Silsilat Ibab al-Rahman (Ramadan lessons)

A daily lesson series by Omar Abdelkafy in the month of Ramadan on the attributes of "the servants of the Most Merciful" in Surat al-Furqan. The first episode opens with supplication for the community at the month's start, announces the daily program — the "servants of the Most Merciful" with their nine attributes — and grounds the theme that this world is an abode of trial, that humility, kindness to parents and charity are the practical path of servanthood in this month. ^{1 2}

• He opens with supplication at the start of the blessed month: praying for the community's advancement, honour and unity, mending rifts among Muslims, and softening rulers' hearts toward their subjects. ^{3 4 5}
• He announces a daily program in this time slot throughout the blessed month, expounding the "servants of the Most Merciful" — a distinguished, noble group — through the attributes drawn from Surat al-Furqan. ^{1 2}
• He explains that "servants of the Most Merciful" is an intensive form for the abundance of their worship: the believer never tires of remembering his Lord for a moment, remembers Him in ease so as not to forget Him, remembers Him in hardship, and remembers Him in wealth through spending and in poverty. ^{2 6 7}
• He holds that this world is an abode of trial, not of honour: what does the rich man do with his wealth, and the poor man with his poverty — citing Qarun, the landowner who said "I give life and I take it" and for whom God sank him and his abode into the earth, and the man of the two gardens who said "I do not think this will ever perish, nor that the Hour will be established". ^{8 9 10 11}
• He calls for renewing intention in Ramadan: that blessings — health, wealth, children, home, security and people's love — are God's gifts deserving gratitude, and that the servant is created from dust and does not deserve the blessing by himself. ^{11 12 13 14}
• He calls for humility: that man is dust and a breath, so he should not be proud before anyone — not before his brother for his standing, nor before his uncle for his status, nor before his neighbours, being worthier of mercy than them all. ^{13 15 16 17 18}
• He notes that in Ramadan homes hold many mushafs and fasters flock to the taraweeh prayer, and asks about those absent in the eleven preceding months — answering that the resolve came with the month. ^{18 19 20 21}
• He sets a practical program for the servants of the Most Merciful in Ramadan: attending prayer and taraweeh, reciting the Qur'an at home, reconciliation and fasting, noting that taraweeh is a sunna that should not divide Muslims or cause them to miss the obligation. ^{20 22 23 24}
• He discusses accumulated Ramadan fasting: one who did not fast for many years — missed days are made up, repentance is offered, and negligence is regretted; rights owed to God lie between servant and Lord, while rights owed to people are returned to their owners. ^{25 26 27 28}
• He closes with an introduction to the daily Ramadan program and the recitation of "and the servants of the Most Merciful who walk the earth gently, and when the ignorant address them, they say peace". ^{29 30}

• He completes the introduction: the nine attributes in Surat al-Furqan are a general frame under which many subsidiary attributes fall, beginning with the first — humility — in God's words "who walk the earth gently". ^{31 32 33 34}
• He states that humility is the only blessing that is not envied: wealth is envied, knowledge is envied, children are envied, and standing is envied — but no one is envied for humility. ^{32 35 36}
• He details the faces of pride and envy: a story of one who envied his son for memorizing the Qur'an and feared he would forget — and pride was the ruin of Iblis, which its bearer should never let flourish. ^{36 37 38}
• He calls for kindness to parents: daughters who sleep until dawn until their mothers wake them to eat suhur with their fathers and brothers — and at the start of Ramadan children must please their fathers and mothers. ^{39 40 41 42}
• He states "you reap what you sow": seeds are requited — whoever presented evil finds it, and whoever sows thorns cannot expect grapes. ^{43 44}
• He discusses clean money: that people deal in lawful and unlawful — an employee on a modest salary looking at one who cannot even ride a train — and that wealth built on unlawful money is built on sand, with a call to account for one's sustenance. ^{45 46 47 48}
• He prescribes humility toward kin and scholars: that our elders should not let us down and our juniors should not be despised, and that we know our scholars their due — "blessed is he who is humble without diminishing himself". ^{48 49}
• He mentions the Prophet ﷺ's humility in serving his guests: "it is I who slaughtered the sheep, skinned it and cooked it, and it is I who gathered the firewood" — and he reserved no seat for himself among the Companions. ^{50 51 52 53}
• He digresses into stories of humility among caliphs and scholars — tales of sharing shade and walking with subjects — order held cautiously. ^{54 55 56 57}
• He calls for humility toward the weak: visiting mosques, prisoners and the sick, and being humble with the poor and those who lost their provider — for humility is a trait planted in children, not imposed. ^{58 59 60 61}

• He recalls that the previous lesson dealt with humility and states that what completes it is friendliness: whoever is humble draws near to people. He explains that the words wudd and mawadda are used for love, pointing to the Qur'anic mention of affection and mercy between spouses and to the promise that the Most Merciful will grant the believers affection. ^{62 63}
• He relates that Ibn Umar saw a man by the Kaaba and placed his own turban on the man's head; asked why he favoured him so, he answered that the man belonged to those his father Umar had been fond of, and he wished to keep up his father's friendship. ^{63 64}
• He holds that affection does not come out of an envious or rancorous heart: rancour shows on the face as anger and haughtiness, and such a person knows no affection with wife, child, relative or neighbour, so that his household thanks God when he falls asleep or travels. His reason is that the envier is absorbed by the blessing in another's hand and wishes it gone, and the more the blessing grows the more his rage and grief grow. ^{64 65 66 67}
• He defines friendliness as looking first at people's good deeds. In his view the essential difference between his contemporaries and the righteous early generations is that the latter were busy with their own faults rather than other people's, whereas today a person throws his own faults behind his back and spreads other people's out before him, and so falls into pride: so-and-so does not pray, so-and-so's daughter does not wear the headscarf. He urges whoever has been spared something to thank God for it instead of occupying himself with others. ^{68 69 70}
• He calls for treating the one who falls short as a patient: one prays for his healing, not against him. He divides people into the afflicted and the spared, urges praise of God for well-being and mercy toward the afflicted, and counts affliction in religion as its hardest kind. Advice and enjoining what is right, he says, must themselves be done in a right way, that is, with affection and mercy. ^{71 72 73}
• He distinguishes three terms: mutual mercy, which rests on the strength of faith; mutual affection, which rests on love; and mutual sympathy, which is people helping one another. He says of the Companions that one of them would put a date in his brother's mouth and find its sweetness in his own. ^{73 74 75 76}
• He holds that affection does not come from a hard heart, and that hardness of heart shows in the features of the face. He recalls the Qur'anic description of hearts that hardened until they were like stones or harder, although water bursts from some stones. The hard-hearted man, as he pictures him, never carried a child, never stroked his daughter's head, and never showed mercy to an orphan, a poor person or a widow. ^{76 77 78}
• To the obstacles to affection he adds miserliness: the miser, as he describes him, is stingy not only with money but with a kind word and kind treatment, for fear of being asked for something, and his motto is that each should keep to himself. Living for others as well as for oneself, in his view, is generosity and not failure, and the generous person stays affectionate and sympathetic. ^{79 80 81}
• He calls the people of affection "brothers of purity" and quotes a sage's judgement that they are the best gain of this world: an adornment in ease, a provision in hardship and a help against enemies. They attend one's celebrations and congratulations, stand beside one in a crisis, and defend one's name when one is spoken ill of in one's absence. ^{82 83 84}
• He cites a hadith, which he attributes to al-Bukhari's narration, to the effect that among those of the community most intense in love for the Prophet are people who come after him, one of whom would wish to have seen him at the price of his family and wealth. He comments that love for him makes one long to see him. ^{84 85 86}
• He ascribes to the Irish writer Bernard Shaw a saying to the effect that if Muhammad ibn Abd Allah were alive today he would solve all the problems of the age over a cup of coffee. His explanation is that the Prophet turned the rigid hearts of Mecca into soft hearts that held affection, and he gives as examples what Islam made of Umar and Khalid ibn al-Walid. ^{86 87 88}
• He passes on a maxim from the teachers of his childhood: kinship needs affection, but affection does not need kinship, so one may hold dear an American, a South African or a Scandinavian Muslim with no tie of blood. He attributes to Ja'far al-Sadiq the saying that a day's affection is a bond, a month's affection is kinship, and a year's affection is a tie of the womb for whose severing God holds one to account. ^{89 90 91}
• He lists the fruits of affection: it increases familiarity, wipes grudges out of society and makes people feel safe in their dealings. He calls overlooking each other's faults between spouses "the practice of overlooking", and urges seeking excuses for one's brother up to seventy; if none is found one says that he may have an excuse one does not know of, such as money trouble or an illness he keeps to himself. ^{91 92 93 94}
• He concludes that affection is a noble attribute of the servants of the Most Merciful, and that planting it requires uprooting what spoils the soil of the heart: envy, rancour, pride and looking down on people. Among those who have no affection he counts the bribe-taker, the embezzling employee and the overbearing manager who rates the one who bows before him as excellent and the one who keeps his self-respect as weak. He quotes the righteous as praying for mercy on whoever made them a gift of their faults, in the sense of welcoming sincere advice. ^{95 96 97}

• He moves to the second attribute in verse 63 of Surat al-Furqan: the reply of the servants of the Most Merciful when the ignorant address them. He asks who the ignorant one is, and answers that such a person may hold the highest degrees from Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne while being ignorant of religion, of the standing of scholars and of values; but the one meant in the verse is the person who behaves rudely and aggressively toward people. ^{98 99 100}
• He reports from the exegetes that the peace in the verse is a peace of parting and letting be, not a greeting. His example is the answer of Ibrahim to his father when the father's heart hardened and he threatened him: Ibrahim wished him peace and promised to ask forgiveness for him, and then each went his own way. ^{101 102}
• He asks why people cannot bear with one another, and criticises the husband who listens to every relative yet treats his wife's advice as idle talk and dismisses her as deficient and her opinion as worthless. He puts a question to him in the holy month: would you be content to marry your daughter to a man of your own character? He calls on him to stand before "the mirror of the self" and ask himself about his temper, his pride and his coarseness. ^{102 103 104 105}
• He holds that Ibrahim set a rule of hospitable manners when he brought his guests the calf and placed it close to them, sparing them even the reach of a hand. He suggests that the husband cook an iftar or suhur meal for his household once to give his wife a rest, and recalls that the Prophet used to serve his family, mending his sandal and patching his garment, and that his rank did not keep him from humility. ^{106 107 108 109}
• He tells of a scholar who said among his disciples that whoever saw the Prophet will not enter the Fire; one of them objected that Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl had seen him. The scholar replied that they did not look at him as the Messenger of God but as the orphan of Abu Talib. He ties this to the haughtiness of the notables of Quraysh at revelation coming to him rather than to their great men. ^{110 111 112}
• He divides those who wrong a person into three: one who does not know his worth, one who knows it and wants to belittle him, and one who has heard nothing of him but ill. In all three cases, he holds, the offence is good deeds that God has driven his way and a raising of his rank. He reports of a great man that he was not angered by someone who spoke of an evil not in him, because others spoke of a good not in him, so the one balanced the other. ^{112 113 114 115}
• He states that what counts is God's good pleasure alone: whoever pleases God at the cost of people's displeasure, God is pleased with him and makes people pleased with him, and whoever displeases God to please people, God is displeased with him and makes people displeased with him. ^{116 115}
• He explains "peace" as meaning that nothing but peace will come to the ignorant from the servants of the Most Merciful: a person is safe from them while with them and after leaving them. He then digresses to spreading the greeting of peace to those one knows and those one does not, and counts restricting the greeting to acquaintances among the signs of the Hour. His example is two neighbours in a lift who exchange the greeting time after time until affection, and perhaps a marriage tie, grows between them. ^{117 118 119}
• He asks what helps one bear with the ignorant, and answers that one excuses him for his ignorance of good conduct, and that forbearance comes by practising forbearance, patience by practising patience and knowledge by learning. He commends a deliberate feigning of not noticing, and advises parents not to punish a child the moment he errs but to remind him of it in a calm moment rather than a heated one. ^{120 121}
• He recalls that the Prophet was called a sorcerer, a soothsayer and a madman, and states that he never mounted the pulpit to deny it of himself but left the matter to God to defend him. He concludes that a person should leave it to God to ward off ill from him, and that those who wrong him expiate his sins and raise his rank. ^{122 123}
• After the break he states that this attribute has described the prophets and the righteous in every nation: the arrogant notables made light of prophethood and despised the bearers of the messages while knowing their standing, and the messengers bore with them until forbearance became second nature to them and they became models of it. ^{124 125 126}
• He says that the word halim, "forbearing", occurs in the Qur'an twelve times by his count: eight as an attribute and name of God, twice describing Ibrahim, once describing Isma'il, and once in the words of the people of Shu'ayb to him. He defines the forbearing person as one who says "peace" with his tongue and his limbs together. ^{126 127 128}
• He defines God's forbearance as not hastening punishment on the sinner, and contrasts it with what human beings would do if punishment were in their hands. He says that close to three billion people out of six deny God or ascribe to Him a child or a consort, and yet He has not withheld from them air, rain or provision. He cites Ibrahim's prayer for provision for those who believed and the divine answer that included those who disbelieved as well. ^{128 129 130 131 132}
• He states that God gives the gift before the asking: a person sleeps, digests his food, his heart beats and he breathes without asking his Lord for any of it, and likewise he is granted hearing, sight and understanding as he sits before the screen. ^{132 133 134}
• He guards against his words being taken as a call to passive reliance, and criticises those who plead that this world is the believer's prison while doing no work. He remarks that the watch by which the programme is timed is Swiss and the camera is not of Arab make, and that if everything returned to the country that made it people would be left without clothes. He calls for "marrying this world for the sake of the next": putting the world to work, and a community that produces rather than only consumes. ^{134 135 136}
• He closes by saying that production comes only from a heart joined to God and free of grudges, and asks how long the courts will be crowded with cases of divorce, inheritance and injustice. He swears that injustice will not be lifted from the community until it lifts the injustice among its own members, husbands and wives, children and relatives, and that mercy is obtained by showing mercy to one another: the elder to the younger, spouses to each other, parents and children. ^{137 138 139}

• He announces the third attribute of the servants of the Most Merciful, the one in verse 64 of Surat al-Furqan. He explains that the Arabic verb bata is said of anyone overtaken by night, whether he sleeps or not. ^{140 141}
• He describes the night prayer as an honour that God confers like a medal on whoever has served His religion and its call by day. He likens it to the student who shakes the hand of the head of state or the king on the platform only if he is first in his class; in the same way God wakes His servant as a mark of honour, to stand before Him prostrating, bowing and turning back to Him. ^{141 142 143 144}
• He relates that Ata ibn Abi Rabah, his mother and his wife used to divide the night into thirds and take turns standing in prayer. When his mother died he shared it in halves with his wife, and when his wife died years later he came to stand the whole night so that remembrance would not cease in his house. He says that the dwellers of heaven see a house in which the night is kept as shining, the way the people of the earth see the stars. ^{144 145 146 147}
• He anticipates his listeners' objection that this was the age of the Followers, with no television and no football matches broadcast at three in the morning. He answers that the matter is one of servanthood and nearness, and gives the example of the employee who, on learning that his minister exercises by the sea at five in the morning, would buy sports clothes and be there before him, and who, given an appointment at ten, would stand at his door from seven. He asks: what then of the Lord of humankind? ^{148 149 150 151}
• He says he does not ask people for the state of Ata's household, nor that of Abu Hanifa, of whom he mentions that he prayed the dawn prayer with the ablution of the night prayer for forty years, but for what suits today's weak faith, and through the whole year, not in Ramadan alone. The first degree of night prayer, for him, is keeping the night and dawn prayers in congregation, and then two units of prayer at any time of the night, even a quarter of an hour before dawn. ^{152 153}
• He states that the servant has a daily, a weekly, a monthly and a yearly scale and a scale for the whole of life, and that the scale of the day is the dawn prayer: whoever prays it on time begins the morning with an open heart and an appetite for life, and whoever rises after sunrise begins it sluggish and dispirited. He reports from the righteous that one who delays the morning prayer until after sunrise is still provided for, but blessing is withdrawn from his provision; and he counts among provision the obedience of children and the soundness of a spouse. ^{154 155 156 157}
• He quotes "the scholars of hearts" as saying: whoever tastes, knows. The sweetness of worship, for him, is felt and not described, like the scent of a perfume or the beauty of a flower, and he cites the hadith on tasting the sweetness of faith for one content with God as Lord. He distinguishes the pleasure of the senses, which passes when its cause passes, from the pleasure of the heart, which remains, and calls on a person to take up the night prayer out of conviction and not as an experiment. ^{157 158 159 160 161}
• He calls the last third of the night the moment of "the divine descent", and cites the hadith on the descent to the lowest heaven and the call: is there anyone seeking forgiveness, anyone with a need, anyone repenting. He adds that the supplication of the wronged at that hour is answered, and that supplications before dawn are "the arrows of destiny". ^{161 162 163}
• He proposes a graded programme for the whole year: waking half an hour before dawn, half of it for reciting the Qur'an and half for two or four units of prayer, kept up for three to six months. It is then raised to forty-five minutes: Qur'an, seeking forgiveness and prayer. After a year or a year and a half it becomes an hour divided into quarters: remembrance, blessings on the Prophet, Qur'an and two units of prayer. He says that one who perseveres then wakes without an alarm and it becomes a devotional habit for him. ^{163 164 165 166 167}
• He dwells on the words "for their Lord": the night prayer, for him, is the act of worship furthest from showing off, because it is between the servant and his Lord. He mentions that a Companion or a righteous man would slip from his bed as a mother slips away from her nursing child, so that his wife would not notice, and that one of the righteous, when his disciples saw his eyes red from weeping, would blame a cold in order to hide his deed. He pairs this with concealing charity so that the left hand does not know what the right has spent, in the sense of sincerity. ^{168 169 170 171 172}
• He lists the effects of keeping up the night prayer: less sleep together with more bodily and spiritual energy, and a clarity of mind that helps in pondering the Qur'an. He reports that al-Hasan al-Basri was asked about the radiance seen on his face and answered that they were people who had been alone with God in the darkness of the night, so He clothed them in His light. He passes on a traditional saying: whoever wants a companion, God suffices him; whoever wants an intimate, the Qur'an suffices him; whoever wants wealth, contentment suffices him; and whoever wants a preacher, death suffices him. ^{173 174 175}
• He likens the servant who has no secret deed between himself and God to a cheque with no funds behind it. He describes the believer's heart, softened by the night prayer, as "the central bank" that distributes to the other banks, meaning the limbs, which then spend in obedience. ^{175 176 177 178}
• He pictures hardness of heart through the man who leans his back against a pillar of the mosque on Friday to doze while the preacher reminds people of the Garden and the Fire. To those who think the night prayer too heavy for a student with examinations he replies that time is one of God's soldiers: it is with whoever fears God and against whoever disobeys. He states that the heart is the sultan of the body: if it fills with light, the eye sees, the ear hears and the hand reaches only toward good, and if it fills with darkness and rancour, the hand turns aggressive and the writer writes what tears homes down. ^{179 180 177}

• He reviews the attributes covered so far: humility, forbearance, affection and standing in prayer at night, even a little; then he moves to what is in verse 65 of Surat al-Furqan: the prayer of the servants of the Most Merciful that the torment of Hell be turned away from them. He marvels that such people seek refuge from the Fire, while the negligent person who does not pray, asked about his fate, answers that he is bound for the Garden because God is merciful. ^{181 182 183}
• He states that no one holds the keys of the Garden and the Fire or may pass judgement on a particular person now that revelation has ended. He mentions that the Prophet was told by revelation the names of seventeen hypocrites and confided them to Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman, the keeper of his secret, so that when one of them died the caliph would not pray over him. ^{183 184 185}
• He states that faith and disbelief are the servant's own choice and that "the key is with you": the message reached Abu Bakr, he stood at the door of faith and was given its key; the same message reached Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab, and they stood at the door of disbelief and obstinacy. He names the two roads "the track of safety" and "the track of regret". ^{186 187 188}
• He relates that Umar ibn al-Khattab, who had been promised the Garden, went to Hudhayfa as soon as he took office as Commander of the Faithful and adjured him: had the Prophet named him on that list? Hudhayfa wept at the sight of his fear, and Umar, supposing he was hiding it from him, wept too. He quotes Ibn Mas'ud as saying that Umar's Islam was a conquest, his emigration a victory and his rule a mercy. ^{188 189 190 191}
• He observes that those given the tidings of the Garden grew in fear of God after the tidings, contrary to what one would expect. His example is a father whose son studies in a school owned by the boy's uncle and staffed by relatives who have assured him the boy will pass: the natural thing is for him to be at ease, and if his worry increased it would be thought a disorder. He explains the Companions' state by saying that those who fear God most are those nearest to Him. ^{192 193 194 195}
• He explains the verse's description of the torment as gharam in the sense of something that clings and does not let go, as one says a person is mughram with another, meaning inseparable from him. He recalls the Qur'anic image of the Fire as a refuge that clasps its inmate as a mother clasps her child. ^{196 197}
• He reminds his listeners that people cannot bear a very hot day without air conditioners, so what of the Fire. To those who object to frightening people he replies with a saying he passes on: that I frighten you so that you find safety on the Day of Resurrection is better than that I reassure you and you find fear. He says that the Qur'an mentions the Fire fifty-seven times or thereabouts and the Garden the same, and mercy two hundred and thirteen times and punishment the same, because the Qur'an comes in pairs. ^{198 199}
• He distinguishes the two terms in verse 66: the "resting place", for him, is for the sinning believer who stays in the Fire for a time until what he owes is settled and then leaves, and the "abode" is for those who remain in it for ever without death. ^{200 201}
• He recommends asking God's protection from the Fire seven times after the dawn prayer and after the sunset prayer, and asking for the Garden after prayer. He mentions that when the verses of punishment were recited to the Companions it was as if they felt the scorch of the Fire. ^{202 203}
• After the break he turns to supplication: one supplicates in ease so as to be relieved in hardship, and in wealth and health for the days of want and illness. He criticises the person who despairs after a month or two of supplication and thinks himself unaccepted because of his many sins, and reminds him that God answers the distressed one whose means have all been cut off. ^{204 205 206}
• His example of the distressed is the surgeon who has prepared the operating theatre and his team and then asks God for success. He attributes to al-Shafi'i, in his last days, the remark that they sent for the physician of people while he sought the Physician of heaven: the one gives the medicine and the Other places the cure in it. He says that ten people take the same medicine and three benefit, because it is God who puts its secret into the medicine. ^{206 207 208 209}
• He adds the example of water: God placed in it the secret of quenching thirst, and its bitterness or sweetness depends on the state of the one who drinks; the sick or the troubled drinks it and finds it bitter, and the healthy and light-hearted drinks it and finds it sweet. ^{209 210 211}
• He warns against weariness and haste in supplication: the supplicant is either answered, or has a calamity lifted from him, or has the reward stored up for him on the Day of Resurrection, so no supplication is lost. He states that God needs no time in order to answer, and that His command is before the letters kaf and nun of "Be", not between them. ^{212 213}
• He tells of a righteous man aboard a ship when the sea rose against it; the passengers asked him to pray, and he said: Lord, You have shown us Your power, so show us Your mercy, and the sea grew calm. He explains this by the man's having a balance of credit with God. ^{214 215}
• He describes the servants of the Most Merciful as doing their deeds with hearts trembling lest these not be accepted. He sets against this a story he tells of Umar: he saw a man pray two hurried units and then raise his hands to ask for the maidens of Paradise, so he tapped him with his stick and said to him, in effect: you have priced the bride high and the dowry low. ^{215 216 217}

• He opens by addressing the oppressor, the sinner and the person in authority: how long will injustice and the violation of rights go on? He asks what al-Hajjaj gained from serving the Umayyads, and whether he threw away his hereafter for the sake of pleasing them. He warns against wronging one who has no helper but God. ^{218 219 220}
• He announces the day's attribute from verse 67 of Surat al-Furqan: the middle course in spending, between waste and stinginess. He observes that people and their children have grown so used to blessings that a father can no longer surprise his child with a present, because the child's room is full of toys and the latest devices. ^{221 222}
• He criticises a community that consumes what it does not make, such as the mobile telephone, and cites the sense of two hadiths: the strong believer is better than the weak, and the upper hand is better than the lower. He says that cutting the internet off from the Arabs would bring their life to a halt, because their necks are in other people's hands. He quotes his teacher: whoever's loaf does not come from his own axe, his opinion will not come from his own head. ^{222 223 224}
• He draws for spending a middle and two extremes: if generosity goes past its limit it becomes waste; if it falls a little short it becomes tight-fistedness, and if that grows it becomes miserliness. He states that going to extremes is rejected in Islam in everything, even in worship. ^{225 226}
• As evidence against excess in worship he relates that the Prophet was on a campaign in Ramadan and raised a cup of water and drank in the middle of the day, so that people would know it was permitted to break the fast on a long journey. Some insisted on fasting until a few of them collapsed from the heat, and he described them as the disobedient. ^{226 227}
• He distinguishes "the servants of the Most Merciful" from "the servants of Ramadan": the latter fill the mosques at dawn in Ramadan and then vanish, so their worship, for him, is a temporary permit that lapses when its cause is removed, like a device that stops when its cable is pulled from the power source. What he asks for is a worshipper of God all year round. ^{227 228 229}
• To those who ask about the limit of waste in the case of a billionaire who buys a car for millions, he answers that this is an exceptional case, and that what is asked of such people is to pay the zakat on their wealth, give charity and not use money to wrong those who work for them. He states that religion addresses rich and poor alike, so that the gratitude of the rich and the patience of the poor may be seen. ^{229 230 231}
• He defines waste in relation to means: someone whose income is ten and who spends twelve or fifteen is wasteful, while someone whose income is a hundred thousand and who spends ninety is not, because he stays within his means. Most debtors, in his view, borrowed in order to live beyond their means, so interest piles up, the car and the house are seized and they are barred from travel. He calls this "false show", counts the love of appearances a sickness, and explains "the strain of affliction" as a person loading himself with more than he can bear. ^{231 232 233 234}
• He explains the Qur'an's description of squanderers as brothers of the devils by saying that Satan is a fool, and part of his folly was refusing to prostrate out of pride. Among kinds of folly he counts folly in spending, in foul speech and in harming society. He lays down the rule: wealth is to be earned lawfully and spent lawfully. ^{235 236}
• After the break he returns to the other extreme: the miser, for him, is a misery in the home, and he gives "a father's advice" not to keep company or marry into the family of such a person, because his money is his life, and some people have taken their dirham and dollar as their passion. He mentions that wealth is called mal because it makes people incline away from the truth, and that a friend turns into an enemy when he thinks he has been wronged over a single pound. He says that miserliness was blamed among the Arabs before Islam, and that the miser is stingy with every good that would reach people. ^{237 238 239 240 241}
• He draws a satirical picture of the miser: when a dinar reaches him he tells it that it has arrived at its resting place and will not see the light again. If Ya'qub came to him with Yusuf's shirt, with the prophets as guarantors, to borrow a needle from him, he would not lend it. ^{241 242}
• He counts as the most miserly of people the one who is stingy with the greeting of peace and answers it with a curt word out of pride. He reports from Ibn Mas'ud, in effect, that when a person greets people who do not answer, One better than they answers him. ^{242 243}
• He widens the verse to emotions and conduct: lavishing too much on a child makes him spoiled or undutiful; a husband sides with "the wife's party" and turns undutiful to his parents once he is grown and well off, and he counts obeying the wife while being undutiful to the mother among the signs of the Hour. He advises a policy of "the door a little open" in dealing with wife, children, relatives and neighbours: the door is neither shut nor thrown wide, so that excessive praise does not turn into a lawsuit. ^{243 244 245 246 247}
• He concludes that the community is a middle community and that the servant is to keep to the middle in everything, even in the pledge to God "as far as I am able" and in preparing according to one's ability rather than with the latest weapons. Among the causes of strength he counts strength of faith, sincere supplication, good upbringing, and giving up waste, competition in tall buildings and boasting of tribe. He prays that his listeners be among the moderate, neither on the far right nor on the far left. ^{248 249 250}

• At the start of the lesson he greets the viewers of the Sharjah satellite channel and says that he is their guest every day at this hour of the month, which shows that the programme was broadcast on that channel in Sharjah. ²⁵¹
• He moves to the sixth of the nine attributes, in verse 68 of Surat al-Furqan: that they call on no other god beside God. He raises a question: why does the matter of monotheism come at this late rank, after humility, forbearance, the night prayer, supplication and the middle course in spending? He answers that all those deeds came from such a person only because he believes in God. ^{252 253 254 255}
• He states that Islam stands on two things: "the word of unity and the unity of the word". He recalls the Qur'anic likeness of the good word to a good tree whose root is firm and whose branches are in the sky, reading the firmness as faith and the height as loftiness of aspiration, and contrasts it with Pharaoh, who exalted himself on the earth and not toward the sky. ^{255 256}
• He digresses to an earthquake of about nine on the Richter scale in Japan, saying that it turned the country from a donor state into a state in need, as evidence that no one has true height on the earth. He declares his sympathy for its people and disclaims any gloating, and praises their seriousness and love of work: courses are held there to persuade employees to take their leave, whereas the Arab employee, in his opinion, needs a course to persuade him to take less of it. ^{256 257 258 259}
• He explains "the unity of the word" by saying that Muslims, for all their different schools and opinions, are joined by one Lord, one qibla and one preserved Book that has not changed. He says that the Qur'an has one hundred and fourteen suras and six thousand two hundred and thirty-six verses, and that its Meccan suras are eighty-five and its Medinan suras twenty-nine by his count. ^{260 261 262 263}
• He mentions that the Prophet is the seal of the prophets, and that the prophets were gathered for him on the night of the Night Journey at al-Aqsa Mosque and prayed behind him. He recites verses from the praise-poetry of Shawqi, cites the Qur'an's commendation of his great character, and says that God swore by no one's life as He swore by his. ^{262 264 265 266}
• He stresses that the Qur'an is a single text: there is no Qur'an for the Iraqis and another for the Syrians, the Egyptians, the people of the Gulf or the people of the Maghreb. He notes that it begins with the basmala, which is the creature's relation to the Creator, and ends with the word "people", which is the creature's relation to the creature, and that what lies between its covers orders both relations, so that "religion is how one deals with others". ^{267 263}
• He pictures the unity of the qibla as circles of worshippers that begin with the first row around the Kaaba, widen until they fill its court and then the whole of Mecca, and then stretch from China to Morocco and from Scandinavia and Siberia to South Africa, all facing one qibla and one goal. ^{263 268 269}
• He mentions that the Qur'an spent thirteen years in Mecca rooting monotheism. He then illustrates a flaw in it with someone who prays and fasts and yet says: had the doctor not reached us in time, the boy would have died. He replies that death comes by God's decree, not by the doctor's treatment or the lack of it, and that a person's part is only to take the means. ^{269 270 271}
• After the break he invites reflection on the loaf of bread on the table: how many hands worked on it? The farmer sowed, watered and tilled for months; then came the harvest and threshing, the grain merchant and the mill, the kneader and the baker, the packing and the transport by land and air, and the boy who delivers it on his bicycle. He concludes that this universe has a Lord who distributes tasks among His creatures and puts them at one another's service. ^{272 273 274 275 276 277}
• He returns to the example of the doctor: if the treating doctor were away or had died, would the child die? He answers that the child dies at the time God wills, not at the time people suppose, and that a person struck by a car would have died at that moment even had he not crossed the road. ^{278 279}
• He attributes to al-Shafi'i that, asked for the proof of God's existence, he answered with the mulberry leaf: a beast eats it and brings it out as dung, the silkworm as silk, the bee as honey and the gazelle as musk. Who made the origin one and the outcomes many, if not God? He contrasts this with the machine, which turns out only one kind of product. ^{279 280 281}
• He criticises common phrases that, for him, impair monotheism, such as someone saying "I rely on God and on you", which he corrects to "on God, then on you", and the saying "God is in heaven and you are on earth". He warns against leaning on the creature, like the man who carries a minister's card of recommendation and counts his son's appointment as assured, and calls for reliance on the Creator with the means kept in their proper place. ^{281 282 283}
• He advises that a person should hope more for what he does not expect than for what he does, and gives the example of Musa: he set out on a cold night in the Sinai desert looking for a brand of fire or someone to show him the way, and came back with the message and became a guide himself, and his brother Harun was sent with him to Pharaoh and the two were told to speak gently. ^{284 285 286 287}
• He concludes that whoever finds the doors shut before him should knock at the door of God, who answers the distressed, and recalls the transmitted prayer of refuge from worry, grief and the burden of debt. His advice: do not say, Lord, I have a great worry; say, worry, I have a great Lord. He defines the summit of monotheism as the servant seeing no doer in the universe but God. ^{288 289 290}

• He announces an attribute he counts among the most important for the security of society, the one in verse 68 of Surat al-Furqan: refraining from killing the soul that God has made inviolable, except by right. He says plainly that he will not deal with the rulings on retaliation, blood money and bodily injury, because their place is the programmes and recognised books of jurisprudence, not this programme. ^{291 292 293}
• He puts forward a notion he calls "moral killing". His example is a man of keen mind married to a woman who discourages him whenever he speaks to her of his work and his success: she changes the subject, or makes light of his standing, or is moved to it by envy. In his view this kills the genius in him, and envy between spouses can come from either side. ^{293 294 295 296}
• He passes on a piece of advice he attributes to the scholars for anyone who wants to marry: not to marry "the pining woman", "the woman who reminds of her favours" or "the moaning woman", and he adds, as a joke, "the nagging woman". The first, for him, pines for a former husband; the second holds her money and her support over her husband; the third complains of her aches so much that her husband starts his day depressed; and the fourth repeats a request twenty times until his chest tightens. He counts all of this as kinds of moral killing. ^{296 297 298 299 300}
• He says of himself that he has been reading faces for forty years, and that some faces cannot be read: the frozen face that does not change whether he speaks to it of mercy or punishment, of the Garden or the Fire. ^{301 302}
• He describes the constant complainer at work: he sees himself as the only genius among hundreds of millions of Arabs, and explains his lack of advancement by the envy and hypocrisy of his manager and colleagues. ^{303 304}
• He digresses with an opinion of his own: that osteoporosis and infertility now afflict the young, which he puts down to hormones and pesticides in imported food, accusing its exporters of not wanting the community to have offspring. He criticises stopping at two children and using contraceptives to that end. ^{304 305}
• He states that the servants of the Most Merciful do not think of harming people, and that the worst thing to fall on the earth is a drop of blood shed without right. He attaches to this making life narrow and hateful for people, as in the case of a wife who waits for death to solve her problem. ^{306 307}
• He takes up abortion with his own view: he recalls what is transmitted about the gravest sins, associating partners with God and then killing one's child for fear that it will eat with its parent, and he reproaches a woman who ends a pregnancy on the grounds of her other child's young age, her health or her figure. He asks: have the doctors established a grave danger to the mother or to the foetus? He advises any woman who has done so once or more to ask the fatwa committees about expiation. (The lecturer's view.) ^{308 309 310 311}
• To a woman who pleads that her husband forced her he replies that there is no obedience to a creature in disobedience to the Creator. ³¹¹
• After the break he mentions another form of moral killing: killing the gift in children. He holds that a bright boy is better served by a teacher who has him memorise the Qur'an than by a music teacher, and that a child who shows a gift for arithmetic, chemistry, physics, language or public speaking should be handed to a specialist who will develop it. (The lecturer's view.) ^{312 313 314}
• He states that a child needs his father's embrace as he needs his mother's: for the father to ask him about his day at school, about who has bothered him and about what he has eaten. He mocks a father who is surprised to find that his son has reached the final year of secondary school, and cites the sense of a line by Shawqi that the true orphan is the one whose parents are too busy for him. ^{315 316}
• He criticises the mother who is taken up with the telephone, her friends and cosmetic clinics, and sets against her the picture of the grandmother of eighty or ninety: she never knew cosmetics, her face holds the light of faith along with the wrinkles of time, she worked from before dawn until sunset serving her children, her husband and his family, and families were full of love. (The lecturer's view.) ^{317 318 319}
• He cites a hadith to the effect that whoever has three daughters and brings them up well, they will be a screen for him from the Fire, and that those present asked about two and then about one and the answer was the same. He explains good upbringing by the son-in-law praying every day for his wife's parents because of the character he sees in her. ^{320 321 322}
• He warns the man who marries off a daughter he has not brought up well, in order to be rid of her, that he has wronged her husband, and that the prayer of the wronged is answered. He attributes to Umar a description of some troublesome wives as like a shackle that God places on the neck of whom He wills. ^{322 323 324}
• He closes with the picture of the righteous father who hands over his daughter as a wife of modesty and good manners who knows what is due to her husband and his family, and with the husband's duty to respect her family and not keep her from visiting or contacting them. He states that killing, whether moral or physical, is no attribute of the servants of the Most Merciful, and that they safeguard people's lives and feelings. ^{325 326}

• He sums up the previous lesson on literal and moral killing, adding to the moral kind the appointment of someone who neither fears God nor shows mercy to those under him. He then moves to the rest of the verse: keeping away from fornication. He states that when societies leave the Book and the Sunna, disorder spreads in them and social ills appear, and that the duty is "to close Satan's entrances". ^{327 328 329 330}
• His example is the delaying of marriage: a young man and a young woman of thirty not yet married, and a father who insists on demands the suitor cannot meet. He recalls that the Companions made the lawful easy: the suitor was asked for something, even an iron ring, and if he had none he was married on what he knew of the Qur'an as a dowry. He asks his listeners: if a suitor came to you who owned nothing but his memorisation of the Qur'an, would you marry your daughter to him? ^{330 331 332 333}
• He frames the rule: the Companions made the lawful easy, so the unlawful became hard; the people of this age have made the lawful hard, with the betrothal gift of jewellery, the advance and deferred dowry and the rooms of furniture, so the unlawful has become easy. ^{333 334 335}
• He says that the rate of women remaining unmarried is high in some Arab countries, even the rich oil-producing ones, and that the Palestinian people are an exception because they make marriage easy. He declines to give the rates so as not to dishearten his listeners in Ramadan. ^{335 336}
• He calls for marrying a young woman during her university years, on the understanding that she completes her studies in her husband's home, and holds that a young mother becomes a friend to her children. He contrasts this with a woman who marries at thirty-five and brings up children in age and strain, so that the child grows up with complexes. (The lecturer's view.) ^{337 338}
• He digresses to "the sickness of the I": whoever says "I" four or five times in a quarter of an hour needs, in his view, a psychiatrist, and he likens him to Pharaoh in insisting on his own opinion alone. His example is a manager who trains no deputy and sees no one in his institution fit for the task but himself. ^{338 339 340}
• Among the causes of the spread of indecency he counts what Arab channels spend on music videos, which he puts at sixty-nine billion dollars a year. He says that if this money were spent on development it would produce scholars, preachers, chemists and mathematicians, and he mocks the celebration of a champion who comes home with a single bronze medal. ^{341 342 343}
• He describes the effect of this in homes: a man compares the women he sees on the screen with his wife, worn out by worry and illness, and his eyes begin to wander. He calls for media with a purpose and a return to authentic values. ^{343 344 345}
• As evidence of how deeply rooted these values were among the Arabs he says that Antara of Abs mentioned in his poetry, before Islam, that he lowered his gaze when his neighbour's wife appeared until she had gone into her house. He says that the Prophet came to perfect noble character. ^{345 346}
• He gives his opinion on education and work: he would like to see in the Arab countries separate schools for boys and for girls, and women's universities teaching home economics, the arts, literature and languages. He approves of a woman being a teacher, a gynaecologist or paediatrician, a midwife, or a dentist in a clinic for women, and he objects to her working in mechanical engineering or on building scaffolds. (The lecturer's view.) ^{346 347 348}
• As evidence for gentleness with women he relates that Anjasha, who had a fine voice, was singing the camels along with the women riding them during the Farewell Pilgrimage, and the Prophet told him to go gently and likened them to glass vessels. He concludes that gentleness with women and good upbringing are among the things that keep indecency from spreading. ^{349 350}
• After the break he goes into lowering the gaze: the fornication of the eye is the look; whoever lowers his gaze, God frees his insight; and whoever turns his eyes from other people's womenfolk is granted those who turn their eyes from his. He asks: if a man has looked at a hundred women and the guardian of each takes his due from him on the Day of Resurrection, what will he have left? He holds that the habit of looking veils from a person the blessing God has given him, and that it is the first step of going astray. ^{351 352 353 354}
• He states that the internet ought to be used for information, research and news, and reproaches the man who leaves his wife and shuts himself in a room to watch on it what no sensible person would accept, reminding him of his wife's chastity and piety. ^{354 355}
• He warns a person against being a mere follower of the crowd: if people do good he does good, and if they do wrong he keeps clear of their wrong. He rejects the logic of partisanship that follows the tribe in error and in right alike, and explains helping one's brother when he is in the wrong as holding him back from his wrong. ^{356 357 358}
• He calls on the owners of channels to fear God with regard to people's sons and daughters, and in the advertisements that fill the satellite channels and use nudity to promote a product such as a refrigerator. ³⁵⁸
• He tells the story of the young man who asked the Prophet's leave to commit fornication: the Prophet did not berate him or order him struck, but calmly asked whether he would accept it for his mother, and then for each of his other close female relatives; he answered no each time, and was told that other people likewise do not accept it. The Prophet then laid his hand on his chest and prayed for him, and the young man was upright afterwards. He concludes that this is how matters should be treated. ^{359 360 361}
• He calls for preachers who study psychology, sociology, history, the lives of earlier figures and civilisations, so that these help them understand the truths of religion. He explains religion as a system, citing the mention in Surat Yusuf of "the king's din" in the sense of his system of law; religion, for him, is the ordering of the creature's relation to the Creator and of the creature's relation to the creature. ^{361 362}
• He remarks that the countries are open to visitors, and that what a newcomer sees of their people is how they hold to their values. He warns that the spread of indecency strips blessing from societies, withholds the rain and brings out diseases that were unknown among earlier generations. ^{362 363 364}
• He concludes that uprightness begins with lowering the gaze and then with watching less of what is indecent, and that every viewer has the off button in his hand. He recalls that the soul urges to evil, and advises good company that reminds the heedless and helps the one who remembers. ^{365 366}

• He joins what went before to the end of verse 68 and to verse 69: the outcome for whoever takes another god beside God, kills a soul or commits indecency. On the word atham he reports two readings: one, from some exegetes, that it is the name of a valley, and another that it is the requital of sin. He states that whoever loses God's side has gained nothing, and whoever gains it has lost nothing. ^{367 368 369 370}
• He counts it the great disaster that people receive the commands and prohibitions as if they were meant for others: a Muslim sits describing Muslims as negligent and lazy and does not ask himself what he has contributed. He proposes a daily question: what have I offered Islam today? Prayer and fasting, in his view, are for the one who performs them, and their fruit is visiting the sick, following funerals, opening doors of good and bringing joy to people. ^{371 372 373}
• He draws attention to setting one's intention right when visiting the sick: it should not be the return of a courtesy to someone who attended one's own occasions, but intended for God, as the discharge of a Muslim's right. ^{374 375}
• He lists six rights that a Muslim has over his brother, as he gives them: to greet him on meeting him, to visit him when he is ill, to congratulate him when good comes to him, to console him when a calamity strikes him, to respond to him when he sneezes and praises God, and to follow his funeral when he dies. He mentions that the full greeting of peace earns thirty good deeds, even over the telephone, and that the few greet the many, the one walking greets the one standing, and the younger greets the elder. ^{375 376 377 378 379}
• He holds that people have restricted condolence to worldly calamities, although calamities in religion deserve it more, as when someone abandons the prayer. He reports that the righteous among the early generations were offered condolences for three days if one of them missed the opening takbir or the congregational prayer. ^{378 380 381}
• He criticises children who find fault with the greeting al-salam alaykum on the telephone and call it backward, and replies that he is content to be raised among "the backward" if that is what backwardness means, for peace is the greeting of the people of the Garden. He calls on those who have learned foreign languages to use them for good, for instance by translating a hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari for a German, a Frenchman, an Austrian, a Spaniard or an American. ^{382 383}
• He states that the requital matches the deed, and explains the doubling of the punishment and abiding in it humiliated. He reports from the scholars that among the harshest torments is for the servant to be veiled from seeing the face of his Lord, and that the height of bliss is to see Him; his reason is that the believer looked in this world on the lights of God's Book and His Messenger's Sunna and acted by them. ^{384 385 386}
• He contrasts the comforts of this world, which breed boredom however varied they are, with the bliss of the Garden, whose people seek no change from it. He notes that the gates of the Garden stand open to its people and no one leaves, while the Fire is closed over its people. He likens this to a school's high wall and its guards: the pupils run away all the same, because the bliss is not inside. ^{387 388 389}
• He ends by saying that there is an exception to this threat: whoever repents, believes and does righteous work; and he leaves its explanation until after the break. ³⁹⁰

• He states that God opens the door of repentance to whoever wants it, and explains the exception in verse 70 of Surat al-Furqan by its three elements: he repented, believed and did righteous work. He sets out repentance: to desist, to feel remorse, to resolve not to return, and then to give people back their rights. ^{391 392 393}
• He distinguishes material rights, which are to be returned, from moral ones: he does not think the penitent should disclose to the person wronged what he said of him if the disclosure would cause greater harm; it is enough to pardon one another and to pray for him in his absence. ^{393 394}
• On why faith is mentioned after repentance he answers that repentance is the first step on the road of true faith. He defines righteous work as that by which God's face is sought, and attributes to Umar that he asked his Lord for the most sincere and the most correct of work, explaining the most sincere as what is purely for God and the most correct as what accords with the Book and the Sunna. ^{394 395}
• He widens the notion of righteous work to every deed that brings a lawful benefit in this world or the next, and everything that makes others happy and builds society. In his opinion it includes the work of the censor who cuts bad scenes from serials and films, and he would like a committee to consider what is fit for society before it is broadcast. (The lecturer's view.) ^{396 397}
• He gives his opinion on atheism: he accepts philosophical thought, logic and sociology, but does not count atheism as thought; he calls it a sickness whose holder needs treatment. (The lecturer's view.) ³⁹⁸
• He explains the changing of evil deeds into good ones as meaning that someone who was recorded in the column of disbelief and disobedience comes to be recorded in the column of faith and obedience, and that repentance is put in the place of the evil deed and good deeds are then built on it, as a tower is built on a sound foundation. ^{399 400}
• He passes on from the scholars the rule of "emptying before adorning". His example is a merchant in debt to the bank: every profit that comes to him goes first to paying his debt, so his profit is not secure until his capital is. In the same way the penitent first rids himself of sins and disobedience and then adorns himself with remembrance, reliance on God, truthfulness and reciting the Qur'an. ^{401 402 403}
• He gives the example of a man who seized land his sisters had inherited from their father and sold it to go on the hajj and the umra, and states that this is not accepted so long as the money is unlawful, and that the pilgrimage does not cancel wrongs done to people. He likens it to someone who wants to hang a picture before he has built the house and raised its walls. ^{403 404 405}

• He announces a new attribute from verse 72 of Surat al-Furqan: that they do not bear false witness. He states that false testimony tears societies down and loses people their rights, giving to one who has no right and denying the one who has, and that through it spreads injustice, which he defines as putting a thing where it does not belong. ^{406 407}
• He recalls that God has forbidden injustice to Himself and made it forbidden among His servants, and that the worst of wrongdoers is the one who wrongs those who have no helper but God: the weak, the orphan, the widow, the aged and the poor. He describes false testimony as the last nail in the coffin of any civilisation or state. ^{407 408 409}
• He cites the hadith on the gravest of the major sins: associating partners with God and undutifulness to parents, and then that the Prophet, who had been reclining, sat up and repeated the warning against false testimony until those present wished he would stop. From his sitting up he infers that what followed was the most serious. In the course of this he goes so far as to say that good works do not avail one who is undutiful to his parents and that sins do not harm one who is dutiful to them, a statement he makes without a source. ^{409 410 411}
• He joins cheating to false testimony, and relates that the Prophet passed a seller of food in the market, put his hand into the heap and found it damp; he asked him, and the man blamed the rain; the Prophet told him to put that part on top so that people could see it, and said that whoever cheats is not one of them. His example is a seller who puts the good fruit at the top of the box and the spoiled at the bottom. ^{411 412 413}
• He criticises the presence of hired false witnesses at the doors of some courts in Arab and Muslim countries, one of whom will testify for a few coins so that a person's right is cut away. He then begins to speak of false testimony in vouching for one's children at the time of marriage, and the recording in the archive breaks off at this point, after about five and a half minutes. ^{413 414}

• He returns to verse 70 and the changing of evil deeds into good, and gives as an example a non-Muslim man who committed grave sins for fifty years and was then guided by God to Islam: it is as if he had just been born with a blank page; the "emptying" is complete for him, and he begins the "adorning". ^{415 416 417}
• He states that when God wills repentance for a servant He opens its road to him, and relates that al-Fudayl ibn Iyad was a highway robber who climbed a house to rob it and heard its owner reciting a verse that asks whether the time has not come for the believers' hearts to be humbled; he said: it has come, Lord, and began a new page. ^{418 419 420}
• He cites a traditional maxim: the door of action may be opened to a servant while the door of acceptance is closed to him, and a sin may be decreed for him that becomes the cause of his arriving. ⁴²⁰
• He relates the conversion of Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib (may God be pleased with him): he came back from hunting and was told that Abu Jahl had hurt his nephew, so he went to him, split his head and said: do you strike him when I follow his religion? He did not yet follow it. Back at home he took himself to task and asked: and why should I not follow his religion? And he embraced Islam. ^{421 422 423}
• He relates the conversion of Umar: he set out meaning to kill the Prophet, and was told on the way to look to his sister Fatima bint al-Khattab and her husband Sa'id ibn Zayd; he came upon them while Khabbab ibn al-Aratt was teaching them the Qur'an. He struck his brother-in-law and slapped his sister until she bled; then his heart softened and he asked for the sheet; she told him to purify himself first; he read from it, asked where the Prophet was, went to the house of al-Arqam and embraced Islam. ^{424 425 426 427}
• From this he draws advice for parents whose daughter refuses the headscarf: to pray for her and make the religion dear to her, because love bears fruit and bare commands do not. (The lecturer's view.) ⁴²⁸
• He lists the witnesses to an act of disobedience, using the example of a bribe: the hand that took it, the tongue that agreed it, the eye that saw, the ear that heard and the foot that walked; then the ground on which it happened, the time, by night or by day, the two recording angels, and God, the best of witnesses. ^{429 430 431}
• He mentions that when the servant repents and gives back the unlawful money, God makes the recording angels forget what they wrote and makes the limbs, the ground and the time forget what they witnessed, so that on the Day of Resurrection no witness remains against him but God, who forgave the sin and accepted the repentance and is more tender toward the servant than his father and mother. ^{432 433 434}
• He mentions that those who have spent a term in the Fire and are then permitted to leave are dipped in a river called the River of Life, where they sprout as a seed sprouts in the silt of a flood, and are made anew, so that no mark remains on them by which the people of the Garden would know them. ^{434 435 436}
• He sets against this what human beings do: an applicant for a post is asked for a certificate of good conduct or a criminal record sheet, and anyone with a previous offence on file is turned down. As for God, His servants have committed millions of "previous offences" against Him and He has not turned them away, but has opened the door of repentance to them. ^{436 437 438}
• After the break he tells of one of the righteous who learned repentance from a boy whose mother had put him out of the house for something he had done and shut the door; he sat on the threshold weeping until her heart softened and she opened it and embraced him. The man said: my Lord is more merciful to me than this mother to her child. ^{439 440 441 442}
• He warns against putting things off, as when someone says: I shall repent next month, or I shall start praying from Friday. He states that whoever prays a single prayer after repenting has a new file opened for him, and that God takes a small good deed and enlarges it until it becomes like mountains. ^{442 443}
• He states that there is no doorkeeper at God's door: someone who wants to bring a grievance to a minister or an official is turned back by guards and office hours, but whoever knocks at God's door at three in the morning is not turned away. He cites the sense of the hadith that God extends His hand by night so that the sinner of the day may repent and by day so that the sinner of the night may repent, and the hadith that God rejoices at His servant's repentance more than a man who lost his camel, with his food and drink upon it, and then found it. ^{444 445 446 447}
• He states that God's pardon is greater than sins however many they are, and explains the eternity of the people of the Garden, despite their short lives, by saying that God knows that His servant, had he lived for all time, would have worshipped Him for all time, and so He gave him everlasting bliss. ^{447 448 449 450}
• He mentions that no one accepts an excuse more readily than God, and illustrates this with the concessions of the sacred law: the lifting of blame from the blind, the lame and the sick; that a woman makes up the days of fasting but not the prayers, because prayer recurs every day; and that someone with incontinence performs ablution for each prayer and prays, and his prayer is accepted. ^{451 452 453}
• He tells of a man who complained to one of the righteous that he went back to sin every time he repented, and was prescribed five "remedies": to disobey God where He does not see him, to disobey Him outside His dominion, not to eat of His provision, to ask the angel of death for a delay when he comes, and to deny his sin before God on the Day of Resurrection. When the man saw that none of these was possible, he repented sincerely. ^{454 455 456}
• He ends with a tale he ascribes to the stories of the Children of Israel: a man who had committed grave sins asked a learned man whether there was repentance for him; the learned man dealt severely with him, gave him a dry palm stalk and said that if it turned green God had forgiven him. The man kept to seeking forgiveness and restoring rights until one day he woke to find the stalk green, and the learned man asked him to teach him how he had repented. ^{456 457 458}

• He announces the next attribute from verse 72 of Surat al-Furqan: that when they pass by idle talk they pass by with dignity. He defines laghw, in the language, as everything worthless and of no value, whether word or deed. ^{459 460}
• He first takes idle talk to mean people's mockery of the good, citing what is in Surat al-Mutaffifin about the wrongdoers laughing and winking at the believers, and then the reversal of the situation on the Day of Resurrection. His example is someone who greets a bearded man or a woman in a face veil with jokes. ^{460 461 462}
• He recalls that mockery of the people of truth is old: Pharaoh said of Musa that he feared he would change his people's religion or bring corruption to the land, and the notables of Mecca said of the Prophet that he was mad, a sorcerer and a soothsayer. His explanation is that the mocker feels a deficiency in himself. ^{463 464 465}
• He takes the headscarf in workplaces as an example: he explains a man's irritation at a veiled colleague by a desire in himself, finds it strange that a woman should be irritated by another woman's headscarf, and asks the one who mocks people who pray: have they harmed you by their prayer? (The lecturer's view.) ^{465 466 467 468}
• He mentions a second meaning of idle talk: all acts of disobedience, so that passing them with dignity means turning away from them, disapproving of them and not sitting with their people until they move on to other talk. He asks the man who went into a gathering of water-pipes and songs and then said he had not been happy about it: and what brought you to that place? ^{468 469}
• He attributes to Ibn Ata' a measure for knowing a servant's standing with his Lord: to look at what He has set him to do. Someone whose occupation brings him near to God, such as overseeing Islamic books or school curricula, giving the call to prayer, teaching people, or practising medicine with knowledge and skill, has in that, for him, a sign of being loved. He contrasts him with someone who has spent twenty years beating a drum behind a band, and calls on him to review his account. ^{470 471 472}
• He observes that people speak thousands of words a day, and cites the traditional saying: whoever talks much slips much, whoever slips much sins much, and whoever sins much has long regret. ^{473 474}
• He likens the person who tears down his good deeds by backbiting, tale-bearing and attacking people's honour to someone who put up a fine building that people admired and then called in a company to demolish it. Holding back from people's honour, in his view, is better than many voluntary acts of worship, in the sense of guarding the tongue. ^{474 475 476}
• He reports of Ibn Umar that he addressed the Kaaba, magnifying its sanctity, and then said that the sanctity of the believer with God is greater than its own. He asks: if pulling a stone out of the Kaaba is a grave thing, what of breaking a believer and hurting him? ^{476 477 478}
• He ties this to what was said earlier on repentance and restoring rights: whoever has spoken ill of people behind their backs should, whenever he remembers it, pray for their good, so that his prayer becomes credit for him when they claim their due on the Day of Resurrection. He states that repentance is a duty, but that leaving the sin is a greater duty. ^{478 479 480}
• He relates that Aisha, out of jealousy, gestured with her hand to indicate that Safiyya was short, and the Prophet told her that she had said a word which, if mixed with the water of the sea, would alter it. He concludes that faulting people for being fat, thin or plain is faulting what the Creator created. ^{480 481 482}
• After the break he observes that many gatherings, under the name of chat and small talk, attack people's honour and make fun of their looks. He recalls that whoever defends his brother's honour, God will keep the Fire from him on the Day of Resurrection. ^{483 484 485}
• He criticises spouses who insult each other's families: the husband who blames his son's poor schoolwork on the boy's maternal uncle, and the wife who blames her daughter's mistake on the girl's paternal aunt. He asks: why are the absent used to hurt those present? ^{485 486 487 488}
• He cites the Prophet's manners when some of the Jews of Medina greeted him with a word meaning death: he would answer only "and upon you". When Aisha answered them harshly he checked her and said that the believer is not foul-mouthed or coarse. ^{489 490}
• He relates that Umar, making his rounds at night to look after his subjects, passed people who had lit a fire in front of their tent and greeted them as "people of the light", avoiding the words "people of the fire". He distinguishes looking into people's condition for their good from spying. ^{490 491}
• He likens the tongue to a ladle and the heart to a pot: the ladle brings out only what is in the pot. He rejects the excuse made for a sharp-tongued person that "his heart is white", and states that a person is known for what he really is in the hour of anger and dispute. ^{492 493 494}
• He states that someone sitting among his superiors who hears something wrong should reject it in his heart if he can do no more, and that someone who has moral courage should make the point with courtesy, citing the sense of the hadith on a word of truth before an unjust ruler. He relates that al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam admonished the Ayyubid sultan and raised his voice to him, and when his students asked whether he had not been afraid, he said that he had called to mind the majesty of his Lord and saw the sultan before him like a small cat. ^{494 495 496}
• He ends by describing the believer among people as like a fragrant flower and like a bee: when it eats it eats what is good, when it feeds it feeds what is good, and when it settles on a twig it does not break it. He mentions the employee who cannot leave a place where people's honour is being attacked, and so rejects it in his heart, and cites the saying that whoever is present at a sin and rejects it in his heart is like one who was absent from it, and whoever is absent from it and approves of it is like one who was present. ^{497 498 499 500}

• He announces the day's attribute from verse 73 of Surat al-Furqan: that when they are reminded of the signs of their Lord they do not fall upon them deaf and blind. He reports from the exegetes that one of its meanings is being reminded of the hereafter and the return. He explains the verb kharra as falling without order, as a roof collapses, and takes the point to be a denial that they stay in their former state as though they had not heard. ^{501 502 503 504}
• He asks what made the early generations so moved by the signs, and mentions that under Umar's eyes there were two dark lines from much weeping. He answers that Umar's heart was not made of a different clay; it was a heart clean of blights, which God's light entered, so that mercy showed in it. ^{504 505 506}
• He relates the story of Umar and the hungry children: he could not sleep for hearing them cry, went to the treasury and carried back flour and fat, with Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf beside him; when he had fed them their mother, who did not know him, said: God is between us and Umar; does he take charge of our affairs and then neglect us? He addresses these words to everyone who is responsible for people. ^{506 507 508}
• He reports that Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan asked Abu Hazim what he should do, and he said: deliver to everyone who has a right his right. He said: and if I cannot? He said: leave it to someone who can. ⁵⁰⁸
• He reports from Fatima bint Abd al-Malik, the wife of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, that on many nights she thought he would not live until morning, so hard did he weep and fear, and that he used to tell her that he remembered the orphan, the poor and the widow and knew that God would question him about them. ^{509 510}
• He recalls the hadith of the woman who shut up a cat, neither feeding it nor letting it eat of the creatures of the earth, and compares to it someone who shuts up a whole people and then waits for mercy to descend. ⁵¹⁰
• He passes on from Ibn Mas'ud the counsel to read the Qur'an as if it had come down to the reader alone, and criticises those who turn the verses of threat toward other people, in the sense of pondering the Qur'an. He relates that the Prophet passed by a woman at night who was reciting the opening of Surat al-Ghashiya and answered: it has reached me. He recalls that what counts is the generality of the wording, not the particular occasion. ^{511 512 513}
• He likens people before the hereafter to two pupils: a bright one who knows the examination is coming, prepares for it and does not mind when it falls, and a lazy one who busies himself asking about the form and language of the examination. He compares to the latter someone who asks in what language he will be questioned in his grave. ^{513 514 515}
• He recalls that on the Day of Resurrection every person is told to read his own book himself, whether he could read in this world or not, that he reckons himself by what he sent ahead, and that the book leaves out nothing small or great. ^{515 516 517}
• He calls on the listener to take himself to account at such verses: has he wronged his family, taken what was not his, or hurt a humble employee by docking his pay so that the man prayed against him at night? He advises a person to go to sleep with the thought that he may not wake. ^{517 518}
• He distinguishes the one who hears God's verses and acts on them from the one who hears them and they become evidence against him, and states that the Qur'an is either a proof for the servant or a proof against him. ^{519 520}
• His example of going against the verses is a man with daughters whose wife presses him to sign over to them everything he owns by way of sale, so that their paternal uncles do not inherit. He counts this as going against God's Book and depriving an heir of his inheritance, and calls for inheritance to follow the prescribed division: two thirds to the daughters, the wife her share, and the remainder to the paternal uncle. (The lecturer's view.) ^{520 521 522 523}
• After the break he calls for taking lessons from the events of life, and works through the example of a child's illness: the doctor whose family spent on him until he graduated, the rented clinic and its guards, the nurse, the laboratory with its equipment and the factory that made it, the pharmacist, and the transport companies that carried the medicine. He says that all of these earned their living from the child's temperature rising two degrees, and that this is one of the doors of provision that God opens. ^{524 525 526 527 528 529 530 531}
• He adds that when the patient does not recover with the first doctor he goes to a second, because the second has a provision written for him with this patient since he was in his mother's womb. ⁵³²
• His example of pondering is a father who asks why his son does not wake for the dawn prayer or stumbles in his studies, and so reviews his money: perhaps there is an unlawful coin in the boy's pillow, his blanket or his school fees. He says that when the unlawful comes in upon the lawful it scatters it. ^{533 534}
• He warns against taunting a relative for bringing up his children badly, since the one who taunts may be tried with the same. He cites the sense of the well-known line: people find fault with their age, and the fault is in themselves. ^{535 536}
• He distinguishes sight from insight with an example: someone with a hundred in his pocket gives ten in charity; by sight he has ninety left, and by insight he has a hundred and ninety, because a good deed counts tenfold. He criticises the materialist outlook that sees only the loss. ^{536 537 538}
• He ends with the lesson of Yusuf: his brothers threw him into the well, and later he was set over the storehouses of Egypt in the years of famine, and they came to him asking him to give them full measure and be charitable to them. The hands that had hurt him became the lower hand through their disobedience. ^{539 540}

• He announces the last attribute, in verse 74 of Surat al-Furqan: the prayer of the servants of the Most Merciful, "Our Lord, grant us from our spouses and offspring comfort to our eyes, and make us leaders for the godfearing". He explains that the word zawj in the language applies to husband and wife alike, so the prayer comes from wife and husband together: a wife asks for a righteous husband, and a husband asks that his wife be a comfort to his eyes. ^{541 542 543}
• He notes that the wife of Pharaoh was a believer in an unbelieving house, while the wives of Noah and of Lot were unbelievers under two prophets. Each person answers for himself, he says, and a husband's goodness does not save his wife from her own deeds. ^{544 545}
• He counts disclosing the secrets of the home to relatives and friends as betrayal, and cites Surat al-Tahrim and the sense of a saying that God withdraws His hand from one of two partners when either betrays the other. ^{545 546}
• He reads the verse of bad women for bad men and good women for good men as more than a matching of pairs: a bad person inclines to a bad partner, a good one to a good partner, so marriage is not a bargain between a man and a woman without regard to piety. ^{547 548}
• He states that a righteous man may be tried with a bad wife so that God expiates his sins through her, and that a righteous wife may have a husband of bad character, which is a test for her. ^{548 549}
• He mentions the prayer of guidance (istikhara) when a daughter is to be married, and says that the acceptable husband is one who fears God: if he loves her he honours her, and if he dislikes her he does not wrong her. His reason is that one who fears God is afraid to do wrong. ^{550 551}
• He describes the believing woman in terms of what gladdens a husband: when he looks at her it pleases him, when he asks her she obeys, and when he is away she guards herself and his property, in the sense of a well-known saying. He says a smile on her face opens what closes in a house, and that beauty for him is more than form. ^{552 553}
• He distinguishes a good life from mere subsistence: subsistence, for him, is a kind of life like that of beasts, whereas a good life needs peace. He says that a home where complaint and quarrel repeat becomes a grave, and that constant bitterness shortens life, in the sense of the verse in Surat al-Nahl on the good life. ^{554 555}
• He holds that partial happiness, such as health or food alone, is not enough, and that full happiness needs someone who understands you, so that one is with a person who shares one's taste. He cites what is told of Sulayman and the hoopoe in Surat al-Naml. ^{556 557 558}
• He says souls were created acquainted, and so they attract, and unacquainted, and so they repel; some people recognise one another at first meeting, while others live forty years under one roof as strangers. He holds that the affinity of souls is the basis of affection between spouses. ^{559 560 561}
• He explains "make us leaders for the godfearing" as meaning that a person should call others to good. He says that whoever starts a good practice has its reward and the reward of all who act by it until the Day of Resurrection, and gives the example of Amr ibn al-As, who opened Egypt, saying that reward attaches to deeds. (The lecturer's view.) ^{562 563 564}
• He says that the family of the dead are urged not to announce the death to someone who does not keep up kinship, nor bring him to the funeral, and he counts kinship as a bond that death does not cancel. ^{565 566}
• He states that provision and term are written before birth, and that no soul dies until it has taken its full provision and term, so a person seeks provision by fair pursuit and prays for good rather than for abundance alone. ^{566 567 568}
• He recalls the verse at the close of the sura, "Say: my Lord would not care for you were it not for your supplication", and counts supplication the greatest means of meeting what has been decreed; he holds that a supplication is answered in one of three ways, one of which is that it is stored up for the servant in the hereafter. ^{569 570}

• He recalls that the verses listed many attributes of the servants of the Most Merciful, from verse 63 to verse 74, and calls on the listener to count them and ask himself whether he has them. ^{571 572}
• He says a person may have some of the attributes but not others; if he manages most of them in Ramadan he should aim to complete the rest through the year. He holds that false witness, backbiting or pride must be uprooted, not postponed. ^{573 574 575 576}
• He warns that the Qur'an becomes proof against the reader rather than for him when a person reads it and does not bring his conduct into line with it. ^{577 578}
• He comments on the verse at the close, "those will be rewarded with the chamber for what they endured": he likens the chamber to the cleanest and finest place in the house, and says that in it there is greeting and peace. He tells the story of a weightlifter who finds the weight of life is not in the iron but in the bearing of it, and that burdens grow light when borne with patience. ^{578 579 580}
• He widens on patience with people's harm and in obedience, saying that patience in obedience needs certainty and faith. He describes the believer as the bee, which when it eats eats what is good and when it settles on a twig does not break it, and cites the modesty of Uthman. ^{581 582 583 584}
• He reads the close of the sura, "Say: my Lord would not care for you were it not for your supplication", and explains that supplication has two sides: that God may grant the answer quickly, or turn away an affliction in proportion, or store up the reward. He holds that only supplication turns back what has been decreed: the decree descends and the supplication rises. ^{585 586 587}
• He states that kindness to parents adds to one's years, and that prayer turns nothing away from one who is sincere. He counts undutifulness to a father as lack of manners, lack of religion and loss of honour. ^{588 589}
• He mentions people who want to choose the sex of a child, and says that the Creator makes what He wills and chooses. He objects to wanting to know a child's sex before birth, and counts it a shortfall in submission. ^{590 591 592}
• He says the angels enter upon the people of the Garden with greeting and peace, that there is no sleep or fatigue in it, and that God rewards the godfearing for their patience. He asks the listener to reorder his priorities so as to be in the company of the servants of the Most Merciful. ^{593 594}
• He concludes that every day and every month a person should add to himself one attribute of the servants of the Most Merciful, and notes that knowledge is easy to reach today through computers, so that what is needed is practice rather than more knowledge. ^{595 596 597}
• He sets two brothers side by side, each of whom spent ten times the earth's worth, and states that the world passes, leaving only the face of God, and that wealth and standing do not last. ^{598 599 595}

• He introduces this lesson as being about the virtue of faithfulness, the opposite of treachery, and says that the one who is wafi is the one who has reached completeness in everything. He says that the series aims to revive hearts through these attributes, and that faithfulness is among the most prominent qualities of the believer. ^{600 601}
• He says that fair measure in weighing and giving back what is entrusted are part of faithfulness, and cites the saying describing a man who gives or takes a pledge as one whose whole conduct is trust and fulfilment. ^{602 603}
• He counts keeping what one is entrusted with, including secrets, as part of trust, and observes that many men today compete with women in disclosing the secrets of homes, whereas this was once mostly a fault of women. ^{604 605}
• He describes a woman who goes out to work early in the morning and comes home exhausted, and holds that this brings illness and fatigue into the home, not only income. (The lecturer's view.) ^{606 607}
• He mentions what is related of the Companions on fulfilling a vow, and relates that a woman of Juhayna came to the Prophet asking about her mother's vow, and he told her to fulfil it on her mother's behalf, saying that God's right is the more deserving of fulfilment. ^{608 609}
• He tells of three men among the Children of Israel, one leprous, one bald and one blind, whom God tested; the leper and the bald man were given wealth and the blind man was given a flock, and when a traveller came in disguise asking for help, each gave what he could, and the blind man's sight was restored, so that the traveller was in effect God's test of gratitude. ^{610 611}
• He holds that a person who becomes rich, healthy or learned may grow proud, and cites Qarun as one who forgot God's favour. Returning to the story, he says the one given sight forgets who gave it and claims the wealth as the fruit of his own skill. ^{612 613}
• He says that thanks for blessings completes faithfulness, and that one whom God has blessed with health and wealth pays his debt of gratitude. He recalls the three who were shut into the cave and each called on a deed of his own. ^{614 615}
• He relates that one of them recalled his kindness to his parents, the second refused a grave sin when he could have committed it, and the third recalled his faithfulness to a hired man who left his wage, which he invested until it had grown, and gave it back to him many times over. ^{616 617 618}
• He mentions the treaty of al-Hudaybiyya and its term that any man who came from Mecca as a Muslim would be returned, and relates that Abu Jandal ibn Suhayl came as a Muslim and the Prophet returned him to his father Suhayl ibn Amr, in keeping the pledge. He holds that faithfulness to a pledge requires that people be given their rights. ^{618 619 620}
• He warns against putting off debts and withholding them, and against buying and selling with other people's money without paying them their due, which leads into usury, interest and the rights of others. (The lecturer's view.) ^{621 622}
• He takes up the deferred dowry in marriage, and says that the condition making the deferred part due at the nearer of two terms, divorce or death, is in the view of some scholars uncertain. (The lecturer's view.) ^{623 624}
• He holds that the deferred dowry is a debt on the husband that must be paid, and warns that one who deliberately leaves a debt unpaid is like a thief who has promised to pay. (The lecturer's view.) ^{625 626}
• He holds that a wife owns her own property, so a husband may not ask where she spent the gold he gave her, since it became hers. (The lecturer's view.) ^{627 628 629}
• He states that faithfulness also covers acts of worship, and that prayer is establishing it, not merely performing it, since it forbids indecency, wrong and oppression. He calls the believer to be a person of faithfulness in everything. ^{630 631}

• He states that order covers every area of life, that the relation between creature and creature and between creature and Creator rests on a remarkable order, and that the whole universe stands on order. ^{632 633}
• He says prayer does not begin until the rows are straight, that straightening the row completes the prayer, and that when three set out they should appoint one of them as leader, so the group is not left without a head. ^{634 635}
• He mentions the system of the fast: the announcement of the crescent, abstaining from food and drink before the dawn call, and that someone who forgot is not held to account. (The lecturer's view.) ^{636 637}
• He says zakat is due on wealth that reaches a set threshold measured in gold, each Hijri year, and explains the zakat on crops, minerals and buried treasure as paid at harvest. The figures are not written because they are unclear in the recording. ^{638 639}
• He holds that zakat is due on shares at their present market value, not at the purchase price. (The lecturer's view.) ^{640 641 642}
• He says that at Badr the Prophet arranged the ranks, and that in battle a group advances while another falls back in turn, to shoot and rest; he counts this as order in war. ^{643 644}
• He holds that the rites of the pilgrimage and all other practices belong to order, as do states under their leaders, and asks: why then are we not organised? He says that is the subject after the break. ^{645 646}
• After the break he says that schooling begins with order in the class, that leadership is needed to take decisions, and he faults people for not knowing the manners of disagreement; a child who is trained stands in a line in order. ^{647 648 649}
• He points out that waiting in queues and keeping one's turn is order, and cites the saying that the hypocrites used to hang back at the end of the row; he holds that moving up or holding back in the row is a matter of manners toward the imam. ^{650 651}
• He suggests that a child be given the household money for a month, so that he learns the value of things: the price of bread and milk, and what water and use cost. (The lecturer's view.) ^{652 653}
• He proposes dividing household tasks among sons and daughters, each taking a turn with errands and services, and says that this keeps away quarrels because each knows his part. ^{654 655}
• He faults the proliferation of fatwas by unqualified people, and says that matters should be returned to their people and their proper places, since an organised community entrusts each thing to those who specialise in it. ^{656 657}
• He gives the example of how companies make a pen: they examine the raw material first, then the ink tube, so that the maker of the system knows what it will give. He holds that the Arab by nature chafes at order and dislikes it, and calls for organising work in the home and in society. (The lecturer's view.) ^{658 659 660}
• He states that Islam is wholly ordered, that disorder, haste and spontaneity harm societies, and he calls on every Muslim to be orderly. (The lecturer's view.) ^{661 662 663}

• He explains contentment (qana'a) as coming from qina', the veil a person draws over his poverty. He distinguishes the one who asks (qani') from the one who presents himself without asking (mu'tarr), and says a person's state shows what need he hides. ^{664 665}
• He says that God gives His servant according to how he accepts what little he has: whoever is content with what is decreed is given what he wants, and whoever is not content is exhausted in pursuit of it, and then only what was decreed comes to pass. ^{666 667}
• He describes envy of someone better in religion as a feeling of deficiency: a person prays and gives charity, then sees a brother more pious and feels his own deeds are weak. He counts all this as a sign of weak contentment. ^{668 669}
• He describes a child deprived of a father who sees others rejoice in theirs, and families who live in one room or in a camp, and reminds the complainer about his clothes of the blessing he is in. (The lecturer's view.) ^{670 671}
• He cites a saying on the human being: if he had two valleys of gold he would wish for a third, and only dust fills his belly; he holds that wealth is the wealth of the soul, not the abundance of goods. ^{672 673}
• He says that the child in the womb has its provision and term written, takes ready blood and food with no waste, and draws from this that contentment springs from certainty that provision is guaranteed. ^{674 675}
• He describes a human being growing from weakness to maturity: he nurses, then moves, then goes to school, then to university, and holds that man is the weakest newborn on earth, which for him is evidence of God's care. ^{676 677}
• He says that rulers' greed for luxury starves their peoples, and holds that a person who is comfortable but looks to others loses the blessing of what he has. ^{678 679}
• He says that the poor man who is patient eats what God has given him gratefully and patiently, and the rich man eats gratefully; he notes that the pleasure of food fades with habit, and calls for remembering and thanking the blessing. ^{680 681 682}
• He says that people love someone who asks nothing of them, and calls for independence from creatures and need only of God; he cites Surat Taha on not extending one's eyes toward what God has given others to enjoy. ^{683 684}
• He says contentment makes society safe, no one envies another or covets what another has, and holds that provision is given to believer and unbeliever, the upright and the wayward alike, so the one thing required is to ask God. ^{685 686}
• He closes with a prayer the Prophet used to say: "O God, make me content with what You have given me, bless it for me, and replace for me what has gone from me". He calls the listeners to be among the content, looking in worldly matters to those with less and in religion to those with more. ^{687 688 689}

• He holds that gentleness is one of the qualities of the righteous, and calls a manager to be gentle with those who work under him, since God is gentle with the gentle; he says gentleness covers wives, children and travelling companions. ^{690 691 692}
• He says patience is gained by practising patience, knowledge by learning, and forbearance by practising forbearance; that gentleness adorns whatever it enters, and that production comes with gentleness, so a child raised gently concentrates better at school. ^{693 694 695}
• He likens a home without gentleness to a spider's web, which thinks itself strong yet is exposed to the first wind, and he describes children who make a show when the father enters as doing so out of fear, not love. (The lecturer's view.) ^{696 697}
• He says the Prophet was gentle with people and urges rulers to be gentle with their subjects, and that whoever wants his heart softened should feed the poor and stroke the head of the orphan. ^{698 699}
• He tells the story of the man who saw a dog panting with thirst, went down the well, filled his shoe with water and gave it to the dog, and God thanked him and forgave him. He counts gentleness to animals among the signs of mercy. ^{700 701}
• He says the Prophet noticed Zaynab's rope hanging in the mosque, which she used to hold during prayer, and told her to pray what she could manage; he holds that gentleness toward oneself in worship is itself gentleness. ^{702 703}
• He calls for religion to be made dear to people, not repellent, and says a harsh preacher drives people away from religion; he urges that no one despise another in his work, since every task has its part. (The lecturer's view.) ^{704 705}
• He says that Abu Bakr would be patient with his servants despite their faults, and tells of a man who stumbled on a stone and cursed it, and was asked: will you curse a stone? He holds that gentleness should cover the whole society and not turn violent. ^{706 707}
• He describes a father who carries his child roughly, and another who puts a toddler in a pram wearily, and calls for gentleness to fill every home. ^{708 709}

• He explains dignity (izza) in the language as strength, might and dominance, and says that God is the Mighty, the Subduer over His servants, so greatness belongs to God. He distinguishes the praiseworthy dignity of the believer from blameworthy pride, and holds that the line between them is unclear to many people. ^{710 711}
• He mentions the saying that those nearest the Prophet on the Day of Resurrection are the best in character, and says that dignity is to be honoured through God and one's religion, not to be proud over creatures. ^{712 713}
• He describes pride as a sickness that weighs down the soul, its smell unpleasant to people and to the angels, and calls one who suffers from it to pray to God and strive against himself. ^{714 715}
• He criticises people's attachment to smoking, coffee and tea until they become slaves to them, and counts this as the humiliation that is at odds with dignity; the believer, he says, is not a slave to appetites. (The lecturer's view.) ^{716 717 718}
• He holds that the believer's dignity lasts as long as he is a believer, and cites the verse that dignity belongs to God, His Messenger and the believers, from Surat al-Munafiqun. ^{719 720}
• He mentions that Quraysh planned to kill the Prophet on the night of the emigration, and holds that God honours whoever is honoured in Him and is with whoever is mindful of Him. ^{721 722}
• He mentions the disparity in numbers between the Muslim and enemy armies in the campaigns, and comments that victory is by God's leave and not by counting alone. ^{723 724}
• He says that dignity comes first through performing the obligations, and that a person should read a part of the Qur'an each day so as to finish the book every month, and cites the scholars' view that one who does not keep the Qur'an close has neglected what God made obligatory. (The lecturer's view.) ^{725 726 727}
• He notes that a verse on ablution and one on cutting off the thief's hand stand on the same page, and says that many Muslims take up part of the Book and leave part, like the Children of Israel. (The lecturer's view.) ^{728 729}
• He turns to the House and the words of Ibrahim and Isma'il in Surat al-Baqara, and says that God honoured through this House everyone who says there is no god but God, and counts the House a place of return and security for people. ^{730 731 732}
• He says dignity is a mark of manliness, while baseness shows in flattery and hypocrisy for a post; he calls on a person to honour others and bear witness to the truth, so that dignity grows in society. ^{733 734}
• He tells how an envoy refused to bow to a ruler at a low door built to humble him: he entered with his head held up and said that dignity belongs to God, His Messenger and the believers; the ruler said they had meant to humble him, and he would not let them. ^{735 736}
• He concludes that whoever is honoured through God is free of need for creatures, and calls the listeners to be among the servants of the Most Merciful who are honoured by faith, neither base nor overbearing. ⁷³⁷

• He holds that the noble person loves to aim for what is higher, and illustrates with birds: the eagle soars while the crow follows carrion; the person of resolve rises in seeking what is with God. ^{738 739}
• He tells of a Bedouin brought to provoke Ibn Zayid who came forward and asked about the gift; they offered him a thousand dinars, he said it was little and he was set on the journey, and they gave him more; he uses this to show a man's aspiration and the meaning of dignity. ^{740 741}
• He mentions that al-Shafi'i did not turn to those who backbit his neighbour, and that Abu Hanifa bore with those who disturbed his night prayer, and holds that true aspiration concerns religion rather than the world. ^{742 743 744}
• He tells of a righteous man who saw a drunkard whose saliva ran, and wiped it with his handkerchief; when asked why, he said he was seeking good character toward one in need. ^{745 746}
• He says that a community's concern should be the highest things, that God loves lofty matters, and that what a father hands on to his son is not only wealth but resolve. ^{747 748}
• He holds that ambition comes only through setting right one's intention and then through righteous models, and calls for children to be filled with the matter of aspiration. (The lecturer's view.) ^{749 750}
• He tells that Imam al-Sarakhsi was imprisoned in a deep well and dictated his books from inside it; when asked whether he accepted the imprisonment, he said: what can my enemies do to me? my resolve is a garden in my breast, and my imprisonment is seclusion with God. ^{751 752 753}
• He says that ambition gives a person a grip on affairs, that one always looks upward and forward, and he names those who aspired in learning and medicine, such as Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Rushd and al-Ghazali, holding that raising children to aspire begins with example. ^{754 755 756}
• He mentions that a young commander at the start of his command led an army under the leadership of Abu Bakr and Umar, and says that a child at an early age can lead when filled with good and placed in a suitable position. (The lecturer's view.) ^{757 758 759}
• He ends that a young person is filled with good and given the readiness, and calls the listeners to be people of virtue, piety and aspiration. ^{760 761}

• He recalls the servants' prayer that God keep them from trials, what appears of them and what is hidden, and defines jealousy as a quality of every great and manly person: disliking that another share in what is his. ^{762 763}
• He holds that jealousy for the sanctities of God is praiseworthy, but when it passes its limit it turns into suspicion and bad thinking; he mentions a known story of the jealousy among the Prophet's wives over a dish sent by one of them. ^{764 765}
• He holds that praiseworthy jealousy is a man's protection of his honour and family, and blameworthy jealousy is what goes past its bounds; he calls jealousy an authentic Arab quality, and says the Arabs even took their women to war to keep them safe. ^{766 767}
• He says jealousy is sometimes mistaken for sloth, counts modesty in a woman among the fruits of good jealousy, and observes that knowledge is not all good, since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from knowledge. (The lecturer's view on the bombing.) ^{768 769}
• He says that when Ibrahim had Isma'il in old age, he was shown in a dream that he should sacrifice him, and he believed the dream and submitted; he holds that jealousy over what one loves does not stop obedience to God at a trial. ^{770 771 772}
• He holds that women's jealousy is greater, that they do not want anyone to share their husband, and that some Western societies have fallen into disorder by giving up jealousy. (The lecturer's view.) ^{773 774}
• He tells that a man wanted to marry a servant-girl who was with Ibn Abbas, and when he asked, Ibn Abbas answered that he did not accept it; he holds that jealousy for one's household is a right, even in principle. ^{775 776 777}
• He mentions that jealousy over one's womenfolk pleases God, and relates that Aisha and Sawda spoke of the jealousy and veiling of the mothers of the believers; he holds that the veil is one of the means of guarding a woman and keeping a house pure. ^{778 779}
• He holds that a husband who is jealous for his household should not cut off his mother, sister or father in the name of jealousy over his wife, since a mother who has lived with him thirty years is owed kinship; kinship is one of the rights of the family. ^{780 781}
• He mentions that blameworthy jealousy drives a person to spy on his wife's telephone and family, violating privacy, and counts this as jealousy misplaced. ^{782 783}
• He proposes that children be raised on faith and the fear of God alone rather than on constant surveillance, which he holds is better than watching their phones and rooms. (The lecturer's view.) ^{784 785}
• He mentions that Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf was very jealous over his wives, and feared he might keep one of them from the mosque; he holds that jealousy must stay within what God has permitted of right liberty. ^{786 787}
• He ends that good jealousy belongs with respectable people who keep to their honour, and advises a husband to treat his wife well and speak well of her, so that she earns the right to guard his honour. ^{788 789}

• He says that some women's lives are wretched with their husbands, and that parents cannot bear their children and lash out at their faces. He calls on a person to be a swallower of rage in moments that provoke anger. ^{790 791}
• He cites from Surat Al Imran the godfearing who spend, who swallow their rage and who pardon people, and holds that anger produces nothing useful. ^{791 792}
• He says the customer is always right in the seller's eyes, and urges gentleness toward a person who errs out of ignorance of manners, so that the one who is unbalanced is pitied and not struck. ^{793 794}
• He describes parents who teach their children to deal politely, and notes that some children are sent from father to mother with no proper training, and calls on parents to guide early. ^{795 796}
• He says that the donkey is provided for though its wit is weak, and holds that a patient person who does not flare up quickly shows sense; whoever takes care to understand a matter and does not grow angry is nearer to wisdom. (The lecturer's view.) ^{797 798}
• He cites a saying of the scholars: whoever is provoked and does not get angry is fine in restraint; he holds that anger in its proper place is not blameworthy, and only anger that goes beyond right is. ^{799 800}
• He says a person should keep in mind that he is not the only one at fault, that everyone has slips and errors, and that when one who erred apologises he should not be quick to judge. ^{801 802}
• He says that whoever is angry should perform ablution, whoever is hasty should sit down, and that the one who is angry should make no decision until he has calmed down. ^{803 804}
• He distinguishes patience from beautiful patience: beautiful patience is patience without complaint, and whoever complains of his affliction is, he says, complaining of the merciless to the merciless. ^{805 806 807}
• He ends that life is not a garden without trouble, that patience and contentment bear fruit, and reminds the listeners to pray that God give them success in what He loves and is pleased with. ^{808 809 810}

• He recalls the prayer that God make homelands secure and at peace, with their provision coming in plenty, and holds that the difference between an ordinary believer and the servants of the Most Merciful is that the servants ponder; he distinguishes thinking (tafakkur) from pondering (tadabbur). ^{811 812}
• He says that at religious occasions a person stands with himself and reflects, and gives the example of a small loss, such as a watch or a little money, which God may repay with something better; he holds that the real loss is what has passed of one's life and faith. ^{813 814}
• He asks the listener when he last wept in prayer, and when he last felt humility in prayer, and says these are the real losses. ^{815 816}
• He tells of a father on his deathbed who wrote a will for his two sons and put it in a sealed box that they needed to open to learn its contents; he likens this to the Qur'an left on a shelf unread. ^{817 818}
• He mentions homes with dozens of copies of the Qur'an that are never read, and says the Qur'an is available to us so that it may be pondered, and calls on a person to keep a daily portion of it. ^{819 820}
• He says a person hides his troubles at work and at home, and then asks: when did you last forgive people, when did you last pardon one who wronged you? He counts pardon among the greatest losses when it is absent. ^{821 822}
• He cites the saying that a true friend is one who stays with you and harms himself to benefit you, and who, when time splits you, scatters himself for you; he asks: have you become a sign of faithfulness? and calls the listener to be faithful to his brothers. ^{823 824}
• He asks: what have you offered Islam? He says that prayer and silence alone are not enough, and calls on a person to be a sincere advisor to his community, since the believer is wise and alert and not heedless. ^{825 826}
• He says a person searches for righteousness, and counts the lack of pondering and humility among the losses, holding that worship without pondering remains mere motion. ^{827 828}
• He tells of Umar who smelt a sweet scent from a woman and asked, and learned that it was not his concern; he holds that a person has no right to take in what is not his. ^{829 830}
• He criticises those who are late to government work while taking public money, counting it among the religious losses in trust. (The lecturer's view.) ^{831 832}
• He says that people remember death only when the end is near, and holds that one who lives with long hopes forgets the hereafter, calling for the remembrance of graves and reckoning. ^{833 834}
• He ends that the listener should ponder and remember, and be among those who remember and turn back to God, and prays for those present. ^{835 836}

• He holds that those who reckon with themselves always weigh their deeds, and counts the first obstacles to the door of accountability as self-admiration and overlooking one's faults; a person who reckons with himself is the one who sets obstacles in his own way, not someone else. ^{837 838 839 840}
• He mentions as an obstacle busying oneself with people's faults; whoever dwells on others' faults and forgets his own, he says, lets pride swell in him, and he counts this as the blameworthy self-praise. ^{841 842}
• He lists self-praise, pride and a Pharaoh-like hardness of decision among the obstacles to reckoning, and holds that whoever places himself above others does not reach the door of accountability. ^{843 844}
• He says a heart that does not hear the admonition is shut and locked, and calls the listeners to ponder the Qur'an so that locks are not upon their hearts. ^{845 846}
• He says some of the righteous used to reckon themselves by plain arithmetic, counting what they owed in prayers, zakat and fasting as one counts money, and calls the listener to do the same. ^{847 848}
• He holds that zakat is calculated on known wealth, and says a person should give to those entitled, with knowledge of the amount and the time, and calls for seeking out the needy nearest first before the distant. (The lecturer's view.) ^{849 850}
• He says love of the world and the drive to hoard are an obstacle between a person and self-reckoning, and counts this among the great obstacles, calling for love of the world to be a means and not the end. ^{851 852}
• After the break he says the senses are blessings for which one will be reckoned: the eye looks only at good, the ear hears only what pleases God, and the tongue speaks only the truth; using these blessings for what angers God makes a person a walking disobedience. ^{853 854 855 856}
• He names the fifth consequence as long hope, and says that whoever thinks death is written for someone else lives heedless, and urges the servant to stay always ready to depart. ^{857 858}
• He says a person gathers buildings, land and companies and then leaves them, gives the example of visiting graves, and says that the best provision is piety, and that wealth is distributed and only what was sent ahead remains. ^{859 860 861}
• He ends that a person should soften his heart, that love of the world should be a means and not the end, and that life is to be lived in obedience; he prays for those present, and says the righteous reckon with themselves to their last breath. ^{862 863 864}