Cultivating Spiritual Presence in a Digital World by Shaykh Adham al-Asimi

This article is based on the SeekersGuidance seminar titled Ihsan in the Age of Distraction. It aims to provide readers with the spiritual tools and practical wisdoms needed to cultivate excellence in their worship in every dimension of their lives, with a particular focus on how to apply these principles in the digital world. 

Ihsan in the Age of Distraction

Ihsan represents the highest level of spiritual consciousness in Islam. The state of worshipping Allah Most High as though one sees Him, and mastering this inner reality, is the foundation of success and excellence in every aspect of our lives.

We live in an era of constant digital distractions which has given way to a spiritual crisis that many Muslims suffer from.

The anxiety and restlessness that come from constant digital stimulation, the erosion of family structures and bonds due to device addiction, and even difficulty in concentrating in salah due to mental fragmentation, and many more spiritual challenges that afflict the modern-day Muslim.

We’re going to treat our subject today in five segments.

The Concept of Ihsan

The very first of these five segments is on the concept of Ihsan.

So what is Ihsan, which is the basis of what we’ll speak about? The definition of Ihsan was provided to us in the Hadith of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) when he was visited amongst his Companions by our master Gabriel, in which he came and he sat and put his knees to his knees and his hands upon his thighs and asked him first about what is belief, what is iman, then about what is submission to Allah Most High, what is Islam, and finally about excellence, what is Ihsan.

When the scholars speak of Islam, they say it is like a tree that has roots, it has a trunk and branches, and it has fruits that it bears.

As for the roots, it is our belief, our creed, and our faith, our iman. As for the trunk and the branches, it is the norms that Allah Most High has legislated for humanity by which to act. And as for the fruits, it is the spiritual excellence of which we now will speak.

The trees are planted for their fruits, and when a farmer plants a land, his main purpose of planting is to reach this fruit. The fruit is the purpose of the tree. Likewise, Ihsan is the fruit of Islam.

When we reflect on the Hadith of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), we find that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) mentioned three things: iman, Islam, and Ihsan.

Fundamentally, for the planting of these seeds, the roots take root as iman and as the branches of Islam. Fundamentally, to entail, to bear the fruit of the spiritual excellence of this Ihsan.

Iman is the easiest. It is not easy for a person to believe in a true creed. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace).

My heart believes in this. This is an easy position. Then we move on to the position above it, which is Islam.

Islam is for a person to do according to this testimony, to pray, to fast, to give zakat, to make hajj, and so on. This is more difficult than the position of iman. But it is a link between iman and Ihsan.

This is a stage between the stage of iman and the stage of belief and the stage of Ihsan, or spiritual excellence. So if we are then to look at the third, it is perhaps the hardest of stages, which is the stage of spiritual excellence, as defined by the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in the Hadith of Gabriel: to worship Allah as if you see Him, because indeed, if you do not see Him, He sees you. And this degree of constant observing of the Divine is, of all of the three stages, that which takes the most from the human being.

And so this is the fruit. This Ihsan, then, is the fruit of having put the deep roots of iman, of having performed and submitted to Allah Most High through His commands, and performing what He has commanded us or staying away from what He has forbidden us of Islam. And the fruit of all of this then is this Ihsan, of spiritual witnessing of Allah. 

So this is the very basis of all else that we are going to speak about today, which is the spiritual witnessing, being present with Allah Most High in all of our affairs.

The Contradiction Between Ihsan and the Digital Age

So the second of the segments now, having established what we mean by Ihsan, is the contradiction, or the divergence, between what we’ve just spoken about as to Islam and Ihsan, of submitting to Allah Most High and having the spiritual excellence, and between the demands and the pressures of the digital age, and especially of social media and what it does to the human being. So we have, between these two things, a struggle. Between these two things, each pulling in a different direction.

The world of Islam and Ihsan is based on humility, is based on good manners, on good manners with the Creator, and good manners with the creation. So the directions of Islam are based on two good manners: good manners with the Creator, and good manners with the creation.

If we look at the world of media and the digital realm, we find a reality in which almost more than 90 percent contradicts these faith-based truths. As soon as a person enters the world of media, they become exposed ,  their character becomes tainted ,  by the immense amount of indecency and vulgarity found in this media world.

So if we contrast the two, if we see how the consequences of the Ihsan belief in practice and spirituality are humility, are to abase the self, are to have all of these virtues of character that we spoke about, and we compare this to the consequences or the effects had often, not always, but in the majority of cases, of engagements on the online world or in social media, where it leads to the inflation of ego, where it leads to a sense of superiority, where it leads to foulness in speech and obscenity, where it leads to always critiquing or being ready to put other people down, these are things that are again at odds with one another. 

So here, except for those people whom Allah Most High has mercy upon, except for those people who by the grace of Allah are protected, if somebody has even a seed of arrogance, in their heart, this type of environment of the digital and the social media tends then to allow that to grow and to expand and to increase.

And this is natural. If somebody is always in an environment which is itself replete with obscenities, replete or full of people speaking in a language or in a fashion that is, again, arrogant or puts other people down, it is only a matter of time until even the best of people will start to take on these habits and characteristics in their own personalities as well. This is something that is a natural consequence of being in such an environment and drowning in it.

The Social Divide Created by Digital Media

The third of our segments in treating this question today then is the consequence of social media in the dividing and the chasm between people that it often bequeaths, that it entails. So if you look around and you observe, you find that the digital tools and online consumption lend themselves to a divide, a breach, a chasm, between teacher and student, between parents and children, between spouses when they’re sitting with one another. 

This divide being a consequence of the way that it pulls attention away from whom you are with and the presence of mind and heart with them, to its own world and its own logic.

So you might observe that a person enters into the home of their parents and sits down and then immediately picks up their phone and begins to have a conversation or to connect with, so to speak, a connection with someone who is on the other side of the world, whereas his or her parents who are sitting in front of them, especially if they’re of an older generation who might not themselves be so tech-savvy, are sitting there effectively in front of the person and severed, cut off, from their very own adult child who is sitting in front of them.

In other words, the consequence of this digital media and of these technologies is to not connect people despite what it calls itself, “social”, but rather to disconnect people, such that it causes a breakage of relationships even when people are physically in front of one another.

What this means effectively, to summarize this point, is that though it is called, its name being social media, that which connects one, in the Arabic especially, the term reflecting the core meaning of social, which is that which connects you to somebody else, is actually a form of severance and of cutting. 

In other words, you are connected with people out there in the digital void, whether you know them or you don’t know them, and you are severed and cut off from your immediate surroundings, from the actual world that you, as a real human being in space and time, are embedded within, of family, of relations, of neighbors, of society itself. So it is a form of cutting off, rather than a form of connection.

These contradictions have generated a selfish human being, who cannot deal with people, who does not respect people, who does not know the etiquettes of gatherings until, perhaps, in the Friday sermons, and this is a holy place, you find a human being you are addressing, and he is holding his phone, and perhaps he is communicating with someone outside the mosque.

So, again, it is actually the inversion, a contradiction, of even what it claims to be.

In this case, you find that the parents are in a situation where they feel as if they are strangers, especially since they do not have modern devices and their communication is limited. They feel that they have become alienated from their families. The husband sits with his wife.

She sends one of her friends, and he sends one of his friends. He has created a huge gap between one family, between one cell, between one school. Even in the classrooms, the teacher enters to teach his students.

You find that the student communicates or writes or looks at something, and he is not with the teacher, in his words, in his body, in his soul, in his mind. And this is a disaster. If we do not put the right conditions for it and if we do not take care of it, a greater disaster will befall us than this disaster that we are experiencing.

It leads to situations where people attend the Jumua prayer in a place, in a moment that is actually sacred, where you are not even, according to the teachings of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), meant to tell someone who might be making a sound to you to quiet down. And yet people are on their phones, and they are not listening to the words of Allah. They’re not listening to the words of the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace).

And they are somewhere else. They are not present with their khutbah. They are not present with their relatives.

They are not present with the people that they have a duty by the connections that Allah Most High has created between them of blood, of kinship, of neighborhood, or of other matters. They are completely oblivious to those whom Allah Most High has created a relationship with.

The Causes Behind Digital Distraction

The fourth of our segments for today, then, is the causes.

So, it is one thing to, of course, identify the symptoms. And it is another thing to be able to identify the root causes underlying these symptoms.

So, these are the things we have discussed so far and that many people spend their time bemoaning and speaking about: they are just the results, the consequences, the fruits of things. This bitter reality that we have just described, and it should be bitter for anybody whose heart strives to be alive with Allah Most High and what Allah Most High loves, this reality, nonetheless, it is not enough to just identify these symptoms and the outward results.

What we must do and need to do is to identify the root causes, because as is common within our tradition, by identifying the root causes of something, you are able to get to the source and to stop it at the very source so that then those consequences, the results that we spoke about, will by themselves vanish, by themselves perish.

If we observe the grief and concern and worry that darkens many people’s faces, if we pay attention to the agitation and the confusion in which many people are in these days, again, the age of post-truth, people hear so many things that they no longer know what to think and what to believe and just give up on anything, any truth, altogether. If we look at the symptom of severance between people, all of these things are consequences.

They are not the actual root cause itself. So, it behooves us to come to the very root itself. The results.

We must talk about the reasons for distraction. Of course, in the digital world, there is something called digital distraction. The reason for this distraction is when a person disconnects from his phone, when a person disconnects from his cell phone, when the Internet goes from his device, the distraction and confusion begin.

A person does not calm down, and his agitation does not end until his phone returns to his hand.

This is a cause at an individual level. Being away from one’s device is a sign that their concern and agitation is a sign of addiction.

It is a sign of being addicted to the online world, being addicted to one’s digital devices.

This is akin to somebody who has an addiction to drugs. You give them the pill after they have been away from the drug that they are addicted to, and their state calms. If this is the case, then again, we have to reflect: are we as individuals, or those that we love around us, addicted?

So, what are the reasons that led us to this disconnection?

One of the reasons for this disconnection is the abundance of information that flows to us right and left. So, I open my phone every day, and I get a lot of information. I cannot pick the right one.

I do not have time to pick. For example, there is an earthquake in an area. I get a variety of news about this earthquake.

So, the amount of information that comes to me is a huge flood of information. We think it is a good thing. But in reality, the abundance of information may not be a good thing.

The sheer amount of information, non-stop coming to one, leads to a person becoming in a state that is agitated or unable to resolve contradictions in the reports.

You might have other occasions, issues, news, but where the report coming from the East is saying one thing and the report coming from the West is saying the complete opposite. And they are coming fast and furious. It is coming upon you wave after wave after wave in a scenario where you have no space or mental capacity to process what it is that you have even heard.

What happened to me? How do I reach the knowledge of the truth? If this is one truth, there are medical facts, religious facts, and scientific facts.

This created a state of anxiety as a result of the abundance of information and its contradictions, and created a lack of confidence in the speaker. Who do I believe? I believe so-and-so, or I believe so-and-so, or I believe so-and-so.

I do not trust anyone as a result of these contradictions.

The key here is that people become so overwhelmed that they no longer are able to arrive at their own conviction. Well, what is a conviction to begin with? A conviction is something that entails that you have had the chance to weigh what has been said according to an objective reality, according to science, according to truth, science here in the sense of that which is ultimately reality and truth.

If you do not have the tools to do this, and if you are constantly flooded with contradictory information, the opposite is what entails, where nothing is true. Everything is simply a possibility. And this leads to people simply having no ability to assess anymore.

So the quality of the human being, of being able to assess according to an objective standard of truth, becomes lost, lost in the individual, lost in the society where it is composed of these individuals who are never able to come to a conviction on a point.

You might attend a lesson. You might attend a khutbah and simply say, “I did not like it.” Why?

“Because I did not like it.” That is it. There is no measure or basis.

Whereas a specialist or somebody with knowledge might come and attend that same lecture, the same speech, and say, “No, that was actually a very solid and strong speech.” Why? “Because in the first point he addressed this, in the second point he addressed this,” etc.

There is a measure by which to judge. Similarly, you go to someone who is not a specialist and you have an illness of a certain sort and they say, “No, you will be OK, you will be fine, do not worry about it,” and just relax and everything will be OK. You then turn to a specialist doctor who actually knows something.

He or she has a measure by which to assess your actual condition, not just to have an impression, not just to react emotionally to it. And they say, “No, you need to go straight to the operation room. Your life is in danger.”

This ability to distinguish between true assessment that is knowledge-based, based upon a standard of truth, and personal impressions and reactions is foundational. And the world of the online tends to erase this.

Most of those who learn and those who take from the Internet and enter the digital world and listen to Zayd and Amran and from the East and from the West, their words are personal impressions that are not based on precise standards for them to judge. As a result, we fall into contradictions and mistakes. And every person who speaks in what he knows and in what he does not know abandons himself to the absence of observing Allah Most High.

Even scholars and teachers speak about politics, economics, matters of public policy, or other matters, without any specialist knowledge, because now they have an audience.

Hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube or elsewhere. And how could they say “I do not know”?

The words “I do not know,” traditionally deemed to be half of knowledge, have been removed from our dictionaries. They have been cut out of our knowledge systems. And the moment this is lost, then as a consequence, again, of the psychology that the online world entails, knowledge itself becomes cheapened, and people no longer know what to think or what to trust.

This is particularly dangerous for those whose primary means of acquiring knowledge is online, whose first recourse when they want to learn something is to open their phone or computer. This consequence is most dangerous for such people who have no other stream or source of knowledge and certitude.

The word “I do not know” or “I am not a specialist” does not exist in the reality of social media. And this should encourage a person to glorify Allah in his heart and to feel responsibility again, so that he can get rid of this disease that has affected many speakers and many participants in the media world.

Also, for example, the requirement is to have muraqaba, an observance of Allah Most High, to be able to say in humility, “I do not know,” to recognize when you do not know even whom to turn to and to try to discover and find out to whom to turn to learn. If we lose this ability, if we surrender it to the social and online world, then we are going back to our first segment about Ihsan. We lose our ability to actually be in observance of Allah Most High, to be present with Allah Most High.

And this is a very dangerous situation.

There is another aspect to this that we need to be aware of and conscious of. Among those who study psychology, there is something called empathy fatigue or a fatigue arising as a consequence of over-empathy. What do we mean by this?

An example: for the past couple of years, everybody has been observing what has been going on in Gaza, in Palestine. Through social media and the devices we carry with us 24 hours a day, one may constantly see pictures of people who are cut to pieces, constantly see blood being spilled, constantly see these images. The impact of this is fatigue; one gets worn out.

What does it mean to be fatigued and worn out? It means you are no longer able to do anything. You are no longer able to help.

You are no longer able to do anything that might lead, even in relation to what you are observing, to a better state. You are fatigued. It is like someone who ran and ran and ran until they simply dropped and are unable to take even one more step. But here the difference is that we inflict this upon ourselves with these devices that we carry around with us all of the time.

This fatigue has led to situations where people are unable not just to distinguish, but to even carry on. Specialists in psychology indicate that repeated exposure to images of violence has an impact far greater than even for those physically present, except that the effect here is debilitating, exhausting, and ultimately desensitizing.

Imagine seeing an accident on the road, it has an impact, it might lead you to take action. But when everything settles, you return to normal.

Whereas when you are in a constant stream of these images, you become immersed in something that has passed, maybe even for the people involved. But you have become affected and desensitized, leading to empathy fatigue. This results in an inability to act in the ways necessary or even required, because your attention has been absorbed in what becomes almost entertainment, other people’s misery.

Therefore, every person should examine the context of social media and the digital world for its harms and benefits. And after reading and preparing in advance, the conviction is that the impact of social media even on the righteous is more than its benefits.

The righteous are harmed more than they benefit. Those who are serious about their religion, their relationship with Allah Most High, and their duties to others, by immersing themselves in this, lose their objective measure, lose their ability to perceive truth and distinguish it from falsehood. This affects everyone.

This tribulation harms far more than it benefits, due to the hardness of heart that it produces. And a hard heart is not a heart that can observe Allah Most High, nor can it witness Allah Most High, nor can it be present with Allah Most High.

Treatment and Practical Solutions

The fifth and last point is treatment.

The first treatment is to reduce dealing with our devices and phones and the digital world so that the brain is prepared again. I like it when one of the teachers when sitting with his students obliges them to turn off their phones.

I like it when one of the parents or one of the mothers, when her children visit her, the married couple with their families, she takes the phones from them when they arrive and turns them off until they sit with the family for two or three hours, then when they leave, she gives them their phones. Now we said that we must treat the cause, not the problem. The cause that led us to this confusion in prayer, in worship, in thoughts, what is the cause?

These devices. So we should reduce them a lot, and with a strong disagreement, and put standards in our schools, in our universities, in our companies, and in our markets to deal with these devices.

We have to have rules. There have to be some rules in our places of worship, in our institutions of education, in our businesses, in our families, to allow for our brains, quite literally, physically, our brains and our minds, to come back to a state of equilibrium, and not to be in a constant state of inflammation and a constant state of reaction, but rather to have some tranquility and to find that equilibrium again.

If we are sitting in a gathering, I turn off the phones, and I am strict about it until I return to the old way, and until I train them little by little to stop using these devices.

Gradual Treatment

Second, the gradualization in the treatment process. Any disease we want to treat has to be gradual.

For example, a person who smokes, if he wants to quit smoking in one moment, this is possible, but it is difficult. The gradualization system is one of the best systems for treating diseases, both physically, psychologically, and spiritually. For example, I look at my phone on Facebook for half an hour. I look at it for half an hour for five minutes, I look at it for twenty-five minutes, and when I get used to it, I look at it on Facebook for twenty minutes a day.

So, train yourself to reduce gradually. Because, as the saying goes, if you trim the branches, they will be trimmed, and they will not become soft if they are made of wood. Now, if I have a tree in my house and its plant came out and it was small, I can trim it directly. But if it became a fruit tree, it would be difficult to trim it.

So, start gradually treating the disease before it becomes too big for us.

We need to cut things down to the size where you can then finally uproot it and be rid of that which is a trial and tribulation for you.

Presence and the Prophetic Example

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) looks at you; he is interested in you. I have to talk about how the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to sit with others. He used to draw others’ attention.

And the books of the Shama’il say that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to look at his speaker in full. For example, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) does not look at his speaker like this. Or he looks at him with his eyes.

When you talk to him like this, he looks at you in full. He feels your value. This is a glorification for man.

And this is a glorification for the Creator of man. And this is an adab and a character with the assembly. So, in order to deal with the disorder, and to deal with the brutality, and to deal with the interruption which happened due to dealing with the media, we have to uproot it by enhancing the realities of faith and by nurturing it.

Strengthening Iman and Ihsan Through the Sunna

The third and final of the practical points, then, is that we nourish and we strengthen the iman and ihsan of which we spoke about in the beginning. And the fundamental way, the best way of doing this, of course, is to come to a greater degree of knowledge and appreciation of the way of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) by studying his sirah, by studying his shama’il, the qualities, attributes, and traits of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). For example, it is narrated in the Shama’il that when the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) would be dealing with someone, he would give them his full attention.

He would give that person or that group his full attention. He would not speak to them just by looking out of the corner of his eye or just turning a little bit of his face toward them. The Sunna tells us he would turn his entire being toward them and address them and listen to them and give them his attention.

He was present, to use today’s language, he was present with the people that he was speaking to or who were speaking or asking of him. If we are to re-adopt and re-establish in our own lives such practices, one of two things: either the selfishness and severance will fade, or the Prophetic presence will displace it. You cannot be with someone the way the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was and be cut off.

One of the two is going to have to give. And this return to that which strengthens iman and presence with Allah Most High, our ihsan, through studying and embodying the way of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is one of the surest, quickest, and most solid ways to addressing the maladies and these disasters which the online and social media world has afflicted upon us as humanity, all, and as believers particularly.

Through my literature with His creation and through my memorization of the sanctity of gatherings, the sanctity of parents, the sanctity of the family, and so on.

Fourthly, the proper adab with Allah Most High. And this is only possible, again, if we begin with the first two points: returning to iman and ihsan as a measure through the Sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), and taking these things gradually in steps.

Presence in Prayer

In the end of the hadith, Allah Most High says, “This is for My servant, and My servant has what he asks.” Some of the early Muslims used to say: when he stands in his prayer, he says, “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,” and he is quiet for a while.

He is careful that he hears the answer of Allah Most High. And Allah Most High says, “My servant has praised Me.” “The Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.” He is quiet.

And he is careful that Allah Most High says, “My servant has glorified Me.” “This is for My servant, and My servant has what he asks.”

That we stand with presence. What does it mean to be standing in presence with Allah Most High? To be aware of what has been narrated in the rigorously authenticated Hadith of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) from Allah Most High.

That when a person stands in the prayer and they say to Allah, “Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘Alamin,” Allah Most High responds to the person who says this, addresses the person, saying, “My servant has praised Me.” As the person continues, “Ar-Rahman ar-Rahim,” until the end of their recitation, such that Allah Most High at the end says, “My servant has addressed Me with all of these things, and I respond to My servant.”

This requires pausing with presence. Some of the early Muslims would recite an ayah and pause, bearing in mind and recalling that they are now being addressed by Allah Most High.

They would not just recite the Fatiha or the prayer mindlessly. In other words, Allah Most High is turned to one, and yet we have our backs turned to Allah in the prayer. We might be standing, but our thoughts, fragmented, impacted by the thousands of little pieces of information we have heard throughout the day.

Maybe immediately before entering the prayer, we were just looking at our phone. And so instead of being present and turning, facing Allah Most High, Allah Most High is facing us, and we are turning our backs. This requires presence and training, both in the prayer and outside of the prayer.

So the fragmentation, O brothers, came and was drawn into our prayer. Most of the people who pray today do not submit in their prayer. This is the result of these things.

So I must advise myself and you to read a book on the re-preparation of the brain for the presence of Allah Most High. I advise you to read *The Management of Prayer* by Ahmed Bassam al-Sa‘i. This is a good book.

Its reading re-prepares the brain for the feeling of standing before Allah Most High. We read of the pious people how they used to pray, how they used to address Allah Most High. At that time, the souls tremble, and this is part of the cure.

The real presence with Allah Most High pushes away all these fragments, all this anxiety, and all this confusion. Why? Because Allah Most High says, “Those who believe and whose hearts find tranquility in the remembrance of Allah. Truly, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find tranquility.” [Quran, 13:28]

Idarat al-Salah by Dr. Bassam al-Sa‘i, How to Manage Your Prayer, is in Arabic and translated into English. Similar works from the people of spiritual insight allow us to re-establish balance within ourselves so that we can have presence with Allah Most High in our prayer. And if we are able to have that presence with Allah Most High, undistracted, in our prayer, it means that we have strengthened something within us that will carry outside of the prayer.

As many ulama say, the prayer is a measure of your state with Allah Most High. If you find yourself distracted in your prayer, it means you are certainly distracted outside your prayer. Look at what is outside the prayer to see what is leading to this distraction.

Reducing Unnecessary Digital Engagement

Do you really need that? Do you really need it? Personally, I do not have a personal Facebook account.

I only have WhatsApp. And if I could delete it, I would delete it. But the people I communicate with and the institutes and schools I teach in send everything via WhatsApp.

So I have to deal with it. So the thing that is not necessary to do, leave it, even if it is good. Leave the good that leads to evil. Meaning: leave the good that the evil is building upon.

The reduction of distractions is very important to preserve the heart, preserve the spirit, and focus on understanding and the mind.

The things that preoccupy you. I am surprised. I am constantly bewildered by someone who is, let’s say, fifteen years old, and they have Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and other platforms.

What does a fifteen-year-old need all of this for? And they are constantly carrying them with their phones and devices. What for?

What is so important for you as a fifteen-year-old that you need five or six different accounts on all of these platforms and constantly check them? This is a distraction. This is something busying you from what is important.

I advise you to do the same. Diminish. If you want tranquility, if you want ihsan and presence in your prayer, then diminish the things that are distracting you and that are busying you in which there is no good.

Even in things that are good, it is a principle in our tradition: leave what may be good if it leads to something evil.

Sometimes you leave the halal to block the harmful. Give up things for the sake of what matters more, especially in a world constantly clamoring for your attention.

Shaykh Adham al-Asimi is a renowned scholar from Syria. Shaykh Adham was born in 1983 in Syria, and he pursued his Islamic studies at the Fatih Islamic Institute in Damascus. He graduated with the highest distinction in his studies specializing in creed, logic, and Hadith, and now he serves as the Imam and the Khatib of Al-Bashir Mosque in Damascus.

Edited by Muhammad Yaseen Kippie