Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadith for Modern Times #08
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Okay. Should we get started?
So we've been looking at
the,
40 hadith collection of Imam Nawi.
I'm on hadith number 4.
If people wanna pull it up on their
phones,
you could just search Imam Noe
hadith 4 or 40 hadith Noe, the number
4, and it'll pop up.
This hadith is commonplace
defined as being about embryology
and
kinda fate, so to speak. And we'll see
as we get through the text
why that's some of it, but where we
can extrapolate other meaning as well.
The first three hadith that we looked at,
the Imam Nawawi,
starts his hadith collection off with hadith of
intentions,
that indeed actions are
by their intentions.
The second hadith, the hadith
tradition that
the angel Gabriel
comes,
ask these questions, gives us
insight into some etiquettes of a teacher student
relationship.
What is Islam? What is iman? What is
their Hassan? Tell me of the hour. And
then
the last hadith we looked at,
was
hadith that talked about
just the foundational
pillars of Islam.
Islam Islam
is built upon 5 things.
So we're now gonna look at a hadith
that
has
seemingly different kind of topical makeup,
but still important to understand
who the narrator is, what the text is
as we both contextualize it, as well as
try to understand
its applicability,
to us,
individually and communally.
And so can someone start by reading the
hadith? You can read it in Arabic or
in English.
It should be narrated by a companion by
the name of Abdullah
ibn Masood.
Does anyone have it?
You have it?
On the authority of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud,
may Allah be pleased with him, who said
the messenger of Allah
Allah And he is the truthful and the
believed narrated to us.
Verily the creation of each of you,
each one of you is brought together in
his mother's womb for 40 days in the
form of a drought, then he becomes a
clot of blood for for a light period
and a morsel of flesh for a light
period.
And there is sent to him the angel
who,
who blows the breath of life onto him
and who was commanded with 4 matters
to write down his sustenance,
his lifespan,
his actions, and whether he will be happy
or unhappy,
whether or not meaning, whether or not he
will enter the paradise.
By Allah,
other than whom there is no deity,
rarely one of you performs the actions of
the people of paradise until
there is by the arm's length between him
and it.
And that which has been written overtakes him.
And so he acts with the actions of
the people of the hellfire and thus enters
it. And verily, one of you performed the
actions of the people of the hellfire
until there is but an arm's length between
him and it. And that which has been
written overtakes him, and
and so
he acts with the actions of the people
of paradise, and thus, he enters it.
This is narrating Muslim and. Can you hear
the Arabic?
Anna,
Anna, Abi Abi Abdul Rahman
in,
in
We cut
the risk
for Ajani.
So looking at the narrator of this hadith
is important.
Abdullah bin
is different from Abdullah bin Umar
who narrated the hadith before.
And the first two hadith that we looked
at, they were narrated in this collection of
hadith by.
May Allah be pleased with all of them.
Right? And within
our kinda understanding more broadly,
understanding what some of these things
are
giving us insight on so that we can
add to the contextualization
of
what the hadith
can that much more mean, not just from
just the text, but kinda as people are
receiving it from.
So there's a lot that people know about,
and you wanna read up about him.
He was one of the first people to
convert to Islam
in the early period of Islam.
But even before that, in looking at his
genealogy
and his lineage,
he didn't necessarily come from an affluent background.
And the way that he's described from his
physical demeanor
was somebody
who was not physically the largest of people,
sometimes described as short as well as skinny,
and he had very dark skin,
even
where
you could say,
in this society
as we've talked about in the Wednesday class
that is so deeply embedded
within challenges around race and class and lineage.
What does this mean that this man, Abdul
ibn Mas'ud,
he is growing up in this society with
these realities?
His 2 parents,
some would say have the ancestry
he's a black man in a Meccan society.
The way that he is described in terms
of his,
just upbringing as a young boy similar to
the prophet alaihis salaam. He was somebody
who
had taken on the profession of being a
shepherd. Right? We don't have to rehash a
lot of it, but if you're in the
Wednesday class,
we talk about what some of the benefits
were to the prophet
being a shepherd growing up,
at a pivotal stage of his life. And
this wasn't when he was in his, like,
thirties or forties, but when he's in his
teens, early teens, and so too, Abdulib and
Mas'ud,
he was a shepherd as a young boy.
He had this responsibility.
One of his first interactions
with the prophet comes
during the course of his shepherding,
and he describes it as a young boy
that the prophet alayhi salam comes with Abu
Bakr, and they're thirsty.
And
Abdul ibn Mas'ud is looking after
the flock of
another person. These are not his animals.
And so
they ask for something to drink, some milk.
And Abdul ibn Mas'ud, he says to the
prophet
that I'm not able to give you this
milk because these are not my animals. Right?
That he's gotta milk them
for
the owner of the animals.
And the insight that we draw there, again,
thinking from a socialized standpoint, he's not from,
like, the elite.
The person whose sheep that he's looking after
is a chieftain of Mecca. He's not a
chieftain.
He's hired by the chieftain.
He's got black skin. His parents are not
from noble backgrounds in the sense of
what
and the prophet is
with his companion,
and he's offering to this child something. And
the child, the young boy,
he is still in a place where he
responds with integrity and honesty.
Who could fundamentally
say anything to him if he just decided
to do something
that would give him some kind of financial
compensation.
But the ethics and values that he's demonstrating
or telling that as a young person who
he's gonna grow up into being. And this
is important
in the terms of how we understand
what it is that he does as he
continues to go forward
and how it is that he is being
kind of an important role in that development
of both the early period of Islam and
later on as he gets older,
even after the passing of the prophet, alaihis
salam.
There's different narrations around some of this, and
in one, there's,
you know, but the crux of it, essentially,
is that the prophet alaihis salaam then asks
for an animal that has has essentially already
been milked. Right? That there's no problem. It's
not producing any milk.
And they say from the barakah of the
prophet alaihis salam that he starts to rub
against the side of the animal.
He starts to recite
and that the animal now starts to produce
milk, you know, kind of as a result
of this consequently.
And you see in a lot of hadith
that
the blessing of the prophet,
in numerous ways, but quite often related to,
like, food in different ways. Right? Like,
Abu Herrera at one point is with the
prophet
and somebody brings them a gift of milk,
and he's hungry, and he wants to drink
milk. Right?
Sharia, like, a milk is considered to be
both a food and a drink. You know,
and it plays a lot of different symbolic
roles. Like, when you're drinking milk in your
dreams,
sign of knowledge, it's a good thing. Right?
And so here,
Abu Herrera, for example,
he is in his head now saying he
doesn't wanna be the one to distribute the
milk because then he'll be the last one
to drink it if he's gotta give it
to all of these other companions that are
seated around him. And so the prophet says
to him, you distribute the milk. Right? So
he's gotta distribute the milk. And they go
from person to person to person. It's a
large group of people. And now when it's
just Abu Huraira and the prophet, the prophet
says to him, you drink first. And to
his astonishment,
not only does he drink
to a full mouth, but he drinks multiple
full mouths, and there's still enough left for
the prophet of God to be able to
drink.
Right? But there's just a unique barakah that
becomes present, and we see this as a
kinda consistent theme
in terms
of just the Hadith literature when it comes
to food. Right? Food for 1 is enough
for 2, food for 2 is enough for
4. It manifests in a lot of different
ways,
when it comes to the prophet's presence in
some of these moments.
And so, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, as a young
person, he becomes interested in this religion of
Islam, and he's one of the first to
convert to Islam. And in a Meccan society,
he's also the first to publicly recite the
Quran
outside in Mecca in front of the Kaaba.
He recites from verses of Surat Al Rahman.
You gotta think about this again. Right? Because
the prophet of god,
he has Abu Talib as his protector at
this juncture.
He comes from a Meccan society. He's a
Banu Hashim. He's of Quraysh.
Abdullah bin Masood
is a young black man.
And when they're looking for volunteers to publicly
recite Quran,
he volunteers himself.
He's not pushed into it. Do you know
what I mean? Nobody's saying, let's take from
amongst us the weakest and most underserved.
Right? And I gave this example last week
in our seerah class, but you wanna see
the connection between these things. The seerah is
very important
because it makes concrete Quranic revelation,
and it makes concrete
so much of what we understand. Individual hadith
without looking at it more deeply doesn't allow
for us to and I'm gonna ask you
this to talk to people in a little
bit, but why is it so important for
us to understand
this disenfranchised
person
is telling us about
embryology
and the roots of how we as humanity
are built together. Like, what significance does it
have that he comes from the background that
he has and is not just giving us
insight into things that are scientific, which are
remarkable in and of themselves, but what does
it mean that this person is telling everybody,
hey. We're all in this in this way.
Do you know? Like, we're connected in this
manner. Do you get what I'm saying? Right?
And you wanna start to think about that
a little bit.
And so here, Abdul ibn Mas'ud, he volunteers.
In the story I was telling people, I
was walking
on Broadway,
or Lafayette in fourth Street where there's a
gym, and there was a,
delivery guy who's African American talking to his
delivery partner,
and he
was dropping goods off to a restaurant
in their basement storage. And as I was
standing next to him, he was saying how
he served in the military of this country
and was given all these promises
by serving in the military,
things around education and opportunities and all of
these kinds of things. And he said, nobody
did anything for me.
He said, I went and I served, and
now I'm just delivering goods. He wasn't saying
it to downplay or be judgmental of the
job, but giving an insight into a society
that's rooted
in challenges around race and class that we
see again and again and again. It just
utilizes minority
demographics
in a prism of antiblackness
to do the things that those who were
in positions of privilege and power, they wouldn't
do. The prophet isn't telling Abdullah bin Mas'ud,
hey. You go and do this. He's volunteering
for it.
And they're telling him, you don't have protection.
Like, there's nobody who's going to be able
to help you here. And these guys went
through a lot of different things. People like
Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, people like Bilal ibn Raba,
people like
Khabab ibn Arat. In the early years of
revelation, it was really heavy.
Khabab ibn Arat, he asked the prophet, why
don't you make dua for us? On one
occasion, Umar ibn Al Khattab sees Khabab ibn
Arat's back bare, and it's got blisters and
scars on it. And when he asked what
happened, like, how did this come to be,
Khabab ibn Arat, he says that they used
to kinda rub flaming coals on his back.
They make them lay on beds of flaming
coals. Right? But there's no consequence. There's no
accountability.
So this man, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, who's narrating
this hadith,
he is volunteering
to, for the first time,
publicly
recite Quran in Mecca that is super hostile
to Muslims.
You know?
And he's reciting Surat Al Rahman.
They start to beat him, spit on his
face, do all kinds of things, and he
just continues to recite and continues to recite
and says, I would do it again if
I had the opportunity to do it.
In terms of the companions of the prophet,
there are a lot that are designated with
particular skills and spiritual gifts. And Abdullah ibn
Mas'ud,
he is noted
as being amongst 4 who the prophet alaihi
salaam distinguishes
as being somebody to take Quran from. And
he says in his own words, that
there's not a verse in the Quran that
I couldn't tell you when it was revealed
and then what it was revealed about. Right?
He's got a deep knowledge of what the
book is about.
He's not somebody who's got, like, thousands of
hadith that he's narrated.
There's, like, 800 to 900 hadith that he
narrates,
but he's known as being somebody
who's really on top of Quran.
Then that's something that he's got a deep
connection to,
so much so that the people are encouraged
to learn Quran from him and to take
Quran Quran from him if they're
not able to take it directly from the
prophet of God, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
There's a lot more that we could talk
about in relation to Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, but
I wanna be mindful of the time
in understanding
what we know about him now, that he
comes from this place
where he has, like, a different
physical demeanor. Forget his skin color for a
minute, but just his physical build is not
what is the typical
of men in the Meccan society.
Right? They function off of a principle called
marua. It's like manliness,
machismo, this kinda virulence
in this way that is
rooted
in the way the society functions.
Abdul ibn Mas'ud
is just a skinny person. This is how
they describe him. That he's thin and he's
small.
And
he also then is described based off of
his skin color. He's a black person.
Thinking about this now as it relates to
the context of the hadith
that
where and how
this hadith is speaking to us about very
particular
things,
Why is it an important thing for us
to think about, or what else can we
extrapolate from it
that
understanding
in real time he's telling people in a
gathering,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said this.
And then he talks about the way humanity
is born
from the starting point within the womb. Does
the question make sense?
Are there any connections that we can draw
from
who he is as a person
and to the text in and of itself
that has nothing to do with embryology and
fate, right, to give you insight. But to
think about it a little bit more deeply
by contextualizing
it. What are some of the other things
that we can take away from it? If
you can turn to the person next to
you, and then we'll come back and discuss
and start going into the actual text of
the hadith.
But go ahead.
If you don't know the people you're sitting
next to, just introduce your names and stuff,
that'd be great.
Okay.
So what are some of the things? Like,
how do we connect
Abdul ibn Mas'ud's
background
to
this hadith?
Like, what what is that
telling us,
in ways that can help us resonate a
little bit differently? What did you discuss?
Or anything that you discussed, whether you talked
about that or not. Whatever you talked about.
Yeah.
The the the the biggest thing that stood
of him being like, guys, we all come
from the same place. So, like, there's no
there there shouldn't you people shouldn't think of
themselves as inherently better because they,
look different or because,
themselves as inherently better because they,
look different or because
Allah made them bigger or Allah made them
white.
It's just it's just things that Allah gave
you, and you shouldn't see yourself as inherently
better because we all came from, like, a
drop of
Yeah. Amazing. Other thoughts?
Anything?
Yeah.
I don't know if this is connected, but
I've, this has come like, I I've heard
of this before in terms of, like, when
people talk about,
abortion.
I wonder
I wonder if, like, this was a topic
that was discussed back then and if a
lot of people were talked
about it and,
whether
doctor Leggen was there when he chose to
speak about it, whether that was related to,
like, those
Yeah.
We're gonna talk about kind of the soul
and this idea of when it's breathed in
and this kind of stuff.
I think this is a point that I
was hoping people would kinda take away from.
Like, here is this man who is not
necessarily
seen to be from
amongst the upper echelons of society,
but he's in a space where his name
is known. He's an early companion. Like, when
we talked about Abdullah bin
Umar
last week, we said that, you know, he
was known as being one of the 4
Abdulas, but they were all younger Abdullah's.
Right?
This is
not considered amongst those 4 Abdullah's
because they're older. You know, and he converted
at a different time and different experience and
was with the prophet pretty much through everything,
Do you know?
But just think about it.
In the Meccan sphere, the Metanese sphere as
well. Right? Abdullah bin Mas'ud,
he when
they, you know, migrate to Medina, he's already
migrated to Abyssinia twice. You know? So you
wanna think about this. Right? They go from
a Meccan society where black people are treated
terribly
to Abyssinia, which is modern day Ethiopia,
and the king is black in Abyssinia.
Do you know?
And what must that mean
in relation to this man who went from
a place
where who he was
just rendered him by default to be at
the lowest of the low. He's
poor. He's skinny. He's short. He's black.
He is in a ever kind of increasing
state of poverty.
He doesn't get married for a long period
of time. He's got no money. Do you
know? Like, they lived real lives.
This man,
he's standing in front of people and saying,
all of us have the same starting point.
All of us have a common beginning.
And it what would that mean not just
to
he himself as the narrator,
but to the people being recipient of it?
Do you know? Think about the people that
you know
who are your friends, family members,
people that you know struggle
just to find someone to even get married
to.
However many reasons somebody can think around race,
culture, class, as to why someone is not
good enough to be married to their child.
Do you know?
Abdul ibn Mas'ud, he is telling this Meccan
society
that is heavily stratified.
People even in Medina who are nice, but
there's still elements of things that carry over
from where people had the consequence
of socialization.
Right? Abu Dhar and Bilal
they argue. They fight. They go back and
forth. Emotions escalate.
Abu Dhar calls Bilal the son of a
black woman.
The prophet hears this, gets upset.
He doesn't get upset when most people do
haram things other than
more often than not when someone's abusing someone,
oppressing someone, being racist. The prophet got angry
at these things. Anger as a parent, all
of us are the children of a black
woman referring to Hajar, peace be upon her.
Do you know? The prophet himself, We talked
about this in the class on Wednesday. 1
of the 4 women who nurse him is
who's a Abyssinian woman.
Right? She is black.
It's one of his foremothers.
So in understanding
this now, the receipt of this
rooted in
particular questions that we're gonna talk about, Embryology,
science,
reason,
revelation,
all of this kind of stuff. But I
want you to think,
what must it be like for this person
who stood in front of the Kaaba
and recited Quran
as he is who he is? Because who
are the people who are the opponents of
Islam? Right? Umar
is large enough
that he can wear a sword on his
neck as a necklace,
and it doesn't cut him, like, just because
of how massive he is. Right? These are
the type of people who are against these
people in the beginning of it all. Do
you get what I mean? He's still standing
there speaking his truth.
He's still out there
speaking what he knows to be important to
share. Do you get what I mean?
And these people have to digest all of
it. The same way your mother or your
father or your mother's father and your father's
mother, whoever has a problem with you getting
married to somebody from the wrong village in
your own country or a different race or
a different culture,
you went and said this to them, they
would say, what are you talking about?
You think it's different for Abdullah ibn Mas'ud
who he's not in a place where
he has the same protections.
The boulder is put on his chest. When
Abu Talib is alive, there's no boulder being
put on the chest of the prophet of
God.
There's other instances where things happen, definitely, but
it's still different.
And so here now, Abdullah bin Mas'ud,
he's telling these people after he has been
mistreated without protection
in this Meccan society,
we all have a common starting point.
Everybody in the beginning,
you all are formulated
from this little
insignificant
thing,
and then you grow into something a little
bit bigger, but still not anything.
The only thing that happens
is you have
a unique
that is breathed into you while you are
in this womb,
but all of us are in this. The
Hadith
doesn't use the word,
which is for womb. It uses the word,
which means stomach. Right?
But still alluding to the same idea.
This is why, like,
for example, is a very unique concept
because it's saying,
like, you're not just family members.
You're linked because you shared a common womb.
You know?
That's like the connection of your bond. Do
you know what I mean? And here,
Adam,
All of us are the children of Adam.
Every human
gotta be born in this way.
All of us have the same
starting point. We all have the same
beginning in terms of worldly
existence.
The soul that's breathing into us,
all coming from the abode of the.
They were all created. We know this. An
Adamic narrative of creation. Right?
The covenant is taken in the Quran. Am
I not your lord? Allah asks
all of us that are create like, all
of us here and everybody who has not
been born into the world yet, everybody who
died already, everyone who's else is in the
building, out in the park,
everyone, what our theology says,
everyone is asked this question, am I not
your lord? And everybody says right? The Quran
says,
that, yes, like, we bear witness to this.
You know?
And so here
from that place,
this is how you
are
entered into
existence
in this world,
a common starting point.
And that nonverbalized
aspect of communication
has to be something that is understood
and recognized.
This religion
elevates people
through principles
of taqwa.
It is not something that is tokenizing.
It is not something
that is done in ways
that are purely
for show,
but the prophet has a deep love for
And Abdullah bin
he has a deep love for the prophets
They have, like, a real close relationship.
The prophet, like,
teaches him pretty much everything directly.
When he goes to Medina,
everyone is buddied up with somebody.
The prophet buddies
brothers up. Right?
The the Ansar, the people of Mecca, they're
now living with the people of Medina.
Abdulib and gets paired with a companion by
the name of Mu'ad ibn Jabal. We also
know that the prophet loves really deeply. Right?
Because at the end of, like, the Medanese
period of this year,
one of the things that happens as the
prophet is in his, like, final
months, year of living in this world,
like, he takes Mu'ad ibn Jabal to the
edge of
city and gives him these words of how
do you essentially derive, like, rulings in our
tradition and whatever else. He also says, when
you come back,
you're likely not gonna be here. And then
he says, you know, I love you, like.
Do you know? Then
this man is the person that he buddies
up this other man that he loves, Abdullah
bin Masfud with.
And so he's telling him this. You wanna
also understand that the prophet had companions who
came from diverse backgrounds,
and it's important to recognize that when you
study, like, books of fiqh, you study books
of hadith.
There's not books of hadith
that when you're going through, like, the madrasa
systems
or other systems
that they're gonna sit there and tell you
the senior companion of the prophet was a
black man.
There's hadith where his students talk about him
or narrations where his students talk about him,
and his hair is, like, braided.
Do you know?
And you just think about it. Right? Think
about how it is that people relate to
people of different cultures and different backgrounds
and what it is that they This
man who is one of the people that
the prophet
said learn and take Quran from him,
he had his hair in braids.
Do you get what I'm saying?
And you wanna think why it's important for
us
within the spaces that we're in because
people won't think about the things they don't
think about.
The Hanafi school of fiqh,
in large part, owes so much to Abdullah
ibn Mas'ud
because he goes to Kufa, which is, like,
the birthplace of all things Hanafi.
And if you did, like, the prayer fit
class we did in the summer, we're looking
at it from a Hanafi fit standpoint.
Do you know what I mean?
In the same way when we talked about
the initial part of the where the prophet
Ibrahim
leaves his wife Hajar
and Ishmael, their son, in the desert
And the city of Mecca gets established where
the well of Zamzam is. And the entire
tribe of the Jurhum come and they're engaging
this elderly
black woman. Hajar's a black woman and this
infant child.
And
can we settle around this area?
This is where Mecca gets established, and she
says, yes, but the water is under my
authority. Where do the shifts come in in
terms of
race and gender?
And how do we understand it? This man,
Abdullah bin Mas'ud,
goes from being somebody who is beaten in
front of the Kaaba to teaching people Quran
to playing significant
roles in different
kinda milestones of the prophet's life, had a
close relationship with Umar radiAllahu an. He passes
during the caliphate of Uthman Radialahu An. So
he lives for a long period of time,
but they give him the credibility
that he is owed. Right?
And it's not belaboring a point. It's important.
When you don't look in more detail,
people who are sitting,
like, in different parts of the world where
everybody's the same, It's all the same culture.
It's homogeneous in certain ways.
They're not thinking about elements of race and
distinct culture in the ways that you might
when you're surrounded by diversity.
If everybody is all Pakistani,
if everybody's Bengali or Indian,
if everybody is all Egyptian,
if everybody's all Saudi, all Malaysian, all Indonesian,
all Turkish,
they're not gonna be necessarily
as focused on some of these things that
are important points also
to be able to then think a little
bit differently about the narration
that it's not just about embryology
and
which it is about. Right? But there's so
much more we can take from it just
by knowing a little bit about the person
who's narrating the hadith to us. Do you
get what I'm saying? Does that make
sense? And then it can open up so
many different
doors of perspective to us. Do you know?
The same way when we talk about Abdullah
ibn
Umar as being somebody who despite the fact
that his father was a Khalifa,
he didn't aspire towards positions of leadership and
authority. Lot
of
things that we want to be able to
just attach to a little bit more in
these ways. I wanna take a pause here.
Because I know I'm talking a lot. If
you turn to the person next to you,
what are you taking away so far? Like,
what is it bringing up for you,
this kinda part of the conversation?
And then we'll come back and discuss. Go
ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
taking away so far? What's coming up for
people?
Who wants to start?
Yeah.
So our group was actually talking about,
you know how you mentioned, like, in certain
countries, like, in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, like, you
might not think
about, like, discriminate like like, differentiating yourself on,
like, color or anything like that, different ethnicities.
But we were talking about how even in
those areas, like, people do find a way
to, like, differentiate themselves from others. So, like,
you can all be from India, but based
on the region you're from, you might view
yourself as better or worse or, like, it
might be tied to maybe,
like, historically
an occupation you held or so we were
talking about what kinda
leads people to behave in that way where
they look for a way to, 1,
feel a sense of belonging with 1 group
but also differentiate from another group. And maybe,
like,
I guess that's maybe innately built in like
on a tribal mentality, but maybe revelations
and, you know,
learning from the Quran and the deeds. It's
kind of telling you to look beyond that
and don't just fall into it. If you're
built a certain way or if
you've been behaving a certain way, that doesn't
have to be how it is.
Yeah. And I would just nuance it to
say it's not telling us to look beyond
it, but it's telling us to find the
beauty in it.
Right? To, like, see it as all encompassing
and all embracing
that, like, black is beautiful, brown is beautiful.
We don't have to say it's despite these
things. Do you know?
But to recognize that all of this is
still that
the
hadith is talking
about, right, and
the
that the hadith is talking about,
right, and then we
bring ourselves up in the state of Alaka
to a. Right? There's all these things that
are happening.
We have a common standing point, but the
mold, like, then yields the beautiful diversity
that we have in this room. Do you
know? That it comes from a place where
how you see someone isn't just telling you
about who they are, but how you see
someone tells you about, like, who you are,
essentially. Right? And why do I look that
way? And my point was more so, like,
you're not going to a lot of gatherings
where they teach you the 40 hadith, and
they're gonna say, and by the way, this
man who had deep
influence on the establishment
of one of the main
remaining
schools of Sunni
thought
was a black man.
Do you know? Do you see what I'm
saying? Right?
And somewhere along the line, it's like, well,
either it was just known and you didn't
have to say it. Did somebody purposely start
to leave it out?
Right? How much would the world be different?
Right? Like, I'm from I'm from the Indian
subcontinent. You know what I mean? Right? People
are super racist like in India and Pakistan.
Right? Do you know right? You know?
How much would Pakistan's, like, world be flipped
upside down
where everyone is in
in Pakistan?
And they'd have to, like, deal with the
reality
that Ibn Mas'ud
is somebody
who
was is was a black guy. Do you
know what I'm saying? Right? It's just it
wouldn't it wouldn't work.
Skin whitening
cream, like, capital of the world would suddenly,
like, just be, like,
in a state of frenzy
inwardly. Do you know? And it's just one
sentence in a biography
that its presence is impactful, but so is
its absence.
Do you see what I mean? Does that
make sense?
Right?
Other thoughts? Like, what else are we taking
away so far?
Yeah.
I think, well, of course, it's great importance
for Hadith, you know, to to understand the
the Hadith,
following
as
well as
a great of greater importance for us to
read the Quran. When you read the Quran,
I noticed that
there are verses that says that there there
is these these are the people of hellfire.
These are the people of paradise
of Jannah Inshallah.
We ask
that we may be of the people of
Jannah. Right.
And from that, so
to equal to the
of all Quran of the Quran
that there are verses that speaks about about
each individual's ruah.
So I guess that's for us to read
in our own time to find out where
is where is
Allah forming me of my
of my character.
You know, just identify that where in the
Quran speaks of that individual each individual.
Yeah. And you can think about this in
the text
as well. Right? That isn't just about the
specific categories of that are being identified,
but when you're in this place
where it's attached together, embryology and, Like, what
is the link that's here? Allah is in
control of all of it.
Who's determining when the soul is coming and
which soul is going into the womb? Who
is it that magnificently
constructed us in such a way that our
inward is so marvelous
as the world is around us?
And now you have this black man that's
telling all these people,
god is in control of this, and god
is in control of this.
Everything is about
Allah's decree and Allah's wisdom.
So it's in Allah's wisdom that he made
me black. It's in Allah's wisdom he made
you Arab.
Nobody asked me who I wanted to be
born to. Nobody asked you either.
How does that become a distinguishing
variable?
The categories
that are outlined here are what when you
read the hadith as it pertains to Qadr.
Right? And Qadar what Qadr we'll talk about
probably next week because it's just like topic
in and of itself,
But, you know, we're looking at it in
terms of things that are decreed by god.
You know? What does the hadith outline here
in terms of
the things
that,
it
specifies
are written for somebody,
the 4 decrees that it talks about?
It's in the Hadith.
It's not a trick question.
Risk. Risk, assistance. What else? Lifespan.
Lifespan. Anything else? Deeds.
Deeds and?
Yeah. Whether you'll be happy or not, which
is, like, entering paradise. I appreciate if you
raised your hand. No one else did. Yeah.
You
you should teach etiquette classes to everybody.
Right?
Yeah. But just think here.
It's talking about ideas.
These are not things you wanna look at
in isolation.
Fill the gaps, not unnecessarily that you create
this fictitious narrative,
but this hadith is also telling us Allah
is in control,
and Allah is the one that is the
determiner of these things. Right?
We hear in a lot of these videos
from our brothers and sisters in Palestine
who are yielding to divine decree that is
around them fundamentally.
Right? You know, Allah is enough for us,
and he is the disposer of our of
of our affairs. Do you know? Right? So
Abdullah ibn Mas'ud,
he's telling them about these theological
principles,
but it's not just only for us
to extrapolate
principles of theology
from this hadith.
You have this man
who is telling these people also
that God is the one that determines these
things.
The length of your life,
that's by God. Your sustenance,
that's by God. Why do you think you
are better or worse? Because you live longer
or because you have more of the world.
Why do you think you're better because your
skin color is different?
Do you understand?
Do you hear what I'm saying?
Right?
And you think now about its placement
in this book of 40 hadith.
Actions are by intentions. You gotta know what
you're gonna
do, why you're doing it before you get
it done.
Right?
Islam, Right? The system of Islam, what is
this religion about? Gives you something to do,
something to believe in, something to embody, something
to get ready for. Hadid Jibril is teaching
us.
This is what makes you Muslim. You gotta
do these things.
You don't think the next hadith as it's
talking about what's there, Your relationship to Allah,
faith, theology,
practice?
This is the nature of things. Right? Right?
The
hadith before said that you establish prayer. That's
how you relate to the divine,
and you give in charity. This is how
you relate to the people. So here and
now, how we
understand
who we are individually
still yields
to who Allah is in his magnificence.
Do you know what I mean?
And it's beautiful
that is being told by somebody
who came from a poor background
that was abused and persecuted
and had the wrong skin color, the wrong
lineage,
and he's telling all of these people,
we all come from the same place.
Do you see what I mean? Does that
make sense?
Okay.
So as we get to it now in
some of where we have more conventional
explanations of this hadith, which are still important
to understand,
that it goes now into
conversations
on things dealing with embryology.
And this is where Abdullah ibn Mas'ud
he starts by talking about the prophet
saying that he is Sadiq and Masduk.
Right? That he is, like,
trustworthy,
and he is the one that is trusted.
Why do you think he's saying this?
Because of the prophet, I mean, like like
you you had mentioned earlier
that despite of the the Muslim position in
society, the prophet
loved him deeply.
And so, like,
you know, like, the prophet,
he knew the prophet on a very intimate
level.
But also that,
like, just to reinforce that I don't, like,
don't care about what the society is saying.
This is a man that speaks not from
his own desire, but this is a beloved
of God, and he speaks,
with revelation.
And, like, this is what he's saying to
emphasize.
Yeah. These people believe that Allah's revelation
and Allah's messenger
who is impacted by Wahi and divinely guided,
everything they say is real and true.
They're not making distinctions
based off of scientific
theory. Here's what is empirically understood.
Right? What religion offers that science and empirical
understandings
don't always is that the latter quite often
gives to us how and what. Right? Religion
gives to us why
in ways that we don't necessarily
get from the latter in that regard.
But in understanding here
that they're talking about things that how would
anybody fundamentally know that this is the way
that it works?
You know, when Noor was reading
in the first rakah,
he mentions a verse that talks about the.
Right?
Do you know what I mean? How how
do they how
will they know this?
Do you know?
Like, how? There's they don't.
Right?
That he's not only, like, honest, but he's
one that's trusted.
People know this about the prophet, alayhis salaam.
You know?
And
he comes in, and they're deciding who's gonna
put the black stone back. And they say,
rejoice. Rejoice. The trustworthy one is here. It's
also remarkable.
Do you know? Because you wanna think, what
do you wanna be known for?
And my kids, right, my my daughter not
so much. She's, like, just amazing human being.
So is my son. They're both great. But
my son, he's, like, really into
asking me questions
around,
like, you know, who's the most famous person
you've ever met, Baba?
And all these kinds of things. And he
really likes mister Beast. I don't know if
he has like mister Beast or not, but
he likes mister Beast because mister Beast is
very philanthropic.
So he'll show me videos
of mister Beast's, like, building wells in Africa
or like doing these other things. Do you
know? But he's, like, got millions of views
on these things. Do you know what I'm
saying? Why are you shaking your head?
Oh, that's fine. History.
Yeah. There we go. Maybe it'll come on.
But, you know,
that's where a lot of our understanding statistically
are kind of inclined towards. You ask most
young people, however you wanna define young people,
their pursuit and ambition is rooted
in the acquisition of fame and money.
Right? These are determiners
of success,
and where and how our religion is just
not like this.
Like, being wealthy is not a key to
paradise. If anything, the hadith teaches us that
the poor and the destitute
have more of an ease of going into
Jannah. May Allah make us all people of
Jannah.
But the recognition there is when you got
more stuff, like, you're accountable for more things.
Do you know?
You just gotta, like, own up to that.
This is how it works whether you want
to or not. Do you know what I
mean?
But
what do you want to be known for?
Because in the heavens, you're not going to
be known for how big your house was.
You're gonna be asked about what did you
use it for. It's not gonna be about
how much money you made. It's gonna be
about how you made it and what did
you spend it on. Do you know? Because
this hadith that we talk about next week,
it's already telling you your risk is written
for you. You play a role in how
you attain it. So why would you turn
to haram in order to achieve it or
to gain it? Do you know? But here,
ibn Mas'ud, he's saying
that the prophet
he is known as being,
like, a man of truth. He speaks honestly,
and he's trusted. He's trustworthy,
and he speaks truth.
Right?
That's a crazy thing to be known. Like,
look at look at the world we live
in right now.
How many people lie
all the time,
like, all the time
about everything
people lie. Like so many things, they just
lie. It's crazy about the kind of things
people lie about. And not even for any
kind of you know, because, like, a lot
of kids, they'll lie not because they're actually
trying to be malicious.
Right?
But they lie because they want to cover
up
mistakes because they don't wanna get in trouble.
Do you know? If you have bad parents,
they're not teaching you how to learn from
your mistakes. They're teaching you how to avoid
getting caught
because the consequence is not something that a
child should have to go through. Right? May
Allah make us all those who honor the
rights of young people in our lives. Do
you know what I mean? The prophet is
just
trustworthy.
You know? You know if he tells you
he's gonna do something, he's gonna get it
done. He's He's gonna make a promise. He's
gonna keep the promise. Right? He's gonna tell
you I'm gonna be some place in a
certain time. He's gonna be there at that
time. That's crazy.
You know what I mean?
Like, just think about it on a real
level. That's what we wanna think when we
look at these hadith that they actually
are historically
occurring.
You know? They're not just things that are
stories. They're real things.
This man,
he doesn't
lie.
That's what he's known for as being trustworthy
and being someone who just
speaks truly.
Do you know?
I was in Chicago last night
speaking at a dinner for the Talif Collective.
People know what the Talif Collective is?
No? Yeah. The Talif Collective
started off as a space that provided,
convert care
to newcomers to Islam.
California
got a lot of people who were not
converts,
but really appreciated the vibe that was there.
They had a satellite space in Chicago.
Chicago now is
like a larger hub than what they have
in California.
They're really amazing team,
you know, of people,
converts and those born into Islam. 1 of
the people who runs in Chicago
actually was a former member of our community
here. His name is Will Caldwell,
and he did his graduate studies here,
when we used to be in the basement
of the church over there. He was back
here a week or two ago with his
wife and one of their kids.
It's really great guy,
So I spoke towards the end. I was
the keynote,
and I don't know what I was gonna
talk about. Right? And so I got on
the stage, and I
said, it's so remarkable
that this space,
it's known as the place where people come
to take their shahada.
Like, there's a lot of messages that are
known for many things.
This is a place women don't go. This
is a place the brown man will stare
at you. Right? This is a place
where, like, they won't speak to you in
the language that you understand.
This is a place where this happens. That
it's not always usually, like, nice things. Right?
Sometimes it is,
but sometimes it's, like, very exclusionary.
Do you know?
And I said, isn't it crazy
that the place we're coming to support tonight,
it's known to be the place people go
to become Muslim.
What a remarkable title to have. Do you
know what I mean? Like, your community here
gets a lot of people that take their
shahada.
People know this to be a safe space,
a diverse space, a generous, like, community.
I love it because it's
really
affirming
in a lot of different ways.
But you wanna trickle it down now to
individual
kind of understanding.
Right?
If a label
was removed of a job title or a
degree,
a credential that hangs on a wall, and
prevailing
characteristics to your character
is what you were known as, what would
you be known as? What would I be
known as? Right? And I'm telling you things
that I think about in my head all
the time. When I read this hadith, I'm
like, man, my prophet was a good man.
What would, like, people know me to be?
If my name was erased,
would people,
like, label me as kind or a jerk?
Would I be in a and not just
like in a public facing space, in private
spaces, in secret spaces,
the people who I have the most intimate
relationships with.
And you start to think for yourself the
legacy of this tradition
from a man who is telling us
that this is what we want to understand
as common beginnings,
known to be a person who is the
one you should go to take Quran from,
in the absence of the prophet, you go
to this man amongst 4.
He's saying, like, our prophet is a good
person.
He speaks truth. He's trusted.
What would we be known for? Can't be
self deprecating. It has to be honest.
Right?
Would you be judgmental, a gossiper,
a racist, a backbiter?
Would you be somebody who doesn't own up
to responsibilities?
Would you be known for your etiquette, your
character? Do you know what I mean?
And so
reflecting on this as a broader sense
and then understanding it also in terms of
what's gonna come after,
that he's letting people know
that the prophet said it, so it's true.
Allah said it, so it's true.
I don't need to understand it for it
to be true.
I don't need to know the intricacies
of it. It's not validated
simply because
a book of embryology
centuries later
outlined that this process actually is what it
is,
that it's enough that god and his messengers
said it, so that's what it is.
Do you know?
He speaks truth
and he is trusted.
A person of integrity
who people
see
who his
nature and character is. Do you get what
I mean?
Because you gotta think. Right?
The people who are hearing this, who are
they? They're people who want to mock and
ridicule.
They want to, like, just bring down. When
the prophet goes on Isra and Miraj,
it's a majestic journey narrated to us from
his home to the city of Jerusalem,
ascends to the heavens, very vividly described, and
then comes back, and he's gotta tell all
of these people this is what's happened.
And as they are hearing this,
the people start to mock and ridicule. Do
you know what your prophet wants to believe?
He wants us to believe he took this
journey, went all the way to Jerusalem, to
the heavens, and came back in the night.
Some people,
they start to doubt. Some people leave Islam.
People are in a place where they're just,
like, confused
in this way.
But then there's people like Abu Bakr who
they say, do you want to know what
your friend wants us to believe? He wants
us to believe he went in 1 night
to Jerusalem
into the heavens and came back
all in 1 night.
And we're lucky with no hesitation. If my
friend said it, then it must be true.
And then he goes and sits where the
prophet is telling people about this.
And
every so often, Abu Bakr
he would say,
right,
spoke the truth, spoke the truth, spoke the
truth.
What do you think it does for the
prophet's
demeanor
and his sense of morale?
Because he's still a person. Right? Why he
is burdensome,
like, in the most literal of senses. Do
you know? He's on the mount when revelation
comes. The animal just sits on the ground
from the weight of it.
Ali has his leg,
the prophet's, like, resting on him when revelation
comes.
Ali talks about just the sheer
physical weight, the heaviness of it, what it's
doing to his body in terms of just
the impact. Do you know?
But then also think
this man got beaten in front of the
Kaaba
for reciting Quran out loud,
and he's still telling people,
I trust this man.
Do you understand?
He's in a place where whatever he's gotta
take, he's gonna take it.
Hardship, difficulty,
abuse,
none of it is wavering his faith.
It's seen as necessary
consequences
given the context that they live in.
But can you imagine
what it must be doing to the messenger
of God who is a trustworthy
person
and is trusted
as a person of truth
to see this happening to the people that
are following him.
And then the man is still saying
he's a good person.
Do you know what I mean?
Do you get it?
Right?
And recognizing the importance of this.
You know? Because the prophet is there for
people,
but
it's definitely
gonna do something for him knowing that Abu
Bakr is speaking
up for him in that moment when people
are looking to push him down.
The people who are beloved to him, who
are having to deal with the consequences of
being his early followers,
they're still with him saying, we're we're here,
like, we're with you. You know?
We believe you. We believe you on everything.
You're telling us this is how we were
made. You're telling us, like, this is how
it all comes together.
You said it. It's true.
Do you know what I mean?
Because it's important. The prophet doubts himself.
He doesn't blame his people. He doesn't say
to them, do you know, like, things are
tough? Maybe you did something wrong. But constantly,
he's going back to Allah. Did I do
something wrong? Right? Are you forsaking
us because of me? Am I inadequate in
what's happening here? Do you get what I
mean?
And then you think a young person looking
up to an older person,
what kind of impact does that have? Do
you know?
And then what's coming after,
he's saying, this is true.
This is how we engage our faith.
This is how we engage our religion.
It's not just overtly rationalized.
We're not in a place where
we are without
engagement of our intellectual
capacity,
but we have a relationship to text,
to our ability
to discern meaning from rational thinking. It's not
an either extreme as an absolute devoid of
the other, but they go hand in hand.
Right? And in a god centric religion, it's
going to assume there's certain things that god
wants us to do, that we love to
do, certain things that are hard to do,
and certain things we just don't understand.
But it centers God,
and that's what we yield to when we
say Allah knows best.
I don't have to believe it for it
to be true,
but I can believe it without having comprehension
of it.
Right? I couldn't tell you how, like, everything
works in the womb
from day 1 till birth,
you know? Most of us couldn't. I don't
even know what happens when I eat food
and what's going on in my body. Do
you know what I mean? Most of us
don't know what's going on to our body.
This is why we eat garbage all the
time. Right? If we knew what was happening
from what it was that we were putting
into our body, we probably wouldn't eat the
way that we eat. Do you know? It's
evidence of the fact that we have no
idea how we function. Do you know what
I mean?
But Ibn Mas'ud
is saying to these people
that
this is how our religion is,
that
we can ask questions,
You can have curiosity. You can want to
understand.
But if Allah and his messenger
have said something is this way, then that's
just what it is. Does this make sense?
As a foundational
principle,
it's an important part of Islam.
Islam is not built off of I think,
I feel,
I want.
It's not devoid of emotional intelligence
but you don't worship feelings.
You can struggle with something,
but you're in a space where you are
still engaging in the struggle with the recognition
that Allah told me not to do it,
that's the better option.
Allah's messenger said to do it, that's the
better option always.
It's hard for me to wake up for
fajr. Doesn't mean I have to rationalize to
a point that I change religion into something
that it's not.
It's not easy for me to tell my
professor I gotta get up to go to
Jummah,
leave the workplace to do this or that.
That's fine. Things are not a lot make
it easy for all of us. Do you
know?
But that's different from being able to say,
hey. I think maybe, like, they didn't get
it right.
Why is this important to understand?
Because tools that are used against us
within supremacist
society
and internalized racisms that we experience, whether aware
of it or not,
make us have doubt in things
that we need to have certitude in.
And what is taken advantage of is an
absence of knowledge.
If you are learning your Islam from people
who hate Islam,
then that's who you're choosing to learn it
from.
And if you're in a place where you
don't see,
which
we see now,
like, going into
this most recent escalation
of just darkness in the world around us
as to where
Islam is ethically distinct
from what is prevalent ideology
in the world.
That you don't want to seek your validation
from this system.
And if this system is telling you that,
oh, man, you're Muslim and you believe in
this, that the aspirational goal is to be
in a place that says, yes, I do
believe in it, and I don't need your
approval.
This young black man who is beaten by
these people,
he's telling them my prophet is right.
Yeah. How much must that sting to these
people?
You know?
They can't break his spirit.
I'm gonna keep reading Quran in public. What
are you gonna do? I know it's truth.
To get to that place,
what Abulib and Mas'ud does,
he spends time with the prophet.
That's who he learns from.
How can you have this if you don't
spend time with your prophet?
Right?
So you learn the Sira. You read the
hadith. You take from text. You memorize it.
You spend time with it. You reflect on
it. You contemplate on it, and then you
say, do I buy into this idea?
Not do I buy into the idea that
I should pray like this many sunnahs in
this prayer and that prayer? Do I buy
into the idea
that I believe in what he is inviting
me to and calling me to?
The things I'm good with and the things
I struggle with. Do you see what I
mean?
That is gonna get into, like, the text
in and of itself
as a preface to it. Right? This is
what happens.
This is how it grows.
This is what happens
at this time. Right? This is when, like,
the angel blows the soul into the womb
and all this stuff, and then talks about
God there, which we're gonna talk about in
the coming week.
But this week, we wanna focus on this
because it's really important for us to understand
this. These are companions
who do not fit into a rugged
box of individualism.
Islam is not a monolithic religion.
There are people who are not Muslim who
make us homogeneous,
but there are also people who are Muslim
who make us homogeneous. They do not relate
text to context. They say everybody
just becomes the same in every which way.
That's just not fundamentally what it is. We
looked at 4 hadith
narrated by 3 different people,
all of whom are so different from each
other.
They're super different from each other.
You know?
They're not the same. So the religion isn't
saying that you have to mute your identity
or your persona or this and that, but
the essential base of it is something
that is going to have a common foundation.
Do you see what I mean?
Okay.
So let's take 5 minutes. If you turn
the person next to you, what what are
you taking away from this conversation tonight?
And then we will,
take a pause, share just, like, a couple
of quick announcements,
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
taking away from today?
Who wants to start?
What are some of the things
coming up for people? Yeah.
I
as you highlighted before,
I found,
one takeaway I found is that
you emphasized
on the attribute
of Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi wa Salam.
We tend to,
always focus on the attributes of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. And then we forget about the
attributes of the and
one is the attributes of siddiq,
which is a very high status. It is
higher than a mortar.
And,
you know, it's it's in reflection of how
to
bring in that,
bring that into actualization.
May Allah make us from amongst them.
Other thoughts?
Yep.
Yeah.
Other thoughts?
Anything? Takeaways? Yeah.
Great.
Anything else? Other thoughts?
Takeaways from today?
Yeah.
Yeah. Go ahead. Part was, about how we
also sort of
Yeah.
Yeah.
No. It's okay.
Oh, what a fun group people over there.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah.
That's my takeaway. Sorry.
Yeah. Thank you for sharing.
And we're grateful for your presence in our
community
and confident
that people will
continue to grow. And that's why, you know,
we wanna, like, learn these things in these
ways. Right? We didn't even look at the
text. We looked at 2 words from the
text so far. Right? And.
Do you know? Like, the
of what, like, the prophet
has said, we haven't looked at it. This
is all what the transmitter
is saying
prior to
the hadefna
of the the text. You know what I
mean? So there's there's a lot there
that isn't even just about, like, the words.
You know? And you could read it really
quickly and be like, oh, look. Yeah. Islam
and science. So great. Do you know? Or,
like, what is this? Like, why should I
do anything?
My, like, deeds are already written for me.
You know? And then you just turn the
page.
But if you can kinda delve into it
a little bit
and just think about it also. And when
we talk about this part on,
right, and we look at it from the
standpoint of
again, like the person who is telling us
the hadith,
he went from a place where
he was
deeply mistreated and persecuted
to having
kind of a high station as a senior
companion. Do you know?
Why is he putting in the work, the
man who's talking about divine decree,
if there's no point to human agency.
Do you understand?
Like, if anybody was gonna sit back and
say, well, look at, like, the life that
god gave me,
poor,
I'm
short, I'm thin. Right? And there's these are
hadith. There's a hadith where,
even is,
you know,
getting something from a tree.
Right?
And the wind blows and his legs get
exposed and companions start laughing at just how
small and skinny his legs are. And the
prophet says to him, what are you laughing
at? And they say, like, his legs. Right?
They're just like, that's what we're laughing at.
Like, he has tiny legs. Right? And the
prophet says that,
like, his legs
are gonna be heavier on the scales on
the day of judgment
than the mountains of Ohad.
Do you know? Right?
Like,
the prophet loves this man, and he loves
the prophet.
But in being able to understand, like, he's
got a life that is not easy,
and he's talking about
predestiny,
but he's also, like, putting in work in
his life.
Do you get what I'm saying?
You know? And that that's where if we
don't know who's telling us the hadith,
then the hadith doesn't mean as much as
it could.
Do do you get what I mean? Does
that make sense? Because he gives me, like,
well, Allah wanted me to be poor.
Allah wants me to be this. Like, god
wrote it all anyway. There's no point. We're
like, no. Like, I'm gonna hustle.
I'm gonna get it done.
And he's known by a beautiful station. Like,
what do you wanna be known as? He's
known as a person of Quran,
you know? Right? And it's not because it
is doing. Like, he
is who he is. It's just the people
who come after generationally.
They just don't teach us the things that
are also important parts of the hadith
about who the transmitter is. Right?
Okay. So we're gonna take a pause. Just
a couple of quick things.
Tomorrow,
doctor Murmur is gonna have his regular,
and on Wednesday,
doctor Marwa and myself
will be doing ours
on Thursday.
And on Wednesday, we're gonna have our monthly
Latino Muslim meetup.
So
if you
identify as Latino, you know somebody who does,
that'll be at 6 o'clock
in the classroom closer to the far office,
475.
It goes to, like, about 8 or 9
or so.
There'll be food there as well.
Sorry?
The Latino Muslim media? Yeah.
Are you gonna go?
Yeah.
For the food? Yeah.
And on Friday, we're gonna do another guiyam
for Palestine
with the Dua.
As of now, it's gonna be in this
room.
We're trying to see if there's a bigger
room that opens up.
So please make the time for that. And
on Saturday,
we're hosting a New York City Muslim Organizing
Summit.
That's gonna be on the 10th floor of
the building next door. There's already about 400
people that have RSVP'd.
There's gonna be different Muslim electeds,
people who are
parts of different label labor unions,
various agencies and organizers,
sessions on how to tap into,
like,
different funding sources from within the city.
It's a all day event from
around 1:30 till 8 or 9 o'clock ending
with, like, a dinner at the end of
an opportunity to engage
kinda more directly 1 on 1.
So definitely would recommend coming
so that
we, regardless of our skill sets and professional
pursuits,
just learning how to be organized or identifying
who are organizers and community organizations that do
this work become important as we're kinda laying
more cohesion
to strategy,
to being able to build clout and power.
It's a free conference, like, you know, you
don't have to pay anything.
But if you get RSVP, it'll be helpful.
We can order food and everything else for
people as makes sense. That'll be on Saturday.
And then next week,
we'll be meeting on Monday again,
and I think on Wednesday. Is next week
Thanksgiving break?
Yeah.
But we'll let people know at the end
of the week. I don't know what. We
do Jummah every Friday,
but other days when university buildings are closed,
like, we're closed along with the university.
So I don't know what days the buildings
are closed next week or not, but,
we'll let people know this Friday about that.
Okay. Sounds good. We prayed to Isha before
we started. So if anybody needs to pray,
feel free to do that,
make another jamaah. And we'll see everyone next
week.
Anytime. As long as you're done by 8.
Yeah.
Cool. I think yeah. 6 ish, like, people
will come and start praying Isha. Okay. But
you can still be in this.