Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Advice For New College Students Grinell 02272024
AI: Summary ©
The speaker, Hamza, discusses their past experiences, including reading online and in person, as well as their background and family history. They emphasize the importance of understanding the differences between culture and behavior in order to achieve salvation and emphasize the need to adapt to living conditions and respect family members. The speaker emphasizes the importance of faith in Islam, respecting family members, and learning to make decisions based on one's own interests. They also discuss the importance of forgiveness and acknowledging one's own limitations. Finally, they mention the Sunni religion and its importance for one's responsibility to make decisions on one's own behalf.
AI: Summary ©
My name again is Hamza.
I know brother Abdul Mohammed for a couple
of years now. We read some, texts online
together as well, and in person together as
well. Right? You came to the what I
talked at the Hawia and Yeah. Yeah.
I must have put that on the Bay
Area. Both of us are originally from the
well, not
I guess you're from Georgia, but
you lived in California for a while. I'm
originally from California,
so we know each other from back then.
A little background about myself. I was born
in,
Southern California,
and I lived there till I was 10.
Then I moved to Seattle, so I spent
all of my youth in the West Coast.
I went to the University of Washington.
I did a degree in biochemistry and another
degree in Near Eastern languages,
which is a kind of like a fancy
way of saying I did, a bunch of
Arabic and Turkish. Not Turkish Turkic to be
technically accurate. Uzbek is kind of like Turkish,
but not
what we call Turkish nowadays.
Anyhow,
and then after that, I went overseas to
study Islam in a number of different places.
I went to Mauritania, which is a country
in West Africa.
Principally, I went to a number of places,
but principally Mauritania
and, Pakistan where I graduated with a seminary
degree over there as well after finishing in
university.
And I've just kind of been
going around doing imami type things
since then.
And
I have a special affinity for MSA because
I was also part of MSA when I
was, in University of Washington.
We were very active. I feel like we
don't have, like,
MSA's that are that active anymore.
But, it was it was a good time.
Anyhow,
would you this is a small crowd, so
I would also appreciate it if everybody maybe
took a minute to just, you know, introduce
themselves as well so that
we can tailor the the the talk to
be relevant rather than some, like, a pro
form a cookie cutter
type of thing. So
my name is.
I'm 3rd year, and I was born and
raised in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Do you have family in Seattle?
I bet you have family in Seattle. You
still don't know. Probably. Yeah. Probably, but I
don't know.
My name is Arsu Sheikh. I'm from,
Pakistan. Where?
Karachi.
Okay. Where?
In Croatia.
I mean, I live in Clifton. Okay. There
you go. Clifton's.
Sure.
Have you been to? I've been to many
times. Where?
I have in laws in in Nazarabad.
Oh, North Nazeemarab. Not North Nazeemarab. Just Nazeemarab.
Okay. North Nazeemarab. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's like
pretty far It is. From where I live.
It is. But, yeah, I'm from Karachi. I
went to Karachi Grammar School. Sure. I'm familiar
with it. Yeah. You are? Okay. I'm familiar
with it. We have 3 Bavarians here in
Karnal.
Oh, amazing. Three people from the same high
school in Pakistan. But yeah.
Yeah. That's my introduction.
Great.
My name is doctor DiPaola.
I'm pro account for you. Where? The Sogal.
Okay. Where?
Okay. Yeah. Cool.
Rabbi Sarah,
serve as a in church in a religious
life here and appreciate the invitation to join
you all today.
Well, I do appreciate you coming in.
And then I this everybody's an undergrad here.
This is the university doesn't have any graduate
programs? Yeah. Yeah. Can I also get what
what,
programs you're in or if you're undecided?
I'm computer science and sociology double major.
I'm computer science.
I'm thinking in biochem or philosophy. I did
biochem too. So
and not a student. Honestly. Yeah.
Well, my undergrad was in political science and
Jewish studies. Okay. Yeah. Great. Excellent. And where
was it from? University of University of Minnesota.
Minneapolis? Minneapolis. Yeah. So I grew up in
Minneapolis. I love Minneapolis. It has great city.
It's the closest place that has nice coffee
shops that remind me of Seattle that's not
actually Seattle. So That's true. I can see
that. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So
the the the talk that or, like, the
title that I was given
was balancing,
can Academics.
Life in general. Being in school and being
spiritually grounded. And being spiritually grounded. How to
order yourself and get yourself on a life
path after school. So that's the
that's the topic.
And what I wanted to say is
with regards to that and then maybe open
it up for kind of a discussion,
like,
speak about or ask about things that you're
more
interested in speaking about or asking about. The
preface to the discussion is this, is that,
you know, coming out of
your home,
in particular, for those of us who are
the children of immigrants or perhaps immigrants ourselves
or at least from a culture that is
more direct directly linked east
rather than people who are, I guess, like,
grounded and born and raised here, not just
born and raised, because I was born and
raised here. Right? But the home was, an
immigrant home.
One of the one of the things that,
I really appreciate about
about the difference between the culture that I
was raised in and about the kind of
ambient culture in America,
that, that that kind of dominates.
One of the things I appreciated about the
outside culture because growing up as a kid,
there's, like, a lot of,
like, okay. There's, like, people outside
and we're different. Right? And the more I
the more I grew up, the more I
realized this is a very normal human thing.
Everybody thinks they're different and really nobody's different.
Like, there are some differences. Right? You may
eat different things or you may speak a
different language or you may prefer different types
of clothing, but when you kinda deconstruct things,
you get down to the core, everybody's the
same. And one of the things that's very
similar between, like, all human beings is they
all wanna feel like they're different.
Really, they're all the same.
The the modalities and the the the colors
and the the the kind of, like,
outward forms change,
but inside, you know, your, like, life experiences
just boil down to, like, a couple of,
like, a handful of common experiences and feelings
that people have. And they're not even unique
to Muslims
much less to, like, different countries and different
languages and different
ethnicities and races and things like that. I've
you know, this is a side side discussion
that we're not here for, but, like, the
word race has no objective definition as far
as I can tell.
So but that's another unique kind of, like,
cultural,
show to enjoy the the spectacle of in
America. But at any rate, coming back to
the issue is that we had this dichotomy
of what's inside and what's outside.
And,
definitely, the modalities, there's some differences between them.
However,
from those from those kind of slight differences,
one of the things I appreciated as I
kind of went on with my, with my
life
that I feel like I didn't really get
from the home that we can also appreciate
if this is a common experience, which it
may be.
Your life is just whatever you wanna make
it into.
We oftentimes use our parents as a crutch.
We use our extended family as a crutch.
We use some sort of cultural expectations, some
sort of communal
expectations as a crash you know, communal expectation
is what? Right?
Everyone needs to feel like they belong to
something or another.
And,
it's a very natural human thing
to
organize yourself in the hierarchy.
And the way you move up the hierarchy
is that whatever that thing you belong to,
you show your dedication to that thing more
and more.
So if your life is all about sports
and basketball, if you're on the team, if
you're a better player than everybody else, you'll
move up the hierarchy.
If you're a fan, you know, the fact
that you went to this many games and
you have this many jerseys and this and
that, you'll move up the hierarchy.
These social hierarchies
exist for every single thing. They exist within
families. They exist within tribes. They exist within
religions including Islam,
and,
they
and including other religions as well. They exist
within,
you know, kinda like national groups and things
like that.
And so
it's a it's a human thing because a
human being needs to, like, fit into somewhere
or another.
But don't drink the Kool Aid so hard
that you let it drive you. And this
is one of the things I feel like
is unique to Islam or,
at least I if it's unique or not,
I shouldn't say because then that involves commenting
on other people's traditions, and I'll let them,
like, represent themselves. But at any rate, this
is a feature of Islam as well is
that there's all of this is there. If
you read through the Quran, you read through
the, corpus of hadith with
people enjoining people to be good to your
brother Muslim and to be good to your
parents and to be good to your neighbors
and to be good to, you know, whatever
groups you belong to. But,
ultimately, the most important thing that you're going
to do in your life, this life that
you have in this world.
It's
you have to do what you need to
in order to attain salvation.
That salvation will be validated in a world
other than this world.
If you blow it, it was your own
choice. If you make it, it's your own
choice, and nobody else will get will give,
you know, answer questions on your behalf.
Your group will not get you
will not save you, and it won't bring
you down either.
So if whatever group you belong to or
groups you belong
to, if all of them make it and
you blew it, you didn't do what you
needed to do in order to attain your
own salvation,
They're having made it is not gonna help
you.
And if you,
if you made it and every single one
of them perishes on the day of judgment,
their perishing is not going to harm you.
And this is something that,
like I said before, it's something very unique
about,
about American culture that that nobody obscures this
fact over here. People try not to obscure
this fact. People celebrate this fact rather than,
trying to obscure it. That you're you're the
one who's in control of your destiny. You're
the one who,
does what you, you know, what you want.
And at the end of your life,
whatever you had, it was your choice.
Even if it's even if you said, well,
I didn't make any choices in my life.
I listened to everybody else my entire life,
and at the end of it, you know,
like, I didn't make any choice. How was
it my choice? Well, it's your choice to
not listen to to, you know, to not
make your own choice. It's your choice to
listen to other people. And this is actually
one of the teachings of the Quran as
well. Is that on the day of judgment,
okay, it's fine. A person can understand how
a murder or criminal or whatever will end
up in in the hellfire or a person
who's a mischief maker,
liar, cheater, whatever other conventional modes of evil
we can think of, that those people are
going to, when faced with account,
will come up short.
But the Quran in many different places it
describes also
just people who are going with the flow
you know people like well someone just told
me something and I listened
in fact, in the Surah Ibrahim,
there's a very interesting there's a very interesting,
episode that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala describes
with regards to the. Right? The is like
the Friday sermon, right, generally. Right? This is
the of Iblis of Satan in health.
So it's not
It's a very different circumstance. But Iblis will
be given a pulpit to speak and address
all of his fellow
the fellow inmates of the hellfire.
And what will he say? This, you know,
his the the gist of his sermon will
be that
God commanded you to something, and he made
certain promises to you.
And I told you to do something, and
I made certain promises to you. This day,
you see that God fulfilled his promises, and
all of my promises are broken.
And I had no power over any of
you to make you do anything that you
wanted
except for I just said something and listened.
So on this day, don't blame don't,
blame me or blame anybody else. Just blame
yourself because you picked the wrong team to
follow.
This is important. Again, it's not to negate
the fact that you you have you know,
your family has certain reasonable expectations for you.
But I say I qualify with what? With
reasonable.
Reasonable is what? Your mother raised you. She
changed your diaper when you're a kid. You
know? If she did something that, like, upset
you, you should, like, forgive her. You don't
even have to recognize that what she did
was wrong or was right. Just let it
go. You know?
On the flip side, if your mother is
like, here, I'm gonna go rob a bank.
You keep the car running.
I'll be back with a sack with, like,
$15,000
in unmarked bills.
And you're like, I don't know if I
wanna do that. What a horrible son. You
know, I raised you from when you were
a baby, I changed your diapers. I gave
you and this may seem like a just
kind of a comical,
comical example. But guess what? We are where
we are for a certain reason.
As a imam, when dealing with people's issues,
there are all sorts of things people know
are wrong, but they'll do them because their
parents tell them to. They'll do them because
the government tells them to. They'll do them
because their peer group tells them to. They'll
do them because their national group tells them
to. They'll do them because that's what every
other fan of, like, whatever sports team is
doing. They're they'll do them for all kinds
of, like, myriad different reasons.
And, you know, I recognize that
an event on campus, there are people who
have different different levels of dedication to Islam.
There are some people who are not Muslims
at all, mashaAllah, that are in this talk.
So the universal message between all of it
is what?
If you think that Islam is not true
or it's something that's a burden for you
or it's something that holds you back and
it's really not something that's going to help
you,
in a way that makes it worth it.
By all means, go do whatever you want
to, you know. You you're free. Like, if
Islam is a complete fraud and a sham
and it's just there to, like, make life
worse or, like, keep Muslim countries in the
barbarian backwards age, whereas somehow or another, if
you come to America, like, you know, buy
things at a shopping mall or whatever, you'll
be you'll have this kind of wonderful, happy,
and fulfilled life,
then why why would you be such a
fool to be a Muslim? I would even
say to the point that even if you
were to come to the conclusion that all
religions are universally valid,
You'd be a complete idiot to be Muslim
in that case. You know how much easier
it is just to go to church on
Sunday
and then have to pray 5 times a
day and wash your feet in a sink
in Iowa
and, like, to, you know, fast in Ramadan
and okay. Fasting has become a fad again,
I guess. You know? So, like, Huberman said,
you should, like, whatever, not eat for 16
hours in a day. So, okay, you can
keep fasting or whatever. Right? But, like, you
know, zakat or Hajj, you know, eat halal
and blah blah blah, all of these different
things. And why would you burden yourself further?
As a Muslim, I'm telling you this form
of thinking
that disagreement I would have as a Muslim
is that I believe that, no, this is
actually worth it. Right? But if you came
to the conclusion it wasn't worth it, then
my believing it's worth it is not gonna
help you,
in the next world. And the form of
thinking of what? Doing something that's unnecessarily
in
an encumbrance,
unnecessary burden. Why in the * would anyone
do that?
It makes no sense whatsoever.
And so
the point is is this that you're
in Grinnell. I don't know. Does anyone here
live at home and commute to campus?
I I assume most yeah. Right? Like, I
I assume that most, if not all students,
especially from the MSA, because Grinnell doesn't seem
to be, like, you know, like, whatever, like,
have, like, a large Muslim, community otherwise.
You're out of your house.
You're now free from
the,
from from from the
normal expectations you would have that you grew
up with that you assumed were,
something that that that are just a normal
part of life.
Now you have to cope with kind of
a new way of living, a new way
of, you know, pattern
of consumption. You no longer eat what your
mother cooked or whatever was available at your
home. You know? You have to buy groceries
from a store that's different that has different
products in the store that that was there
wherever you came from.
There's no Costco or Trader Joe's and Grinnell,
so I think I would probably go nuts
just because of that. So I you have
to adjust. You have to cope with all
of those things. They're, like, the most basic
things of life.
And so, like and nobody's gonna, like, force
you to do anything.
And so I find that actually kids that
that come from irreligious
families when they go to university, especially those
who, again, like, live in dorms,
that's when they start praying 5 times a
day. They'll sleep through for, like, their whole
life until they're 18. Then they'll come to
the dorm, maybe party for, like, a month
or 2, and they're like, hey. This is
kind of like an empty life. Or maybe
they'll like it, and they'll just go off
in that trajectory. And I I won't see
them. So, you know, I guess the data
set is a little bit limited. But the
ones that come come then to, like, events
like this are the ones where, like, hey.
This is not, you know, this is not
something that that that's fulfilling for me. I
gotta, like,
keep, you know, keep this in check. And
if I'm a Muslim, I may as well
start, you know, waking up to fajr or
may as well start being conscious about what
I eat or drink or how I speak
to people or how I interact with people
or whatever.
This is your opportunity right now to reexamine
all of those,
those different types of, like, social commitments that
you have and and to examine which things
are you doing for yourself and which things
are you doing for others. And by all
means, please keep all of those commitments. I
mean, it's one of the first teachings of
Islam is that a person should respect their
parents.
I remember this. I read the,
Victor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning. There's one
of the most, like, moving parts of it
that he said that he knew that, you
know, he had offer offer an opportunity
to come to America
before the holocaust that he saw unfolding in
front of him. He could have avoided it,
you know? But he only got the visa
for him and his wife. They wouldn't let
his parents come with him. So he was
like, you know, like, what should I do?
Like, he was kind of fraud. Should I
just leave save myself and my wife,
or should I stay with my parents? And
so in Vienna, Kristallnacht,
when he was walking amongst the debris of,
like, all of the things that were, destroyed
from the,
from the sacking of the synagogue,
He said he came upon a fragment of,
like, a kind of, like, a
a a fragment of a decorative,
a decorative
piece of art in which the 10 commandments
were kind of written.
And it was an unbroken piece that said
something like, you know, like, in order that
you may be prosper
and, you know, like, you know, prosper in
your life, you should you should honor your
parents.
So when he saw that piece, which is,
you know, as Muslims, you know, we also
believe in the
the the divine origin of the the the
commandments of the Torah as well. So it's
relevant to us. And if you read the
Quran, you read the hadith of the prophet
that the commandment to honor your parents is
again and again and again
mentioned and emphasized, you know,
very powerfully.
So it's like I saw that. Okay. I
knew I I couldn't just, like, you know,
throw up the deuces and bail on my
parents,
paraphrase.
And, he stayed, and all of them died.
He's the only one who he's he's the
only one who survived. Every one of them
were killed. Every one of his family was
killed, wife, everybody. He lost all of them,
but at least he stayed, you know, with
them as long as he could. He didn't
bail out on them. So I'm not saying,
you know, like, okay. Because you're in control
and you're gonna have to give individual,
count on the day of judgment that you
should just be, like, you should just cut
yourself off from others. People do have rights
over you, but it's important and informative and
helpful and necessary to think about what those
rights are, what parameters those rights function within,
why are they there.
Right? Islam is not a religion of parent
worship or ancestor worship.
Islam is not a religion of sports team
worship or nation worship.
Who's the only god in Islam?
Allah.
So
there's said of everything else you're commanded to
revere. You revere for his sake and there's
a set of parameters in which it's functional
and there's a set of parameters in which
it's dysfunctional.
And for that matter, even even the Muslim
community because people will do all kind of
boneheaded things in order because, oh, the ummah
needs this, the ummah needs that, you know.
So someone will do exactly the thing that
is forbidden
in Islam by God in order to serve
Islam so that it doesn't it's it's a
broken it's a broken mode of of thinking.
And this is one of the things in
our in our religious tradition.
We don't have this idea that thinking about
2 things too much is bad.
We don't have this idea that you have
to take something on blind faith. In fact,
if you read the books of of Imal
Khan, the books of of Abi that they
say that the the faith of a man
who doesn't who when asked, like, you do
believe in God. Right? Faith the word faith
itself has a bunch of Christian connotations. Why?
Because English is like a language that most
of the speakers are Christians for the last,
you know, ever since, I don't know, the
venerable beat or something like that.
The word iman in in Arabic,
it doesn't mean taking something on faith. It
means it means it means it means having
certainty.
So if someone asks you does God exist
and you say yes but
you really don't know.
Your prayers and fasting are like, I don't
wanna say they're a waste of time, but
they're not as
useful to you as you might think.
I studied in Mauritania.
The
is also probably the first book you read
in Maliki 5th as well. Right?
It's a book about ritual law but what's
the first commandment written in it?
But first, you know, and this is very
different than people's cultural experience with Islam in
the modern era at any rate. But this
is the first thing that when kids are
in Quran school like in Maktab,
classically they would learn that the first the
first obligation on every person who's morally responsible.
A morally responsible person is an adult, sane,
person who who has access to the teaching
of the prophet salayam al salam.
The first the first
obligation is what? Is it to make wudu?
No. Is it to pray? No. Is it
to fast? Is it to donate to the
masjid? Is it to wave the flag of
a particular country or, you know, like, you
know, when Morocco
plays against France in the World Cup that
you have to
cheer from Morocco even if the French team
is half Moroccans anyway, but, you know, like,
what is it? Uh-uh, it's what is that
you have to correct any, like, any doubt
that you have in your faith. Simple questions
about does God exist,
what are his
necessary attributes,
you know.
As Muslims, when we say that there's only
one God, you know, is is this necessarily
true or is it true that, you know,
people who are, like, prostrating,
you know, in front of idols or say,
well, I believe all of this happened on
its own or whatever. Do they have a
point? Is it possible even if they have
a point? Until you remove all of those
doubts, which sadly,
we have very few people who are who
actually are conversant in,
even teaching these types of things or thinking
about these types of things, and mosques usually
don't talk about them.
But it doesn't mean that it's not there
in our tradition.
But you have to you have to come
to your own conclusion with regards to them
because nobody else can believe them on your
behalf.
If you're falling behind on your bills, I
can pay your rent for you.
If you're,
you know, if you can't make it to
Hajj, it's not even wajib on you. It's
not an obligation on you in the first
place, but I can pay for you to
go to Hajj. I can pay for you
to, you know, if you wanna get married
and you don't have enough money for a
dowry, I can pay for your dowry. If
you want to, you know, for example, you
know, visit your parents, Every act of piety,
there's some something or another person can help
you with. This is something nobody else can
help you with. You have to figure it
out on your own.
Once you've figured it out on your own,
then it's
improper for a person to
live life without thinking about stuff within that
framework,
and thinking about what is it that I
wanna do, what is it that I don't
wanna do within that framework. Because life is
very short, you know. You're already done with
a third of your life. You may feel
in some ways that your life hasn't started
yet, but you're already done with a third
of your life.
If you wanna if you wanna have a
family, if you wanna have kids, you can't
just wait 30 years for that. It doesn't
work. Some people biology biologically, literally, it won't
work. Some people, you know, like, if you're
a
a male or, you know, like, I I'm
not trying to say this, like, in order
to, like, start some sort of gender war
or whatever, but I'm just saying, you know,
even if you can
imagine that. Right? I I had a child
I had a child a bit my youngest
child, little baby, Marshawn, like, 33 months old.
It just occurred to me that my oldest
daughter, she's 15 years old.
Like, if I live, lord knows how long
anyone's gonna live. You know? A person should
come to grips with the fact that they
may die soon, and then later on, they
have to come to grips with the fact
that they may be around for a very,
like, depressingly long amount of time. But whatever
it is, right, if imagine if I died
when I'm 60,
right,
I may not even see,
you know, I may not even see my,
my my son, like, graduate from high
school.
Whereas the other kids, it's, like, kinda unfair.
Like, they'll have to be so much further
in but further in life or whatever.
You have to make those decisions that have
the impact for that stuff later on, and
there will be somebody who will say, oh,
but, you know, you need to get this
degree, you need to get this career, you
need to do this thing, you need to
do that thing, you need to do the
other thing, and you may need to. I
don't know. No one can make that decision
for you but yourself, but there's a 1,000
people who will be telling you a thousand
different
things that are that may or may not
be in your in your interest. They're probably
not in your interest, to be very honest
with you. Very few people you'll find that
are actually sincere for you. You know, someone
might be sitting in this talk. You're also
pushing your own agenda. You know, you're trying
to tell them all it's a religious mumbo
jumbo, and they're you're gonna get them to,
like, not not follow their career. They may
be right.
You have to make that decision. Right.
Would it be stupider to believe that person
or to believe me blindly? They're all equally
as stupid. You have to make the decision
for yourself.
What is it that you wanna do? Because
I promise you the university you know, when
you're in university, what's the thing to do
after getting your bachelor's degree? It's very natural
to say master's and then PhD. Why? Because
that's a track that's a track of thinking
that wasn't designed for you, but it's a
track that things things are flowing in, and
so everything is designed to be in that
flow, or you're gonna get a job.
Every corporation in the United States of America,
including the federal government, including state government, they're
there to get you to think about your
career as what as you're gonna go to
this and then you're gonna get a raise
and then you're gonna get this and then
you're gonna get that. We'll pay for your
retirement. We'll pay for your burial. They have
a plan for you even after you're dead.
Who's gonna plan for you better, them or
you?
Or do you think the government has your
interest in mind all the time? If anyone
here is here as an agent from the
government, then I love the government, long live
the government. But like for the rest of
us, right, you know, it could be theoretically
possible that no matter how well intentioned,
you know, any any corporation or any,
you know, whatever,
bureaucratic or
institutional,
setting may be toward you, they still are
not gonna make a better decision for you
for your own life than you are for
yourself.
And guess what?
Almost none of them are
even have good intentions for you. They don't
care. The you know, how much imagine if
you got a good paying job when you
came out. What are you studying right now?
I'm doing pre med. So Pre med. So
you became, you know, some super,
you know,
super, like,
monetized specialization.
They bring them. My my my yeah. You
you know? My
wife's uncle. Are you from Chicago? You're from,
from where? I'm from it's a suburb of
Brookfield. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. It's not that far. I'm not
from you said. Yeah. I live in Edison,
so it's not that far away. Oh, nice.
So,
you get, like, the most monetized,
special specialization.
I remember one of my wife's uncles, he's
a oncologist. He was complaining, oh, we don't
make any money anymore. They gutted our field
and blah blah blah. And, like, what do
you let's throw out some numbers. We used
to make, you know, 600, 700,000,
but now we're down to 450.
I was like,
hold on a second. I'm gonna go get
a handkerchief to, like, wipe my tears away.
You know? I'm like,
you know but okay. Imagine imagine
that. Do you think the hospital is gonna
pay you $700,000
if they're not making more than $700,000?
The day they're making less than that, they'll
cut you. The day they can do your
job without you, that's the day you'll get
a letter in the mail, and you're you're
toast. Right?
Should they be a welfare,
welfare program, charity program to even to pay
you even if though you're not doing anything
for the hospital?
It's one would like to have somebody who
loves them that much. Sadly, most people's spouses
don't love them that much.
So why is the hospital or the corporation
or government gonna love you that much? Right?
But,
like, it makes sense for them
to look out for themselves. But what happens,
we are we ourselves allow ourselves to be
seduced and kinda cocooned into this
idea that somehow or another, if I let
someone else make decisions for me, it's gonna
be better for me, and it's not.
Like, I can understand. Not everybody is, like,
psychiatrically,
mentally,
cognitively made up the same way.
And so some people stresses, you know, kind
of burden them more, so they need to
kinda, like, ease up a little bit and,
like, you
know,
let someone else do some of the heavy
lifting, in which case, at least try to
find somebody who won't cheat you as bad,
in doing so. But, you know, you you
are university students. You made it here somehow
or another. I'm assuming that, you know, unless,
you know, since there's no, like, Lexuses in
the parking lot or whatever,
well, very few at any rate, that, you
know, you got some sort of scholarship because
you're competent people.
You know?
Think about things even though it hurts sometimes.
It's scary sometimes.
Think about what it is that you wanna
do, why it is that you wanna do
it. Think about the fact that you have
to live in this world for some time.
You need the most pious,
7th degree,
black belt ninja of piety.
But if you don't have enough money to
pay your bills, if you have a family
and you're not able to take care of
them, you're you're a bad person no matter
how much you pray.
But on the on the flip side on
the flip side,
you're gonna die one day
on at which time
you're nobody's gonna be like, I wish I
made more money.
Forget about dying. You know? Even before that,
you're gonna
be okay. Someone will be like, hey. Here's
a job. Forget about $700. You'll make $2,000,000
a year,
but you're not gonna have time with your
kids. What are you gonna say to your
daughter when she's 18? 18? She's like, I
don't even know who you are.
What are you gonna say to your kids
when they, you know, say that to you?
At that time, a person will, like, wanna
burn their own house down in order to,
like, make whatever this thing just happened unhappen.
You have to think about all of those
things, and you're gonna constantly be changing your
mind about things. You're gonna constantly be making
new plans. You're gonna constantly
be reconsidering things. You're gonna constantly and the
fact that you thought about something and made
a plan is absolutely 100%. And this is
what we were talking about. This is half
of the conversation since last night that we've
been having. The fact that you completely lined
up the docs or something has no bearing
or relationship
with whether that thing is gonna happen or
not.
And so you have to be able to
you know, that process of, you know, like,
thinking through things, you're gonna have to iteratively
keep repeating it again and again and again
because Allah Ta'ala will throw you different circumstances
based on what he wants to see from
you, not what you want to see from
yourself. The person who submits to the Lord
makes friends with them, at least will be
reassured that even though this is difficult, there's
something good will come out of all of
this. Whereas the person who's in it on
their own, like, we have a we have
a belief. Right? In particular, the Sunni tradition
in Islam,
we have a belief that that nothing happens
except for through the the will of the
lord. Nobody has free will. Free will is
something that is operates within a context, even
that is
something that that the Lord gave us choices
about things, and he knew that we're gonna
do it from beforehand. And this is one
of the early controversies in Islamic theology that
there's the and the The are the people
who said, no. All your actions are completely
your own choice. God doesn't have any
say in that. And the Jabariya, they're hard
determinists. They say, no. Everything God decreed from
beforehand,
and there is a sect of them. So
there's no point in even trying. Whatever is
gonna happen is gonna end up happening in
the first place. So this is one of
the unique contributions to philosophy of,
of the Sunni tradition in particular of Islam,
which is we have a doctrine called Kasb,
which is what everything happens by the divine
decree
but you also have some sort of you
also you it's something it's something you earn
as well. It's not like God makes you
do things,
in a way that,
that it you you know, you didn't wanna
do the things you did as well on
your own. He created you,
And so he could've, I guess, made you
different so that you would've wanted something else.
But at the same time, it's intuitive to
you and to all other
living things that
you
your choices, you own them yourself.
And just like maybe somebody's living in a
rented apartment, but while they're there, it's kind
of it's intuitive to them that it's theirs
even though they don't formally own it. And
so, Milano Rumi
he he he made the metaphor
not the metaphor, the parable of when you
throw a rock, even a a dog if
you throw a rock at a dog,
the dog is gonna be more upset with
you than he is with the rock.
Because everything that happens, there's god is behind
it. Right? But you still understand you have
this idea that you have a choice in
something. You have a desire in something that
has a reality.
And,
this is part of, you know, this is
also part of our doctrine.
I find the
American sensibility
really,
doesn't appreciate
saying that there's somebody else other than myself
who's in control of things, who makes stuff
happen, whose will overpowers all other wills.
But on the flip side, I would say
I don't know. I mean, like, I don't
know how anyone could live a life being
completely you know, thinking of themselves as being
completely in control of what happens and not
just go
mad.
Because a lot of messed up stuff happens
in in life. There are a lot of
things you'll never be able to, like, you'll
never be able to take responsibility for without
destroying yourself.
Imagine you see one of your children die,
you see
your spouse die, you lose your home, you
lose your income, you get, you know, you
God forbid someone make a mistake and do
something bad in their life,
And then afterward,
afterward, you know, you can repent if it's
God that you're accountable to. You can repent
and he can forgive you because he it's
him that you're accountable to.
If you're accountable to yourself, how how are
you gonna forgive yourself? You forgive yourself, that's
the opposite of any sort of accountability.
And, again, you know, to mention, this is
part of also part of our,
part of our creed. So I think our
creed is in some sense similar with regards
to repentance to that of Christians that a
person through the through the blessings of faith,
that person will eventually be forgiven of all
sins.
But one of the things I think that's
unique, that's different between the belief of the
Christians and the belief of Muslims is this,
is that we divide
what is a sin between the the slave
and the lord
and what are other people's rights
which are not sins but they have to
be forgiven or they have to either be
forgiven or fulfilled. So if you I don't
know. If your heart is a flame with
the light of faith, but you owe someone,
like, $10,000,
you still owe owe them $10,000.
You know? You're accountable for that. That's like
repentance and all that stuff has nothing to
do with that. Like, if you harm somebody,
you're physical. But I'm saying, okay, the sin
part of it. Right? The sin part of
it,
still, you know, if if you're not accountable
to somebody else, then how can you be
forgiven for any of it? I don't know
how a person could walk around with that
burden, mashallah. People who are young or people
who have never suffered any difficulty in life,
they may have difficulty
understanding what that is, coping with what that
is.
But nobody
lives life
unafflicted by difficulty.
And the worst thing that ever happened to
you is the worst thing that ever happened
to you. So for some people, it may
be something completely horrific. For something of people,
it may be relatively more mild, but it's
always gonna be something that you always think
about and be like, oh that was horrible.
You know how are you gonna cope with
that,
except for except for through at any rate
having some sort of resignation in front of
the lord. Still
the doctrine is of cusp.
What you want is what you're gonna get.
So it is in your interest to be
honest enough with yourself to know what it
is that you want
and then to make your decisions on your
own behalf and to put an effort in
order to get the information you need in
order to make those correct decisions,
whether it has to do with something
ritually relevant,
with Islam. So we think about that as
something Islamic, but really Islam is everything. Everything
is Islamic. You wanna buy a house, you
know, that's gonna the the dean is gonna
have something to say say about that. There
are 2 different 3 different options that you
have. All of them are halal. All of
them none of them involves
usury or any of these other things that
the the sacred law prescribes. Even then, the
decision between them is something has to do
with Islam. If you're gonna buy a, you
know, a house with, you know, a $300,000
house because there's a fancy chandelier or whatever,
well, I guess stuff has become expensive now.
Now that's more like a $900,000
house. Right? $300,000
basically will probably barely buy you a house
that you can raise a family in anymore
anyway.
Whatever, you know, if you're gonna be buy
something more expensive because it's fancy, you're gonna
be a slave to that thing for a
longer amount of time. You have to put
all of that, you know, calculation in because
it's but, you know, if you,
you know, if you don't if you don't
buy the fancy house, you know, maybe
you're a spartan aesthetic that will be able
to survive in it, but your family is
not gonna is not gonna abide by it
or whatever.
You have to make all of the decisions,
make an informed decision and own it yourself.
And if you decide not to decide, you
decide to, like, let someone else make the
decision for you, don't be like, oh, you
know, I listened to that person and they
ruined me. No. You decided to listen to
that person just to own it yourself.
Take responsibility
for it as well. Not a very reassuring
message, somewhat of a scary message, but I
wouldn't have mentioned it to any of you
if I didn't think that in the end
knowing is better than not knowing.
And,
dealing with a little bit of stress beforehand
is a lot better than coming to a
point where your life is over
and you become old
like me.
And then say, I wish, you know, someone
told me this and I wish someone told
me that. Because by that time, it's too
late.
Life is like that. You know? By the
time you know which,
you know, place to buy your groceries from
in Grinnell, in which, you know, dorm is
a good dorm, it's time to move out
and, you know, go somewhere else, and you're
probably never gonna come back again.
And so, you know, it's better to it's
better to go in with the eyes open,
ahead of time.
So that was