For over 1,400 years, one clan has guarded the most important key in history. And ironically, it reached them through a man who once rudely denied the Prophet ﷺ entry into the Ka’bah. 

But even as his own parents vehemently opposed the Prophet ﷺ, Uthman ibn Talha (ra) inched closer to Islam. His excellent character in escorting a Muslim woman (ra) to safety, and his joining two other great Companions as they finally headed to Medina to accept Islam, became turning points in his life. 

And on the day of the Conquest of Mecca, the Prophet ﷺ honored him and his descendants with a duty that remains theirs until today. 

0:00 - His name and title of Hajib al-Ka’bah (Custodian of the Ka’bah)
2:18 - A rude comment when the Prophet ﷺ tried to enter the Ka’bah 
5:00 - How he escorted Umm Salamah (ra) to safety 
10:15 - Losing his father, uncle, and 5 brothers at Uhud 
13:21 - His mother’s vow to drink wine from a Muslim’s skull 
14:43 - Embracing Islam along with Khalid (ra) and Amr (ra)
15:58 - Receiving the keys to the Ka’bah 

You were still in your mother’s womb when all of this was already written for you by an angel: your rizq (provision), your lifespan, your deeds, and whether you will be among the blessed or wretched. 

So does it matter what you do with your life? Can you still change your destiny? What kind of plot twists might still happen at the end of an apparently good or evil life? And how deep are the risks of getting involved in bid’ah (innovations) in the religion? 

“Anchored: 40 Hadith for Today’s Muslim” is a new series by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy which draws insights from Imam an-Nawawi (rh)’s collection of 40 hadith and applies them to some of the most pressing questions Muslims face today. 

Tune in every Saturday at 9 AM CST/3 PM GMT for a new episode of Anchored!

Episode 3 covers the 4th and 5th hadiths of Imam an-Nawawi’s collection. 

0:00 - Introduction
3:55 - The first half of Hadith 4: What’s written for you in the womb
5:42 - The first 40 days after conception: How the embryo forms
11:35 - Is there tension between Islamic teachings and modern science? 
13:03 - Ensoulment: When an embryo becomes a person 
16:24 - Can you change your destiny? 
22:59 - The second half of Hadith 4: Does destiny disregard your effort? 
26:12 - Some of your true colors surface at the moment of death 
33:31 - The 4 types of hearts 
37:09 - Hadith 5: The importance of avoiding bid’ah (innovation) 
41:48 - The definition of bid’ah (innovation)
45:01 - Reasons why bid’ah is dangerous 

Hosting guests at home has become rare. Most of us have friends we’ve known for years and never had over. We meet at cafés and restaurants, keep up in the group chat, and save our homes for some day when the house is clean and there’s time to cook. That day rarely comes.

Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy argues in this khutbah that the feast is part of the problem. When hosting means a week of cooking and a table nobody can finish, the guest feels the weight of it, the host dreads doing it again, and the invitations stop. 

The Prophet ﷺ told his Companions not to go to great lengths for guests, and they served what they had. 

Your friends came for you. A cup of tea on the floor and one extra dish is enough to keep the door open, and an open door is how friendship, and the faith that grows inside it, reaches your children.

0:00 - The perfection in every word of the Qur’an
2:41 - The first person to host guests at home 
4:13 - How we meet each other today 
5:35 - Visiting each other is an act of worship 
7:30 - How the Prophet ﷺ and Companions hosted
9:19 - It’s your guest’s rizq and your reward 
10:12 - How we made hosting a burden 
11:33 - Does keeping it simple mean you’re not generous?
13:55 - Complicating visitations breaks us apart 
16:10 - Brilliance in how Ibrahim (as) hosted angels 

NOTE: This lecture discusses Islamic teachings about the trials of the end times, including the prophecy that people will wish for death. It is a discussion of Islamic eschatology. Nothing in it is encouragement toward self-harm. 

If you are struggling with despair, hopelessness, or thoughts of harming yourself, please contact Naseeha Mental Health for free, confidential, faith-sensitive support. Call or text 1-866-627-3342 or visit https://naseeha.org. 

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A narration says that before the Hour a man will pass a grave and say, “I wish I were in his place,” and that it will not be out of longing for Allah but out of exhaustion with life. 

The emptiness is the sign, not the hardship. What the same tradition carries is the correction: everyone already in a grave would trade everything they owned for one more day to seek Allah’s pleasure.

Dr. Omar Suleiman reflects on what is left when this world is no longer fulfilling. He is explicit that this is a religious diagnosis of one specific cause and not a statement about mental health or why anyone experiences these thoughts. 

Find out which wish for death the Prophet ﷺ forbade, which one he allowed, and the du‘a he taught in relation to this: 

اللَّهُمَّ أَحْيِنِي مَا كَانَتْ الْحَيَاةُ خَيْرًا لِي وَتَوَفَّنِي إِذَا كَانَتْ الْوَفَاةُ خَيْرًا لِي
Allahumma ahyini ma kanat al-hayatu khayran li, wa tawaffani idha kanat al-wafatu khayran li. 

“O Allah, keep me alive so long as life is good for me, and cause me to die if death is better for me.” [Sahih al-Bukhari no. 5671] 

0:00 - What’s left when nothing is fulfilling anymore
2:43 - Why disbelief in the Hereafter empties everything
3:47 - What held Ayyub (as) together
4:15 - Why are you wishing for death?
5:42 - Ibn Hajar (rh) on the paradox of wishing for death
9:47 - Fleeing a confusion you cannot correct
11:42 - What Ali (ra) said near the end of his life
15:22 - Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (rh) and the du’a of longing
18:08 - What the dead are wishing for
19:39 - The istikhara parallel
20:14 - When a du’a becomes transgression

Abdullah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi Sarh (ra) was honored with writing the revelation down as it came to the Prophet ﷺ. Then he left Islam. 

He returned to Mecca and claimed he could tamper with or forge the Qur’an himself. It was the worst lie one could tell, and Allah (awj) responded in Surah al-An’am, ayah 93. The punishment set for him was severe, even amidst the general amnesty in the conquest of Mecca. 

Dr. Omar Suleiman traces how a man whose apostasy was answered by revelation came to command the right wing at the conquest of Egypt, replace Amr ibn al-As (ra) as its governor, and lead the first Muslim campaign west across North Africa. 

The record that survives him does not open with the apostasy. It opens with the commander, the leader of armies. Find out what he asked Allah for at the end of his life, and what he was doing at the moment he died.

0:00 - The foster brother of Uthman ibn Affan (ra)
3:59 - Leaving Islam and claiming to tamper with revelation
5:22 - Why Islamophobes misuse weak narrations about the scribes
8:29 - How he was pardoned by the Prophet ﷺ
11:20 - Leading Muslims armies across North Africa 
15:47 - The du'a to have Fajr be his last deed

Manners are not the polish on top of a religion. 

In the framework Abdullah ibn Mubarak used, faith sits inside five concentric walls. Certainty at the centre, then sincerity, then the obligations, then the prophetic practices, and manners as the outermost wall of all. The order matters, because the outermost wall is the one that gets breached first. 

Lose your adab and the sunnah starts looking optional; lose the sunnah and the obligations start slipping; lose those and whatever worship is left is self-selected, which means it was never very sincere; and at the end of that sequence a person’s certainty is gone. Nobody experiences this as a collapse. It happens inward, in order, over years.

The practical edge of all this is uncomfortable, and Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy lands it hard at the end. Islam was built on five pillars, which makes those pillars infrastructure rather than decoration. Everything else is finishing work, and finishing work on a structure in shambles is not piety. It is decor.

“Anchored: 40 Hadith for Today’s Muslim” is a new series by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy which draws insights from Imam an-Nawawi (rh)’s collection of 40 hadith and applies them to some of the most pressing questions Muslims face today. 

Tune in every Saturday at 9 AM CST/3 PM GMT for a new episode of Anchored!

Episode 2 covers the second and third hadiths of Imam an-Nawawi’s collection. 

0:00 - 4 essential questions: The hadith of Jibril (as) 
6:57 - Why the Prophet ﷺ rarely gave long lectures
9:30 - 5 fortresses of faith and adab (manners) as the outer fortress  
12:56 - The baseline faith of a Muslim
18:22 - Questions about qadr (destiny)
21:18 - How Islam addresses loneliness 
23:52 - The pattern in Yaqeen’s Ramadan series 
26:58 - Disrespectful children: Don’t become a sign of the Hour 
29:57 - Competing in tall buildings: Turning opportunity into vanity? 
34:33 - What the word “deen” really means 
36:05 - The 5 pillars of Islam

A narration says that before the Hour a year will pass like a month, a month like a week, a week like a day, and an hour like a burning leaf. Ibn Hajar (rh) gave three reasons for it, and the first was that the barakah of time had been removed. 

Dr. Omar Suleiman on what disappears first when time stops being blessed. Find out what he says the first casualty actually is, and the one thing he guarantees will give time back.

0:00 - When time starts losing barakah
2:43 - A year like a month, an hour like a burning leaf
3:55  - Ibn Hajar (rh)’s first reason: the barakah of time is gone
4:37 - Ibn Hajar’s second reason: time literally shortens
5:25 - Ibn Hajar’s third reason: the abundance of distraction
8:20 - Extravagance, or vehicles replacing the animal altogether
9:54 - The man on the camel getting ahead of everybody
11:35 - The guarantee: Worship expands time
13:45 - What barakah in a day actually means

Should you seek Islamic knowledge? Work for Big Tech? Get involved in politics? Make hijrah? Use AI? 

These are some of the complicated questions that shape the decisions Muslims have to make every day, as students, professionals, parents, community members, and even in their personal worship. 

And answering them starts with reflecting on the foundation of everything we do in life: intention (niyyah). 

After introducing us to the great scholar Imam an-Nawawi (rh), Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy explains what every Muslim must know about intention. 

Six months after 9/11, 25% of Americans said Islam encourages violence more than other religions. 25 years later, that number is 51%.

The hostility did not fade with time. It grew. And it grew in a country where Muslims buried their own dead from that day, where Muslim first responders ran toward the towers, and where a generation has now spent its entire life answering for a crime committed by 19 strangers.

On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, Sh. Omar Suleiman takes the question America asked in 2001 and turns it in the other direction. Why do they hate us? Who taught you to hate?

This khutbah sits with collective blame and what the Qur'an says about it. Allah tells us that no soul carries the burden of another (Surah al-An'am, 6:164). He commands justice even toward people who despise us: “Do not let the hatred of a people lead you away from justice. Be just. That is closer to taqwa.” (Surah al-Ma'idah, 5:8).

For Muslims who have never known an America before the Patriot Act, the watchlist, and the secondary screening line at the airport, this is a khutbah about where the hate actually came from, who has profited from keeping it alive, and why the enemy you were handed may not be your enemy at all.

What does it take to really fix a broken heart, relationship, and community? 

Are we making du’a to Allah to fix our lives, while neglecting the actions He wants us to take because they are uncomfortable? 

It’s easy to skip to the conclusion that your situation isn’t fixable. It’s more difficult, but honest, to remember that nothing fixes itself. 

Dr. Omar Suleiman explains the power Allah has given us to work to fix our problems, while always trusting Him with the best outcome. And he reminds us of the true cost of leaving our relationships broken. 

0:00 - The Strangers: Those who fix what others corrupted
3:40 - A powerful statement of Shu’ayb (as) on islah (fixing things)
5:20 - Marriage: If they both want it fixed, Allah gives tawfiq
10:15 - Do you think Allah can free Palestine but can’t change your spouse?
12:30 - Al-Hadi and Al-Jabbar: Allah mends what you can’t 
14:05 - What Umar (ra) on making du’a for rizq
16:30 - The Prophet ﷺ’s 3 du’as and our responsibility
19:30 - Turning to Allah with broken pieces
21:45 - The cost of leaving things broken
24:40 - Closing du’a