Yaqeen Podcast

The Prophet ﷺ said that someone who witnesses a sin and hates it is like someone who wasn’t there, and someone who wasn’t there but approves of it is like someone who witnessed it. Dr. Omar Suleiman says that hadith reads differently now. You no longer have to be in the room to approve of a sin. You can like it, share it, or laugh at it from anywhere, and every clip and every joke hardens the heart a little more.

In Signs of the Hour Ep. 24, he begins with the narration of a time when zina happens in public and the most righteous person only asks for it to be done out of sight. 

He covers Zaynab bint Jahsh’s (ra) question about whether a people can be destroyed while the righteous are still among them, the hadith of trials laid on the heart strand by strand, the ship whose lower deck drilled a hole, and how the decline of Bani Isra’il began when people kept eating with those whose sins they had stopped objecting to. 

He ends on why forbidding sin is harder than enjoining good, why it will never cost a person their life or provision, and how to correct someone out of love instead of to shame them.

0:00 - When evil no longer bothers the heart
2:14 - Private righteousness doesn’t protect a society
4:30 - Every clip, every reel, every joke
4:50 - The heart dies when it stops hating evil
6:17 - A standard to know good from evil
8:01 - What the like button is saying
11:23 - Du’a is not a replacement for duty
13:07 - Why forbidding evil is harder
13:36 - A society is judged by what it permits
14:32 - The job description of this ummah

You’re finishing suhoor when it hits you that Fajr may already have come in. Do you stop, or keep eating? The answer goes back to a hadith narrated by the Prophet’s ﷺ grandson, and it doesn’t stop at fasting. Find out what it says about your prayer, and about the doubts people keep to themselves about Allah.

Hadith 11 of Imam al-Nawawi’s Forty, taught by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy in Anchored Ep. 7.

0:00 - Hasan ibn Ali (ra): The Prophet’s ﷺ “rayhana”
2:10 - Hadith 11: “Leave what makes you doubt for what doesn’t”
3:10 - Aisha (ra)’s advice on patience: “It’s only a few days”
4:50 - When hardship justifies the easier opinion: The 3 conditions
9:25 - Doubts in application: disputes, masjid money, conflicts of interest
11:30 - Doubt in worship: Wudu, salah, fasting, tawaf, forgetting rak’ahs
14:40 - Make your heart like glass, not a sponge  
17:25 - Are Shaytan’s whispers to you a sign of your faith?
20:00 - Hanlon’s razor: Don’t assume malice

He was the strongest man among the Prophet ﷺ’s Companions. What made Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra) so great wasn’t only his strength, but what he did with it: he turned it against himself first.

In this khutbah, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy walks through stories from the life of Umar (ra) that show strength used for justice and compassion:

The takeaway: find your strength, and use it for Allah's pleasure and to improve the world in the short time we have.

0:00 - Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra): Strength turned inward
1:50 - Justice without favoritism: The whip and the son of Amr ibn al-As (as)
4:20 - No special treatment: His son's camels and the perfume from Bahrayn
7:15 - Strength in compassion
8:00 - The night Umar (ra) cooked for a starving family
12:35 - The crying baby and the stipend for every newborn
16:00 - Finding your strength
17:00 - “O Allah, I am weak, so strengthen me”: Umar (ra)’s first du'a on the pulpit
18:10 - Closing du’a

The Prophet ﷺ said that when modesty leaves, faith follows. And he reminded us that his ummah will be forgiven except those who publicise their sins: the person Allah covered overnight who wakes up and tells everyone what he did.

Dr. Omar Suleiman defines haya (modesty) well beyond clothing, using the hadith that true modesty before Allah means guarding the head and what it holds, the stomach and what it takes in, and remembering death. 

He separates shame before Allah from shame about the family’s reputation, explains why the Qur’an condemns loving to see immorality spread, and reads the hadith of those “clothed yet naked” as a diagnosis of a whole society: the people who consume it, perform it, fund it and design it, and the trafficking industry that sits behind it.

To learn more, read the paper, “Ḥayāʾ: More Than Just Modesty in Islam” by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy: https://yaqeeninstitute.org/read/paper/haya-more-than-just-modesty

0:00 - The loss of haya
2:15 - What true modesty with Allah is
4:51 - Shame for Allah vs. shame for the family
6:49 - Announcing a sin before the digital age
9:07 - When immorality is open
11:24 - Clothed yet naked, as a society
14:30 - The industry behind the industry
15:53 - Which side of it am I on?

Most of us look back on our lives. In this khutbah, Dr. Omar Suleiman asks us to look forward too. Allah tells us that on the Day of Judgment our words and deeds will be replayed to us. He also tells us the exact words people will use to express their regret.

Since Allah has told us those regrets in advance, we can plan around them. Think about the regrets you don’t want to have, with your prayer, your parents, your marriage and your friendships. Then work backwards and change things while you still can.

0:00 - Your deathbed regrets, today
2:05 - Jeff Bezos’ regret minimization framework
3:51 - Walking the Day of Judgment backwards
9:21 - Starting from Jannat al-Firdaws
11:54 - The Qantarah: Letting grudges go
13:45 - The Sirat: Family ties and trustworthiness
15:15 - The Mizan and the Book of Deeds
18:21 - “My Lord, send me back”
20:34 - Reverse engineer your relationships

The Prophet ﷺ said there is no sin more deserving of punishment in this world, on top of what awaits in the next, than oppression and cutting off family ties. Most sins can be expiated by worldly hardship. These two are punished in both. Dr. Omar Suleiman reads that as the reason a broken family counts among the signs of the Hour: it does not stay private, and its cost shows up as a lost blessing in health, wealth and every other relationship.

In this episode, Dr. Omar Suleiman separates setting boundaries with someone harmful, which Islam allows, from treating every family discomfort as abuse, which it does not. He goes through the hadith of the man whose relatives kept wronging him, Ibn Mas‘ud’s answer when a storm in Kufa made people think the Hour had come, siblings fighting over an inheritance, signatures used to steal, and why the first thing the devils teach is how to separate a husband and wife. The episode closes on what Madinah was built on.

0:00 - Parents as gates of Jannah
3:18 - Cutting ties is not a private sin
4:18 - Respectful distance is an option
7:03 - Taqwa in marriage, and in divorce
9:07 - Siblings fighting over an inheritance
13:26 - Why households predict doubt
13:33 - Algorithms that divide families
14:38 - What Madinah was built on

“Allah is pure, and He only accepts what is pure.” That one line from Hadith 10 of the 40 Hadith reaches further than most of us expect, into what we earn, what we give and why some prayers seem to go nowhere.

In this episode, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy discusses the traveler whose prayer was stopped by unlawful money, why charity can’t clean wealth that was never yours, and how a single date given honestly grows into a mountain. We also look at why admitting a sin can open more for you than a year of good deeds, and why a blocked prayer is never a reason to stop asking.

0:00 - Allah is pure and accepts only what is pure
4:44 - The man whose prayer was not answered
5:52 - Can haram money become charity?
8:19 - Don’t give Allah the leftovers
10:58 - The date that becomes a mountain
14:08 - Good money in the hands of a good person
16:20 - Carcass by night, donkey by day
17:59 - What blocks a du’a
19:21 - Brokenness: why the traveler’s state matters
22:22 - “How could he be answered?” is not “never”
24:39 - The worshipper who fasted 70 weeks
26:38 - The man who held back the rain

Artificial intelligence is changing work, school and family life faster than most people can adjust. Many Muslims are left asking whether to embrace it, fear it or avoid it altogether. 

Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy presents a five-part guide to using AI as a Muslim, drawn from the reflections of Dr. Hatem El-Haj and built around the word QIBLA. 

It starts with setting your direction toward the Hereafter and guarding the inputs that form your identity. From there it covers deciding in advance how much use is too much, and holding firm limits on cheating, on giving up the hard work of learning, and on replacing real friendships with artificial ones. It ends with treating AI as an amanah, a trust and a gift Allah will ask about. That means individuals using it to build a lasting legacy, and the Muslim community making sure it has a seat at the table where this technology is being shaped.

0:00 - Opening
1:21 - How the next 20 years will change more than the last 200
4:47 - Allah destined the AI boom, so don’t panic
6:41 - Q is for Qibla: speed without direction is a curse
10:31 - I is for Input: What is shaping you and your kids
12:13 - B is for Balance: decide how much is too much
13:57 - L is for Limits: learning, relationships and what stays at zero
17:00 - A is for Amanah: AI as a gift you’ll be asked about
18:22 - Why the ummah can’t get locked out of AI
21:02 - Closing du’a

The Prophet ﷺ described a time when a man would bring his friends close and treat his father coldly. A time when a mother is pushed aside because she has nothing left to give. A time when “a slave woman gives birth to her master.”

Dr. Omar Suleiman looks at one of the most uncomfortable signs of the Day of Judgment: the breakdown of the family, and how we treat our parents once they seemingly no longer do anything for us. 

He explains what these narrations mean (and what they don’t), why being kind to everyone except your own family is a warning sign, and why scholars call elderly parents a person’s first real test of power.

And why did Allah specifically praise Yahya and Isa (peace be upon them) for being dutiful to their parents? The answer says a lot about the times we’re living in…

0:00 - Why this lesson is uncomfortable
1:15 - Important: This never justifies abuse
3:05 - A hadith that connects the dots
4:15 - Obeys his wife, cruel to his mother
6:10 - Advice for couples: your in-laws aren’t the enemy
7:25 - “I don’t need you anymore, dad”
8:45 - “A slave woman gives birth to her master”
11:55 - Towers rise while parents are lowered
12:35 - The first sign of a society’s decay
14:00 - The first test of power

Some hadith are hard to read and understand the first time around. 

One of them is the authentic narration in Bukhari and Muslim where the Prophet ﷺ says, “I was commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no god but Allah.” Read alone, it can sound like an order of endless war against non-Muslims. The scholars who explained it read it a different way. In this hadith, “the people” refers to the pagan Arab tribes who broke treaty after treaty at the end of the Prophet’s ﷺ mission, not to all of humanity. The Qur’an sets peace as the default (“if they incline to peace, incline to it as well”). The Prophet ﷺ made treaties with non-Muslims and lived beside them in Medina. He also said to leave the Abyssinians and the Turks alone as long as they left the Muslims alone. In Islamic law, the justification for war is always protective. Its rules shield non-combatants, women, children, clergy, animals and even trees, and a promise of safety holds even when an eight-year-old gives it.

Hadith 9 of Imam al-Nawawi’s 40 draws our attention to a question: Why does the Prophet ﷺ tell us to avoid what he forbids completely, but to do what he commands “as much as you can”? Avoiding something takes no money and no strength, only will, so it is within everyone’s reach. Plenty of people do good deeds. Staying away from what Allah forbids is what sets a God-conscious person apart. The same hadith warns about questions asked to dodge an obligation, to trip someone up, or to look pious, like the man who asked Ibn ‘Umar about the blood of fleas. In this episode of Anchored: The 40 Hadith for Today’s Muslim, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy explains what jihad really means in the Islamic tradition, how Islam’s ethics of war compare with other civilizations, and why closing the gap between what you know and what you do matters more than gathering another answer.

0:00 - Hadith 8: “I was commanded to fight the people”
1:11 - Why ignoring a hard hadith makes the doubt worse
7:08 - Does Islam teach peace or war? (Qur’an 8:61)
11:29 - Defensive sometimes, protective always
15:17 - Islamic rules of war: non-combatants, animals, trees
19:00 - Comparing scriptural ethics of war
20:58 - Hadith 9: avoid all of it, do what you can
22:13 - Which matters more, commands or prohibitions?
29:28 - Avoid one haram dollar rather than give $100,000
31:40 - The questions that destroyed earlier nations
36:27 - “Take your what-if and toss it in Yemen”
40:50 - When learning becomes a social currency
43:30 - Bottom line: close the gap between knowing and doing