Should we do Dhikr or not? Tell me. That is why Allah ta’ala enables us – but do we have the ability to understand what Dhikr is? When a person loves the world, he gains understanding of the world and gets shops and businesses and buys stock which he knows he can sell in this or that way. We call these worldly people very brainy and think that they have progressed. But a man who has the Noor of the Akhirah and who says he wants to meet Allah and achieve a positive result, he is always thinking about meeting Allah. He wants to meet Allah in such a beautiful meeting that Allah is happy with him and he is happy with Allah. {ٱرۡجِعِىٓ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكِ رَاضِيَةً۬ مَّرۡضِيَّةً۬ } He thinks ‘When I leave the world, may Allah be happy with me, and I with Allah.’ {وَٱدۡخُلِى جَنَّتِى} – For him it is announced ‘Come – come into Paradise!’ This is for that person who has done Dhikr of Allah and protected his life with Dhikr and worked hard and made effort to seek refuge with Allah from those evil things, thinking ‘Allah, we are weak. How can we leave the Dunya? How can we leave the sins? How can we shun the sins? Everything has proliferated in this world – television and songs and immodesty and nakedness - so how do we save ourselves, oh Allah? We don’t have the strength, and we don’t have the power. Oh Allah, only You can save us.’
Then Allah says ‘If you desire that I save you, then listen to Me also. {وَٱذۡڪُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ ڪَثِيرً۬ا لَّعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ} Allahu Akbar! Remember Me in abundance, and I guarantee you that the path to Falah is My Dhikr. It is your job to do Dhikr, and it is My job to save you from all wrongdoing and bad paths and bad effects. I guarantee that those men and women who do Dhikr in this month of Ramadhan with the right Niyyah, the first effect will be that they leave their sins and are protected from the evil and the wrong that is around them.’ Allahu Akbar. There is no guarantee that they will not do it, but they become fearful of committing sins, saying ‘I don’t want to consume Haram and I don’t want to consume somebody’s wealth.’ If they think about someone in the wrong way, they will do Astaghfar all night long, saying ‘Oh Allah, forgive me because I stepped over the line.’ Whether it is a family member or someone from outside, he will think ‘How did I commit this wrong to him?’ Even if it is a young person, grab hold of his feet and say ‘Forgive me, for I have so much fear of Allah in my heart that I do not want Allah to be unhappy with me, or how will I meet Allah in the Hereafter?’ This is what you call Ashiq-e-Rabb – a lover of Allah.
How do we become like this? Ramadhan makes us like this. Allah has given Ramadhan to us to make us lovers of Allah. That is why Allah says {لَعَلَّكُمۡ تَتَّقُونَ}. Allah is saying ‘If you want to become an Ashiq of Allah, then spend Ramadhan with Taqwa and shun the sins.’ The Niyyah of such people in the morning is not ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’; their Niyyah is ‘Ya Allah, I want to strive today; I want to leave this sin today. Oh Allah, I will try today and make effort, but it is only possible through Your Karam and grace and mercy, so please make us successful until the evening so that we can leave the sins.’ Say SubhanAllah.
Come – let’s recite Durood Sharif, and then we will do Dhikr.
Alhamdulillah, this blessed, illuminated, illustrious month of Ramadhan is full of Allah’s grace and mercy. Gradually and slowly, it is moving away from us, in the same way that if a human being is from a certain city and he goes to the station to make a journey, when he sits on the train and it starts to move, that city gets further and further away from him. The person looks out of the window, and gradually, all the things connected to the city move further way. He keeps looking back at the buildings, the marketplaces and the features of the city, and they are getting further and further away. In the same way, this beautiful and excellent month that Allah ta’ala has given to us, with its lovely memories, is slowly leaving us - whatever comes also leaves. Through His bounty, Allah ta’ala has favoured us in a massive way by giving us this month – Allah ta’ala has given us this opportunity. Is this the last that we will get or will Allah ta’ala give us more such favours? Allah knows best; nobody can say.
Allah ta’ala gave a Hukm along with this month that He has given to us – or, rather, He bestowed a favour upon us. Allah has told us ‘When you leave Ramadhan, then leave as a Muttaqi.’ This is the message Allah ta’ala has given, and nothing else. Allah is saying ‘I gave you Ramadhan for this reason, so that you become a Muttaqi by the time you leave the month.’ This is the target. Allah says ‘When you leave Ramadhan with this objective fulfilled, then you have attained. I didn’t tell you to lose weight or give you this as a punishment. It was not an Adhab that I stopped your food and drink and your sleep – none of this. I have not been harsh to you – this was not a punishment. Rather, I have given you Thawab for the difficulty that you went through – I am giving you rewards for the hardship and the striving, so don’t worry about that. But this month that I give to you is given for this reason - that you become a Muttaqi by the time you leave this month. When you come out of the month, you should have become totally refined and improved and changed. That is the measure of whether you utilised this month.’
Allah ta’ala has not put any other demand into this month. It is not stated that you should leave the month as a worshipper, or a generous person – Allah has made just one demand. And what is that? {لَعَلَّكُمۡ تَتَّقُونَ} ‘In order that you gain consciousness and fear of Allah.’ If we don’t meet this target, how can we celebrate Eid and say ‘Eid Mubarak’? Eid Mubarak is for that person who has left Ramadhan as a Muttaqi. Allah ta’ala says ‘Then you can depart Ramadhan happily.’ If, for example, you go to the bathroom for a shower and come out an hour later still dirty and smelly, then what would a person say to you? He would say ‘You went to have a shower, but you have come out the same as you were before.’ In the same way, when we come out of Ramadhan in a few days, Allah will ask us, saying ‘I sent you into Ramadhan so that you could become a Muttaqi and attain Taqwa, so have you attained Taqwa?’ What will our response be? ‘No, no - I was busy doing this, and I did a lot of that.’ Allah will say ‘But what about the purpose for which I gave you Ramadhan? Give Me the answer about that. If you had done nothing else apart from attaining Taqwa, then your Ramadhan would have been accepted - you would have met the objective that I gave you. You would have attained the reward and also the objective.’ SubhanAllah.
So what is this Taqwa for which Allah ta’ala gave us Ramadhan? This month is going – most of it has gone. A person cannot become a Muttaqi until he shuns the sins; a Muttaqi is a person who is always saving themselves, who is always cautious. If a person doesn’t save himself from sins, if he doesn’t leave sins, then he cannot become a Muttaqi – he cannot be a Muttaqi. To be a Muttaqi, a person has to discard sins. Allah ta’ala is saying ‘I have given you these thirty days and you need to leave sins. I have given you this Amal of fasting so that you eat less, sleep less, have more hunger, and have fewer desires and less passions and lust. Your base desires will be weakened so that you cannot go towards sin.’ When a person is weak so that he can’t raise his hands and he can’t walk, in the same way, Allah ta’ala has suppressed the desires. Allah knows best that desires are created more than anything else by the stomach. When the stomach is full of food, a man carries out more wrong actions; there is more passion, desire and lust, and the drive to do wrong is stronger within him. So Allah ta’ala, in His mercy and Karam, has withheld food and drink from us so that we can attain the objective and reach the objective. This is Allah ta’ala’s great favour in that He made it even easier for us to attain Taqwa and become Muttaqis. So who is a person of Taqwa? Taqwa is that state in which a person saves himself from sins – then he has become a Muttaqi. A person who has left sins, who shuns sins, has become a Muttaqi.
Now there are two types of sin – one is Dhahiri sins, and the other is Batini sins. These are the two types of sin that are committed by a human being. Dhahiri sins, external sins, are more easily controlled, because we can see them physically, so you try to leave such sins. You think ‘What will people say?’ and because of the worry of what people will think or say, then obviously, a person controls himself and leaves the sins. However, the inner sins, the Batini sins, these are the ones that we do not control, even in the state of fasting, because they are hidden. A person doesn’t really care about things that are hidden, even though the Batini sins are more dangerous than the Dhahiri sins. The effects of the Batini sins are very dirty and they are extremely dangerous and hazardous, and that is why Allah ta’ala has selected these thirty days of Ramadhan for us. ‘You can’t control your inner sins, so I am giving you thirty days and giving you the hardships of staying hungry and thirsty, and pushing you more towards Ibadaat so that your self-control increases.’
It is not easy to control the Batini sins. Look at the preparation Allah has made so that we can rein in and control the inner desires - so how dangerous the Batini sins must be. What dangerous sins these Batini sins must be. Is this not the case? We don’t pay attention to this all year long, so in the thirty days of Ramadhan, Allah says ‘I have instilled Barakaat and blessings, so practice leaving the sins and shunning Batini sins; you have to pay attention to that.’ During the fast, we need to pay total attention to our inner sins - and that is why Allah ta’ala has given us Ramadhan. There is no other objective or purpose. The objective of Ramadhan is that we pay attention to our internal sins and focus upon them. Allah says ‘I have given you thirty days, so start trying to leave every sin.’ The Barakah of Ramadhan is such that the effect will be that Allah will make you able to control yourself after that, and your name will be included in the list of Muttaqis after Ramadhan.
All too often, a person doesn’t pay attention to this and doesn’t try, and instead works hard on other things - don’t take what I am saying badly. I was thinking yesterday while I was fasting that we need to eliminate these internal sins. Have we thought about this? If I don’t have this Niyyah, how will my fast be accepted? Tell me. We don’t even make this Niyyah. For example, the Ulema-e-Kiram say that if you don’t recite Qur’an, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of the fast. In reality, this is not part of the Dua for keeping the fast - it is not a Sunnah. We say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’, but the real Niyyah is ‘Oh Allah, I am keeping this fast with Your Karam and Your grace and Your mercy and Your Fadhl. You have given me this opportunity to attain Taqwa and alhamdulillah, with Your Karam and Fadhl, I will try all day long to shun the Batini sins just as I shun food and drink.’ Make this Niyyah, and Allah will say ‘Yes.’ When you make the intention ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’, this will not be the means to the acceptance of your fast. The Niyyah that I am telling you will be the means to the acceptance of our fast, so let us correct our Niyyah. As soon as you start the fast, turn to the objective for which Allah is making us fast and keeping us hungry and thirsty and sleep less. Make this the Niyyah and objective; leave the meaning of ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’ and come to this intention: ‘Oh Allah, by your Karam and Fadhl, You are taking me towards this effort. I am striving and working hard by stopping eating and drinking and sleeping, and now I have come to the real playing field: I am going to fight with this sin today – I am not going to let it come close to me.’ So we need to make intention to shun at least one Batini sin.
Listen carefully and attentively to what I am saying – although I am speaking to myself here, in reality. I am explaining this not to you, but to myself. Do you understand what I am saying? Understand this – this is totally, one hundred percent, the reality of Ramadhan. We just get up and eat and then say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’, and then we think ‘Now we will just wait for the evening and we’ll make roast chicken today and Pakoras and Bhajis.’ Until the evening, all this just floats around in our minds. Okay, eat – I’m not saying don’t eat. Eat nice things and good things, but keep the objective in front of you, and remember ‘Oh Allah, everything You are making us do this for a reason and a purpose.’ Allah wants us to attain something by practicing fasting, and Allah is saying ‘I will help you and assist you through this striving and working hard and leaving food and drink. Don’t worry – you are doing this for My sake, and you want to leave your sins for My sake.’ Why do we leave sins? For Allah. Why are we leaving sins for Allah’s sake? Understand this point as well. We are leaving sins, and this is for Allah’s sake because we want to meet Allah – that is why we are leaving the sins. We are desperate – we are keen! There is a Dua: ‘Oh Allah, make me eager for Your Ziyarah!’ Say SubhanAllah. ‘Oh Allah, make me a lover, ultra-keen to meet You. Oh Allah, make me desperate, always thinking that I am going to meet my Lord.’ Say SubhanAllah. What a great way of thinking.
So my brothers, these are stages of Ramadhan. So we should think ‘Oh Allah, I am doing this for You – that is why I am leaving everything and shunning everything.’ What is our destination and objective? We say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’ – but this will not give us success; this is not enough. We need to make Dua and plead to Allah: ‘Oh Allah, through Your Fadhl and Karam, we have picked up the tools and resources You have given to us, and we are ready for our stomachs to be empty for a while; we will not eat and drink, and we will be thirsty and hungry and dizzy, and in this way we are going to fight our Nafs, our base desires. We are going to shun our sins and become free of them.’ Allah will say ‘Fine – you are going to stay hungry and thirsty and everything, and you are doing all of this to meet Me. You doing everything because you are keen to meet Me. You love makes you want to meet Me, so come – just as you have this love, your love has its effect on Me also. I also want to meet you and am also eager and longing to meet you. So I will assist you in order that you are able to leave these sins!’ This is fasting, SubhanAllah.
And then, when we do not commit that sin until evening, all the angels gather together and affirm ‘You did Mujahidah and you strove, and you established goodness – well done, MashaAllah.’ For this Allah ta’ala says ‘Tell My servant that we consider that he has truly fasted, and he will get the reward for that.’ What reward are we going to get for just leaving food? This is a little thing – even a sick person doesn’t eat. If the doctor says ‘Don’t eat for twenty-four hours because your stomach is upset, will you eat? Nobody would, because their stomach is upset. So this is not the reason that we are fasting. Allah will be happy when a person has done Mujahidah and has made effort, so then the angels gather and say ‘O Allah, from the morning he tried his best and said he was going to fight this sin. He has fought himself and opposed himself.’ Then Allah says ‘When I give him the rewards for this one fast at the end of the day, the first reward I give him is Maghfirah – forgiveness.’ SubhanAllah.
We think ‘We kept the fast and did not eat and drink all day, so Allah has forgiven me,’ but in the meantime, we carry on doing all the other actions that we want. A person says ‘I did this and I did that, but I didn’t eat or drink.’ The women didn’t stay at home within the four walls, which we should be doing as part of our routine; and we wore clothes that showed us off, and our hair was flowing and showing. We did a full mix of Halal and Haram actions – we don’t know what the difference is - and we just kept a fast. We didn’t eat or drink and think Allah has given us Maghfirah. SubhanAllah! Oh servants of Allah, is that it? Is that the target that Allah has given us to attain Maghfirah? The target is to do Mujahidah to leave your sins; you have to work hard to leave your sins, and for that work, Allah ta’ala says ‘I have given you Maghfirah.’ Say SubhanAllah. When every fasting person breaks the fast, he is forgiven, SubhanAllah.
And on top of that, Allah ta’ala says ‘I want to give you another reward in this world where you are now. I have told you the reward of the Hereafter and I have forgiven you, so if you were to die now, the doors of Paradise are open for you.’ A person may say ‘Oh Allah, but I did this and that and the other sin,’ but Allah says ‘I have forgiven you! I have detached you from those sins – they have been wiped away and you are clean. You worked hard and made effort because you wanted to meet Me, so your sins have been eliminated and evaporated. I am your Rabb – if I want, I can wipe away all of your sins. They have gone – forget them!’ This is for one person who fasts – why? This is not due to the hunger and the thirst, but because we shunned sins, because we fought ourselves; we fought our Nafs in order to make it shun the sins.’ Say SubhanAllah.
This is the objective, not that this or that happened – no. We fought our Nafs, and Allah says ‘The first reward that I will give you is that in the Akhirah, you are forgiven beyond forgiven; Jannah is open for you, the palace is made for you, the Hoors are ready, the Ghulams are ready. When you pass away, you will get this reward. And if you sin again but then fast like this again, I will forgive you again!’ Say SubhanAllah – this is the relationship between the servant of the Creator and Allah the Creator. Allah says ‘That is your reward in the Akhirah, but now, if you have a need in the world, I will also give you the full reward in this world.’ This is the reward for just one fast. We say ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadan’ – but this is not the Niyyah that Allah wants. What Allah wants is the Niyyah that I have explained to you – will you make that Niyyah from today when you fast? Yes? Change the Niyyah you make for keeping your fast from today. Don’t put a Fatwa on me, but I am telling you the truth, the fact. Ask any Alim or Mufti and they will confirm. Phone Mufti Taqi Sahib and say ‘This person has said this – is he right or is he wrong?’ If he doesn’t say that this is the right Niyyah, come and tell me and I will meet him as well. What I am saying is the right Niyyah. Yes? We must understand this point, the objective of the fast.
So Allah ta’ala says ‘I will also give you something in this world’ – and what is the biggest reward for me and you in this world? That, oh Allah ta’ala, our desires are fulfilled. Say SubhanAllah. What is the biggest desire that we have? We might think ‘I know what it is. Oh Allah, I want to buy a house – finances are tight, and we can’t afford it.’ We live in the Dunya so we have these needs - I’m not saying don’t earn Dunya. Let’s look at the Dunya now, for Allah ta’ala has given us Akhirah, because He has given what? Forgiveness – Allah says ‘You are free now – forgiven.’ But we also need something in the world, and we have desires in the heart. We may think ‘Oh Allah, I want a house; I don’t have the money, but I want to buy a house. I want to buy a car because mine is old and it is not working properly.’ So the desire is in the heart. Allah is saying ‘It is your turn now – ask what you want. Whatever you ask, I will accept your Dua.’ SubhanAllah! What else do we want?
So for the sake of this desire of meeting Allah and wanting to see our Rabb, we did Mujahidah for ten or twelve hours, leaving food and drink, and after that you ate to your fill – remember this. But due to that little target of ‘Oh Allah, I want to meet You, and the barrier between me and You is my sins in my Batin, so I will shun the sins and have no link and relationship with my sins so that this veil, this barrier between me and You is dropped, and we are able to be together. Oh Allah, this is my objective.’ Is this the right definition of Ramadhan, my brothers? Are we keeping the fast with the Niyyah of meeting Allah?’ What will happen when you come to pray Eid? Why would you go for Eid Salah? What is the happiness for on Eid? If you haven’t had the desire to meet Allah when you go to pray Eid Salah, then Allah ta’ala doesn’t need your Dua. What does one fast give the human being if he keeps it correctly? Then what about if he keeps thirty fasts like this? Allah ta’ala says ‘Then he will be light upon light – Noor ‘ala Noor. He becomes filled with the light of wanting to meet Me – he tried, and he made effort to see Me, to get to meet Me. He dropped the veils and overcame the barriers and the obstacles between him and Me.’ Say SubhanAllah. This is the fast – this is the definition of the fast.
These sins of the Batin are there, so now let us consider these hidden sins that we cannot see. Do you see cancer? Do you see TB? Do you see any of those old sicknesses? Astaghfirullah, I can’t remember any of their names. Do you see Corona? No. So what is that then? I come to the Masjid and they take my temperature on the way in. Has he got a temperature? Is he ill? Does he have a fever or a cough? So what we realise is that if a person has a fever and a cough, the people will say ‘Oh go away – you’ve got Corona virus.’ So what we realise is that there are symptoms of sicknesses. When you see the symptom, then you realise what the sickness is. It is the same for Batini sicknesses; the inner sicknesses have symptoms. When you see those symptoms, then you will immediately realise that there is a sickness within. Say SubhanAllah.
So I am telling you now how to identify and grab the Batini sins. We don’t have the desire and we don’t have the passion to look inside ourselves and see what dirt is there; all we do is decorate our Dhahir. We put on nice clothes, a turban, grow a nice beard and put oil on it, and we wear Surma – we make our appearance like a Muttaqi person, and see ourselves as a first-row worshipper. When we come, people say ‘Oh Hadhrat Sahib has come, Pir Sahib has come – he is a pious man.’ But look inside yourself to see what the defect is; look at the situation within; look at the dryness and barrenness within. At least decorate your Batin and come, just as you decorate yourself and make yourself up externally. You are here to meet Allah, and Allah says ‘I have no need for external decoration and make up. I like the Faqir who has torn clothes, whose hair is dishevelled and too matted to comb. He doesn’t even wear his clothes properly, but his internal Batin is such that if you look inside at his Batin, you see the earth of Paradise there! If you look inside at his Batin, you can see in his state the flashes of Paradise, the reflection of Paradise and the palaces of Paradise within him.’ Allah says ‘That is the one who is deserving of meeting Me and of seeing Me - he has the longing and the eagerness.’
If we have these internal diseases and sicknesses, we can carry on doing Ibadah with that – Allah says ‘Okay, fine – carry on doing Ibadah.’ It is just like a wall which has damp within, so to hide the damp, you say ‘Oh, let’s put some wallpaper over it.’ But after six months, the damp becomes evident again – so then you put another layer of wallpaper on top, and you keep on putting on layer after layer but the damp is still there inside. Within, the dirt is still there. I recite the Qur’an and pray Salah and do Dhikr, but the dirt is still there within – but I still keep putting wallpaper on top. When we are presented in front of Allah, when you are presented to Allah, Allah will say ‘Remove the wallpaper and see what is inside. Show Me what is inside yourself.’ When you go to buy a house, first you will say ‘Remove this wallpaper – let me do a survey first. Is there damp in these walls?’ If this is the case when it comes to the world, Allah will do the same. When you present your Salah, Allah will say ‘Leave the Salah – first, is there any damp inside you? First, remove that dampness.’
What a logical explanation – remove the dampness that is within first. Otherwise, if you were to sell the house, the buyer would come to you tomorrow and say ‘You are a fraudster – you sold me the house as good, but there is damp inside it. You just wallpapered over it and didn’t tell me anything, so are you not a fraudster? This is deception.’ But you cannot deceive Allah. First, Allah will say ‘Bare him – remove the wallpaper. Let me see what the core Salah was – that is what I want to see.’ Say SubhanAllah. He will be lost, and Allah will say ‘I gave you thirty days to help you remove that damp-rot, a full thirty days, and I was there to help you – I was with you. So why didn’t you use those thirty days to take action to remove that damp-rot? If you had tried and made an effort, it would have been My job to remove that dampness from within your life - My job.’ But we just leave food and drink and don’t do anything else. Do you understand what I am saying?
So there are symptoms of these faults; there are signs. Look at this example. A man comes to someone – a friend, a very good friend – and says ‘Assalamu alaykum.’ ‘Wa alaykum salam,’ he replies. Then he says ‘Oh, I have had such good news today – I have bought a beautiful house.’ Now observe the symptoms. He replies ‘Oh, so you’ve bought a house.’ When he hears the news, whether about the purchase of a house or a nice car or attaining some rank, this now has an effect on the friend who he has told. After he has been told the good news, his heart becomes twisted and develops a crack, and he starts to get hot inside and a bit annoyed, and a change becomes visible on his face. He gets hot and bothered inside, and thoughts start developing within him, even though the other person is his friend. He gets a weird feeling and emotion inside, and rather than being glad at the news, he starts becoming frustrated and upset. Instead of showing his happiness to his friend, he thinks ‘How did he get this house? How did he attain this?’ An Ajeeb dislike and hatred begins to develop, and when this emotion starts inside, then consider that you have an internal sickness, a Batini illness inside you. When you hear of someone’s happiness or fame, or money or beauty, or somebody’s speech or ‘Ilm, or somebody’s Darajaat or status, or somebody’s riches and wealth, if, when you hear this, you start to burn inside with hatred which increases, and your heart doesn’t complain but rather feels that it would be happy if he lost whatever he has gained, and if you think ‘Why did he get things? And why don’t I get these things? How did he attain this? How can this be?’ to this extent that if he finds out that that thing has gone from the life of the friend, he starts getting happy, then, my brothers, this is the biggest disease of the Akhirah, and it is called Hasad – envy. That thief has been caught.
On the other hand, if you hear such good news and you feel happiness, look at the difference. If you feel happiness, it will show on your face in the form a nice smile; you will say ‘MashaAllah, alhamdulillah – you’ve got yourself a nice car there,’ and then you’ll say ‘Make Dua that I also get a car like this.’ Say SubhanAllah. ‘You got a car, and I need a car too, so make Dua for me that I get one too. You have got a house, so make Dua that I get one too. Mubarak – congratulations!’ Allah ta’ala says ‘This man is deserving of praise – this is a good response that you have made, and you are showing good feelings – so I will give to you as I gave to him.’ So we need to turn our malice into positive appreciation. We have been given these thirty days of Ramadhan to change our malice and hatred into positive admiration and gratitude and being happy for whatever that person has got. This is the objective of Ramadhan. Am I right or am I wrong? This is fasting, isn’t it? Is this the first fast that you are keeping? Is it the first fast? I am laughing at our destruction! What a beautiful time of life we are wasting. How many days of Ramadhan we have wasted! We have wasted 70 years of Ramadhan, 30 years of Ramadhan – year after year, we keep on wasting, wasting.
Allah says ‘How great is he who spends just one fast in this way, just one fast spent with the desire to meet Me and therefore trying to shun the sins.’ What sin must we avoid? What is it called? Hasad! Hasad is such a severe sickness of the Akhirah that an Insan is not Insan if he has Hasad inside him – rather, he is a ball of fire! Every illness has a condition. Corona goes into the lungs – it is a respiratory disease which annihilates the lungs; cancer burns away that organ or portion of the body where the cancer is. This sickness of Hasad is such a severe sickness that it is stated in Hadith – and I am sharing the words of the Hadith with you – that what does it do? It twists a person. The Prophet of Allah sallallahu alayhi wasallam said this point in an Ajeeb Hadith. What does this sickness of malice and hatred do?
This is not a sickness you should have – Hasad is not the sickness of a Mu’min, a person who recites La ilaha illa-llah Muhammad-ar-Rasoolullah – not someone who recites La ilaha illa-llaah Isa Rasoolullah or some other Rasool, no. They are all Rasools, but whoever has La ilaha illa-llah Muhammad-ar-Rasoolullah within him, he should not have this sickness within. This was the sickness of the previous nations, and it continued and continued, transferred and transferred, and has now come to you. Why? These are not the words of the Hadith – I am giving you the explanation now. It transferred and transferred to you because you have left the following of your Deen and have taken on their Deen. We think Libaas should be like theirs, walking should be like theirs, eating like theirs, my child should be like theirs. Everything in our lives should be like they are. We have cut off the concept that everything in our lives should be like he was sallallahu alayhi wasallam. Our colour has changed – and when we change our colour and absorb ourselves in the other way, we become immersed in the other way, and take on, knowingly or unknowingly, the things that the previous nations had, their bad and negative states.
May we give our all for the Sadqa of Rasoolullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam – Allah ta’ala washed all of that away for us and gave us a plain, simple Deen. He gave us the Qur’an in our hand and said ‘Here – this is the way of life for you.’ Within it are the enjoyments of the Tawrah and of the Injeel – Allah has put all the enjoyments of the previous Deens within it. Imam ul-Ambiya sallallahu alayhi wasallam brought the Kitab of the Qur’an, and Allah has allowed it to come into our hearts, and He has given us Ramadhan, MashaAllah. Allah says ‘When Ramadhan comes, pick up the Qur’an and read! Read!’ What a great honour Allah ta’ala has given to this Ummah – what an honour! Do you realise this? If so, what is our excuse then?
This is the situation. Allah has given us this Karam and this mercy and this great favour – and what have we done? Allah has given us Ramadhan, such a beautiful Ibadah, and we have destroyed the greatness of Ramadhan via our sins. Yet Allah is saying ‘This sin is not even yours – it has been transferred and passed on and has now come into you. You are doing so much following of them, and as much as you follow, the more it penetrates your lives.’ If we do Tawbah today, then henceforth we will not follow and imitate them. Our Masjids have become like this; we go into Sujod like this; we do Tawaf like this. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon. What a big punishment Allah has give to us – a big disease has come into us due to this. Allah says ‘I dislike that way.’ We have taken on their ways and have left the way of he who Allah ta’ala loves, the way that gives beautiful thoughts - we have left that way. We have shunned and discarded that way. Take the turban; who likes this? Our Rabb, Allah. Who likes the beard? Our Rabb, Allah. The colour white – who likes it? Our Rabb, Allah – and why? Because His Habeeb sallallahu alayhi wasallam likes these things. Allah likes these things, but we say ‘Oh no, I don’t want to do this. I want to do what they do – but I do want to earn Paradise, and I do want to get Shifa’a’ – from who? From Rasoolullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam! The one who we don’t like to imitate - women, men and children, they all don’t like to imitate him sallallahu alayhi wasallam – we don’t want to imitate him, but we want him to intercede for us.
SubhanAllah – oh servants of Allah, what a strange choice you have made there. What a contrast. What is this way in which you are bringing up your children? With your eyes, you are looking at them and imitating them, playing the games and dramas of their lives - day and night, you are lost inside them - and then what will you ask for? Shifa’a - Shifa’a from him whose way we are opposing in our daily lives. We give weird excuses for not practicing and for the imitation that we do – strange excuses. “من احب سنتى فقد احبنى” – what greater guarantee can there be than this? ‘You just have to do Amal on my Sunnah, and then I will love you, and then “ومن أحبني كان معي في الجنة” whoever I love, I will take him with me into Paradise!’ SubhanAllah. But we say ‘No, no, I like imitating other people.’ And then they call those who do imitate him fundamentalist or backward, saying ‘Does he have no sense? What backward path has he gone onto?’ Then they laugh at them and mock them, saying ‘He is destroyed!’
So brothers, this Hadith clarifies that this sin has come into us due to this imitation – the sin gets passed along and passed along and comes into us. And Hasad is such a big disease. It is stated that whoever has Hasad inside him is twisted and changed. Two meanings come out of this. One is twisted and the other is shaven, like someone whose hair has been totally removed and shaved off. So if a person has been shaved, will there not be a difference in his appearance? Of course. If I have a nice, full head of hair and then go home and shave it off, I will then be bald. People will say ‘Oh, you have suddenly changed. You look so different.’ So the person who has Hasad is said to be like this – shaven, totally transformed. What is the punishment that comes with the disease of Hasad? It is that he will be totally transformed – his Deen will be spoiled and disfigured. Allah is saying ‘He doesn’t have the Deen that I gave him anymore.’ Due to the Hasad that has passed into him through the centuries, the Qur’an has gone, the Deen has gone, his Salah has gone – his appearance has been disfigured and changed. I am telling you about a Hadith here – you can read this Hadith in Mishkat.
So should we have Hasad or not? Tell me. A person who is a Hasid, his Deen has transformed – everything has changed. Everything is Jaa’iz, Haram becomes Jaa’iz – the Deen has changed. He changes the Deen, twists the Deen, disfigures the Deen so that everything becomes Jaa’iz. He says ‘Oh, what difference does it make? Never mind – I can do this action. What difference does it make?’ Haram become Halal - the boundaries of Halal and Haram come together, the limits are transgressed and he learns how to make excuses when it comes to the Nafs and the stomach; he takes shortcuts. Where is all this coming from? From which illness? From Hasad. Now we are getting the opportunity to eliminate and extinguish this, so make the Niyyah. Allah says ‘If you make this Niyyah, then you can get rid of Hasad. That is why you are keeping the fast.’ And that is when a person will have this desire to meet Allah. He will think ‘I am keeping this fast so that I can meet Allah.’
So this is a weird illness. The meaning of what Allah’s Nabi sallallahu alayhi wasallam said in this Hadith is that when a person has Hasad, this creates fire within him. He has malice and deep envy as if a fire is burning within him. If you speak to someone who has Hasad and tell him some good news, then he will suddenly get a burning sensation inside and his face and ears will go red. Shortly after hearing your good news, his ears and face will go red because there is this fire within him. Hasad is a disease that generates fire inside, and what does that fire burn? I will tell you a little bit later, but that fire burns. Fire heats things up – it never cools anything. What does water do? It cools the heat of the fire. So when he feels that heat, something is burning inside him. And what does it burn? Tell me. What does the hatred and malice and envy burn? It burns that thing which is linked to the Akhirah within us, that thing which is linked to the heavens – that is what gets burned. There is no fire of the world that can burn the connection that we have to the Hereafter, so that fire within is the fire of Jahannam. I am telling you about Hasad here, about envy, hatred and malice.
So don’t be a fake person after these days of Ibadah. Correct the internal sins – Allah is giving you an opportunity in your life. Go to a Khanqah, sit in the company of a Wali of Allah, and say ‘I have got these sicknesses’ - without that, you cannot eliminate those sins. The symptoms are present – I have told you the symptoms. If you see these symptoms within you, then run to a Wali of Allah. Hasten, thinking ‘I am finished, I am destroyed. I do all these things externally, but the fire is raging within me. Why? Why do I get this burning sensation within me and feel this envy? Why do I feel jealousy and hatred when someone tells me his good news?’ This is a very lengthy subject, but I am giving you a short, concise summary because we have not done Dhikr yet.
So what will that fire do that has been generated within? Allah’s Nabi sallallahu alayhi wasallam tells us that his eyes could see what is happening inside. He said ‘My eyes can see what your eyes cannot see, which is that you have a fire within that is burning you, burning up the collection of good deeds that you have gathered for the Akhirah.’ When a fire burns and rages in someone’s house, all of his valuable possessions get burnt. The fire doesn’t say ‘Let’s only burn his old clothes and his cheap belongings. We will leave the gold and the valuable items.’ No, when fire takes hold in a house, it burns everything, whether valuable or cheap. SubhanAllah, when the fire of Jahannam burns, it burns all of the jewels of the Hereafter and all of the piety within us that is connected to the Hereafter. Everything is burned and destroyed. So what is the result if we are envious, my brothers? What have we attained? Fire – a fire that burns away all a person’s deeds for the Akhirah. By doing Hasad, his Deen has gone, his way of life has gone. By being jealous and having malice and hatred, what do you attain? Nothing at all.
So what a big disease this is. Have you ever tried to get rid of jealousy, this sin of malice and envy? We actually cultivate it – we grow it and tend it. And after that, in this Hadith that Abu Hurayrah radhiAllahu anh narrates in Mishkat, Allah’s Nabi sallallahu alayhi wasallam stated ‘This sin of jealously and malice not only burns away your good deeds, but it also disfigures you in another way, creating a very bad condition within you of Fasaad and Fitnah.’ And this gets worse and multiplies, causing you to commit more sins – you get anger, you get backbiting. The person who is jealous of someone else will start treating that person in the wrong way, and he will be angry with him and will try to give loss to his assets. And if the malice and jealousy grows and grows, he will physically try to affect the person he is jealous of, to the extent that he won’t even want to see that person. As soon as he sees that person, he feels dislike without any reason. And there is a bigger sin than this – may Allah forgive, may Allah forgive, and save us from this sin – which is that he stands in front of Allah and says ‘Ya Allah, You have apportioned wrongly! This should have been mine, so why did You give it to him?’ Allahu Akbar - he starts to complain.
Do you understand these words that I am saying? These are the words of the Faqirs – this is what they discuss, my brothers. May Allah ta’ala improve me and correct me and make me a good Muslim. May I not be a person who shows off – may all pretentiousness come out of me. Ameen.
So this person who has jealousy and malice says to Allah ‘You have wrongfully assigned this to him – why didn’t You give it to me? He shouldn’t have received this.’ Allah says ‘When you complain and challenge My distribution, then come to Me and will grab you by the neck in such a way that you will see what you earned from your fasts, and you will realise that you played games with Ramadhan.’ Allahu Akbar. There is such a big punishment for this sin – your goodness has gone, and your deeds have gone, and Allah says ‘These effects are what you are getting in the Dunya, but when you come to Me in the Akhirah, you will have so few deeds left.’ Allahu Akbar. One other effect of this sin that is coming to my mind is that when we have Hasad and are jealous or feel malice to somebody, then we are consuming his rights; we are taking possession of his rights. Shari’ah tells us that when you have jealousy for someone, you are trampling on his rights and treating his assets as if they were yours. Taking another person’s rights is such a big sin that Allah says ‘I will not forgive this sin until you first go to that human being and ask him to forgive you for the sin you have committed against him.’ Allahu Akbar – say SubhanAllah. Allah says ‘I won’t forgive you. Whether in this world or the Hereafter, you will have to go to him and plead for forgiveness.’ Where has this sin of taking his rights come from? Also from Hasad.
So Allah is saying ‘I am giving you an opportunity with this fasting’ – but we are wasting these fasts. Allah says ‘All you need to do is try and make effort. If you had made Niyyah in the morning when starting the fast, then I, your Rabb, would have removed the Hasad from your heart by the evening.’ What number fast are we on today? This is the seventeenth fast. Seventeen sins should have come out of our lives up to now. Imam Ghazali rahmatullah alayh mentioned twenty sins – so how many should be left to deal with? Three – SubhanAllah. Yes? ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’ – we make this Niyyah in the morning, but did we make Niyyah to remove one sin? Or did you just make Niyyah to lose weight? Do you understand what I am saying? Do you? Is your Ramadhan going correctly? Is it? Maybe it is – I am speaking to myself. Your Ramadhan is probably good – you probably make good Niyyahs – but I am speaking to you about my mistakes. I am like a monkey, like an animal. Seventeen of my fasts have been wasted. What have I done? I couldn’t make Niyyah to leave sin in even one fast.
And we shouldn’t talk of leaving sins ourselves, for it is about {سَعۡيُكُم مَّشۡكُورًا}. Allah says ‘Who are you to leave a sin? How can you practically and physically leave a sin? Do you have any energy of your own? La hawla wa la Quwwata illa-bi-llah. If I want, then I will enable you to leave everything, so you have to make a special request to Me, to Allah. Who are you, you big-headed man, to say that you will leave your sins? You don’t even have the strength to take Hasad out of your life.’ You need your Rabb – your Rabb. You have to present your request and say ‘Oh Allah, I am leaving food and drink and my sleep, and I am doing this due to Your Karam and mercy; You have enabled me to do this so that I can leave my sins. Oh Allah, I am not able to do this. It is only Your grace and Your mercy and Your selection, oh Allah. I just want to make an effort, but it is You who are able to remove the sin from my life.’ We just have to try, to work hard, and in return for that, Allah will give you the payment that He will pull that sin out by its roots and end our impurities.
But if we consume the rights of others and break their rights, then Allah says ‘I will not forgive that sin – rather, the one whose rights you broke needs to forgive you.’ So in the Hereafter, when the envious person stands in the Court of Allah, that person who he was envious of will have the veils removed and the matter will be laid bare. He will say ‘What? I thought this man was my friend, and yet he used to burn inside due to my money and fame and status. I am not going to leave you now – you are in my control.’ Allah will say ‘You broke his rights by having Hasad for him. You trampled on his rights.’ It will look as if he was about to go into Paradise, but he will stand in front of him and say ‘I won’t forgive you until you give me the few deeds that you have left to your name. Give me those good deeds.’ So the good deeds that he tried hard to gather up will be removed from his fortune. That Salah and that wealth of the Hereafter that he had gathered will go to the person for whom he had Hasad in the world. Just due to that Hasad, the wealth of any good deeds that he had done will get transferred to the man he was jealous of. He has to give the wealth he had brought for Paradise to that person he was envious of, while he goes towards Jahannam. Why? Because he committed this sin of Hasad.
This subject is very vast and broad, so I will make it concise. This is an introduction to this sin, and what a big sin it is. Never have Hasad for anybody – don’t do it. So shall I tell you the cure? You are sitting in front of a Faqir – so how will it come out? Whoever wants to learn, raise your hand. Okay, now I will tell you. Obviously, I am keen to tell you – I am not saying all this for any other reason. Someone might say ‘Oh, what has he come here to do? He has come here with his humble blanket wrapped around him just to make a few announcements’ – no. Listen to what I am saying and inshaAllah, in the Hereafter we will all be in Jannah. We will not be people of Hasad, rather we will sit with each other and discuss and eat and drink. MashaAllah, we will eat meat – say Ameen! This is the time of acceptance, so Allah will accept inshaAllah. We will sit together there just like we sit together here, talking in the Masjid; inshaAllah this same group will gather in the Hereafter, with the Fadhl of Allah, MashaAllah.
So Hasad can come out, and I will quickly tell you how, and then we will do Dhikr. To get rid of Hasad, number one, first and foremost, as with an illness in the world, you have to accept that you are sick. That is step number one – I am sick. The doctor always gets angry about this. When you go to the doctor, he sees the symptoms and makes the diagnosis and says ‘It looks like you have had this sickness for quite a while. Why didn’t you come to me before? Why didn’t you tell me that you had this problem earlier? If you had come earlier, I could have cured the sickness more easily and quickly. You have delayed too long – you should have told me long before this.’ Don’t doctors say this? Yes, this is the case. So when you get the signs and symptoms of this sickness, immediately recognise that the sickness is there within and say ‘I don’t need any other medicine’ because if you catch this sickness in its early stages, you can cure it yourself. Say SubhanAllah. If I have a stomach-ache, I just need to control my diet and eat less – I don’t need to go to the pharmacy to get medicine. But if I don’t accept that I am sick, and say ‘No, I don’t have cancer – I am totally fine’ then I will keep getting worse and worse because I wasted time and delayed finding a cure. So the first thing to do when you see that the signs of jealousy and malice are there is to accept that we have got that sin and that sickness within and say ‘Yes, I am a Hasid.’ But we never accept that we are a Hasid. Just accept it within yourself. Don’t worry about others telling you – when you have these feelings within that you are jealous about someone’s car or his house or his fame or his ‘Ilm or his status, then consider that you are a Hasid.
So step number one is to accept that you are a Hasid and that the sickness is within and that you are a patient. When you accept that you have got this sin, when you realise that you are jealous, then you move to step number two to solve the problem. There is a great Ni’mah that Allah ta’ala gives to you in step two, so do this. Whenever you get an opportunity to do good, when you have prayed Salah or done any form of worship, straightaway raise your hands and make Dua for that person, saying ‘Oh Allah, from the depths of my heart I request that You give even more to that person of whom I am jealous. I was jealous of his car, so give him an even better car; give him more wealth.’ Whatever you are jealous about, pray from depths of the heart that Allah gives him more. The more you do such Duas, Allah will give you the remedy and increase that remedy. Say SubhanAllah.
This is such a great cure and remedy that, for example, when a body is operated on physically, the doctor gives you an anaesthetic to make you unconscious so that you do not experience pain when the cure is being enacted – as when something needs to be removed from within by means of an operation. In that case, an anaesthetic is used. So when you raise your hands to make Dua for the person you are jealous of, you will undergo a high level operation at that time. The jealousy gives the pain of the burning inside as the fire rages and the ashes swirl around, but when you raise your hands to be saved from that Adhab, Allah says ‘No, give to him, give to him, give much more.’ A great contrast takes place at that time because the operation is taking place within. This cure of step number two causes the Hasad to be removed by its roots.
Step number three – The Qur’an tells us about Hasad, doesn’t it?
{قُلۡ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ ٱلۡفَلَقِ (١) مِن شَرِّ مَا خَلَقَ (٢) وَمِن شَرِّ غَاسِقٍ إِذَا وَقَبَ (٣) وَمِن شَرِّ ٱلنَّفَّـٰثَـٰتِ فِى ٱلۡعُقَدِ (٤) وَمِن شَرِّ حَاسِدٍ إِذَا حَسَدَ}
Allah puts {وَمِن شَرِّ حَاسِدٍ إِذَا حَسَدَ} at the end because it is such an important point. Allah says ‘The best remedy for Hasad is to turn to Me. Come under My protection.’ And what is the greatest protection? What is the refuge? We call on Allah ‘Oh Allah, save me from Hasad. I am doing these sins, so save me from this fire of Hasad.’ When a person feels his incapacity, he seeks refuge in Allah - {وَمِن شَرِّ حَاسِدٍ إِذَا حَسَدَ}. This is such a big sin that the final remedy is to come to the refuge of Allah. Hadith explains that the greatest protection of Allah is what? When the servant is being pursued by shayateen and is running away from evil and from the darkness, as soon as he sees a castle or fort, he runs inside and closes the gate so that his enemies outside cannot get to him. Allah says ‘When you come into My protection, you have come into the best protection, and that is Remembrance of Me, Dhikrullah! When you do Dhikrullah, you have come into a great fort in which you are protected from all vice and evil.’ SubhanAllah.
That is why we do Dhikr in the Khanqah day and night, oh Sufis. This is the greatest fort and the greatest protection for a human being. No darkness comes to him and no punishment comes to him. {وَٱذۡڪُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ ڪَثِيرً۬ا لَّعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ} This is the success that Allah ta’ala is mentioning – and this comes not from occasional Dhikr. Allah is saying ‘Do Dhikr all life long – with every breath, do Dhikr. There are so may sins and obstacles and barriers to meeting Me, and so many bad paths, and so many shayateen and evil spirits and wretched things in the world that don’t allow you to meet Me. Oh My servant, I have prepared something for you, and if you grab hold of that solution of {وَٱذۡڪُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ ڪَثِيرً۬}, of abundant Dhikr, then whoever comes into My protection will be saved from all vice and wrongdoing, and in the Hereafter you will definitely meet Me.’ People say ‘Why do you do Dhikr? Why? What is the benefit of Dhikr?’ Oh my brothers, Dhikr is everything – there is nothing else! This is the biggest protection and security and means of safeguarding. The people who do Dhikr are not mad – Allah has put a condition here which is that you need to do Dhikran Katheeran. There are great barriers against you in the world and you cannot be saved from those barriers without doing Dhikrullah.
Should we do Dhikr or not? Tell me. That is why Allah ta’ala enables us – but do we have the ability to understand what Dhikr is? When a person loves the world, he gains understanding of the world and gets shops and businesses and buys stock which he knows he can sell in this or that way. We call these worldly people very brainy and think that they have progressed. But a man who has the Noor of the Akhirah and who says he wants to meet Allah and achieve a positive result, he is always thinking about meeting Allah. He wants to meet Allah in such a beautiful meeting that Allah is happy with him and he is happy with Allah. {ٱرۡجِعِىٓ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكِ رَاضِيَةً۬ مَّرۡضِيَّةً۬ } He thinks ‘When I leave the world, may Allah be happy with me, and I with Allah.’ {وَٱدۡخُلِى جَنَّتِى} – For him it is announced ‘Come – come into Paradise!’ This is for that person who has done Dhikr of Allah and protected his life with Dhikr and worked hard and made effort to seek refuge with Allah from those evil things, thinking ‘Allah, we are weak. How can we leave the Dunya? How can we leave the sins? How can we shun the sins? Everything has proliferated in this world – television and songs and immodesty and nakedness - so how do we save ourselves, oh Allah? We don’t have the strength, and we don’t have the power. Oh Allah, only You can save us.’
Then Allah says ‘If you desire that I save you, then listen to Me also. {وَٱذۡڪُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ ڪَثِيرً۬ا لَّعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ} Allahu Akbar! Remember Me in abundance, and I guarantee you that the path to Falah is My Dhikr. It is your job to do Dhikr, and it is My job to save you from all wrongdoing and bad paths and bad effects. I guarantee that those men and women who do Dhikr in this month of Ramadhan with the right Niyyah, the first effect will be that they leave their sins and are protected from the evil and the wrong that is around them.’ Allahu Akbar. There is no guarantee that they will not do it, but they become fearful of committing sins, saying ‘I don’t want to consume Haram and I don’t want to consume somebody’s wealth.’ If they think about someone in the wrong way, they will do Astaghfar all night long, saying ‘Oh Allah, forgive me because I stepped over the line.’ Whether it is a family member or someone from outside, he will think ‘How did I commit this wrong to him?’ Even if it is a young person, grab hold of his feet and say ‘Forgive me, for I have so much fear of Allah in my heart that I do not want Allah to be unhappy with me, or how will I meet Allah in the Hereafter?’ This is what you call Ashiq-e-Rabb – a lover of Allah.
How do we become like this? Ramadhan makes us like this. Allah has given Ramadhan to us to make us lovers of Allah. That is why Allah says {لَعَلَّكُمۡ تَتَّقُونَ}. Allah is saying ‘If you want to become an Ashiq of Allah, then spend Ramadhan with Taqwa and shun the sins.’ The Niyyah of such people in the morning is not ‘Wa bisawmi ghadinn nawaiytu min shahri Ramadhan’; their Niyyah is ‘Ya Allah, I want to strive today; I want to leave this sin today. Oh Allah, I will try today and make effort, but it is only possible through Your Karam and grace and mercy, so please make us successful until the evening so that we can leave the sins.’ Say SubhanAllah.
Come – let’s recite Durood Sharif, and then we will do Dhikr.