Yaqeen Podcast

The Prophet ﷺ said that someone who witnesses a sin and hates it is like someone who wasn’t there, and someone who wasn’t there but approves of it is like someone who witnessed it. Dr. Omar Suleiman says that hadith reads differently now. You no longer have to be in the room to approve of a sin. You can like it, share it, or laugh at it from anywhere, and every clip and every joke hardens the heart a little more.

In Signs of the Hour Ep. 24, he begins with the narration of a time when zina happens in public and the most righteous person only asks for it to be done out of sight. 

He covers Zaynab bint Jahsh’s (ra) question about whether a people can be destroyed while the righteous are still among them, the hadith of trials laid on the heart strand by strand, the ship whose lower deck drilled a hole, and how the decline of Bani Isra’il began when people kept eating with those whose sins they had stopped objecting to. 

He ends on why forbidding sin is harder than enjoining good, why it will never cost a person their life or provision, and how to correct someone out of love instead of to shame them.

0:00 - When evil no longer bothers the heart
2:14 - Private righteousness doesn’t protect a society
4:30 - Every clip, every reel, every joke
4:50 - The heart dies when it stops hating evil
6:17 - A standard to know good from evil
8:01 - What the like button is saying
11:23 - Du’a is not a replacement for duty
13:07 - Why forbidding evil is harder
13:36 - A society is judged by what it permits
14:32 - The job description of this ummah

You’re finishing suhoor when it hits you that Fajr may already have come in. Do you stop, or keep eating? The answer goes back to a hadith narrated by the Prophet’s ﷺ grandson, and it doesn’t stop at fasting. Find out what it says about your prayer, and about the doubts people keep to themselves about Allah.

Hadith 11 of Imam al-Nawawi’s Forty, taught by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy in Anchored Ep. 7.

0:00 - Hasan ibn Ali (ra): The Prophet’s ﷺ “rayhana”
2:10 - Hadith 11: “Leave what makes you doubt for what doesn’t”
3:10 - Aisha (ra)’s advice on patience: “It’s only a few days”
4:50 - When hardship justifies the easier opinion: The 3 conditions
9:25 - Doubts in application: disputes, masjid money, conflicts of interest
11:30 - Doubt in worship: Wudu, salah, fasting, tawaf, forgetting rak’ahs
14:40 - Make your heart like glass, not a sponge  
17:25 - Are Shaytan’s whispers to you a sign of your faith?
20:00 - Hanlon’s razor: Don’t assume malice

He was the strongest man among the Prophet ﷺ’s Companions. What made Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra) so great wasn’t only his strength, but what he did with it: he turned it against himself first.

In this khutbah, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy walks through stories from the life of Umar (ra) that show strength used for justice and compassion:

The takeaway: find your strength, and use it for Allah's pleasure and to improve the world in the short time we have.

0:00 - Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra): Strength turned inward
1:50 - Justice without favoritism: The whip and the son of Amr ibn al-As (as)
4:20 - No special treatment: His son's camels and the perfume from Bahrayn
7:15 - Strength in compassion
8:00 - The night Umar (ra) cooked for a starving family
12:35 - The crying baby and the stipend for every newborn
16:00 - Finding your strength
17:00 - “O Allah, I am weak, so strengthen me”: Umar (ra)’s first du'a on the pulpit
18:10 - Closing du’a

The Prophet ﷺ said that when modesty leaves, faith follows. And he reminded us that his ummah will be forgiven except those who publicise their sins: the person Allah covered overnight who wakes up and tells everyone what he did.

Dr. Omar Suleiman defines haya (modesty) well beyond clothing, using the hadith that true modesty before Allah means guarding the head and what it holds, the stomach and what it takes in, and remembering death. 

He separates shame before Allah from shame about the family’s reputation, explains why the Qur’an condemns loving to see immorality spread, and reads the hadith of those “clothed yet naked” as a diagnosis of a whole society: the people who consume it, perform it, fund it and design it, and the trafficking industry that sits behind it.

To learn more, read the paper, “Ḥayāʾ: More Than Just Modesty in Islam” by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy: https://yaqeeninstitute.org/read/paper/haya-more-than-just-modesty

0:00 - The loss of haya
2:15 - What true modesty with Allah is
4:51 - Shame for Allah vs. shame for the family
6:49 - Announcing a sin before the digital age
9:07 - When immorality is open
11:24 - Clothed yet naked, as a society
14:30 - The industry behind the industry
15:53 - Which side of it am I on?

Most of us look back on our lives. In this khutbah, Dr. Omar Suleiman asks us to look forward too. Allah tells us that on the Day of Judgment our words and deeds will be replayed to us. He also tells us the exact words people will use to express their regret.

Since Allah has told us those regrets in advance, we can plan around them. Think about the regrets you don’t want to have, with your prayer, your parents, your marriage and your friendships. Then work backwards and change things while you still can.

0:00 - Your deathbed regrets, today
2:05 - Jeff Bezos’ regret minimization framework
3:51 - Walking the Day of Judgment backwards
9:21 - Starting from Jannat al-Firdaws
11:54 - The Qantarah: Letting grudges go
13:45 - The Sirat: Family ties and trustworthiness
15:15 - The Mizan and the Book of Deeds
18:21 - “My Lord, send me back”
20:34 - Reverse engineer your relationships