The Defenders – The young Muslim’s Guide to a Godless World
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AI Generated Summary ©
The Sapiens Institute will offer a course on the Young Muslims Guide to help individuals understand and reduce ideologies, build out a comprehensive understanding of Islam, and access the right language and ideology to make a positive impact on one's life and society. The course will provide guidance on finding the right language and extension to individuals within Islam, as well as exposure to various ideologies and building out a culture of personal growth and personal development. The course will also include a book and training for young people to understand the importance of their creator, emotions, and emotions in general. Additionally, the speakers emphasize the importance of writing and reading in shaping one's life, and encourage individuals to share their experiences on social media. They express a desire to continue updating and be part of the consortium.AI Generated Transcript ©
Assalamu alaykum. My
dear brothers
and sisters and friends,
and welcome to the Sapiens Institute live.
My name is Hamza Andres Soudes, the CEO
of this institute, Alhamdulillah.
And with me is our brother, Imran Hussain.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi.
How are you, bro? How are you?
Good. Good.
Today, Habib, we're gonna be discussing the Young
Muslims Guide to a Godless World.
This essentially is your baby. It's your project.
It's something that we're gonna deliver all across
the world. It's gonna be online, and it's
going to be face to face. It's gonna
be on-site as well, and we're gonna have
a particular focus in the US, the UK,
and Europe.
Now why I want you to explain
to
our dear beloved audiences
is what is The Young Muslim's Guide to
a Godless World because it's gonna be a
book and a course. So what is that
and why it's important for them to become
a defender
in order to support this new area of
work. I've just sent an email out to
our email list
talking about these amazing projects we're gonna be
delivering after Ramadan, Insha'Allah. And one of them
is
the book,
The Young Muslims Guide to a Godless World,
and the course based on the book. So
please, bro, what is give us a synopsis
on what this thing is.
Yeah.
So before I go into it, I think
it's important to mention the thinking behind it.
What sort of triggered the whole idea?
So there was 2 main things. 1 was
my own personal experiences
growing up in the West,
dealing with the the ideologies and the influences
that existed,
and not being well informed about Islam, at
least to the degree where I would be
grounded,
in Islam so that I wouldn't be affected
by these ideologies.
And then that part of my story, I
guess, is Dying to Believe. That's the the
first book that will come out, inshallah. And
then the second book
is sort of my now I'm looking back
retrospectively.
You know, what I would have liked to
have had at the time, which would have
helped me deal with those issues.
So based on what I would have liked,
also looking at, you know, the calls we
get from lots of Muslims with doubts and
so on and so forth through the Lighthouse
Mentoring. So that is all that played a
role in it. And the third thing was
it's just having children, man, having kids. Because
when you have kids, you see the world
in a totally different way. You have more
concerns than you never had before. You're worried
about your children,
you know, and their well-being. And that's not
only in regards to their physical well-being. That's
also in regards to their spiritual well-being.
And, you know, that have was a concern
for me over the past couple of years.
So I
about a year and a half ago, I
really, you know, was thinking, okay. I need
to put something together,
which, sort of, in a way,
deals with the problem before the problem arises.
So, you know, when the problem arises in
universities and when they go into uni and
they come across these ideologies, can we
immunize Muslims in some way so that they're
not affected? Or even if they do come
across these ideologies that they already they already
have
the knowledge and the grounding that they need
to be able to deal with these and
navigate that space. So that was a feature
behind this course.
And
it wasn't too much it wasn't too difficult
to put the structure in place
because you, Shafa, doctor Oman, you guys have
done some phenomenal work in Sapiens. So that
that that base, you know, knowledge or that
groundwork is already there.
The the challenge was to take that and
to now bring it all together, your work,
Shafaad's work, some of doctor Asma's work, and
So build it together in a way where
it comprehensively addresses
the origins and the history of these ideologies,
why they exist, how they exist, and then
go to their foundations and deconstruct them. That's
the first part of the course. So d
so making people aware of why these ideologies
exist
and then how to take them apart
and what those fundamental
underlying issues are that all of these ideologies
share.
So that's the first part. The second part
of the course is, okay. Now you don't
keep the glass. Let's fill the glass now.
How do we ground them within Islam? Right?
So another issue that I've experienced and many
people experience is that we may be brought
up in Islamic families or Muslim families. Many
of us may not be the case for,
but many Muslims or born Muslims have grown
up in a in a Muslim environment, quote,
unquote, Muslim environment. But
they are and they may learn the Quran.
They may learn how to recite the Quran.
They may memorize the Quran in some cases.
However, they are not aware of the
or they don't understand Islam as a worldview.
So the it that's not how Islam is
built in their minds. You know, where it
addresses
existential questions for them, it gives them, clear
road map to life. It tells them, you
know, where they come from and where they're
going. They don't get that from Islam. Right?
All they get from Islam in a cultural
from a cultural sense is, okay. I'm Muslim.
We fast in Ramadan. We're supposed to pray.
You know, we, give charity, if they know
that. That's if they know that. You know?
We read Quran. We recite this book in
this language we don't understand, but it sounds
nice.
And that's that pretty much. Right? So the
second part of the course deals with that
where it builds out a comprehensive,
understanding or reconstruct in a way, Islam for
them. And, you know, how to see Islam,
how to approach Islam, how it's a worldview,
how it shifts and changes the way they
look at reality and understand the world, and
therefore grounding them within Islam.
And then, basically,
another part of the course or a final
part is this juxtaposition between these 2,
you know, between Islam as a worldview and
these other other worldviews and ideologies and just
showing let let them make the comparison.
How Islam grounds you, gives you value, gives
you the meaning of life, tells you about
suffering,
you know, gives you all of this understanding.
Whereas all of these are the other ideologies,
although on the surface, may look appealing.
However, when you really look at what they
give you, it's nothing much. It leaves you
in a very sort of with nihilism and
emptiness.
So that's what the course is in a
sort of nutshell, basically.
That's what it will be, sir, once you
complete it.
But this is brilliant. I think this
is gonna be one of our greatest projects
because
when we deal with people who come to
Lighthouse Mentoring, which is our kind of
amazing project that
gives people free 1 hour sessions on how
to deal with the, how to deal with
the destructive doubts,
We deal with new Muslim mentoring. We deal
with ex Muslims. We deal with
imams, preachers, teachers, aspiring du'at to help them
make an impact in the dua. It's a
very comprehensive mentoring service that addresses all of
these things.
When we
engage with people who have Shubohat, destructive doubts,
one of the key reasons they have these
destructive doubts is number 1,
obviously their hearts are not connected to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, but also
it's because they don't have Islam as a
worldview.
Islam is not the lens that allows them
to see reality in the correct way,
and because you've been brought up in the
West or in
societies that have other ideological frames
that has dictated the way they think and
they feel because a worldview
deals with things like ontology. What is the
source and nature of reality?
It deals with epistemology.
What are the sources of knowledge? What is
true? How do we know what is true?
How do we acquire knowledge?
And it deals with things like anthropology.
What is the human being?
It deals
with ethics.
What is right? What is wrong? What is
good and bad behavior? What is the right
way to live?
And
what happens is
these ideologies become lenses for people, and when
they try to understand themselves,
understand others, and specifically understand Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala,
it's done through those alien skewed lenses.
And what we do in the mentoring sessions,
we actually get them to recognize that and
to put on the dini lenses, the lenses
of the dini, and now they can see
clearly, they can see reality, understand reality.
And many of the questions, many of the
shubuhaat, many of the destructive doubts
become
minimalized
or diminished
as a result of having the correct lenses.
What you're doing and what we're doing as
Sapiens
is not only we're producing a book on
this issue, but we're also producing a course
that would nip it in the bud, so
to speak. So when people are growing up
in their teens
in these environments that have alien ideological frames,
we're telling them straight away, right, this is
this is what's
what's wrong. This is what's right. This is
the correct way of understanding reality.
So we are catch catching them before they
go to the university or we're catching them
before they get
infected too much
by the alien
ideologies like nihilism
and atheism
and humanism
and
liberalism and secularism, all these isms and schisms.
Now the beautiful thing about this is all
because we had a discussion about this a
few months ago, I believe.
It's gonna be grounded in the tradition, meaning
people are going to know who Allah is
through this course. They're gonna have a good
understanding of
affirming the Tawhid, the oneness of
Allah understanding what is shirk, understanding
why Allah is worthy of our humble adoration,
why Allah is worthy of love and so
on and so forth, why Allah is worthy
of worship.
And
because we don't want people to think this
is gonna be a Theo philosophical discourse. No.
It's gonna be grounded in the tradition.
It's just gonna be delivered in a way
that
is appropriate for that target audience, and it's
gonna use the right type of language, but
it's gonna be grounded in the tradition. So,
bro, I'm really looking forward to the book
and to the course. I'm looking forward to
you training me on how to deliver the
course.
It'll be fantastic,
to do that, and I'm looking forward to
reading the book when it comes out as
well. And it's just an honor that Sapiens
Institute has been able to actually put this
together
because it is the need of the hour.
It is the need of the time. In
actual fact, I remember one of the criticisms
I got of my book,
They said, where is the book for the
younger audience or for the audience that is
not kind of trained? They're not they're not
that
maybe intelligence the word wrong word to use,
but they're not of the particular age where
maybe they're ready to understand certain key concepts.
Even though this book the book was addressed
at nonspecialists,
but it was it's for, like, maybe 1st
year university.
What about the people who
are in college
or in secondary school or in high school?
All about parents who have children
at that age.
Where is the book for them?
And that and this, in my view, yes,
there's gonna be overlaps for sure because this
will address universities as well.
But it would also address
that particular target audience that we have to
deal with before they develop further and they
have Shubhahat destructive doubts. Bro, it's like what
the atheists do. Like Richard Dawkins wrote the
book The Magic of Reality.
That's aimed for 12 year olds. Right?
You know, and they write these books in
a particular way to
plot inside them, like the ideas of scientism
or atheism or naturalism.
So brothers and sisters, this project is an
amazing project,
but it requires time,
effort,
research,
delivery.
All of these things are not free, and
that's why we're inviting you to become a
defender
in order for us to deliver projects such
as the Young Muslim's Guide to a Godless
World all around the world, train others to
be able to deliver it to, Insha'Allah, hopefully,
in multiple languages.
And we also
want, my dear brothers and sisters, this to
be a book translated into multiple languages. We
also want this to be an online course
on our learning platform. There are there's so
much that needs to be done,
and we have to do it fast.
Because Pew Research in 2017,
they did an assessment of Islam in America,
and they said that the number of Muslims
that leave Islam
is equivalent to or so it's about equivalent
to the number that become Muslim. So the
net gain is 0. And one of the
reasons this happens, brothers and sisters, is why,
is because we live in an ideological world.
There's the ideological
frame is always gonna create shubahat
and actually take people's iman away because that
ideological
frame, like atheism, secularism, nihilism, naturalism
is promoted by influential structures in society at
different levels. So you're just gonna be a
product of that.
So we need to think smarter
and actually deal with
the ideological frame in a way that's gonna
prevent people leaving the deen. It's gonna strengthen
iman, and it's also gonna bring people to
Islam as well. Alhamdulillah.
So brothers and sisters, go to the link
in the description below
or go to sapiensinstitute.orgforward/defenders.
This Ramadan, we were looking for 2,000 defenders.
And
we've had over 1500 defenders, which shows that
people believe in us, and we have a
good track record, and we're delivering work.
And
this project is gonna be out before the
end
of next Ramadan.
So please support it. Just £10 a month,
brothers and sisters. And, also, before I let
Imran speak,
we are publishing we're aiming to publish on
Monday or Tuesday
depending on
whether the book is authorized on the online
platform,
we're
intending of
of publishing
Abraham Fulfilled, which is an amazing book
by
Ustad Adnan Rashid, Abu Zakaria, and
brother Zakir,
and his own essentially the prophet in the
Bible and upgraded
version of that.
And and one that is really going
to trouble the Christian academics because since the
time of Ahmedidat, may Allah have messaged on
him,
the idea of the present in the Bible
was, you know, promulgated
to the Christian
society.
But then after they took that, and as
you know, with ideas, they start developing their
responses.
But, unfortunately, the dower, generally speaking, didn't
develop the counter response. And we were sitting
on our laurels, if you like. But now
this book solves the problem. This book actually
annihilates
the
Christian responses to that issue, and it's a
very, very powerful book. It's over 400 pages,
I believe,
and it's gonna be out on Monday or
Tuesday. So brothers and sisters, books like this,
Abraham Fulfilled,
The Young Muslim's Guide to Godless World. The
course is gonna be
based on this book, and it being delivered
all around the world.
This requires your support. We just need £10
a month. We need around another 450 defenders
become a
defender, small amount. The prophet said that Allah
loves the regular deed even if it's small.
Isn't that right, Imran?
Absolutely. And, you know, even, like, just with
the first book that we're doing, the, Dying
to Believe book, we we still need to
do one final edit, and edits, you know,
to done professionally. Because, look, we wanna put
these books out. We wanna make them as
professional as possible.
So we need to make sure that it's
edited, that it's, you know, ready to go
out and it's taken seriously, inshallah. So that
edit needs to take place. That's the final
step in it. My cat's just,
just just crashed the crashed the live.
Yeah. Definitely, brothers and sisters, please support the
world. Go to cpscinstitute.orgforward/defenders.
There's a really good comment put out by,
GM,
Fork. Assalamualaikum. I'm just about to start studying,
yeah, in a university, in a western country
where where liberalism and atheism are dominant.
I'm really looking forward to the course so
I can be ready
to defend ourselves, inshallah.
Ready? Absolutely. Look. This is what we want,
brothers and sisters. We want you to it's
almost like a,
you can see it as a small course
before you go into university.
And it's gonna go into the psychology as
well of, you know,
how our minds are shaped from the very
from the very beginning. Because, look, when you
go through schooling or education,
your secular teachers and educators aren't gonna come
to you and give you a, you know,
a 3 month course on, you know, why
secularism or liberalism is the correct way of
looking at the world. It's not gonna happen.
It doesn't work like that. It's gradually,
you know,
over time,
injected into your mind. So by the time
you go to university, you're primed to accept
1 or the other one of these ideologies
that's out there because the foundations are all
the same. All of these ideologies, you know,
begin with the premise that God doesn't exist.
You know? So the human being, it's himself
or herself, is that primary mover that determines,
you know, what reality is gonna be for
them. And so and all of these ideologies,
they will govern towards this, and they will
also lead you towards fulfilling your desires and
focusing on yourself and what brings you happiness
and satisfaction and all of this type of
stuff. But you're primed through education to do
this. So we're gonna deconstruct all of this
as well. And then we're gonna
explain what a worldview is, You know? How
to because it's literally well, when you have
a worldview,
you know, it's it's the way you map
reality that that you see the world. It
shapes everything in your world. Everything you believe,
everything you don't believe in, everything you, you
know, do is shaped by the way you
look around to your worldview.
So because we don't have Muslims that will
see Islam as a comprehensive worldview
and see they've been in this way. It's
a comprehensive way of life, a worldview.
That's why when we come across these ideologies,
we think they're fulfilling something that Islam doesn't
give us.
And hence, we incline towards it. Right? We
because we have a notion of Islam that
Islam is x, y, and zed. It's a
it's a religion. It's talking about praying. It's
a book I recite, book I memorize,
and that's pretty much it
but
questions about life the meaning of life
the meaning of, you know, identity who I
am as a person
when it comes to knowledge and truth. If
you spoke about epistemology, all of these things
are outside of the deep. These are things
we get from the world or from other
people and other views and ideologies.
But it's bridging that gap that, no, Islam
gives you all of those things. It teaches
you how to see the world. It teaches
you who you are, what's your identity, what
are you as a human being. It teaches
you what the meaning of life is. You
know, it makes sense of suffering, evil and
suffering, and all of these things.
So it's about showing Muslims that Islam should
be under comprehensively like this. And if they
understand it that way, then they're not gonna
be tempted towards looking for answers elsewhere. And,
also, they're gonna realize that the answers you
get in regards to these existential questions,
you can't get them anyway from us. So
when if you begin with no god,
then those fundamental
existential questions you have have no answers. They
have no true answers. You can make up
answers. You can come up with stuff. People
will tell you stuff. But it's just made
up at the end of the day. You
know, so it's it's gonna be a very
profound course from this way as far shaping
the Muslim mind is concerned, inshallah, young Muslim
minds.
And,
you know, I'm I'm hopeful it's gonna have
a big impact, inshallah. I really believe it
will have a big impact, especially for the
youth. And inshallah, by you know, through this,
we'll get less calls for our Lighthouse Mentoring,
inshallah.
You know? So it's gonna make our job
from that perspective easier as well because we
get a lot of calls, bro. I know
Yousef is doing many calls, doctor Usman, Shefad.
When I was doing it a year ago,
I it's it's not only that there's lots
of people that have questions.
It's draining. Right? It's not easy, like you
said, because you come across stories and you
come across situations which really affect you, man.
And it makes you sad to see the
the state people have ended up in
and how it could be prevented. Because we
can see if we have that vantage point.
This could have been prevented,
but it wasn't, unfortunately. You know? So it's
it's it saddens you even further, Spana.
Yeah. Yeah. No. For sure. And, you know,
and it's gonna be so important for parents
and for imams and for teachers, Islamic teachers,
and for du'at to even attend as well
and to learn because it will give them
the right pedagogical
tools in order to basically help people on
their journey, especially their age group.
And while you were speaking, something came to
mind, which was, you know, when people say,
you know, let me do it or I
can do it as soon as I don't
harm anybody, which is like a very liberal
mantra. Right?
Now we're brought up with that attitude even
as Muslims.
Now that attitude is a very liberal attitude.
It's it it adopts one of the normative
secular normative ethical theories of utilitarianism
or,
you know,
whatever is whatever increases
the well-being of society
is the right thing, and whatever decreases the
overall happiness or well-being of society
is the wrong thing to do. And when
they say, well, as long as I'm not
harming anybody,
let me do it. It assumes that particular
moral epistemology that they're utilitarian or maybe an
ethical egoist, which is that, you know,
I'm doing it because it's in line with
my interests, and I ought to do that.
Right? Which is different from psychological egoism. Psychological
egoism is that human beings,
they always do things in line with their
interest. That's not a ethical view. That's not
a normative ethical theory. The normative ethical theory
of ethical egoism is
that you should always do things that's in
line with your own personal interest, which is
different from utilitarianism
because more about the collective well-being rather than
the individual. But, anyway, notwithstanding that that,
philosophical gymnastics, the point here is that you
assume
secular normative ethical theories,
and they've picked that up through TV,
through social media,
through schools, through engaging with people, and it's
become embedded
into themselves to such a degree that you
think it's fit to you, you think it's
natural, and they think it's a norm. Yeah.
I'm not harming anyone.
Right?
But that assumes a particular
normative ethical theory that is secular, but that's
not the Islamic
ethics. That's not the Islamic
ethical viewpoint because we're divine command theorists. Actually,
what is good and bad
is based on the commands of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. So
if if they're brought up in a liberal
environment or a secondary environment at school and
so on and so forth, then they pick
up these things and they think it becomes,
you know, like a
timeless truth, you know, as long as I
could do it, as long as I'm not
harming anyone, that itself adopts a particular ideology,
if you like, which generally speaking is liberalism
because generally speaking, liberalism,
also adopts the secular normative ethical theories, at
least either the deontological ethics, ethical egoism, or
utilitarianism. And the point here is
that came to my mind because a lot
of the statements that you hear from some
of our youth as well, if you break
them down,
those statements are, like,
based on alien world views. Even when they
say, for example,
even the concept of freedom.
Yeah.
Now, obviously, we're not against freedom, but they'll
have a conception of freedom. Because if you
study the idea of freedom in academia, it's
actually based on the non violation of your
rights.
So you're free as long as your right
rights are not violated.
Okay.
But then who has a right to give
you rights and who defines those rights?
So,
you know, 2 different people with different conception
of rights would be debating each other. Hey.
You're oppressed. No. You're oppressed. Hey. You're
oppressed. No. You're oppressed. I'm free. No. You're
free. Not free. And stuff like that because
they have a different conception of rights.
But because we're in a liberal society,
the Muslims growing up in the liberal secular
world will pick up a liberal notion of
rights or a secular notion of rights,
and that would actually formulate the understanding of
what is free and what is not free,
what is coercion, what is not coercion, what
is oppressed, and what is liberated. It will
be done through those prisms. Obviously, there are
some overlaps, but in some cases, there are
not. So even things like this with the
idea of what is good, what is bad,
am I oppressed? Am I not oppressed? Am
I free? Am I not free?
These are all very, very important questions. And
that's why, you know, even when I, you
know, if I were to discuss with an
academic and they say, hey. Islam
curtails freedom. I'll say to them, what do
you mean by freedom?
And then, you know, you'll break it down.
Actually, we have an essay on this in
on our website about freedom. And then it
just it always reduces itself to the conception
of rights. And if those rights are not
violated, then you're free. If they're violated, you're
unfree. So the question is,
who has the right to give us our
rights? Who draws the line? And who is
the source of those rights? And we will
say, salaam,
our deen is Allah centric.
So even these, you know, subtle examples of
the idea of freedom
or what moral principles we should adopt,
these are real life examples, bro. Especially people
going to university, they pick up these ideas
of, like, how they should live and who
they should be and what is free and
what is oppressed and what is not. And
all of that is shaped by their particular
world view. So, hopefully, I try to articulate
that to a certain degree. But, yeah, I'm
excited, bro. I'm excited. So
I think the first thing that's gonna come
out, though, is dying to believe
because the bulk of that book is ready.
And the reason I like this book,
because brothers and sisters, not only is
Iman Hussain producing the Young Muslims Guide to
God as World, but also we're publishing his
book
that's
gonna be completed
inshallah in a couple of months, which got
dying to believe.
Now the history of that book was that
we wanted to produce something to our audiences
in a way that the atheists and the
humanists do. They produce these kind of like
nice stories with these journeys
and in in filtered within them
or infected within them are like alien secular
naturalistic, materialistic philosophies, and you don't realize.
And it's done in a story form,
and it's very hard to refute a story.
That's when you watch a video, a movie,
and it's written very well, even if you
have some liberal secular undertones, if you're not
trained, it would affect your nafs
because it's hard to refute a story.
And we wanted a book to actually fill
that gap in that space because we don't
have those books in our community. There are,
yes, of an intellectual standard, but they're written
in a way through someone's life journey from
doubt to certainty.
And because it's based on the the haqq,
the truth anyway, the way it's gonna be
delivered is gonna have a huge impact. So
I'm really excited about the book, but maybe
you could talk about that as well, bro.
What was the the history? What's the what's
what's the the the nutshell of the book,
like, if you were to define the book
in about couple of paragraphs?
Yeah. So it's, I remember we were discussing
it a few years
ago. It was just after Richard Dawkins had
published his,
he published his,
Outgrowing God, that that book they wrote. And
I remember, when we did a review to
it, and the review's still up somewhere,
or a response to that book. And one
of the things you were shocked about was
that there was no references in it. Right?
Do you remember?
Oh, the the the purple book.
The purple book. Yeah. Outgrowing God. Oh, when
he when he said oh, when, he took
he he he signed a false Wikipedia.
Yeah. Yeah. It was all mishmash of stuff.
Yeah.
In during Eid or Ramadan, he made a
mistake. It was a it was a very
basic schoolboy error.
Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. Yes. Wow. Yeah.
So that that and he wrote in a
very narrative style. So there's bits of the
book which are very, like, storytelling and, you
know, personal experiences and stuff like this. And
then you have people like Sam Harris who
did something similar in,
what was that book?
Something, you know, where he talks he shifts
from this old classical
naturalistic atheism to his new age,
Buddhist type of atheism. Yeah. Yeah. I bought
a book. It's called,
Waking Up or something. Waking Up, I think
it was.
That's the one. Yeah. So you had that.
And then you had Olam Shah, who did
the a few years prior to that, he
did the atheist,
handbook.
A young atheist handbook or something. It was
called a little small book.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So and and those were the ones that
made most of the impact, if you think
about it, amongst the masses.
Those couple of books and a few others,
because the academic stuff they've done, although it's
not very academic, but there's you know, they
have dropped down to the level where it's
more appealing to the younger audience, and it
reads more like a story, and it's more
narrative based personal experiences. So that inspired us.
We thought, you know
Yeah. For sure. And they and they do
it deliberately, bro, because they have an agenda.
They have an agenda to actually
try and convince the masses because they really
believe in the world view. But I don't
actually, don't really really believe they believe in
the world view, but that's a different topic.
But Yeah. You know, they've adopted this particular
world view, and they're pushing it, and they
wanna affect the masses. It's a shame, though,
that,
you know, as a community, we didn't produce
anything of of similar
of similar genre, which is a shame.
That's why I'm very happy that we got
a team like Sapiens where we think like
this. You know, how do we fill the
gap in the dower?
Like, even when I wrote the book, The
Divine Reality, there was no comprehensive book on
the topic in English. 0.
There was a filling of a gap. And
then after that, obviously, he inspired other people
to produce stuff, which is amazing. And we're
gonna be working on the 2nd edition this
year, so Insha'Allah.
And then we have Dying to Believe Now
that's coming out.
A book that
fulfills the gap in this genre space
because we don't have one. People are like,
you know what? Yeah. I received
an email the other day. You know, Hamza,
can you give me a list of the
5 books we should read?
And I'm like, I don't think we have
5 books written by Muslims at least, yeah,
on on topics like this. Yeah.
So it's very, very important. Zakaria, bro. I
think it's gonna be fantastic. These two projects
themselves,
even if we just end up just doing
these two books here and and courses connected
to to the Young Muslims Guide to a
Godless World,
that in itself is an achievement. Obviously, we're
gonna be doing much more, alhamdulillah,
but I'm just trying to show that
even doing that, writing the Young Muslims Guide
to Godless World, making it to a course,
delivering it all around the world, and hopefully,
training others to be able to do to
deliver and obviously train others to deliver in
other languages.
That itself
is an amazing project, my dear brothers and
sisters, and you should support it. This these
are the this is the kind of work
that we're doing. And this is one project
that are many projects that we aim to
deliver after Ramadan insha'Allah.
So be one of the defenders. You know,
this Ramadan, we aimed
to have 2,000 defenders. My dear brothers and
sisters, now we need around only around 400.
People
are trusting us. People wanna support what we're
doing. May Allah bless them.
And,
you know, I think it's very, very important,
my dear brothers and sisters, to support these
type of endeavors because we need to be
strategic
with our sadaqah. We need to know where
the community is moving.
And, yes, it's important to support humanitarian work,
but we need to preserve the community,
make this community into a beacon of light
for the other communities that we're living
amongst,
and that we're able to take intellectual moral
leadership that we're a beacon of light for
these people. That can only happen if we
strengthen our iman, we share Islam academically and
intellectually,
and we develop refined characters. And this is
part of the process.
And what needs to happen,
my dear brothers and sisters, is also for
you to
to get involved.
Getting involved through your dua and through your
volunteering. Go to the website, send us your
CV, and inshallah, you could be one of
the volunteers because we aim to focus a
lot in the UK up and down the
country
delivering these type of essential courses like the
Young Muslims Guide to a Godless World.
So it could be the night of power,
my dear brothers and sisters, a night that
is better than a 1000 months, Alhamdulillah.
We're just asking you to become a defender.
We need around 400 defenders left. Alhamdulillah,
around 1600 defenders have trusted us. Be one
of those defenders so you could get share
in all of this reward.
So go to the link in the description
below. Just £10 a month, which is less
than 35p a day. If you were to
lose 35p a day, you wouldn't even realize
it. And remember the prophet
said that Allah
loves the regular deed even
if it's small.
Allahu Akbar.
So
do a deed that Allah loves It's regular,
even if it's small, like £10 a month,
because every drop raises the ocean. And you
need to understand, my dear brothers and sisters,
that to do this with quality and with
Ihsan
and in a timely way and to do
it all around the world, it actually does
cost money. And this is an obvious thing
that doesn't even have to be stated.
And I don't want you to be
regretful
because
I want you to imagine that you were
one of the donors. See, you haven't donated
to us yet, but I want you to
imagine that
you were one of the donors that you
donate to us 4 years ago. Actually, Ramadan
2021,
that was our first Ramadan fundraising.
I want you to think that you're one
of the donors. And now 4 years, you're
getting the sadaqa jariyah of being of training
over 40,000 people. The sadaqa jariyah of over
12,000
students in our learning platform. The sadaqa jariyah
of having the world's leading English learning platform
focused on developing Muslims to share Islam academically
and intellectually. The sadaqa jariyah of over 16
books, the sadaqa jaria of over 250
videos, the sadaqa jaria of in-depth YouTube series
videos, the sadaqa jaria
of our work on Zionism and Gaza, but
we're the only English speaking institute to produce
2 books on the topic within 7 weeks
of Israel's tyranny and the genocide. And we
produce 2 audio books and a course called
dehumanized,
and we engage in debates and on media
that had access and was watched by millions
of people. I could go on and on
and on. Imagine you were the person 3,
4 years ago, they gave us £10 per
month. You'd be just sitting back going, Bismillah,
I'm on the gravy train. I'm on the
reward gravy train.
Don't now now since you weren't that person
3, 4 years ago, but you are that
person right now. And the person right now,
you can give that £10 per month and
in 4 years we'll have a conversation you
were like you know what Alhamdulillah
Hamza was honest and open he told me
you Allah Bismillah
cause with that £10 look at the share
and the reward.
Look, training, training 40,000 people and multiple organizations,
they can have access to millions of people
around the world. You'll be getting a share
in the road of their work.
Allahu Akbar.
So dear brothers and sisters, go in the
description, the link below or go to sapiensinstitute.org/defenders
and donate
now.
Oh, you know that absolutely. And you remind
me of something. You know, analogy comes to
mind. You know, in crypto in the world
of crypto, you know that I I understand
it. There are a few things I've heard
from some of the brothers, and I think
it's a brilliant analogy. There's something called the
bull run,
every couple of years. Right? So the bull
run is where
crypto
tanks to a certain point. And maybe Ian
is completely, somewhat wrong, but I think he
gets a point. It tanks, and then everyone
waits,
you know, and waits for a couple of
years, and and something similar has been happening
recently. And then after a couple of years,
suddenly, there is another
rise. Right? Everyone goes in. Everyone invests at
that point.
So you mentioned the 2 guys that donated
in the beginning and that in the very
first stages, and they're looking back now and
thinking, we've earned so much reward. You know,
40,000 trained,
over 16 courses, over 16 books going all
around the world, training
organizations, institutes, tau leaders.
They are gaining all that reward, inshallah. Absolutely.
But now what we're trying to highlight, inshallah,
and I can see this, is that there's
another bull run. You can see it as
that now. That we're gonna we have plans
now to do some phenomenal work over the
next year and the next couple of years,
And it's gonna go exponentially, Shana. So we
have loads of books. Doctor is working. He
was mentioning the other day. He's working on
another book, which is more of a storytelling
format. He gives a phenomenal idea, and and
that's coming as well. We have a lot
we've got our finger on the past, brothers
and sisters, like I always say been saying
over the past couple of lives. We're trying
to think ahead, deal with all of the
issues and problems that are arising within society
now, today. We're not dealing with stuff that's
5 years old or 6 years old or
10 years old or that's outdated.
We're dealing with what's now, what's happening now,
what's coming. For example, I'll give you guys
another example. You know the, in the course,
the young Muslims guide.
Initially, when I was developing it, I didn't
have this section in there. But looking at
this sort of postmodern shift and the way
it's sort of transpiring into the social
environment. Because what you're seeing now is that
the people who are associated with some classical
naturalistic atheism and liberalism
a few years ago, Now they're shifting away
from that, and they're turning towards this new
age pseudo spirituality engaging in psychedelics,
wanting to have spiritual experiences,
wanting to redefine what truth is for themselves,
redefine what meaning is. You know, there is
no objective truth anymore for these people. They
just make things up as as they go
along.
So another section that I'm gonna add into
the course is to do with religious experiences
themselves.
You know? Because if you look at the
Islamic tradition,
you will see Ghazali,
Iqbal, for example.
All of these guys, one of the things
they focused on was religious experience
and how that was the highest form of
knowledge, basically,
when when it comes to one connecting with
the divine and that, you know, being spiritually
awakened.
So we're gonna have that in the course
as well. Because, yes, the rational element plays
a role that, you know, we live in
a world where rationality is big or was
big, but things are shifting now. So we're
gonna cater for what's coming as well, each
other. And the work's already been done by
our scholars. I was going through, Iqbal's reconstruction
of religious thought,
A very difficult book to sort of read.
The first time I remember, I tried to
read it and grapple with it a few
years ago. I couldn't understand it.
But now,
sir, you one thing you realize, all of
his book is based on that fundamental principle
of of religious experience and how he builds
that as an argument for Islam. So we're
going to incorporate stuff like this into it
as well where we're sharing look You're gonna
be rationally satisfied as a muslim. We have
the arguments. You know, everything is grounded. Everything
is preserved. It's all there Islam covers and
explains to us what the meaning of life
is. It answers all the existential questions and
all of these things.
But you also have to connect with what
you believe in now. Right? So that having
that experience is very important with the divine
as well. And how is that done? That's.
At praying properly, not just make just praying
and bouncing the head off the ground, but
actually connecting with Allah and all of these
things. So we're gonna build all of this
into the courses as well. So there's gonna
be a lot of stuff that's coming over
this year and next year, which is gonna
be phenomenal in each other. So we're we're
planning ahead, brother and sister. And this is
what I'm saying. You have to. If you
if you want to invest in something, this
is the investment in China. If you invest
in if you understand what's going on in
the world
as far as the ideologies are concerned. And
like Hamzah says, you know, everything starts with
the ideology. You know, that's the seed. And
then everything the plant grows from there. Everything
we see in the world today, what's happening
in Gaza, what's happening elsewhere in the world,
it all starts with the ideology, brothers and
sisters. We're trying to tackle that. We're trying
to tackle that, and you can help us
tackle that. So, inshallah, all the books, publications,
everything that comes, you get the reward for
it, inshallah.
May Allah bless you, brother.
It reminds me of, you know, when people
talk about religious experiences.
You know, sometimes in the dhow, we teach
people
not to
dismiss the experience because
they'll put up a barrier straight away, and
you're almost
dismissing
the what they consider to be real, and
you're dismissing something that they have a connection
with. And from a
psychological and and empathic point of view, this
is not the way forward.
So what we try and get them to
do is we've we don't validate the experience.
We appreciate that they've had an experience,
but we get them to stand in the
possibility
that the way you've understood
that experience
is not the only way.
Like, for example, a Jewish person may see
a dream, and they may think a better
guy is Moses,
and a Christian may see a better guy
thinking he is Jesus. Right? And the reason
they'll have the understanding
most likely is because they have a particular
frame of reference.
So what we do is we change that
frame of reference,
and we get them to see things in
the way that it should be understood. Like
one scholar said that, you know, most religious
experiences
are basically experiences of of oneness, essentially of
Tawhid.
But those experiences get skewed or misunderstood because
they have a false world view to understand
that particular experience.
Now as you're saying,
what so we're gonna be teaching them this
about world views, but at the same time,
since they have the correct world view, and
then when we get them to have those
experiences in a very deep and solid way,
then they're gonna be
formidable forces.
Like, when I was writing my book and
I was going through the chapter on worship,
while Allah's worthy of worship, that really changed
my understanding.
Because I had to study, like, Allah's names
and attributes. I had to reflect,
and that was transformative
for me.
And to the point where,
you know, you could throw I'm not saying
I'm formidable, but, you know, it's like
you
in your mind, you don't have the same
type of whisperings
you know, that was a spiritual experience for
me in a way. You know, understanding Allah's
names and attributes and trying to, you know,
figure them out and
understand how to articulate them from the point
of your while lives worthy of worship.
And that really, really helped. And I and
I know other brothers are like that too.
And it's like I think you told me
this one. It's like having a mango.
You know, if I'm having a mango and
it's a sweet mango, and people are saying
to me,
the whole world says to me, no, it's
bitter. I'm like, with all due respect, I've
tasted the mango. You haven't.
I know it's sweet. This is hakal yakin.
This is not only almel yakin.
This is not only,
aynal yakin. This is hakal yakin.
It's not only the the knowledge that, you
know,
like, I'll mean that you learn from a
book, from a scholar.
This is not knowledge that you've seen for
yourself the truth of it. You're experiencing it
yourself. Right? Like, you know,
the distinction of these different types of yakin
are
like someone who
is told his house is on on fire,
and they find that person trustworthy. That's the
elm ul yaqeen.
Then
then
the other form of yakin, hakal yakin sorry.
Ainul yakin, when you see it yourself, is
that you're you're watching your house and it's
being it's on fire.
And then hakal yapin is you're in your
house and it's on fire and you're feeling
it burning, crushing down.
Yeah. Now, you know, so when you have
the correct world view and you have deep
experiences with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
you will have that type of yaqeen. And
by the way, this is a caveat. I'm
not claiming to have that yaqeen.
All I'm saying is I'm claiming that the
process works.
That when you have a correct world view,
you're correct correct aqidah, you affirm the attributes
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. You affirm his
unicity, his transcendence.
You affirm the fact that he's worthy of
worship. You affirm that the Quran and the
sunnah are the basis
for all of
your understanding of reality, or it shapes your
reality and your understanding. It's the lens that
gives you accurate picture of how to understand
yourself, how to understand others, and how to
understand Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
When you do that and at the same
time, you have a spiritual connection by reflecting
Allah's names and attributes, you know, your understanding
as as Him. He's the king of all
kings. He's the benevolent king. He's the king
that is worthy of our humble adoration.
He's worthy of our service, of our submission,
of our love, of our adoration,
of our fear,
of our all acts of our worship. And
when you experience that
combined with the correct world view,
then it works. It helps in ways that
you you never believe.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think you summarized it
perfectly. So you begin with that solid world
view
and the truth from a rational
a I mean, there's nothing that's gonna shake
you. You know?
It's there's nothing like that.
Because,
you know, this is gonna be a short
life, inshallah, be nice and sweet, then it'll
be recorded, and people could watch it, and
they can donate. Now in the last 15
minutes or so, recorded and people could watch
it and they can donate. Now in the
last 15 minutes or so or so,
I want you to reflect or not reflect,
but to unpack a little bit more what
you said about, you know, you being a
parent actually
helped you
develop this course and think about this course.
So there's gonna be parents here, future parents.
There's gonna be teachers. There's going to be
people of influence whether they're imams.
Why would this type of book and course
be important for them as well?
Because it's so for me, starting with myself,
when that was one of the impetuses, that
that's what got me triggered.
Because I was thinking there's nothing I can
give, say, when my kids get to, Inshallah,
at the age of 15, 16,
what can I give them that they can
understand
that will make sense to them at their
level, but that can actually
affect change within them? You know, frame them
in the right way, condition them. Because everyone's
conditioned, bro. Everyone's brainwashed. You know, check the
dots in this. Everyone's brainwashed. It's just that
you choose your brainwashing.
Right? Choose the right brainwashing. You need the
right framing, the right sort of, way of
seeing reality. So what could I give them
which could get them to understand
that this is the truth,
this is the the correct way of life,
you know, and this is why it is
the correct way of life, and this is
how this way of life makes sense of
all of the questions I have.
It tells me who I am. It tells
me why I exist. It tells me where
I'm going. It tells me how to live
in this world. It tells me, you know,
how what knowledge is. It gives me the
most fundamental knowledge in regard 1st and foremost
in regards to my creator, Allah. We begin
with Allah. You know? And then everything else
stems from that.
That was the key thing for that was
the driving force. And that's why I even
did a short version of this course,
a very sort of, preliminary version where I
just put out my thoughts on on my
YouTube channel in a couple of, short videos.
And even that, bro, I I
some of the imams I spoke like, even
recently when we had the conferences before Ramadan,
one of the imams came up to me,
and he said that, yeah, I've been using
that. And we'll be I'll be using some
of the stuff from that that that video
series you did in our curriculum. And that
was just a very superficial summary of some
of the ideas that I had, the structure
in my mind that I wanted to put
put in place.
So, you know,
that that in itself gave me, you know
okay. It told me, yeah. Okay. This is
gonna be beneficial. Someone of knowledge,
you know, someone that studied sees this as
beneficial, considering the age that we live in
and the students he's dealing with and the
challenges they they're coming to him with. So
this is gonna be good, inshallah. If if
a preliminary version of that was so useful,
inshallah, this full complete version that we put
together and that's gonna come out is gonna
be extremely useful,
So it's gonna help them. They're gonna it's
gonna give teachings,
imams,
students of knowledge,
certain concepts and ideas
which relate to the world that we live
in today and which relate to the way
young people are conditioned and the way young
people see the world
and these ideologies. It's gonna teach give them
those concepts and ideas. So when they now
bring their knowledge and their onto
this or with this and they combine it
with this, it's gonna be phenomenal. It's gonna
it's
gonna ensure that everything they teach
gets right through to those young people.
And, you know, they
themselves because we wanna we wanna arm them,
bro, with this knowledge where they can have
these concepts where whatever ideology they they come
across today or the next 10 years, they
will be able to do the judge exposition
for themselves
and see, okay, which one which one is
stronger. You know and islam will always come
out the strongest once you understand the principles
and you know the the reality of world
views and how they work and what's out
there and how to deconstruct them and break
go right down to the the core of
those worldviews because every worldview is based on
some presuppositions
and foundational ideas.
When you look at these godless worldviews,
all of them begin with no god. And
that's that's it. That's a that's a nonstop,
right, if you really think about it. You
can't go anywhere from there.
However, they still do construct these these, you
know,
lavish buildings on top of these these shoddy
foundations or the appearance of these these beautiful
buildings, but they're nothing. They're they're empty. There's
void. They're just illusions. That's what they are.
Illusions that we stare at and we're impressed
with. So, inshallah, we're gonna help people understand
this and have to deconstruct this, inshallah. So
I think it's gonna be phenomenal from this
perspective, inshallah.
So
we have a doctor Usman Lateef in the
house.
So you came out perfect time, but we're
we're gonna wrap up in 15 minutes.
So you're the you're the you're the perfect,
the best,
the best has come for the the last
few moments
to touch, move, and inspire us. What we've
been talking about, my beloved doctor, is that
we're talking about the young Muslims guide to
God's world.
Why it's important to actually address particular demographic
within our community
to nip it in the bud as they
say. Because when people become teenagers and just
before university, they start to develop an ideological
frame as a result of the ideological environment
that they live in.
And,
you know, for example, even when it comes
to things like what is right and what
is wrong and, you know, things to do
with ideas such as freedom.
Like, you know, a lot of the youth
who will adopt a liberal secular narrative
on morality, they'll be like, well, I'm not
harming anyone.
I can do it as long as I
don't harm anyone. They think that becomes a
universal
absolute truth or a principle, but in reality,
it's predicated on a particular
individualistic
or at least a normative ethical theory that
is that is secular. It could be utilitarianism.
They'd be like, well,
as long as it doesn't harm society,
then or the collective,
then it's not evil. I'm allowed to do
it. Right? But that is based on an
assumption that
that utilitarian way of thinking is correct.
We would say no. It's not just about
harms. It's about Allah's commands.
And even your definition of harm, Allah knows
what that definition is better than you do
and so on and so forth. So
even understanding of morality, understanding of freedom.
Right? People think freedom is doing doing whatever
you want within the the law or within
a particular paradigm. Yeah. But what paradigm?
If you look at the academic works on
freedom, it's basically the non violation of your
rights.
You're free when your rights are not violated.
Simple as that. It's not even about coercion
because there could be instances that you need
to be coerced or you have an untenable,
second,
option,
but it's untenable, and it's implausible for you
to follow that option. You're coerced
in some way, but that coercion itself doesn't
necessarily mean that you're unfree.
You'd only be unfree if your rights are
violated.
Now what they would think is I'm free
within the liberal paradigm, the liberal conception of
rights. We say no.
You need to if under if freedom is
about the non violation of rights, then you
need to understand, well, who has the right
to give you your rights and who draws
the lines? Allah. So so world views affect
how you understand freedom, how you understand morality,
and so many different things. So this work
is gonna be doing that. It's gonna be
written as a book, and it's gonna be
an online course, and it's gonna be an
on-site course that we deliver
all around the world in the UK and
Europe. And I'm looking forward to
Imran teaching us how to deliver that course.
And
and that's part of the key project that
we're gonna be delivering after Ramadan.
And I think this is exactly what was
needed. A book
that is in a in a in a
format and in a style that young people
can understand.
And also the training is done in a
way that young people can understand, but also
imams, parents, and teachers,
which is solving a a a great problem
that we're facing at the moment. Because if
you look at Pew Research in 2017,
they analyzed America,
and they basically said the number of people
who become Muslim is around the same as
the number of people who leave Islam.
And I think one reason for this is
because it's an ideological
frame. You know, America is a liberal secular
nation, if you like. And that ideology is
gonna affect people's understanding of religion and and
themselves.
And because many of the Muslims are not
brought up understanding Islam as a world view,
as the correct lens to see reality clearly,
to understand themselves, understand Allah, and to understand
understand others,
then they're gonna be infected by an alien
world view, and they're gonna put false lenses
on their eyes. And they won't be able
understand themselves, understand Islam, understand reality properly, and
that may push them away.
So that was the nutshell. That what that's
what we were talking about really,
and talking the importance of the these type
of projects because we have another project coming
up from yourself as well because you have
a story that you're producing with another publisher.
But also we have the comprehensive dua manual
that's coming up as well, which I think
is gonna be one of our greatest projects
that,
we already started, but hopefully we'll be able
to deliver very soon, but it's a massive
piece of work.
And we don't have a data manual. So
maybe you could, talk a little bit about
that, talk about
the work that we just spoke about, a
young Muslim's guide to a goddess world view,
and why it's important,
and why people should should support this type
of work.
No. May Allah bless you. Thank you so
much.
So to clarify, I'm not the best in
anything
and no purpose in anything. All successes from
Allah
alone, and we are simply just,
mechanisms
and and tools Allah uses,
by his mercy and grace to fulfill a
task that's beloved to him. May Allah grant
all of us tofiq and make us busy
in his remembrance for his sake. Allahu Amin.
As you were speaking, I thought of 2
things that I think are very important.
One is Quranic, one's prophetic.
And the Quranic one I thought of as
you were speaking, in fact, is from Surah
Luqman
and is to do with how we identify
what is true wisdom.
And as you mentioned from a liberal secular
paradigm,
there is subjectivity
in terms of outlining what is actually good,
what is goodness for people, what is wise
for people to do.
And we have a beautiful beautiful paradigm in
the Quran in fact about this in Sura
Al Qumman
and that in Sura Al Qumman Allah says
that this is a book you know of
wisdom
and Allah then begins Surah Alkmaan in fact
going through
several things. And one of the things that
Allah mentioned, I think in iron 9 or
10, Allah mentioned Allah creates
heavens and the earth.
This is a very beautiful part.
Without a pillar that you see.
So Allah is saying that without that the
heavens and the skies that everything that we
see is there sustained by Allah
and we don't see a support mechanism as
we don't see a pillar
holding those guys up.
Allah in the Quran says that Allah of
course is sustaining and maintaining that.
So what we find therefore is that we
find things that are macro outside of us,
big things and Allah is saying that they're
sustained by Allah.
But then Allah mentioned next to Allah says,
Allah says,
now this is a Christian of Allah.
So show me then what have does this
create besides Allah?
And indeed the wrongdoers are in obvious error.
So Allah then appoint this very strong dictative
Hadak Khulkullah, this is Allah's creation.
But then the next Ayah is interesting that
Allah says that we gave
wisdom.
So Allah has already said in fact in
the beginning of Surah Al Khumman that this
is a book of wisdom
and we have now Allah is saying that
Luqman we gave Luqman wisdom, we gave the
the small
the the micro level, the human being Luqman
in this case, alaihis salam, we gave him
wisdom.
And even though the ayah before is about
sustaining sustenance, Allah gives
power and support to heavens and the earth
and the mountains Allah.
Make the heavens, this held up without that
you see, without what you see.
Allah then says we gave Luqman wisdom.
Saying to him,
be grateful to Allah.
Right? So that's the instruction here. So connection
of wisdom to Shukr. Now the next Ayah
is Allah says Luqman advise his son,
don't make Shirk with Allah that is the
greatest of all injustice of all oppressions.
So so many beautiful interplays happening in these
verses SubhanAllah.
So on the one hand of course you
see that heavens and the earth create a
support without without support without without pillars.
But then when it comes down to the
human level,
the human
self,
the human paradigm,
Allah is saying well there is a need
then of support.
So heavens and the earth are without support
you see but down when it comes down
to the micro level from the macro to
the micro
human beings are in need of support
and so Allah is saying we gave that
support to Luqman
of course by telling him
be grateful to Allah and that's his wisdom
and then from Luqman to his son
saying,
advising him
He's instructing him don't make sure to put
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the sacrifice of all
injustice. Then it goes on the command advising
his son in many different ways. Things to
do. Pray salaam and be good to people
and so on and so forth. So we
find therefore that
Allah is telling us that
even though the the the macro side of
us, the big things
Seem to be that Allah is sustaining them
happens in the night and the day Allah
lets things run freely.
Allah is saying that isn't the same with
the human condition.
The human self
is in need of instruction, the human self
is in need of guidance. We are people
in need
of correct guidance and without that we have
anarchy.
And so imagine
if the heavens and the earth
were not sustained,
what would you have? You'd have anarchy,
you'd have chaos
in the cosmic bodies. Everything will be floating
and crashing and destruction.
But Allah sustains maintains that and therefore the
same principle applies for the human condition without
correct guidance. We're going to be an an
anarchy and animalistic and we would have no
guidance and no source of reference and no
source of morality nothing. Everything is called subjective
and chaotic reasoning.
This is a beautiful illustration therefore, if you
think closely
about from the micro
to the micro then to the micro even
more still Luqman advising his small son what
to do. That's a beautiful thing I think
SubhanAllah.
The second thing is as Samzal was speaking
I thought of the Prophet advised to Ibn
Abbas. Ibn Abbas was small
and he was writing behind Rasool and the
Prophet says to him, Yahulam,
O young boy,
I will teach you some words be mindful
of them. This is Ibn Abbas journey through
life.
So he needs to know what what to
do in life because
if without that guidance,
what would you do in life? SubhanAllah.
And so he says to him, he says
It's interesting so Iffalallahu from the word So
protect
Allah is
a protector
So he says that
be mindful of Allah this translation be mindful
Allah and Allah will keep and protect you.
But it's like saying you know protect
that sense of belief in yourself concerning Allah
and Allah will protect you. Right, so how
do you do that? How do you how
do you protect that in yourself? Remember of
course that there is a vulnerability
in the human self and I think that
you must mashallah. You might cover this you
know in your book of course. We also
have the awakening the truth,
cause and I'm also writing about this in
the book I'm writing now on the dower
manual about the human condition. Right. So what
are what are we left with? Now we
of course believe in those axiomatic truths, those
first principles like the importance of the Fitra.
Now that connects to the human condition.
If the fitra which is this,
original normative state of man,
inclined towards knowing Allah Subhanahu wa'ala. If that
becomes cloud over time, clouded
and besmirched and stained
through negative influences
and bad company
and bad social media and bad epistemology and
learning and bad influences
and and bad beliefs and all this corrosive
effects around him that Fitra state is corrupted.
So that can happen of course to our
young people because in schools
they're seeing this, hearing this, you have social
pressures all this stuff around them and then
that fitra state is pure becomes
corrupted. The prophet says to Ibn Abbas
Be mindful of Allah meaning protect
Allah in yourself
when you protect that state of believing in
Allah in yourself and Allah will maintain protect
you. So it's conditional that you know, you
have you have to maintain in yourself and
then of course in your life you will
have Allah sing and then it says that
be mindful of Allah we'll find Allah before
you and when you ask ask only from
Allah and when you seek refuge, seek refuge
only with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. That means
your first point of call
is Allah. That means something happens in life,
you don't resort to these vices of gambling
and drinking
and and other things just to seek some
kind of sedation
and you know momentary
satisfaction that's short lived and is not fulfilling.
Allah is saying, You seek, you see you're
stuck in life ask Allah. That's a very
powerful powerful point in fact For young people
to grow up knowing of course they have
Allah. It's a very powerful thing because of
course they're going to run through problems in
life, they're going to have issues with friendships,
with their exams, with relationships, they're gonna have
so many things happen in life. You know,
I turned 40 last year and I was
giving a talk SubhanAllah. I was 41 very
last year and I was giving a talk
in an Islamic school
and,
and on on that day, on the day
I turned on my birthday on the on
the 40 41
day, I was 41 that day. And, so
I was speaking to children who were like
14,
and I turned 41.
And I said that you know you guys
are lucky because
your your 4 is a safe 4 comes
after the 1. Why is it is it
is it dangerous for because he can't before
the one, you know. So I said before
between the 14
and 41,
lots will happen in life, you know. And
and you go to your point and the
prophet is preparing the blessing that you know
you will grow up in life but if
you're mindful of Allah you will have Allah
with you all the time. Then he said
if you seek refuge to Allah, if you
refuse then seek refuge to Allah Subhanahu wa
ta'ala meaning you know have Allah as a
protector for you in all things
and one narration and if you know
If
whatever
past you was not gonna strike you, whatever
struck you was not gonna miss you was
not gonna, you know, affect you. And that
success with patience
and after hardship there's ease. And
they mentioned maybe some more things. So and
there's a different notion as well about the
nature of the world if they get to
attack you and so on and so forth.
Anyway, these two things came to my mind
as Hamzah was speaking because I think that
they're important advice by how we maintain ourselves
through the ingredients of faith in Islam,
in a time that is corrosive because so
many corrosive things
around us.
So we need therefore that sense of
protection
from Allah and Allah gives us therefore means
like Luqmana, this father, the father is like
the protector over the son because he's advising
what to do.
Sometimes like for example you know yourself in
our mentoring program you know we have young
kids that come to our Misha, I mean
18 and above because of
we can't have younger than that. But they
come and they come with these
sometimes they're afraid to speak to their own
fathers about these concerns, about belief and they
have doubt in Islam.
And they're able to have a one to
one call with us to speak about their
problems. Of course it's a free service so
we recommend everybody, everybody particularly today could be
you know just donate SubhanAllah. Everyone should donate
and support the cause because this is so
crucial
in this time and of course your book
Masha'Allah Imran will be a free book for
people to read SubhanAllah. A free ebook and
it will be a free course SubhanAllah.
You know at the same time SubhanAllah. So
everything is free. Why are we doing it?
Because we realize that there is an urgent
need to do it. You know, I was
in, you know, I was in Pakistan some
years ago. You know in Pakistan you have
this very big you probably been to this
big bookshop in Islamabad.
You know, Adnan took me. And and, you
know, it's a very beautiful shop and it
has like different layers, different floors.
And the Islamic books seem to be at
the at the back of the bookshop you
know. And
as we went in the bookshop,
there are all these kind of like
advertisements
of the books of Sam Harris,
of Richard Dawkins, of all these atheist authors
and I thought to myself I said to
Anadha
why why why are they doing that? I
mean these are books are supposed to not
give credence to they should be at the
back somewhere but they're at the front.
So obviously
people not knowing anything are going to end
up thinking these books must have some substance
to them and they would read them And
but then of course you'd be
be baffled by these false arguments
and,
and not knowing of course that you know
there is of course the Islamic reason which
is far more superior than that. The point
is that we're trying to develop a an
epistemology
to push back against this false learning.
For ourselves,
for your children, for your nephews, for your
nieces, for your grandchildren,
you know, for people around us.
So as some as we mentioned about the
people not only embracing but also leaving Islam
that's something that we have to face and
we don't want a situation that it's so
close to home, it becomes like we feel
the urgency because it's affecting one of our
own.
So, you know, may Allah increase and bless
bless the
Absolutely. You know, it's a all of the
things you were mentioning are so beautiful and
profound, especially the narration of the prophet about,
you know,
about being aware of Allah, protecting his deen,
making sure you don't forget Allah, you have
taqwa, and Allah will protect you. You know,
this is this is a way of looking
at reality.
You know, this is a way of looking
at the world that the prophet is teaching
us. And it's very different from the way
that people are being taught to look at
the world today. You know, they've been taught
to look at the world through the lenses
of materialism
and secularism and naturalism and atheism.
And this inevitably,
anything that begins without Allah ends bad, right,
for everyone.
And that's one of the key tenets or,
you know, focal points of the course itself
is about world views, you know, having the
correct world worldview, understanding why it's the correct
worldview,
looking at all of these other ideologies and
things that are out there, which are, you
know, ephemeral and empty and are not gonna
lead to anything
significant in your not nothing important in your
life. They're not going to help you or
benefit you in any way. They're just going
to lead you to crushing and burning at
some point in your life. And that's what
people think. People are crashing and burning all
over the place. Right? So it's it's it's
gonna be a very important course, brothers and
sisters, and a book inshallah. And like we
were saying, so there's there's a couple of,
I guess, to summarize, there's,
4 or 5 books that I can think
of right now that Sapiens is publishing. And
one that's been published externally but doctor Usman
is inshallah working on nonetheless
is you know the first one is the
dua manual which is gonna be very important
and profound inshallah. We have nothing like it,
as far as I know, from the top
of my head, as far as a comprehensive
dua guide, which also focuses on the the
one giving the dua himself or herself. Right?
So and on and on their development, and
how they grow and mature as a as
a person that calls to Allah.
The second book is that the book doctor
Usman is working on, which is more of
a story,
is more of a novel format,
which is gonna be phenomenal because that genre,
again, hasn't been touched upon much. There's not
much content out there in that genre itself.
We've also got the young muslim's guide to
a godless world which is coming which we've
been talking about today. We also have the
dying to believe book. I'm gonna that's gonna
come out before, the Young Muslims Guide, which
again is more of a story format inshallah.
So we have 2 story format type of
books coming out. Then also we have,
Hijab's London here,
manual inshallah, which is coming, which is gonna
be amazing. It's gonna be comprehensive.
So those are just a couple that I
could think off top of my head. I'm
sure there's gonna be many more books. I'm
sure doctor Osman may wake up one day
and say okay I'm gonna write another book
inshallah. So you may get more than 2
this year maybe 3 or 4 inshallah if
Allah wills. But doctor Osman before we wrap
up,
why don't you tell us because we've been
talking about publications a lot this livestream.
Just tell us about the importance of publications
and the written word. How significant is it?
Why is it so important in the age
of technology and social media and all of
this type of stuff?
Yeah. It's it's, you know, the first thing
I would say my dear brother is that,
you know,
without Allah
support those limbs couldn't move
for your eyes to blink and to see
a page,
you know, for your pen to move, for
your hands to move. And so we give
all credit to him alone
All blessings are for him alone
All tafik from him
alone All guidance and correctness
is from him alone All mistakes are our
own.
And so we begin by saying that, you
know, we begin by
saying in the name of Allah.
And it's interesting that the first revelation on
what could be tonight
was recite in Allah's name. You know, it's
not egotistic
learning like that's kind of a false paradigm
where you have egotistic learning about just learning
become illiterate
illiterate and Allah is saying recite, learn
in in the name of your Lord who
created you. So therefore you make everything you
do,
for his pleasure, for his divine,
you know, for blessings. So that's the first
thing. So we remember that we are simply
just
trying to do something with all ability from
him alone.
Musa gets to Madyan and when he gets
to Madyan, he's of course escaping Firaun. And
he finds these 2 young ladies and they're
trying to water their sheep. And, he says
to them, you know,
what is up with you too? And they
said that, you know, our father is elderly.
They can't be here to water the sheep.
And so we're doing it. And then he,
watered the sheep for them.
It turned towards the shade, and he says
a beautiful dua. He says,
my lord, whatever whatever good you've sent me,
I'm desperately in need of. I'm Saqid. I'm
desperately in need of. So whatever blessings you
have in your life,
thank Allah for them in order for Allah
then to increase you, you know with them.
And that's the first thing for us to
remember. The second thing of course is that,
It's crucial crucial.
Remember that we were not simply reliant on
contemporary fads of social media
and and quick information
because that's simply passing through time
and there's no guarantee this will in fact
remain forever.
Not everything that we do is not only
for today, in in that of course there
are still people who read and we have
to read to process information, we have to
act upon information, all that kind of a
process.
But we have of course the book and
we have the course. Some people in fact,
might not read the book, but they'll watch
the course and some people watch the course
and might not read the book, you know.
Some people will do both of them which
of course is the ideal thing. So we
wanna make it accessible for all people by
having all the material correctly referenced. This is
the key thing. So I could say something
and you know when you when you speak
like for example, like you've been speaking
for a long time SubhanAllah.
Sometimes words are not remembered.
They're like in the air, they're floating along
and this they're just hardly many people will
learn the words that you're saying, But when
it's in
the book, it's there and people can learn
the words of the book. They can memorize
words from the book. They can learn the
arguments from the book.
It's hard for example, you might I might
give a talk like for example, I've given
talks on on Easter and Islam and and
then I can end the book last time.
But I don't think anybody was taking notes
in fact in the talk. So I don't
know to what extent they would have would
have remembered that stuff like let's say this
year from last year. But if it's on
if it's on paper, if it's in a
book then that academic source is always available.
The second thing of course is that
we you know I did my I did
my post talk SubhanAllah and also a fake
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Now that my second book is very different
to my first one. My second book is
on war and suffering and international relations and
about you know it's about Palestine and Iraq
and this and that.
And you know one of my one of
my push my motivational forces from Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala was that I saw that there's
so many
non muslims writing about these topics and I
simply didn't find the Muslims
in this field. I saw I would buy
books from Amazon again and again and again
and I couldn't find
representation there. So I wanted to have a
voice you know from
a Muslim lens in my writing that I
felt could be something in that field and
I get all to fiqh from Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
It's important therefore for us to be able
to write about important things from today from
an Islamic
lens, with an Islamic perspective. You know
kids would learn things in school using books.
They would read their science books and maths
books whatever
and the teacher could of course teach the
books from an incorrect paradigm
promoting a secular atheistic
worldview perspective and that's going to confuse them
about material.
When we write the book like for example
the books that you're writing
Hijab's book on on Burhan,
books on atheism or other books, they're written
from a very strong chronic
perspective to make it Quranic centric, akhiracentric.
You know why do we do anything because
you we want to insha Allah by Allah's
mercy attain his favor. So you want to
make your writing akhirah centric. Like you want
this this book that you're writing. You want
one day that to become sadaqa jariyah for
you and that people would learn your argument.
They would that's gonna benefit countless people and
so after even though you might have passed
away.
But you want you want of course that
the whole point of the the supremacy of
Islam is ingrained in people's minds, hearts, consciousness
in a forever.
So
I would say that you know whoever is
able to put pen to paper.
I've
you know, I've been like I've been involved
in the book clubs for a very long
time. I started doing a book club. I
used to take the train from Slough to
Walthamstow.
We used to have book club in Walthamster.
People in fact, you know,
I used to go there, I think every
2 weeks we used to go there and,
and hold this book club in in Walthamsew.
And so I think that and it was
really a beauty experience but I think that
the more we read the more we should
be able to then to write. I think
it's one thing about reading, but not to
make reading the whole pursuit,
but then of course if you're able to
if you're able to then put pen to
paper and even I said to you I
gave a talk in
on
on a few weeks ago on on, author
day or book day book week or something.
And I was invited by a Islamic school
where I live and, to take my books.
I took the Sapiens books with me and
gifted them in a handout to school,
and and they had questions
about, like, what you asked right now about,
you know, how to write and what to
do and what to whatever. And I said
that, you know, you guys have these,
small notebooks in your school.
Whatever you think of just jot it down
because one day one day those words could
become important to you. One day you might
rely on those words. And so I think
that sometimes
we shouldn't think like there might be a
book like this is a book on
Spain
fiction by Matthew Carr, devils,
in Cardona.
But
but I don't think his
his ideas didn't begin
by writing a whole chapter. They began with
writing a sentence which became a paragraph, which
became a chapter, which became a book And
so therefore, you don't give up hope you
just carry on doing it. But the book
is crucial
because it provides
a very strong good Islamic methodology
of learning,
for ourselves and for others and people can
benefit from it. And so and remember of
course
that, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is Alim Al
Hakim, Allah is all knowing, Allah is all
wise. That means our vantage point in life
is very limited,
skewed, you know we can't see that much,
we don't know what's gonna happen. Allah knows
all things and it could be that what
you write today,
like look at for example, great words like
Ibn Taymiyyah or
Al Bukhari.
You know, they were not I mean Bukhari
was not I think Bukhari was or or
or imamsa not very popular in their time.
But now of course every household has Sahil
Bukhari or has Sahil of Imam Muslim or
as somehow it was. Meaning that the scholars
of course,
they didn't see their writing only for their
time, for their students.
But now
since you know centuries have passed and their
works are extremely important.
And so therefore we're not limited by the
fact that I might write something today. Maybe
I have some readers Insha'Allah today you can
benefit, but maybe the book will be really
important
tomorrow,
100 years down the line.
There's a beautiful narration I mentioned SubhanAllah.
Once, Abdul Abin Salam Muhammad
Allah
Subhabi Jalil he said that he said,
in Sumit if
you heard that Dajjal has come out, Antichrist
has come out. He says, and then sow
your seeds quickly.
He says,
don't delay.
Because
because
there'll be people who will live after Dajjal.
So he said that
when you sow your seeds don't delay it.
The hadith says that if you're in Karma
De Sa'a, if the hour comes and one
of you is sowing a seed on the
floor then don't get up until you planted
planted a seed or Qumaqal.
His narration is like that,
but then he says that
but after Dajjal people will live.
Meaning you have life. So he's saying therefore
that don't stop the work.
Today
just because you're frantic about the job coming,
what if what if when he goes people
will still live after him. So they might
need your work, you know. They might need
the fruits of the trees. So therefore the
idea is that, you know, you keep investing.
This is investment insha'Allah for
today
and for tomorrow inshallah as well.
Doctor. Aswan, very beautiful.
And, you know, I guess he he summarized
the the importance of writing, and reading
these days for people. And and like you
said, you know, the very first revelation to
come down was
know, Iqra.
So read in the name of your lord
who created and, you know, the emphasis on
reading and studying and it was there from
the from the get go, from the very
beginnings,
So brothers and sisters, you know,
it may be the 23rd night. It may
be it is the 23rd night. You know,
it may be the odd night. Well, it
is. Well, potentially, depending on when you start
fasting, but we are in the last 10
nights of Ramadan. Laylatul Qadr could be any
of these 10.
You know. So make good of to our
brothers and sisters. Support us the best you
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Support the work. We're going to Secains Institute
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And if Allah wills, you know you are
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because you are
facilitating this amazing work inshallah so definitely support
the work If you can't support it financially,
then share it. Make dua for us inshallah.
Doctor Athan, anything else you wanna say before
we wrap up for today?
No. Just may Allah, may Allah increase all
of us. Of course, these are days
of increase. And so one of the things
that we should do to increase, of course,
is giving sadaqah
and you know support the work inshallah because
that's that's on you inshallah.
That's with you. That's for you. And that
will not diminish, decrease any reward from anybody.
It It will increase and enhance
you. So you know if you if you
if you donate
£10 a month
that means you're part of the Sapiens project.
That means you're carrying this with you. Whatever
we end up doing, that's also with you.
The reward is also with you. You're you're
the you're the support base for this. And
it's like, you know, we can't we can't
be everywhere at the same time all the
time. And it's wonderful thing we wanna get
involved with, but when we support each and
every
worthy cause and it's many worthy causes in
the world today to support including of course
Sapiens and other charities as well, then of
course that means that you're benefiting, you know,
from that at the same time.
And don't let the opportunity pass because,
if it passes and it passes and then
that's gonna be might be a cause of
regret for for us. May Allah save and
protect all of us. Allah,
Amen.
Brothers and sisters, like I said, please share
this. We're gonna go offline now but please
share this if you watch this after, you
know, the recording is done and and, published
on the YouTube.
Please share this. Please support the work inshallah.
May Allah bless you guys.
And we will join you again on the
25th
in tonight, which is in,
2 days time. Join us then. We'll come
back with another important topic that we'll discuss.
Doctor. Asmaj coming on may Allah bless you
inshallah.
inshallah.