Purpose of knowledge

Fajr Reminders - Mahmood Habib Masjid and Islamic Center

--- *This transcript was automatically generated by AI and may contain errors. * --- In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the Universe. And peace and blessings be upon the honorable prophets and messengers, Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and upon his family and companions. Tasliman kaseem kaseeha. Many years ago, I was in Saudi Arabia in Dammam, and I went to meet a very famous alim there, who I had been following and learning from for many years. So I met with Maziz, I met him, and it was about Salat al-Isha, so you know around 8, 7, 8 p.m. And he said to me, if you're free after Salat al-Isha, please come home to meet, it is a great honor, the alim is inviting me to his house. I went to meet him, and then guess what time I left? After Salat al-Fajr. And as we left, he gave me a parting advice. And his advice he gave me was, the next time you meet an alib, shake his hand and rub. So I came here to do a door of Darussalam, and then we spent an hour with the teachers. Now I am here with you, and Allah knows best what is ahead of me. Hande Allah. I'm delighted to see all of you, maashada, may Allah bless all of you, and grant you his khashiyya in your heart. The hasil of ilm, please understand this very clearly, because when we are in madrasah, we get stuck with the books, kitab, kitab, kitab, kitab, kitab. And we forget, not deliberately, but we forget the purpose of all that. Imam Ahmad bin Hambal Ram to Lali had a friend called Bishar al-Hafi. Now Imam Ahmad himself was so tremendously rigorous about knowledge, that one day somebody asked him to do istambadul akhkam, how many ahadis, and we are here talking about the dakhri, the ilm-ul-rijal, the whole works, right? How many ahadis should a person know? Imam Ahmad did not reply. So the man started to push him, and guess what number he started with? Did he say, is it enough to know ten ahadis, enough to know a hundred? No, he said, is it sufficient to know ten thousand ahadis? Ten thousand ahadis memorized with the huchens of the writers. Imam Ahmad said no. He said twenty, he said no. He said thirty, he said no. He said forty, he said no. The man went all the way to a hundred and twenty thousand ahadis memorized, and Imam Ahmad says maybe, right? Same deed. So one day somebody asked Imam Ahmad, he said, you have this great rigor with regard to how many ahadis a person should have memorized and so on and so on, but your friend Bishr al-Hafi, Rahatul alaih, you call him your ustad. But he does not know hundred and twenty thousand ahadis. How is he a uttab? Imam Ahmad said something which I want to leave with all of you, and I ask Allah to put in my heart. Imam Ahmad said Bishr has the husul, he has the hassle of the ilm. He has the essence of the knowledge, he has the purpose of knowledge. He said what is that? He said khashyatullah. He said khashyatullah. Right? So remember this, khashyatullah. Purpose of your learning here is not to become an alin, not to become a fazil, not to get a bachelor's, a master's, not to make heads of the foran, not to be an expert in usul al-ahadis or whatever. All of these are zimn and all of these are things that will happen to you in matter of course as you go through the curriculum, your purpose to be here is to have the khashya of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in your heart. Now question is, how do I know if I have the khashyat of Allah or not? Wait, she agrees, I should have khashya of Alhamdulillah. So now do you have it or not? Do I have it or not? One of the things that I teach is six sigma quality and six sigma is a quality standard. For example, if I ask you, I'm doing a business, I'm manufacturing something that is 99% perfect. Is that good or bad? 99% perfect, good, right? 99% is 10,000 mistakes per million. Six sigma is 3.4 mistakes per million. That is the difference from 10,000 to 3.4. The man who invented that, he said, if you want,