Ali Ataie – Understanding the Times We Live In
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of understanding the meaning of "has been praying for" or "has been praying for" forms of prayer and how they can be considered evil from one's perspective. They stress the need to destroy old-fashioned values and rebuild society, while also acknowledging the importance of respecting faith and history. The speakers provide advice on being a principled stance, avoiding double-standing, and developing a thick skin to showcase Islam. They also stress the importance of listening to people and finding out one's beliefs to avoid harmful behavior and avoid double-standing.
AI: Summary ©
Just wanna say a few things inshallah to
Hannah. Just some words of advice. This
is
hadith of the prophet.
So,
one thing I wanna say is,
and I think, you know, the general topic
is around sort of understanding the times we
live in.
And there's a very vast corpus of Hadith
literature,
that deals with
signs of the Sa'a.
Right? And the Hadith of Jibril alayhis salaam,
which is a foundational hadith in our tradition.
Absolutely foundational.
Hadith Jibril alayhi salam.
It's found in Bukhari, a Muslim imam and
Nawawi,
quotes it as number 2 highly in his
alarraqim.
The prophet
is approached by Jibril,
who comes in the form of a man
and this is how the prophet
would receive Wahi.
Imam al Shafi'i said that the forms of
Wahi are 46 types, and this is just
one type,
which the angel would take the form of
a human being and come to the prophet,
in this case, it says that Jibril, he
came to the prophet,
He had exceedingly black hair.
He had very, very white
clothes.
He did not have signs of travel on
him. He wasn't disheveled, no dirt on his
clothes, nothing like that. No knapsack.
And none of us knew who he was.
So he sits in front of the Prophet
and then he begins to, in a sense,
interrogate the Prophet
and he says, akhbirni
alil Islam. Tell me about Islam. You know
the hadith? You should know this hadith.
And so the prophet
he gives them the 5 pillars of Islam.
Right?
Islam is built on 5.
The Shahada
that there's no illah, there's no deity
except Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
and that we pray. And for a lot
of unfortunately, a lot of modern Muslims,
that's
plenty for them.
I believe in God, I do my prayers,
or I just believe in God, this type
of thing. So prayer is absolutely fundamental.
Right? I can't stress this enough.
The first thing we're going to be asked
about Yom Kiyama. According to the hadith of
the prophet,
is our prayer. The Prophet
in his final appearance in the Masjid, he
said, Assalah Assalah, the prayer the prayer.
Right?
So and there's a hadith where he says
that the difference between
a mukbang and a kafir is a salah,
the prayer.
And most of the Imam, they take this
as sort of a qualitative difference
between a moment in a kafir. In other
words, if a moment of a Muslim is
not praying that he's
taking on sort of the characteristics of the
Katha, but Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal, he said,
no. He's a Katha
in
essence. It's an essential difference.
Right? And Imam Ahmed ibn Khambal is one
of the great 'Imma of Rasoolullah Jema' so
we should take these opinions very very seriously.
So our prayers should be the focus of
our life.
Right? Really be the focus of our life.
Plan your day around
the prayer. Do you wanna go
see, you
know, The Last Jedi?
You know, and, you know, the days are
short and then you're gonna miss Asar and
Maghreb, but yeah, I'll make it up later.
Then, you know, every day we should be
improving. One of my teachers said, if you're
not a better person than you were yesterday,
then you failed.
Everyday you should make progress.
We have and it's an inward struggle, and
it's it's a constant struggle. We should we
should be conscious of our thoughts.
Right?
We should be in a state of Tova.
You know, one of my teachers said, be
in 1 of 2 states. Just something like
that. A state of Tawbah,
which is repentance, and a state of Shukuk,
which is gratitude. And this is something that
again is lost on a lot of modern
people, just to be in a state of
gratitude.
Right? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, fathkuruni
al kurkum.
This is sort of
a purpose clause in Arabic.
If you have regard for me,
have regard for me so that I might
have regard for you.
Sometimes it's translated remember me so that I
might remember you. Probably not a good translation
because it sort of implies that there's the
opposite might be true of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala that will forget, but he doesn't forget.
So zikr could mean to have regard for
something. Have regard for Allah
so that he might have regard for us.
In other words, put us in the center
of his providence, of his Tawfee.
Right? In the Quran, oftentimes, this is one
of the rhetorical sort of secrets of the
Quran.
Allah uses something in
in,
classical English grammar. It's called parataxis,
which is a juxtaposition
of opposite ideas.
Right? You find this in the Quran
with, like, gin and ins, for example. Someawati
were
Opposites put in juxtaposition.
So they're gonna say this is what's happening
in this in this part of the ayah.
Have Shukur, be grateful to me and do
not disbelieve in me.
So that Kufur and Shukur are opposites.
You see? Kufur and shukur are opposites. In
other words,
to be ungrateful
is a form of kufur to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is a form of disbelief,
right?
So one of the ways in which we
manifest
Shukr or gratitude
to Allah who is Ashaka, is one of
his names, Ashakur.
Allah
is the one who appreciates
service.
Right? So this is one of the names
of Allah. When
we manifest the attribute
of Ashaqir, it means we are thankful to
Allah.
But the shakur is the one who thanks
Allah
even when he's deprived.
This is a higher level of shukub.
Right? Because ultimately Allah
knows what's good for us and according to
our limited wisdom we might think well that
thing was good for me. Why why didn't
Allah give it to me?
But
this is imputing upon
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala our own sense of
reason. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala's Hikma is infinite
and absolute.
In reality, we don't know what is ultimately
good for us. Something that ostensibly is is
seen as evil from our perspective or unjust
might actually be something that's good for us
in the sort of long run.
Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is outside of
time.
Right?
He created time. He's not in time. He
transcends
space, time, and matter.
So the shakur is the one who thanks
Allah
even when he's deprived
and even in times of other adversity.
Right? The prophet
when he was praying a third of the
night,
and you know his feet were swollen and
our mother Aisha,
she said why do you do this and
Allah has
forgiven
has forgiven your past and future transgressions.
And the transgression of a prophet is completely
different than a transgression of 1 of us.
We don't have time to go into that,
it's a theological
issue.
But his response was
Shall I not be a grateful servant?
And he uses shakur.
What was constantly in
the process of thanking Allah
in any state,
right?
This is important.
And that we carry if we complain, we
complain to Allah
Right? A lot of times now, youngsters, they
wanna complain about things, and how things are
bad in the world,
and how bad we've got it.
We just take inventory, do a self audit.
Is it really that bad? Is your life
really that bad?
Do you really wanna march out to the
streets and
shout at people and wave signs at people?
Right? One of my teachers said,
you know, you better make sure that the
evil is really out there
before you do that.
Whenever you want to mention the faults of
others, remember your own fault first.
Whoever,
whoever, whoever, humbles himself Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
will indulge
and raise up. Whoever raises himself Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala will debase and humiliate.
Okay?
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and our
sort of state is analogous to the prophet
in Mecca,
Muslim minority and non Muslim majority.
Right? So we need to study the Meccan
period.
Study the tafsir. How did the prophet sallallahu
alaihi sallam handle himself in the Meccan period?
He was a victim in Mecca,
right? He was a victim of verbal and
physical abuse. He was oppressed.
They were tyrannical towards him. He went to
Taif. He was stoned out of the city,
and he carried his complaint to Allah. He
didn't complain to the people.
A beautiful dua, which he made while his
feet feet were bleeding,
sitting under a tree. Is
how he started his dua. This is incredible.
The entire Du'a is really incredible. Just the
first part he says, oh Allah, I complain
to you about my weakness of strength.
So he doesn't say I complain to you
because what you did to me.
I'm complaining to you,
you know, because you put me with this
group of people who who stoned me out
of the city. So he attributes the weakness,
his shortcomings to himself. This is called Tawadur.
This is called humility.
Right?
So the prayer reinforces that. The prayer has
many functions.
Anyway, back to the after the small tangent,
after the back to the Hadith of the
Hadith of the Hadeep of Hillel alaihis salaam.
So the prayer and then charity.
Right?
Hajjim
and fasting. These are the 5 points. And
then Shirkuh
says to him, tell me about Iman.
So the prophet he
tells him the 6 articles of faith,
and then tell me about Ihsan,
spiritual excellence, if you will, or goodness.
And he said to worship Allah
as if you can see him.
And if you can't see him, you should
be cognizant or fully aware that indeed he
sees you. Allah
sees you.
Right? This is Ihsan.
And then the hadith continues.
Tell me about the Sa'a.
Right? Tell me about the hour.
Man man,
Mas'ulu,
he says,
The one being questioned knows no more than
the questioner. No one knows the saha. So
whoever gives you a date, that person is
a liar. So here's back, there's a Christian
preacher
who said what did he say? May 21,
2012. And then people, you know, they sold
their
their entire life because they thought they were
going to be raptured into heaven.
And then they said, oh, you know what?
I miscalculated.
It's actually in October.
So
we can have the summer.
And October comes around, you know, it's just
it's not it's not happening. I'm gonna stop
predicting.
So no one knows the Sa'a. Right? So
prophet said, I don't know. No one being
questioned knows more than the questioner. So he
said, tell me about his portents and hamaratihad.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he
mentioned a few things.
The first thing he mentioned in Quran hadith
of Jireem. He said,
That
a girl will give birth to her master
or mistress.
A girl will give birth to her master,
which is very interesting.
Right? This idea of empowering children.
This idea that there's the just or the
ideal society
is one in which there is absolutely,
perfect egalitarianism.
That hierarchical structures are seen as oppressive.
This is a kind of philosophy that's sort
of being pumped out
of American universities
in the academy.
Right? Our children that go to these colleges
are being taught
in epistemology
known as postmodernism.
That every type of traditional
society
or belief system
is inherently oppressive.
This is what they're taught.
Okay. You take a philosophy class, a psychology
class, you take an English class, it's almost
unavoidable.
Every type of traditional,
belief system,
every type
is inherently
tyrannical and oppressive,
and it must be
taken off the face of the earth, and
we need to rebuild society again.
Even traditional religious values
are seen as oppressive.
They study people like Nietzsche,
a German philosopher,
whom Hitler made the official philosopher
of the Third Reich.
Nietzsche said that compassion
is a vice.
Compassion
is bad for you.
Right?
Which is interesting because this is the core
virtue in our tradition,
is compassion, is
rahman.
That the most compassionate shows compassion to those
who show compassion, show compassion to those on
earth, and the one in heaven,
in no anthropomorphic way, they say, and
the one in heaven will show you compassion.
Absolutely fundamental,
Right?
And so,
our our children are being taught that these
are all sort of and, you know, they
sort of frame it as this is a
a Christian value, but those are values that
we also
we also believe in.
Right? Compassion is a is is and what's
interesting is Friedrich Nietzsche,
his his final sane act on earth
was he was walking in the streets of
Turin. This is very ironic. And he saw
a man beating his horse
and then he ran and he hugged the
horse
and tears in his eyes and then he
went into a total state of insanity for
2 or 3 years. Very ironic that his
final act on earth was an act of
compassion. Right? But this is what we need
to do. We need to get rid of
these religious, these archaic,
these old fashioned values, and come up with
our own values.
Right?
So we need to destroy what they call
the patriarchy.
This is how they refer to it, especially
3rd wave feminists.
Right?
The patriarchy's gotta go.
What's the patriarchy?
Who's the patriarch?
Ibrahim alaihis salam.
So they're taught a narrative.
Here's the narrative.
Before these
archaic and tyrannical and oppressive Abrahamic religions,
the world was living in a state of
utopia.
Right? And it's, you know, Judaism, Islam, Christianity
that came
and disrupted the utopia.
Some of them actually believe you take classes
in gender studies and things like that. That
before Abraham, women just ruled the world is
what they're
taught. It's a mythos, it's not
true. It's only true in Hollywood.
It's called Wonder Woman.
And the place is not real, it's called
the Amazon.
But in our tradition we're taught that
women need men
and men need women.
It's a compliment,
it's not a competition,
right?
So,
you know,
this idea of postmodernism.
So things that are traditional beliefs are seen
to be
things that are sort of outdated,
right?
For example, they say,
gender itself is just a
it's a social construct.
Right? There were this before, there's nothing biological
about gender.
You can arbitrarily change your gender.
This is what they're being taught.
That there's a difference between * and gender.
You're born into a *, male or female,
but gender is something that is
socialized. It's all nurtured. Of course there's no
scientific evidence of this.
But a way of sort of creating this
egalitarian type of society where there's no differences
whatsoever.
It's interesting to see this sort of
sort of outcome of this type of philosophy,
you know. Because now it's
it's permeating into things like,
like,
college sports or professional sports.
If you can just arbitrarily change your gender,
I can wake up tomorrow then. I can
say, You know what? I'm a woman today,
and I'm going to
play on the women's basketball team.
Of course, that'd still be terrible.
I'm not a very good basketball player.
But imagine someone like Lebron James
decides,
she's like a woman,
and then he joins WNBA.
They'll say, yeah, he's a he's a woman.
There's no there's there's there's no such thing
as gender. That's what they say.
And a lot of children they have what's
known as gender dysphoria.
Right?
So children, because Saint Addie said that
that childhood is a type of joonon. It's
a type of insanity.
That's why they're children. They need to be
manipulated,
for lack of a better term.
So children, they
many of them start acting like the other
gender.
And you have these parents who say: Yeah,
these are now our teachers.
Johnny wants to be a girl.
I'm old fashioned, Johnny knows what he's doing.
These are now our teachers. Is this your
teacher?
The same kid who put on Mickey Mouse
ears
and now he wants to be a girl.
So what if the what if your child
wants to be a mouse? You're gonna give
them
mouse hormones and no.
The intellect is not developed, but you have
parents that are now giving their children,
you know, hormone therapy that's sterilizing them.
And then 80% of children actually come out
of this gender dysphoria. 80% of them. It's
a phase.
But we're being taught that gender doesn't really
exist.
Right? And that men and women are absolutely
the same. Now if you look at our
sharia,
there's no absolute equality.
There's there's equitable
rules for men and women.
Because men and women are different. Physically they're
different.
You know, why do women pray behind men?
This is a big affront to postmodernists.
They go inside of a masjid. What is
this?
Women should pray next to men in front
of men.
Men and women are different.
We have different hardwiring.
Physically we're different. That's true.
Right?
But even our
our rods and cones and our eyes interact
with light differently.
And men are more,
they're more visually oriented,
right? So I got this question the other
day, another question, from a large non Muslim
audience. Why do women pray behind the men?
It's because men are easily distracted from the
prayer.
And
men know what I'm talking about. This is
just a fact. Right? Islam is dealing with
reality,
you know. So we don't have absolutely egalitarianism.
What we're looking for are things that are
equal,
things that are fair. So for example, polygamy,
you know, people bring that issue up.
Why can't I have 4 husbands?
Okay? But a man must support his wife,
right? Doesn't matter if she has a PhD
or she's an MD. If she decides, you
know what, I'm not gonna work, you go
work.
She has that right.
Right?
Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created us and
he knows that there's differences amongst us. And
what's interesting is, if you look at European
studies so Europeans in general are not very
religious people.
Right? There's a study that came out of
Prague University in the Czech Republic.
And so these countries are 80% atheist.
Right? And they're very homogeneous.
Basically, you have a bunch of tall white
people. Right?
So you can't you sort of go, well,
you know, there's there's religious baggage, there's cultural
baggage, but people are basically the same.
This is an interesting study, Progima, I'm sorry,
Charles University in Prague.
Where they found that,
amongst married couples,
when one spouse
is dominant in the relationship.
And dominant not dominant in the sense of
oppressive,
dominant in the sense that
they sort of have the final say on
things.
Right? They found that in those relationships,
they have more children and they're much happier
than when you have 2 dominant spouses competing
for power.
The study also found you can't blame religions
or non religious people. You can't vote this
is, you know,
some Middle Eastern
cultural baggage.
No. These are people that the
Czech Republic,
they found that 78%
of those relationships were male dominated.
So it's interesting. You have studies done by
non Muslims,
by people who are non religious,
that demonstrate the data proves that when a
man is dominant in the relationship,
those couples tend to be happier.
This is sort of the normal state of
human beings.
We shouldn't apologize for it. There's studies out
there that back this. It doesn't mean that,
you know, women are inferior to men or
something like that,
but they're compliments,
you know. So,
it's important for us to articulate
our tradition to people. Because eventually because you
know Muslims they tend to align themselves with
the left.
Right? Because they don't want anything to do
with Trump, and he's a Republican.
Right?
But if you look at
If you look at our religious beliefs, we
look at our values, we probably have more
in common when it really comes down to
it with Sarah Palin than we do with
Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton is believes in,
social construction. Gender is a social construct.
Right? For example, she says I wish we
could have a woman president.
Yet she believes that if Donald Trump wakes
up tomorrow and says, I do have a
woman, we have a woman president.
But that won't be good enough for her.
She says we have to keep
abortion
safe,
legal, and rare.
Why rare?
She says, oh, the baby is not the
fetus is not a baby. You can always
use the word baby.
It's just a bundle of cells. Then why
should it be rare If it's like removing
a polyp from your colon, who cares? Just
get rid of it.
Because they know it's wrong, that's why.
So you look down at it, you really
analyze,
right?
What's happening as far as,
what people actually believe,
Right? It's it's very revelatory.
And I think,
right now,
the greatest challenge to us is not the
Christian right, it's not, you know, fundamentalist Jews,
it's not religious people really.
It's this idea, this attack on tradition
that's coming out of philosophies,
like postmodernism,
like nominalism.
Nominalism teaches there's no essence to anything. It's
all accidents.
There's no essences.
Right?
This type of thing.
And and so
and so when when children, well, or teenagers,
they go to high school, they go to
college, they're exposed to these types of things.
It's very hard for them to find
guidance through
the Muslim Ummah, unfortunately.
But I think it's it's time for us
to defend our tradition, and it can't be
defended well.
Because the prophet,
you know, he said,
at the end of time,
Nothing will remain of this religion except its
name.
What does that mean? There's some people who
believe that
you can define this religion as Islam by
your feelings.
Right? Whatever I feel like, that's what it
is.
Well then, how do you interpret this hadith?
Nothing will remain of the religion except its
name. This hadith indicates there's a normative
definition of Islam, and there's something else postmodernists
don't believe in. Something normative, something orthodox.
Right? There's nothing normative, they say. There's nothing
normal,
they say. Right? This hadith indicates there's a
normative definition. It's not defined by our feelings.
It's defined by Allah and his Messenger.
You'll come a time when people will say
I'm Muslim, but there's nothing Islamic about them.
Because they've redefined their religion.
Right?
Sometimes we have to use secular arguments, because
if you appeal to scripture, it's it's fallacy.
It's an appeal to
unqualified authority. Somebody says to you for example,
why don't you agree with homosexuality?
So well the Quran says
that it's a sin. Well, I don't believe
in some text
that was
written, you know, 1000 of years ago.
It's important for us to use,
secular type arguments according to the CDC,
the Center of Disease Control. I apologize in
advance.
1 third of gay men are incontinent.
You can look that word up later.
50,000 people every year get HIV. 78%
of them
are 2% of the population.
That is completely unacceptable,
and that is an epidemic, and that's absolutely
insane when you think about
that. Facts from the CDC.
Facts hurt your feelings. I don't care. Those
are facts.
We can have a good discussion about them,
but this is what it is.
And we shouldn't apologize
for our faith,
because we believe that our faith and you
know people
people sometimes they want us to use sort
of their terminology for things.
Right? We have to respect their tradition, but
why isn't our tradition respected? Like this whole
movement about gender pronouns. People not picking their
own pronouns.
Apparently there's more than 2 genders, there's more
than 2 types of pronouns.
You go to some of these classes and
they say, what pronoun do you prefer?
Excuse me?
What
pronoun?
What are the choices?
He, she, she,
she, me,
me, they,
what?
A gender binary, if you will.
Well you're you're a trans folk then.
You're you're racist. You're full of hate. You're
a bigot.
Why? Because I want to because I believe
in something. Because I want to uphold my
religious beliefs.
And it's like this one time, I was
tutoring a student and she put her hand
out and she shake my hand and I
just put my hand over my heart and
said, oh, I don't I don't shake hands
with women. And she said, what?
And she said,
I'm so offended.
And,
and she said,
and I said, you're offended by what?
I'm so offended you won't shake my hand.
And I said, oh, my religious beliefs offend
you?
I'm offended
that you're offended. Oh, okay.
Yeah. Or it's like one time I was
in a PhD seminar class, and we're talking
about some cultural practice in a different country
that I found to be absolutely
disgusting. And I voiced that in class. I
said, I think that's just totally disgusting.
A liberal student jumped all over me and
said, how dare you?
How dare you make a judgment about another
culture? Who the heck do you think you
are?
You think you're so much better? How dare
you make a judgment about another culture and
and judge that person and and demean their
opinion?
And I said,
what are you doing to me right now?
So yeah, yeah.
But it's really interesting. They don't they don't
they don't they don't flip it on themselves
and see what that basically it's all hypocrisy.
This should be our stance. We should be
principled. The prophet in
Mecca was principled.
His methodology
was called assertive non violence.
Assertive non violence means to be totally non
violent.
No violence.
But assertive meaning discipline,
principle.
Right? The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam did not
compromise in theology and morality.
He didn't compromise.
And it would have made the situation a
lot better if he had done that. They
said, no, I'm not compromising.
Because he wants to honor Allah Subhanahu wa
Ta'ala.
Leqldina Khumriyidim. I read a book one time
by an anti Muslim publicist.
This guy who hated Islam, and he quoted
this ayah, Leqaddina Qunidhi. He said this is
the most tolerant verse in the Quran.
Interestingly enough, in Surat al
Kahfirullah.
You have your way, I have my way.
Don't impose your beliefs on me. This is
the Mecca period.
You know. You wanna use your pronouns, you
wanna call yourself this and that, you can
be an elephant for all I care.
I don't care,
But don't expect me to go along with
it. You have your religion, I have my
religion. You have your religious belief or lack
thereof. You don't believe in anything? Good for
you.
The Quran says to it's a calf.
Whoever wants to believe, men and believe. Whoever
wants to disbelieve, men and disbelieve.
Do whatever you want.
Right? You have your religion, I have my
religion.
Right?
And so
this is not going to be good enough.
Eventually, when we align ourselves with people on
the left, the extreme left,
there's there's there's my way or the highway.
Believe with that.
Right?
But interestingly enough with Christians and Jews, they
understand that there's believers and there's non believers.
There's gonna be people who don't agree with
you, and this is how to deal with
them. With compassion,
with tolerance.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is our
model. The Meccan period, assertive non violence.
When they threw garbage on him, he went
home wrapped himself in his mantle, he laid
down.
Allah
said to him, did Jibreelai, a salam, descended,
you had wudestah, oh you wrapped up in
the mantle. Boom,
Get on your feet. Right?
So I'll sit and go and warn them.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
you know, Allah is
is
is teaching
him don't victimize yourself, don't make yourself into
a victim. Oftentimes we do this
And, you know, I I I said this
before that I used to go to massages.
I used to go to churches and synagogues,
and I used to have interfaith dialogue.
And people genuinely
wanted to know about our faith. And I
would talk about, you know, Isa alaihi salaam,
and the Quran, and the Prophet and the
Bible and whatnot. Now it's just Muslims going
into churches
and just complaining
about everything.
Complaining.
You know,
I was in the Trader Joe's or the
Safeway. I was at McDonald's, and somebody said,
you're a *.
And then everyone goes, oh,
yeah, poor me. I mean, how many times
does that really happen? You really need to
announce that. You have an opportunity to talk
to non Muslims. You can you can say
the name Mohammed sallallahu alaihi wasallam in front
of non Muslims. You can put a hadith
for the prophet sallallahu
alaihi. One time I was in a church,
and then there was like 10 speakers, and
the lady said you have one minute to
say something. I quoted 1 hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. There's this girl
in the audience, she came in crying like
this. She was running to hug me like,
that is so beautiful.
We're like this, running to hug me. And
I saw a Muslim sister in hijab. She
said, get it, what are you getting for
me?
So she was hugging the Muslim sister, but
she's looking at me.
Would you go,
is it I mean yeah. I mean, think
think about what's happening in the society. Is
it really a big problem? Are you really
a victim?
I'll tell you right
now, I've been to many Muslim majority countries,
and I've I've experienced
more racism
in some of these countries. I've been far
from going into places.
Literally, Muslim majority countries.
Or, you know, eventually sort
of let in after
hours and hours of this never happened to
me here.
So we have to put things in perspective.
Right? Don't victimize yourself.
The prophet says, and wrapped himself, boom, get
on your feet. So I'm gonna go back
out there and warn people. Now what does
it mean to be a nalir, a warner?
It means to to to to make people
aware of a harm.
Right? So the prophet was just victimized, Allah
is telling them Allah is telling him, go
back out there and warn them about this
harm. In essence,
continue to be compassionate
to
them. Continue to be compassionate even though they've
abused you.
And magnify your lord.
While you're doing that, say Allahu Akbar, Allahu
Akbar.
And clean your clothes off.
They put dirt on you, you are going
to take it off. Don't lie down and
say, well, I'm gonna wait till somebody pulls
me back up and cleans me back off
because I've been victimized.
Isn't that what the prophet did?
Stood back up, went out there,
cleaned himself off,
And shun their immorality
and idolatry.
Being principled,
take a principled stance.
Stance.
Tell me something about Islam that only you
can tell me.
Give me something that only you can tell
me, something special.
The prophet said,
Say I believe in Allah and have istifalma,
uprightness.
Be upright. Be strong upon that. That's it.
That's the entire answer.
Right? Life is too short to be a
sellout.
Don't sellout for what?
Make a few people happy in your class.
Right?
So,
you know,
be wary of
different types of philosophies and teachings that
our children might be exposed to. And
and now even in high school,
right, where difference of opinion is absolutely not
tolerated anymore. There's one philosophy. This is what
it is. If you don't believe in this,
you're a bigot or a racist. You're an
archaic sort of traditionalist,
and your and your entire
belief system has to go.
Right? So we should be able to reason
with that.
I think I'll stop
That's it. None of you believe.
None of you enter paradise until you believe.
And none of you believe until you love
one another.
And then I said and then I said
and the prophet said to his companions,
shall I tell you of something
that will increase love? And he said, yes.
And he said, Abshul Salaam Ubeinikum.
Spread peace amongst yourself. And I sat down.
That was the only thing I said. You
have an opportunity to speak to people,
You know, people out there are have living
traumatic lives. They need something that you have,
really.
You know.
And you'll be, surprised
the reaction you get. Yes, sir. Can you
finish the hadith that you started with?
And then he said so
he said a a
a woman will give birth to her master
and then you will see the
naked destitute barefoot shepherds
competing in the construction of tall buildings.
Which is an indication according to the urama
of sort of a competition in Humbertonya and
Dunya basically.
And that's the end of the hadith and
then the prophet
and then Jibril Ali Islam goes
alaihi wasallam. Allah's messenger know best. He said,
that was Jibril alaihi wasallam was come to
you to teach you religion,
and that's the end of the Hadith.
So he gave two signs.
One of them, according to the urnama,
will happen quickly.
Like, bupukulwadi
dein, right, filial recalcitrant,
disrespect of parents by children.
And the other one is gonna come later,
down the line.
Dan?
So earlier on you're saying don't really, like,
listen to other people's cultures and just kinda
stick to your own culture. But why not
listen to their culture and find out the
flaw and check how your culture is superior?
So I said that don't listen to other
people. You're saying, like, when people will come
up to you and say, oh,
there should be more than 2 genders and
you kind of say, let me have my
beliefs and you have yours. Mhmm. Why not
listen to their beliefs and then point out
the flaws of their beliefs? Yeah. You can
if you want to.
That's what I've been saying is
interact with people
on the basis of reason and use secular
arguments. Don't use religious arguments because they're not
going to work with people that don't believe
in the sacredness of text.
That was my whole point when I pointed
out,
the problem with homosexuality.
The social impact of that is detrimental to
society.
So giving an answer of, oh, I you
know, I just don't believe in it. It
is the Koran says, so that's fine for
you. But that's not gonna work for the
other people for the other person. And if
you don't wanna talk to the other person,
that's fine also. You don't have to say
anything.
Right? But I think we need to have,
you know, like they bring conservative speakers, for
example, to UC Berkeley, and then people show
up and they write and they break windows.
Let them speak.
And you can just bring your speaker,
and they can refute their points.
Right? Stopping someone's speech is not the right
answer.
Right? It's fundamentally opposed to what this country
stands
for. They say, well, you know,
in my opinion, well, your opinion is irrelevant.
Let people have their beliefs. Let them do
whatever they want, as long as they break
the laws of the country. And then you
can
lawfully,
debate their positions.
But you'll learn a lot from people that
you think you disagree with. This is very
difficult for a youth, to have the discipline
to listen to someone who has a difference
of opinion.
It's very hard. The prophet says, actually Hadith
that says part of a person's Moruah
or maturity
is listening to a different opinion and not
interrupting that person. It's a function of a
person's maturity.
Right? Because all we do now, for the
most part, is ad hominem. You don't agree
with someone? Oh, you're an idiot, or you're
a bigot. That's called ad hominem attack.
Right? It's just an insult. It doesn't it
doesn't it's not a real argument.
Right? Or people are so easily triggered now.
Right? They have this these trigger warnings in
college. You can do you go into a
college. Right? You go into a classroom, they'll
get trigger warning, trigger warning,
and they make some statement and then some
children the kids freak out. They have to
go to a safe space
where there's Play Doh. You can play video
games.
Because they can't hear another opinion. It's very
strange. They actually have these rooms called safe
spaces in colleges, universities.
When children go and they sort of,
you know, they meditate because that was triggers.
There was a microaggression
against me because this person said something that
I disagree with.
You know, it's very strange culture now.
We should be able to hear different opinions
and process them. And that's sort of the
point of college anyway, is to hear different
opinions
and to be able to deal with them
rationally.
Yes?
What would be the, appropriate
exact
response or reaction to hate speech right now?
Reaction to hate speech? Yeah. If you wanted
the audience,
dialogue?
Get on the lead.
That's it. Yeah. Remove yourself from that situation.
Just take leave of that.
If you wanna make a
sort of a silent scene,
you know, just kinda go and walk out.
Just remove yourself from that situation.
Because the problem is,
there are a lot of provocateurs out there.
In other words, there are people actually go
up on stage and they actually want to
produce some sort of reaction from Muslims specifically.
So So I go up there and say
some slanderous thing about the prophets of Allah,
and then a Muslim of course did, oh,
and and then they'll kind of lose their
mind. And they'll let angers end. And, oh,
no. See, this is what I'm talking about.
These people hate our democracy.
They hate our first amendment.
Right?
So don't attend it. If you want to
attend, have the discipline to sit there and
listen to something, and then write a reputation.
The pen is my ear than the sword,
you know. So we should be in positions
where I mean use social media, you know,
use use, you know,
journalistic avenues.
Do something, but do it in a way
that is that is tempered, in a way
that is civil.
Right?
But a lot of these people are just
trying to get a reaction. One of the
best things we can do is just completely
ignore, is downplay it. It'll just fizzle and
go away.
And the prophet that's that's his Sunnah in
Mecca. When when the Wushar Hakim were slandering
him, they were calling him the opposite of
the name Mohammed.
There's a name with it sounds like the
prophet's name, but it means the opposite of
his name. The Sahab were so upset about
this, They came to the prophet, can we
attack people that call you this? They said,
what are they saying? They're calling you Mudamam.
I said, who is that?
I'm Mohammed.
And everyone kind of chuckled.
That's
it. He didn't allow himself to be triggered.
Well, like the prophet says, I'm sitting like
this one time. He's eating something and now
a Muslim woman passed by. She said,
this
is your prophet.
He eats like an apple, like a slave.
Your prophet eats like a slave? And the
suhara stopped, and he said, alas, do be
abdil.
Am I not a slave?
Am I not a slave? Continue with this.
That's it.
She walked away and everyone laughed at her.
Don't take these things so seriously. These are
nothing.
Absolutely nothing,
you know.
Go about your business. Life is too short.
Take care of your family. If people are
angry with their wives, like 4 or 5
days,
now life is too short for that. People
that love you, you're angry with them. Why?
People haven't talked to their fathers in weeks.
For what?
It's Ajib, Ajib and Harid. A person will
shun his father and cling to his friend.
Other signs of lisaqa.
Right? A person will
ignore his mother and obey his wife. Nothing
wrong with
being congenial with this with your wife. The
point
is shutting your mother.
Right?
These are fitna that come towards the end
of time.
But we have to have sort of develop
a thick skin. The prophet
in Mecca
developed a thick skin because ultimately he knew
who was in charge.
Right? We have belief in Qadr.
Something that happened in the past. You can't
do anything about it. That's the will of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Don't dwell on it.
Move on.
Is there a question over here?
There's one there.
Yes, sir? Yes. If you, similar note, all
of the using the discussion, testing about the
health.
Let's say, your system where we talk at
them, you know,
insulted in the mall or what is this?
What is a
better way to react?
If a sister gets assaulted at the mall.
I'm just saying, you know, we have people
that insult the same as all. Oh, insult.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It means to pretend to be to have
hafla. Just don't even acknowledge it.
This is the sunnah practice.
Your insulins are not even worth your time,
You know?
Just walk right by.
If they get in your face and things
like that,
you know, try to
remove yourself from that situation as much as
possible. But again, a lot of people, they
wanna get a reaction. People have their phones
out. You never know, some guys over there
trying to get you to get angry and
his buddies over there recording,
he's gonna post it on some,
YouTube channel. He has a million,
subscribers or something. Muslim goes crazy involved
and he doesn't show the first part where
he like punches you in the stomach or
something or calls you some name. He just
gets you reacting.
I kill you.
Just remove yourself from that situation.
Yeah. Uh-huh.
It's just an observation actually. You know, the
current administration, you know, if you like, as
Muslims,
you know, we're made constantly tarnished. And,
I'm just really voicing my opinion in terms
of how can we improve our English Muslims
to show what really Islam is. You know?
Especially the people who are ignorant of it,
and they always see in TV, you know,
which is things which is not portrayed Islam
the right way.
I feel like there's need more from our,
Islamic society
in this country.
He knew more maybe on TVs. I I
don't really know the answer.
It's just an observation. I feel like our
image, especially with the country administration, is being
tarnished and moving.
Yeah.
You know, it's something we need to kind
of,
really see a way to just to show
what
our true image is. I think the best
thing is just be Muslim.
Just be a practicing Muslim. If you try
to infiltrate the media, good luck with that.
Because the media is a function of the
government, and the government has to justify,
you know,
Israeli occupation and invasion of foreign countries.
And it's all the same spin on every
channel. It's very very difficult to make headway.
I mean, you can have, like, a YouTube
channel or something like that. You can create
an alternative sort of news network,
But it's gonna be a slow process and
these things actually work. There there are a
lot of people that are have actually made
a name for themselves,
creating these channels
that are challenging, you know, sort of mainstream
media. But MSM, mainstream media, it's it's all
the same sort of prepackaged garbage.
I would say just just
be about Islam.
And people eventually, they're watching these things on
TV, eventually they're gonna meet someone like you,
my I have a Muslim neighbor, a Muslim
friend, and there's gonna be a cognitive dissonance.
This is what this guy on TV is
telling me. This suit on TV, and this
is a Muslim guy that I know, and
he's nothing like this.
When people begin
the great awakening,
they're already starting to wake up.
So
that's the best. I mean,
just be Muslim. Be a principled Muslim.
And it doesn't mean that you have to,
you know, give speeches and whatnot in the
subway or something.
Just
be be
a practicing Muslim.
You know, a smile or something like that.
So that is a very friendly gesture. Go
to open the door for somebody. But now,
it's interesting,
I was I was on a BART train.
This lady came in and I've gone up
to give her my seat and she said,
I don't eat your seat.
Do I look weak to you or something
like that? I don't know if you're taking
gender studies. So you gotta be careful.
They're highly chivalrous, they shut they shut you
down.
You know, it's very IG.
But again, gender is a social construct. Right?
You know, there's an MA there's an MA
what's it called? Mixed martial arts. MMA fighter,
who's a man biologically
fighting women
and sending them to the hospital.
And no one can say anything because they
don't wanna be labeled as a big man.
Because they believe there's really no difference between
those. She took hormones. Yeah. But the whole
skeletal frame is bigger. There's denser muscle. Her
fists are like this big.
Huge cranium.
That's a
man.
Like beating up these women.
And it's going into the Olympics now. Now
you have, you know, know, in fact, the
field people that are born men, racing women,
completely destroying them.
And you see the women in the back
who who lost the race, and their faces
are just like
I can't say anyone.
They're gonna label me a bigot
because they refuse to acknowledge that there's differences
between men and women. Doesn't mean one is
better than the other,
but there are differences.
Our brains work differently.
We remember things differently.
You know, we excel in different areas.
This is just a it's just a fact.
Again, look at European studies, Scandinavian studies,
that prove that women have a sort of
predisposition
towards certain careers and so do men.
Women tend to go into
medicine,
in teaching. Men go into the stem fields.
These are studies coming out of irreligious societies
in Scandinavia. You can't blame religious baggage.
So this is our hardwiring.
People refuse to acknowledge it.
It. Because they want absolutely egalitarianism.
So my son is at the same level
of me.
Right?
Everyone's the
same, you know. Everyone at work should be
the same. Everything the same,
you know. They wanted to create this egalitarian
utopia on earth that's not going to exist.
You can never have perfect justice in the
dunya. It's impossible. Perfect justice
is is for Yom Kiyama,
and you don't want justice on Yom Kiyama.
We want Rahmah on Yolongpiyama.
It's why we believe in Yolongpiyama.
But people who only believe in this dunya,
they try to create their utopia. Here, it
doesn't work. Mao tried it, Stalin tried it,
Pol Pot tried it, doesn't work. You're gonna
end up killing millions and millions of people.
So obviously, there's a place for protest,
but we really have to be self checking
first.
Do we really have anything to complain about?
Yeah. Maybe there's a few things.
But,
you know,
we should check ourselves. And that's the answer
to the question.
Is that
if you just implement,
you know, the sunnah in our lives inshallah,
we'll see vast improvement.
Allah
can change opinions like this,
You know,
like the the sister said when Muhammad Ali
passed away,
and his funeral was in Louisville, Kentucky. It
There's a Muslim sister in hijack. She said
she landed at the airport. As soon as
she walked out into the airport, people were
giving her a standing ovation just because she
was a Muslim.
And then like 2 days later there was
one of these shootings or whatever, and they
blamed the Muslims. And all of that went
away.
And one one of my teachers said, you
see what Allah can do?
Like, at least he can change hearts and
then bring it back again.
This is an evidence of the of the
Quran of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
He can change it easy to change all
perceptions.
But sitting around and
and just sort of it's all tamannah. Tamannah
means, like, vain hope with no action.
I'm believing Sami ma tamannah, shall I give
man whatever he desires?
Right? You know, we know Raja. Raja is
hope with action.
Hope for something, but you're taking action. What
is the difference between Raja and Tamanna?
The person who has Tamanna is sitting in
his mother's basement, is a 40 year old
man, he's playing video games, and he's thinking
to, I wish I had a job.
I wish I had a wife. I wish
I lost £200.
But he doesn't take any action towards it.
He's keeping maybe he can go out.
But the one who has Raja is Fa'il,
is an is active.
Right? Muslim
ism fa'il, an active participant.
He's doing the best he can,
right? And if he falls short, he means
Duwaz Khawla subhanahu wa ta'ala
to complete his action. They give him Tawfee,
at least he tried his best.
Okay. Thank you very much. Is that correct
there?
I'm sorry if
I offended people.
Actually, I'm not sorry.
It's okay. You can take it.