How To Love Relationships In Islam

salatu salam ala rasulillah

Salam alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh

Angela it's really really good to be here.

And really, so far we've been really enjoying our time here in Knoxville. It's a beautiful part of the country Mashallah a lot of natural beauty. A lot of the wonders of Allah's creation are present here. We were up on the mountains yesterday, we took the motor hike up and some highlights just It's unbelievable. it's mind blowing. When you can witness a lot creation, you can witness exactly what Allah subhanaw taala points out as the reason to believe as proof of why we believe in what we believe in who we believe in. When you can drive 20 minutes you can drive an hour out and see exactly why Allah subhanaw taala told us to believe and you can witness that it's really a huge

blessing of Allah hamdulillah we got to witness that I was able to take my kids up and you know, kind of give them a little basic lesson on eemaan we don't we don't learn we don't teach a man often enough. And it's very easy. It's very simple. him on one on one, it's from the Quran. That simply went up there, made sure they looked around, they saw the mountains they saw things they'd never seen before in Dallas, Texas. And then just ask them one simple question. Who made all of this? A law? That's it. That's the man 101 so humble. It's been a real blessing to be here and the hospitality Mashallah in Knoxville is living up to the hype. Mashallah, I was telling Breton Nadeem,

I think I've eaten in three days more than I did in last three months. But it's it's it's been good though. Mashallah Knoxville, people know how to eat and hamdulillah.

Now, I have a talk, but before I give a talk, I feel like I have to do like a little bit of damage control as to what's I mean, this situation deteriorated pretty badly here.

So a little bit I wanted to add on to what happened. We Sam talked about amazing recitation, Mashallah said something really interesting that, you know, he was crunched for time. So he kind of glossed over, it said, Allah subhanho wa Taala, wa Jalla vena cava. And he put between the two of you. So first, Allah says, he created a spouse for you. And he said that something very profound that you have to understand. And I actually have a hadith I have a narration here, which might not seem like it's related to the topic, but I want you to hear me out.

The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, it was a situation of war, there were some prisoners of war that were taken captive. So the prophets, a lot of them was walking around kind of surveying the aftermath of the battle. And he saw a woman who was amongst the captives, the prisoners of war. And there was a small child that was kind of little baby that was kind of crawling around. And the baby started to get a little fussy. And the woman obviously, being the mother, they didn't know before that she was that child's mother. She picked up the child and she hugged the child and kind of took them inside of her clothing. And she began to feed the child nurse the child, like immediately, you

know, I mean, think about that. They've been through battle. They've been through war. They're prisoners right now. And all this is going on. But what is a mom doing? She's feeding the child.

She's feeding the child. That's unbelievable. That's remarkable. That's amazing. You know, it's just, we were leaving for the airport when we were coming here Wednesday morning. And I'm like, you know, we're going to be late and we gotta go through security. And then we can fold up the stroller and put it through the scanner, and, you know, then they want to X ray, my babies and they want to do like, all this crazy stuff, right? Like, go go, we need to go. Not before my wife packs the baby's milk. She extending their microwave and

I'm like, we're gonna miss our flight.

babies need milk. So you be quiet. Right? So that's, that's remarkable, right? So the profits of Madison sees this mother in action.

And the Prophet of Allah sallallahu sallam, he says, as an owner had the hill, Mara,

Bari Hatton, one and a half. And now could you ever imagine this mother throwing her baby throwing her child into the fire,

like flinging and tossing your child into a fire? The Companions of the prophets, a lot of them were taught. We're taught etiquette from the prophets allottee center. And one of the things that Prophet sallallahu Sallam taught them to do was to not very often very frequently take oaths. Like, don't walk around, take one law, he won't lie he right to not walk around saying we're logging all the time, but the Sahaba would still use it if it was a serious situation. So the Sahaba actually respond to their teacher, the one who taught them not to be swearing all the time, not to be taking Olds all the time. They say now we're lucky. Absolutely not. We swear by God, absolutely not. A

mother would never throw her job. This mother could never throw her child into the fire. She loves her child way too much. Look at her. And then the prophets a lot he said him said that

Allahu humblebee

Human how the Hebrew one,

Allah is more merciful to his slaves and this woman, this mother is to her child. Now the reason why I mentioned this this not it's not directly related to our topic here. But the reason why I mentioned is that Allah is more merciful Allah's mercy upon his slaves is greater than the mercy of this woman upon her child, his mother of Hunter, baby, the reason why I mentioned that is, Allah loves each and every single one of us in this room more than he loves the more than our mothers love us. All right. And the reason why I want you to understand that is because unfortunately, and this is where I get to my, the core of my session, my topic, what I wanted to talk about, that there is

an unbelievable amount of despair. There is a cynicism that exists in our community, especially in our youth community today about marriage and the prospect of marriage. Love marriage is a very bleak topic in the minds of a lot of our youth today. And I'll tell you where this comes from. And more importantly, especially our youngsters are young brothers and sisters, who might be a little bit more concerned about their relationship with the law, about their Deen about their spirituality, they a lot of times are very cynical, they're very pessimistic, they're very,

you know, they're not very optimistic, they're not very hopeful about the prospect of getting married, and enjoying a loving relationship one day, and having a very fulfilling marriage one day. And let me talk about where this comes from I, I kind of took upon myself to talk about some of the maybe heavier stuff today, like in the tones, not the not so much fun stuff today. But I did think that it was necessary for us to go in and tackle it, because it gets at the core of some of the issues that we have. And that is we need to redefine the idea of marriage in our heads. You know, I'll talk about myself. And I think this goes for the majority of the younger folks in the room here

today.

We are the children of an immigrant generation. All right, people who came from a very different place at a very different time. And a very different culture, completely different. And today, our culture, our environment, our time and our place, is very, very different than from where our parents came from, especially at the time when they got married. Right. It's a very different world today. It's a very different culture environment today. And a lot of times, we base,

you know, our expectations of marriage and married life, off of what our parents may be experienced, or what their situation their scenario was. At the same time, there's another major issue that we have in our communities, you know, may Allah protect everyone. And I hope this is not the situation. But a lot of times, maybe it's somebody whose own parents, maybe it is somebody has an uncle or an aunt, or someone in their family, who did not have a very fulfilling happy marriage.

And sometimes they're at a point in their life where, for all intensive purposes, they're basically roommates at that point.

It's a very sad situation. But it happens. Unfortunately, what a lot of times young people do is they base their idea of marriage off of that one bad case that they have in front of them, that that's what marriage results in. And I don't want to get married or I don't want to take like a Brahman and heaven, we Some are mentioning, I don't want to take this more Islamic route of getting married. Why? Because that's what it results in. That's what the consequence is that marriage basically means I don't know who I'm marrying, I never seen the person before. I don't know her name or his name. I don't know anything about them. And then randomly, one, some, you know, hairy guys

gonna come up here, and he's gonna read a bunch of Arabic stuff, and then pronounce this married. And then after that we're gonna come face to face and I'm gonna realize, I don't like this person.

Right? That's the idea. That's the very bleak picture. That's the nightmare that's waiting for us. On the other side. Unfortunately, a lot of people think that way.

What we have to do is we have to reconstruct the idea of marriage that we have in our hands, because what happens is one extreme breeds the other. So you have one extreme idea, or unfortunately, maybe you do have certain extreme examples of bad flawed, you know, relationships and marriages, in the community, or even in your own family, extended family. So what do we do? We resort to the opposite extreme. And the opposite extreme. Unfortunately, today for us can be summarized into one word and that one word is Twilight. All right. That's the opposite. Extreme. All right.

Yeah. All right. That's the opposite extreme. Where it's like we feel like we have to explore, you know, whether it be dating, premarital relations, illicit relationships. We have to explore that because if I don't do that, I'm not going to be happy.

Because God knows Kim Kardashian was very happy for 72 days.

Right? Right.

All right. Good. I mean, Subhana like, you know, you know, so vanilla, I often wonder, I often think, you know,

in our day and age, yes, with all the temptations and all the confusion that's out there, when you have such like glaring examples,

you know, in front of you, where these people have failed marriage after failed marriage after failed relationship with these people become empty, hollow shells of themselves, when people will reconstruct, these people are like, pretty much like 80% plastic and 20% flesh at this point. Like, when we have these glaring like, examples in front of us today, we have to employ enough common sense to be able to see the truth playing out in front of our own eyes.

You know, and and so, a black man talks about

the amazing, beautiful relationship that the process we have with each other, the aloha aina. And at the expense of, you know, bringing up one of the most feared question by all Muslim speakers of all time, I'm going to go ahead and present another example. All right from the life of the Prophet sallallahu sallam, and that was the first marriage of the prophets Ali Salaam, right, the first love of the prophets a lot of songs life.

Who was Khadija de la Mancha, the mother of the believers, who was a woman by the name of Khadija, an honorable, dignified, strong woman.

All right, who was the profitsystem best friend literally,

when he see when he received revelation, when the most amazing thing that's ever happened to any human being on the face of this earth, that occurred with the Prophet sallallahu sallam, who was the first person who we spoke to.

She was his best friend.

They were married for over 25 years, she was the mother of his children.

And the amount of love You know, you know, what always gets to me. What always gets me, you know, stories of young love and young marriage and all these things that it's beautiful. Recently, you know, I've actually started to get old enough to the point where I've actually now begin to witness my own students getting married.

And it's, it's an, it's a beautiful thing. It's amazing thing, it just makes you so happy. It's it's the closest thing to experiencing maybe like your own children getting married. Well, thanks, man. So

So it's, it's amazing. But one of the things that always gets to me personally is like, when you hear an amazing story, like you made the reference a notebook, right? The when you hear stories about like people growing old,

and, and, and growing stronger and stronger, deeper and deeper in their love, and their affection and their mercy, like Allah said. So what happens when someone is talking about a loss but love, compassion and mercy? Because when the compassion and the love and the compassion and the love begins to wear thin, when a very serious situation arrives, when a couple of situations come back to back to back, and the love and the compassion begins to kind of wear off and you kind of forget why you love each other.

Why should you have compassion with each other, that's when mercy kicks in. And when you practice mercy with each other, it brings you full circle right back in to remind you why you love each other.

So when you grow old together and you grow deeper and deeper in love those stories always get me the Prophet of Allah sallallahu. Khadija, the Ilana, one of those types of relationships. It was amazing. It was beautiful. She literally spent 25 years of her life, aiding, supporting her husband and fulfilling the mission of his life. He sat by her bedside as she breathed her last.

He wept and he cried after she passed.

You know that the pain that the prophets, a lot of them felt that the passing of the death of Khadija was so severe,

that the only thing that could heal that pain was a lot of calling him above the heavens, near him and personally talking and speaking to him.

That is the only thing that could take away that could slightly you know, diminish the pain that the process and felt that the person Khadija Elisa with Mirage happened after the death of Khadija

he had to talk to the most beloved in order to get over his worldly Beloved.

So that's that type of relationship. That's the image. That's the impression along with brother Dharma, and Harvard, we talked about that should define love and marriage, in your mind and in your hearts. It's not a hopeless prospect. It's not some major compromise that you make. It's not some miserable, like, you know, future in existence, or it doesn't demand it doesn't require you it doesn't ask you to live a life that is displeasing to Allah. love and marriage is a part of the passion part of the deal. And now I want to go back to where I was.

Started off. So when I read you that narration where the Prophet of Allah sallallahu Sallam is saying that Allah is more merciful Allah's mercy upon his slaves is greater than the mercy of a mother to her child. The reason why I brought that up is realize and understand that believe alone will not leave you

alone will not leave you hanging, Allah subhanaw taala will give you love, and Allah squanto will give you a companion to spend his life with, and Allah subhanaw taala will give you the most amazing partner in life, who will be your best friend in this world,

who will be your best friend in this world. And so you have to believe that Allah loves you so much mercy on you, he takes care of you. He's given you everything that you have, from the roof over your head to the car that you came in here to the food that you eat, to the eyes, and the ears and the nose and the arms and the legs and the functioning body and organs, unless given you everything.

And Allah will give you this. So young people have to learn to believe that Allah will take care of me. And Allah will not make me live life without experiencing love. But leave that and make dua for that. And Allah will give it to you. Musa alayhis salam was sitting under a tree all by himself, he had to run away from his home yet to run away from his family. He didn't know anybody there. And he looked up at the sky and he said, Oh, Allah, I know you're going to take care of me.

I know you're going to take care of next thing, you know, a couple of young girls who he had helped get some water out of a well come to get them and say our father's asking for you. He goes over to the father's to the to the this elders house. And the elders says, I'd like to give you a job. And I'd like to marry one of my daughters to

a job and away.

Because what because two thumbs up, all right? Because why? Because he looked up at the sky. And he said, Oh Allah, you'll take care of me. I know, I believe you'll take care of. So Allah will take care of us, you have to believe that you have to know that. The next thing that I wanted to mention,

you know, kind of somewhat conclude with this.

Is that removing the guilt?

See, I'm basically trying to do away with some of the key misunderstandings or misconceptions that we have regard regarding this topic. All right. So the first one is to do away with the negativity, it is a beautiful thing. And Allah squanto will bless you with that beautiful thing if he hasn't already.

Number two, is removing the guilt.

All right.

A lot of times in this in the confusion

that comes from the environment, the world that we live in today, where we are constantly trying to find spirituality, emaan, or relationship with Allah.

And trying to balance and temper that out with the world of temptation, the environment, the culture of temptation that we live in today.

And we go, all the lines get crossed, all the wires get crossed. Right. So when you're told that something is wrong, and something is bad, you can accidentally

you know, misappropriated you can you can wrongly apply it somewhere else. And everything ends up all mixed in jumbled and cross, like a lot of the word brother of the man does here in Knoxville. I mean, I feel like one of the most amazing things that he does, like just part of who he is and what he does, and what he has been able to accomplish. And he's doing that here for you guys now, is trying to again, deconstruct this misconception, this misnomer, that fun is bad.

That there is a such thing as good fun, because a lot of people like to have fun in a bad way. And so there's been so much discourse that when you start to get a little bit more religious, and I put that in quotation marks, because it's again, it's really funny how we apply that turns. But nevertheless, when you decide that you want to start to go closer to Allah, you want to develop a relationship with Allah, when the first thing that hits home is Oh, funnies bad, right? Fun equals bad. Fun is fun is not good. There's no room for fun. So what he does a huge part of what he does, as simple as it might seem, as you know, basic as it might seem, but it's profound. And that is no

fun is good. It's just you have to figure out what is the nature of the activity that you are deriving pleasure from. So similarly, here, removing the guilt, love itself and forget about level to get down to even a more basic level. I'm going to talk about something it might raise some eyebrows with some of the older folks but hear me out. attraction,

attraction, feeling attracted to someone. Right? That is not a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing. We're not where do we get this from?

Again, I won't give you any logical proof on my part. I'll follow hefeweizens lead and just read the book of Allah surah number three surah Allah Emraan in the very beginning of the surah number 14 Allah says Zoo nlnac

Zoo in Alina see, it has been beautified for the people

It has been made beautiful for the people, it has been made attractive for the people, what has been beautified what has been made attractive what has been made appealing for the people who push out

the love, the desire the inclination to fulfill your lust and your desires, attraction Hoku chahatein and Misha, and not only that, but Allah mentions the opposite gender in the opposite spot, the opposite gender, because Allah subhanaw taala is saying that feeling attracted to the opposite gender is something that is programmed inside of you. I go as far as saying that, you know, feeling attraction for the opposite gender means that you're okay.

It's actually like,

relief. No, and I know laughing and joking. But seriously, it means that you're happy and you're healthy. Clap your hands. My kids, you know, you don't have kids when I do that. Right. But so it means that you're okay. Now, of course, the crux of the conversation is what? What do you do with that? How do you react to that? How do you go about in now trying to fulfill those desires, trying to act on that attraction that you felt that is what makes your bridge spiritual? In this world, and then the next, that's what's gonna make you or break you.

So of course, we go about the appropriate means. And we that's where marriage comes into play. Right. That's why we've been talking about marriage. That's why we want to talk to you about this key relationship of marriage. But I wanted to take it out to a more basic level because we need to remove the guilt. We live with guilt, we walk around with guilt, for stuff we don't need to be guilty about, you know, Subhanallah our Deen is so amazing that even in regards to the sin, they're supposed to be remorse. And there's supposed to be repentance, but you're not supposed to live like a life of guilt.

That's why we have the concept of that's why they like to do this stuff. So that's why we have the concept of Toba. That's why we have the concept of dobot repentance, you turn it around

to make a U turn

to make a U turn. That's it.

Right. So I wanted to talk about a little bit I wanted to at least briefly address this. And that was removing the guild's from this entire discussion, this entire con conversation. And lastly, I'm just going to end up concluding here with where I started from and understand one thing. And so this while we a lot of this talk has been kind of geared towards maybe some of the younger people and people who aren't married yet and kind of giving them a better perspective as to what is love? What is marriage? What are relationships in Islam, but I want to give something even to the youngins. All right, but this is also a little bit of maybe, you know, advice, a little bit of just, you know,

just a little tidbit I'd like to share with even some of the older folks who are married here with us today in the in the machine. And that is understanding one basic principle, one basic rule of their man hit the nail on the head when he said, who create, I'm gonna ask you some Sunday school, I like to call them Sunday school questions, who created us?

Who puts love in our hearts? That's it. That's all you have to know. That's all you have to understand. So if Allah is the one that created all of us, He created you and your spouse or your future spouse in sha Allah. And Allah subhanaw taala is the one who has put love in your hearts, or will put love in your hearts. If you're not married yet, then that means who should you?

What should you make sure, who should you maintain a very strong relationship with if you want to maintain love in your marriage and in your spousal relationship? Allah, you got to stay good with Allah, if you want to stay good with your other relationships, because that's where Buttercup that's where blessing comes from a lesser source of butter got lots of source of blessing, and allies a source of love,

a lesser source of mercy and Rama. So if you want to maintain love, mercy Rama blessing Baraka in your marriage, in your personal relationship, you will maintain your relationship with the law, and you will make sure that your relationship with love stays strong, and they stay sound, we don't have enough time to talk about it. Maybe this will make for a good topic in the future. inshallah, when we have another conversation, but there's a very powerful I end up running sort of to Baccarat is number 238. where Allah says very carefully, very cautiously, very diligently watch over the prayers.

Watch over the prayers. But what's very interesting about that, it sounds like pretty straightforward advice. Right? Take care of the prayers. Got it. But what's interesting is that that ayah is in the middle of a passage where he talks about divorce.

10 is before that, start talking about divorce. And the next three, four is continue talking about divorce or marriage ending and things like that.

Now, the question begs What does watch your prayers, all of a sudden have to do with the topic at hand. It's almost like

Can introjection it's like a tangent. But the problem is Allah doesn't have two engines is the facade everything is divine and precise. Why did Allah bring up the prayers in the middle of a conversation about divorce? Well, because the scholars, the the Musashi room, the scholars of Tafseer, they explained to us that our last panel with Allah is reminding us about the prayers, because when a couple is going through a rough patch, and they're at the brink of divorce, maybe what they need to do in order to start fixing their relationship is go back and look at their relationship with Allah. Maybe they're struggling in their relationship with Allah, and that has

stripped their home that has stripped their marriage that has stripped their relationship of its bark and its blessing and it's loving it's compassion and mercy. So go back and inject some love and compassion and mercy and Buttercup from Allah back into your home back into your relationship by fixing your relationship with Allah. Spirituality strengthens relationships, pray, make dua, connect with Allah and that will help you in your personal relationships. It's something really, really important to think about, and I'll leave you with this last Hadith of the prophets, a legend that emphasizes his point. It's like all in one beautiful, the wisdom of the prophets a lot is everyone's

a Salah. LaValle, who is

the wisdom and the depth of the Prophet ceylonese system is unbelievable. His words are profound. They're deep. They've been studied for 1400 years and we're not done. We haven't even gotten started. All right, the prophet of Allah salatu salam says Rahim, Allahu Allah. May Allah have mercy May Allah bless May Allah shower and rain has mercy down upon a husband.

Who when he wakes up for fudger, to pray in the early morning, and he finds his wife still asleep having difficulty waking up.

He goes ahead and helps her out and wakes her up to pray with him.

And then he turns around, he says, may Allah bless me alive mercy May Allah and rain and shower down his blessings and his mercy upon the wife who wakes up to pray and she finds her husband having a little bit of trouble waking up. And she helps him up and she wakes him up to pray with her.

That's that's marriage. That's that that's this topic and that's something we really have to understand. We have to wrap our heads around. There's a lot going on.