When a criminal plots their crime, they ensure that the crime occurs at a time when they will be able to take cover; and the reason they do this is because the only way to be able to escape and hide at the time of the crime is if they have some sort of protection around them. For example, crimes often occur at night. Why do criminals plot their crimes at night? Because, at night, it’s dark; and people are sleeping; it’s difficult to see; it’s difficult for—there are very few people watching; and so, if they have to commit a crime, they know that they can take cover in the fact that it’s dark; so, very few people will see them; and, of course, very few people are looking at that time as well.

If a criminal has to perform a crime during the day—let’s just say that there’s some reason they wanna perform a crime during the day, then they do it in the biggest crowd possible. Why do they do it in the biggest crowd possible? Because the moment the crime occurs, they can quickly slip under the cover of the rest of the people that are around them; and they won’t be detected; or, at least, that’s their hope. So, for example, somebody robs a bank—what do they do? They quickly disguise themselves; and as they’re leaving the bank, they throw off their disguise and try to look like everybody else because the moment they exit the bank and they enter the sea of humanity, it’ll be very difficult for you to be able to find the criminal. If there’s tens of thousands of people walking around, how are you going to be able to identify that this is the criminal out of these tens of thousands of people? So, they will—in the daytime—hide within the sea of humanity. So, these are the ways by which the criminal will be able to commit their crime and remain undetected.

Now, of course, that’s the criminal who’s interested in being a criminal; but what we should recognize is that all of us are criminals in the deen; and, there is only one place to hide; and that is the place that Allah SWT created a refuge; because, look, when we commit our crime in deen, we can’t hide from Allah; Allah sees; and it doesn’t matter if it’s night or day; Allah sees; and it doesn’t matter if it’s silent or if it’s out loud; Allah sees; and it doesn’t matter if we verbalize it or if it’s within our minds and hearts; Allah knows. There’s no way that we, as people who are trying to do the things that we should be doing—but constantly failing at those things—there’s no place that we can hide. We can’t hide from Allah’s knowledge. We can’t hide from Allah’s detection. We can’t hide by doing these crimes in the dark. However, there is one place that Allah SWT has created where people, despite their crimes, can hide; despite their Islamic crimes; or, despite their spiritual crimes, can hide; and that is in the jamaa’ah of the believers. When a person mixes and keeps the company of the pious, then Allah SWT includes them among the pious—despite the fact that they may be criminals. When a person mixes and keeps the company of the pious, then they come like the pious. They mix into the sea of the pious, despite the fact that they might be criminals.

Look, last week, we talked about the example of the individual who killed ninety-nine people. And remember we said that he killed ninety-nine people; and he felt some remorse for having killed ninety-nine people. He went to the most knowledgeable person that he knew; and he asked if there was forgiveness for him. The person said there is no forgiveness for you; so he killed that individual. So, now he killed ninety-nine people, plus a scholar. And he now had killed a hundred people. When he again felt remorse, he went to a pious person in the community and he asked, “Is there forgiveness for me?” The person said, “Yes, of course, there’s forgiveness for you, but you have to go to that group of pious people that’s living in this particular place”. So, he began to head towards that group of pious people who was living in one particular p[...]