TRAILER: The Book of Heart Softeners | Dhul Hijjah 2026 | Dr. Omar Suleiman and Sh. Ali Hammuda
Do You Really Want to Meet Allah? I Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
What Goes With You When You Die? I Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Ep.3 Your Tongue Will Speak Against You | Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Ep.4 Your Actions Will Be Exposed | Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Ep.5 How You Will Be Resurrected | Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Ep.6 You Will Drown in Your Worst Deeds | Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Ep.7 Save Yourself with Small Acts | Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Ep.8 How to Have Jannah Pray for You | Dhul Hijjah Series | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Playing
Ep.9 | All You Have to Do is Acknowledge Allah | Dhul Hijjah | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
Ep.10 | He Will Give You What You Hope For | Dhul Hijjah | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
The Book of Heart Softeners Dhul Hijjah 2026
Ep.9 | All You Have to Do is Acknowledge Allah | Dhul Hijjah | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Sh. Ali Hammuda
In this episode of The Book of Heart Softeners, we reflect on the most fundamental truth Allah asks of us: to acknowledge Him alone. Every human being was created with an innate recognition of their Creator, yet many spend their lives suppressing that reality. As Arafah arrives, this episode examines what it means to renew our covenant with Allah through sincerity, gratitude, and remembrance. What do we truly want most? And does the direction of our lives reflect it?
Join Sh. Omar Suleiman and Sh. Ali Hammuda as they praise the mercy of a Lord who asks so little from us compared to all that He gives.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00The word 'arafah is to come to know your Lord, and there are two things that are
00:09paired off here: recognition and desire. The first thing that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told you when he spoke to you, "Alastu bi rabbikum," am I not your Lord? That's the first thing, and you
00:23are renewing that covenant on the day of 'Arafah. That tawheed is our operating system. We were
00:31born running towards Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So tawheed, the unification of Allah subhanahu
00:41wa ta'ala, is not something that we had to discover. It's not something that we had to learn. Tawheed is not taught to you. It is something you remember.
01:17Allah will say to the person who has the minimum punishment in the fire on the day of judgment,
01:26"If you had things equal to whatever is on earth, would you ransom yourself from the punishment
01:41with it? Would you give up the whole world to get yourself out of the situation that you are in right
01:46now?" He would say, "Yes, of course." He will say, "I asked you for something so much less than that.
02:08While you were still in the loins of Adam, that you would not worship others besides me, but you refused, and you insisted on worshiping others besides me." Subhan'Allah, this is the
02:22final conversation between Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and this person before that person enters into hellfire, and they will never have the chance to speak to Allah again. There's no
02:35du'a that you can make to Allah from hellfire. You can't talk to Allah anymore. This is the last conversation. And in that final conversation, Allah reminds him of the very first conversation
02:47you ever had with Allah. How incredible is that? Like you think about the movie coming together, the story of life coming together, the meeting with Allah, whoever wants to meet Allah. And
03:00Allah reminds you as you are about to be cast into fire. May Allah not make us amongst those people.
03:08Remember the very first time I spoke to you, when you were still in the loins of Adam, 'alayhis salam. This is the day of 'Arafah. You come to know your Lord. You commemorate this day, where you commemorate
03:23this moment, and you renew that covenant. And the opposite of this situation, this man that is being sent into hellfire, and in this last conversation with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, is the last man
03:36to enter into Jannah—the lowest person, the lowest person to enter into Jannah. And I want
03:47you to think about the connection here. For this person, Allah says, "I didn't ask you for the whole world." This man says, "I'd give you the whole world, ya Allah, to get me out of hellfire." And Allah says, "All I asked you for was just don't associate a partner with me. At least acknowledge me."
04:01The opposite: the person who enters into paradise, the last person to leave hellfire and enter into paradise, what we were speaking about last time. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives him the entire
04:16world ten times over. And he's the lowest person in Jannah. And as Allah is giving him and giving him and giving him and giving him and giving him, he thinks Allah is mocking him. Like, "Are you
04:29making fun of me? Are you making fun of me? And you're the Lord of the worlds." And by definition, all this person did was tawheed. I mean, all he did was acknowledge the oneness of Allah
04:43subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because if he's the last person who comes out of hell and makes it into paradise, then he's that person who the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, said has just an atom's worth of faith in his heart. And this is how Allah honors him. So think about the juxtaposition here.
04:57Right? Dear brothers, we are in 'Arafah. And you come to know your Lord. The word 'arafah is to come
05:05to know your Lord. And there are two things that are paired off here: recognition and desire. The first thing that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told you, when he spoke to you, "Alastu bi Rabbikum,"
05:20am I not your Lord? That's the first thing. And you are renewing that covenant on the day of 'Arafah. You came to know. You came to know. And so you are coming to recognize once again. And then the
05:33Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he tells us that as Allah 'Azza wa Jall looks out at these people
05:39on the day of 'Arafah, "Maa arada ha'ula?" What do they want? So you ask yourself, "Maa arata?" What do you want? Allah is asking you, what do you want? And so there's recognition. And that's the
05:53first step. And then there's desire. There's channeling yourself towards that recognition. As we come into the day of 'Arafah, which commemorates that concept of coming to know Allah, what do you
06:04do? You renew the covenant throughout the day: "La ilaha illallah, wahdahu la sharika lahu, al-mulk wa lahu al-hamd, wa ala kulli shay'in qadeer." You keep renewing the covenant just as you came to know your Lord the very first time. And you know, you can't get to the future unless you can properly
06:14recall the past. And so as you think about your final meeting with your Lord, you first think about your first meeting with your Lord. Sheikh Ali, I would love for you to take us through
06:27that moment. What does it mean here? In the loins of Adam, 'alayhis salam. And you're being spoken to on the plane of the day of judgment for the very last time before you go to your consequence.
06:42Alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa assalam 'ala rasoolillahi wa 'ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'een. This statement that Sheikh Umar is highlighting: "I wanted something from you whilst you were still in the loins of your father Adam."
06:58This speaks to our fitrah. This speaks to, in other words, our primordial orientation. That tawheed is our operating system. We were born running towards Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
07:13So tawheed, the unification of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, is not something that we had to discover.
07:25It's not something that we had to learn. Tawheed is not taught to you. It is something you remember. And that is what this person is being disgraced about. That I never asked you to do something
07:40difficult. I never asked you to recreate a concept or to discuss or to discover something that was very difficult for you to comprehend. I just asked you to align yourself with what should
07:54have been your very first memory as tawheed is. Much like a tune that you hear. It's a familiar
08:01humming. You've definitely heard it before somewhere, but you just can't quite remember where. And even for the kafir, this is the concept of tawheed, unless he or she actively goes out of
08:15their way to suppress, to suffocate this realization that constantly yearns to come to the surface. And that is why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, He said:
08:31Meaning that they denied it. They rejected it though they were certain of it in their hearts.
08:38But why did they do that? Out of injustice, wrongdoing, and out of arrogance and haughtiness. So this air, this voice, this sound of tawheed is constantly yearning for you to give it attention,
08:54to align with it, to walk along its grain. But man will suffocate the voice again and again, and though the needle is pointing north, let's call north tawheed, he will bend that needle again
09:07until south feels completely normal. The idea, my brothers, is that tawheed, or the unification of
09:13Allah Almighty, to single him out in worship and adoration and love and glorification, that should not require work. It doesn't require a huge effort, at least from an intellectual
09:28perspective. What does require work is to suppress that default status that Allah Almighty created us in. And that is why the Prophet, alayhi assalatu wasalam, he said:
09:44That Allah Almighty said: "I, Allah Almighty, created my servants upon the upright way of Islam as believers,
09:52as people of tawheed, but it was the devils who then pulled them astray." And to illustrate this idea that our hearts yearn for Allah Almighty, though I personally
10:06may not have learned about it in a book, is this idea of freedom. Freedom. What does it mean to be free? Don't recall a definition that you may have memorized in school or other places,
10:20just allow your soul for a moment to speak. What does it mean to be hurr, hurriyah, freedom? And I did this exercise with my students back in Wales, and I gave every one of them a small
10:33square piece of paper and a pen, and I said to them, "If you can draw freedom as an image, what would it look like?" And so we spent a few minutes, and the images were hilarious, but the outcome
10:44proved this point: 90% of those images involved the idea of looking towards the heavens. So nobody drew a picture of a phone, a table, a car, a house. No. They drew, for example, flags,
11:00which are the symbol of freedoms, waving where? In the air. Somebody drew a picture of a bird flying where? In the air. Faces that are looking where? Towards the sky, the air. Or someone who
11:13is raising his fist where? Towards the sky. Or someone who is flying with wings—freedom—but where? Towards the sky. Therefore, it's almost as if there's something inside of us that is
11:27looking upwards in search for home, in search for that one who breathed life into us, and our imagination of this idea of freedom is upwards. Who put that there? That is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
11:42and this is what this person in the hadith is being reminded. What did I ask of you? I asked of you the simplest instruction, which is just to align yourself with your primordial state of
11:55tawheed, but you refused, and you went the other way. I want you all to think about this. On the day of 'Arafah, what is the gift? The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, said that Allah frees
12:09more people from hellfire on this day than any other day. Why? Because it's an annual realignment, as the Sheikh is talking about. You know, when you've got to realign the body, you realign the soul,
12:22you get adjusted, readjusted back to "La ilaha illallah, La ilaha illallah, La ilaha illallah." "Alastu bi rabbikum?" "Bala." Yes, yes you are, yes you are, yes you are. But then you ask yourself,
12:32why does that compass go off at other times of the year? Your five daily salats are a realignment, they're a readjustment. Ramadan is an adjustment, right? You're constantly realigning yourself,
12:46realigning yourself. What happens? And that's where the iradah comes in. Allah says: "All I wanted from you was this, right?" And he didn't want it from you from a place of need,
12:56subhanahu wa ta'ala, right? But the same word is used. And then Allah says: "What did you want?" As we're coming to the end of this series, here's what I want you to think about:
13:08If you solve your want properly, then everything else falls into place. Shaytan doesn't necessarily convince you that your want is off, but he convinces you that he
13:21can fulfill your wants for you through illegitimate ways. That he has the solutions, that he has the remedy to your wants, that he can prematurely deliver on your desires and your wants. That
13:36you don't need to do this whole religion thing and wait for a paradise. No, I've got you. So that's the first thing. He tries to divert your wants to a means and a way that is not from Allah
13:48subhanahu wa ta'ala. But here's the second thing. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches you to nurture
13:58the greatest want that you could possibly have, which is his pleasure. I want Allah's pleasure. "Maa arada ha'ula." You have to ask yourself very honestly. When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala asks
14:12the angels, and Allah knows us better than they know us, "What do they want? What do you want?" You have to sit with yourself and ask yourself, "Do I want Allah's pleasure more than anything else?
14:24And if so, does my life reflect that want?" If you solve that problem, then you're constantly aligned. You're constantly aligned. And your swerves become more minor in nature, less severe in nature.
14:40The last thing that I'll say here, dear brothers, because people ask, you know, "How do I really lean into this concept?" The ulama mention that there is 'arafah, and then there is al-i'tiraf.
14:53They sound very similar. 'Arafah is to come to know your Lord. Then there is al-i'tiraf bi-ni'ami. To acknowledge his blessings upon you. Now I'm going to connect this hadith all the way
15:07back to the first hadith for a moment. "Man ahabba liqaa'a Allah." The one who loves to meet Allah, Allah loves to meet them. The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, said in an authentic hadith in
15:19al-Tirmidhi: "Ahibbu allaha lima yaghthiukum min ni'amilah." Love Allah for the blessings that he provides you with. You know how enhanced your relationship with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is
15:32when every single day you go back and you think, "Allah, you gave me this. Allah, you gave me that. Alhamdulillah, you gave me this. Alhamdulillah, you gave me that. I feel it, ya Allah." Then this is not becoming a relationship just of obligation. This is becoming a relationship
15:48of love and gratitude. "Ya Allah, you gave me all of this." And then you desire to meet Allah. So you can thank him. We would say, for us, "I want to thank you in person."
16:02Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is no person. "I want to thank you, ya Allah. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah." And the slogan of the people of paradise is alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah.
16:14And so this is where you come to: not just "La ilaha illallah," but "Lahul-mulk wa lahul-hamd." To him belongs all dominion. To him belongs all praise, subhanahu wa ta'ala. So lean into
16:26these two things constantly: renewal of covenant and gratitude for blessings. And you will find that your renewal is becoming more frequent and more intense. And your longing for Allah
16:38is greater than any other longing that you have. Any questions, dear brothers? How can we guarantee that our remembrance of Allah and our remembrance of tawheed is sincere,
16:50so that we don't land amongst the hypocrites? We've mentioned this in our previous episode that sincerity is a work in progress. It is never a
17:03finished product. It is not so much a destination that we arrive at and settle in, but it is a
17:11track. It is a journey that we are constantly in battle with. One of the indications that a person
17:19is in fact sincere is that he finds himself more obsessed with the private acts of worship than the
17:29is in fact sincere is that he finds himself more obsessed with the private acts of worship than the public ones. A person who is motivated when the eyes of people are upon him or her, but not so
17:43motivated in private, is one such worrying sign. Another sign is that
17:54it is equal to you that people praise you or blame you. That isn't to say necessarily that we should become numb. We're human beings at the end of the day. But the idea is that you are
18:07not motivated by the praise of people to the level where you would have had no motivation before, and you are not demotivated by their blame to the level where you would stop what you would have
18:21otherwise been doing. These are some of the signs or the telltale signs to look out for that are, insha'Allah, indicators of sincerity. I'll add just for 15 seconds because I have to. In
18:32Hajj we talked about how in Ihram at some point people forget they're in Ihram. If you ever make it to Arafah, may Allah make us to the plain of Arafah. In the last hour of Arafah where people are making du'a, they forget whoever else is around them. Everyone is so immersed in their du'a and
18:47their own personal relationship with Allah that everything else becomes irrelevant. That's where you want to get to, wherever you are, not just in the plain of Arafah but in the state of Arafah.
