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And to help us benefit from this month of Ramadan, to make it easy for us to increase the goodness in this month, and to become conscious of our bad habits and to eradicate them.

Honour the Rulama, beloved brothers, sisters, dearest listeners, this evening we completed firstly the Surah, known as Suratul-Furqan, the criterion, or the distinguisher between that which is right and wrong.

The term Furqan refers to the Quran, because the Quran has in it laws that separate the right from the wrong, the good from the bad, the light from the darkness and so on.

And obviously if we are to follow what Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala has sent to us, automatically we will be granted the ability to distinguish between the opposite poles.

And this is why in this Surah Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala has made mention of several aspects that we need to take heed of.

But I will only make mention of some of them. One of the most important aspects in this particular Surah is that of company.

So many places in the Quran Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala speaks of good company, and the fact that we must abstain from bad company.

Bad company breaks you in such a way that you think you are doing right, because you don't have the ability to think, because we begin to think in the same manner that those around us think,

and we will not be able to understand what's right and wrong. But when we change our company, and we go into company that has the ability to distinguish, we will also be given that ability to distinguish.

Those who mix with people who have no deen, no religion in them, they will always point fingers at the deen and religion, and they won't understand the laws and the regulations.

And they will always ask questions, and they will always look at religion as something backward. But those who mix with those who are pious and religious, they will understand the goodness that is derived from religion, and they will understand that our need for the deen is greater than our need for water and drink.

So Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala speaks of how a person who had bad company in the dunya will regret it on the day of Kiyama.

Allah says on that day the oppressive person, and what is the oppression that they engaged in, it is oppression to have bad company.

You are oppressing yourselves. So Allah says the oppressive person will in regret be eating his hands, eating the hands is an Arabic term which means the height of regret.

This person will be so deep in regret, and they will say, why didn't I choose the path of the missing, just Allah who alaihi wa sallam?

Ya Allah, why did I have such and such a person as a friend of mine, he is the one who led me astray after the truth came to me, I rejected it.

And from this verse we learn that our company makes us reject the truth, our company makes us laugh and scoff at that which is correct, our company makes us do that which we know is wrong.

Believe me, the problem of drugs we have today across the globe 99.9% of those on drugs will confirm that they were introduced via a friend or an acquaintance or someone they mixed with.

Those who are smoking will confirm the same, anyone who has any bad habit, when you mix with people who speak very vulgarly, we will also begin to have vulgar language without even noticing, but when you mix with those who have good language, good character,

Allah will automatically become like that.

So this is something I call not only upon the youth, but even the adults, it's time for us to get rid of some of the people we've been mixing with for many many years.

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