You Need to Read (Islamic Lectures Collection)

Don't let your attention be distracted from the real prize

After Allah has done introducing Himself and He tells every single thing about Him, this is the immense power of Allah, that He says there is no compulsion in deen.

Ikhtilaaf (conflict) in deen>>if you take whole life of Prophet s.a.w. as 24 hours, then 23 hours are free of conflict, then 1 hour is left of things of ikhtilaaf.

If the person next to you does rafa yadayn and you don't, there is no reason not to consider him Muslim. If you say "ameen" in a lower voice than him, both of you are still saying ameen to the same dua.

The concern of the average person is to perform Salah properly, not to discuss matters of derivation of Islamic legal rulings.

That person who disbelieves in all the false deities, the person who disbelieves in everything that is wrong, Allah will open up the path of hidayat (guidance) for that person. You must first disbelieve in all the false idols you are stuck in. Some people are super motivated by their aql and they believe in their aql before they believe in the Quran. If Quran can be understood by aql, they accept, otherwise they do not. Scientists would be impressed, that Muslims of 2015 give science preference over wahy (revelation) and kitab (Quran), science, something that changes every 100 years, they would give you the Nobel Peace Prize.

People striving to get rich, kill their own parents and siblings. They lose their families because of this. Allah says, leave all this and come towards me. Then you start to believe in Allah. The person who leaves everything that is wrong and then brings iman (belief, faith) in Allah, that person is that who has grasped the rope of Allah strongly. This is that rope which does not break. He has grasped the most trustworthy handhold, and there is no break in it. This is the real you, which has actually come to Allah, and this is what He wants. The youth of today and the old people of today will never give in, as time goes by it becomes difficult for people to come back to Islam. The more "choice" you have, the further you go away from deen. Apparently, there is no choice in deen, but the dunya is filled with choices. When you say, to talk to a youth about deen, he or she will say, "I have a lot of things to do, I will think about deen later", that means he or she is simply considering exploring all the choices of the dunya. In older times, when there wasn't this much consumer culture, people came back to deen faster. The ultimate result is dissatisfaction. Before, there were three things in English: good, better, and best. Now they say "better than the best". You want to be better in everything, clothes, house etc. There is no ideal in the dunya, but there is an ideal in deen. In dunya there is choice but no end, the person at the front of the race is tired, how long can he run? He dies running that race. There is no end to the dunya, it is designed to trap you. The alternate to dunya is to hold on to the rope of Allah.

[Weekly Spiritual Gathering, talk by Shaykh Arsalan Ahmed, 29.10.2015]