Mohammad Elshinawy – Marvel Movies Turn People Against God
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Tell me, like give me advice.
I'm like, don't be me.
This is my advice to you.
Whatever Shinawi would do or has done, don't
do it.
You'll be just fine.
So proportionality, ratios-wise, you should be building
the khair more so than you are.
Allah Azza wa Jal only measures us against
our potentials.
The Quran is primarily for those who believe
in it.
So Allah is questioning us to not develop
religious prejudice.
So we have to go out.
We have to share Islam with the world
for our survival and theirs thereafter.
There's a lot of healing we need to
bring to the world.
Unless we master this world while prioritizing the
hereafter, we will not be able to have
an impact on it.
People judge books by their covers.
Allah does not look at your faces.
He looks at your heart.
Our enemies fear the day that we realize
that we're not outnumbered, we're outmobilized.
He said to him, I love your community,
but your community cannot keep me in this
chair.
That is the problem.
So the religious director of a masjid in
Allentown, Pennsylvania, and also one of the research
directors for Yaqeen, could you tell us a
bit more about your research interests at Yaqeen
or beyond?
Sure.
Is this live?
Yeah, we started.
We started already.
Okay.
Bloopers.
I was like, is this the pre-interview
or is this the unscripted, unscripted?
Okay.
Yeah, alhamdulillah, I am blessed to serve at
Yaqeen as one of the research directors currently
for the Systematic Theology Department.
ultimately, we're trying to present and represent in
the best framing packaging possible the beliefs of
the Muslim and the justifications of those beliefs
and how those beliefs can not just be
intellectually compelling, but also spiritually invigorating.
It gives you that spiritual energy to move
forward in your relationship with Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala and hopefully transform as a better
person in the process.
So I'm gonna ask you a few questions.
I've been asking different mashayikh wherever we go.
What's some advice that you would give your
younger self?
I mean, you're still young, mashaAllah, not to
say.
I appreciate the qualifier.
But it's a very triggering question because if
I can find that guy, I'm very angry
at him.
He knows that I'm gonna throw him a
mean beating if I could track him down.
Allah an-Nusta'an.
It is the Qadr of Allah that we
learn better out of our mistakes, I guess.
Without taking this on too much of a
tangent, you know, Ibn Taymiyyah, Rahim Allah, actually,
I'm remembering now, he has a discussion in
his book, Ubudiyyah, Servitude to Allah Azza wa
Jal, that some people think that Adam alayhis
salaam was blaming Qadr, blaming destiny, when he
got into that sort of heavenly debate in
the Barzakh with Adam alayhis salaam.
Musa alayhis salaam and Adam alayhis salaam got
into a debate.
How could you get us thrown out of
Jannah?
I'm sort of paraphrasing, of course.
To get to my actual regrets, right?
But Adam alayhis salaam said, aren't you the
one who Allah Azza wa Jal spoke to
directly and he wrote for you the Alwah,
the tablets with the commandments with his own
hands?
How could you hold against me something that
Allah had written on me thousands of years
before the creation?
And so, the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam
did not leave us to wonder who had
the upper hand in the debate.
He said, Fahadja Adam Musa.
Adam out-argued Musa alayhis salaam.
So Ibn Taymiyyah says he's not blaming Qadr,
but once you repent, regret, reform, move past
something, then you can consider your slip-ups,
I guess, part of the Qadr of Allah
Azza wa Jal, just like any other calamity.
So there's many calamities that I can identify
with in my younger age, but perhaps leaving
the symptomatic ones at the core of the
Qur'an.
The Qur'an, until this day, I am
still struggling to complete my memorization of the
Qur'an.
And of course, memorization is not everything, but
it is such a huge thing in so
many respects.
And maybe this is not the context to
speak about it, but I wish I would
have been pushed a little harder and pushed
myself a little harder to commit the Book
of Allah Azza wa Jal to my chest.
There is nothing like the Qur'an as
a fountain.
There's nothing like the Qur'an also to
humble you.
Many times we see all of the shenanigans
that some of us in the da'wah
get ourselves into, whether like what lurks inside
us or how we behave on the outside.
And a big part of that is that
the Qur'an did not take the priority
that it deserved.
And so trying to continue to learn on
the job, trying to fight off the job
from, you know, it's preventing me from learning.
That's a big regret I have.
Maybe another big regret is I did not
shut my mouth enough times on certain subjects.
I remember sitting with Dr. Haytham El-Hajj,
one of my mentors, and he was reminiscing
on himself.
And he's someone that I consider of the
highest calibers of scholarship in our age.
And he says, Muhammad, can you imagine?
Can you imagine how arrogant we were?
He's like, we used to sit there and
say the stronger view this.
And I think the stronger view that and
that's the weaker view when we did not
even know.
I remember clearly we were sitting on the
couch and he said when we did not
even know the names of some of the
sciences, the disciplines that these scholars used to
arrive at those conclusions.
Like you don't even know where they got
it from or even the names of the
instrumental sciences that were employed in this process.
And yet you sit there and think he
has no evidence for this position.
And you referee between positions.
And so if he's saying that, you can
imagine how that makes me feel.
I just want to crawl under a rock
and die somewhere every time I think about
it.
And we ask Allah to forgive us and
that others can, you know, oftentimes younger Shabab
when they tell me, like, give me advice.
I'm like, don't be me.
This is my advice to you.
Whatever Shinawi would do or has done, don't
do it.
You'll be just fine.
I jokingly say that, but Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah for
that.
We got a few answers along the lines
of the Qur'an memorization.
Sheikh Abu Isa, I think he had a
good one.
He said, I wish I wrote down the
Qur'an.
That's something we can just popped into my
head.
He said, when you write down the Qur
'an, it does something else to your memorization
and makes it stronger.
And it's like a practice in some cultures.
Yeah, yeah, the Libyans, the Africans, I've seen
it.
They have these ink pots and they write
it, even though it's not because they can't
afford a printed Mus'haf.
There is something there, something very special there,
not just cognitively and even memorizing in general.
You know, Dr. Saeed Al Kamal, a great
Maliki scholar in our day and age.
He says, you know, memorizing the Qur'an
at the very least breaks you in to
scholarship.
Meaning when you realize the amount of work
it takes to contain this Qur'an and
then retain this Qur'an inside you, it
makes you that much more likely to respect
those that have gone much further.
Like when you realize that memorizing the entire
Qur'an, at least classically, traditionally, was the
threshold to become a student.
That's when you become a student, when you
memorize the Qur'an.
Before you had the Qur'an, you're not
even a student yet.
He said it humbles you in a way
that few things can.
What was a teacher or a sheikh or
murabbi that had an impact on you?
Can you share a story or a lesson?
Alhamdulillah, Allah Azzawajal has given undeserving me quite
a few.
But I mean, I spent the majority of
my adult life now with around Dr. Hatim
and I can't thank Allah Azzawajal enough for
that.
And I learn a lot from not just
what he says, but what he refuses to
say.
And also his reframing of things in positive
ways and the big picture helps you zoom
out of the granular stuff where everything feels
like chaos or tense or hostile.
For instance, I remember one time I came
to him and asked him about a particular
da'wah personality.
And I was like very upset with certain
things that he used to do and methods
he would undertake.
And luckily, I wasn't very well known in
the era, so my blunders weren't as public
facing.
And may Allah help us all.
But he stopped for a second and he
said to me, number one, that these people
have been able to reach pockets of society
that we have failed to reach.
So in a sense, you may be looking
at it disapprovingly, but he has spared us
of some of the collective sin, collective liability
of where if we were better people, perhaps
Allah would have allowed us to puncture those
circles with our da'wah and so on
and so forth.
So stop being idealistic, be a little bit
grateful that these people have been able to
reach where we were supposed to and we
couldn't.
And he often says, you know, this is
a statement of Nursi, the great Turkish reformer,
and he reminds us about it a lot.
He says we are far more in need
of building what's absent and destroying what's present.
Sometimes shaitan will get you caught up in
this reactive mode, not proactively building.
And like you don't realize that let's assume
you're supposed to tear something down.
Tearing it down can create a void for
something worse to come up.
So proportionality, ratios wise, you should be building
the khair more so than you are.
And this principle, SubhanAllah, applies everywhere, everywhere.
Like, you know, Ibn al-Qayyim, hundreds of
years ago, almost a thousand years ago, in
the 1300s, he's saying that, you know, people
that are ascetics, like minimalists in the name
of piety or driven by their piety, zuhad,
they fall into the mistake of attacking people's
love for dunya.
Look at just how wide ranging the principle
is, people's love for dunya.
He goes, that's too difficult of a transition
for people.
Instead, you should be building their love for
Allah so that if their love for Allah
becomes superior to the love for dunya, if
they have to choose, they'll choose the right
one.
So like building what's absent versus, you know,
destroying what's present, even doubts.
Like, you know, a lot of times we
are trying to engage with doubts and dismantle
them.
And it's very obvious that cultivating conviction is
far more powerful than dismantling doubt.
Dismantle doubt, another doubt can come.
But when you build conviction, that's when people
have this immunity of source that I don't
have the answer right now and I don't
need to.
My faith is not dependent upon having a
retail answer to an unlimited number of doubts.
So this issue of, you know, be a
builder more so than be a destroyer, be
a demolisher.
It's a profound principle.
If you think about just the spectrum of
domains and applications, you can you can be
extended to.
It just popped into my head.
You know, Allah tells us that.
If you repel, you know, someone who is
obnoxious or a bad deed with something better,
push back with something better than, you know,
you could destroy, you could vanquish an enemy,
then you have a kind of.
But how do you transform?
You can have a net reduction in enemy.
But if you win him over, you get
a you've gained an ally.
That thing about these people, these these brothers,
maybe in the dawah, it's we were talking
about the other day, actually, you know, that
we have we have a lot of criticism
for maybe the methods and some of the
personalities.
But truth be told, they are, in fact,
kind of reaching an audience or doing some
important work that not many other people can
reach.
I'm just speaking to this one, the imam
in Salah yesterday, and he said, anyone, the
ummah right now, anyone who's working towards something
good, we should we should try and encourage
them and try and just be grateful that
they're there.
As long as they're moving in the right
direction, generally.
And I would much rather, I mean, you
know, young dawah kind of personalities on YouTube
and social media and stuff.
They are, I mean, we disagree in terms
of taste and stuff like that.
But if I think maybe my my my
nephews, young young brothers, you know, who are
maybe adolescents, I would much rather them listen
to those people than whatever the latest celebrity
or rapper or something.
At least, you know, those brothers, they have
that kind of Islamic ethos and they're building
a civilization.
They're important.
They're carrying out an important function, I think.
Now, for sure.
I mean, this is like there's two elements
here that should solidify for us the importance
of this calculus.
Right.
There's the pros cons element.
Like if you chase them away from preacher
X, are they really coming to you or
are they going further down the road?
That's number one.
But number two, a lot of times there
is there's a misunderstanding.
Like is person X wrong to begin with?
Or are you just a little bit too
narrow minded, too sort of uninformed?
Are these actual red lines or are these
legitimate scholarly views that Mujtahid Imams have had?
And they had a semblance of evidence that
you simply have not acquainted yourself with.
And so you're even creating like an artificial
conflict, a false dichotomy.
It's like, you know, all or nothing.
No, but this is part of the all.
Islam is not, you know, your camp or
your tribe or your opinion.
Is the thing you disagree with the matter
of taste, maybe?
Sometimes it's taste.
But even if it's not taste, it's going
to break like a unanimously agreed upon.
Then then we talk about the first point
of the lesser of two evils.
So those two elements must be front and
center.
Muhammad Ali, the great kind of champion, heavyweight
champion of the world.
By the way, my middle name is Ali,
I just can't fight for my life.
But we're from Pennsylvania, so we have guns.
Let's just make that very clear.
Yeah, he he came.
I mean, everyone, everyone remembers him, loves him
as a legend.
But in his heyday, he was he would
rub people up the wrong way and he
would be come across as arrogant and quite
edgy and stuff like that.
But ultimately it was I think it was
good for the Dawa and good for the
I don't know, maybe the presence of Islam
and the confidence of having a having a
Muslim personality who doesn't kind of bow down
to pressure, who who gives that kind of,
I don't know, that that that confidence.
And yeah, I mean, I remember seeing some
of those documentaries and stuff about his his
life.
He was in his in his youth, very
loud and maybe flamboyant.
Yeah, that's a good word.
So maybe people don't remember him that much
for those things.
They remember him as, you know, the overall
impression he had on on the world and
the US.
And especially when it comes to, you know.
People doing what, you know, according to the
very limited access they have to Islamic knowledge
or whatnot, could be actually doing the very
best that they know.
Right.
Like Allah only measures us against our potentials.
And so if you have less knowledge and
it was not a result of negligence that
you had less knowledge and you acted upon
a greater percentage of your pool, then you
are a better human being.
You know, one of the mashayikh of Alexandria,
Egypt, and I remember him telling his students,
we must differentiate between those who try to
do the right thing and failed and those
who try to do the wrong thing and
succeeded.
Yeah.
Like the first one must be superior in
your eyes than the second.
But when everyone is the same, then this
is not equity.
This is not what Allah loves.
That's deep.
How has the Dawah scene in your eyes
changed over the years?
I mean, generally or in your own community,
your communities that you've been part of?
The Dawah scene, online or offline?
That's one obvious, obvious kind of big thing
on online phenomenon now.
I mean, the information age has disseminated more
information.
And so that has helped, in a sense,
the availability, the proliferation of Islamic knowledge, the
sacred sciences, the access.
But of course, things, when they come easy,
also they're taken for granted.
So it's a double edged blade, of course.
But in general, there is more literacy out
there and more reach for those that want
to increase the literacy of this ummah, which
is a wonderful thing.
We are not insulated from wider society.
The world has also opened up its fronts
in every direction, the global village as a
result of connectivity and technology.
And so if it happens to be the
age of rage, then there will be more
tension and anger.
And we have to double down in our
tradition, in our revelation to protect ourselves from
that.
If we are in the age of the
resurgence of fascism, tribalism, cultish ways, then we
must really dig deep to make sure we
don't pull the jahiliyyah out from under our
Prophet's feet.
He said, I've placed it, I've stomped on
it, we've trampled it.
But some people will continue to try to
revive it.
May we never be consciously or not of
those people.
Do you think that that's a trend that's
re-emerging?
I mean, what happens in the US with
culture wars and, you know, populism, it kind
of has an impact because of the soft
power and the entertainment and media and stuff
across the world.
So we could get some advice from you
to see what's going to affect us a
few years down the line.
I mean, we are so interesting because I
came to the UK 10 years ago, my
first and only trip before this one, to
understand how it's going to be for us
in a few years.
Because you guys were here a little longer,
the mass migration, at least.
You guys are like second, third generation, we're
like first, second.
But now you're reversing the army that you
guys have Hollywood.
So now we're exporters of dominant culture.
And I guess there's some truth to both.
I mean, some of it is actually, you
know, on purpose, you get phenomena like the
likes of Steve Bannon and them kind of
outright kind of try to push and teach
their methods to people like, you know, Boris
Johnson, a former Prime Minister, Liz Truss, another
former Prime Minister.
I mean, she only lasts like 40 something
days.
But she's kind of a lot of those
kind of right wing people, populists, they're kind
of positioning themselves and getting advice from, you
know, Steve Bannon and the likes.
And you can see this kind of cultural
wars kind of thing starting to infect people's
minds here.
No, I think we have a very serious
duty, both for the survival of our communities,
but also for our survival on the Day
of Judgment, which is that have we really
gone out to the community?
You can't change what people outside are doing
much, or some people will forever be diehard
haters, right?
They hate you for being you, not because
they misunderstand you.
But in general, in the modern West, most
of the people that you come across, you
may have stereotypes about them the way they
have about you.
They're actually very sort of welcoming.
They care about their bread and butter and
their income and their family and their safety
and their security.
And so we owe it to them to
reassure them.
That we are or not a Trojan horse
in your societies.
And yes, there's a lot of propaganda that
posits us that way.
But there is also a lot of behavior,
like whether it's our isolationist behavior or unethical
interactions with them.
You know, there's an ayah in the Qur
'an, actually, that Dr. Hatim's book, Love and
Hate in Islam, revisiting Doctrine of Al-Walaa
Al-Baraa, he stopped that and it blew
me away.
When Allah Azawajal is saying they're not all
the same, the non-Muslims.
From the people of the book are those
that if you give them a chunk of
gold, they'll be found to have integrity.
They'll give it right back to you.
They're trustworthy.
And among them are those that if you
give them a dinar, like a single gold
coin, they will not return it back to
you unless you're standing over his head.
Like, where's my money?
Then Allah says, وَلَيْسَ عَلَيْنَا فِي الْأُمِّيِّينَ سَبِيلٌ
And the reason some of them are like
that is because they say we are not
responsible for anything to the Ummiyin.
Ummiyin are the non-Israelites in their lingo,
right?
The Goyims, the unlettered, non-Jews, right?
And so, of course, this is known, right?
If you have a supremacist ideology, you're going
to believe that everyone else is at your
disposal.
But what Dr. Hatham was turning our attention
to is that this is not just a
way to point a finger at Bani Israel.
The Quran is primarily for those who believe
in it.
So Allah is questioning us to not develop
religious prejudice.
Like, oh, they're just a bunch of kuffar.
It's like, I can lie to him.
I can credit card scam him.
I can sort of this, that, and the
third with him because he's a kafir.
Well, that's exactly what Bani Israel did.
And so we have to be careful with
that as well.
We have to own our own before we
point fingers at the world, especially when that's
what we have more control over to begin
with.
And many people out there are just looking
for a reasonable proposal for coexistence.
So if there's propaganda on one side and
sort of concurrence on some of that propaganda
internally, obviously not the terror stuff and all
this, then they will continue to resist us.
And I'm not saying I can't blame them,
but I understand where some of it is
coming from.
So we have to go out.
We have to share Islam with the world
for our survival and theirs thereafter.
And our communities need to integrate in a
principled way with wider society.
I don't think we have the luxury to
do anything else anymore.
Do you think Muslims are in a position,
in your experience, to take a leading kind
of contributory role in culture, in these types
of things?
Rather than kind of just being, wandering into
debate among rival kind of factions of non
-Muslims and kind of taking a side.
You know, you have different polarities, left wing,
right wing, liberal, conservative, whatever, on hot issues.
Are Muslims, in your opinion, or in the
US, are they in a position where they
can actually produce something which is that can
lead others?
And rather than, do you see people getting
into kind of left wing, right wing, and
these types of realities?
Of course.
And even this notion that there's only the
left and right option, and even the notion
of the Muslim community being, since 9-11,
due to the duress and the very serious
scares that we've been subjected to since 9
-11.
Us being in an abusive marriage with the
left, as they say, right?
Or in a scary predicament, potentially concentration camps,
so-called, right, with Trump's first run.
It's there.
I do believe, in the little bit that
I know about history, that you can have
a disproportionately influential minority.
And I think, especially the early generations, of
course, the African-Americans have been there forever,
but I just mean like the bulk of
the Muslim community migrated there between the 70s
and the 90s, South Asians first and the
Arabs a decade or two later, that the
majority of the Muslim community, because they're incoming
with a chip on their shoulder, working hard,
they are at the joints of society.
So some of the little numbers I've come
across, if the Muslims in New York City
in the five boroughs are 9% of
the population, they could be 12% of
the physicians, for instance, right?
So there is influence there.
There is leverage there.
And I think we need to be very
intentional.
I think there's a lot we can learn
from minority communities, be it a Jewish community
or be it an Italian community, the Chinese,
the Catholics, in terms of them becoming known
for first-class education or best-in-class
education, primary school education.
These things can be done and they should
be done because the world needs Islam and
it's not a platitude.
It's not a cliche.
There's a lot of healing we need to
bring to the world.
And, you know, unless we master this world
while prioritizing the hereafter, that's the whole secret
recipe, right?
Master this world without it getting into our
hearts, we will not be able to have
an impact on it.
I mean, we have to respect the Sunan,
the laws of the cosmos as Allah created
them.
And Allah will not show favoritism to those
who don't respect that.
So Ibn al-Qayyim, I was coming to
mind now, he mentioned something so profound.
He said that when the Prophet ﷺ came
to the world, very few people actually paid
attention to him because of the message initially,
right?
Like Abu Bakr as-Siddiq had such a
pure fitrah that the message resonated with him
immediately.
Okay.
And very few actually resonated with his character
because you have to be really close to
him to know firsthand.
He said it was actually after he established
his power on the ground, right?
The conquest of Mecca, liberation of Mecca.
I prefer the word liberation for Fatih.
That people entered Islam in waves.
It was called the year of liberation.
And then following that was the year of
delegations.
People were flocking to Islam wholesale in waves.
There were so many of them, they would
only be able to send representatives on behalf
of my people.
And this is amazing because people, not just
in the prophetic era, they gravitate towards strength.
They gravitate towards distinction.
Like I was joking with my community that
the owner, the CEO and owner of Chobani,
you guys have Chobani Greek yogurt here?
Chobani, I don't know.
It's okay, it's okay.
You'll get there one day.
Is it good?
It's in every single supermarket in the United
States.
It's like a massive company.
And he made top news about 15 years
ago because his Muslim brother, Turkish, he donated
or promised to donate and donated 10%
of the shares of the company to his
workers.
So he said, you know, I've made it
big, struck gold, wouldn't have been possible without
you guys.
He gave them 10% of the company.
And so I was jokingly speaking to some
of the young professionals telling them, so what?
Like I have given 50% of my
estate once and no one ever told me,
mashallah, takbirallah, it was one time on Eid,
I had $2 and I gave $1 because
nobody cares about a dollar.
Allah cares, right?
I always have to put that disclaimer.
Of course, Allah cares, right?
But people want to see strength.
No one does that in that sphere.
Khabib, the Khabib phenomenon.
Like so many, usually sisters, have called out
people that openly speak about covering the awrah
and sort of like boxing being haram or
things of this nature.
So even Khabib, right?
There were so many people that were called
out online, I remember, usually by our sisters,
rightfully so, to be honest, that how are
you praising someone who's not covering his awrah
and he's in a sport that smashes people
in the face, which is haram on the
tongue of the Prophet, peace be upon him,
to the end of it.
But we can't, I remember one brother, he
was saying like, look, lady, we need some
heroes.
We're parched, right?
Yes, I know technically in a perfect world,
that's the thing.
Why?
Would the world have celebrated Khabib?
Would non-Muslims have shared memes of how
good he is to his mom if he
was 1 in 28 instead of 29 and
0?
No, it's because he was 29 and 0.
People gravitate towards strength.
Yes, Muhammad Ali, like undefeated and like then
he stands that refuses to go to Vietnam.
That's what made it amazing.
Like even in the World Cup, I don't
watch soccer whatsoever or UFC, of course, but
like everyone is going crazy about the Moroccan
soccer team and how they make sujood and
how they sort of honor their moms.
And why?
Is it because they're Muslim?
It's not because they're Muslim because there was
many Muslim teams.
It was because they were final four.
So the notion of gravitating towards strength and
the examples are too many to count.
The opposite is also true.
رَبَّنَا لَا تَجْعَلْنَا فِتْنَةً لِلَّذِينَ كَفَرُونَ Yeah?
If people don't make us a trial, a
tribulation for the disbelieving people, the tafseer of
that was, you know, don't let us be
vanquished so other people think that they're upon
the truth.
If it were true, God would have helped
them.
Exactly.
So people are superficial.
People judge books by their covers.
And so you need to be presentable.
I remember one brother in New York City,
let's keep this a little light-hearted.
After the khutbah, elderly man, I think he
was one of the founders, he's like, Imam,
I cannot tell you how proud I was
of you seeing you up there on the
minbar.
I was like, it's like, Allah khair, you
know, inshallah, you benefited.
Keep me in your du'a.
He's like, it had nothing to do with
what you said.
I was like, ouch, okay, then what?
He said, you don't look like you crawled
out of bed in your pajamas and climbed
the minbar.
You look presentable, you iron your clothes.
And I was like, really?
Like, is that all it takes to like
get your attention?
I'll do it.
And even Dr. Hatim once said to us
something.
He said, have you ever thought about the
fact that the Prophet ﷺ was given the
most beautiful face?
When he himself said ﷺ, Allah does not
look at your faces.
Or your wealth.
He looks at your heart and your actions.
If Allah doesn't look at your face, then
why did he give him the most beautiful
face?
Because people look at faces.
Allah wants to guide people.
And so he's making him visually appealing.
He wants to draw more people to his
guidance ﷺ.
So us being presentable, us getting our ducks
in a row, us being successful, prosperous, with
our principles and our values, that's the way
to do it.
That's the way to call attention to yourself.
Not for yourself, but for what you represent.
Just a second ago, did you say that
Muslims are like 9% of New York?
Maybe 10, yeah.
So 9 or 10%.
So that's obviously, that's leverage, that's potential power
influence, you think?
Yeah, we're not outnumbered.
We're out-organized.
And as one of our mashayikh, Shaykh Abdul
Rahman, he says in New York City, he
says, our enemies fear the day that we
realize that we're not outnumbered, we're out-mobilized.
We're out-organized.
I met him when I went.
Oh, that's right.
We had dinner together.
New York pizza.
You've been indoctrinated, my friend.
Welcome, welcome to the dark side.
I mean, I'll even share a story here
about how much of the details I need
to fudge, because this is top secret, confidential
stuff.
A politician in New York City was being
blasted for his stance with the Zionists, right?
Since October, and he was known to everyone
as being a very, very pronounced ally, a
big ally of the Muslim community.
And in fact, he has done a lot.
But when this happened, that's it.
They don't pick up the phones, they don't
say anything.
I don't know you.
And the Muslims were blasting him for?
They were blasting him for how quickly he
flipped the switch.
But he mentioned to one of the Muslims
who shared with me privately in confidence, he
said to him, I love your community, but
your community cannot keep me in this chair.
That is the problem.
And he said to him, the Jewish community
outvotes every other demographic in New York City.
And of course, voting is not everything.
And Thoreau says it's like the activism of
the feeble-minded, and if you think just
waking up once every four years is going
to do something, you live in a delusional
world.
But 90% of them vote.
And then it trickles down from one group
to another.
And the least participating was the Muslim community.
And that's a problem because you may also
not get involved, not get your act together
because you think you are involved and you
have your act together.
You may think, oh, this is just the
wrong path.
No, you haven't started walking on the path
yet.
And so 10% of the Muslim community
votes.
Wow.
And then they say, what's the point of
voting?
It doesn't make a difference.
No, you haven't voted yet.
That's why it hasn't made a difference.
And so understanding the system, engaging the realities,
there's no favoritism.
You know the ayah, SubhanAllah, in the Surah
Ash-Shura, Allah Azza wa Jal says, وَجَعَلَ
فِيهَا أَقْوَاتَهَا that Allah placed the resources of
the earth in the earth فِي أَرْبَعَةِ أَيَّام
وَقَدَّرَ فِيهَا and destined into it over the
span of four days فُسْصِلِح JazakAllahu Khayran.
First pages of Fussila.
over the span of four days سَوَاءً لِلسَّائِلِينَ
equally accessible to those who seek it.
Muslim or not Muslim, it doesn't matter.
Equally accessible to those who seek it.
So if they seek it with greater aptitude
than you, then they will access it faster
than you.
SubhanAllah.
So Muslims need to get out and mobilize
more.
Yeah.
And of course there are different ways to
do that.
I'll leave each to their niche and not
speak above my pay grade.
But at least let us say that we
are clearly not doing it.
Let us say that this notion that we
have the luxury of not needing to do
it together is a big problem.
Even if you don't agree with how some
people are doing it, don't undermine the work
of others.
Just do your own work.
That thing you mentioned earlier about don't dismantle
what is, build what isn't.
It applies here as well, SubhanAllah.
I just want to get your views, your
answer on a question I've been asking different
people as well.
And that is, what advice can you give
for introducing Allah SWT to children?
I think one of the biggest challenges here,
and before I get lost in my own
answer, Dr. Othman Omarovji and Dr. Hassan Alwan
have a wonderful study and there are more
subsequent studies going to be published by Yaqeen
on what is known in psychology or psychological
theory as God image.
So in the psychology of conviction, motivation, attachment
theory is a big subset of psychology, modern
psych, what makes you want to attach, have
a relationship with, and so on and so
forth.
So under that, there is an emerging field
called your God image.
How do you experience God?
It was originally called the alchemy of divine
love.
I think a spin on Ghazali's alchemy of
happiness.
Rahimahullah, Imam Ghazali.
But in general, just look it up.
It's a wonderful work and there's more forthcoming
on it and it's based on over 10
years of research.
But the idea here is that there is
a big difference between knowing Allah on the
theoretical level and on the experiential level.
Like no Muslim that's a Muslim will answer
the questions wrong.
Is God powerful?
Is God merciful?
But how do you experience Allah?
They found like roughly, don't quote me, like
let's say a fifth of the Muslim community
could have a almost pathological relationship or perception,
experienced perception of Allah.
And maybe a third of them, and they're
going to shoot me if these numbers are
wrong, but roughly there's like a significant minority.
Let's say a third of them have at
least an imbalanced, unhealthy, experienced relationship with Allah.
What does that mean in practice?
And so they see Allah as more of
an enforcer than a caretaker.
That's not it.
He's not even 55th.
He introduces himself to your question in the
beginning of every Surah pretty much as And
so where does it come from?
This is a part of the answer that
maybe is worthy of mentioning and then it'll
be a teaser for the paper.
The number one factor in the transmission of
faith, whether your faith in Allah or transmission
of faith across generations is actually parental influence.
And still that's not the full answer because
it's not whether or not the parents have
introduced Allah to the child in a pedagogical,
in a sort of instructional setting.
The research shows that you get your first
impression and your strongest impression growing up on
who Allah is from who your parents are.
So if your parent seems sort of like
distant, seems indifferent, seems to only show up
when you make a mistake, gotcha, right?
If it's a stressful relationship, this can also
erode the warmth of your experience with Allah
SWT because that was your first semblance of
sort of authority and caretaking and the likes.
And then of course the culture.
You get parented by your society after that.
So, you know, when Umar radiAllahu anhu, he
said, people are more the children of their
times than they are of their parents.
I believe it was Umar, it may have
been Ibn al-Qayyim, I'm conflating here.
Yes, أَشْبَهُ بِأَزْمَانِهِمْ مِنْهُم مِّنْ أَبِي أَبَائِهِمْ They
resemble more their era than they do their
parents.
So then, you know, you become parented by
the popular culture because literally in the ether.
And so, for example, you have like a
stressful upbringing with your parents.
You don't feel their compassion, their forgiving nature
when you mess up, when you slip and
the likes.
As opposed to, imagine being parented by the
Prophet SAW.
Like Dr. Hassan Alwan, the co-author, he
actually says, picture it this way, Allah wanted
to introduce himself to the world, so he
sent Muhammad SAW.
We're not conflating creator and creation, but he
is the earthly pivot of how we experience
Allah Azzawajal.
Through him, not just his instruction, not just
the verses that we're going to memorize, but
through experiencing him, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
He is a reflection of everything beautiful that
Allah loves to see in his creation.
And much of that are our divine qualities,
of course, in the imperfect form, in the
human form.
So that's the parents.
Then you move on to society.
How are they introduced to God?
Like think of, I don't watch movies and
I don't believe movies are halal for the
most part, but the so-called Marvel universe,
every villain is God and every hero is
the person that can save the world from
God.
There's either a God or a demigod or
some sort of like, right?
And so this corroborates and crystallizes for someone
this negative God image.
And so your image of Allah will be
blurry or will just be bad, will be
just dangerous because of this.
Someone waiting for you to slip up so
he can punish you rather than someone waiting
for you to do something so he can,
an excuse to give you his mercy.
Yeah, like God is not indifferent.
He actually has a preference.
ما يفعل الله بعذابكم What would Allah get
out of punishing you?
إن شكرتم وآلمنتم If you are thankful and
you are faithful.
And the verses are many, right?
So as a parent, how do I, how
would you say I can get this across
to my children?
So imbibing compassion, compassionate nurturance, forbearance, forgiving before
anything else.
That's what I was trying to get to.
Introduce them through your demeanor to these qualities,
right?
And then speak to them about Allah.
You know, some scholars have pointed out that
Ibn Abbas said about himself that when the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam died, he was around
the age of puberty, which means he was
prepubescent, right?
When he heard any of the hadith that
he narrated to us, except those he would
hear later from other companions.
But one hadith we know he heard directly
is the hadith where he's on the camelback
or the mount and he says the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, you know, said to me,
oh young man, I'm going to teach you
some words, meaning memorize this.
And so to memorize something, but memorize something
you understand, to carve into their personality that
Allah will always be there for you.
Allah watches over you even when I can't.
These notions.
So the scholar said that this is a
profound instruction, probably more profound than Ibn Abbas
initially understood.
So there are times when you sort of
inculcate in someone something and it gets activated
later.
Like, you know, even the, you think of
when the Sahaba said, when the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam passed away and Abu Bakr as
-Siddiq came out and he sort of anchored
everyone.
It was, of course, greatest calamity humanity has
ever seen.
It was pandemonium.
And he recited the ayah, Muhammad was but
a messenger.
What did they say?
It was as if it was the first
time.
So it was there, but it just, the
moment that came later for its activation.
So etching in their personality, the meanings of
Allah's names, the beauty of Allah's being, as
far as we can articulate it.
Through the names he gave us, he introduced
himself to us through these names and attributes.
And then imbibing as much of that is,
as is humanly possible.
That's good advice.
I've got one more question.
We need to go for Salah now.
So just make this the last question.
What's your favorite masjid in the world and
why?
Not including the three, Mecca, Medina and Aqsa.
Oh, you're going to make me sectarian now.
Or are you going to say Qom or
something?
No, I mean, I was just in Istanbul
for the second time, sort of.
I've translated it about like two real times.
I've been.
And Masjid Sultan Ayyub, Masjid Abi Ayyub al
-Ansari, There is something very special about the
masjid.
I mean, there's something I can identify.
Like it's not as decorative on the inside,
which is not from the Sunnah.
One of the signs of the Day of
Judgment is that you embellish the masjid, especially
the insides.
Because the masjid is supposed to be a
place where you look inward, not outward.
It should be elegant, but it shouldn't be
decorative, shouldn't be museum-esque.
And so that's probably one of the reasons.
But the sectarian point was that the grave
is not inside the masjid.
That made me very happy.
Of course, we cannot conclusively establish.
Historians speculate.
And it's more symbolic than anything.
The gravesite of Abu Ayyub.
We know that he traveled to those lands.
We know that he passed away before the
liberation of Constantinople.
But just what that represents, what that means.
But also there seems to be an effect,
an impact.
Perhaps the generations upon generations of righteous that
have passed through here.
The purity of the wealth that was used
to build here.
Allah knows best exactly what it is.
But there's a unique sakinah.
And maybe because it was very recent also,
that I find in that place.
MashaAllah.
Jazakumullahu khair.
We have to head for Salah.
Jazakumullahu khair.
We'll wrap up there.
Jazakumullahu khair for sharing your advice and everything.
And jazakumullahu khair to you at home for
watching.
If you like this podcast, give it a
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And let us know in the comments what
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Until next time.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.