Johari Abdul-Malik – Fast & Learn
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I couldn't I stand here.
Don't come past the line. So let's do
it, though.
Quick. Quick. Quick.
How's everybody?
I said that fast, but
I'm really
I try not to do anything
without praising Allah
And if I know anything,
I'm always reminded that probably somewhere in the
back of my mind,
I know it because
there there there is some
tradition of the prophet alaihi salaam
that I somehow rather got in my head.
And then from there,
kind of jump off into trying
to figure out
how to implement
those things
into my daily life.
Make sense?
You guys,
we're happy with the video and all that
stuff is doing what it's supposed to do?
Yeah? Oh, we're good. Alhamdulillah.
Tonight, I wanna
I wanna just be following up.
You're probably over here, Shay.
Thank you.
I just wanna follow-up,
open your mind
and
kind of way
of thinking
within
the paradigm
of
what you know
in Islam.
You with me?
This is not at the level of.
This is probably more everyone know. Right?
What's?
Did you derive a ruling how?
The
There's not a clear
both from the Quran and the Hadith. Right.
So you you're going back into the Quran
and the Hadith the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam to bring out something new.
That's not what I'm talking about today.
I'm probably thinking and operating in the realm
of what we might call chaos.
What's that? Analogy.
Analogy.
When I was growing up,
my mother, Rahim Alalik,
she
she made me she made me, like,
was working to perfect my ability to analogize.
And I think that
that that training because she used to tell
me, like, this was very good. She was
like, oh, that's that's that's a terrible analogy.
It kind of helped frame my thinking. And
then I had the blessing of having a
teacher, doctor Suleiman Yang, at Howard University
who was
always talking about Islam and trying to explain
concepts
in an analogical way.
So tonight,
we talked last time
about
love and relationships.
Tonight, I wanna talk a little bit about
kind of a
a frame
for
how how
how to get hooked up.
Right? I mean, how to get hooked up.
Not not
not who to get hooked up with.
You got a lot of guidance on that.
How how the the hookup process,
Islamically,
makes
perfect sense
except
for many of us is difficult
as rasoolullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
informed us in a narration
that Islam is as easy as
breathing.
Is is breathing always easy?
Yeah. We're in the youth lounge at daughter
Hedra.
Suppose this was a nightclub
full of smoke,
hooker barn. Right?
All the fumes that's everywhere. Right?
May it be difficult to breathe in some
of them places.
So there is by
analogy
that Islam is as easy as breathing
when you're in the right
Environment.
Environment.
I like to use
the
word
atmosphere.
For many people who are trying to get
married,
this fantastic
relationship,
ordained
by Allah
as the
most
fundamental
arrangement
that Allah is pleased with,
the institution of marriage.
And for the record,
as I understand,
this narrative that it is between a man
and a woman, just for the record because
we're screaming on YouTube, maybe Facebook people that
According to what I understand of the Quran,
this
is a union between
male and female. This is a union between
male and female. And this is a union
between male and female. And this is a
union. And this is a union. And this
is a union. And this is a union.
And this is a union. And this is
a union. And this is a union. And
this is a union. And this is a
union. And this is a union. And this
is a union. And this is a union.
And
informs us that it is a relationship that
is so weighty.
And I don't want people to get the
wrong idea and say, well, brother, cleanliness is
half of your deen and marriage is half
of your, so all I need to do
is be clean and married, and I'm good.
Like, no. It doesn't mean that. It means
the the weightiness of it.
And when
you
are thinking about
and feeling
the feelings that have been programmed into you
to lead you to marriage
in the context we live in creates
problems for some of us? Yeah.
Yes. No.
Like,
just just to to make sure that I'm
clear,
we are physiologically
programmed
to be attracted to one another.
Fit programmed.
It's natural.
Don't don't let anybody, like, a stock for
the law. No. I was wired by Allah.
Certain kind of woman that I see, not
the same woman you see, the one I
see.
If you were measuring my physiology,
I my my skin will start getting a
little little, moist.
I said, Joe, hi. What happened? Oh, nothing.
I'm okay. They're like, no. Something happened, man.
Right? Serotonin level is going up. All different
kind of neuropeptides are, right, are firing. Why?
Because
something hardwired into me has said
she get married.
Because the place to act out the rest
of those emotions
is within the institution of marriage.
Because if not,
there are other kinds of consequences
that are emotionally
and physically,
spiritually
damaging.
Question for you.
If you lived in
we we talked about this earlier. So I'll
pick on you.
If you were in Morocco,
because your mother's from Morocco.
Yeah? If you were in Morocco
or in Tunisia,
how easy would it be for you to
get married?
Easy, not easy.
You have one choice. Easy, not easy. Easy.
Easy.
You live
in Falls Church, Virginia.
Not only for you,
but for your friends,
is marriage
easy,
not easy?
Not easy. Not easy. Now, if you were
that this I want you to, like, process
this. How many of you your parents are
from overseas? Raise your hand. Okay. So you
know what I'm talking about. The video can't
see you, but, like, almost everybody raised their
hand.
Which
relative
would your parents most likely want you to
cousin. And the sisters need to marry like,
oh my god. My cousin.
Guess what?
I have evidence to prove to you
that your parents
are not wrong.
You're like, oh, the middle, I thought this
guy was gonna be saying something tonight. They're
not wrong.
Their their challenge
is they're not in the right
atmosphere.
Their thinking
about when they lived in Tunisia
or in in in what city in Morocco?
The nearest city. Fez. Fez. She's thinking she's
in Fez.
In Fez, our family goes back
100 of years.
My brothers and sisters
who are all also married to our cousins,
we all know each other.
So if you marry from us,
we know
who you're married to,
and we also know who you shouldn't marry.
Marry.
That, oh, that part of the family, Taqfidullah.
They don't do that her, right?
This part, these cousins, they're all good. And
this is a
It makes the assumption
this is worth writing down.
It makes the assumption in this cultural context
that
in order for you to be successful
iman
in marriage,
it assumes
any iman. I'll take any iman. It doesn't
have to be that particular
iman. Anyone who anyone who has iman,
but it requires work.
A man came to the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam,
according to this narration.
He said,
I'm going to marry a woman.
He said,
have you seen her?
And if you notice Hadid, the man replied,
What? Yes or no? No.
No.
He's gonna marry a woman.
He comes
the rasulullah, will marry a woman, but
I never seen her.
How you marry a woman you never seen?
You just raise your hand.
I wanna get married.
Right?
And then out there, there's some woman wearing
the back.
She wave her hair like that. You can't
see her, but your hand is waving. And
then you can say, yada so much. I'm
a married woman. I don't know. The woman
She had on a
red a red,
Come on.
How do you marry a woman?
You said to the prophet, marry a woman.
I've never seen her. How?
How can that happen?
Asking you.
It's gonna happen. Who? His family, sisters, or
mother.
That
there is someone
that that man knows
that knows that woman.
This is important.
And because
of
the relationship,
it is possible for me to say there
is a woman,
I talked to Sabri.
Sabri
talked to her and her family.
They told
them about me,
and
he told
me about her.
And based on
that analysis,
I can say,
wow,
that'd
be a good pick.
Is that possible
today?
I'm asking you.
Yes and no.
The prophet, sallam,
replies to the man and says what?
Go see her. Go see her.
Why?
Why?
By by way of
of some explanation. Why?
It's more like to develop feelings act toward
the Yeah. Yeah. Right. Is is a person
pleasing to you? Right?
Now
there is a book called Ronan,
you leaving? Yes. There's a book by a
man called Barry Schwartz.
It's called The Paradox
of Choice.
According to this
and Schwartz, I assume he might be Jewish.
Schwartz
was asked on the Diane Riehm show,
are you saying that
arranged marriages
are more effective than dating?
Because he's saying people have all these choices,
but
they need some other objective ways of making
decisions.
The man, Ronen,
said they're gonna leave you, said
that
the arrangement
produces better results
than random choice.
This is on Diane Renfield.
I bought the book.
I mean,
it's
it's
a few hundred pages. Great book.
Let me
go to my point.
We have a breakdown
today.
The first breakdown
is that
when I talked
to
Sabri
and Sabri talked to the other people,
the first thing that has to happen between
Sabri and I
is Sabri has to what?
My relationship with him. Trust him. He has
to trust me.
He trusts me why?
What about my family?
I trust your family. You wanna also trust
your mother and your father.
Because what? They're gonna choose the best for
you.
The problem here
is that
in the case of me and Sudbury,
Sudbury knows me.
Are you with me?
Sudbury can't go to the other people if
he doesn't know me. They start asking, well,
what is a * like? I don't really
know. I just see him in the Masjid.
He wears nice clothes,
funky shoes. Other than that, I don't really
know much about him.
That that's not gonna fly.
The problem with the village model is that
our families
don't know
oh, subhanallah,
that's our cousin.
We used to
I went to college with his father
35 years ago.
We lived together in Ramallah.
You're like,
okay,
when is the last time you've seen them?
Well, why he was what's the like yesterday?
You're like,
how
oh, yeah. 25 years.
You don't know these people.
The critical element
in the Hadith is that the man was
marrying a woman
that he know.
He was objective
first.
In order for that work to be done,
our family sometimes can't do the work, not
only because they don't know the other people,
but because they don't know you.
Am I right?
My my father's gonna go out and try
to find somebody for me. You don't even
know what I want.
Right?
How do I plan to live?
Whose fault is that?
I'm asking.
Whose fault is that?
Both.
Who? Parents want No. It's your
because you you all have not
said to your mother and father and aunts
and uncles, this is me. This is what
I'm about.
These are my
what I intend to do. This is when
I intend to do it. This is how
I intend to do it,
and they can inform you and guide you
and help you.
But if they don't know,
how are they supposed to help you?
Doesn't make sense.
And then on the other side, other people
who have the same level of engagement and
commitment that the other people that are in
our universe
that they
known.
They can say what's your name, Mansoor. Mansoor,
you married? Married. Good. Start the video. Start
the video.
Mansoor's a good brother. I see him in
a message. He wears funky clothes.
No. I'm in love. I always know that
he's he had a taste,
right?
The reason that
our old model
seems not to work and our families don't
know why it doesn't work,
It doesn't work because
they're doing things that they used to do
without the framework,
the environment, the atmosphere that they used to
do them in.
Yeah?
Now in a new atmosphere,
you have to create
a new sense of community, a new sense
of family, and the willingness in America
not like
back in in Fez.
You don't tell your parents,
you're growing up in Fez. This is what
I'm gonna do. This is me. This is
the way I'm work. Right? You lay back
and and
kind of gradually break it to them. Well,
I'm not gonna be an engineer.
I wanna be an artist.
Stockfit of law.
How will you make a living doing that?
Right? Say,
ah, let me talk to you about how
much the kind of artist that I'm gonna
be makes.
They say, well, law, they make that. So
give me
it's some graphic graphical artist thing. I don't
know. But I saw they offered him $60,000
come out of college.
Artists. Engineer.
Right?
So you have to do your job
being clear about where you're going, what you're
doing, and then share it with them so
that people in your universe can perform the
function that was performed in this hadith by
a person we don't even know their name.
Are you with me?
Me? It's weird, but
there's a subjective part of this.
And it is the part when the prophet
says that you should see her
so that you know that she's pleasing
to you. Harville Hendry, I mean,
Barry Schwartz
says
that actually,
if you have already made the
objective
observations,
it only takes you a second
subjectively
to find out whether or not
it'll work.
Harville Hendrix, in his book called Getting the
Love You Want, What's the title?
Yeah.
Great book to read, especially if you have
the foundation of Islam, then you can see
by way of analogy,
you can see
the the the wisdom in it
without buying into other stuff.
By Harville Hendrix calling getting the love you
want.
Harville Hendrix says
that
that that thing that makes
your blood pressure go up,
you start perspiring a little bit,
the serotonin level starts.
If you live in Washington DC area,
you travel on the metro
from home, school, work, back, whatever, how many
people you think you see in a day?
How many?
Wow number. You see. Couple 100. Couple 100.
How many people do you remember?
2.
Wait. What
Harvard Hendricks says there is something
wired into you
that when you feel the vibe,
the way the person,
moves, the this, the that, that says, hey.
Who's that?
I can there's certain people I can feel
them.
Sister Wendy job, Jill Dubbed. I see her
from the thing she moved like that. I
say, oh, that's Ayesha.
I I I just right?
I don't even see her face and all
that stuff because
there's a certain vibe that connects us.
He says,
Hendrix,
it's great. This book is like in
its 25th edition or whatever.
Says
you can get it like that
if you got this part straight.
We only have a couple of minutes,
so we gotta go.
Most people in the world
live in this quadrant.
They're unseen and unknown.
If you're looking for somebody,
most people in the world are in this
quadrant.
S stands for?
Unseen.
US stands for? Unseen.
Unseen.
Known,
unknown.
By the way, if I was interested, I
could I could I I could sell a
book about this or something. Right?
What's in this box?
She's seen known.
Seen?
Known. Known. What's in this box?
Unknown.
Seen?
Unknown.
Which box was the man in the hadith
in?
Quadrant 1,
2,
3,
or 4? 2, 2, 2, 2. The the
woman
in the hadith,
she's in quadrant 2.
Yeah?
She's unseen, but she's known.
Before she was there, she used to be
in this box.
The vast universe of people, you see them
on the metro that that
no connection with them.
The man in the Hadith, he's taking this
route. He's going from the objective to the
subjective.
All he has to do now is cross
this barrier,
and he got here
because someone
knew him.
Let's talk about
the other route.
You're on the metro,
and
you see Amin.
But you don't know Amin.
3 minutes to the to Salah.
Said we can go and come back, they
said. Come back?
Alright. Then I have to leave you with
a cliffhanger.
So you see Amin on the metro.
He's seen,
but he's unknown.
But do you like him?
So then
you now have subjective bias. Right?
This they call
dating.
So I keep seeing
the unknown person
hoping that I will get to know them.
Unfortunately,
many times
either we find out
that there are things about them that if
we had known
we would never have seen them.
And they conceal things about themselves
that they don't want to be known.
They claim if you take this route,
that you may be in a relationship with
someone
that you never really
know
because you've been biased
and you can't get to the objective
person
with the values of mercy and piety and
love and sincerity and what have you because
you're blinded
by
their physical beauty, by their fancy clothes which
we're wearing
and our lovely smile.
And so we wind up being in a
relationship where
we almost never
ever really know
or want to accept
who
came
out of the box of seen and unknown.
We're gonna mix a lot, and we'll be
black
I mean,
back. And then I can we can
we can dialogue.