Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadiths for Modern Times #19
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Okay. Should we get started?
So we've been looking at hadith number 7
of the 40 hadith of Imam Nawi.
This is a hadith,
that says,
The religion is sincere advice.
People wanna pull it up, and then maybe
we could have somebody just read it, the
Arabic and the English.
And then today, we'll wrap up with this
Hadith.
Does anybody have it in front of them?
Do you not read it? Go ahead.
On the authority of, Tamima
Dadi, and Allah be pleased with him. The
prophet, peace be upon him, said the religion
is necessary.
Does anybody wanna read the Arabic?
I wanna try.
Okay. Yeah. Go ahead.
Great.
So
we've been looking at this in a little
bit detail. We looked at the different categories.
What does it mean to have
sincere conduct,
sincerity in the sense of
to Allah,
to his book, to his messenger,
to the leaders of the Muslims, and to
the common people.
I talked about it in a lot of
different frames. Last Monday, we didn't meet.
Some of you might know one of our
community members, Willi, the boss, he passed away
unexpectedly.
May Allah grant him peace and entrance into
Jannah without any judgment.
And so,
it gone to his and
just
didn't end up getting back in time
for the.
We still had Iftar. We're gonna have Iftar
tonight. And then later tonight, we'll talk about
a couple of things.
This might be the last
haleqah we do on Monday here
before,
the building hours change. Next Monday, we'll still
have something.
There's a doctor in our community who just
came back from Gaza
who wanted to share images and videos of
his kinda time in Gaza. And we're thinking
we might do that next Monday night,
if he's not able to come on Friday,
and do that during Jomad time,
like how I did when I came back
from Rafa and from the other trips.
And then,
there's another person in our community
who is also
was supposed to be in Gaza right now
on a second humanitarian visit.
But with the escalated violence,
the trip got suspended. So he's gonna go
in late June, Inshallah,
and wanted to share some stuff. So we're
trying to figure out days and times for
all of this while the building hours are
still,
kinda till 11,
before they shift for the summer,
while students are still around,
so we can kinda maximize
on the number of people being present for
all of it.
So we'll keep people updated.
But, likely, what we're gonna do in the
summer is shift. So is that closer to
if the hard time there's more people, he'll
we'll kinda get feedback from everybody,
because we have options of either maintaining
our Monday night
here,
and then the building closes at 8.
Or we could potentially shift it to my
apartment building the way we did last summer,
and then we can maintain a thaw still
on Mondays,
and see kinda what makes the most sense.
So do you always wanna think I live
on 23rd Street and Third Avenue. It's not
a secret where I live. A lot of
you have been to my house. For Those
who haven't, I'd love to have you come
over soon.
But,
we'll decide on that
before we wrap up tonight just in case
next Monday we're doing the other program. So
in case I forget, if you can just
remind me.
So here we wanna
kinda get into
a last discussion on this hadith.
This is a very foundational hadith in our
tradition.
That their dean is, like,
sincere advice.
We talked about in a lot of different
frames. We talked about who the narrator,
is,
and you can go to, like, the recordings
and all of that so we don't have
to rehash too much of it.
But fundamentally,
this is what is the foundation
of our religion
to begin with. When the prophet alaihi salaam
comes to Mecca,
he's not coming to Mecca to reinforce what's
already there. He's coming to Mecca to get
people to shift
on the way that they interact
with each other, the way that they interact
with society,
the way that they understand and see the
world.
He's essentially giving them admonition and counsel.
They have to determine now if they're going
to take it or not. And we see
distinct
kind of receptive modes. So Khateeja Radhiallahu Ta'ala
Anha, the prophet's
wife, she just immediately embraces it.
Waraka,
who is Khadija's cousin,
We have hadith where the prophet speaks about
him saying that he's seen Waraka and Jannah
wearing kinda these silver kinda silk robes, cloaks,
etcetera. So there's a understanding that he believes
in the prophet also. Right?
When he sees the prophet and Khadija praying
together and he inquires what's happening and the
prophet gives him some insight. If you've come
to our Wednesday seerah class, we talk about
this a little bit more detail some months
ago.
And then he, like, accepts the religion. Abu
Bakr accepts the religion. There's handfuls of people
in the 1st 2 to 3 years of
revelation that take it, and then there's propagation
that happens. And there's some people
who they're staunch enemies of Islam. They eventually
accept Islam.
But his
mode of engagement is essentially
telling them that the way that they're doing
things is not the way that things should
be done
fundamentally.
That their theology
has an
a gap in it that creates an absence
of accountability. There's no afterlife believed in the
Meccan society.
This is where they can treat people terribly
who come from the wrong clan, the wrong
race, the wrong ethnicity.
They're able to bury their daughters in life.
He tells people that good religion is not
self serving, but good religion should bring you
to take on societal ailments.
It should bring you to break down social
inequities.
And if your practice of religion isn't doing
this, then fundamentally, what's the point of your
religion?
So he's breaking down in a stratified society.
The same challenges we see today,
issues around race and class,
you know, privilege and wealth determine who has
and who has not.
But the whole idea
is that he's telling people
that this is what's good for you. If
you follow it, then great, good for you
in this world and in the next. If
you don't, then that's between God and you.
Like, Allah will determine
where you're at. But their whole willingness to
receive
is gonna be rooted
in their capacity
to actually take advice and counsel from people.
Right? This is fundamentally why there is this
idea that the dean is Naseeha,
that you're going to have to be able
to take counsel and advice
if you're gonna actually be able to
be elevated
spiritually within this religious tradition. Does that make
sense?
And so we wanna be able to think
about this in a few different facets
today. Like, how do I give
advice?
How do I take advice?
How is it that I also take the
advice that I give to others? Because because
a good number of people that I sit
within my office, it's really easy for them
to give advice to others.
But when they have to kinda sip their
own tea, it's very tough. You know, so
you could tell somebody
that you should not let your parents treat
you a certain way.
You should not let somebody
be mistreating you in a relationship.
But when you have to apply it back
to yourself,
there's not necessarily that same sense of, well,
why would I let somebody treat me this
way when I'm telling you don't treat someone
this way. Right? And it's not a good
or a bad in the sense you wanna
be self deprecating,
but for us to be able to think
out some of these things more concretely.
Do you know what goes into some of
this,
is gonna be
for us to understand
how these things of counsel and advice become
applicable
in these various scenarios. Does this make sense?
So what I'd love for us to do
just to start getting
going,
so we can kinda be talking a little
bit.
Why do you think it's difficult for people
to take advice from others? Like, what's gets
in the way? And don't think about it
just simplistic or reductive,
but think about
those areas where someone has actually given you
some type of feedback
and you've been willing to take it versus
the areas where someone has given it to
you and you're not really down to take
it. You know, it creates like a challenge
in being receptive or responsive.
What's like the variables that are different? Thinking
about yourself holistically
as a person.
Right? Because it can be applicable in a
lot of different ways, but you wanna become
a population that when we read the Quran
and the hadith, we're not hard on ourselves.
But at the same time, there's a bridge
now between,
like, what we know and how we act
on what we know.
You know, and that's where contentment resides in
the connection between these two things.
But the whole idea is that the book
is said to be a lot of different
things. It's Shafa, it's Rahma, but it's also
Huda, it's Hidayah.
Right? So
the guidance is not coming in any other
way other than in an advisory capacity.
Like, Allah is gonna say live this way,
and then you're gonna decide why do I
not listen to what it is that's being
said. Do you know what I mean?
And for this to be something that doesn't
have us throw our backs against the wall.
Like, you've probably heard me say it in
different settings if you've been around here. There's
no 2 people in this room who could
have a conversation
where
both of us
are anything other than people who are sinners.
Right? It's not to be indifferent towards it.
But there's nobody who doesn't have something to
improve upon.
Anybody who's in a conversation with anyone is
somebody who is doing something
that likely we shouldn't be doing in some
capacity. Do you know what I mean? But
if we can harness this thing
of both giving, but more so receiving,
advice and admonition,
it's gonna be
quite a game changer in the way our
spirituality
and our interaction with our inner selves change
a lot. You know? And so what makes
it hard for us to take advice,
which is different from acting upon advice? They're
2 different things. We wanna nuance it. So
step number 1 is how do I, like,
deal with this? What gets in the way
for me even wanting to hear when somebody's
telling me something that
is gonna
necessitate me having to kinda take a reflection
back towards myself
that I'm not necessarily
being who I should be or who I
could be or I'm supposed to be. Does
that make sense?
So if you can turn to the people
next to you, these people are trickling in,
like, share some names. What gets in the
way? What makes it hard for us to
actually take advice from people,
when it's being given? And think about when
it's worked and when it's not worked,
because then embedded within that is also a
conversation on, like, the how to's of us
giving this a little bit better. Does that
make sense? So if you can kinda exchange
names and then kinda talk about it a
bit, and then we'll come back and discuss.
Go ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the things? Like,
what what gets in the way?
What do we discuss so far? Yeah.
So one of the things I spoke about
was that
I guess what gets in the way is,
like, there's a certain sense of
ease that comes
from empathy,
and the only way to use you would
get that empathy is through, like,
self victimization.
And what I mean by that is, like,
you put your you put you made yourself
victim to a bunch of scenarios,
so you get empathy
or you extract empathy from others.
And that gives you a sense of ease
and comfort that you just don't wanna get
out of. Does that make sense? Can you
give me an example of what you mean?
Okay. We'll see if you can illustrate it
some way so we can kinda yeah. Other
thoughts?
What gets in the way?
Yeah. I was making it sometimes, like, the
difference between when we can take advice and
not take advice. There's, like, often, it's the
thing.
This couch is something that we think we
have knowledge about or something that's, like, related
to
maybe that's
our family has been doing for a long
time. It's hard to then take advice about
doing something the opposite of it because it's,
like, then the questions,
this whole entire lineage of you or whatever
it may be versus, like, okay. Maybe this
is where it's, like, depending on the situation
that we're going to be doing, I think,
you know, we're going to be doing things.
I think, you know, we're going to be
doing things. I think, you know, the situation
that we're going to be doing things. I
think, you know, we're going to be doing
things.
Okay.
Other thoughts?
What did we discuss?
Yeah.
I think, like to question on another person
that has, like, gone through the same experience
or has, like, some level of expertise or
credentials to offer.
Great. Any other thoughts?
Those are the only things again, by the
way.
Yeah.
Yeah. So
in getting to a place where we wanna
think about this from the standpoint of spiritual
elevation.
Right? You can't fundamentally
have spiritual growth if there's nothing to improve
upon.
And when you get to a certain place
where exposure to religion
is just fundamentally about, like, do's and don'ts
and rights and wrongs.
The whole idea with Islam as a religion
is that the bar of entry is not
up here. The bar of entry
is purposely very low
because anybody can be Muslim if they want
to. So religion that claims to be a
last religion for all of humanity
for the
end of time. It's already existed for more
than 14 centuries.
It can't be something
that has, like, a very rigid complex set
of obligations and prohibitions
because
everything is fundamentally,
going to then be hard on some segments
of the population because we're so diverse. Does
that make sense?
Right? Like, we're purposely designed to be different
from each other. So what we're all required
to do can't be the same. Do you
know?
So embedded within that now is this idea
of, well, where does the actual growth come
in? And it's not necessarily
just about the performance of postures, but how
are they a means to something? What is
it that's refining my ethics, my values, my
character?
How do I deal with things like intention?
How is it that I act upon what
it is that I've been given? So when
you have scholars who say to us that
if all you have of the Quran is,
that's all you need.
Right? Embedded within it is everything that one
would need to know.
That
essentially holds within it everything that the Quran
speaks of. That is
a third of the Quran. Like, there's so
much that goes into the shorter chapters
that can give to us an opportunity for
growth and development of insight,
but a part of this has to be
that we're willing
to actually be malleable and molded by it.
And if you're in a place where there's
rigidity
inwardly,
then outwardly is gonna also result in rigidity.
There's a paradox to our spiritual tradition
that a hard heart
is a weak heart, and a soft heart
is a strong heart.
We think about something being strong, it's gonna
have stability to it. Right? If I could,
like, punch my hands through this because it
was soft, we wouldn't say that it's strong,
but
the opposite is true in our spiritual tradition
that a soft heart is what's actually strong,
not a heart that's, like, hard.
And what
our tradition teaches us, we have hadith. The
prophet says,
that indeed
for your lord,
That there are vessels,
for your lord amongst the people of the
earth.
And the vessels of your lord,
are the hearts of his righteous servants.
The ones that he loves the most,
are the ones that are the most lean,
and the ones that are most,
soft. Right? The word lean
is light,
but it isn't light the way that we
have lights in the ceiling.
When a heart is lean,
it means that it's willing to take advice.
Like, it's willing to take counsel and admonition.
Do you know?
Somebody tells you you're doing something,
then you're gonna be good to actually hear
what it is that's taking place.
Does that make sense?
Like, when we used to be at the
church basement on sixth Avenue, I don't know
if any of you were ever in that
space. Were any of you here ever in
the church basement?
You were there? Nobody else?
Man, are you kidding me? Yeah. So on
sixth Avenue, there's a spot that we used
to lease while this building was being built,
and that was from 2,008
to 2012.
Right? So in 2,008,
I was 26 years old. Right? I'm 41
now.
And at 26, I started working here when
I was 22.
And so when I was given the Jumah
Khutba over there,
there was an elder man that came up
to me. He's probably as old as your
grandfather, if you wanna picture him in your
head.
And he said to me, you know, your
are very nice,
but,
like,
the pants you wear under your,
they drag on the ground.
You know? I used to wear jeans
that were pretty long.
Now I could tell
all kinds of different things that would come
up
of opinions on
what this idea is of wearing, like, pants
that go below your ankles.
This man is old enough to be on
my grandfather.
Do you know?
But aside from that, he's talking to me
about something that's rooted in the sunnah.
So what's going to rise up in me?
Am I gonna say something that says, well,
here's all these different opinions on this thing,
or am I gonna have a recognition of
who it is that's actually speaking to me
and what it is that I need to
be mindful of in my interactions with him?
Do you get what I'm saying?
And at the slightest of things, we can
get tweaked in our ego
that becomes fundamental
to
our theological
tradition that in an Adamic
narrative of creation,
Iblis,
he doesn't want to hear what Allah is
telling him.
Like, Allah is telling
in this Adamic narrative of creation. Adamari Islam
is created.
Right? He is made of earth. The belief
is made of fire.
Everything is told to prostrate and everything does
accept the beliefs,
and he's the first racist in his act
of flawed logic.
He has arrogance
and limited knowledge.
And all these things combined together create an
absence
of perspective.
Right? How he sees it is different from
how everyone else sees it. But he thinks
because of what he knows,
he doesn't have to then listen
to what it is that he's being told.
He doesn't want to be put in other
places other than what he deems to be
like a lofty place of existence.
Do you get what I mean? Sometimes,
we don't wanna hear from people
because we don't necessarily
want to take
insight or advice
from somebody
that we believe shouldn't be telling us something.
One of the first ways the Meccans
responded to a public propagation
of Quran
was that
they basically mocked the prophet of God.
Like, this is the person that you claim
is a messenger
of Allah.
Looking down at him,
he came from not the wealthiest of backgrounds
in comparison to everybody else. He was a
shepherd. He was married to a woman who
was older than him that was basically,
like, providing for him financially
in those early stages.
There's a lot of different things that when
you don't wanna hear advice from someone,
your mind, like, rolls out all kinds of
things to critique as to why they're not
somebody who should be telling you something. Do
you know?
And that's the problem.
Literally in our religion,
like Abu Herrera
is guarding the Beitul Mal, the place where
the wealth is of the Muslims,
and somebody comes to steal something from it.
And he
is essentially apprehended by Abu Herrera,
and he makes his case. Abu Herrera lets
him go. The prophet, like, asks him about
this person without
bringing it up, and
tells him and the prophet said he's a
liar. The 2nd night, the same thing happens.
The 3rd night, again, it happens, and Abu
Hureira says, I'm gonna take you to the
prophet. And the man says that if you
let me go, I'll teach you something.
And he wants to gain this knowledge, and
so he tells Abu Herrera
that if you recite,
it'll keep the shayateen
away from you. And when he tells the
prophet what takes place when he's asked,
the prophet says this man is indeed a
liar, but he told you the truth. And
he says that this was a belief himself,
Right? Coming to engage you in this way.
We can extrapolate a lot from this hadith,
but what you wanna be able to understand
is that Abu Herrera
learned
something beneficial
from Iblis in the Hadith.
Do you get what I mean?
Hassan and Hussain were children.
Right? Like, we have children sitting with us
that makes our gathering more blessed. Hassan and
Hussain are children,
and they see a older companion
making wudu wrong.
And they go to correct him. They understand
say,
let's make
say,
let's make a competition and ask him to
judge who makes will do better. And then
when one of them makes will do, they
make the same mistake, and they start to
discuss it, and then they ask the Sahaba,
like, which one of us is correct? And
he thanks them
for not, like, embarrassing him. But as an
elder, he learns from the child. Do you
get what I mean?
The whole idea first in being able to
understand one of these obstacles and taking advice
is that the nuffs is real, the ego
is real, and arrogance
is a thing we wanna combat.
So why does somebody
only have to come from your culture or
your race
in order for them to be somebody that
you take advice from?
Why does somebody
have to come from a certain wealth class
or have a certain degree or certain credential?
Like, do you think you could learn something
from somebody
who lives in the park? Do you think
you could learn something from somebody
who's serving you your coffee? If the answer
is no, then this is one of the
reasons why it's hard for you to take
advice from people.
Do you see the connection point here?
If you don't walk on this earth
really invoking Allah
is Right? You're not calling him the rub
of the duniya,
which is the lower materialistic world, but alamin,
the alam is rooted etymologically
in ilam, which is knowledge.
Meaning that like every step you take in
this world can be a step of knowing.
So there's an opportunity
to learn pretty much from everybody.
You just have to have an openness to
the idea
that there are people who will instruct me
in ways that come from Allah's choosing, not
just for me sitting in a classroom
or throwing down x amount of dollars to
be able to be recipient
of some type of information,
like children can teach you, the elderly can
teach you, people who are rich and affluent
can teach you, People who are poor and
have no influence can teach you. There's so
many different opportunities of learning,
but you gotta be open to the idea
first that there's anybody that has capacity to
give me insight. Does that make sense?
Jahaliyah
is not just a state of ignorance,
but Jahaliyah was an actual, like,
time period and a mode of perspective.
Do you know?
And when you look at characteristics of the
time of Jahaliya,
the Hadith give us insight on what kind
of things were taking place at the time
of Jahilia.
And some of the things that were taking
place at the time of Jahilia,
rich people got treated differently from poor people.
The way that laws applied to certain people
did not apply to other people.
It's not any different when you see these
kids
in Ole Miss, the university.
Right? You've probably seen, like, the videos online.
This black woman is being harassed by mobs
of white people.
People know what I'm talking about.
There's a kid who, like, makes gestures
as of a monkey, like, towards this lady
who's getting grilled online right now.
But the majority of those kids,
they're not going to be chastised or penalized
the way children who are minorities would. Right?
Or you look at the protests at UCLA
where there's literally
paid
people who come to harass
and fight and commit acts of violence and
transgressions,
and videos will
move
across and there is, like, entire,
like, contingents
of uniformed officers just standing and watching.
And then when it's all done, they go
and arrest the protesters who are protesting peacefully,
not the ones who are engaged in acts
of violent transgressions.
This is
qualitatively
a definition
of Jahilia.
And this is what was taking place in
a pre Islamic Mecca in Arabia. And this
is the Jahilia
that the prophet is seeking to break down.
It's not Jahil
in the sense that there's an absence of
knowledge, but the ignorance has qualifying
kinda characteristics
to it that we could break down even
further.
You can just go look up hadith that
describe the age of ignorance, the age of
Jahiliya,
and what kind of qualities were there, and
how you see a lot of those replicated
today.
Nobody wants to listen to anybody.
They don't fundamentally
want to hear anything of what anybody has
to tell them,
and they believe that their privilege and power
is what it is that determines
decisions and choices and what is the best
way of actually being. Do you get what
I mean?
You don't want to adopt that way of
thinking.
So sitting with an idea of being able
to think about
how anybody has the potential of actually teaching
me something.
I have full opportunity of actually learning.
And when I can acknowledge that as step
number 1, it then opens up a bunch
of other steps
that kind of get into the formula. Does
that make sense?
So
I
have capacity
to learn from whoever it is
that comes towards me. Right?
But Ramadan, when we used to be in
the church basement over there, one night, I
came out with some extra food that was
left over. There was a man standing on
the street asking people for money. I said,
do you want some sandwiches? He said, no.
I walked away
with whatever was
the reactive thoughts going on in my head.
This guy didn't want my food. He's just
asking for money. He's probably not even homeless.
He just wants money to buy, like, alcohol
and drugs, and the thoughts are very much
present. This is in Ramadan.
So it's telling me something that's about myself.
Right? The Shayateen are chained.
So I took a pause, and I said,
the only person who can tell me why
he doesn't want my food is this man
himself. So I walked back to him and
I said, why don't you want this food?
And he simply walked back to a shopping
cart that held all of his belongings, and
he took out a bag, and he said,
I already have food. And if you were
to give me your food in addition to
the food I have, there's no way I
could finish it all without some of it
going bad, and then I'd have to throw
it away. And he said, me living the
life that I live,
I'm not gonna ever throw food away.
And then I thanked him for not just
teaching me something about him, but teaching me
something about me. Do you get what I
mean?
You're not gonna be able to take advice
concretely
if you don't think that there's room to
learn from people of all different backgrounds.
And if you don't address the obstacles that
are very much there,
that get in the way that I will
only listen to people in positions above me.
I will only listen to people who qualitatively
will offer to me something
from experience
rooted in the things that we take. There's
gonna be some people who you want to
limit that advice to that we'll talk about
in a few steps. Right? Like, you shouldn't
come and ask me for advice when you
have a medical condition. Do you know what
I mean? Right? Just like you shouldn't be
doling stuff out. Do you know? So growing
up as a son of a doctor and
many of my family members are doctors, and
I'm one of the, like, failed brown kids
that didn't become a doctor.
Right? Which a lot of you are too.
If there's a doctor saying, like, I think
this, this, or this, and you think about
the number of people who go to their
physicians
and then act contrary to their advice? Like,
why?
Why do you fundamentally
believe that you know better than your doctor?
They tell you don't eat this stuff, and
then you leave and you go eat it.
Or forget the doctors. Right? Because maybe you
listen to them. Why don't you listen to
dentists?
Do you know?
Like, you don't listen to dentists.
Every time I go to the dentist, because
I know because I don't too. I go
to the dentist, and the dentist says to
me, are you flossing? And I say, clearly,
I'm not flossing. And they say, you should
start flossing.
Otherwise, you're gonna be miserable as an old
person.
And I'll say, okay. And then I go
back for another cleaning. Did you floss? No.
I did not floss. Right? What's getting in
the way?
And I've seen enough old people who have
no teeth in their mouth. Do you know?
So where is the disconnect?
But the understanding
is not from the person giving the advice.
The understanding is within me. Why am I
not adopting it, and what's getting in the
way? Do I not see this person as
somebody that actually has something to teach me?
What creates, like, shortsightedness
for me? Do you get what I mean?
The second part to it then is our
capacity to actually listen.
And listening is in both frames of giving
advice
as well as receiving advice.
Because if I come to ask you, like,
hey, man, should I get married to this
person?
How are you gonna fundamentally
tell me,
like, how I should live in my home
with my wife?
When none of you knows my wife or
knows the way my wife and I live
together.
Most of what that mode of advice is
seeking
is not
a listening to respond,
but an empathetic
listening, a listening to understand.
So when you have a prophet,
alaihi salaam, who doesn't speak so much,
he's just hearing
and absorbing and listening so that somebody doesn't
have to carry
on their own and allows for decision making
to still be in
the power of the one that's seeking the
advice.
That empathetic mode of listening that's listening to
understand
is also one that when somebody's giving you
advice,
you gotta quiet the nuffs
and the ego
and get to a place where you're just
hearing what the person has to say
and not jumping to get fired up in
the middle of it.
That is a product now of me being
able to control
my emotional state
even when things are heavy and things are
difficult because then you stop listening.
How many times have you had a conversation
with someone where you interrupt them or they
interrupt you?
And what's giving
weight to the interruption?
How often does it happen? A friend, a
significant other,
a parent, a child, you don't even give
people room to express.
The listening goes in both directions.
If you jump to give advice before a
sentence is even finished or you understand fully
through all sensory perception
or when the advice is being given and
you can't even stomach hearing it to its
endpoint
is telling you something about you.
So where do I take a breath and
just absorb and hear stuff?
Allow for myself to kind of take it
in, and what gets in the way that
makes it difficult to listen
both in the giving as well as the
receiving of the information. Do you get what
I mean?
If you get married one day, if you're
not married or you're already married, this is
what's going to lend as a key variable
to a healthy home. The giving and receiving
of information,
not the content of it.
Communication
statistically is only 7% rooted in the actual
content of what you say. This is why
when people come and they say, I wanna,
like, be somebody who teaches Islam to people.
You can't just memorize an answer and then
throw it at somebody.
93%
of communication
is non verbalized.
The way that things get packaged,
the tone, the volume. This is why, like,
I can stand on the stage and there's
30,000 people in the audience listening to what
I say and my mother is in the
audience
sitting next to me when I get off
and the next guy gets on the stage.
Literally, it's happened to me more than once.
And the few times that my mom actually
comes to hear me speak at these things,
and the next person says
pretty much verbatim what I said. And my
mother looks at me, and she's like, this
man is so smart. And I'll say, Ami,
I just said what he said. And she's
like, no stupid. You didn't say that. Right?
Because I'm gonna still always be her kid.
And so how she processes what I say
is going to be
based on that relationship. You're not my mom.
You might hear it differently than the way
I say it. Do you get what I
mean?
What gets in the way of listening
just as a skill set empathetically,
listening to understand,
not listening to respond,
not listening to argue,
not listening to deconstruct,
but just listening, which is a hard skill.
And what you wanna be able to think
about this is that it's not that people
innately
are built with these skills.
Your ability to give advice and receive advice
is a concrete
skill that you can actually develop.
It's not something that's just, like, naturally that
somebody's endowed with something. You can have temperaments
that are just what you're built upon,
but the ability to give as well as
receive information
is like a skill set that can actually
be developed well. You know this just by
looking at the companions.
At some level, some of them
just started listening at some point differently.
Right? How did Omar become Omar? Because before
he became Omar, the person who the prophet
said
that if there was a messenger after me,
it'd be best man, Omar. Before that, he
was somebody who drank alcohol.
He was a staunch opponent of the Muslim
community.
He was a champion of the.
At some level, he just started listening differently.
Do you get what I mean?
Like, you wanna build this as a skill,
especially in this frame. So what makes it
hard to listen?
Like, what gets in the way when somebody's
asking for advice
as well as when somebody's giving advice?
Like, what makes it difficult
to just simply listen to understand?
If you could turn to the person next
to you,
and talk this out, if you don't know
the name of the person next to you,
share some names. Like, what makes it hard
to listen? Then we'll come back and discuss.
Go ahead.
Okay. So what what makes it hard to
listen?
Like, what gets in the way?
Yeah.
I think, like, when you're not, like, getting
harm directly
or, like, the signs are not visible,
it's easier to just sort of ignore the
problems
as compared to because, like, the dentist analogy,
I had the same experience, right, they said
that I'm gonna get gingivitis if I don't
floss. But, like, when I see, like, my
gum, if it bleeds or I have loose
tooth, I immediately start flossing
because I see the signs, like, visible or,
like, my family has, like, their plate. A
lot of them are diabetic, but I will
drink a lot of sugar. But if my
doctor tells me that my sugar level is
high, then I it's like a wake up
call. So I feel like until I don't
know I'm in
in a certain danger,
then I will just be, like, help sort
of relax.
Great.
Any other thoughts?
And this is an important thing to think
about. Right? Like, listening in that state is
also not just verbalized things. You know, when
I was in my twenties and I was
working here in the beginning,
my self care was nonexistent.
And throughout the course of my twenties, I
was getting sick all the time. My weight
would fluctuate a lot. It was very heavy.
I was very light.
I,
in my late twenties, got shingles,
which if any of you have ever had
shingles
has anybody ever had shingles?
Oh, it's miserable. Yeah. So shingles is usually,
like, something that very older people get. You
know, I got in my twenties.
If you ever had the chicken pox virus,
it stays dormant in your nervous system. And
when you get to a high level of
stress and low point of immunity,
it reactivates as blisters on a nerve track.
And so I woke up one morning with
these blisters in the middle of my torso
all the way to my back.
And
I went to the doctor
and, you know, they told me what I
had, and it's contagious. I had to be
quarantined.
And so I ended up going to stay
where
my parents lived, the house I grew up
in.
And one night,
I got an email from a young woman
who went to school here at that time,
and she had told me that earlier that
day
in, one of our main buildings,
the large white building that's across the park
is called the silver building. She'd been walking
in that building,
with,
her Muslim boyfriend,
and he grabbed her by the straps of
her book bag, threw her into some lockers,
and she said, had a security guard not
intervene. She didn't know what would have happened.
She was reaching out to me now for
help in this abusive relationship she was in,
and I closed the laptop.
I went down to where my mother was
watching TV
in her living room, and I put my
head in her lap and I started to
cry.
And it wasn't that I didn't know how
to support this girl, but I couldn't take
care of her because I wasn't taking care
of me.
But in paying attention to signs and listening
to those signs, like my body,
my heart, my spirit, my mind, Everything was
giving me indications that I was running on
empty. I just wasn't listening to it. My
body had to literally implode on itself, do
you know, in order for me to wake
up and say, like, what am I really
doing? Do you get what I mean?
What makes it hard to listen? Like, what
gets in the way?
Yeah.
I think
having, like, biased towards some somebody can, a
lot of times, get in the way.
Just to give you an example, like, if
you have if you're talking to somebody with
a different political view, for example,
regardless of what the conversation is, you already
have a preconceived notion of, some of the
things they
believe in or,
think about. So,
it might get in the way of you
kind of listening,
hearing their input and, like, you know, learning
from what they have to say. So I
think just, like, dealing with your bias can,
can file a sentence here.
Yeah. And that could be applicable in a
lot of different situations. Right? Our own internalized
biases.
These aren't things we wanna apply to situations
of abuse and oppression.
Do you get what I mean?
So this conversation is not about how do
we have, like, watered down, tokenized,
like, dialogue sessions with people. That's not what
we're saying. But our day to day where
we have opportunity
to engage in actual,
like, listening,
understanding
the prism of advice and the see
in that way. And sometimes our biases
get
the best of us, and we fundamentally just
don't think that somebody can say something to
us
that they have merit. Right? This happens a
lot across, like, race, class, gender.
You know, we look at people the way
that they're dressed, the way that they're not
dressed,
and that then makes us a determination
of, like, their intellectual capacities,
you know, if they have something to offer
to us or not. Do you see what
I
mean? What else gets in the way?
I wanna say people's egos.
I don't know if that was already said,
but I just walked in. But a lot
of people's egos is, like, sometimes people feel
like they know it all.
They really may not know it all, so
they don't wanna hear nothing at all.
They may feel like also, because I deal
with this in my job. I'm younger than
most of the guys, so they don't like
to listen because they're older than me. They
think, what does this young guy know that
I don't know? And usually,
I'm right a lot of the times, so
that also comes into play, which also
is ego.
Yeah. The ego gets in the way. What
else?
It's hard to, like, listen when you have
all kinds of distractions around you. Right? Like,
if any of you have ever sat with
me in my office,
do you know?
And you're telling me about heaviness in your
life. What if while you were doing that,
I was scrolling on my phone?
Do you know what I mean? And you
could say, well, that's ridiculous,
but
it's purposeful.
When your attention is able to be strategically
drawn away
from being a source of support and presence,
then people are going to turn towards other
things
usually that they have to purchase to numb
whatever it is that they have going on.
And if I can harness your attention in
a consumer driven society
to make you want to be listening to
something else or be focused in 10 different
things. Right? There's certain things that we can
do
while we do something else. Do you know?
So, like, you can drive your car
and sing a song along with whatever is
playing
on your sound system in the car,
and you'll be fine. Do you know what
I mean? You cannot drive your car and
text at the same time.
Right? It's a different level of danger.
And if you think that's not the case,
I can introduce you to people in our
community who can no longer walk.
And so you don't want to put yourself
in a place where something happens that you
think you can do, something that you're just
not wired to do. The way Allah has
created you cognitively
to have 2 things that necessitate
a conscious mode of exertion
is not something that's fundamentally possible. But can
you do something that is habituated
unconsciously
while you do something else consciously? Right? So
can you run on a treadmill while you
watch a TV show? Yeah. You fundamentally, you
can. Do you know? Can you sing in
the shower? Right? Yes. Like, you can. Can
you fold laundry while you're on the phone
with someone? Probably, if you've done it enough.
Do you know what I mean?
But there's a lot of things that people
think they can multitask on that they can't.
You cannot multitask
on the giving and receiving of advice.
Like, it just doesn't work that way. And
so when you have hadith that say that
the prophet
turned his entire attention
towards somebody, did not turn his back towards
anybody that was speaking to him. Right?
Both on the giving and receiving end. If
somebody is addressing you and you are addressed
in a different direction,
how are you gonna, like, hear from them?
Unless it's something that's strategic.
So if you have, like, young children, for
example, in your
life versus, like, teenagers or people who are
a little bit more grown.
So
think about if you've ever been in a
setting with an older person,
and the mode through which advice is given
is not just I'm sitting in this chair
and you're sitting in that chair. So when
you have hadith where the prophet is
sitting on the front of a horse, and
there's somebody sitting on the back of a
horse, and counsel is being given. Right? The
prophet's walking with Mu'ad ibn Jabal to the
outskirts of the city, and he's giving him
advice.
Do you know?
A teenage kid is not gonna listen to
you the same way as somebody who's sitting
in a therapist's office.
Do you get what I mean?
So the mode through which we understand this,
like, front facing engagement
is not always what was done by the
prophet of God who is the best of
teachers. He knew how to
speak to someone
by giving him his full attention
without having it be something that created a
sense of awkwardness amongst them. Do you get
what I mean? So there's a lot of,
like, young men who learn from older men
while they're painting the side of a wall
or they're hammering nails into, like, a wall.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
But the capacity
to listen
necessitates
removing the things that are distracting.
And the ability to then give and receive
is also about creating the opportunity
that says, well, where am I mindful
of the other person's ability to actually receive?
Do you know what I mean?
So you want your partner to hear from
you.
It's probably not the best time to call,
like, in the middle of a work meeting.
Somebody's running to get out the door. Right?
My wife and I, our kids are now
8 and 11. It's a little different from
when they were younger.
But
Priya's job is, like, more structured, and it's
ours.
Right?
I have a make a believe job. Do
you know what I mean? So I have,
like I got here this morning at 8:30.
I'm gonna leave here tonight probably at, like,
10 something. Do you know? It's not a
problem. Like, I love what I do. But
tomorrow,
I can, like, schedule my routine a little
bit differently. It's got more malleability to it.
So in the morning, as we're getting kids
ready when they're now
3 and 6 and not 8 and 11
is a little bit different of a stress
in the morning and getting out to day
care and getting out to kindergarten
and getting out to work.
So that's not the time to have a
conversation
because the distraction is not a piece of
technology.
The distraction is all these other things that
are vying for our attentiveness.
Do you get what I mean?
It has to make sense, like, the opportunities
that you're creating
for the environment to be for both parties
to be ready barring, like, emergency
situations.
Do you know? So somebody dies, god forbid,
in the family, and you gotta, like, have
someone be present. They gotta be present. There's
an accident that comes up. There's an emergency
situation.
But most of those conversations that we believe
have to happen right now in the moment,
they probably could happen a little bit later
when everybody's
ready to give and receive a little bit
better. Do you get what I mean?
Identifying
distractions,
though, are going to be important to be
able to break away from, like, what gets
in the way from listening.
Does that make sense? And so then you
take hadith
that give us these insights that, like, there's
no prayer when there's food being served. It
doesn't mean you don't pray at the time
Maghrib comes in,
but your stomach is now where your thoughts
are gonna be if the food is there
on the table and you're trying to bang
out some rakaz. Right? Or, like, you have
to go to the bathroom, and you decide,
I'm not gonna make will do again. So
you're trying to hold your will do in
the course of the jamaah,
praying that the imam reads short surahs,
but, like, they're not going to, and you're
gonna be miserable.
But that's what's gonna be the focus. You're
not gonna have focus in your prayer. You're
gonna be focusing on, like, I hope I
just don't fart right now. Do you know
what I mean? But you're bringing the distraction
in.
Does that make sense?
So it's hard to listen when there's other
things vying for your attention.
And that can also be applied to, like,
your sleep habits being poor,
like your consumption habits not making any sense,
like exhaustion fitting in in a lot of
different ways,
what gets in the way that makes it
hard for me to be paying attention
fully? Do you get what I mean?
And then a third part to this on
the advice
giving and receiving
is
who am I actually going to for the
advice, and why am I answering the questions
that are being asked of me?
I had a teacher who studied
for 7 years, Islamic legal theory,
and somebody asked him a question about whether
a flyer looks good or not.
And he says, I like what I have
a comment on this. Do you know what
I mean?
The challenge comes in that a lot of
our lives get messed up because we're asking
people for advice on things that they're not
qualified to ask, like, to be asked for
advice.
Religious leadership does not equate to absolute leadership
in our tradition.
So anecdotes that you probably are privy to
are things that actually happen quite often.
Friends of mine who studied
Islam
that aren't blessed to serve a community the
way I'm blessed to serve this amazing community.
A why would they be good at marriage
counseling?
And that's not to discount anybody, but now
that person has no choice other than take
that job, and you're gonna walk into an
office, or you're gonna go on YouTube, and
you're gonna say, what does shake so and
so say about this situation?
If someone's not trained in certain capacities or
they don't have that experiential
understanding
as a scholar practitioner,
they're giving you subjective
anecdotal advice.
People ask the prophet alaihis salaam when they
should plant their crop
to get harvest
and he says something to them, and then
they plant, and then there's nothing reared from
the crop.
And they ask, like, why did you tell
us to plant in this way? And he
says, why did you ask me? Like, I'm
not a farmer.
Do do you know what I mean? Does
that make sense?
And so
the ways that you go to ask the
people who know that are not gonna always
be your friends, who have no shortage of
giving you advice. You don't want to tell
people things that make no sense. The amount
of people that sit in my office who
make terrible life decisions
because they have all of their friends and
family members
words and clutter in their heads and their
heart also
because they're asking questions and getting answers from
people who shouldn't be answering those things. Do
you know what I mean?
And then they make decisions
that at the base of it, we're gonna
have accountability
to it. So, Imam Malik, when he's asked
40 questions, and to 36 of them, he
says, I don't know. The person who comes
all the way
from Al Andalus to ask these questions in
Medina
and says, you are the shining star of
Medina. You are Imam Malik, and you are
asking
I'm asking his question. I came from far,
man. Right? And you said, I don't know
to 30 he says, I don't know.
Because it's not a game.
It's like a very real thing.
And you think in the last day, the
last week, the last month,
how many pieces of advice have you given
to people
that they've actually taken
that create potential challenges for them
and how to, like, manage their anxiety
on whether they should get married to somebody
or not. Unlike anything that they have going
on in their life, you gave them some
counsel without even hearing, like, where they're coming
from. Do you know? There's hadith where a
companion comes to the prophet,
can I kiss my wife while I'm fasting?
And he says yes to another, Yarasulullah,
can I kiss while my wife while I'm
fasting? He says no.
They asked the same question and get a
different answer.
Why?
Because they're different people.
If you have like a rote answer that
you give out constantly
to people about stuff,
that's not an absolute.
Don't eat pork means don't eat pork, but
everything is not just don't eat pork type
questions.
Do you get what I mean?
And because a lot of us in this
religion
don't know how to think outside of thick
terminologies
because all we're given is ritual and practice
black and white, we come with what does
Islam say about x, y, and z?
Islam is not a person that manifests in
a human form that then can answer these
questions.
A lot of what we're given in the
Quran
presents to us opportunities for how we resolve
ethical dilemmas.
It doesn't say open this page and it's
gonna tell you here and now this is
how you do these things.
It's gonna want you to make a choice.
And a part of the choices that you
choose are who you're going to give advice
to and who you're taking advice from. Does
that make sense?
What are the criteria
or qualities that you would look for in
somebody
who you would take advice from on different
situations.
The question makes sense? Do you wanna have
a conscious mode of understanding?
Your heart is more precious
than just allowing for sound bites online
of lectures that you weren't even sitting in
that took place years ago to define
how it is that you make your choices.
You gotta build relationships
with people that could be multiple
across different fields.
But as a starting point, what are some
of the qualities we should look for?
This is is Sam, by the way. Sam,
you wanna wave to everybody? Salam. Today's is
Sam's first day working at the IC. He
joined as a digital media coordinator for our
team. It's Mig Dua. He's a really nice
guy.
And you're gonna probably see a lot of
him around. So if you see him, introduce
yourselves to him. Let him feel welcome in
our community,
and what it's like to be part of
this amazing community in service of it,
and introduce him to people as you kinda
see him around. But
he's gonna be around,
a lot more.
So, yeah, feel free to introduce yourselves to
him. So if you could take couple minutes
and turn to the person next to you,
what are some of the qualities we look
for in somebody that gives us advice?
You wanna know this so that you're not
just turning to people at your wits end,
and it's like somebody just helped me. Do
you know what I mean? But proactively,
like, what are some of the things that
should be present in the people that we're
taking kind of advice and counsel from
in whatever the issues might be that are
coming up. So you can turn to the
persons next to you,
and kinda take some insight from one another,
and then we'll come back and discuss. Go
ahead.
I was gonna tell you I was gonna
just record you, like, randomly. So you might
see me just go around. Fine. Yeah.
Yeah. You'll probably just see me around with
the camera funny that you're were you planning
on staying here this late? For I've thought.
You will? Yeah. Yeah. You're not looking to
go see someplace? I was gonna leave, but
then I was like, I might as well
break my desk here as well. Okay.
And then I was helping out,
remember the holiday, set up with the food
and everything. How did that go? It went
well.
It's almost done. Okay. Great.
Okay.
What are some of the things we should
look for? Like, we're looking for somebody
who we're gonna
take advice from.
Like, what should that person be about? What
are some of the qualities?
Good characters.
Good character. Good character. How they act, like,
in adversity.
How they act in adversity? Okay. Yeah. I
was gonna make a good pitch tomorrow. We
might actually listen to. If you're not gonna
listen to him, it's a good start.
Pick somebody you listen to? Okay. Yeah.
Other things?
What other qualities?
Compassionate.
Compassionate.
Yeah.
Someone's open minded.
I should ask you to start from a
person. You're often going to someone for advice
on something that is
Great.
Yeah. I will go for someone who's actually
doing what I'm looking for. Although I won't
discredit no one else,
but I would say I would listen to
someone else, but I will actually strive to
go for someone who's actually doing something. Like,
if and since I need something for education,
for religion,
I will someone like you or anyone or
brothers in here, but I would more aim
someone like you because I know you you
you're more knowledgeable. You can probably help me
more in that category. I wanna just go
to someone sitting on a park bench. Although
I would listen to what they have to
say, though, but I would take your advice
more over this.
Okay.
Other thoughts?
You wanna, like, build that reflection
and think about why do you take advice
from the people that you do,
and why
are there some people that you don't hear
from them or listen to them?
There's a couple of other frames that we
wanna look at this, and we can look
at this also in the frame of, like,
who is it that you should be actually
giving advice to? And advice is different from
emotional support.
A good number of people when they turn
to us, they're not looking for solution orientation.
They're looking for validation of what they're feeling.
Do you know what I mean? Because sometimes
the anxiety that rises in us, it brings
us to a place where we don't want
someone to feel bad, and we love them,
and we care about them. So we'll say,
why don't you do this or try that
or do that?
What they sometimes just need is somebody to
say, like, this is really hard,
and I'm gonna carry this with you. Like,
you don't have to hold this all by
yourself.
Do you know?
Some of the people that you take advice
from, not all of them, but some of
them have to be people who are accessible.
Like, it's gonna be a process. Do you
know what I mean? So sometimes there's an
advantage. You walk into a place and there's
a person who's a prominent expert in a
field and you wanna hear their thoughts on
something,
that person might not be somebody that you're
gonna have interactions with day to day for
the rest of your life. But if you
open up on certain things, there's gotta be,
continuity
to some of that kind of engagement.
And on the other end of it, if
you invite somebody to come speak to you,
it's not a matter of convenience.
It's gotta be something that you make yourself
readily
available at the times that they need
within reason,
but it's not just a one off. Do
you get what I mean?
The last thing that I wanted us to
think about and I would invite you to
reflect on here as well as, like, individually
and together,
Why is it hard for us to take
the advice that we give to others?
Like, what gets in the way?
I've been here for 19 years, and I
can tell you if I sat with someone
in my office
and I said, if somebody else came and
sat in this office
and told me
that they were going through what you were
going through,
you know definitely what you would tell them
to do. Why are you telling yourself something
different?
You know that you would not let your
friend be treated by a boy the way
you let a boy treat you.
You know there's no way that you would
tell
someone close to you that walked in here
that it's okay for their parents to treat
them the way that their parents are treating
them?
Why is it easier for you to give
somebody else some advice, but you're not willing
to give it to yourself in the same
way.
Do you get what I mean?
And this becomes, like, a big challenge for
many of us.
I can give you advice,
but it's hard for me to let myself
be in a place where I'm willing to
take the advice that I'm giving to somebody
else. Do you know? And it's a different
variation
of
that why do you say that which you
do not do? It's not hypocrisy,
but there's absence sometimes
of self care, self love, self kindness,
self compassion.
Do you know?
You don't wanna see somebody else get hurt,
but you make excuses as to why you
let somebody else hurt you. Do you see
what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
My group is gonna come in in 3
minutes,
so we're not gonna delve into those 2
things a little deeper.
Some of the things that I was sharing
with people before we started,
next Monday
is gonna either be, like, the last halica
we do of this text
for the semester
before you shift to summer hours
or,
this one will be. We had a doctor
in our community who returned from Gaza recently.
They wanted to kinda share with us images
and videos. I'm hoping that that'll work out
in Jumah.
But if it doesn't, then what we're gonna
do is probably have on one of the
weeknights before the academic semester ends.
It'll likely be Monday night of next week.
But either way thanks, man.
We're gonna have,
from the following Monday.
So not
the 13th, but 20th,
a shift in building hours,
which,
will have the building closed on the weekends,
following 17th, and it'll be open only till
8 PM,
on week nights.
So, for example, Maghrib is gonna get later
into the summer.
And what we did last semester
or last year, was shift our Monday night
to my apartment building, which is on 23rd
3rd, and then we still had iftar
for everybody, like, potluck style.
You can, like,
just shoot me an email and let me
know.
If you would prefer to maintain this here,
we would go to, like, 7:30
so that people would have time
to get some place to pray Maghrib because
we won't be able to make Maghrib here.
The building closes at 8.
Or if you're good with us shifting it
there and then there's no time limit, and
then we would have the halukkah
probably starting at around, like, 7,
as Maghreb gets later, 6:37.
And then we'd have Ithar. And last year,
we would, like, have people there probably till,
like, around 9:30, 10 o'clock,
and just be in each other's, like, company
and build community in.
But just think about those things and shoot
me a message and let me know so
we're not putting anyone on the spot, and
you can feel comfortable sharing whatever your thoughts
are. Does that make sense?
Okay. Tomorrow,
doctor Murmur will have his helica.
On Wednesday, doctor Madwa
will do hers, and then I'll follow at
7.
And then on Thursday,
with Faith NYC, we'll do their monthly halukkah,
with Imam Zakir.
It's for, like, our professionals community.
Friday, we're gonna have our post Jumak community
lunch. And then Sunday, we're doing a film
screening,
that we sent email out about today of
a documentary,
whose name I'm forgetting. Does anybody remember the
film? Q. The film is called Jude?
Q. Q? The director. The director's name is
Jude. Yeah. Sam, you wanna tell people about
the film since you've watched it? Yeah.
So it won
don't wanna spoil too much, but it just
follows her around
as she talks about her,
experience for her. It's a very good movie.
I
She talks about her, experience for it. It's
a very good movie. I don't wanna say
too much for it, but it's, you guys
check it out. 7 PM, Sunday.
4:30, the doors will open,
and 5 o'clock, we'll start the film screening.
It'll be in the lecture hall of the
base the in the basement of this building.
So come and check it out.
And then there'll be a talk back with
the director, Jude,
who Sam was telling me earlier today he's
met and, like, is a really amazing person.
So you should come check that out. And
then we'll send out info about some of
these,
firsthand experiences on the ground in Gaza
for next
week, and keep people updated on that. And
then later tonight or tomorrow, I'm gonna send
an update on where we're at just in
our building space project.
We're doing pretty well.
We've raised about, I think, 4.5 or $4,600,000.
We're trying to get to 5,000,000,
in this first round of fundraising. So people
can just help to circulate some of that
as the email comes out. We'd appreciate it.
So we're gonna take a pause here. There'll
be Iftar after Maghrib, so please stick around
even if you weren't fasting.
Maybe we just move the chairs back to
the wall,
and then
can one of you guys call the athan?
Anybody feel like coming up?
Doctor Marquez will be till June 30th,
and I'll show her resume again in August.