Mohammad Elshinawy – Silent Demands of Youth 01

			In Alhamdulillah Allah and I'm gonna screen over here on a stock photo when I wrote it out I mean
Julian fusina was a DR Molina de la la la mobila woman lilford fella her de la Chateau La ilaha
illallah wa de la sharika lahu Asha Donna Mohammed Abu whenever you who are Soto yeah you're Latina
mundo de la hapa Ducati welaka mutanda illa one two Muslim moon. Yeah yohanna suta Pura Bakula. Viva
la comida de Vaca hola caminhada Baba serene. humare geralyn Cassie wrong Juanita
		

			waterco la la de Luna B he will have him in a la Cana la cumbre Kiba Yeah, you hella Xena mano De La
Hoya Hulu Colin sadita useless local mmamoloko oil silicones and overcome woman Nutella Rasulullah
who so called the faza fellows and alima all praise and glory be to Allah We thank him and we seek
His help and his guidance and his pleasure and its forgiveness. And we seek protection with Allah
from the evil whispers within us and from the consequences of our evil deeds. for whomever Allah
guides, none can ever lead astray and whomever Allah leads astray, none can ever guide. And we
testify that no one is worthy of our worship and our devotion, and our love and obedience in the
		

			absolute sense of those two words but Allah and Allah alone, without any partners, the true supreme
King, as a prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was in truth, His Prophet, and his servant
and His Messenger, whom he says as a mercy to the world. Oh, you have believed Allah says, Oh, you
have committed to faith, have the taqwa of Allah present in your life at all times, and to the
extent that he deserves or as best of that as you can muster, and do not die do not get caught off
guard by death, except in a state of complete and total, consistent, loving surrender to Allah state
of Islam.
		

			To begin welcoming my brothers and sisters to the house of our lives, though, again,
		

			allow me to begin in a way that is a little bit atypical, a little bit unordinary allow me to read
to you the following line.
		

			A writer says
		

			the children now love luxury, and they have bad manners. And they have contempt for authority.
		

			And they show disrespect for elders. And they love to chatter in place of exercise, that of doing
work. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.
		

			They no longer rise when elders enter the room. they contradict their parents, they speak in front
of guests, they chat there before company, they gobble up dainties, meaning appetizers at the table,
they cross their legs, and they turn up tyrannized their teachers.
		

			Do you know who made this long list of complaints?
		

			It was the famous philosopher Socrates
		

			2400 years ago, though, many of you would assume that this was said by someone complaining of
generation millennials or Generation Y or, or someone very recent.
		

			And it is so interesting because this man is someone who specialized in studying the patterns of
human thought and the fault lines of human thought the way humans think. And yet still, he could not
see past the fact that he was blinded into thinking in his old age, that the youth now are worse
than ever, just like everybody else does. The youth this time they're crazy.
		

			As a law though, just said you didn't hit Medina Sha, Allah is the one that chooses who to give
wisdom to he selected to kind of with Allah. And if Allah does not show you your blind spot, the
most intelligent person in the world can follow the some of the most amateur mistakes. Well, men
Lamia, jalila, hula, hula neuron family, Allah whom
		

			whomever Allah does not grant the light to, they will not have that light. That's why it can never
be made available to them.
		

			And so part of the blessing of the hikma which of course, starts with the revelation of the deen,
that is the foundation of all wisdom is that it enabled you to break out of those dark corners,
sometimes of your thoughts. It allows you to break out of your box, we all live in a box on some
level to break out of your frame of reference where you can see as acceptable anything but what you
are a part of.
		

			So like people say, Oh, that's that old stuff. We don't do that anymore. Or That's crazy. That New
Age stuff is crazy. I'm not accepting it because they're not a part of it.
		

			Are the people that say women women are crazy?
		

			Or the women that say men men are out of their mind?
		

			Or the western that says these Eastern people, I don't know what they're thinking.
		

			I'm the Easterners say these people in the West are with a villa in their own religious lingo.
		

			And likewise here, what I want to focus on for this whole one, perhaps a series of hope of now is
the issue of the standoff
		

			by the elders against the youth and by the youth against the elders. That is, Islam allows us to
snap out of
		

			us always say the elders are like stiff, and they're stubborn, and they're outdated, and they're
disposable, essentially. And they're not able to realize the value, the irreplaceable value of the
elders.
		

			And likewise, the elders like soccer teams, by and large almost always fall into the state of
frustration with the Unity these youth are reckless, these youth are dangerous, these youth are a
threat to these youth are lazy, these youth youth are hard headed, we just gotta make sure and they
don't know how to understand them from a point of reference where they can benefit from them. Both
ways two way street. And our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam even struck that balance in a very
brief statement once when he said Lisa Amina Mel mellem, you work heavier on it. Why are Hamza later
on eliminare hepco they are not upon our teachings, they are not one of us, meaning aligned with us
		

			entirely. Those who do not revere their elders, and have mercy on their youngsters and know the
right of their scholars.
		

			You know, even in this country, when major changes happen, even in modern times, they still struggle
on how to make sense of the youth.
		

			You know, in the 1940s
		

			when the concept of it takes a village to raise a child and the whole village life ended and then
extended family life went after it few a century or two later, then, which is how do we fix this
problem, the youth are needing to get reined in, they're going to destroy us. So in the 40s, the
tactic was something that scholars described as like dramatic scare tactics, basically Scared
Straight programs to make sure we protect us and our civilization from the dangers of the youth. And
then they realized that this didn't work, among other reasons, it failed. And then the 80s they
changed gears on the youth. And the major theories were okay, we messed up. How do we do damage
		

			control now on what the youth are going through? How do we stop them from failing so bad at school?
Let's lower the standard. Right? How do we stop them from getting into drug and alcohol abuse to the
end of it? Let's figure this out. Let's give them some clemency with regard to their convictions,
they started thinking of ways to do damage control, when they realize you can't keep doing that you
can't be more lean more and more and more lenient, that doesn't work either. And in the past 20 or
30 years. Yeah, and the past 20 or 30 years from the 90s onwards. One of the most prevalent theories
regarding the EU, though still has major holes in it is what they call the P YD theory, the positive
		

			youth development theory. And I know this is not ordinary talk for a lot. But I had to give this
introduction like that. So you realize just how complex the problem is. To appreciate just how
special the solution is Islam offers are.
		

			The TYT theory basically hinges on five points, it says you will forever they're saying now forget
damage control, we have to like be ahead of the curve. We have to develop youth in a certain way not
look at them as evil or try to contain their evil or fix their problems and meet them halfway in
their evil. How do we develop them in a way we want? They said you basically have five demands that
they may not even know they have, they need five things whether they realize it or not. Okay, they
call them the five C's.
		

			And I'm just going to use them as a framework for what Islam offers in light of this very human,
very possibly flawed theory.
		

			The first of them, they say the user must have competence, like what's the point of caring about the
youth, if they're going to become irrelevant, they're gonna have to have to contribute to society
some way they have to have some sort of skill. Then they said connection, the youth have to also see
themselves as an extension of something, they have to see their route, they have to be connected,
they have to belong, or else even if they have a skill, we're not going to enjoy it at all costs
gonna benefit us in any way. They're just going to be a free for all every man for himself.
		

			They said the third one they need very important for them is the concept of caring. They need to
feel like no matter how old they get that they're cared about. They need to feel like they're cared
about. Number four is confidence and confidence is a little bit different than competence.
		

			Because you can be confident and not know what you're doing, right? Like, let me run the show.
That's the whole problem with you. They believe they can do it all without the skills. But you can
have this skill, but you're not very confident in your skill. So confidence is really about you
giving us a space to feel accomplished, even to fail a little bit and feel like I've actually done
this. I've done this. So they develop resilience, they develop confidence, that was the fourth see
confidence. And the fifth of them is character.
		

			Nobody wants to hear anything from you know, an intelligent, disrespectful person, right. And nobody
wants someone to be extremely good at making money, but they're extremely corrupt at the exact same
time. No one wants someone that has a theory, but also, they're not very sure about their theory on
life, how life works, because then they're just going to be too fluid, they're not going to be
stable, they're not going to be consistent. They need character. They need like a framework that
they live their life by like a life philosophy.
		

			So in light of those five, I do want to say a few things. We said,
		

			competence, connection, caring confidence. And the last of them character certainly will not be
enough to squeeze these into one.
		

			But the reason you do want to pay attention to these with Islam paid attention to them, that's
number one, we find them in the planet in this manner. And the way Islam addresses them is the
number one thing you can offer the youth and the youth don't just mean your children, you know, many
people, they try to wait till their kids are used or you know, the children you might have, or the
children that look up to you in the massages all of that the use of this. And secondarily the use of
humanity. Because the greatest thing we can offer the next generation to meet a law with with a
bright faith, to leave this earth on the right foot is to connect the next generation and more of
		

			them with the Islam that we have.
		

			And you see the struggle of Muslim American youth, by the way, in particular, that for so many
reasons, they can feel their Islam, they don't even show it. Right. And when you can feel it for
long enough, it becomes too difficult to conceal it. So you just quit doing it even in private.
		

			And this is especially difficult because Islam is is the bad guy is the scapegoat for everything
that goes wrong in some spaces. The idea of Islamophobia is their reality, what is Islamophobia the
irrational fears that are created in society, about Islam, that results in many things, the way
these youth are looked at their stigmatized Little things like second class human beings almost in
some people's eyes, it caused them to actually be bullied caused them to be disadvantaged in work in
and in education before that. It's a reality, so much pressure on them, aside from the fact that
they're a minority, and that minority is 1% of the population. disunited 1% of scattered 1%. And so
		

			all of this adds up in a way that is extremely challenging. So we have to understand how to meet
that challenge. And speaking of minorities, before I get into the five, the five aims of this
development model.
		

			We can learn from the previous minorities in this country so much, right? If you read about how the
Italians faced, what they faced when they came 100 years ago, what the Jewish community faces due to
their tiny numbers, and the stigma that is out there about them, certainly, but there is no
community that is worthy of being spoken about as an inspiration for Muslim American youth than the
African American community. And this is not just because this is February, and so it's black history
month to the end of it, though, that is always a good opportunity for you to realize what these
people went through and did not just survive, but were able to thrive to shine. Despite like the
		

			African American community is also one third of the Muslims in America, we don't realize that, but
aside from their Islam forget their Islam for a second.
		

			These people faced pressures and faced hate and developed while this advantage
		

			for 500 years since their arrival in this country, they face these problems. This is not like the
first generation wisdom or the second generation wisdom has been here for 2030 years. These people
even after slavery
		

			ended the state had sanctioned certain laws like it was called the Jim Crow laws. If you don't know
what these are, there was state sanctioned separation segregation. They were placed in the most
		

			rundown places of of society, their communities were ghetto, it turned into ghettos, drugs were
subsidized families were broken. In light of all this they still 500 years and continuing had in
them the ability to not dissolve, to not melt with the pressure to not be broken and there's so much
really we can learn from them.
		

			But let's begin with the five.
		

			competence to have skills. By Allah's grace, everyone that goes through their standard upbringing in
this part of the world is blessed to be able to develop a skill set.
		

			You need to find the skill set of the youth around you whether your children are beyond and to let
them know they have a skill set. They are relevant The world needs them or will need them.
		

			You know of the live now, Beth, that'll be a level on Houma. He says when the Prophet sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam died, me and a young man from the unsolved, were standing and I said, Let us go
collect the sunon the Hadith of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, while the seniors will have
are still plenty before they all die off. And so my own 30 friends said to me, You think people will
ever need you old Naga?
		

			He said, and I ignored what he said. And I continue to chase down all of them, and tell them exactly
what did you hear from the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam.
		

			He says, and I used to come to them at a time when I would have their undivided attention as the
noon time when everyone goes into their homes because of the summer midday heat. And I would sleep
at their door and the sun would scorch me in the dust with the sand would cover my clothes, I would
nap outside their door. So when they come out, they find me. And they say to me, what in the world
are you doing here? If you needed us, call us we would come to you. You're the cousin of the Bravo
column. This is wrong. He said, No, I want it to come to you. You have something sacred. And he
collected all of this knowledge. Until a time came when he was the ultimate reference point for this
		

			oma and the Ansari man used to pacify of navette. And see people crowded beyond wherever he was
sitting, meaning and overflowing find the message, for example, and flowing into the alleyways in
the streets. And he used to say has alfetta can act alumini this young man was smarter than me.
		

			For us to instill in our youth that our skill, the oma and the world needs, this is very important.
You have an advantage you have a special opportunity no one else has. There are people that would
die for this opportunity. Let them know what their relevance is.
		

			You know, speaking of the African American community, I remember some of the lectures I used to hear
		

			from Alicia, Hola, Malcolm X, who I may wind up quoting a bunch of times in this book, he used to
say, and this is not the line we use, but the concept was very empowering the point he used to say
to his crowds in the, in the protests, and in the in the speeches, he would say to black people
looking at you, you have this skin that these other people spend hours in the sun just to develop.
		

			You have it by birth.
		

			How do you think that would make them feel people that we're always told that you are inferior and
your nose is wrong and your hair is wrong and everything about you is wrong? It will reinstate this
in them you have something that people need. People want people cause themselves cause themselves
suffering to develop.
		

			One of the challenges towards helping our youth identify their skills is that we are very limited in
the what we think of skills when too idealistic.
		

			Not everyone is meant to be a doctor, as we say, not everyone is meant to be an engineer, not
everyone is meant to be a hospital, not everyone is meant to be a chair. Not everyone is meant to be
an expert in all the fields. And so sometimes our youth are so special, but because our standards
are too high, or too idealistic, we don't give them a chance to recognize how special they are.
		

			And be very careful of this, you know, even if the youth are misjudged going to use and that's it.
Sometimes our youth and hamdulillah come with us to the massages Do you realize what that means? 80%
of Muslim Americans, youth and non youth don't attend the massages. On the day of read, they're not
here. So for your child or the youth that you see, however, they may come, they show up and they're
in the masjid. Be content with that on some level and recognize that you are the key to helping
others you're relevant. You can bring people in the massage, they'll never listen to me because I'm
too busy or I have an accent or whatever it may be. Show them their elements, show them their skill
		

			set and don't demand that they develop a very specific skill, a very specific competency that may
never be possible for them.
		

			That is the first of them competence. They need to have skills. Absolutely. Don't be idealistic
about it and help them find it.
		

			echolalia
		

			Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam Ala Moana Viva Chateau La ilaha illallah wa ala sharika shawanna
Mohammedan Abu Abu hora pseudo.
		

			The second major demand a youth development screams for is the need for connection and the order is
is not deliberate.
		

			To connect, what does it mean to connect?
		

			They need to feel like they belong. They are part of something big, something bigger than
themselves.
		

			You know, Malcolm Rahim Allah when he was gathering the people upon his call,
		

			he though he gave up his racism when he found the real Islam, he still called people around the
concept of their blackness,
		

			their ethnicity, he was a black nationalist but I'ma hold love and said only if we gathered the
momentum from all the people that were punished and persecuted because of their blackness we gather
all their grievances, can we actually make a difference.
		

			And he said, I used to be a black nationalism United States No. And this was in the end of his life
right before he was assassinated him a whole lot. He used to say we need to call people from our
background from every part of the world. So we can prosecute the United States In the United
Nations, for their crimes against us.
		

			That does what
		

			it made them feel like they are part of something huge. The reality is most Muslim American youth,
they don't have a sense of identity or a sense of
		

			connection belonging to anything outside of America. And it is not wrong to identify with being a
part of America, it would be it would be unnatural and unexpected for you to feel not part of this
country. And the fabric of this country, was the concept that I don't just belong to the United
States in 2020 is very important
		

			to believe that I am also a part of this planet, a part of this very blessed oma,
		

			that is all over the globe. You know, sometimes the reason why they don't identify public with Islam
is because they've internalized this concept. They imagine that their Islam is when people accused
it of it's a little quote, a death cult of people that can't wait to die, so they can get married to
their prizes in paradise. And that's it. But you belong to a religion of 1.5 billion people. That
sense of belonging is extremely important for them. You belong to a religion that spans 1400 years.
		

			You know, as the poet used to say, or mimoza Danny Shara fan was he have a kid to be
		

			the Holy cow, like everybody wants Medina via very beautiful line to think about. He says, an award
increased me above all else, in honor and in nobility, to the point that I felt like I was walking
on the stars, for me to be included under your statement, oh my servants, that I'm the servant of
God.
		

			That is my greatest identity I belong to Allah Subhana without to the Creator, not his creation, no
part of his creation. I belong to the creator above all else, that I was included under your
statement, oh, my servants, and that you sent Mohammed, above all else, not anyone else as my
prophet. I got to be a part of the last film, the one that Allah saved, he saved the best for last.
And I get to be a part of it.
		

			You know, I'm one of the 11 when he was traveling through the provinces as Khalifa and he got to a
Javea wherever Aveda of their level and who was the was the governor. He told him Let us go to your
house and he said of course it's an honor to go to my and so he took him home. And the woman wanted
to go to his house a very specific reason. I said to him, take me to your home when they entered his
wife came out the wife level Aveda. He said Fulani or so and so she said yes. Allah Allah, He loves
you and I'm gonna make you Sorry. She caught everybody off guard, like almost had heard that this
woman would lean on her husband to take advantage of his position. And you wanted to make sure she
		

			would not do that.
		

			That this was a responsibility, not the privilege, this role and so he said I'm going to make you
Sorry.
		

			So she said to him
		

			in the kehlata Corolla Valley, you will not be able to
		

			so he said to her, be sure I will make you Sorry. So she says in nicoleta kabiru. Allah Derek you
will not be able to make me Sorry.
		

			And so her husband stepped in like he says on whatever on what can make you Sorry, who's going to be
able to make his sorry, and this is when he's ready for do so it's a no brainer. So he said, belly
up. There's no he can make sorry like back down. She said one law he liked this one.
		

			You'll never be able to
		

			and then she explained why she says that. She said, I applaud the rule and NZ and Millis never
		

			fails heavy Will he be able to strip me of my Islam and send it elsewhere?
		

			So I almost said no, she said fella Oh barely my father by the relic then I don't really care what
he can do to me after that so I'm what about the low onto the stuff that a lot I mean this is
clearly not the woman that was related to me different woman different personality than that he said
I asked a lot forgiveness and he Mission completed he left all the low data on
		

			and so belonging to a great oma is a part of it. belong to a great history, like the history of this
oma Take your pick whoever you want, Salahuddin a UB if you mungus personality, historical
personality, like words not for the fact that the enemies of philosopher Dean in the books of
Europeans spoke about how impressive and how gracious he was when he took back Jerusalem. We
wouldn't even believe it. We'd say that our scholars are historians are making this stuff up. They
adored the man for like his exemplar character, it was a historic event.
		

			Even it's a meal him I would love to go to this scholarship, even if Tamia you are connected with
this with his heritage. You know, they say there was never a great scholar since Aristotle in
philosophy than Emmanuel Khan. And now many Western scholars because they're just finally getting
past their prejudice and discovering some of the scholarship of the Muslim world included. They
realize that so many of the groundbreaking ideas that haven't come about in 2000 years that were
brought by Emmanuel Kant, were set by potamia, five 600 years before that. But I came up a long time
when you speak about the civilization of Muslim Spain and Al Andalus. And otherwise, one man, a
		

			young youth walked in on two feet without an army and conquered southern Spain.
		

			No luck. When you connect people to this, it's a completely different experience, connect them to
their history, connect them to their roots.
		

			You know, I will share with you two things before I close,
		

			connecting them with adulthood even within the family. So I said Islam, and I said the oma the grace
of the oma connecting them even with family. Number one family studies continue to show family has
the greatest influence over everything else over media over schooling over everything else on the
transmission of faith.
		

			And you'd look to connect in general with adulthood. And that is why it's a Panama, there's a study
I was going through recently, two weeks ago, there's a very formidable study that came out of
Harvard University, to show you how
		

			detrimental it is to have broken families. The absence of fathers in particular, this study showed
that the African American families, I have to come back to these examples of how Allah have, it
hurts everybody, but they have the most mitigation meaning the least damage to their families by the
absence of the father. Why? Because they usually have other males present, they are more likely to
have the grandfather present, right? This helps the youth Connect. I'm part of the big people now.
Right? I'm part of the adults now I've been accepted. That sense of acceptance is huge. You know,
the studies also extend to long 10 year study about all the gangs that used to arrive, especially in
		

			the 90s in Los Angeles, all of them continue to have the same trend, the prevalence of fatherless
homes, right. And they would say we felt more acceptance in gang life than we've ever felt at home.
So that idea of keeping the family and the wider family in the masjid as the stronghold bolstering,
that is huge. I want to feel this transition that I am an adult I'm an equal.
		

			I'm going to look above your loved one and time is up so I will defer to next week actually, we
asked a lot of project to help us with this monumental task, appreciate our Islam and protect our
youth. Help us serve and respond to their silent demands alone. I mean, may Allah grant us and them
life and health and safety and make them and us pleasing to Him to kind of hold to Allah alone
membership and assuming I'm well how to read I mean from Costco, a lot of Muslim semi non Muslim Mac
Mini now one more minute was Allah Allah Allah Allah wa Nabina Muhammad Allah Allah He was a marine.
		

			Hello, it