Silent Demands of Youth 01 – Jumuah 02.28.2020

In Alhamdulillah heatall and another gonna sign over here on a stock photo when I was really tired I mean Julian fusina was a yo Dr. Molina de la Jota Allah, Allah mobila Wanna yield lympha fella De La Hoya shadow Allah ilaha illallah wa sallahu la sharika who eyeshadow and Mohammed Abdullah? Who whenever you who are sort of, yeah you're Latina Aminata hola ha ha ha Ducati Wella moto Nila one two Muslim moon. Yeah Johanna SUTA pura Baku la vie halacha coming up Seema Haider ha bahala caminhada Uber sering humare Geralyn Cathy wrong when it

what are called law holidays as a loaner vehicle or ham in Allaha Cana Alikum rock Eva.

Yeah, you hella Xena. I'm an otaku. Hola Hola, Hulu colon sadita Useless Glaucoma malaco Well, silicone vinnova Come my Nutella or Sudha who, for the first fellows and Alima All Praise and Glory be to Allah Who 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, the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu, alayhi, WA early yoursel lamb 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 Allah azza wa jal

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 chatter before company, they gobble up dainties, meaning advertisers 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 your 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.

Subhan Allah as Allah azza wa jal said, You didn't hikma Tunisia, Allah is the one that chooses who to give wisdom to he selected Subhana wa Tala. And if Allah does not show you your blind spots, the most intelligent person in the world control the some of the most amateur mistakes. Well, Mala Mia jalila Hula, hula neuron from Allah Who minuite

whomever Allah does not grant the light to, they will not have that light. That light 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 have always done is that it enables 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're 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 Easterners say these people in the West, are will be left in their own religious lingo.

And likewise here, what I want to focus on for this whole month, perhaps a series of 12 now, is the issue of the standoff

by the elders against the youth and by the youth against the elders, that is, lamb allows us to snap out of

youth 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 Socrates, by and large, almost always fall into the state of frustration with the youth that hey, these youth are reckless, these youth are dangerous, these youth are a threat, these youth are lazy, these youth youth are hard headed, we just got to 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 wasallam even struck that balance in a very brief statement once when he said lace, I mean, mill mellem. You work your caviar on it. Why are Hamsa Lair on our island eliminar hubco. 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 describe 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 standards. 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 regards to their convictions. They started thinking of ways to do damage control. When they realize you can't keep doing this, 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, in the past 20 or 30 years from the 90s onwards. One of the most prevalent theories regarding the youth, though it still has major holes in it is what they call the BYD theory, that

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

The TYT theory, basically it 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 youth 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 flood theory.

The first of them they say that youth are 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 roots, 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 something to 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, need to feel like they're cared about. Number four is confidence and confidence 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 the skill, but you're not very confident in your skill. So confidence is really about you giving you 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 resiliency, 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, 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 uncomfortable. 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 Quran and the Sunnah. 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 tried 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 massage. It's all of that the youth of this OMA and secondarily the youth of humanity, because the greatest thing we can

offer the next generation to meet Allah with with a bright face, 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 a 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 they're stigmatized, they looked as like second class human beings almost in some people's eyes, it caused them to actually be bullied cause them to be disadvantaged in work and 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, this United 1%, a 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 with thy face 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, then the African American community. And this is not just the 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 1/3 of the Muslims in America and we don't realize that, but aside from their Islam forget their Islam for a second.

These people faced pressures and faced hate and develop while disadvantage.

For 500 years since their arrival in this country, they face these problems. This is not like the first generation most of them are the second generation wisdom has been here 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 that 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 or your children or beyond. And to let them know they have a skill set they are relevant The world needs them or will need them

you know, Abdullah have not best of the Allahu anha he says when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam died, me and a young man from the unsavoury were standing and I said, Let us go collect the Sunnah and the Hadith of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, while the seniors who have are still plenty before they all die off. And so my Ansari friend 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 the Sahaba and tell them exactly what did you hear from the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wasallam

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 scorched me and the dust would the sand would cover my clothes, I would not 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 Prophet SAW 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 an overflow outside the masjid, for example, and flowing into the alleyways in the streets. And he used to say have Alfetta can calm in me, this young man was smarter than me.

For us to instill in our youth that our skill, the OMA and the world needs 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 Malik Chavez Rahim Allah, Malcolm X, who I may wind up quoting a bunch of times in the scope of what he used to say. And this is not a 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, look 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 way we think of skills. We're 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. And not everyone is meant to be a sharer, 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 Masjid going youth 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 a non youth don't attend them attach it. On the day of Eid, 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 relevance showed them their skill sets 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.

A cola COLA that was a lot of money.

Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala manana via via shadow Allah Ilaha illa Allah or the hola Che Guevara, who eyeshadow anna Muhammad and I will do who whenever you who are solo

the second major demand a youth development screams for is the need for connection and the order is is not delivered

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 Rahim Allah 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 Rahim Allah, 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 publicly Islam is because they've internalized this concept. They imagine that their Islam is what people accused it of. It's like a little coat a death cult of people that can't wait to die, so they can get married to their prices 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 he used to say, Well, me Meza Danny shut off. No, it has to be mostly another four years holy, practically, everybody, one four years Madonnina via very beautiful line to think about. He said, an avoid increased me above all else, in honor and 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 subhanho wa, Taala 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 send to 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 gonna I'm gonna kappa probably Allah who I know when he was traveling through the provinces as Khalifa and he got to a Javea wherever Aveda of the Allahu Anhu 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 homeowner wanted to go to his house for very specific reason. Our homeowner said to him, Take me to your home when they entered his wife came out. The wife ever Aveda he said, Fula you're so on. So she said yes. Paulo Hola. Hola, Su and Nikki? I'm going to make you sorry. She caught everybody off guard, like Omar had heard that this woman would lean on her husband

to take advantage of his position. And he 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 Nicoletta Corolla VALIC you will not be able to.

So he said to her be sure I will make you Sorry. So she says in Nicoletta Kabiru. Allah Derek you will not be able to make me sorry.

And so her husband stepped in like this is almost a mama can make you sorry, who's gonna be able to make you Sorry. And this is when he's Khalifa two, so it's a no brainer. So he said, Well, yeah, there's no he can make you Sorry. Like back down. She said Walla Walla.

You'll never be able to.

And then she explained why she says that. She said, I have to do and nzr Neil Islam

for his heavy will he be able to strip me of my Islam and send it elsewhere?

So I almost said no, she said fella will barely my father by the relic, then I don't really care what he can do to me after that. So Omar will be a low answer to the federal law. This is clearly not the woman that was related to me different woman, different personality than that. He said, I asked Allah's forgiveness and he mission completed he left the Allahu Taala and

and so belonging to a great OMA is a part of it. belong to a great history, like the history of his Alma, take your pick whoever you want, Salahuddin a UB if you Mungus personality, historical personality, like worth not for the fact that the enemies of philosopher Dean in the books of European 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 Tamia himolla If you go to the scholarship, even the Tamia, you are connected with this with this heritage. You know, they say there was never a greater scholar since Aristotle in philosophy than Immanuel Kant. And now many Western scholars because they're just finally getting past their prejudice and discovering some of the scholarship of the East Muslim world included. They realized that so many of the groundbreaking ideas that haven't come about in 2000 years that were brought by Immanuel Kant, were set by Potamia, five 600 years before that, but I am I would love to add, 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, there are no Allah, 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, 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 youth look to connect in general with adulthood. And that is why Subhanallah 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 Halla 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 arise 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 masajid as the stronghold bolstering that is huge. I want to feel this transition that I am an adult I'm an equal

or I'm gonna love your loved one and time is up so I will defer to next week actually, we ask Allah azza wa jal 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. Subhana Allah to Allah Allah MADI Shabaab and misdemeanor I'm well how to read I mean whom Khalsa Allah MacWilliams semi non Muslim and when we mean I mean that was Allah Allah Allah Allah Allah cannot be anna Muhammad Allah Allah He was he married

along with

the sugar