The Information Age has brought us unprecedented convenience but at a heavy price. Rumors, slander, and lies have the ability to spread across vast spaces, leaving individuals and communities reeling in the aftermath. This episode expounds on the current crisis of misinformation and how to protect ourselves from its destructive nature through sacred guidelines that place knowledge over information.
Hamza Yusuf – Sacred Text Messages S01 E03 – When No News Is Good News
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The speakers discuss the importance of considering the context of Islam's text messages and rumors, as it is crucial to avoid false and inaccurate statements. They also touch on the history of Islam, including the story of the Islamist's Sun satisfaction and the " handyman" claims to be the best of them. The speakers stress the importance of privacy and alerting people about false and inaccurate statements, while also reminding them not to be caught in the "afterlife zone." They also discuss the use of grammar in media and how it is the evil principle of the 20th century, and the importance of being raised and privacy in media.
AI: Summary ©
Mohammed what on earth he was, he was an empty steamer and hamdulillah salaam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh who Alhamdulillah we're meeting again in this podcast for sacred text messages, which was entitled to remind us that we have our own text messages from Allah subhanho wa Taala. So many people are looking at text messages from creatures when we actually have text messages from the creator of creatures. And we
we should be concerned about reading them and thinking and reflecting on them. Today I wanted to look at a hadith that the Prophet sallallahu Sallam
told us would happen towards the latter days. And there's a few different narrations of the Hadith but one of them there's one from Ohm selama one of the wives of the prophets a lot is that him and she said are the lower on her and her semi at Rasul Allah has Salalah and it was sent me a cord lay at the end and a nurse is a man you kill the Wolfie has saw that you set the coffee had Kadam Will you How will you feel? I mean, will your terminal fee aloha in your shed and model in the new stash? Had we actually full model we're in the new staff.
We call aside the nasty bit dunia look at Abu Luca
Sudhi. So in this Hadith, which is related by Ronnie that I'm selama relate. The Prophet sallallahu Sallam said, verily there will come upon people at a time when truthful people would be deemed liars. And they would also deem liars to be truthful that a trustworthy person would be deemed treacherous, and a treacherous person would be deemed trustworthy. And the province allies him said that a man would swear an oath were enemies to shed even if he had not been asked to swear an oath. And then he said that the most felicitous people are the people have the most joy in the world would be look I've been looking at, which is an Arabic idiom for the lowest of the low. And he said they
would neither believe in Allah nor his prophet. And so this is an indication of a certain time that would come but there's another Hadeeth, which is related, a very similar thing where the Prophet Sall I sent him said that Benia de si, si noona had an in one, narration had to add that before the actual hour comes, you would have years of deception. And then he repeated this about that the heart in would be believed, and treacherous, people would be deemed trustworthy and truthful ones would be deemed liars. So I think it's very important that he told us that there would be years of deception, there would be a lot of deception, where you, you would look at things and you wouldn't know what
was happening. And one of the verses in the Quran that's really important, the reason for it coming down was that a man came to the prophet and was actually a man and worried, even having more was actually one of the righteous of the Sahaba. But he told the province I sent him about some people that they had abandoned Islam without really firmly establishing that fact. And so the verse that was revealed about that was you under the arm and injure a confess upon being at the end. So this man who was actually not a fast ship, is the cause for this idea to be revealed. And the reason the commentators say is because if you transmit things without ascertaining whether they're true or not,
it's an act of fisc. It's an act of profligacy, of putting you outside of the pale of what's accepted with Allah and His messenger. And so the Prophet Sall lightsome also said that it's enough to deem a person a liar, who repeats everything he hears. Now, one of the things about the time we're living in is rumors just circulate so fast. In fact, according to experts, apparently, and we have to take all this with a grain of salt to be consistent with what I'm talking about. false news spread six times faster than actually news. That's true. But I would argue that most news by the criteria that we were given to judge whether something was true or false, nothing that we read can
be taken at face value, we have to really consider everything we read to be potentially false. I mean, that's that's by using our standards because we have extremely high standards, especially when they deal with a person's honor their ailed and one of the things that the prophets Allah sent him said about the latter days. He said that you're living in a time that people are like fruitful trees, but there's coming a time when they'll be like thorny bushes.
They'll be like trees with thorns. And he said that, then nerfed to home nafa thought if you speak to them, they'll speak to you. We interact to home. Matera cook that and if you turn away from them, they won't leave you alone way the hot up to men home, your blue book. And if if you try to avoid them, they will seek you out. And then one of the Sahaba said, What do you tell us to do in those days? And he said, to crudo Homer Baca laomi, far katika loan them your good name for the day when you'll need to take that loan back. In other words, just let them slander you and let them say what they're going to say about you, and just considered a loan to them, and you'll get their huseynov on
the day of judgment when you need it. So he was actually telling us that there's going to be a time when people will just say things and, and they won't leave you alone, they'll just seek you out and hunt you out. And there's a lot of this is online, because people now they just talk about other people. And it says if when you go online, all for Muslims, I mean, I have to believe a lot of the comments must that have Muslim names must be from people outside of our religion, because I can't believe Muslims would write some of the things that they write on these things, we have to just assume that these are actually people trying to make Muslims look bad, because it's hard to believe
that Muslims could actually do these things. And so people just seem to when they go online, feel like they can say whatever they want, and not have any repercussions. But there's actually a day of judgment, and everything you say is being recorded, literally and SubhanAllah. I mean, I'm right now talking into a recorder. So the Quran says we will show them our signs. And the whole thing I can't there's things on YouTube, I wish I could take down but I can't. Because it's just there in what they call the data sphere, the NOAA sphere. There's nothing we can do about that. Well, that's your whole life. And on the Day of Judgment, you're going to have to see, in fact, there's something
called the odd in our tradition, which is where you have to watch your whole life. Now fortunately, like do you have in dunya have something called editing machine in which you can edit out things. And Toba is one way of editing your life. So if you really make a sincere Toba, it's like you can cut out that part of the film that you're gonna have to watch in the afterlife. One of the interesting things about the afterlife is that believers that are in a good state with Allah subhanaw taala get private screenings, whereas the other people have to everybody watches it. That's why it's so long. It just goes on and on and on the Day of Judgment, because everybody has to see
all these things. And that's why Traditionally, the Muslims used to say yes, oh, veiler of things, you know, to bail us. So these verses that were revealed in the Quran about this event that took place, are you Hello, Dina amaroo, India, a confessor on beneva empathy. You know, if people come with news, then to be you know, clarify it. And there's another Pura, which is Tessa Beto, because they're written the same way. But this is a different color. It's sound recension. And what that means to be you know, into thaba. To to Bayonne is to make sure that you know what's being said because sometimes we misinterpret words to thaba to is make sure that it actually happened. In all
news, we have to make sure because we know fake news happens. And we know even news casters have to retract what they say sometimes or that but very often nobody knows about the retraction because it's put the next day or something and, and so a lot of people are harmed and that's why Allah says, and to civil Coleman behera tim fotozap, her animal, abdomen abdomen, because you might actually harm some people out of ignorance on spreading this news, and then you'll be feel remorseful about it. Better to be remorseful here than on the Day of Judgment, but there's going to be a lot of people with great remorse on the Day of Judgment. And then why no more than a few coma rasulillah II
know that the Messenger of Allah is among you. His Sunnah is amongst us. I mean, we should be reminded of his Sunnah because the prophets I sent him Tara Kofi comb ambrane ma Temasek Don't be him a length of the Lu badie. You know, I left you two things if you hold to them you will never go astray que tabula erotic tabula rasa meditators to rewire of that the book of Allah and my family and the book of Allah and my Sunnah, and both are from the Sunni tradition. So these are sacred trust that the prophets are some left. There's a amazing Hadith, which is Sahih were the prophets I said I'm said that that is cinnamyl hareem and was say yuru. To come a better Reba for to Berlin
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That Islam began a strange affair, and it will return a strange affair. So bless it are the strangers Booba they say is a tree in paradise that the righteous sit under, but it also does just has the idea of blessing. So bless it are the strangers and then they asked him who those horror about were, who are the strangers, he said they are the people that rectify my Sunnah after the people have corrupted it. So these are the people that actually rectify the Sunnah of the Prophet. In times when his Sunnah his way is being corrupted, I think it should be very clear to a lot of us, if not all of us that the Sunnah of the prophet has been corrupted by our community because we don't
practice these things anymore. Men can Yeoman will be labeled Yama, arsha, then the apple hire and Ollie azmuth, whoever believes in Allah on the last day, let him speak good or be silent, let him speak good or be silent, say good things. We have a problem of like these critics that want to just everything everybody does, they will just jump on it. And one of the things and I've tried I mean, I've been a public figure for many, many years, I've really tried to avoid that my whole public career, just because I thought that was sooner like to practice that. That was my understanding. Like you can talk about ideas, it's important. If there's bad ideas out there, you should criticize
ideas, but attacking people. Now one of the things you might not have, as it says, in kuttabul element, which is the first book of the year, which is the river vacation or the revival of the Islamic sciences, he begins with the book of knowledge, because that's how Islamic sciences are revived. In that book, he says he calls these people the foul scholars Oh, not a su. And he said the hallmark of foul scholars is they attack other scholars. That is their Hallmark. And he said they always do it, claiming that they're defending the religion. They're doing it out of righteousness, and the boon on ad hoc, they're defending the religion. But then he says, in reality, they're
undermining the religion. He goes into the psychology behind it. And he says the actual reason why they're doing it is because they know that the quickest way to gain followers is by attacking others. And this is a psychology. And so one of the things that you will notice that some people they're on, for instance, they have a channel or something online, and their normal talks will have very low viewing, like a few 100 people, but then when they attack a scholar, and they put the name of the scholar, why you shouldn't follow so and so or why so and so's misguided. They'll have 1000s of people going onto it. So they know that it works. And that's what he does. It says this is a
strategy for gaining followers. And he says it's back in keytab, in which is now in online, they call them followers, like how many followers you have. And followers means nothing. It doesn't mean you're guided because you have lots of followers. It could be quite the opposite. I mean, there's celebrities that have millions of followers. And then there's incredible scholars that like have a handful, Allah does that. That's not within our graph. So it's important to note, and Mr. kozar, he then says something very interesting, he says, and somebody might say that I don't know what I'm talking about. He said no, take it from one who was the best of the bunch at doing that before Allah
illuminated his inner eye and he made Toba and he's talking about himself, because he was famous for that for attacking other people. And he could win any argument. But he realized that he was misguided in doing it. And one of the things that shipped with a man who was one of the great scholars of Arabia died not that long ago. But one of the things that he said was, there are three reasons why scholars should not attack other scholars. The first reason is that when you attack other scholars, the people that support those scholars will never listen to you. Because they just don't like you for attacking the scholar that they like. So you lose credibility with a lot of
people that you shouldn't lose credibility with. That's one reason. The second reason he says it undermine scholarship. Because if you're attacking scholars, instead of saying, like, I think this position might be wrong, and or there might be a fee laugh or something, instead of looking at or like he says that you should actually contact them and ask them about why they've said something because maybe they didn't even say it. But the third thing he said is that it creates doubt in the common people. They lose their faith in scholars, and so it undermines the idea. So those are three reasons. But I think the best reason is because the prophets Allah sent him said that when Allah
removes his providential care on paper,
People, the sign of it is that he preoccupies them with things that don't concern them. And that's another really important Heidi because the prophets I send him said in a hadith that Abu Dara relates, he said sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, min Hosni Islam and Marie Turco, whom Allah Yani. And this is a good idea that EMA tirmidhi relates one of the six canonical books as the sunon of EMA tirmidhi. So this Hadees says that, from the beautiful Islam of a person is his leaving what doesn't concern him, in other words, minding his own business. And one of the hallmarks of what in English we call busy bodies, is people that concern themselves with things that aren't their concern. One of
the scholars was walking by a beautiful house, and he asked somebody whose house it was, and he told him, and the scholar said, that he asked forgiveness for a law for 40 days after that, because he said it was none of his business whose house
it was just it's still a lot like curiosity, which didn't just kill the cat it very often will kill your heart. And so in this Hadith, which appeared outside is 1/4 of Islam, in Hosea, Saman. utako, Mehta and 1/4 of Islam, in this Hadeeth. Even Hazara hated me in his amazing commentary. He said he did a comment on the 40 hadith of Imam unknown, which is he put it in there, but I will doubts that this is one form of Islam. Even as you're said, a hater may not last Alani. He said, Actually, this is half of Islam, because half of Islam is feral. And the other half is tarc. Half of it is doing and the other half is not doing so this is the half that deals with doing. And then he said no, I'll
even go further is that all say this is all of Islam. It's not even a fourth or a half it is all of Islam. Because if you're not preoccupied in what doesn't concern you, that means you're preoccupied in what concern you? And so he said the men here is not partitive because the men, this a little for the grammarians out there that people have interest in grammar men has 12 meanings in Arabic. The men comes for Sabine, it comes to clarify something, it comes as a partitive. It comes for what's called Terra Lille, which is for giving the reason why like a sticky min and model I'm complaining of a disease. So it's the tattletale. It's the reason. And then the men have beginning like I came
from Mecca, the men of ending the men of abdol, or a replacement men, or the men of Zakah, or the men of fossil, which separates things. And then it can also mean fee, which is like in and on and Allah and but it can be used as a bus. So those are the 12 meanings. So in any Hadeeth that uses men, the the scholar has to discern which one of those the same in the eyes of current. So grammar matters. And one of the hallmarks of our time, not just in Arabic, but in English as well as that we've lost grammar, and people should be more concerned about learning grammar, because what I've noted in all the comments I've ever read on internet, I've noted that all the really bad ones were
written with bad grammar. And when they're written Well, I've noticed that usually they say intelligent things, which is very interesting. And that's not elitist. That's just education, which is the hallmark of our religion. The prophecy I sent him said seeking knowledge is incumbent upon every Muslim man and woman. So where people have literacy, Accra, this fear of the color the Hara, queer people of literacy, so I just want to really warn everybody, because there's a great statement of Mr. Murali mentions of prakasam al Hakim, a summer candy, who was one of the great scholars of Central Asia. He was from summer camp, and he said all of the world's tribulations come from three
things, all of them. He said, The first is a Nakuru Akbar, I will transit as a news caster, somebody who's transmitting. And then the second he said is what Allah Akbar, which is a consumer, a news consumer, somebody who's consuming news. And the third one, he said, is audible Akbar, a news hound. And he said, none of them are free of blame. So all of the world's tribulations come from these three things. And so I want to just close this with something that from a great philosopher who, over 200 years ago saw what was happening with the media because news, believe it or not, we've always had news, but newspapers and what we call modern media are actually relatively new things.
And so this philosopher said that it says Daily Press, but I'm going to slightly change some of the wording to make it relevant for us today because it was set over 200 years ago. He said that media is the evil principle of the modern world and time
will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clarity. The capacity of the media for degeneration is sophistically. without limit, since it can always seek lower and lower in its choice of consumers. At last, it will stir up all the dregs of humanity, which no state or government can control. And then he said, suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube. I'm not making this up over 200 years ago, suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube, which say, could be heard over the whole world. I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing that the whole country would become mentally
deranged. If we're used. On the whole the evil in the media consists in it's being calculated to make if possible, the passing moment 1000 or 10,000 times more inflated and important than it really is. But all moral elevation consists first and foremost in being weaned from the momentary. I mean, think about this. What does Allah say? I'm Maya to sat alone. What are they asking about? On another Illa Allah theme on the vast news, the day of judgment, that's the real news that we are going to be taken to account for our lives for everything we do. And that's the real news. And once you realize that news, once that text message comes to you, if you really take it seriously, you'll start
preparing, and really think about it. So if you actually look at the name of our Prophet sallallahu sallam, he is a Navy. What is a Navy, there's two ways of saying that Navy yarn and Nabhi own with Hamza or with the with the Hamza, it's from Nebo news. So the prophets are the news bringers. They bring the news. And the news is either glad tidings, if you believe, or it's a warning, if you don't believe that's the real news. That's the news that we should be tuned into. It's not CNN, it's not msnbc. It's not Fox News. It's divine news, because that's the real news. And then he says, and I'm going to substitute because he was Christian, I'm going to substitute Islam for Christianity here.
If Christianity is really to be proclaimed, I would say if Islam is really to be proclaimed, it will become apparent that the media, which will if possible, make it impossible. There has never been a power so diametrically opposed to Islam. As the media day in and day out, the media does nothing but delude the masses, with the supreme axiom of this lie, that numbers are decisive. Islam, on the other hand, is based on the thought that the truth lies in the single individual. Because you're all going to be raised up as individuals, each one of us is to be called by our name and our mother's name, every single one of us, we are not judged collectively, we're judged as individuals. And this
whole collectivization that's happened in the modern era, where everybody talks about groups, as if there's some real group out there called this people are that people, where where are they? There's only individuals that's all there is. And that's in the end, how we're going to be raised up as individuals.
On that note, I will say, Allah subhanho wa Taala forgive me if I've said anything wrong. bless all of you shall love me. We take these things to heart And may Allah Subhana Allah inshallah elevate us and free us of the, the worst tendencies of ourselves. inshallah Baraka love you comb was set Ahmadiyya comb rahmatullah wa barakaatuh.