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Far as long as she could remember, music was always a huge part of her life
From adoring fans to bright lights
cameras to that carpets, it never seemed enough, there was always something that wasn't quite right
Allah, Allah was what was missing
This is My Next Record
My truth when I was young
was
music
I could not live my life without music
I felt like there are times where I would just cry to myself
and I think to myself like why am I crying like I have everything in life. You know
But that was an emptiness inside my heart, even though my truth was that. It was just
You know the culture that I was living
It was, it was me. The truth was just it was just that you know.
I didn't..Islam, the truth of Islam my fitrah
was not.. it was blurred
It was very blurred when I was young. So my truth was that, like just me as an artist
Portraying to be this you know this person
in this music industry
And that was me. That was me, that was who I was trying to to be I was trying to portray myself
build myself that way
Assalammualaikum Sheikh
Waalaikumsalam warrahmatullah
Alhamdulillah I wanted to ask you just a couple of questions about
finding our purpose in life. The one thing that I've learned is that
Our main purpose is to strive for Jannah
And..but sometimes you know
I find it quite, not say difficult
But I want to know how do we get to a place where our sole purpose is to please Allah Subhana Wata'ala?
Because at times and many times we can get very distracted
It's one of those
Balancing acts, it's a really difficult thing. You know on one hand the Prophet SAW tells us that this dunya is
..it's a beautiful green place. It's full of
amusement and joy and happiness and the pursuit of success in it sometimes overcomes
Our shortsightedness of seeing the next day
And that's why Allah always tells us.. look towards tomorrow
Don't look towards today, so that balance is something that has always been a great challenge for us as Muslims
There's four things that affect us. And the ulama' Al Imam Ahmad. He said in a poem he said
Ad-dunya, wa nafsi, wa shaitaan, wal hawwa, so those are the four things that we can't compromise on
We can't let our inner dialogue, our inner soul keep us away from doing good
Sometimes it's through cowardice. So we got to be more brave
Sometimes you know there's something that we can do. Should I go to Hajj?
But if I go to Hajj then I don't have savings that I wanted to get married with that money
And then your inner dialogue. It makes you so afraid of losing something from the dunya
that something that is an obligation. So the thing that holds you back is that fear that cowardice of losing something from the dunya
So overcome that inner dialogue, that we must be more brave
...Allah says treat him as an enemy
How do you treat an enemy? Someone you keep at a distance, is someone you put boundaries and borders from them.
It's someone you don't follow their leanings or footsteps
You don't even come near them. And a friend of an enemy can't really be your friend. Can't be really trusted
Don't don't make those who have given their life in satanic pursuit
To be the ones you rely on in life. The third is, the beauty of the dunya; it's halal
And it's good, but it's excess is
desensitizing to the needs
and the blending of needs and wants. And sometimes you know you'll talk about something that you want as if it's something you need
What does that mean? And you can save yourself from Jahannam with a cup of coffee
You know if you buy three cups a day or two cups a day and you say no
I'm gonna buy just two and that other cup of coffee
I'm gonna give it to a you know charity. You save yourself with something that small
It's something that isn't significant and that's how the Sahaba used to look at things
That's the meaning of the hadith where the Prophet
would say, "You can save yourself from Jahannam with half of a date" ..It's not even a whole date
It's not even a whole cup of coffee even the money of half a cup of coffee
Can can be the matter of life and death in the next life. So the fourth thing is you know so the dunya your soul
the Shaitaan and our base desires. You know, Shahwa is one of the two reasons
why we do the things that we do and the sins that we commit
There's only two types of categories of sin. One category is related to the doubts and the second is
ShaHwa the problem really is that a person has made a choice in their
dissatisfaction with what they have. I want more
and I'm gonna take it even if I know it's the wrong way to take it and that's unacceptable
Assalammualaikum everyone it's good to have you all here alhamdulillah
Look, I think it's always good to remind each other of different things. And the Prophet SAW
You know he receives in the Quran the command.. you remind them always always remind each other
...because the reminder benefits those who have belief
Those who believe are the ones who benefit from hearing it more than one time and anytime you hear something you already know and it's
Ah I already know this, it's about something that relates to your Iman that is incorrect because the more you hear of the simple things
the more it should strengthen your faith
And really one of the things that I wanted to
speak to you a little bit about today for just a couple of minutes is about our purpose
And that question has always been asked
You know why am I here? And even if you don't ask it consciously, you ask it subconsciously. And even if it's not
subconsciously in the deeds and in the ways that we act in life, we ask it
So when we talk about the purpose of life
It's to look at life in that most generic general perspective
That it's everything Allah wants us that He loves of us to do whether it's something just a belief in your heart about someone
You took
optimism and you filled it. You know someone who's having it, and you gave him optimism
"Don't worry in shaa Allah things will get better" And the only
reason they felt better was because you shared a kind word or an exchange with them
Or it could be that you did something physical or something tangible, financial, or it could just be that
some, a word of kindness that you said
May Allah Subhanawa Ta'ala allow us to achieve that that purpose. I leave you with this hadith of the Prophet SAW
where he said
... "The best of you all O human beings O Muslims is the one who is best in serving others"
That's profound. Like what's your purpose?
It's right there. The best of you is the best in caring, healing, helping, serving, protecting
enriching the life of others. May Allah Subhanaw Taala
Make us of them, Allahuma Ameen. If you think of the people who are really meaningful to you
They will have that quality, the people you really love and respect, they will be those who've done good things
Not just for you and not just because they were obligated
But because it was the right thing to do and they were generous in their spirit to share it with you. May Allah bless us
I used to dream of being that next big star on stage
Every page my life since that day was dedicated to the seriousness of play
My heart dance to the rhythm of the beats that beat the melodies of life that dropped rhyme and reason until it became my season
24/7, see
I was high on a tribe called quest cos I was on a quest to find love. You know, real love
Finding my way to set my heart free
and searching my roots and asking myself who am I? And what's my purpose in life?
Those words were like a soundtrack that followed me everywhere every day
My life was like a musical
My life was music
When it comes to being on the straight path
We know there are there are major major signs and minor signs
When we can detect whether we are on the straight path or not, but I'd like to ask you
What are some of the some really minor really subtle signals that we can detect
when we are kind of straying a little bit off, of path, sidetracked because sometimes we kind of miss this?
Look the ulama'
they actually speak a lot in detail about these kind of things
One of the things that we don't hear enough of is something called 'firasah'. 'Firasah' is this intuition it's a spiritual intuition
where your heart tells you a problem before they arise
And it's really 'firasah' is another fancy word for 'taqwa'
You know you have a consciousness in your heart, and your your heart becomes a compass
It leads you not north, south, east or west, but it leads you to halal and away from haram
It leads you to the Sunnah and away from Bida'ah. It leads you to
Making good choices in random things in life. It could be about the job that I will take or the person
I marry and so on. Imam Al Shafie Rahmatullahi alaihi would say
...a scholar is the one who practices whatever
they know so once you get into that habit of doing by the things that you know
Allah blesses you with hikmah and that wisdom is to put everything in its right place
So you begin to make effective choices and everything in your work and your studies and your social settings
and the best outcome of hikmah is that your heart
then begins to lead you, and that's a sure sign that you're heading in the right direction
Secondly is that your salah becomes more conscious and more meaningful
That when you pray you feel your prayer. I don't know if that makes sense for some people.. being in the moment
Yeah, yeah your salah isn't just emotions
it's not just the up and down and the the idle zikr
One of the things that the prophet and Allah warns us about in the Quran
...You know some when they stand to prayer
It's just because people expect them to do it
.. Their mention and remembrance of God in their prayers is seldom, and it's deficient
and therefore when you see in your salah
It's not about choosing the shortest surah. It's not about hurrying it
It's not about catching the prayer, but it's about doing it at its earliest time
it's about maintaining your wuduk in a right way and
Making sure that it's done correctly
It's about setting the place cleanly and you know having that that is a process
It's a sure sign that Allah is leading you in the right direction
The further I go on this journey to seek my truth
I feel much more at peace and closer to Him than I've ever felt before
The things I've learned along the way has really opened my heart and eyes to Allah's mercy
Assalammualaikum everyone
One of the journeys that we're all on whether we know it or not is a search for truth
And you know
What is truth? You know Al Haq is one of the names of Allah SWT
And it's one of the names of Allah that Allah
uses about certain things. So the day of judgement is referred to Al Haq
you know it's the day where the reality the truth is revealed
and Allah talks about this in Surah Kahf
That at the moment of our death..
Your eyes that were veiled see the truth that you were blinded to?
Now the search for truth is twofold
The first is actual, it's by reading and studying and the second it's spiritual, by praying for Allah to
reveal it to you
There's those two levels of hidayah
Hidayah where you have to chase it you have to read and you have to study and you have to ask questions and you remove
doubts from your heart, and it's like Prophet Ibrahim
He believes in Allah everything about Allah, but he still asks Allah, "Show me with my own eyes
how you bring the dead to life?" In Surah Al-Baqarah?
Allah says..is it because you don't believe? He says no
I believe O Allah... but I want doubt to be out of my heart
It's not that Ibrahim doubts God, but he his heart needs that solidification
So that truth comes with a search, with you reading and studying and asking and asking one person and the next. So you have to
have to ask the next person. You know don't say "Well I asked Brother Yahya and he didn't know that's it
I asked someone." You have to search for the truth
The second level of Hidayah is you have to pray for the truth and that proof that level of iman only comes
When Allah reveals it to you because you've made yourself worthy of it
...those who are guided I
I give them more guidance, meaning those who follow what they already know
So if you want Allah to bless you by praying your sunnah prayers you've got to do your five
obligatory prayers right. You're never ever ever gonna get the sunnah twelve raka'at sunnah rawwatib
down pat unless you actually pray the five correct. and unless you do those 12 correct, you're never gonna pray at night
It's like do those sunnah
and do the five prayers together and Allah will open your heart to that and with that that level of Hidayah
increases when you practice the simple things that you know and I leave you with this verse where Allah speaks about those before us
...when they left what they know they should follow I turned their hearts from regretting it
If any time we do something not right, and we don't regret it
it's because Allah has made a heart blind to that feeling of pain
of having gone far away from him. May Allah Subhana Wa Ta'ala
give us the joy of Hidayah and
keep us far away from dalal and let us know when we've fallen astray and may Allah open our hearts to the truth
Allahuma Ameen
Okay Sheikh we're gonna be talking a little bit about
narcissism, and how we are all living in the age of the boom of social media, where we find
there are a lot of people even youth or maybe some adults as well
who are perhaps oversharing their lives. Who are basically
using social media for
sometimes wrong purposes and
becoming very self indulged. Is this
something that will affect us in terms of our Deen and do you think that this is a problem?
Look, Alhamdulillah Wa Salatuwassalamu Alaa' Rasulillah
Social media is a
it's a powerful powerful tool
and any tool can be used and misused
and you know initially when Facebook arrived in Egypt for example
Azhar issued a fatwa that Facebook was Haram because in that particular year
They had a spike of
three hundred thousand
divorces. Now of course Azhar university and and the Muftis office has a Facebook page
And they haven't taken off their fatwa that you know Facebook is Haram meaning
It's Haram if it's used in a sinful way, but the thing I think that's important is not to live a fake life
What do I mean by this fake life? The balance I think that most people lose is
"Is this really me?"
Am I just putting the nice face of me and the Prophet SAW warns us about
A person, he says before the day of judgment there will be people who will have two faces, where they meet one group of people with that
Face and they show another face to another group of people. And I firmly believe that that's something that relates to social media. It relates
to how we project our images. So all of a sudden there's research now that shows that people who share
happy family photos
and happy kids photos are really the ones that are having the most difficult home lives
with their families and their wives and their children and they try to
overcompensate by doing those kind of things. So research is really quite rife. Initially
the internet was something that you know you can read in that late 90s early 2000s about internet addiction
And there's people who got into it, you know addicted. You don't hear that that anymore. People have just gotten accustomed to this new thing that
it's like oxygen
I remember reading in 1994 in one of the science journals that they're setting up a system called oxygen
And basically what it meant was that the
intertwining of technology will be like oxygen you don't know your breathing, and you won't know that you're using it
And that's really where we are today from your watch to your shoe
to the feet steps to how you sleep and the rhythms of your heart
and all this kind of thing is collected data. All of that builds within us a perception that we're
impregnable. I know so much about myself. I know how well I sleep. I know you know, and I can share this with other people
instantaneously. Rumors today spread
not even like wildfire, it's almost instantaneous
You can put something on about someone whether true or not true really makes no difference that decimates their life and
those kind of social ills are really
becoming a pandemic it's like everywhere in the world
At that time I was about 18, 19
and validation from people was such a big thing for me at that point of my of my life
I wanted to be as good as the boys because I was pretty much one of the only
female MCs at the time, so I I felt like I had so much to prove
not just to the boys
but also to my family as well because I was
so into it
like my parents were not very happy with me doing this and so I really wanted to prove to them that I was in I was
doing it seriously, and then I could actually do it as a career and so that was my striving
I really wanted to to be the best that I could be at that point
However, you know getting mixed up with this whole party lifestyle didn't help
I probably would have been better than I actually was but you know
But that was it that was really you know validation and getting respect, earning respect from my peers
from the industry
Trying to get my parents to really kind of like give me the blest their blessings for me to do this
and so at a very young age, you know I was very concerned with that and and nothing else and the whole idea of
pleasing Allah Subhana Wa Ta'ala was was not there. It was completely not there and so
But you know what the thing is alhamdulillah I think at that time we didn't have Twitter
Facebook Instagram whatever. So validation, getting validation and
respect from from my peers my family and things like that was very important to me
Alhamdulillah, I'm actually very blessed that we didn't have social media back then so we didn't have the you know the luxury of actually trying
to to show ourselves to more people and getting their validation and just depending on that because you know I feel that
even at that time when when everything depended on what people said about me
You know it would have, I would have crashed many times because of that. So you know alhamdulillah for that blessing
Just one last question, I just want to know because of this social media a lot of people
want validation from other people and not Allah SWT? How do we counter this?
Look my father he used he still says to me
You know sometimes I get in and get a bit down or something
You know something doesn't go right someone said something, or you know that upset me and my dad would say, does he pay your rent
and I say no. He goes then why are you worried? Like this person what you know who are you?
Do they pay you anything? Who are they? Why is it, are they your boss, if it's your boss
yes, you should worry about your job performance. If it's your wife.. it's yeah
it's important to think about it
But if it's random people who you're trying to find validation from, you're looking in the wrong place for it
and the stages of
consolidating that faith begins with knowing who Allah is
Developing a certainty by answering questions
we have doubt about
We can't leave lingering questions about Allah or the Prophet that are in our heart
and not ask them. Allah wants us to ask those questions. And from that certainty we begin to develop an acceptance
When you're certain you accept even if you're not doing you accept it. Yeah, I should be doing it
I'm not doing it, but I accept it. And from acceptance you get to submitting to it, and then you begin to practice
as much of it as you can. From that practice you become more truthful with Allah and being truthful with Allah is
the step that's right before sincerity and
once you become sincere and you maintain that sincerity you reach that final level of worship
Which is mahabba, love, and you become one who's in love with Allah more than in love with what Allah has created
And most of us we have trouble in life because we love what Allah has given us
more than the one who's given it to us. We're holding on to the things rather than the bestower of the things
Alhamdulillah jazakallahu khair Sheikh. I learned so much and so many things that I have to really improve upon when it comes to living in the world that we
live in today and striving for Jannah in shaa Allah
After such a meaningful day it was time to let loose at the beautiful Lancelin Sand Dunes
I had my first go at sand boarding and after a few tries, I finally did it
Sliding down the soft white sands was so exhilarating. I can't wait to see what else Perth has to offer