Sunday, February 2, 2014

Ikhlas (sincerety)

(a talk by Shaykh Kamaluddin Ahmad)

There are three levels by which one can draw close to Allah.

The first is knowledge, the second is action upon that knowledge, the third is sincerity. We are most lacking in sincerity. If a person has sincerity, Allah will bring him towards action and knowledge.

The pious people used to end their nights of worship with asking for forgiveness (istaghfar).

It is one thing to do action, it's another thing for it to be accepted by Allah. There is the fear that the worship may not be accepted.

We should try to give our best rather than settling for average. We should want Allah to be happy with us.

A major part of sincerity is intention. The power of intention makes us sincere. We should thing that there is no value in life besides those things that make Allah happy.

A general intention we can make for any action "I want to do this for the pleasure of Allah".

A mujahid, a scholar and a qari will be brought before Allah on the day of judgement and they will be sent to hell because they were not sincere. What will happen to the sinner, the lazy, the unworshipful one? We should be scared. We should think and reflect, become people of knowledge and action and sincerity.

If we free ourselves from the sin of riyaa (showing off) we will free ourselves from the sin of takabbur (arrogance).

Another sin that comes from wanting to be in the spotlight is envy. If you only care about pleasing Allah, you will not care who gets the spotlight. It is a devastating sin.

If we save ourselves from these sins, we get the blessing of humility.

If we acquire two types of sincerity, all the rest will follow. One is sincerity as an ummati of the Prophet (peace be upon him), to follow the Sunnah, to be like him. We should try to be as sincere an ummati as sincere was the Prophet as a prophet.

The second is to be a sincere abd of the Rab. As sincere with Him as He is with us.




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