Opening: where's your phone?
2 minBismillah ir-Rahman ir-Raheem. All praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger ﷺ.
Who has their phone on them right now? Raise your hand.
Wait for hands
Now imagine it just disappeared. And not only the phone...
All your accounts.
Your followers.
Your photos.
Your games.
Your home.
Your school.
Your city.
Your friends.
And you find yourself alone, in a country you don't know, owning nothing.
What would be left of you?
What do you know? What are you good at? What could you start again from zero?
Most of us have never thought about that question.
But there was a man who lived this exact scenario. His story is our story tonight.
Who was Ahmad Baba?
1 minMore than four hundred years ago, in West Africa, there was a city called Timbuktu.
An amazing city: people there competed to buy books the way we compete for the newest phone.
In this city, around 1556, Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti was born.
He wasn't an army commander.
He wasn't a king.
He wasn't famous when he was young.
He was a student of knowledge... who became one of the greatest scholars in Africa.
The years nobody sees
2 minHis father was a scholar. But that wasn't enough.
Being a doctor's son doesn't make you a doctor. Being at a good school doesn't make you a top student.
Ahmad Baba spent long years reading, memorising, revising, and sitting with scholars.
No likes. No followers. Nobody clapping.
Ibn Abbas was barely a teenager when the Prophet ﷺ passed away. So he decided to learn from the senior Companions.
He would lie down at a Companion's door during the afternoon rest, the wind blowing dust over him, waiting until the man came out so he could ask him.
Years later, that boy became the scholar of the Ummah, and the elders came to stand at his door.
Could you work hard at something for five years before anyone notices?
A tree doesn't start with fruit. It starts with roots nobody sees.
These years you're living now, in high school, are your root years.
The day they took everything
2 minAhmad Baba grew up, became a scholar who taught and wrote, and built a huge library.
Then, in 1591, an army came from Morocco across the Sahara and took control of the region.
About two years later, Ahmad Baba was arrested along with other scholars of his city, and taken as a prisoner across the desert to Morocco.
Pause, and lower your voice
He lost his home.
He lost his city.
He lost his students.
And he lost his library: it's reported that around 1,600 volumes were taken from him.
Imagine: books copied by hand, each one taking days or weeks to produce... all gone.
If this happened to one of us, we'd say: it's over.
What no one can confiscate
2 minBut here's the twist. They took the books... so what was left?
The knowledge in his head.
His language.
His understanding.
His ability to teach.
His faith.
They took the man out of Timbuktu, but they couldn't take the Timbuktu out of the man.
A book on your shelf can be stolen.
But a book you've read and understood has become part of you.
Your phone can be lost. Your account can be deleted. Your popularity can vanish in a day.
So what do you own that can't be deleted?
Invest in the things you can carry with you, for the day you lose the things you can't.
Knowledge. Skills. Language. Character. Faith.
Don't wait for perfect conditions
2 minAhmad Baba arrived in Morocco as a prisoner. So what did he do?
He started teaching! He taught and wrote, until students and scholars in Marrakesh came to learn from him.
He was taken out of a city of knowledge, so he became a city of knowledge wherever he went.
Yusuf was in prison, wronged, far from his family. He didn't say, "I'll start once I'm out." He called his two cellmates to Allah right there:
﴿يَا صَاحِبَيِ السِّجْنِ أَأَرْبَابٌ مُّتَفَرِّقُونَ خَيْرٌ أَمِ اللَّهُ الْوَاحِدُ الْقَهَّارُ﴾"O my two prison companions, are many different lords better, or Allah, the One, the Supreme?"
[Yusuf 12:39]
And us? How many times have we said:
"I'll start studying properly after the mocks."
"I'll memorise Qur'an in the summer."
"I'll learn to code when I get a better laptop."
"I'll pray on time when things calm down."
Summer comes... and goes. And things never calm down.
Don't ask: when will my situation get better?
Ask: what can I build right now, with what I have?
Excuses don't build anyone
1 minAhmad Baba had the strongest excuse in the world: a prisoner, wronged, who had lost everything.
And yet he didn't use it.
"The teacher doesn't explain well."
"My house is too noisy."
"My situation is hard."
They might all be true. But the real question is: what will you do anyway?
Don't let the worst thing that happened to you become who you are.
Leave a legacy
1 minAhmad Baba didn't just know things. He wrote books that are still read today, four centuries later.
He lived only about forty-five years. But his book "The Forty Hadith" may be one you've studied yourself!
He died seven hundred years ago... and he's still teaching you.
"When a person dies, his deeds come to an end except for three: ... or knowledge that benefits others..." (Muslim)
You might live sixty years, and your legacy live six hundred.
The seven-day challenge
1 minI'm not asking you to become scholars tonight. I'm asking for something small, for just one week:
- Twenty minutes a day of something that builds your mind: a book, a lesson, or Qur'an. Take it from phone time, not sleep time.
- One skill you choose and start: a language, coding, calligraphy, public speaking... anything that stays with you.
- Teach one thing to a sibling or friend this week. Whoever teaches, learns twice.
Twenty minutes a day = over a hundred hours a year. That's what makes the difference five years from now.
Closing
1 minAhmad Baba wasn't great because his life was easy.
He was great because he built himself before the storm came.
He lost his city, but not his mission.
He lost his books, but not his knowledge.
He became a prisoner, so he became a teacher.
What you build outside yourself, you can lose. What you build inside yourself, no one can take.
You are in the most important building years of your life right now. Don't waste them collecting things that can be deleted with one tap.
If they took everything from you tomorrow, what have you built today that no one could take?
And all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds.