Message from the Minbar

In the second sermon of Unsteady: Strengthening the Foundations of Life with Allah, we turn to another essential foundation: knowing Allah. We explore what Allah has revealed about Himself, His knowledge of all things, His power and authority, His promises and warnings, and His mercy. The more we come to know Allah, the more we understand why we should trust Him, turn to Him in our struggles, and seek His pleasure in everything we do.

But knowing Allah is more than learning about His Names and Attributes. This sermon explores how that knowledge becomes firmly established in our hearts through certainty and action, leading us toward watchful awareness (murāqabah). We learn how remembering Allah can shape our thoughts, correct our intentions, and guide our choices before we act. Through practice, this awareness becomes part of who we are, helping us live according to what we know about Him.

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In the opening sermon of Unsteady: Strengthening the Foundations of Life with Allah, we begin with a simple question: what keeps our life with Allah steady when our feelings, circumstances, and motivation begin to change? The Qurʾān calls us to steadfastness, but steadfastness does not appear on its own. It has to be built upon foundations strong enough to hold us in place when life becomes difficult.

This sermon explores the first of those foundations: spiritual striving (mujāhadah). We look at how striving trains the self, exposes what still needs to be corrected, and leads us into honest self-examination (muḥāsabah). From there, the path turns toward watchful awareness of Allah (murāqabah), learning to live with the knowledge that He sees us, knows us, and is present to every part of our journey. This is where steadiness begins.

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The eighth sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God’s Servant.

Having returned to the ordinary appetites of life, we now return to the place where spiritual formation is tested most intimately: the home. What happens when Allah has taught us to need less, endure more, worship more seriously, or detach from things that once occupied us, but the people under our roof have not been brought to the same place? In this sermon, we consider the danger of making our families carry the weight of our spiritual development, and the responsibility to remove ourselves from the center without abandoning the trusts Allah has placed in our hands. Through the encounter between Salmān and Abū al-Dardāʾ, we see that devotion to Allah cannot consume the rights Allah Himself has given to others.

The sermon then turns the gaze inward. When a spouse or child disappoints us, their conduct may sometimes expose something we have learned not to see in ourselves. Yet self-examination does not make us sovereign over another person’s heart. We are responsible for how we lead, teach, correct, provide, and cultivate, but guidance belongs to Allah. Our task is to form a household directed toward Him while preparing those within it to live responsibly in the world. The clearest sign that the path has truly brought us home is that those under our roof are the first to taste the fruits of what Allah has cultivated within us.

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The seventh sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God's Servant.

Having learned that what reaches us through another person’s hand does not begin there, we now turn to one of the most ordinary forms of provision we receive: food. A meal may appear simple, but the table quickly reveals what appetite has learned to expect from us. Do we have to reach first, secure what we prefer, or allow our own satisfaction to set the pace for everyone around us? What seems too small to matter may expose whether the self has truly learned that it is no longer the center of the room.

In this sermon, we explore how appetite can narrow our attention until the people beside us begin to disappear, how even refusing hospitality can become another way of centering ourselves, and why our conduct should change according to who shares the table with us—with the wealthy, dignity; with the poor, preference; and with our brothers, ease. We then turn inward to a subtler form of appetite: the way anticipated pleasures can occupy us before they ever arrive, pulling us away from what Allah has placed before us now. The path is neither to chase what has not been given nor to reject what has. It is to receive what Allah provides, enjoy it with gratitude, and remain at the table fully present with those beside us while the heart remains directed toward His greatness.

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The sixth sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God's Servant.

Having learned to recognize our own faqr, we now face the question that naturally follows: when our need becomes practical and something we require appears to rest in another person’s hands, toward whom does our poverty actually turn?

In this sermon, we explore the adab of asking and receiving from creation without mistaking creation for the Source. Need has a measure. We can become too quick to place ordinary burdens upon others, just as we can become so protective of our independence that we refuse to ask even when help is appropriate. The goal is neither habitual dependence nor radical self-sufficiency, but a truthful relationship with need in which we remain capable of asking, receiving, and depending upon one another without allowing the heart to lose its direction toward Allah.

The sermon then turns to the image of the treasurer. Another person may genuinely possess what we need, but what rests in the hand does not make the hand its ultimate owner. The Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ expressed this order with remarkable clarity: “I am only a distributor, and Allah is the One who gives.” Even as Allah caused immeasurable mercy and guidance to flow through His Messenger ﷺ, the Prophet never confused the means with the Source. In the same way, we learn to thank those through whose hands Allah provides without becoming servile before them, and without becoming so spiritually detached that we fail to acknowledge the human kindness Allah chose to use.

Finally, we consider what happens when the hand remains closed. A refusal can expose where our hope had quietly settled, especially when disappointment turns into resentment toward someone who was never the owner of what we sought. Allah reminds us that whatever mercy He opens, none can withhold, and whatever He withholds, none can release after Him. The closed hand therefore does not mean the treasury is empty. Whether provision reaches us through one hand or another, the heart no longer has to decide beforehand which hand Allah must use.

The sermon concludes at the door of al-Muʿṭī, the Giver. We can need one another without making one another lords, receive without becoming owned by the gift, and give without imagining that what passes through our hands began with us. We thought we were waiting at someone else’s door, but every door was His, every treasury was His, and every hand belonged to one of His servants.

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The fifth sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God's Servant.

Having learned to recognize the dignity of another person’s need, we now turn the mirror toward ourselves. What happens when we spend so much of our lives learning how not to need that dependence itself begins to feel like a problem we have solved?

In this sermon, we explore the meaning of faqr: not material deprivation, but the servant’s unchanging dependence upon Allah. Wealth, stability, competence, planning, and provision do not necessarily threaten that poverty. The danger begins when what fills the hand persuades the heart that it has become sufficient. As comfort increases, pleasures become expectations, expectations become necessities, and we may gradually construct lives in which need rarely has enough time to remind us what we are.

The test becomes sharper when obedience threatens something we have come to believe we cannot live without. We may begin searching for religious permission only after the desire has already decided what must be preserved. What began as provision becomes reassurance, and the self quietly returns to the center, asking religion to protect it from having to surrender.

The sermon concludes with the reminder that ultimately strips every illusion of sufficiency away: death. The salary ends, the position passes, the house remains, the plans stop, and even the body is left behind. Everything upon the earth will perish, while Allah remains, al-Ghanī, the One free of all need. And before Him, we stand exactly as we always were: poor.

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The fourth sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God's Servant.

Having learned not to let wealth enlarge another person in our sight, we now face the opposite test: what happens when another person’s need tempts us to make them small? We may believe deeply in charity while still arranging our lives so that poverty remains at a distance, allowing us to give without ever truly knowing the people who need us.

In this sermon, we explore the hidden cost of asking, the dignity that can be lost when need must be repeatedly explained, and the responsibility to notice before another person is forced to disclose what they would rather carry quietly. We consider how generosity itself can become another form of injury when accompanied by irritation, judgment, reminders, or the expectation that hardship should quickly disappear once we have helped.

The sermon then turns the encounter inward. The person who is poor of hand may be rich of heart, while the person whose hand is full may remain deeply poor within. Allah makes some of us a trial for others: one of us may be tested through having to ask, while another is tested through what happens in the heart when someone asks.

The poor person may therefore be holding a mirror before us. If need does not strip a person of dignity, why do we keep our distance from those whose need reminds us of our own?

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The third sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God's Servant.

Having learned how to return among those who do not share the same spiritual formation, we now turn toward another reality we inevitably encounter in the world: wealth, and those who possess it. The spiritually formed servant does not return to a world emptied of material abundance, status, influence, or access. He returns to a world still shaped by possession, where some have little and others have much. How do we remain in the presence of wealth without allowing it to distort our sight, bend our course, or alter the way we stand before those who possess it?

In this sermon, we explore how wealth can begin to resemble independence, how the apparent weight of possession can transfer to the person holding it, and how the heart can slowly enter another person's orbit before anything has ever been asked or promised. Drawing upon the imagery of gravity, orbit, light, and borrowed radiance, we consider how the glitter of worldly life can captivate the eye, enlarge the wealthy in our estimation, and quietly diminish us before them. The servant learns to resist this pull through dignity, cutting off covetousness, severing hope from what is in the hands of creation, and refusing to give another servant a dwelling place within the heart.

But freedom from wealth carries its own danger. The one who is no longer impressed by possession may begin to become impressed with his own detachment from it. Spiritual poverty can harden into distance, disdain, and superiority if the wealthy are no longer seen in their proper proportion. The sermon therefore turns inward, showing that the wealthy and the spiritually poor each carry their own discipline: one must loosen the hand through generosity, while the other must empty the heart of false dependence.

Ultimately, the question is not whether we will live with need, but where that need will finally come to rest. The servant remains faqīr, and Allah alone is al-Ghanī. When the heart remembers where its poverty belongs, wealth may remain in the world without determining our course.

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The second sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God's Servant.

After learning how companionship changes among those who share the same spiritual path, we now turn toward those who do not. Most of our lives are not spent only among people who share our formation, understand our inward concerns, or recognize the terrain Allah has allowed us to traverse. We return to family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and communities where others may be standing at very different places along the path. How do we remain among them without becoming harsh, demanding, or estranged?

In this sermon, we explore the sacred responsibility of safeguarding the sirr, the secret place between the servant and Allah, while returning to ordinary life. What Allah opens within us is not something to impose upon everyone around us. The servant learns instead to look upon others with tenderness and mercy, leave people to their own states, refrain from burdening them with disciplines they have not entered, patiently bear rough character, and know when distance itself becomes necessary to preserve what Allah has established within the heart.

Drawing upon the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the enduring wisdom of the great masters of spiritual wayfaring, this sermon also confronts the more dangerous threat that remains within. The one whom Allah has carried farther along the path cannot lower his standard simply because those around him carry less. Knowledge removes excuses. The one who has never stepped onto the trail may stand in safety. But the one whom Allah has brought across it, even after returning to level ground, still stands in peril.

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The first sermon in the series Estranged: Joining Creation as God's Servant.

Something has happened to us. We are becoming increasingly estranged from one another. Friendships fracture, families drift apart, marriages struggle under the weight of expectation, and communities slowly give way to isolation. Yet before asking what has happened to everyone else, this sermon turns the mirror inward. Perhaps the deeper question is what has happened to us. What if the greatest obstacle to companionship is not the failure of others, but the quiet insistence that every relationship exists to serve the self?

In this opening sermon, we begin where every lasting reform must begin: by learning our true measure before Allah. As the servant is freed from the illusion of self-importance and returned to the world in humble servitude, relationships themselves begin to change. We no longer approach people asking what they will become for us, but what our servitude to Allah requires of us among them. Companionship is transformed from a hidden transaction into an opportunity for service, preference, forgiveness, and the safeguarding of another person's heart.

Drawing upon the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the enduring wisdom of the great masters of spiritual wayfaring, this sermon explores the first and clearest proof of genuine nearness to Allah: not extraordinary spiritual experiences, but becoming the kind of person others find easier to live with. The relationship is no longer there to serve us. We are there to serve within it.

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The sixth and final sermon in the series Unmeasured: Reclaiming Servitude in a Self-Centered World.

Having surrendered every false claim the nafs once made for itself, the servant now faces its final and most subtle temptation: the desire to appropriate the very light that came to humble it. In this sermon, we contemplate Allah's Name al-Nūr (the Light) and the profound parable of the lamp in Sūrat al-Nūr, discovering that the believing heart was never created to produce the light, but to receive it faithfully. As the heart is purified of every lingering claim to itself, it becomes less like a mirror reflecting attention back upon the self and more like the clear glass through which the light of faith quietly shines. The journey of servitude reaches its completion as the heart learns not merely to stand beneath Allah's light, but to bear it without ever claiming it as its own.

Drawing upon the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the profound insights of the Sufi sages, this sermon explores how true knowledge of Allah transforms the servant from within until faith becomes visible in gratitude, patience, mercy, justice, and humble service to others. The journey concludes not in extraordinary spiritual experience, but in truthful servitude. The lamp was never meant to be admired. It was only meant to bear the light faithfully.

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The fifth sermon in the series Unmeasured: Reclaiming Servitude in a Self-Centered World.

Having relinquished every claim over what we possess, the servant now confronts perhaps the most subtle illusion of all: the belief that he himself is great. In this sermon, we contemplate Allah's Names al-ʿAẓīm (the Magnificent) and al-Aʿlā(the Most Exalted) and discover how knowledge, accomplishment, suffering, uniqueness, and even acts of worship can quietly become materials from which the self fashions a false measure of its own importance. As the greatness of Allah fills the heart, every claim to greatness collapses, and the servant begins to rediscover his true proportion before his Lord.

Drawing upon the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the profound insights of the Sufi sages, this sermon explores how true knowledge of Allah dismantles the illusion of greatness and teaches the heart the worship of humility. Through the repeated movements of bowing and prostration, the prayer becomes the servant's daily return to his proper measure before Allah. The journey into servitude continues, not by becoming great, but by surrendering every claim to greatness until the heart is finally free to be His servant.

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The fourth sermon in the series Unmeasured: Reclaiming Servitude in a Self-Centered World.

Having discovered that our efforts do not govern their outcomes, the servant now confronts an even deeper illusion: the belief that what has been placed in his hands truly belongs to him. In this sermon, we contemplate Allah's Name al-Malik(the King) and discover how the language of "mine" can quietly become a claim the heart was never meant to make. Whether our wealth, our bodies, our loved ones, or even our time, everything we possess remains under the absolute dominion of Allah. Loss, accountability, and the certainty of return all expose what prolonged nearness has allowed the self to assume.

Drawing upon the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the profound insights of the Sufi sages, this sermon explores how true knowledge of Allah as al-Malik dismantles the illusion of ownership and reveals the reality of amānah (trust). As every false claim of possession is stripped away, the heart awakens to its true station before its Lord: not as an owner, but as a servant entrusted with what the Master has placed in its care. The journey into servitude continues, not by claiming what has been given, but by faithfully carrying it until it is returned to the One to whom it has always belonged.

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The third sermon in the series Unmeasured: Reclaiming Servitude in a Self-Centered World.

Having discovered that every strength and ability is continually sustained by Allah, the servant now confronts a subtler illusion: the belief that he governs what comes next. In this sermon, we contemplate Allah's perfect governance over all affairs and uncover the hidden ways the self quietly expects the future to conform to its own desires. Anxiety, frustration, relentless planning, and attachment to outcomes often reveal not merely a fear of uncertainty, but an illusion of control that only the light of divine knowledge can expose.

Drawing upon the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the profound insights of the Sufi sages, this sermon explores how true knowledge of Allah's governance dismantles the illusion of control and calls the servant to the worship of tawakkul. As every false claim to directing the future is stripped away, the heart awakens to the reality that it was never entrusted with governing outcomes, only with faithful obedience. The journey into servitude continues, not by learning how to control tomorrow, but by placing complete reliance upon the One who has always governed it.

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The second sermon in the series Unmeasured: Reclaiming Servitude in a Self-Centered World.

If the first illusion exposed by the light of divine knowledge is the servant's poverty, then the first illusion to fall is the belief that he possesses anything within himself independently of Allah. In this sermon, we contemplate Allah's Name al-Ghanī (the Self-Sufficient) and discover that every strength we claim, every ability we exercise, and every blessing we enjoy is continually received from Him. What we mistake for self-reliance is often nothing more than Allah's uninterrupted generosity becoming so constant that we forget its source.

Drawing upon the Qur'an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the profound insights of the Sufi sages, this sermon explores how true knowledge of Allah dismantles the illusion of self-sufficiency and teaches the servant to worship from a place of complete poverty before his Lord. As every false claim of independence is stripped away, the heart begins to discover that even remembrance, gratitude, and worship themselves are gifts that can only be sought from Allah. The journey into servitude continues, not by becoming stronger in ourselves, but by becoming more truthful before the One who alone needs nothing.

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The opening sermon in the series Unmeasured: Reclaiming Servitude in a Self-Centered World.

Building upon the journey of Divine Love and Communion, this sermon marks a decisive turning point. Having come to know and love Allah, the servant must now confront a deeper question: Who am I before Him? Drawing upon the profound insights of Imam al-Wāsiṭī, this sermon explores how every true knowledge of Allah becomes a mirror that exposes the reality of the self. The Divine Names no longer function merely as windows through which Allah is known, but as mirrors through which the servant discovers his poverty, weakness, dependence, and need before his Lord. As the light of divine knowledge enters the heart, it not only illuminates the majesty of Allah, but also shatters the illusions the soul has long maintained about itself. The journey of love now reaches its fulfillment in truthful servitude.

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Ninth sermon in the series Divine Love and Communion.

This sermon moves from communion to illumination. It shows that the many disclosures of Allah's attributes are not separate destinations, but rays of a single divine light drawing the heart toward Allah Himself. Through the imagery of the stars, the moon, the dawn, and the rising sun, the sermon traces the servant's journey from obedience and gratitude, through the tasting of the divine attributes, until the scattered witnessings of majesty, mercy, wisdom, and beauty begin to gather into one abiding love.

The sermon shows that the highest love is not found in passing spiritual states, but in a heart established with Allah through every changing circumstance. What begins as many lights becomes one light, what begins as many tastes becomes one love, and the servant discovers that every step of the journey was guiding him toward the One who had been drawing him near all along.

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Eighth sermon in the series Divine Love and Communion.

This sermon moves from orientation to communion. It shows that love for Allah does not stop at knowing His attributes, but deepens as the heart begins to taste their effects. Through divine exaltedness, revelation, knowledge, will, and sustaining care, the sermon explores how Allah makes Himself known to the servant, not merely as truths to be affirmed, but as realities that transform the heart. As each attribute unveils a new dimension of divine perfection, humility, reverence, shame, surrender, dependence, and longing begin to gather into a deeper love.

The sermon shows that these spiritual tastes are not the destination, but openings through which the servant comes to know the One described by them all. It is through these disclosures that the Qur'an becomes communion, worship becomes watchfulness, and every attribute becomes another invitation to draw nearer to Allah Himself.

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Seventh sermon in the series Divine Love and Communion.

This sermon moves from recognition to orientation. It shows that love for Allah does not merely deepen faith, but gives it direction. Through the imagery of the seed, the thinning of veils, and the opening of the heart, the sermon explores how the servant prepares through repentance, sincerity, vigilance, and sound belief, while the opening itself belongs to Allah alone. It shows how illumination in this life serves as a foretaste of a greater unveiling in the next, and how the heart finds its qiblah through knowing Allah as both transcendent beyond creation and near to His servants. Through this gathering of the heart, worship is transformed, prayer becomes presence, and love begins to take root.

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Sixth sermon in the series Divine Love and Communion.

This sermon moves from recognition to honoring. It shows that the ten days of Dhul-Ḥijjah are not merely a season of reward, but a test of whether the heart honors what Allah loves. Through prayer, remembrance, sacrifice, repentance, and longing, the sermon reframes these days as a lived case study of love for Allah as al-Ilāh and al-Rabb. It shows how sacred time exposes the state of the heart, how beloved deeds become weightier when offered in beloved days, and how the servant is called back to Allah through obedience, gratitude, and attentiveness. Through the pilgrims and those who remain behind, the sermon restores the meaning of nearness, showing that the road to Allah was never closed to the one who turns back honestly.

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