Hamza Yusuf

And that is the secret of this world. If you remove love of dunya from your heart, the dunya is yours for the taking. You can have the dunya because it's in your hand and not in your heart

People say to you, 'you've changed', or something like that, well, I hope, for the sake of God, that you have changed, because I don't want to be the same person all my life. I want to be growing, I want to be expanding. I want to be changing. Because animate things change, inanimate things don&'t change. Dead things don't change. And the heart should be alive, it should be changing, it should be moving, it should be growing, its knowledge should be expanding.

Hypocrisy is wretched because the hypocrite says with his tongue what is not in his heart. He wrongs his tongue and oppresses his heart. But if the heart is sound, the condition of the tongue follows suit. We are commanded to be upright in speech, which is a gauge of the heart's state.

Islam is based on naql (texts) and ‘aql (intellect). Some people just have the texts – we call them naql-heads.

The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego.

Opinion is not knowledge. You're entitled to your own opinion but you're not entitled to your own facts.

Why do we need to justify God's existence? He exists. We need to justify our own existence.

Call on your Lord when your heart is brittle, that is a time when it's in pieces and the Light of Allah can fill the gaps. That is why Allāh is with the broken hearted.

We live in the age of Noah (a.s.) in the sense that a flood of distraction accosts us. It is a slow and subtle drowning. For those who notice it, they engage in the remembrance of God. The rites of worship and devotion to God's remembrance (dhikr) are planks of the ark. When Noah (a.s.) started to build his ark, his people mocked him and considered him a fool. But he kept building. He knew what was coming. And we know too.

God is with the broken-hearted. When your heart breaks, it’s a good thing – the breaking of the heart is what opens it up to the light of Allah. The dunya is designed to break your heart, to crush it.

Knowledge is taken from breath, not lives in a book

Allah knows exactly what to give you to help you return to Him. The events in your life are purposeful, appropriate & non-random.