BismillahirRahmanirRahim

Awaken The Humanity In Our Hearts

What can you do? So many things you can do. When you look at that kid (the little Boy In Aleppo) and you say, ‘okay I feel something but I’m so desensitized to it that sometimes I just want to gloss it over, what can I do other than feeling bad?’ Some people they are asking.

So many things you can do. One of the things you can do is that when you look at your child, you are going to see that kid. When you look at children, you are going to see that kid. Which mean, not to say, ‘ohh, that is my precious child, I don’t want it to be like that kid so I must now shower him with more and more luxury and spoil him.’ No. You are going to look at your child, and you are going to look at that kid and when your child, he passes the limit, for example, not giving respect to food, that so many they don’t teach their children to have respect for food. First they give their children whatever they want to eat. Then later when they eat, ‘mommy, I don’t want this!’

‘Oh it’s okay, put it over there.’

What is she going to do with it? She’s going to throw it to garbage. Correct?

‘I want this! I want this! Ah enough, I don’t want to eat anymore.’

Then, ‘ it’s okay.’

It is something precious, that is rizq, you don’t treat it like that. Then you are going to understand, ‘how much my child has been blessed. What is separating my child from that one? Nothing. So now I’m going to be extra careful because Allah has given me so much and has denied that one, so now I must be responsible with the nikmat that I have.’ Because people are looking, ‘what can I do to help that kid.’ You cannot do too much to reach to that kid. You can do something to reach to yourself and others around you. That is more important. Where your hand can reach? It cannot reach there, it can reach to your children. It can reach to your wife, it can reach to your husband, it can reach to your grandchildren. Reach then. Make them to understand, make them to appreciate whatever Allah has given. Make them to care. Make them to have compassion. Make them to have responsibility. Make them to have love and thanks to Allah swt. Do you understand? And that’s what you should do. Otherwise it’s not going to hit us. Otherwise, we are going to be questioned on the Day of Judgment.

We may get away this time to say, ‘Ya Rabbi, I cannot help those ones. We don’t have a Khalifa, there’s no Divine Law in this world anymore. My hands are tight. I cannot help them.’ But the question will be asked: so what did you do to help yourself and others around you? You cannot reach that one but at least you can reach to those who are around you.

I wonder, how many of us who have children would make their kids to watch that video. If the adult they get so dead in their heart, how many are going to teach their children that, to say, ‘look, look at this one. Look where his home is. Look what happen.’ Then that time maybe you are going to understand a little bit more because the kid is going to ask, ‘Why is this happening daddy?’

‘Because bad people makes it to happen.’

‘Why?’

Then you are going to start having to explain but you can only explain if you understand it yourself. And to make a kid to understand, you yourself have to have that innocence and that purity of understanding to make them understand. Otherwise you are just using words, you said, ‘oh it’s complicated. Oh I don’t know.’ No, there’s no real complication between Haqq and Batil, between zulm and the one who is being oppressed, the zalim and the mazlum. It’s not so complicated. Then you are going to teach them about this world in a way that they are going to learn and they are going to become better ones for each other, better ones for Allah. They are not going to grow up ignorant and arrogant and spoiled. They are going to appreciate and they are going to care. They are going to have respect. Then that time when all those qualities are there, when you teach them the dunya, that’s a very firm container and that container is going to filter out what is good and filter out what is bad. Filter out the bad and retain the good because he has a strong container.First you don’t teach them the love of this dunya. You teach them about the love of Allah and His Prophet, and the love of this ummat, and the love of good. You teach them that first before you teach them about worldly knowledge. Because otherwise, when are they going to learn about right or wrong?

So many passed teens, twenty, thirty, forty years old, they still don’t know what is right and wrong and they don’t want to know what is right and wrong. Why? ‘because I’m not the one getting bombed. Because I have everything that I want. Because daddy is going to give it to me. Because if I don’t then mommy is going to get very upset and daddy has to give.’ So they learn manipulation at a very young age.

We don’t see these things, that’s why living here in the farm, you are going to see death of the animals, you are going to see how animals get sick. You are going to see how difficult it is to live in this world. Especially living in these countries, first world countries, it’s not as if we are shielded from the misery of other people, but it’s shown in such a way that it is very ineffective, through post and through this and that, it’s very ineffective and it desensitizes you. But we don’t have, they take away all the poor people, they take away all the sick people, they take away everyone who is handicapped, to remind us of the reality, that other reality of this world, and they locked them up. So when you come out, you don’t see it. So from a very young age, you are not going to pass by, say a poor person who is begging on the streets, same age as him, without a limb and he is going to lack that experience to know that, ‘alhamdulillah, I have something and this one does not have. Because I have something, I should not waste that. I have a responsibility.’

All that is taken away. In fact, they not only take away that reminder and those feelings, they put different feelings to say, ‘whatever you have, it is not enough. You should have more, and more and more and more and more.’ Awakening that desire especially through the television and through other things, the children grows up just wanting more and more.

I remember reading an article years ago, there was this very spoiled teenager from New Jersey. She was very out of control, the mother said, spending thousands of dollars every month, that she’s not earning, you know, getting very spoiled taking one thing not even using it, throwing it away, wanting more and being very nasty. You know what the mother did to her? The mother took her and gave her a one way ticket to India, to Calcutta, to stay in an orphanage and she throws out all her credit cards and said, ‘you stay there. Because I cannot teach you anymore. I cannot do anything. You have to stay there.’ The girl was going to kill herself da, da, da, but she stayed there. It transformed her life. Because people still have humanity in their hearts. It just have to be awaken. They just have to be surrounded by the right amount of influence. She stayed there, she had to deal with these orphans, she had to deal with poor people, sick people, and she just woke up. She says, ‘this is real. What I had before, that was unreal.’ And this is the meaning when the Prophet (asws) said, ‘visit the cemeteries often. Visit the sick people often. Remind yourself of death often.’ This is a same meaning.

Oh, we know so much, so many times we teach our children to become hafiz but we don’t know any of this Prophetic manners. So they become hafiz of Quran with the worse sheytanic manner. From a very young age, they know how to cheat and lie and steal. Then are we surprise that twenty years later, we have people who are claiming to be Muslims and they are perpetrating the worse crimes? No, we are not surprise.

InsyaAllah, may we move away from all those wrong teachings and hold on tightly to the teachings of our Holy Prophet (asws). InsyaAllah ar-Rahman. We are weak, we are asking, Ya Rabbi, help us. Send us some strength. Send us some power for us to live clean and properly and to raise our children clean and proper, as much as we can in this ahir Zaman Ya Rabbi. Send us the help and protect us Ya Rabbi. For the sake of the Holy Prophet (asws), Sultanul Awliya and SahibulSaif. Al-Fatiha.

Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz,
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
OSMANLI DERGAHI- New York
16 Zul Qaida 1437
August 19, 2016.