Ammar Alshukry – Imposter Syndrome – Young Muslims Secret Session
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of avoiding feeling inadequate or insincere, learning to say not knowing, supporting older generation, and working with mentors and coaches. They emphasize the need to learn to say not knowing and share experiences to achieve their goals. The speakers also emphasize the importance of working with mentors and sharing experiences to improve one's knowledge and values.AI: Transcript ©
Imam Jihad told you to come to Crenshaw,
but he didn't tell you what color to
wear. He set you all low.
What do what do they wear when they
go to LA? Yeah. Nothing to worry about.
Any color? We got your back. Okay. Okay.
Come on, come on. Okay.
Don't wear red. Oh, okay. Okay.
Okay. So that was a very it's a
very hard act to follow
but I'm gonna do my best.
There was a companion whose name was Hamdullah.
And Hamdullah came to Abu Bakr radiallahu,
and he said to him, I feel like
I'm a hypocrite.
Abu'uk said, why? This is a companion of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam saying, I
feel like I'm a hypocrite.
And then
he says to him, because when I'm with
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, I feel
such high iman.
I feel like
I'm so close to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And then when I go home and I'm
amongst my family,
I feel completely different.
Abu Bakr says to him,
I feel the same way.
So why don't we both go and ask
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam?
This is Abu Bakr, the greatest companion,
the greatest man to walk on the face
of the earth after the prophets, period. Out
of every, Abu Bakr is the best. And
yet, Abu Bakr is saying to Hanzalah, a
companion of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, I
feel like you feel.
Sometimes,
I feel,
like Hanvala said, a hypocrite.
And so they go to Rasulullah salallahu alaihi
wasallam, and the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam says
to them, if you stayed
all the time, like when you're with me,
the angels would shake your hands in the
streets of Madina.
But it's this
at times, and sometimes it's like that. Sometimes
it's like this, and sometimes it's like that.
Your iman goes up and your iman goes
down.
Umr ibn Khattab
is knocking on the door of Hudayf ibnir
iman. Hudayfah
to ask him whether the prophet
named him as a hypocrite.
After everything that did,
all of his sacrifice for Islam,
the prophet
marrying his daughter, and yet Umar radiAllahu alayhi
wa sallam who still has that question that
he needs answered,
did the prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam name
me amongst the hypocrites?
And so this question of impostor syndrome,
do I feel
like I am sincere to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala is actually a question that every believer
asks.
And that is something that every believer engages
in. Sufyanath Thode, he says, this great imam.
This man had a nadaab. This man was
the first man to be called Amir ul
Mu'mineen in Hadith. He says, I never dealt
with anything that was stronger, more difficult than
my intention. Why? Because it's always changing. I
never know.
Even right now, why am I doing what
I'm doing?
Why did I come all the way over
here and lecture? Why am I doing that?
It's always changing. Am I doing it for
the handshakes outside? Am I doing it for
clout? Am I doing it the believer is
always questioning their intention,
and the hypocrite never questions theirs. And so
this question of feeling inadequate, this question of
feeling insincere
is actually a healthy diagnosis that the believer
is always required to do. You're always questioning
why you are doing things.
And you're hoping
that at the end of the day, why
you are doing it is for Allah,
and you're always analyzing, you're always critiquing, you're
always questioning, you're always tweaking
your intention. You're always asking yourself that question.
Now
shaitan
wants you to feel like you're not worthy.
Shaitan would love nothing more than for you
to go home and not act because you
don't feel like you are righteous enough.
In fact, I can't tell you how many
times people have come up to me and
said, I don't feel comfortable praying.
Why don't I feel comfortable praying? Because of
what I know of my sins. I did
this and I did that and I did
this and I did that. And I don't
pray just because of what I know of
my
sins. We
are taught by the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
to make a really beautiful dua for everybody
who's ever come to you and complain to
you about that. There's a dua that I
want you to know. It is a dua
that we are taught to make by
when you are entering into the salah. What
is this dua? He says,
Oh Allah, distance me from my sins like
you've distanced between the east and the west.
When I'm entering into
those same sins that I feel like they
are
a barrier between me and Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, I'm too shy to stand in front
of Allah. I don't even wanna pray because
of these sins. You enter into the salah
and you say, oh Allah, distance me from
my sins like you've distanced between the east
and the west. Oh Allah, cleanse me of
my sins like a white garment is cleansed
from filth. Oh Allah, bathe me of my
sins with water and hail and ice.
You know what's interesting?
Is that when you're told
to make that dua, to ask Allah
to cleanse you of your sins with ice,
with cold,
when you have gum on your shirt,
do you wash it off with cold water
or hot water?
Who says cold here? Who's team cold?
Who says hot?
It's ice. Who says my my mom does
it for me still?
K. That's the majority. Okay.
Imam Jihad said ice. You use ice.
Why do you use ice?
When something is sticky, you use ice. And
so here's the question.
When Allah
when the prophet
is rather is teaching you to tell you
that when your sins
are being cleansed, you're asking Allah to use
snow and ice, it is because sins are
sticky.
And so you're asking Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to remove it with ice. Also, the scholars
mentioned something beautiful and they said, because sins
have a heat to them.
So you're asking Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
cool that which is in your breast. We
are not the first people to ever feel
inadequate.
Musa alaihi salam.
When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells him and
he says, go to he says, my lord,
My brother Harun is more eloquent than me.
So send him along with me.
Musa alaihis salaam is known as the prophet
who has a speech impediment.
But Musa, who is the prophet who had
a speech impediment,
is the prophet that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
spoke to.
And so when Musa alaihi salaam is mentioned,
he is mentioned as the kalim of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. He's not mentioned as the
prophet who had an impediment in his speech.
Your sense of inadequacy
or your sense of insecurity
may be the reason why Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala loves you. That brother with the face
tats who's praying in his masjid, the fact
that he went through that fire and he
came to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala might have
him levels above
everybody else who's coming and did not go
through turmoil and did not go through pain.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave them an
easy path to him. Parents who are righteous,
a community that is righteous, Islamic school, that
brother and sister who came out of the
mud, that brother and sister who came out
of the dirt, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows
their journey. And so we know and we
appreciate that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has required
from all of us to act in the
capacity that we have.
A couple of quick points that I wanna
leave you with. Number 1 is that a
person should never feel inadequate in sharing what
they know.
Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam gave us all.
Every single one of us an instruction. He
said,
He says, narrate from me. Teach from me.
Every single one of us, yes.
Even if it's a single verse.
Every single one of us is supposed to
be a in our capacity
of what we have access to of knowledge.
Even if all I know is
let me share
with others. If all I know is Surah
Al Fatiha, let me share Surah Al Fatiha
with others. You know from the early seal
that Abu Bakr
accepted Islam, and the next thing he did
was he brought 6 of the 10 who
were promised paradise. He brought them to Islam.
He brought them to rasulullah sallallahu alaihi sallam.
Did Abu Bakr at that time know Surat
Al Baqarah? No. It wasn't revealed. Did Abu
Bakr who know the details of Surat Al
Nisa? No. It wasn't revealed. Abu Bakr simply
knew
Muhammad that's good enough. I can go and
I can communicate that to these brothers, and
he brought them to
Islam.
You don't need to know
the knowledge of a scholar to be able
to call people to
But there's an important but here. And that
is the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam says, narrate
from me
even if it's a single verse and the
hadith continues. He says,
he says,
and narrate
and narrate from the stories of the children
of Israel, Judeo Christian sources. There's no problem
with that. And then he says,
and whoever lies about me intentionally,
then let them secure their seat in the
hellfire. You know what that means? It means
narrate about me even if it's a single
verse, but don't lie.
Don't jeopardize
the information that you're communicating about me because
your ego's got involved. And somebody now thinks
that you're a sheikh, and they're like, sheikh
or brother so and so or sister so
and so. I have a question.
And you're like, oh, I'm excited,
but I'm gonna pretend like, yes. Okay, sister.
Yeah. What's your question?
And then they ask you something that you
don't know,
and you don't
know, but they're looking at you and they're
expecting an answer, and so you say,
you know, I'm not sure, but
I think
you know, that I think,
put that back in your pocket
and get used to saying I don't know.
You know the olema, they used to teach
their students to say I don't know.
Say it with me. I don't know. I
don't know.
How many languages can we say I don't
know in? How do you say I don't
know in in Urdu?
Okay. Whatever that was, yes.
K? Whatever that was, yes. Let's say it
in Arabic.
How do we say it in,
that's Egyptian, brother.
That's Egyptian. You can keep that.
What other languages do we have? Yes, sir.
Spanish.
No? No say. No say. No say. Yo
no say. Yo no say. So passionate about
it. Let's say yo no say together.
Yo no say. That's it. As long as
this is the rule, guys. I need you
to know this rule, and I need you
to implement this rule and teach it to
others.
As long as you communicate what you know,
and you say I don't know about what
you don't know, you'll always be okay.
The problem becomes
when people start to teach what they know,
and then they they decide that they wanna
go up a level that they don't have.
Whether it's on social media, whether it's in
person,
as long as you learned Abdulai ibn Umar,
a man came to him and he said,
ask him a question, and he said, I
don't know. And then when the man left,
Abdulai ibn Umar was so excited, he said,
ibn Umar was asked about a question that
he doesn't know, and he said, I don't
know. He was excited about that
because he conquered his ego.
And so learning to say you don't know.
And, yes, there comes times in all of
our communities being young and active, even if
it's in your capacity as a in high
school or in college or whatever,
Where people are going to come to you
and they're gonna ask you for information.
So you be comfortable saying, I don't know
this or I'm not qualified to teach it.
I had one friend of mine. He was
a young Hafiz kid.
And so being a Hafiz he started to
get a lot of social cache back in
the day.
And a masjid asked him to teach the
Fiqh of transactions,
and he had no clue about the Fiqh
of transactions.
So he called up his sheikh, and he
said, sheikh, can you teach me the transactions?
He said, why do you want to learn
the transactions? He He said, because the masjid
invited me to teach the fiqh of transactions,
and I don't know the fiqh of transactions.
So can you teach me? He said, you
agreed to teach something that you don't know?
I am not going to teach you anything.
And you are going go and you're going
to apologize, and you're not going to teach
that. And so one of the ways that
we resolve impostor syndrome also this is point
number
okay. Thank you.
Point number 3 is that you keep a
mentor with you.
You keep scholars around you.
I have a a favorite quote that I
have by, Amir Suleiman, a wonderful poet. He
says, freedom is somewhere between
the passion
of the young and the patience of the
old.
This freedom that we're seeking now, all of
these wonderful encampments, all of this energy, all
of this action
is beautiful, and it is powered by the
passion of the young. Absolutely.
But
also, take advantage of the experience of the
old.
Also, take advantage of
the knowledge of those who are senior to
you. You know, I went to one encampment
recently. I won't tell you which
city.
But the brothers had a flyer that they
made, and they showed it to me. They
said, we're distributing these flyers about to hate
the encampments.
I said,
I don't know if you wanna distribute these
flyers in the encampments or in prison because
that's where you're gonna go if you distribute
these flyers.
The
image
and the militancy
and the quotes that they had
had nothing to do with Tawhid.
And I was, like, if it's about Tawhid,
why are you spreading all of this information?
And they were, like, you know what? Shit.
This is a really good point that you
made. I'm, like, yes. It's a good point.
But just the idea of consulting with scholarship,
consulting with those who are older than you,
consulting with those who are more experienced than
you, and having mentors even as you're giving
dua. Another brother, May Allah bless him. Wonderful
reciter of the Quran. He came up to
me and he said, Sheikh, I was invited
to go and recite at a particular
event.
And my mentor told me, he said, do
not go. You are not ready.
So what do you think, Shia?
So what do you mean? What do I
think? I'm just visiting, and you're telling me
your day in, day out, and whatever be
teacher, all of this type of stuff is
telling you that you're not ready to go.
Why are you asking me? He said, you
know, just doing shulah with multiple people. I'm,
like, you're not doing shulah with multiple people.
You're trying to get a different opinion than
the one that your chef gave you, and
my opinion is his opinion.
There is a blessing
to having access to teachers
and working within
what they think you're ready for.
I gave my first khutba
after being given the green light by a
brother who is senior to me.
And he told me the night before, he
said, I want you to give the khutba.
I think, to be honest, now looking back
at it, he just wanted to get out
of giving the khutba.
But it was my first khutbah.
And I remember, like Imam Jihad mentioned, that
panic of the first khutbah, I was in
college and I spent the entire night writing
the khutbah. And I have it memorized. Until
today, I have that khutbah memorized. I can
give it any time.
Because I wrote I took a book and
I wrote it out, my the entire thing.
I summarized it onto, like, 5 pages, and
I went up
and I was giving the hold button and
my voice was steady, but my hands were
going like this. I was having an involuntary
reaction where people were looking at me, they
were just going like
this. And I felt like I wasn't qualified
to do it, but a brother told me
you should go do it and you can
do it. And when I did it,
Imam was making me remember beautiful memories because
he was saying that your boys need to
be in the 1st row and they need
to hype you up and stuff like that.
And for a lot of us,
the thing that suffocates our possibility
is not is not the people online. It's
not the trolls online. It's not it's our
own brothers and sisters around us who make
us feel like, who do you think you
are to be doing what you're doing?
And so I got a call from one
of my friends,
and I answered. And this was the first
response that I was getting on the Khutba
that I gave.
And he called me up and he said,
I said,
He said, oh, snap. Was that Imam Siraj
Wa Hajj today?
And I was like, no.
But he gave me such positive
reinforcement,
and he doesn't know. Whatever I've given since
then, Allah knows best he's rewarded for that
because he supported me in a in a
moment of self doubt.
And so the importance of supporting one another.
There's a beautiful story. And and not just
supporting one another, but supporting those who are
younger than you.
Yes. You guys are looked at as youth
18, 19, 20 years old. There might be
someone who's 15 or 16 years old who
you see incredible talent in. Do not stifle
that talent.
Encourage them. Inspire them. You know, there's a
famous imam of the Haram. His name is
Sheikh Yasir al Doseiri.
This guy's recitation is unbelievable.
If you if you go on YouTube and
use it to take Sheikh Yasir al Doseiri's
recitation, it's incredible. Do you all know his
story?
Sheikh Yasir was in he went to a
military academy.
He went to a military academy. He was
going to be a soldier. He was going
to be in the army. That was his
journey.
And when they had an event, an Islamic
event, a sheikh came, And Sheikh Yasir is
a practicing Muslim, but he's he's a soldier.
That's what he's training to be.
And so when he did the he did
the recitation like our brother just did this
beautiful recitation at the beginning. The sheikh did
the recitation. He wasn't the sheikh at that
time. It was just Yasir.
But he does this beautiful, unbelievable recitation and
the sheikh says
to Yasir, he says to him, this is
the recitation of an imam of the haram.
And that was the first time a seed
was planted in his heart. He was so
motivated
by that statement of that
he studied Sharia,
and went down that path of becoming a
sheikh until he literally became the Imam of
the Haram, someone who millions of people benefit
from his recitation every single day. That is
the result of a kind word, a word
of encouragement
that someone who is senior made to someone
who is junior. I'm saying that our generation,
we need to continue to encourage those who
are younger, but you yourself develop the habit
of encouraging those who are coming along behind
you.
The last thing that I'll mention
is
the self worth
and the confidence that everybody needs to have.
Allah
chose you, and there's a wonderful person that
I'll leave you with. This man's name was
doctor Abdurrahman al Sumit.
Doctor Abdurrahman al Sumit is one of the
giants of this ummah that most people have
never heard of. He
was a medical doctor by training. He went
to Canada to train. He's from Kuwait.
And when he
became licensed,
he decided that he was not going to
go back to Kuwait to work there, even
though he would have had a very comfortable
life. Instead, he decided that he was going
to go to sub Saharan Africa, and he
was going to treat people there, and he
was going to give Dawah there too.
This man spent the next 20 or 30,
maybe even 40 years of his life going
amongst the villages and tribes of the most
impoverished places in Africa.
This man was not a person who was
supposed to be known.
This man lived a very very difficult life
instead of a very comfortable life. But what
was his legacy that he left behind?
You can Google his name. You'll see that
the amount of people who accepted Islam in
his hands are over 3,000,000 people.
The amount of universities that he built were
around
less than 10, but around 8 or 9
universities. He built 4 hospitals. This man built
dozens of schools, dug thousands of wells, distributed
millions of Musa'ih.
This man, they called him a man who
is equal to an ummah. What's my point
here? Is that Imam
or doctor Abdur Rahman al Sumeet, he has
a beautiful quote. When you watch his interviews,
they're incredibly inspiring and funny. He talks about
hilarious stories,
But he says, I never used to ask
Allah for a lighter load.
I always used to ask him for a
stronger back.
The thing that I want you to leave
you with is how can I feel like
I'm an imposter
if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala puts me in
a circumstance?
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala selected and chose me
to be in a particular position, to be
in a particular
place
for me to give what I have to
give in a moment in time.
And so if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has
given me the opportunity,
then let me source my strength from Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Let me source my tafir
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, and let me
beg and implore Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to
guide my footsteps
and accept my actions. And if I do
that, not only will I not be an
imposter inshallah ta'ala, but I will be one
of the sincere individuals
who works upon the sunnah of the prophet
whom Allah
loves. May Allah
grant us his love and the love of
those who he loves and the love of
actions that will garner us his love.
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