Signs of guidance

Fajr Reminders - Mahmood Habib Masjid and Islamic Center

⚠️ Auto-generated transcript: Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen. Wasalaatuhu wa Salamu ala sharafil anbiya'i wa al-mursaleen. Muhammadun Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi wa ala alihi wa as-sallam, tasliman kateeran kateeraan. Fumma badhu. My brothers and sisters, in today's world it is very easy to get distracted and to start believing things about yourself which have no grounding and no roots in reality. For example, you might feel that you are extremely popular and very influential and that you are a great strategic leader and all kinds of things that I hear people saying about themselves or other people saying about them. May Allah have mercy on us and teach us to remain grounded in reality. And that's why I always quote and remember one of the wise sayings of Imam Shafi'i Rahmatul Ali. He said that when somebody praises you, remember that he is praising the cloak that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala covered you with. He does not know you. He has not seen you. You are real you. He has not seen your reality. He is reacting to or responding to what he is seeing and what he is seeing is the cloak that Allah has covered you with. Meaning Allah has covered your weaknesses, Allah has covered your evil with his cloak and therefore the person thinks very highly of you. Don't start believing that. Just thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as alhamdulillah and ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala never to remove that cloak so that if it is, so that if people see your actual reality then that landing can be very rough. So it is very important on having said that, it's important for us to remain grounded as I said and let me therefore teach you some ways of how to remain grounded. So whatever you are, however high you might be flying, ask yourself some questions, some very simple questions and the first of that question is, no matter who you think listens to you, no matter who comes to you for advice, ask the question, are they willing to pay you for that advice? And what's the evidence? It's not a question of just saying I'm willing to pay. Have they paid? Can you look at and can you show for yourself? I don't say show me, you don't need to show me but do you have invoices and bills to show that people come to you for advice and that they are willing to pay you good money for that advice, number one. Number two, how many people follow your advice? Who follows your advice? Have you tracked anybody to see that you gave some advice and the person followed that advice and then what happened to them? After all our advice is not coming from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, nobody is receiving wahi. So no matter what, no matter how good you think your advice is, it's a good idea to track it to see what happened to the person who was wise enough or foolish enough to follow your advice. Now today we are conditioned and we measure success on the basis of false numbers, followers of social media. There's a joke somebody sent me once and they said that this guy died and there were three people in his funeral and his mother said, oh, how is this possible? Because he had 3,000 followers on Facebook. Now that is the unfortunate reality. The whole reality is that we live in a make-believe world and we measure our success and we feel good on the basis of these false numbers. We think people are listening to us. It's a mutual, you scratch my back, I scratch yours kind of thing. So if one is it's of course also promoted by the algorithm, whatever you like, you see more of that. And secondly, if you like something, somebody's comment, then that person likes your comment and so on, actually has no meaning. So therefore false numbers. Now just analyze that on the basis of engagement and the number will get reduced to single digits. For example, if you are looking at the number of views on your channel, you might have 10,000 views. But then look at the engagement for example, if you had a 30-minute lecture,