https://youtu.be/j09JBq9whEs

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers.
Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions, and upon many, many.
Amen.
As a video, just to also give you an idea of what Hyderabad looks like to those who haven't seen the city.
It's a very big city, around six or seven million is the population.
As you can see, it is extremely alive.
It's very urban, extremely built up.
I don't know if you can see that in this video, but way in the distance you can see the high rises, the skyscrapers, which is the financial district of Hyderabad.
Practically every brand name, every big name industry, every big name multinational is here.
And there you can see one of the denizens of Hyderabad, the Blue Rock Pigeons, which we have.
I think we have probably the highest concentration of them in the world.
This is a little clump of forests near the house, and then you see the rest of the built up society.
The traffic, today being Saturday, is very heavy.
The traffic is very heavy.
Today, also partly holiday, traffic hasn't started yet, but still there's quite a lot on the road.
The traffic is completely insane.
I will post a video later on.
I'm trying my best to stay inside.
The traffic is completely insane.
These things here are to prevent...
I don't know if you can see them.
These... they're like... they're plastic thorns, spikes.
These are to prevent pigeons from sitting on this railing.
And because they make... they make a big mess.
Now, having given you a very quick thumbnail tour of Hyderabad,
let me come to the point of what I want to share with you.
Yesterday was Juma, and I prayed in my masjid.
Very... again, a bittersweet experience, because on the one hand, it's a wonderful feeling,
and I hope Allah gives this opportunity to all of you.
It's a very beautiful thing to see something that you started, which people have carried out and carried on,
and you see it working very well and functioning very smoothly.
And that was my experience in my masjid yesterday.
When I went there Saturday, the khatib came and said to me,
I cannot deliver the khutbah when you are here.
So I said, are you asking me to leave?
He said, no, no, no, Astaghfirullahalazim.
He said, you please do the khutbah.
So I said, are you trying to test me?
He said, no.
He said, no, no, I'm not trying to test you.
But how can I give the khutbah?
I said, no, please do give the khutbah.
He said, okay, with your permission.
I mean, this is, you know, coming back, coming out of America after a week,
even counting my own culture of in which I was born and grew up,
a culture of adab, a culture of Islamic manners, alhamdulillah.
May Allah forgive me for grumbling about this at one point in my life.
I used to say, oh, you know, we have lost our culture.
But we're all right.
When I come back now, I find that now I have perspective of what happened when you actually do lose your culture.
May Allah have mercy on all of us.
So anyway, so this is the, that was a beautiful part of it.
And of course, you know, practically I know every single person there.
So after the Jum'ah, I spent about two hours with everyone comes and meets personally and hugs and so on.
And Mashallah, may Allah bless all of us.
I said, that's the sweet part of it.
Of the bittersweet.
But the bitter part of it also was, I could literally see spaces were not actually vacant,
because obviously the vacant space gets occupied.
But places where my very, very dear friends used to pray, I see that place and that place has got somebody else sitting in it now.
Because these are, you know, in Masajid, people who go regularly, we tend to form our favorite places.
So, you know, you always go and sit in that place.
You pray in that place.
You pray in that place.