Opening and Purpose of the Series
All praise be to Allah, the One God, Creator and Lord of all worlds. We worship only Him and seek help only from Him. We ask Him to guide us to the right path and keep us on it. We continuously ask Him to forgive our sins, cover our shame, accept our good deeds and worship, and by His will and mercy admit us to Jannat al-Firdaus. The best greetings, salutations and peace be upon the final Messenger of Allah, the Beloved Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, his honourable family, the exemplary companions, the martyrs, the righteous Islamic scholars, and all those who follow the path of truth and goodness. Dear and respected youth, as-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Thank you for the greeting. Of course, as I have begun this evening, every speech starts with praise to the Lord of the worlds and the sending of salutations upon His Beloved, the Seal of the Messengers, the Seal of Prophethood, and the finest example, Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. We begin with this and we end every serious, useful and good work with this. I ask Allah that these ten planned pre-Ramadan lectures will be precisely that—useful to you who will listen, God willing. My goal, my ambition, is to motivate you, to awaken you, and to kindle or rekindle the fire of faith in your hearts even more, even stronger. Every success comes from the Lord of the worlds, and whether I will succeed or not, I will try, and I hope you will help me by reflecting on what I will say, especially about the verses, the hadith, examples from the lives of the companions and our righteous predecessors. Because faith in the heart is a feeling that grows and diminishes.
Faith and Consciousness During Ramadan
You know well that when the month of Ramadan comes—and this is a kind of introduction to the month of Ramadan—when we dedicate ourselves to fasting, when we dedicate ourselves to prayer, when we dedicate ourselves to learning the Qur'an and being in seclusion with our Lord, our faith grows. We somehow distance ourselves from worldly concerns, draw closer to the afterlife, strengthen our spirituality, and then you feel a beauty that you cannot describe and that you cannot obtain except through the month of Ramadan. All of you who have fasted, all of you who study the Qur'an often, occasionally, or constantly, you know well that feeling, just as you know the feeling when you do not come to the mosque for days, weeks, months—how the heart hardens. We always mention this: that faith dwells in our hearts, in our souls, in our selves, and above all we must remember that it is a gift from the Lord of the worlds, a favour that Allah gives only to those servants of His, men and women, whom He loves. He gives all these worldly blessings—life, food, everything in which man as such enjoys on this earth—to everyone, to disbelievers and believers alike. And what is interesting to remember is that Allah does not make His blessings conditional on man's belief. If Allah made His blessings conditional on obedience to Him, then a disbeliever would not receive even a drop of water to drink. Yet we see, observing the world around us, that actually, in quotation marks, people who do not care about the Creator, who do not mention the Creator—the Creator is mentioned less and less.
The Creator Absent from the World
As a digression, watch films, if you like films; watch documentaries, watch any kind of series, watch everything that is offered through the media—unless Muslims are speaking, of course, or believers—and you will see that God is not mentioned anywhere. Look at films in cinemas now, and you will see that there is almost nowhere any mention of the Lord of the worlds. Look, say, at weather forecasts on Croatian television or on any television, and you will see that God is not mentioned anywhere. People, and we know well that the Lord of the worlds is the Lord of all processes, that He causes the sun to rise in the east and set in the west, that He determines whether it will be cloudy this evening, rainy, whether it will snow or whether it will be plus fifteen degrees in January or minus fifteen. Human technology and man as such will never be able to achieve this, yet no one mentions God. Now I want you to reflect on this: in what dangerous world we are living—dangerous, in quotation marks. You are young, and do not misunderstand me—you know well what danger is. For instance, when we speak of the war in Ukraine, that is danger: the danger of losing your life, losing your home, being driven out. When someone, God forbid, is terminally ill, that is danger: the danger of losing your dearest one. However, the danger when the world opens up, when you enjoy blessings every day—listen to me—you enjoy blessings every day, you are healthy, you have food to eat and drink, you have a place to sleep when you go home from the club, yet you are not conscious of who gave you these blessings. That is the danger. What is the danger? To your faith, to your belief. There is no greater danger than when a person forgets where every blessing comes from.
The Title and Main Theme
Therefore, the title of this evening's lecture is: wherever you are, be conscious of Allah. That is, wherever you are, with whoever you are, whatever you do, whatever you think about, at the end of your thoughts and at the end of your deeds and every activity, let it be your Lord and your Creator, Allah, who stands foremost. From this, in these introductory sentences, we must know what faith is. We know that our religion is called Islam, we are adherents of Islam, which means obedience to the Creator, to one and only God. Now, consciousness of God—what is our consciousness of Allah? In Arabic, this is called taqwa, a broad topic. I will try to convey it to your age group so that we are conscious, so that it is not just that I, the speaker, speak well, but that in the end you understand nothing. I want you to reflect on my words. When someone asks you in class, a non-Muslim friend of yours, a random passerby from the city, tomorrow at university, in a work collective, "What does it mean to be a Muslim?" and you say, "Well, a Muslim—my father is Muslim, my mother is Muslim, I went to Islamic school, I go to the mosque, I believe in one God, that's what a Muslim is, right?"—we know well that this is a broader concept. It means to place your entire life in obedience to the Lord of the worlds, because we have freedom and the ability to choose, and we could choose not to be obedient to the Lord of the worlds.
Islam: External and Internal
Now I ask all of you here: are you Muslims? Yes, of course we are. Well, what does that entail? And we repeat the Islamic pillars—that entails prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage. Now the question is: what is our relationship to these pillars? But truly, we can enumerate them precisely, we know verbally what they mean, but essentially what Islam means—I have not yet moved to faith, only to Islam itself. I am speaking about our external aspect. That is, if you have a Muslim name, if you went to Islamic school, if you come to the mosque, if you come to lectures, say at the OKM, then by your external appearance you are Muslim. However, for a believer and a believing woman, that is not enough to attain faith, to attain that inner feeling. Whatever you do—here is the key sentence of this evening's lecture—remember just this sentence, and I will be happy if you grasp the feeling that the most important goal of everything you do is Allah's pleasure.
The Example of Pleasing Parents
You know well how, when you want to win over your father and mother, grandmother and grandfather, you do what they love around them. If you want pocket money, or you want to go on a trip with friends, for seven days before that moment when you need to ask, you are like an angel, right? You are with your mother all the time—"Mother, do you need anything? Father, do you need anything?"—to show yourself in the best light. Now I transfer this comparison: why do we not try to win over our Creator in the same way? And why do I say this? Because we firmly believe that we have a Creator who gave us freedom, who guided us to the right path. This is very important for you to understand.
Free Will and Divine Decree
Why are we Muslims? Feel free to say—this means fatalismo, in the sense that Allah determines everything and I have no role. We need to be conscious and think about this: do I have a role in the fact that I am Muslim? You can interpret this in two ways. First, I have a role because, although my father and mother are Muslim and sent me to Islamic school, I ultimately chose whether I would be Muslim or not. That means I chose to pray, to fast, to give almsgiving, to perform pilgrimage, to follow the Qur'an and the Sunnah. However, the second part of the answer is equally correct: you could say that Allah determined that I am Muslim, just as Allah determined that my classmates be Christian, not Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox, or come from an atheistic family. Once we have reconciled this—that it is at the same time Allah's decree and Allah's fate, but also my choice—my choice now stands thus: that most important task is that I live Islam in such a way that I understand Islam, that Islam is not just a ritual, that Islam is not just prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage—without these there is no Islam—but Islam is also my relationship with other people, my activity in this world, so that ultimately everything I do has as its goal Allah's pleasure.
Everything You Do for Allah's Sake
Whatever you do, whatever you do, the clothes you wear, the food you eat—I will trivialise some things a bit—the company you choose, tomorrow the spouse you choose, the firm where you get a job, how you earn your living, where you even buy an apartment, build a house, if you perhaps want to move from Zagreb to another country—why are you doing this? Is Allah pleased with it? Behind everything, pay attention, I am speaking about the category of believers, those from the title of this lecture, who are conscious of Allah wherever they are and with whoever they are. If a person has wavering faith, now this way, now that way, my speech makes no sense, but it makes sense for you, and I hope you are 100% in such a state, in such a condition, that you want Allah to be with you, to be pleased with you. Now, how to achieve Allah's pleasure and what it means, and what it actually means to be conscious of your Lord, whoever you are with—well, simply, especially for young people, it is very important. Being conscious of Allah has multiple interpretations, and one of perhaps the closest to you, because for your age group it is to be as far from sin as possible. Why do I say this? Because a young person is full of energy, full of passion, full of desires, and here desire can quickly slip into sin.