Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

muḥāsabah
of themselves, they are not going to be able to live by the
instructions that are about to be given, and have already been given, in this
surah. Allah says: 
Rabbukum aʿlam bi-mā fī nufūsikum in takūnū ṣāliḥīn
—if in
fact you are good, if in fact you are righteous, then Allah knows that better—
fa-
innahū kāna li-l-awwābīna ghafūrā
—for those who keep coming back to Allah
in repentance. Just as we have the word 
tawwāb
, similarly we have the word
awwāb
, people who come back to Allah sincerely. They feel bad about what
they have done and they keep recognizing that they’ve made a mistake and they
keep coming back, for those people Allah is exceedingly forgiving. Inside the
word 
awwāb
there is also a lesson—the idea that we are never going to stop
making mistakes; there is always going to be something we could have done
better. We constantly have to recognize that in ourselves—I have to recognize
that in myself, you have to recognize that in yourself, and then we have to keep
making 
istaghfār
to Allah for the shortcomings that we have. We have to be
constantly aware of our own flaws. Instead of waiting for somebody else to point
out what’s wrong with me I should be the first one to point out what’s wrong
with myself, and constantly acknowledge that before Allah.
It is a beautiful thing actually and it’s directly connected with the perfection
of Allah—the only one who is perfect is Allah, which means all of us have some
flaw. We’re always going to have flaws and we’re never going to be done with
our mistakes. It’s never going to happen. So the fact that we recognize our
mistakes and then ask Allah to cover up those mistakes—this is the idea of
maghfirah
: to cover things up, to cover the flaws. If you see a crack in the
ground, you cover it with cement or something this is literally the idea of
maghfirah
. The fact that we do this is an acknowledgement that we are imperfect
and also an acknowledgement that only Allah is perfect. People who cease to
recognize that in themselves—may Allah not make us from them—people who
just don’t actually think about what’s wrong with them and what they could
make better about themselves, they have actually forgotten about the perfection
of Allah.

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Give to the near of kin his due, and also to the needy and the
wayfarer. Do not squander your wealth wastefully.
(Al-Isrā’ 17: 26)
Now, Allah gives us advice about how to spend our money, He says: 
wa-āti
dhā al-qurbā ḥaqqahū
—and give to the one who possesses closeness—not
dhawī al-qurbā
but 
dhā al-qurbā
—give the one relative, his right. Allah is not
making us think about all of our relatives at the same time, it is as though Allah
is saying, consider each one of them individually.
What happens in a lot of families? A lot of families, if you’re an average
family, then you have some fight in your family. Some uncle you don’t like,
some cousin you don’t get along with, some brother that you had a problem with
or whatever. Then if somebody needs help, you think of helping the people that
you get along with but you don’t think of helping the people that you had a fight
with. We skip them. ‘That uncle? No, no, no! He’s not getting anything. Zakat?
I’ll give it to some other place. Some 
ṣadaqah
I’ll give it to my 
khala
, but my
chacha
!? Forget about him. No, no, no. I hate that guy.’
Allah is telling us: actually, if they are close to you and Allah gave them that
relationship to you—
wa-ulū āl-arḥām baʿḍuhum awlā bi-baʿḍin fī Kitāb Allāh
(
al-Aḥzāb
33: 6)—the people that are connected to you by the womb of a
mother; maybe you’re connected by your grandmother, maybe your connected
by your mother or your father, these are connections of the womb. If you have
that connection then you have to consider each and every one of them. If they’re
in need—whether you like them or not, whether you had a fight with them or not
—if they deserve your help then you have to give it to them. And Allah here in
this incredible 
āyah
did not say: 
wa-āti dhā al-qurbā
and then after that 
amwālak
or 
mālak
; He said, 
ḥaqqahū
—give him what he deserves. Give him his right!
In other words the money sitting in my pocket, that should be given to my
family members that are in need, is actually not my money according to the
Qur’an; it’s their money, that I’m holding—it’s their right. Just like when you
hire someone to do a job for you, after they finish their job the money you had
agreed to pay them, if you haven’t paid them it yet, and it’s in your pocket, it’s
still not your money. It’s actually their money and you have to give it to them.
You can’t think of it as, ‘Oh, I’m just going to go shopping with this cash’. You

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can’t. You owe it to someone else. That mentality has to permeate, has to be
internalized by the Muslims, that for our close relatives, the ones that need help,
that’s actually their money. What we have in our pocket is actually their money.
It’s in our account, we login and see it in our account, but it’s actually not ours;
It’s his right—
ḥaqqahū
—according to Allah.
When you owe someone money, you are quick to pay it, especially if it’s a
higher authority. You owe the government taxes, you pay it quickly. You owe
the electricity company money or there are going to cut the electricity, you’ll pay
the bill quickly. When you owe something and you know that there are going to
be consequences, you and I will pay it quickly. Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) is now the
authority behind the close relative. The close relative may not have any
authority, as a matter of fact, if he deserves zakat and he or she deserves
ṣadaqah
, then they are not financially capable. This means they are most likely
not in a position of authority; but now their authority is validated by Allah. Allah
is the authority that is saying you better give them their right.
Wa-l-miskīn
—then on top of that, the second is 
al-miskīn
. 
Miskīn
is a
combination of two words 
masaka
and 
sakana
in Arabic. It’s formulated by both
of those words together. It means people that are stuck in a situation. 
Miskīn
does not mean poor people, there are other words for that in the Arabic language,
for example 
fuqarā’
. 
Miskīn
is a deeper concept. The idea of a 
miskīn
is someone
who is not able to help themselves, in their financial situation, their political
situation or whatever problem. For example, if somebody is a cab driver and he
makes his money, provides for his family, by driving a cab. But his eyes become
weak or he has to go for surgery and he is legally considered blind. Now he can’t
drive the cab anymore. It’s the only job he had, and now he’s stuck. He’s not a
beggar, he’s not a poor person, but he is stuck in that situation. You have people
for example that have reached an age where they have retired but their retirement
savings are not enough for them. They’re not even able to get the groceries,
they’re stuck. They are not of the age where they can go and get another job—
they have a health condition, they have something else going on in their life,
they’re not able to do it. You have single mothers; they have children that they
have to take care of and they can’t afford day care. They can’t go get a job
because they have to take care of their kids and there’s no family, no other
support that can help them. These are the people that are called 
miskīn
—they’re
stuck. They can’t help themselves. Literally, just from every angle, they’re just
caught, and they don’t know what to do.
Allah says take care of those people. And, by the way, it’s an extension, so

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the first people we look for are within our own family. Then we identify people
who are in that situation in our community. But the problem is how are you
going to know? How am I going to know that in the city of Irving, Dallas, in a