Yasmin Mogahed: Building a Balanced Personality

Building a Balanced Personality

Ustadha Yasmin Mogahed

ILM FEST 2015

MCA Santa Clara, CA

1/10/15

Why do our youth have unbalanced personalities?

- We go to Sunday school and we are given a list. A list of halal and haram. A list of do's and don'ts. We are taught about hellfire when we don’t yet understand the mercy of Allah. So we haven’t been given a full picture of what Islam really means or who Allah really is. What is our purpose? What does Islam really mean? The youth are growing up and they have these concepts misunderstood.

- If you are constantly telling your children you better not mess up because the police will get you. And you use it to control your children. the whole idea of like the police is coming to get you… how are they going to feel about the police when they grow up? They will grow up with an idea of avoidance of the police. We create this kind of relationship for our kids with God. Parents mean well but they think this is the way we have to teach. I want to control their behavior so I use Allah. We are teaching them to want to avoid or stay away from Allah. Because their fear is not balanced with hope and the other characteristics of Allah.

- So kids grow up and they want nothing to do with religion. It just looks like just a bunch of rules. Boiled down to how you dress, eat, rituals and that’s it. And the heart of islam has been lost. Why do I do these things? And how do I motivate myself from the inside out?

- We teach them from the outside in, we start with the rules, when it should be the opposite. Look at how Muh (S) was instructed, it did not start with the rules. If the first verses were revealed you cannot drink alcohol or zina, then no one would have listened at all to the message. The first verses that were revealed were about building a relationship with Allah and a concept of what this life is and what the next life is and who Allah is and what my relationship with Allah is. If you study the makkan verses they were about belief. Then when rules come down, we can say we hear and we obey.

- When you love someone, think about human love, then you will do whatever pleases them and you will find happiness in pleasing them and fear in displeasing them, without force. But tell someone to do something difficult for someone they don’t love is very hard. Is it hard for a mother to take care of her baby? Do you have to pay her to do? No. And she doesn’t quit, because of love and mercy, because she loves her baby.

- Begin with the love of Allah, when you build that foundation, then you can start introducing the rules. So later when they migrated to madinah, then they were told to give up alcohol, about hijab, riba, zina, they immediately hear and obey, sami3na wa ata3na. We hear accounts of how they would immediately submit to the commands. This is what happens when you love someone. When you don’t love someone it becomes a burden.

- The problem today is our worship has become a burden. Because we haven’t built the relationship and attachment to Allah. We are trying to do this whole thing the wrong way. We teach rules and think that’s how we are going to make an lslamic personality. How do we make it easy to follow those rules.

- Hadith we grew up learning - where p(S) says the haram is clear and halal is clear and what is between is the doubtful matters. If we don’t want to fall into the haram we should not go close to doubtful matters. So staying away from doubtful matters will protect us from falling into the haram. When I first learned this hadith, I did not know there is more to the hadith. But there is more to the hadith - indeed in the body there is a lump of flesh, if sound then the rest of body is sound, if corrupt then the rest of the body is corrupt.

- The first part of the hadith is about halal and haram. The second part tells us how
how to make it easy to stay away from haram. The answer - if you rectify the heart, the entire body will be rectified. The heart serves a very important purpose. The heart is the command center of the body. If you work on that lump of flesh, it will affect the rest of the body.

- That’s the reason why we are told in the Quran on tongue of Ibrahim (AS). ‘and do not disgrace me on the day when they are all brought back, the day where wealth and children will be of no benefit. except for the one who comes to Allah with a heart that is sound.’ that is the only thing that will benefit a human being.

- So why am I here? To build a sound heart. So that when you return to Allah you will be successful. Anything else won’t matter in the end. What’s going to matter, that when you return to Allah, what is the condition of your heart.

Practical ways to build this type of heart and personality.

- Allah and His messenger have already given us a description of balance. The secret has already been given us. We are like the one who the doctor gives us a prescription and we put it in the drawer and forget about it.

- If we study the physical world, we will learn about the spiritual world. Because there is one Creator. So if we want to know how to take care of our heart we can look at how we can take care of our body. What is the urgent thing we need to stay alive - breathe. Oxygen is the most important need to keep the body alive. Same thing with the heart, heart also needs oxygen. So #1 what is the oxygen of the heart? The remembrance of Allah is the oxygen of the heart. So a person who is not remembering Allah or not remembering Him enough, it’s like someone who is not getting enough oxygen, they get very weak and can become sick.

- ThikrulAllah includes all remembrance of Allah first and foremost in Salat. You can’t have the discussion about the path to Allah without Salat. Because the first question we are asked about on the day of Judgement is Salat. If the person’s salat is in order then he will be successful. and if not then they fail. We often get caught up in our work, our dawah, community work. If you get so caught up in your planning that you miss your salat, this shows a mis-alignment of our priorities.

- The Fard is first. Hadith - the things which Allah has made obligatory, the 5 prayers, treatment of parents, will be the way to get to Allah. ‘Then my slave continues to do the extra things (nawafil) and continues to do that until I love him. Then I become his hearing, sight and what he wants I will give him.’ But you can’t go through that process unless you start with the fard. You have to do it in the way Allah has prescribed. You have to start with salat. Then going into thikr and dua. The more thikr we do the more oxygen we are pumping into the heart. 

- When we look at how we approach salat, it’s very problematic sometimes. Would you ever hear, I’m at the mall right now so I'm not going to breathe right now. I’m at an important meeting so I’ll breathe later when I get home. We don’t say this because we would die if we stopped breathing! Surat al Baqarah paraphrased ‘if we are going to benefit from the book at all, we have to have a very strong belief in the unseen’ just because you don’t see the heart dying, doesn’t mean it’s not dying, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

- We take care of our body, but we neglect our spiritual soul. Example: ramadan. We miss fajr what is your reaction? It’s the end of the world because you missed suhor. Let’s be real. Some will even start crying as they think about having to go so many hours without eating and drinking. So for one month it would be the end of the world to miss fajr. The day after eid -you miss fair what is your reaction? The point is if I miss fair for one month it’s the end of the world because I missed a meal. But the rest of the 11 months we’re cool in missing fajr. It’s no problem if my heart misses a meal. 

- What happens to your body in 100 years, it becomes a part of the ground, it’s not going to be alive. You can’t argue with that. What happens to your soul , it remains, it goes to a different realm but it continues to exist. I have one thing, the body, that is temporary, and I have another that is lasting. Which one am I taking care of? We are so concerned about taking care of the body- what is passing away, and we have neglected what is lasting. It’s a misunderstand of reality. My concerns and worries are about things that are passing away. Except for Allah and what I did for Allah. So if I look at what gives me anxiety, worry, concerns me.. what is it about?

- Hadith about the two groups: there are some who make this life their primary concern, and others who make the hereafter their primary concern.

- When this life is your primary concern:
1) Poverty will be put between their eyes. Very interesting expression. What would happen if I always have something hanging in front of my eyes? I would always see myself as poor. I never feel like I have enough. Feeling that no matter what you have it’s never enough. It’s a lack of satisfaction and contentment. You cannot have true contentment while the heart is in love with dunya. I keep running after money but I still feel poor. There’s always something else to get. There’s always a new model and I never feel like I have enough.

2) Your matters become scattered. Internally, externally, emotionally scattered.

3) Nothing of this life will come to you except what was decreed for you anyways.

- When you make the hereafter your primary concern:
1) Allah puts contentment in their heart. No matter what hardships they face in their life, internally they are at peace. 

- I have a friend who’s daughter was born normally but when she turned 3 the school tells her your daughter suddenly stopped talking. Doctor says she has rare genetic disorder where she will slowly lose all her faculties until she dies, and most likely won’t live beyond age of 12. Then she has a second daughter, at age of 3 again stops talking. Doctor tells her second daughter also has MPS. Then she has a third daughter, also stops talking and also has MPS. She has to watch each and every one of them lose their faculties. All 3 of them are older now and are in wheelchairs, they can’t even swallow. They can’t swallow their saliva or else they will choke. So she has to constantly suction. I thought - have you ever thought about thanking Allah for being able to swallow your saliva?! Then she had a 4th child with severe autism. Btw, this woman is always smiling. I visited her, she said, 'I’m drowning in gratitude.'' It blew me away, because we have nothing close to her life. We get in a traffic jam and we get upset. She is happier than all the people who have the money and power. How is that possible? That is the sign of the existence of Allah. if Allah puts contentment in the heart, you are at peace no matter what happens.

- There is a troubling trend of celebrities dying of drug overdoses. Why? Why are they killing themselves? They have the things we are running after. Isn’t that what we spend our days and nights running after why aren’t they happy? Because you can’t get contentment of heart while chasing dunya.

2) Your affairs get in order. Matters will become easier for you. Some people say I am so busy. The answer is give a little extra time for thikr. Allah is the creator of time. Allah controls time. He can expand and contract time. Allah can allow you to do more in the same amount of time, it’s called baraka. When you give to Allah, Allah puts blessing. If you are having money problems, give a portion to sadaqa, Allah will increase it. P(S) told us that sadaqa does not decrease wealth. Same with time. When you give time for the sake of Allah, He increases your time.

3) The dunya comes to the person even if it hates to. The more you run after dunya the more it runs away from you. The more you run after Allah, dunya runs toward you. I’m talking about focus of the heart - the hadith is not talking about actions, it’s talking about your primary concern, the focus of your heart - what you stay up worrying about. When you go toward akhirah you get akhirah and this life. So what is the better deal?

- In taking care of the body, we need something else, we need to clean the body. What if someone said I don’t need to take a shower today because I did that last month. You don’t say that because you will get stinky and no one will come close to you. You will be building dirt on your body. The same with the heart. There is dirt that builds up on the heart, and that is from sin. The heart gets dirty. The way to clean the heart is through istighfaar and tawba. Repentance cannot be done once in ramadan and then you leave it for the rest of the year.

- In taking care of the body, we also need to protect it. What happens if I roll around in the dirt? Or go out in the cold without proper dress? I will be harming my body. Same with the heart, we need to protect the heart. We have to put guards around the heart. We wear clothes to protect us from the cold. When I have an expensive jewel I put it in a box in a safe, we lock our doors at night, we put a security system, we put a fence - layers of protection. Our protection for the heart is the daily athkar. That’s why it’s called hisnul muslim, the fortress of the Muslim.

- Then we have to protect the openings of the heart - the eyes, the ears, the mouth, and the environment. If I’m not guarding my mouth, it’s like pouring poison into my mouth. When I’m not guarding my ears, it’s like pouring poison into my ears. When I am not guarding my eyes, it’s like pouring poison into my eyes. So when I look at the haram, it affects my heart.

May Allah guide us to build sound hearts and balanced personalities in us and our children.