Reduced Concepts #05 Chastity, Love, and Gender Relations
Date:
Channel: Adnan Rajeh
Series: Adnan Rajeh - Reduced Concepts
File Size: 60.20MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speakers discuss the concept of "by default" and the negative impact of reducing the opposite sex on society. They emphasize the importance of love and lust, following definition of it, and avoiding confusion and harm. They also offer advice on how to handle sex roles and receive feedback for future videos. Additionally, they emphasize the need to learn how to deal with certain situations and the importance of avoiding issues outside of the church.AI Generated Transcript ©
Today is the 5th episode of the 7
episode series Reduced Concepts. And today, I'm gonna
talk about something a little bit more, tricky.
It's a little more difficult to talk about,
but I think these, concepts are equally reduced
or or similarly reduced to the concepts of
rituals,
and the bigger topics such as freedom
and,
and jihad and and whatnot. And and and
the, the theme of these concepts for today
are are one way or another,
the relationships or the sexuality of the of
the of the human race and how how
Islam sees aspects of that and how we
maybe have been led to understand certain certain
things and maybe how we have to go
back and understand them a little bit differently.
And I'm gonna I'm gonna discuss the concept
of chastity, which is ifa, and and discuss
love, the word itself, what it means, and,
you know, how we understand it and how
Islam basically
has explained it to us or how Islam
understands it, and then gender relations in general.
Gender issues, maybe. It was better than gender
relations, probably gender issues, but
it's too late not to change that. So
I'll start with by talking about ifa or
chastity.
This is a big word within within Islam.
It's a it's it's a it's a strong
Islamic value, and it has a lot of,
weight in the way that we understand ourselves
as Muslims. Mainly being that the main reason
being that, Islam and the Abrahamic faiths in
general. So you'll find this across yeah. Not
just within Islam. You'll find it within Judaism
and Christianity as well. Now we have an
understanding
of,
of how we carry our sexuality as human
beings. Is very different than what the modern
world agrees to or what other faiths that
are not necessarily Abrahamic in background
tend to have. Even though if you go
back to some of the the origins of
these faiths, you'll find similar rulings in the
in the, kind of older versions of their
books or the early teachings of their, their
religions.
But, you know, not not to get into,
an historical
argument with the people who have different, faiths,
today, they just don't don't carry that same
understanding of things. And as Muslims specifically, we
for sure have a of a of a
comprehension of what chastity or ifa is that
is different than what, the rest of the
world, does. And that's okay.
It's okay. It actually is important. It's not
even the word okay is is kind of
an understatement. It's actually important for us as
Muslims to identify
where we differ with the world and what
do we differ. Like, it's important and it's
important for your kids to know exactly where
they're going to be different than people who
are with them at school or people they're
working going to work with or, yeah, their
friends that are gonna be outside of, yeah,
the Muslim
community. It's important that you understand where they
differ. Because if you know where you differ,
then you know what to watch out for.
You know where, you know, at this point,
we kinda part ways. You do this. I
do something a little bit different.
You know, it's it's no you can do
whatever you want as long as I, you
know, have the liberty and the ability to
do, you know, what I what I want,
and I I I protect myself. And most
Muslims have a a reasonable
approach to that, especially when it comes to
food, for example. Yeah. If you're going out
with friends who aren't Muslim, yeah, they you
you tend to state that I don't I'm
not gonna eat pork. I look for halal.
Yeah. I don't drink at my table or,
you know, you drink. I try not to
like, these are aspects of our so this
is the same thing. When it comes to
if for chastity, it's the same thing. We
just have a different way of understanding human
relationships and how how they're going to be,
carried and how we kinda express ourselves sexually
and how we see that and how we
identify ourselves in that manner and how we
deal with this this topic in general. So
I wanna talk start by talking about ifa
because ifa
has been reduced to to one word. It's
been reduced to the word hijab that's been
reduced to a piece of cloth. This is
the reduction that has happened over over the
years. Again, as I've stated, Yani, this is
the 5th time. The 5th halakha is the
5th statement that I'll make that I'm not
saying that the things that these concepts or
values have been reduced to are not good.
No. They're very important. They're good. It's just
when you reduce something that big to just
one slither, just one piece of it, first
of all, that piece has to carry more
than its weight. It can't carry all of
that on its own because it's just a
piece. It's just a it's like you have
5 compartments and you're putting the whole the
the weight of the whole project in one
of them, and of course it's going to
it's going to fall. It's gonna collapse. It
can't carry. It wasn't designed to carry all
of that. So, Yani, when you reduce the
concept of chastity to one word, the hijab,
to one word, which is Yani, the the
piece of cloth. Now you're asking this one
thing to carry a complete Yeah. A full
Islamic value on its own. That's impossible. It's
not gonna be able to do that, which
becomes way too much burden on on the
on the sisters who are who are, you
know, who are stuck with this word. Again,
it doesn't mean that hijabi is not a
part of ifa. It for sure is. And
the beads of cloth is also a part
of it for sure, but it's not the
it's not the only thing. And that's what
the the point of this series. This point
of this series was just to say, let's
let's step back a bit and see if
we can if we can identify that these
values or these concepts have become skeletons or
shells of what's what they once were. And
we're left with a very small piece of
each of them that actually does not serve,
yeah, the purpose for anyone. Like it does
not help the community. It does not help
the individual either.
So when when you take the word hijab
and you want to, yeah, you define If
you if you do accept the word hijab
Because what hijab means for there to be
a barrier. That's what Hajab is is you
put a barrier between something and something else
so they they can't see it. And Hajjub
is the one who is deprived from from
visibility.
He he can't he can't be seen or
he can't be accessed. The person can't be
accessed, which is which is, you know, due
to a barrier. So The concept of hijab,
outside of Yani, again, kind of zooming out
from the, the physical usage of it or
which is basically that the, you know,
the the head cover. We're talking
about there being a barrier. There being boundaries,
basically. The word barrier in in Arabic, you
can you can translate that pretty easily to
to a but there could be boundaries. So
it's not just a,
a way of a dress code. No. It's
also a social It's it's a form of
social behavior. And so it's the way It's
the social contract that we have amongst ourselves
as Muslim men and Muslim women living within
the Muslim community. It includes a dress code
for both genders for sure. It includes that.
Part of that is that we have to
dress in a certain way. As Muslim men,
we have to do as well. Like a
Muslim man cannot walk around naked. A Muslim
man can't walk around dressed in a way
that is showing off his own body parts
either. There's a certain dress code for us.
Is it more, strict for women? For sure
it is. For sure it is. That's just
the part of the of of this, of
this equation. But the dress code exists for
both.
However, hijab is a social it's a it's
a form of social behavior. It's a way
that we deal with one another within a
community.
It's you it becomes useless when it's when
it's reduced to a piece of cloth that
doesn't have the social behavior,
in in the back of it. Without
the social behavior, then we're missing something. And
because we've reduced it to the piece of
cloth, guys don't get this talk
because because we've done that, because we reduced
if
to hijab, to a piece of cloth that
a lady puts on her head, men are
completely excluded from this conversation so they don't
get a ifa talk. They don't get that.
They're not talked to about, yeah, how they
should be dealing with women, how they should
speak to them, how they should view them.
Their own sexuality. They don't get this talk
at all because because
ifa which is the word that's going to
be used to understand
how we act in a sexual meaning, like
how we understand ourselves sexually and express ourselves.
We've just removed men from it altogether, which
is why you end up having, you know,
young men who don't know how to act
around women and they don't know how to
treat them and they don't know how to
view them or understand them or even they
they have a they have a problem a
pathologic Yeah, I need a perspective of of
the the opposite gender because of the fact
that we have we have removed them from
this conversation to begin with. If you go
back to the prophet alaihi sallahu alaihi wa
sallam's life, you don't find it to be
the case. Not at all. Ali Islam had
these discussions with men, with young men
multiple times. Like all the young sahaba, like
Ibn Abbas,
like even Mas'ud, like Zayd ibn Fabbid, like
Zayd ibn Haritha. He had these discussions with
them alayhis salatu wa sallam. He himself was
involved in Yeah. And he in helping them
get married. He told them what to what
to look for. He told them, you know,
who to look for. He told them how
to deal with their wives. He would be
there to help them deal with problems and
to point things out. And then he was
always though there when it didn't work out
and there needed to be a divorce. He
was a part of that as well, alayhi
salatu wa sallam. Doesn't mean he attended every
wedding. Not at all. But he was a
part of the process of the thought process
and he was making And people were educated
by him alayhis salatu wa sallam. Then we
take all these hadith that talk about marriage
that are directed towards men. They're
they were directed towards men. Within Islam This
is this is like an FYI. Just a
a side
a side point. There are things that prophet
did not say on the mimbar.
Like, he didn't get on the mimbar and
say them because they were
words or they were pieces of advice that
were directed towards a specific group.
So when you read the hadith that are
directed towards men in terms of how they're
supposed to be dealing with ladies, how they're
supposed to deal with their spouses, how they
should be, Biyani, looking for marriage. Most of
these are hadith if not all of them
were hadith or or words or advice the
prophet alaihis salatu wa sama offered men when
he was speaking only to them. And a
lot of the hadith that are
addressing women in terms of, Yani, what they
should be doing in their lives, how they
should be treating their spouses, how they should
be looking for all that. It was not
addressed on their input either. It was addressed
it was addressed in sessions where it was
only women who's only speaking to them. So
when when someone takes a hadith where the
prophet alaihi wa sallam was speaking specifically to
women
It was not designed to be used in
a public setting. This hadith was the prophet,
alayhis salatu wa sama, offering his daughters and
his sisters and his wife advice between him
as a teacher, as a leader, as a
prophet, and them as a part of his
congregation, alayhi salatu wa sallam. To take those
a hadith and then use them
and then use them as evidence to say,
well, he said this alayhi salatu wa salam
too. Yeah. He said it to them. He
didn't say it to you. He didn't say
it to you. You were not a part
of this conversation at all. Why are you
using a piece of information that you were
not
meant to hear in the first place? You
heard. That's fine. But you don't get to
use it. So all the hadith that have
this is this is this is this is
something that women will listen to from the
mouth of the prophet alaihis salatu wa sallam
amongst themselves. It's not something that the husband
gets to use as leverage and vice versa.
And vice versa, the things that prophet alaihis
salatu wasalam told told men is also Well,
not all of them. Some of them Actually,
when you look at the public address any
When the prophet prophet alaihis salami talisman talked
to about gender issues publicly, he he almost
never addressed women. He always addressed men. Was
also a still has been Always a still
has been used at yohima or etcetera etcetera.
He was always addressing men. And this is
important to understand because as I know that
the prophet alaihis salam would have secluded,
meetings with with the sahabah.
Men and sahabiyat women and and he would
give them advice alaihis salatu waslam. To take
that advice and then use it as public
statements is is a little bit of a
problem. The Quran, you can do that. The
Quran is addressing everyone and you can read
the Quran that way and everything in the
Quran is is is public accesses. But when
it comes to the prophet alaihi wa sallam's
teachings, we have to know the context for
what he was teaching and how he was
teaching alaihi wa sallahu alaihi wa sallam. So
understanding hijab here, because we've reduced it to
something that is, you know, very specific to
to sisters, it's a piece of cloth on
their head, men have been secluded or excluded
from this from this, discussion altogether,
which leads to all the problems that we
have. A lot of the problems that we
have come from how young men behave around
women. How they view I need the the
women around them and how they end up
seeing themselves in, yeah, I mean, in in
conjecture to to sisters.
The same problem also will affect sisters because
if it's
reduced to a piece of cloth on the
head, then the rest of herself, the rest
of her her dress code, and the rest
of her behavior will not reflect what ifa
and hijab actually is. And then we end
up with a useless cloth, Like it actually
actually It actually backfires. It backfires. It looks
pretty It looks bad. Like this is not
Because when you're wearing When when a sister
decides to wear the hijab, she's accepting on
herself a social system. She's accepting on herself
a way a way of life, a way
of behavior, a way that she's going to
carry herself in the community, a way she's
going to be dealing with others as men
do as well. And I think this is
important. I don't know exactly
I I I'm not gonna act like I
I I figured out how to fix this
problem within a community. Not at all. It's
it's actually quite complicated. It's very difficult as
human relationships have always been quite complicated and
quite difficult. And it's the, yeah, the the
gift that never stops giving. Right?
Human relationships and the all the problems that
come from it, it never ends. It just
never ends. So it's not easy to deal
with, but I don't think we're even trying.
Like, I believe in our communities. We're not
even trying to do it. Like, most massages
don't accept this setup at all, by the
way. Like, not even
go to any the massages don't accept this
setup. It has to be. The women have
to wave the active has to be a
big barrier, a completely different entry so that
there's no possibility that there's any overlap between
men and women. That, in my opinion, is
a way for you to run away from
a problem. It's just it's just instead of
dealing with something, you're just running away from
it. So I don't You know, when men
and women deal with one another, it brings
a lot of headaches. I don't want headaches,
so I'll just completely seclude it so we
never deal with each other. But then what
happens outside? Again, you don't you're not seeing
I need this masjid as a training ground.
You're not seeing masjid masjids aren't being seen
for what they are. This is where people
come and learn how to actually carry themselves,
how to deal with
with certain situations in in their lives. And
if they don't learn here, then they're going
to learn somewhere else. And the somewhere else
they're going to learn is not gonna teach
them the same values that Islam is going
to offer them.
It's going to be a completely different values
altogether, and a different value set will later
on, obviously, reflect
within the Masjid late. Like, it'll it'll come
back. It's just a matter of time. It's
like instead of it's you're kicking the can
down the down the curve. That's all. Just
kicking the can down the road. You wanna
deal with it. You'll you'll have to deal
with it tenfold a few years down the
road when when you didn't take time to
train your young men or your young women
in terms of how they're supposed to deal
with another so they can exist in the
same space in a respectful manner without having
problems knowing that by doing that, you're going
to subject yourself to a lot of problems.
And we have, for the last 2 years,
we have subjected ourselves to a large amount
like, there's a truckload of headache that I
did not see coming in the yeah. I
mean, in the periphery when I started this
place. There's a couple of them. Like when
I was looking at starting a a center,
I had in my mind, okay. Here are
the problems that I'm gonna have to deal
with. I was focused on them. Then a
truckload of headaches came that I didn't even
know was coming from the periphery that later
literally threw us off balance completely. But does
that mean that we we No. It doesn't
mean we stop or change. It just means
we have to adjust and learn how to
do it. But it taught me yeah, I
mean, it it led for to this lecture
or to the or to this series of
of hokbas that I gave during the summer
that talks about, you know, gender relationships,
is that we have a problem within our
community in terms of how we are preparing
our youth to to, you know, to in
in the method they're gonna carry themselves at
school, at work, in university, around the opposite
gender, how they should behave, how they should
think, and how they should speak. And a
lot of it is just not clear unfortunately
for for a lot of our youth.
And it brings me to an Islamic ethic.
And if ifa is the umbrella concept or
value, haya is the is the is the
ethic that we should understand. And again, haya
is an ethic. When I asked you to
to translate it, you're gonna tell me modesty.
And that has nothing to do with the
word.
Like the root of the word, has There's
no way for modesty to exist in the
root of this word at all. Like like
at all. Like it's not even a part
of the of the of the concept. Now
I'm gonna show you how we ended up
at modesty because I'm not saying that modesty
is not a part of what Hayat is.
I'm just saying that that's not really what
the word meant to begin with. The word
is much more meaningful and much more profound
than that.
Hayat comes from the root of hayat which
is life. Right? From from hay, from something
that is alive. In Arabic, whenever you add
an alif and hamza at the end of
something, you make it the epitome of that,
of that word. So something for example, samah,
you go up. So if you want the
highest thing up you say samah,
which is why it's called,
why it's called the,
the sky. So Dur for example is is
harm. You want the
and
Yeah. You you get the idea. So when
you take the word
and you want to take the, the epitome
of of meanings that this word can carry
or the pinnacle of this word. What is
this word actually represented? Then you say, Haya.
So Haya is the epitome of living, of
being alive. Now what aspect of life are
we talking about? Well, something
something that's alive versus something that is dead.
What's the basic difference? It's their ability to
respond, their sensitivity.
A corpse, no matter how many times you
poke it or it's not it's not gonna
react because it doesn't feel anything. It's lost
feeling. It doesn't feel. Right?
The way you know something's alive if it's
if it feels. Now as a physician, when
I'm going in to assess a patient that
is not responsive to, to a nurse, there's
a few maneuvers that I have to do.
One of the new maneuvers is called a
sternal rub.
Now this is and this is not when
you read it, it's like this is. This
is a form of torture. This is called
a sternal rub. I take my fist and
I put it right in their chest and
I push down and I go like this,
not to see if they'll respond in pain
because that's the only way for me to
know if they're dead or alive. If they
don't respond in pain from a still rub,
then I have an assessment. I say this
is a code. It needs to call a
code right now. This person is either dead
or dying because they didn't respond to one
of the most scary painful maneuvers that you
can give another person. So the way we
understand life is the ability the sensitivity is
being sensitive. It's as having feeling. Right? So
haya is having the highest degree of sensitivity,
of feelings. You feel. You feel everything around
you. You're sensitive to everything that's occurring. That's
what haya means. It's not being bashful. Another
horrible reduction of the meaning of this word.
That's kajal.
Being bashful is kajal. Some people are like
that. Some people are introverts. Some people are
just not any confident socially. Some people just,
you know, have that. They're not fragile. They're
just shy. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with
that.
Is it celebrated?
Neither neither celebrated nor not. It's not something
that we really assign assign good or or,
you know, thumbs up or thumbs down to.
It's just some people are bashful. They're shy.
They have qajar. It's not something that you
know that we
No. Haya is sensitivity.
It's when you're aware of your surroundings. You're
aware of how you are affecting others.
That's what Haya is. Is you're aware of
how you affect other individuals and how you
affect
the community that you're living in. That's what
Haya means. I'm watching out how I how
what I say, how I behave, the way
I dress, the way I walk, the way
I talk, the way I speak, the way
I go. What I'm doing. I'm I'm sensitive
to how people are and how they are
viewing and how they're taking it and how
they're Whether they're benefiting or or being harmed.
Whether this is this is causing difficulty for
them or ease. I'm I'm sensitive to these
things. That's what haya means. I'm not saying
I am. I'm just saying that that's what
haya
actually
means. So we took from that that if
you are sensitive in that way, if you
have that haya where you're sensitive and you're
like, well, the way I dress matters too
then. You know, the way I'm going to
present myself to the community, the way I'm
going to sit, the way I'm going to
speak, you know, the way Whether I have
a smile on my face or not, the
way I'm dressing, this is going to affect
people. So it's gonna affect people so I'm
I'm aware of it. I'll make sure that
I that I that I dress in a
way that that's appropriate so that turns into
modesty, which is why Hayat was turned into
modesty. You see, this is how we This
is the thought process that we led to
modesty. But then we got rid of the
whole thing and they were just left with
this one thing, which is modesty. You know,
Haya has no meaning to people anymore. And
Haya is your heightened sensitivity.
Someone who walks into a place and is
making sure that, you know, their presence is
yeah. And he is welcome, that they're not
some people I'll give you example. And so
you understand.
So the
word has no has no Someone who comes
and he visits
you and he sits for 4 hours.
4 hours. After like half an hour you
you're done. You've talked everything. You've you've been
sitting there, you've been moving around, you've been
picking up your phone, your wife is calling
you and they're sitting there. No problem. Yeah,
yeah, we'll have a hada and then well,
yeah, you've already had fatur, have hada. There's
no haya. There's no sensitivity. They don't feel
that maybe maybe you have something to do.
You're too you have haya. You're not gonna
come and say, bro, get lost. I have
things to do. You're not gonna do that
because you're sensitive to their feelings. So you
don't wanna so you wanna harm them but
they don't have haya. So don't just sit
there going on and on and on. That's
what haya is. Is that you're aware. Oh,
I may be I may be I may
be bothering you. I may be coming in
a, you know,
inappropriate time. Maybe I can, you know, this
is may not be the best moment for
you. Did I overstay my welcome? Did I
say something that was offensive? Did I, you
know,
deal with you or or treat you in
a way that was not appropriate to you?
That's high up. But it But So if
you expand that concept, well, even the way
that I dress,
even the way that I carry myself and
I deal with,
with with with others, that's a part of
Haya because I'm gonna be watching out for
myself. How is this, being carried? How is
how is this being taken by the people
around me? So it's a heightened level of
sensitivity.
So it's a beautiful beautiful ethic. It's beautiful.
Like it's a It's actually
the prophet of alayhis salamam, like, this is
just one hadith. Haya
only brings hray. If you have haya, that
only brings you hray. Saybn Uthman
there was a person who had a lot
of
that he was bashful and shy. He led
he led the Ummah, radiAllahu anhu, for for
a decade.
He led the Ummah. He was very brave
actually. He accepted death upon himself to save
To to to say To make sure there
was no bloodshed within his own So he
wasn't someone who was weak or someone who
lacked the ability to speak for himself. No.
He just had hayah. He someone who was
always sensitive. He was always thinking about others.
Right? He's always thinking about how his behavior
and what he was doing was affecting other
people.
Which is why they brought alayhis salaam. He
could do he would
say
Every deen has a has an ethic that
represents it. Like, of all these beautiful ethics,
you need one to kinda lead the way.
And the ethic of Islam is higher. That's
that's how you define us as Muslims. We're
people, we're supposed to be at least, who
are who are highly sensitive
to everyone around us. So you wouldn't park
in a place that would, you know, cut
off others from entering or leaving. You wouldn't
do that. You wouldn't walk into a bathroom
and leave it as if you any,
something exploded in there and we don't we
don't, you know, we don't do that. We
don't walk into we don't walk and, you
know, put our feet beside people's faces because
we want to sit a little bit, upfront
even though we came late. We wouldn't do
that because Hayat wouldn't allow you to do
it because it's you're gonna you're gonna bother
people. You're gonna you're gonna inconvenience them. Make
them feel yeah. I need that's not nice.
So you wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do
that. Muslims would never do that. You would
never, you know, rush towards the door pushing
and shoving to get out of jom'ah or
get in because we, you know, we we
believe that our lives are much more important
than everyone else's and what we have to
do next is actually more valuable than whatever
everyone else has to do next and they
just don't know that because I'm just more
important so I push myself. We wouldn't do
that. The Hayat wouldn't allow that. See, that's
our deen. Our deen. The kuluk is hayah.
The prophet alayhis salaam was like that.
Had more
than a young lady who was not married
yet, who was being asked for for marriage.
The amount of sensitivity that she has at
that moment. The prophet, alayhis salam, this is
how he lived his life. He was always
wondering
always attentive to his the effect he had
on people in in the way that he
he carried himself and the way he lived
his life.
I'm
just trying to make a point for you
of how how how how profound these concepts
are and how how, you know, they're not
they don't they don't carry that anymore.
So a piece of cloth versus a social
system. A social system where when I when
I look at my I mean,
anyway, they talk about Yes. So when I
look at when I look at the the
opposite gender, I'm not focusing on on appearance.
I focus on merits. The way the reason
that we dress and the way is that
it forces people not to focus on the
way you look. You focus on the things
that you have to say, who you are,
your character. You know, when when This is
the concept that that this social system brings
forward. When you dress with haya, when you
when there's disco, when this ifa exists, when
this ifa exists, when you're not looking at
the opposite gender and you're thinking thinking about
something that is materialistic,
when you're not focusing on their appearance, then
you have to listen to what they have
to say and that values the person instead
of valuing something that really does not the
most For the most part, it's not something
that they had control over to begin with.
And your appearance or the way you look
is not always something that you can, you
can change.
And that's not real value. And if you're
being valued because of an appearance, then how
real is that? That doesn't that doesn't stay
around for very long.
And and and it's very
it's it's worthless, really. It's really worthless.
Youth only sticks around for a couple of,
like, 2 decades and then it's gone. For
men and women, by the way, it doesn't
you know, it's not just for ladies, it's
for both. But when when there's this social
system that that
dictates that we don't see people based on
their appearance. We don't look we're not focused
on their appearance. We're looking at merit.
We're
listening to what they have to say. We
were seeing how that what their character looks
like. It's a whole different it's a whole
different
method of life,
acknowledging human nature.
And we can't talk about this anymore.
I even I even feel very, very uncomfortable
talking about this. We can't talk about human
nature anymore. It's like it doesn't exist. It's
like it's not a part of life anymore.
That, Yani, men are a certain way and
women are a certain way. And we we
view ourselves in a certain way. We view
the opposite gender in a certain way. Well,
I I never thought that was gonna come
to a point where we couldn't But we
can't talk about this, khalas.
It's not. We have to ignore all human
nature. We have to ignore that men are
extremely extremely attracted to the visual,
that men are extremely attracted to the visual,
and that women are extremely attracted to the
to the to what they hear, to the
audible,
And that there's and that, yeah, I mean,
men love to
to to give attention, and women love to
seek it. This is a part of human
nature. It's a part of how we are
as as individuals. It's the biology, Hashek, is
the is the is the basics of our
psychology.
But but the way that we're living right
now is that we're we're we're saying, no.
That's not the case. We're all exactly we're
not all the same when it comes to
that. We never were, and we never will
be. And actually ignoring that piece makes it
impossible for us to function as societies. Islam
just acknowledges that, yeah, this is your nature.
This is human nature. So this is how
you're going to, you know, deal with one
another. This is how we're going to organize
your society for you so that you're Everyone's
protected.
So that everyone can can live in a
safe space where they're not
where men are not always fighting off an
urge because of something. And women are not
always being hounded
and being followed, and and having to deal
with comments, and having to deal with with
people staring because that's not comfortable for either
gender to It's not comfortable for either group.
And when you have that system then those
who make mistakes will become clear. When a
guy is Khalil adabi, Khalil Haya, lacks Haya,
it becomes very clear because the system is
set up where someone who says something that's
inappropriate behaves in a way that's inappropriate is
of it's obvious. It stands out, and that
person can be removed, reprimanded, or punished. And
same goes for the other for the opposite
gender. And this is how we're supposed to
function as a society. It's designed to protect
us.
How do we if we don't have that,
then how do we open Masajid and have
youth safely come in?
If you
if you're young, you you this may not
make as much sense to you. Once you
have a kid, you'll understand. Once you have
a 14 year old son or a 14
year old daughter, and you send them to
a masjid and they come back with a
relationship that was that that that they
You didn't send them to come back with
a relationship. You sent them so they could
learn the Muslim islam and build some friendships.
But you send them to a masjid, they
came back with a relationship. Now they know
somebody and they know someone else and someone's
texting back and forth is interested. They're only
14 years old, so they can't get married.
And now you're stuck with this problem, and
if you tell them that you don't like
it, then they're gonna They're teenagers who are,
you know, with raging hormones all day long,
so they don't really have a lot of
reason. And no matter how much you talk
to them about this issue, they won't listen
to you.
To you. It was the fault of the
masjid that did not have the proper setup.
It's the fault of the Muslim community that
did not make sure that it was a
safe place. When the boat, they could both
come here and they could exist. The opposition
is there. We're not I don't believe in
segregation of that's not how he lived alaihi
salaam. His masjid was like this.
Almost exactly this size, by the way, just
as a,
Almost exactly this size. Not not nothing bigger
than this.
Exactly like this with no yeah. With a
few pillars.
There was no there was no sukha upfront.
You would stand in pray and pray alaihis
salaam. Even though that because at the beginning,
they put the, sukhaft towards, Masid al Aqsa.
Right? Because they were praying to the Yeah.
They were praying towards Al Aqsa. But then
the Qibla turned back to Mecca, so the
the roofed one part of the Masjid and
left the other part unroofed. They left the
part that was towards Mecca unroofed and towards
towards Aqsa roofed because that's where you're gonna
pray. So they ended up praying where it's
unroofed. And then out of Allah say see,
al sufa lived under the roof piece which
which worked out for them. So that was
his message. It was open, wasn't near on
the roof.
Men prayed up front, women prayed behind because
they didn't because it was dark and there
was there was no electricity and there was
no people didn't have cars. After Sholei HaSha,
men had to stay until the women
got up, took their children and went home.
And when they got safely home, the men
left So that they wouldn't have a in
a enclosed in in in dark alleys with
no with no way to distinguish who the
person is in front of you because it's
so dark. If you think back then there
was no Yani, the lamps or or Yani,
the the
Fuel based lamps were very few. Like the
Siraj in the Masjid was very You only
had 2 or 3 in the in the
Masjid and then in the rest of, Yani.
The city that didn't didn't really exist. So
that's why people die asleep, Yani.
I live in a village, yeah, for most
of my life. And and last 2 years,
Yani, before I left, electricity was what? Maybe
4 hours a day or 3 hours a
day or something. It was ridiculous. You just
you had everything in the,
the the charger, laptop and charger.
So at 7 once Maghrib Adhan went off
and you prayed, you actually struggled to make
it to Isha. Like, you struggled to make
it to Isha. You couldn't make it to
Isha. You're like, I because there's no electricity,
and he's very inviting just to sleep. So
you would make it to Isha, and then
you would bolt home and just collapse and
sleep. Probably the best year of my life.
Yeah. You slept nice and early. You woke
up. You say nothing.
You open this place and then you go
sleep at 7 o'clock. Well, I don't know
where.
Leaving me in the dragon's den.
Aloha. No. I agree. Brother Khaled's system of
life is is better. We don't I don't
know that we have the ability to, you
know, to function like that here. I wish
we did. I wish that, Yani, days ended
earlier and we started earlier. Yani, honestly, I
I brought this to my division at the
hospital that starting at 9 No. No. Either
start at 7 or 11. Yani,
9 is horrible.
Especially, it's like 5:30 to 6 o'clock. Either
I pay for sure when I come and
work or I need to go home and
have a nice nap. Like I sleep for
a good amount time and I come. 9,
I get neither. I can't start early. I
can't start late. It just it's it's like
kills your day. And then you running the
Muslims, they yaqiloon.
Shein the shayateen, lataqeen. They take naps. It's
the shayateen that don't take naps. I have
actually one of my staff. He's not Muslim,
but a very religious man. Very nice man.
He he he has in his office a
a bed. Like a proper put up bed
in and think At 12:30, once we're done
the afternoon clinic, he goes upstairs and he
sleeps for 30 minutes. He comes down to
the afternoon clinic and his eyes are always
bulging out of his face, but he had
a nice nap. He had a It's actually
very valuable. You sleep less if you have
a nap during the day. Like you sleep
less. You don't need as much time. Anyways,
this has nothing to do with this but
I thought I would bring it up. So
when we talk about iffah, Yani,
the Muslim the Muslim approach to this topic
is that we we refuse to focus on
on appearance. We acknowledge human nature. So we
organize things acknowledging that, yes, we have to
dress in a certain way. We have to
lower our gaze in a certain way. We
have to speak to each other in a
certain way because human nature is there. It'll
never go away, and both of us and
both genders will seek certain things. And if
we don't have boundaries, then those things will
be sought too early in the wrong time
and it'll cause problems for everybody.
And if they learn how to You're not
on the market. You're on the market. It's
not your time. If you're looking for the
marriage, you look for marriage, and you like
someone then you go ask and you don't
worry. Move on to the next person. Same
thing for ladies. It's very simple. You're not
ready yet, then you don't you're not you
don't open for you have to be you
have to have those,
I know. Just forgive me for this phrase.
Forgive me for the phrase. I want you
to think about this phrase. This is a
really weird phrase. I I find it really
weird. Well, it's a it's a mind blowing
phrase that now has become normal. We just
say, yeah. How are you?
What does that mean to dress in this
manner?
Right. Let me I'll give you I'll give
you an example of what I'm trying to
explain. I I'll say this.
I dress
respectfully.
Right? Why?
Because I want people to
respect me. Right?
If I dress like this, then I want
people to what?
Are you understanding what I'm trying to say?
Like when you when you make that phrase,
what are you trying to dressing like this?
What does that mean?
That I want people to look at me
and
Maqul, that's what I want. I want people
to look at me and
Imagine that you're walking up the street, you're
hoping everyone who sees you hopes that they
can lai laha illallah.
How does that even work? How does that
work? Like, how does that how is that
an how is that ethically sound? How how
does a community or society or a or
a civilization, how does it accept such
such phrases?
And, yeah, that's how I'm addressing. I'm addressing
in a way where everyone who sees me
wants to have sex with me.
Are people able to see me and respect?
Have
empathy. Have compassion.
That's what that's how you dress. You dress
in a way I want people to to
know who I am. I want to express
my values through the way I dress. What
are my values?
Is my value? My value I want people
to see me and want to this is
what I'm trying to say. This is our
problem. We we we
don't we don't understand the the danger of
some of the phrases that we use because
we reduced our concept of hijab to something
really simple.
Just a cloth.
Men are completely excluded from this whole conversation.
And sister just told you, you have to
put cloth on your head. Clothe
your head. Just cover your head. And then
everything else doesn't matter. How you The rest
of your dress code doesn't matter. The way
you speak to people doesn't matter. The way
you how what your boundaries are with people
doesn't matter. Nayami. No ifa is much more
profound than that.
It's it's much more profound than that. It's
that professionalism you find. By the way, like
our ifa is is is, is, expressed very
well in workspaces today. Maybe it wasn't maybe
in the sixties seventies, you know, to lack
of, again, a good regulation. But today, for
the most part, at least maybe in public
sectors or in hospitals where I work, there's
there's a there's a, you know, there's a
code of professionalism.
You can't you can't speak inappropriately. You can't
be inappropriate. You can't dress inappropriately. You have
to come in a certain a certain dress
code that's needed. Like, we're more professional, and
you have more ifa in in in any
hospital for those who want than than we
have maybe sometimes in Masjid.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, because we don't have that proper anti
mentality.
Ifa is a it's fikli. It's a mentality
of chastity. It's not just there's a there's
a there's a way of thought that's that
that I,
that's included in, in understanding what what chastity
actually is. And I think we have to
take some time and reflect on this so
that we we go from this very reduced
concept to to to the beauty and the
profoundness of what it what it once was.
So you so you can because you want
to be able to trust your children. You
wanna be able to have confidence that they
will they know how to carry themselves. They
know how to draw boundaries, know how to
speak to other people. They don't They have
an if. They're not Yeah. They're not gonna
be They're not gonna They're not vulnerable. See
see parents who don't have trust in their
children will deprive them from a lot. Like
I get a lot of the high school
students and universities. They don't let me do
this. They don't let me do this. I
can't go there. I can't do this. I'm
like, yeah. The problem is probably they just
don't have trust. Now I don't know if
they should or they shouldn't because I don't
know you well enough to actually make that
judgment. I I I don't know, but that's
probably the reason. And I'm not saying that
it's okay. I'm not saying it's right. I'm
just saying that that's the best the problem.
That there's lack of trust and that lack
of trust comes to the fact that if
as a as a as a mentality, as
a value, as a concept was not properly
discussed because there's a lot there's a lot
to discuss regarding it. Like this discussion, I'm
actually I just scratched the surface of what
needs to be talked about. Like, we need
to talk about way more things, and it
has to be gender specific.
Like, meaning you some of these parts of
these discussions have to be genders. We have
to sit down and talk to Shabab differently
than you may be talking to to Solvayah.
The objective is 1, but the the nature
of it is going to be a little
bit different in terms of what is required
of them,
in terms of how they should view themselves,
with within within the community they're living in.
Let's talk about love,
the second piece.
Love versus lust. I don't think we know
the difference. I don't think as as the
human race that we know the difference between
the two things. And I think we confuse
them. Love is a very difficult concept to
define, by the way. And I'll talk about
that in a moment.
But it's an extremely profound
value. It's a concept that Islam is built
upon. Islam is built upon love. This is
what I was taught.
Someone today brought up to me that, oh,
we talk about love a lot in the
West because we're all, you know, lovey w.
No. I learned love in the Middle East.
I didn't learn it here. I I didn't
all live here. I learned I learned the
concepts of love back home from the teachers
who taught me fisham,
under under under siege and under bombing. These
are the people who taught me, who showed
me how the Quran speaks about this, how
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is illbadood and explained
me explained to me the importance of having
love within Islam. Without it, Islam does not
survive. It's there for a while. You can
distill yourself for a couple of years. Then
if you lack love, it all goes downhill
from there. It turns into the reason reduced
concepts. Actually, the argument that I when I
had when I when I prepared this,
this talk or I prepared this topic I
prepared this topic maybe maybe 5 or 4
or 5 years ago or more.
Probably more than that. And I and I
I at the time I I had a
discussion with him, Maishuk. I I asked him,
like, where do you think like I was
I was interested to see. Remember the first,
lecture that we had and I kind of
went over with the psychologists and sociologists
who are not religious necessarily
kinda looked at things and and how they
assess stuff. I asked them, what is your
assessment? Why do you think and we are
at that point where reducing
value, reduction of values is something that
they're
is the lack of love.
Because when you do something just based on
discipline for a long time and it doesn't
end up fulfilling its purpose and it's not
later on derived by love, it gets reduced
to something that's very mechanical because you you
That's the only way for you to deal
with it. Because you run into something called
cognitive dissonance where where this You're doing it.
It doesn't make any sense. Either you get
rid of it or you do it in
a way that doesn't mean anything. Just so
you can keep it and you can Your
conscious doesn't feel bad. Right? Because if it
doesn't work. The way it's going to work
is that if if it's if it's driven
by love. You can only drive behaviors via
fear,
desire and discipline for so long.
Like, you can only drive behavior via these
3, yeah, any motivations for a certain period
of time. They're short term. They're amazing short
term. Yeah. And fear is an amazing
short term
immediate Yeah. I mean, immediate relief type of,
of,
motivation. Like if you're in a middle in
the middle of a In front of a
mass, yeah. Yeah. I need Or you need
fear to say, Nope. I'm not doing this.
I'm not gonna be punished for this. This.
It's like that. Yeah. Immediate relief Tylenol pill
that you take to get rid of that
egg. But it doesn't work in the long
run. The long run you have to figure
out something else. Same thing goes for desire.
Desire any the radaba that Allah subhanahu wa'ala
give you a reward. It works. It it
it it sparks things. It starts the engine
moving. But then after a while, you you
start If you start to mature mentally and
intellectually, you start to feel that I don't
want to be just looking at materialistic gain.
I don't want that to be the only
reason I have a relationship with a lost
You start to outgrow it. So if you
don't outgrow these things to a long term
motivation, which is love,
the long term motive, the best motive, the
most powerful of all motives by far,
the endless energies
resource for for having for being a Muslim
is love, and if it doesn't exist, then
you you lose a lot.
That's just Yaniy,
my rant on this issue from an Islamic
perspective.
However,
when it comes to how we define it,
we often
mix love up with lust.
Lust is different.
It's important. Without it, life can be quite
boring. It's required within,
certain types of relationships.
Within certain relationships, you need lust. If you
remove lust altogether then it becomes very hard.
Without that chemistry, any spouse's
A marriage does not survive.
Marriages become very rocky and difficult because you
need that piece there. It's how marriages start.
You have to be able to to to
generate a certain way of a certain way
of feeling towards someone else in order for
you to fathom or imagine that maybe this
could be a long term relationship that will
work forever. So it's a it's a And
I tell guys, sometimes like my,
he wants to get And I look at
her. I I I I I'm not Yeah.
Then don't. Yeah. His haram is not fair
for her. She's a human being. If she
She doesn't want to be in a relationship
with the guy. Does not think she's attractive
at all to him. It's not about you.
Again, this comes from the lack of these
conversations with men. Men thinks it's all about
them. I don't feel attractive so I'll marry
her. What
what do you What about,
is that not a person?
Does that person not deserve to be in
a relationship where they feel that that their
spouse is attracted to them? Why is it
all related about you? But again, that's comes
from the lack of understanding of if and
this whole concept men aren't educated on this
issue appropriately. The way the way the prophet
alaihis salam would tell the sahaba go before
you do that. Go take a look. Make
sure that this person in the umbu, and
if you're lilsali shayah. And we told him
mas'ud.
And go look. Sometimes
the eyes of the of the people of
the people of Medina are different than the
eyes of the people of Mecca. They don't
look the same. They look a little bit
different. So maybe before you talk about this,
zawaja, go take a look. Make sure that
this is something you you can Because it's
not fair to her. It's not just not
fair to you. It's not fair to her
either. So lust is important. But for lust
to to to substitute love, to substitute it.
When we say love, all we think about
is sexual chemistry and attraction between 2 people.
Then we we we're not we're not defining
this appropriately. And this won't it's not a
long term
it's it's it's not gonna work long run.
Like, for the long that's why the the
most amazing love stories in history they always
end with the they always end these stories
at the moment they get married. Right? Every
every rom com in the history of, all
these novels. The end when they're standing at
the altar. Yeah. In the Alibranic, tell tell
the story. Just just jump forward. Show me
15 years later. Alright? If 15 years later
they still love each other, then I'll oh,
you know, I'll say this is a good
love story, but it's never like that. It
actually turns into one of the most, you
know, the
the the worst
divorces in the history of divorce. It's a
bloodbath. They people What what point was that
love? What value did that love have? And
at the end, this is how you're doing
to the other person. There was no love.
There was no love.
When you're going to when the divorce has
to be
has to be with beauty, has to be
beautified. We didn't get along. I I ask
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to grant you the
best. Inshallah, you do really well. And, inshallah,
you're able to take care of yourself and,
on your way.
Divorces should not end in the amount of
hatred
that they end in today. Like, they really
shouldn't. Like, I understand some of it will
happen when there's abuse and when there's mistreatment
and there's domestic violence. That's different. I'm not
talking about these these cases that are yani,
but there's bull in them. I'm talking about
generally speaking people who get along. If you
don't get along, it's normal. You don't get
along. It's not a problem. We're not we're
not, we're not helping each other. Like I'm
not helping you be better. You're not helping
me be be better. We're actually harming one
another. We we we part ways in a
way that is beautified.
Yeah. Because because there was love. If there's
true love
and again, you say, well, no. There's you
can only love one person. Yeah. You start
love no. Who said what do you mean
of Allah?
Who said this? Here's like 5 5 things
we're going to talk about. Let's start with
the first one. The myth of the one.
What do you mean the one? You can't
love 1 person? Are you insane? What What
do you mean the one? You you love
millions of people. Like you you will love
a lot in your life, and you will
love many people. And the concept that, no,
I can only fall in love with 1
person one time in my life, that was
made up. That was made up by by
Yanim. I want I don't wanna I'm gonna
come off as Yanim a conspiracy theorist by
saying they're not gonna I'm not gonna say
all this. Look. The people who came up
with this, they knew what they were doing.
They knew what they were selling.
They knew what they were selling by saying
that, that there was one person for you
in the world. BS.
Openly. They did know that's completely untrue. What
do you mean there's only one person for
you? Imagine that. 8,000,000,000 people. There's one person.
How are they gonna find this person?
Like how are you Imagine 8,000,000,000 people. The
odds are they're in China.
The odds are pretty high that they're in
China because that's where the most people are.
This makes no sense. There's one person. That's
not true. What do you mean there's one
person? There's actually, like, 90% of humanity you're
able to actually build a loving relationship with.
It's actually the opposite. Maybe there's 1 or
2 people that you can't you can't stomach,
you can't take care of. This impossibility, there's
no attraction whatsoever, and you're so different that
you can't do it. But the majority of
human beings, we're programmed to be able to
love one another.
Imagine if love was that scarce
and that rare. What a
sad
existence we must have if if you can
only love 1 person. But no. You'll love
many. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's
nothing wrong. Like when spouses are sitting there
and and the husband or the wife are
Yeah. I mean jealous because and we're not
talking about someone else like a previous No.
Because he loves his mom a lot, or
she loves her uncle a lot or her
brother a lot. It's pathetic.
That shows that level of insecurity in who
you are as a person that you should
address. Forget about your spouse. What do you
mean you're jealous of how much she loves
her mother or her father or her brother?
She's gonna love many people.
She's going to love her children and love
her friends and she's gonna love a lot.
So just like you are.
Why is, for example, that are upset that
the her son
her husband loves his mother a lot. What
are you upset
of? Why? What do you think? Why are
you why are you seeing you see this
as competition if you understand this, you know,
this garbage.
1
it's not how it is. It's not the
same.
It's not this it's not even similar. You're
saying that the love a a man has
to his mother is ease. Ease. The same
of and saying in nature that the love
he has to hurt his wife?
Yes.
That's that's disgusting
to even think that way. That's just not
it's love. It's not the same type of
love. Come on. Like, you have to be
it's because we've been led to believe. We've
taken this word, this amazing word, this central
word in our deen, the central world word
in life in life,
and we've reduced it to something that is
very, very mechanical
and is very and is not and and
does not last
and is and hormonal in in in nature,
and it's just it's just it's chemical. It's
chemical. That's what it is. And we reduced
this amazing concept,
and we we we basically emptied emptied our
our hearts of it and emptied our dean
of it. It produces something very sexual these
days. That's how it's always looked at. It's
talked about in that in those terms.
Love is they even use that to to
describe it. It's
it's very problematic for love to be reduced
to a sexual act or some form of
sexuality.
That's basically I remember I remember this story,
and my mom probably remembers this, but my
grandma came and visited us in the nineties
in in our in our village. And we
were I she was just coming we were
just in the in the car, and there
was 2 guys,
and this is this is this is very
normal by the way. I did this all
my life. 2 guys walking out the street
holding hands.
Holding hands. So she saw that and she
said, oh, you guys have this problem here
too.
And she's like, no. No we don't. No.
I I hold I held my friends' hands
all my life.
I love them and they loved me. And
we held hands and there's nothing weird about
it.
But see, even you're like, Oh.
Oh. Sure. No. See even you're like Because
we've been programmed and we've been programmed to
think, oh, there must be something No, there
isn't. But you take love and you reduce
it to lust, then yeah, that's what it
seems that there must be something, some suppressed
urge. There was no suppressed urge at all.
It would be It's disgusting to even think
of it, but this love, I We would
hope I remember like all throughout grade 9,
10 in university. This was a it only
became abnormal when I came here. Like it
only became abnormal when I actually came here
and I saw how people function. Go back
to the Middle East, you find people you
know the pinky thing?
I've seen guys pinky.
It's very normal. It's an expression of love.
They're best friends. They love each other. There's
no lust involved at all.
At all. And this is completely normal. But
again, we've reduced this concept to something very
very simple. And you're saying my problem is
a problem. This is a real problem. This
has to be addressed. We have to talk
about this more. It's very uncomfortable, by the
way, to talk about it, especially here in
the west because we've been the way we've
been pre programmed to see things and accept
things and and the premise for the discussion.
Like I said at the beginning of this
course,
the limitations of this of acceptable opinion has
been set for us. We can't talk outside
of it anymore.
And because it Because they've made love
reduced to lust, when men feel that way
towards each other, they start wondering does that
mean we
do we actually Maybe that that's what it
seemed to everyone saying. No, no. You love
each other and there's no It doesn't have
to be there, but that's what they're saying.
If we love each other, we must be
that must that every love has to mean
something sexual.
Again, if you read if you read any
Western
novels and and western literature, you'll find that
there's a lot of stuff like stuff like
that. There's a lot of incest.
Right? A lot of incest. And it's becoming
actually more and more prevalent and, you know,
very well known shows and things that have
a lot of incest in it.
It. It's it's it's it's quite
disturbing.
It's very disturbing that this is where we're
allowing
our minds and our and our souls to
go. It's reduced to fish love.
You know what fish love is?
If I ask you,
and you tell me, hey, Sheik, I love
fish.
Oh, you love fish.
So you take it out of its natural
habitat. You chop its head off. You throw
it into a pan and then you eat
it. That's what you do to things you
love.
So a lot of love is reduced to
fish love. Think about that. You say I
love my mom.
Is it fish love or is it actual
love? Where you just love what they do
for you. You just love that they they
they do something for you. They take they
they give you something that you want. Because
fish love is is not real love. It
means nothing really. And it's actually quite pathetic
to exist as an alternative for real love.
When you only love that which does something
for you, that which gives you,
fulfills the need or offers you
something that you require, and you love it
because it does that for you. What happens
when it stops doing that for you? What
happens when that's why the, you know, the
Birul Wari din is talking about in the
Quran to to prevent this problem. Because at
a certain point, your parents won't have anything
left to give.
There was a a book when I was
a kid. Remember? The Giving Tree?
My favorite book. A tree that just you
know, I need the as it grew up
as as the boy would grow up, every
time he needed he needed money, he would
give the, the apples. If he had I
mean, if he needed a house, he would
give the branches. If he needed until there's
nothing outside the tree at the end of
his life. And he went and he sat
on the stump and, you know,
it was a beautiful story of something that
just keeps on giving. But at some point,
they won't have anything left to give you.
So then what?
I've seen I've seen I've heard and witnessed
stuff that are just very sad.
It's very sad when you sit there and
you watch, you know, any
a son or a daughter just hoping that
their parents would die.
Just hoping that they would just move on
because, you know, they'd wanna live their lives.
This poor person who offered everything they had
when they had to offer had nothing left
to offer and now they're they're they're disposable.
We don't need them anymore. We don't want
them around. That I mean, a part of
the beauty of the middle of of the
culture of Islam in the Middle East, at
least maybe I don't know if it's still
there now but when it was there, it
was the tawim of the of the kibar,
of, the the magnification respect the elders had.
Where they lived in the center of the
home. Where where they were Yeah. They were
taken care of by everyone. Where everything still
came to them even though they could hardly
move. Even though they couldn't even stand up
on there or they needed help but they
were dignified. They were not thrown into a
home. They were not spoken to in a
belittling matter. Even if they lost their minds
and were completely out of it and they
were completely demented.
Fish love is a problem in our society
where we only love that which does something
for us. Yeah. Get rid of that. That's
not that's not a healthy way. That's not
real love. It's not real love. It's not
actually what love is at all.
It's reduced to an emotion.
It's reduced to an emotion. Yes. It's reduced
to an emotion because if it's that's all
it is, then I don't care what you
have in your heart. I really don't. Like,
if you're like, I love you. I don't
care. That doesn't make that doesn't help me.
Unless you have something to do about it.
Unless you're going to actually come and volunteer
or
Yeah.
You're going to assist us or or help
with service, then your love means meaningless to
me. Like everyday comes say, oh, lasekh, I
love you. I never see You're never a
part of anything. It means nothing. It means
nothing. It's a Yeah. You're saying, I don't
I don't I don't know that it's there.
I have no evidence that it's there. Emotions
are for you. Emotions are for you to
deal with.
Emotions are your domain. That's what you deal
with. Don't make it other people's problems.
Don't make your emotions other people's problems and
don't express something that you're not willing to
prove because it comes off as dishonest.
Right? If I You love some And this
and this Again, this comes down to
another problem that we have in in our
society. When how we And we'll talk about
that in a moment. How we understand love
and how we define it within our within
our households between people. And men express love
a little bit differently than women do. I'm
not saying that they're right or wrong. I
mean, it just happens a little bit differently.
For men, their expression of love is a
lifelong commitment to people where they'll put their
wealth and their time and their effort and
they'll grow old and they'll give everything they
have and they'll die. Making sure that these
people are taken care of and have something
to live by afterwards. That's how they express
their love. Now it may not be the
most,
enjoyable expression of love, but it is but
it is love all the same. Women express
it very differently.
I don't know how exactly, but they do.
No. I do.
You have to give me 1 or 2
jabs throughout this whole thing or else I
allow me just 1 or 2 again, right?
So I'll
behave afterwards and show up.
Yeah. No. No. She's watching right now so
she'll I'll hear I'll hear this when I
go home. Yeah.
The concept of love being conditional versus unconditional.
This is a very this is a very
difficult topic.
The concept of condition
unconditional love.
This this this disagreement on this topic when
when you say conditional unconditional comes from the
definition. What do you mean by unconditional love?
Are you talking about the emotion? That's ridiculous.
If you're talking about the emotion, that's ridiculous
because you can't you can't hold me to
an emotion if I don't feel love anymore.
I don't feel love.
The emotion itself is very much conditional.
It's very much it has a lot of
conditions surrounding
it. If the person in front of you
continues to abuse you all the time then
you're not gonna feel that emotion anymore. So
it's very much conditional. That's why our relationship
with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has to be
properly understood so that we may have unconditional
love to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala as he
does with us. Because if we tie
the occurrences that the occurrences in our lives
to his love subhanahu wa ta'ala then we're
not we're gonna have a problem. If we
if we if we
tie in the difficulties that we run into
or the struggles
that we have with our lives to Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala's love then we're gonna have
a big problem because that's not how we're
supposed to understand his love. Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
He We're here right now. He's already shown
us an infinite amount of love because you're
going from nothing to something. There's no way
there's no way to value that. To market
value that. There's no way to explain it
to what it's worth and how much How
many problems later on can cancel it out.
Nothing can cancel that out. The fact that
you sit here right now as a human
being that's able to understand what I have
to say, you've already been shown so much
love that there's no way for that to
be cancelled out by by by by a
full lifetime of agony and suffering then they
can't cancel it out. So your love for
Allah will always be unconditional because of the
fact that what he does has has done
for you,
and then your life love for him has
to be the same of the same nature.
When it comes to people, it's different. You
say unconditional love. What do you mean by
that? I'm gonna love I have to love
my children unconditionally.
Okay. Let's say your child
grows up and they beat you every day.
Then what? You love them unconditionally too?
Are you talking about the emotion? The emotion
won't be there for sure. When you're talking
about the caregiving?
Okay. Well, what do you do when they
start doing that? When you start being abused
by that person?
Are you understanding the problem?
I'm not I'm not offering you a, I'm
not saying yes or no. I'm just saying
that this topic itself is is overrated and
is talked about in abstract ways, and there's
no definition.
There's no clarity on what's meant. So the
person doesn't know what to do.
The person doesn't know when to let go,
when to hold on, when to They don't
know how to deal with things. They don't
know when the time is that I have
to I have
to let go because I have to preserve
myself. I'm being abused. I'm being mistreated. The
problem is is real.
It all comes down to this. All of
these questions all come down. How do you
define love?
When I go over, like, a test my
in my test, it it takes, like, a
year and a half to talk about this
topic. And it's talked about, like, 4 or
5 times because it takes a long time
for people to fully wrap their heads around
what love actually means. Because
it's an abstract concept that even the scholars
don't agree on the definition of.
Even the scholars don't know exactly. It's such
a precious thing that it's hard to figure
out what exactly it is. Yeah. But for
sure, it's not just an emotion. And for
sure, it's not just something sexual. And for
sure, to say it's conditional or unconditional
has to have parameters that are clear when
we use that those that terminology. Or else
we're we're putting ourselves in harm's way.
You love someone,
to the point where you're willing to
ruin your own life for them even though
they don't carry you in any regard at
all.
Think about that for a while. How is
that?
Is that is that correct? Is that appropriate?
You may say, yes. I'm I'm willing to
do that, and that's how I love this
person. For sure. That's fine. But why would
that be the case? Why would you be
willing to ruin your akhirah, for example, for
would you be willing to to do that?
You know, this this the the the story
of Abdullah nuharram and his son Jabir when
they were going out for Uhud and they
I mean, they, they they they threw a
coin or drew a straw because Jabir is
like, I'm I'm 20. I'm going. You're like
85.
You know, I've all these I you know,
you stay. You're old. You're older. You don't
have to go. You have your daughters. And
I'm I'm young. I'm not it makes sense.
I go for this. You stay at home.
And he said, no.
And then they drew straws and it turned
out, Abdullah was going to go and the
son was gonna stay. So Jabber is very
upset. He was he was sobbing because he
wasn't gonna be with the with the Sahaba.
He was gonna be part a part of
this.
It was anything aside from Jannah, I would
have I would have, you
know, given it to you. If it's anything
aside from this prophet would say, yeah, you
have a paltriimaminta Muhammad salini minmali ma*ihuwalaqi.
Ask me whatever you want from everything that
I own is yours.
But you have to save yourself from the
hellfire.
That that's on you. You have to do
that piece. I can't do that for you.
But in terms of what I have, I
offer it to you. This is
so the concept of love I'm I'm not
gonna attempt to actually explain it here today
because it's it it it it requires
a touching base on a number of other
values and ethics so so that we can
tie them all together so that you can
understand exactly how to view and understand. But
what I'm what I'm saying is that don't
accept the reduction of this value, of this
extremely central part of our deen and of
our lives to something that is that is
a slither of the of the actual meaning
itself. Make sure that you engage in in
deep thoughts and discussion and under to to
comprehend what love is. And you'll find that
there's all these different types of love, and
it presents itself in all the different ways.
There has to be evidence to it. There
has to be a caregiving aspect to it.
And yes, there may be an emotion to
it. There may not be sometimes. But there's
always that piece. And and taking time to
comprehend that I think is is, of of
of real importance.
I'll end by talking with gender
I'll end by talking about gender issues.
It's it's becoming,
I guess I guess I guess growing up
in a different part of the world, I
never really imagined
the extent of the conversation. Like, I didn't
I didn't even though I I I considered
myself, like, up to date to a certain
degree with popular culture and what what the
west is saying, but I didn't really I
didn't really get it until I came here.
When I came here and I started hearing
the actual arguments, people speaking their minds about
what they how they view these
Gender issues meaning how we, you know, how
we identify,
how we What type of relationships.
The relationship between men and women cannot be
reduced to something sexual all the time. It
can't it shouldn't be looked at like that.
That's very that's very harmful for them for
the psyche. It's it's harmful for us as
as people. It's every time you're in the
vicinity of a female, that's not a to
you. You're thinking about the possibility of of
something that will lead to a sexual relationship
whether halal or haram. I'm not even I'm
not even caring about that piece or vice
versa.
We we see we see the opposite gender.
Oh, we meant only within that capacity. That
becomes problematic.
That actually hinders the ability for life to
progress. It hinders our ability for creativity, for
collaboration,
for growth, for Honey, we can't You cannot
achieve prosperity
if that's how we are constantly seeing one
another.
And even if you're single and you're looking
for marriage, that still wouldn't be healthy.
But I'm seeing that even when it comes
to people who are married,
always viewing the opposite gender with the possibility
of there being No.
Relationships cannot cannot be reduced
cannot be reduced just to something that is
sexual in nature.
And even though there may be an urge
that is pushing for that, you have to
learn to to deal with that. That's why
these conversations have to occur with younger ages.
That you have to understand that that's not
how you're supposed to be functioning. Not every
single person you come by you have to
No. Because the I'll tell you. I can't
speak for the female brain.
I'll speak to the male brain. For the
male brain, that is how the male brain
functions. If you leave the male brain to
do whatever it wants, the male brain will
do that
every encounter it has. Every time a man
meets a woman, if he does not have
the inhibitory
skills to actually deal with it, that's how
he's going to think immediately.
And it has nothing to do with his
upbringing. It has nothing to do with the
value system. It's just just the sexual biology,
sexual psychology that men carry.
No. But that has to be
removed or changed or inhibited or dealt with
based on
education. You have to be educated. You have
to understand what this means. You have to
Because, again, if we reduce the opposite gender
just to That's all it is. Women For
men, women are only objects of of sexual
desire and and and and women are is
looking at men in in in a way
that is somewhat similar but a little bit
different, then we have a problem because that's
there's no how are we going to grow?
There's no way to grow. We can't we
can't go anywhere.
When when the word gender becomes an identity,
when I identify
based on my gender, identify based on my
sexual orientation.
Islam, that was never the case. You walk
into a masjid, you're not, you don't walk
in the masjid and say, I am a
male and I'm attracted to females, and you
walk in and the male, I am a
female attracted to No. I don't care. I
don't wanna know. Don't don't don't share that.
Don't share that. That's no no no. No
one's business. You don't Well, we don't do
that in our massage yet to begin with.
Like, never historically were we do we ask
people,
what are you and what are you attracted
to? So we can know where to put
No. That's not that's not that's not a
part of discussion. It's it's very disrespectful. Whatever
you're attracted to, that's between you and yourself.
It's not I I shouldn't know about that.
Don't tell anyone about it either. Whether it's
a person or a door, don't don't don't
bring that up. It's not This is something
that's very specific between you and yourself. Really,
Islam is about, okay, how are we going
to organize proper relationships between the opposite genders
so that we can have families, so we
can have offspring, so we can have actual
units. So Islam The baton of Islam can
be handed down to the next generation appropriately
and people can live with some degree of
harmony in their lives.
So when you use with the word gender
like that and you start making it fluid
and it becomes there's more than 2, I
mean, the x y I mean, excess. That's
not that's not what we're going to actually
go by thing Go by anymore. We're gonna
we're gonna open the Then it loses all
meaning.
It loses all meaning then people get very
confused.
We have to
understand sexuality is a very confusing thing for
the human being. It's a very it's a
very,
delicate aspect of our existence.
It can be
skewed really, really horribly. Like you you can
mess it up really badly for both men
and women if you expose people to the
wrong things. If you expose them to the
wrong thought process. If they're stuck in situations
where they are being treated in a way
that people who are molested or abused as
children, they grow up and they're usually they
struggle for the rest of their lives with
building relationships with any gender
and finding any form of intimacy in their
lives. Because because you mess with something that
is very delicate at a young age and
now and and you've sent it in a
direction that's hard for it to to to
go in. This is a Yeah. This is
not the best topic to talk about in
Ramadan. I'll admit to you. But it's worth
taking time and thinking about. Understanding that we
have a problem. We have a problem. We've
reduced some of the most
and hayah and hijab
and
relationships and.
We've reduced these these things to to to
to concepts that are very simplistic
and they're very harmful.
They they they they harm our ability to
be together, to work together, to respect one
another, to be professional with one another.
This is what I I what is achdelat?
Achdelat is when
we're dealing with one another without the boundaries,
when we're flirtatious,
when we're thinking the wrong thing, when we're
speaking in the wrong way, when we're when
we're being suggested but not clear about what
we're trying to do here. And we're and
we're putting out messages that are confusing to
the opposite group, both both that's what istirav
is. When physically we are not putting boundaries,
when psychologically we're not putting boundaries, when ethically
we're not putting boundaries.
That's what Ikhilat. That's what the that's the
haram piece of it. But Ikhilah in general,
meaning men and women working together, that's not
haram.
Men and women working with one another, building
their community together, taking care of of their
society, talking about about where they need to
go and where they are. That that there's
nothing wrong with that. It's just when we
don't know where the boundaries are, it still
becomes a problem. To say that, okay, men
and women are segregated permanently, that's that's just
that doesn't they've tried. That didn't work. They
tried it. They tried it. They tried. Like,
other parts of the world tried it. Didn't
work. It turned into something. I I grew
up in I grew up in Saudi. It
doesn't work. Oh, god. It doesn't work. It's
very problematic. What you're seeing right now, I
mean, you may see it to be a
political problem. It's not really political.
Maybe the the politicians are are are are
doing something that that's completely unacceptable, but I
but I live there. What you're seeing right
now is the is the normal, yeah, any
a progression of a society that was deprived
from any form of, yeah, any sexual education,
any ability to deal with with the opposite
gender and learn how to do it appropriately
and be corrected when you make a mistake
so that you learn how to do it.
And if you don't have that, then you
grow up and there's all these And and
then and it comes off. It comes It
it explodes. It's like it's like you're
just pressing Just suppressing something until it just
comes out and it comes out very as
ugly as we're seeing it right now. And
when it's not you don't wanna see stuff
like that happening in the in the holy
land. The types of permissible gender relationships, I've
talked about this in in previous tukbas. There's
a lot of different types of relationships. The
the educational, a teacher, a student or a
student teacher.
There's,
coworkers. There's,
classmates.
There's emergency sit situations.
There's the patient doctor relationship. There's a lot
of relationships where where, yeah, I need, lines
that wouldn't be,
crossed elsewhere would be would be crossed here
because of the fact that so you can
stand and speak. If I'm a teacher and
I have a student and I stand, I
talk to her for an hour. As long
as we're talking about the knowledge and the
text and there's nothing wrong with this, is
when we deviate and start going into stuff
that has nothing to do with this relationship.
As long as you understand the parameters of
the relationship that you have, you're safe. The
moment the person in front of you starts
leaving that parameter, he's like, no. I'm not.
We're coworkers. We'll talk about the projects and
the work. The moment the person goes in
something different, then make your intentions clear or
stop doing that and go back to what
we're talking about here.
That appropriateness, that understanding, that the importance of
having those boundaries within relationships.
There's social relationships. People who are your neighbors,
people who are your relatives.
You'll talk about stuff that retained that that
attained to that to that type of the
relationship, and that's fine.
It's not hard. Yeah. I need to understand
what
when
you're saying you're putting out messages that are
confusing and you're opening doors to something that
you shouldn't be opening doors to. Men and
women, it it it's something that we know
what we're doing. And the opposite
usually opposite the person, Yaniyah, on the other
side of it kinda knows as well. It's
knowing when to draw those lines and boundaries
and say this is not, you know, the
way to do it. So gender issues and
gender relations are this is this is probably
the biggest topic of all. I put it
at the end. Just I want to say
that this matters. It's also reduced, but it
requires so much much more, you know, any
in-depth conversations that we can deal with the
realities of them of it in in our
society.
Forgive me. This was a longer one. I
know I've said that every single day for
the last 5 days but, I'm trying my
best to bring to break this down to
something shorter but it's it's it's a it's
a quite challenging. Inshallah, you're finding it beneficial.
Please use the q and a code for
feedback as well. Every year Anyway, I do
these 7 episodes series. I try to get
feedback and then I use it to refine,
the when I do it again. Like when
I do it again in the future, I
try to I take the feedback. I think
about it. I reflect upon it. And I
try to incorporate
some of the pieces of advice that are
offered to me in the next time in
the next run when I try and do
it again in a year or 2 or
or more, or when I present it in
a different, any setting to help people, you
know, benefit from it more. So I appreciate
any any any type of feedback that you
want to offer. And again, any questions, you're
welcome to use the q and I q
and a code for. Otherwise, I'll take verbal
questions to get priority. And, those of you
and you're welcome to leave.
and you're welcome to leave.