Islam, Depression and Addiction

So, what I want to do guys is, since it's quite an intimate group, I would like to open it up for direct questions and answers so that we can engage with one another right away. I think that way, get the most out of this session. We don't have that much time together so let's

open it up for questions and answers straightaway in Sharla.

Yeah, the first question

yes question

what's your Big Blue Bear? When we know it sometimes in our

mission, our hiring boats.

Okay, the question was, what do we do and we thought quite low. And we have like low Eman and we feel low. I mean, look, there are a few things in psychology, which correlate to the feeling of being locked. So one of them is depression, okay. One of them is something called transitory sadness. And the third one is grief. These are three diagnoses usually that are given to people who feel low, and they're all different from one another. So typically, psychologists will differentiate between what is referred to as transitory sadness, and depression and so much as transitory sadness is usually put on by some extraneous variable, something happened to someone in their life, they

become sad. And that's a very natural thing to happen to human beings. In fact, that's what should happen to human beings. The difference usually that's made between transitory sadness and depression, is that transitory sadness goes for up to six months and depressions more than six months. And usually depression is not as a result of some extraneous variable. Grief is a different animal altogether. Grief is a different thing. bereavement or grief usually has stages. They're referred to as the six stages of grief, well, well known in the literature, etc. Now, what does Islam say about all of this? Now, Islam doesn't negate that human being a Muslim, can feel any of

those things. In fact, you have people who are prophets who felt that like, for example, in the Quran

Yahuwah his Suleiman Surah Jusuf, he says, In the My esky bethey your husband and Allah, in them Eshkol with your host, Neil Allah, that I certainly complain, my bereavement and my grief to Allah, which means he felt grief himself. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad Salah Salam, we know that he had a hammer husband, which is the year of grief when his wife died had deja about the loved one. And when his uncle died, I will tell him so grief is it's actually no way of manipulating that. And it does it's not an indication that you are a bad person or have low Eman or have low faith if you're feeling grief. Because if this was the case, then surely the prophets would not have felt

that feeling.

Obviously, Maria Mala has Salam in the Quran. She was so bereaved. She said, Yeah, later in the mid two Kabbalah had to go to NASA and see that I wish I had died before this. And I was completely forgotten, which means that she had reached such a pinnacle of grief and she had been grief stricken to the point where she didn't want she didn't want to die, kill myself, but she said I wish I wasn't here, which shows you that it's a natural emotion, as well. I'll ETM usually this is the Arabic translation for depression. You won't find this in the Quran and Sunnah per se. But you do find this the term sadness in the Quran and Sunnah. And one of the famous hadith of that is that there's a

hadith in Bukhari, which says that there will be somebody who is Ashkar ETHEL. Jana, or Ashkar Atul Jana, which effectively means the saddest person in the dunya. Okay, that will go to heaven. And then the Hadith continues that it was your muscle fill Jana, he's going to be dipped into Jana, and he's going to say I've never felt any sadness at all. The point being is that sadness, which is due to some kind of extraneous variable is something which yes, which Islam accepts human beings can go through and it's not an indication that someone who goes through that is has low Eman or should be scolded for that or should be reprimanded for that or anything like

exam. There is a problem though, which is what which is if someone becomes hopeless, now depression itself psychologically, if you look at depression, it has a spectrum it has a range. At the end of it is what you call hopelessness, which is usually accompanied sometimes by what is referred to as suicide ideation. Someone even thinks about killing themselves. Now, there is a kind of depression, which is unacceptable in Islam. And that is the kind of depression which is unacceptable Islam. And the evidence for that is in the same Surah, which we first mentioned, Allah says in the Quran, he says, well, May 8, Esselman, Rohilla. He, Ill humbled Catherine, that no one is hopeless from the

mercy of God except for disbelieving people. So hopelessness indicates that you don't have trust in God, a complete hopelessness. So depression cannot spill over to kind of hopelessness and God, there has to be telecoil and reliance to that level. So yes, Islam doesn't say it doesn't live this utopian life of a psychological kind that says, You can't be depressed and you can't be sad, and you can't grieve. But it says you can't be hopeless. And you can't let depression take you to a certain level where your content contemplating killing yourself or contemplating these things, because that's within your willpower to avoid. And Allah says in the Quran, lay you can live Allahu Allah

Azza, that Allah does not burden the soul with more than it can handle. And none of us lead to qlf Allah Azza, the West, the soul is not given more than less

than it can handle. So this is the Islamic understanding of it. Now, one more thing, I did have a discussion. You know, the whoever was interviewing, introducing me mentioned that with Jordan Peterson, he is, for all intents and purposes, we know his stance now, on the on the Palestine issue, and we don't respect him for that. However, there was a few things which were interesting, because he's a clinical psychologist at the end of the day. And I did discuss with him, something which I found, which is very interesting is a study, which I came across, it's called, and you can research this on Google on your own time. And, you know, as a point of research, it's called the

effect of oneness on the effect of oneness on life satisfaction. And the person who done this study is someone called Laura Marie, and it was done in Germany, by three or four different people. And this study showed that it's very interesting it showed that if you believe in one, monotheistic beliefs, like one, oneness beliefs like to hate effectively, they increases your life satisfaction. And what the study concluded was that the group of people that had the greatest life satisfaction from all other groups were Muslims,

and followed by Christians, followed by Hindus, etc, etc. So they actually surveyed that it's a very interesting thing. Now, we will renew from those A Pew research study that was done in 2019, that religious people, generally speaking have better life satisfaction than atheists. That's something in 2019 Pew researchers discovered, but this is the first study that I come to see, which I think was in 2021 year afterwards, which specified Muslims and indicated that the reason why they had this was because of oneness beliefs, and the Quran mentions that it says Allah basically Lajitas through that, certainly, okay, by the remembrance of God, do hearts find rest. And on the flip side, and

about the antiquities for in the Allahu Maisha and been Cal one actual reality, ama, whoever swerves away from my remembrance, he will have a depressed life, like his entire life will be depressed. Now once again. So with Peterson, I had this discussion. And he was saying, I know his interpretation is that is, because when you believe in one thing, like one God and your focus is on one god submitting to one god to hate and whatever, then your focus is not multiplicity, us. Because when you have multiple focuses, what that does is it creates anxiety, if you have too many things to think about. But when you have one overarching thing, it allows you to focus on what better overarching thing

could you have in your life than the transcendental principle which is the Creator of the heavens in the earth, which is the one God there's nothing better that you can imagine that can create a uniform and anchor the effect for the human psychology than believing in worshiping one God. So in some, I would say

in terms of how to increase your Eman and how to remove is true, that there are ways spiritually speaking that you can actually become less depressed. This is something you should not going to see in a psychological manual because, you know, if you mentioned if you go to a psychiatrist, they'll say, look, take an SSRI which there are these drugs?

They're called SSRIs. And they effectively manipulate one of your neurotransmitters like dopamine or serotonin or something like that. That's what they'll tell you to do. Or they'll tell you to do something like CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy. But Islam tells you to do is to focus on your mission, which is to worship God. Allah says in the Quran in Al Insana, holy cow halwa. Is there a Master who shall Rogers who are what is a master who Pharaoh Manoir? Ill, mousseline? Certainly the human being, has been created in a state of anxiety and panic.

Can you imagine Allah saying this to us, that certainly the human being is created in a state of panic that when evil befalls him, something happens calamitous in that person's life, some trauma happens, that they become in a panic state. And when good happens, they become very, if you like, stingy with it.

And except for and there's a entire, maybe 10 verses dedicated to the exception, the ones who pray and they are consistent on the prayer and the ones who do this, because the spiritual activity, it creates that strength, and it moves you away from that anxiety. So yes, from the Islamic perspective, there's no doubt that Islam proposes that the more you are connected to Allah, the more you worship Him, the more you are away from the sins, the more solid you will be, and the less anxiety that you will have in your life.

Hopefully, that answers the question. Let's see who else has another question?

Don't be shy guys.

So we got a question from the audience, which was how we identify the actual accurate slamming people, how we can identify who's actually guiding Muslims, Islam, what is the idea?

And actually located?

Guys person?

So it's a good question, what's the criterion of finding out who to you know, I'm, I'm a chef, I said something very powerful. He said that if you want to know who to,

if you want to follow, see where the where the arrows of the enemies are pointing,

see where the arrows of the enemies are pointing.

And recently, you know, the Israeli army, I had my name on one of the missiles. I said, I said, I put this on Twitter, I said, Look, this is good proof.

Only kidding. But the point is, is usually if someone has an agenda, okay, which is clearly connected with an anti Islam agenda, they're right off, that person has a right off. And that is a very important thing. The second thing is that general piety, that general piety,

which disqualifies me altogether now.

But now, when I look for someone to take knowledge from, I look at two or three things, like Islamic knowledge, and I spoke about like, for example, fetch was an issue you had and as I look at their pipes, how they live Islam, because the last thing you want is a Hypocrites.

For me, one of the most important things is that the person has to be courageous. Because if they're not courageous, when something difficult happens, they're all succumb and capitulate under pressure. They have to be extremely knowledgeable. So for me, I have to see that they actually possess knowledge.

I literally just yesterday was, was speaking to one of your great scholars. His name was Mufti Taqi Usmani a lot of you guys have heard of him.

And he likes for example, when I was speaking to him, you could see, the man had great piety. The man great had great students. He was living what he he's practicing what he preached, things like that is what you'd be looking for someone who's not gaining directly or benefiting or manipulating. So there are lots of scholars that you could take from.

And the way you would think about it is think about it as

if you had a medical issue. Sometimes you need a second opinion, you don't always need to go to just one scholar might go to a second or third and see what they all say and then

see what the majority for example, say, we'll see if position a makes more sense than position B. So you have to employ a certain level of criticality as well. You can't just blindly follow one person or your life. But in terms of the things I'd be looking for, especially when it comes to Islam, it is things like for example, that you know, valiant nature, the courageous nature, the gallant nature and also be looking at the piety and we're looking at the knowledge and the area of specialism because someone might be very good at one area but not good another area. Someone might be fantastic at Hadith but not good at FIFA, for example. So these are the kinds of things I'll be I'll be

looking at.

Next question.

We've got a question.

Why have you been placed in our 530? model?

So the question is, why would we make it to Iowa isn't the answer now there's a hadith which says that diet can either be answered directly, or it can be postponed, it can be postponed, or it can be made into something in the hereafter for you. Now, the person who has the mentality that my diet is not being answered is usually the person whose diet will not be answered, because the Prophet Muhammad wa sallam said, Anna and I in the house Nirvana, and I in the house with an app dB, I am as my

servant thinks of me. So if my servant thinks negatively of me, then he will be given a negative outcome. One of the ibraheim mentions, for example, one of his books that he mentioned six points of dye when to do the dye with the edit on the etiquettes of dye, etc. One of the points that he mentions is ill Haho fungi, which is effectively persistence in diet.

And it might be the case if someone says, Oh, why is my diet not been accepted? It could be the case that your money is coming from haram place it could be that you're falling into a kind of sin, it could be that you're doing something which Allah doesn't like and there's a famous Hadith on this. You know, Matt, Khalil Muhammad Rasul haram, you know, for Nia used to jab Allahu, how is it that this person thinks that they will be answered, like, for example, somebody who's making glad he doesn't pray five times, or she doesn't pray five times a day,

or someone who's doing making diet, but then they are involved in being negative to both of their parents, your mother and your father, for example, you have a bad relationship with your mother and your father. Maybe that's the reason why your data is not being answered. So you have to, when it comes to that, you have to make sure that you expand yourself from the sins that could potentially block one's diet from being answered. Plus, you have to have the mentality that you will be answered, and inshallah it will be answered.

Next question is about falling into sin again. And again. What do we do when we fall into the same sin over and over again, despite trying so hard to not to do it? And now the person is feeling hopeless?

Well, I mean, look, there's no need to feel hopeless about it. This is effectively addiction. And people have different kinds of addiction, because we are living in the age of addiction. You know, we are living in the age of addict, there's addiction everywhere. You go on your phone, there's sorry to say pornography, that people are addicted to it, some people are addicted to pornography, because it's so easy to access, it's extremely easy. And if it's not pornography, then it might be something similar to it, like a softer version of it. And if it's not that it could be, for example, that someone's addicted to a kind of drug. I don't know how, to what extent this is a problem here

in Pakistan. But there are different drugs that people are addicted to. Or people can be addicted to certain behaviors, which are negative, they have negative habits. And really, what you need to do when it comes to addictions is you need to first of all, sit with yourself and not deny the fact that you have an addiction problem, because some people are addicted, but they don't identify as an addiction. So number one, you have to say to yourself, Okay, let me be honest, I'm addicted to vape. So I don't know cigarettes or

you know, pornography. That's the first thing you're going to sit down and admit to yourself that okay, I'm addicted, I'm an addict.

So then the second thing is what to do about that. The second thing to do about that is number one, you have to develop a strong will to remove that. So you must want to want to remove that. Some philosophers refer to this as second order volition. So you have to want to want to remove that. So you think to yourself, Okay, what are the benefits of me removing this thing, addiction x from my life? The benefits are that I have stronger willpower, for example. And that's, by the way, if this was the only benefit of eliminating an addiction, it would be enough of a benefit. Because if you're, if you're addicted to something, whatever that thing may be, that calls into question your

resilience as a human being. It calls into question, the extent to which you can withhold

it issues and you can fight off the urge. There are two things effectively, that if you can control, you're likely to be successful. Two things. One of them is your fear. And the other one is your desires.

If you can control these two things in your life, you're likely to be very successful person. Because if you can control your fear and anxiety, you'll become courageous. That's what that means. Being courageous means

Taking risks which are calculated, but which mean that you have to despite feeling fear, act in a certain manner.

The other one is desire. So it could be sexual desire, it could be anger, and both of those things are linked. So, for example, in psychoanalytic theory, someone like Freud, etc, they would refer to it in a compound way, they would say the sexual aggressive urges.

So, if you could control your anger and your sexual desires, and you could control your fear, there's really nothing stopping you from doing anything you want to do in life. Because you can start becoming extremely disciplined person, resilient person, powerful person. But if those two things are controller view, then you're you will be unspectacular and unremarkable in this world, you will be forgotten in history.

This is the truth. If you look at any successful person, okay, and put success in quotation marks in any field that you like, whether it's educational field, whether it's as an athlete, a sports field, or wherever else, they've had to be able to control those two things, at least to some extent. Now controlling it doesn't mean denying it. Now, I'm not saying to you that become celibate, or become reckless, I'm not saying anything like that, I'm saying that part of controlling those desires is knowing how to manage it. So going back to the addictions problem, if one is addicted to certain behaviors or certain things, then one must cut the issue from the root.

Might, one must realize their own limitations. Let me tell you something which might sound controversial.

Under certain circumstances, anyone can do anything.

When I say anything, obviously within logical parameters. What I mean by that is, it's possible for anyone in this room to commit Zina. Now, I'm not saying that you, me or you, anybody else would do that. hamdulillah most of us are good Muslims and all that. But in certain circumstances, if you must know that, it's like a Hoover effect, you know, the Hoover, or a magnet effect, there's certain things if you come close to it, it will suck you in. It's like quicksand. So you can't come close to that thing.

Everyone in this room is capable of maybe harming someone physically, and maybe many of us killing someone. Now, I'm not saying that. Once again, I'm not saying that you will, I will do that. But we're all capable of it, you must understand that the human being is capable of great evil. And what the story shows us this reality best the story of Joseph.

And you know, as powerful as when Joseph was seduced by the woman who said, The Quran says, you know, what God had met behind the behind that she was desirous for him and he was desired for her. Everything was in place.

Except that he saw Bohan, robbing the Quran of Allah. So it was ALLAH he attributes to the fact that he was saved from that situation to Allah.

So the point is, what I'm saying to you is, we need to realize when it comes to addictions and bad behaviors and bad actions, all of us

are capable. None of us are absorbed and that's what you said. He says, in the nessa La Mara to be Su. Willa Abell Riona says I don't absolve myself that certainly, the self is instilled with it great evil. So we all have that capability. Allah says the Quran fell hammer half withdraw our Toccoa that when I've seen when masa, Allah created the self, for Al Hamra half withdrawal how Taqwa he gave it its capability of doing bad things and good things. Because after happens, a cow called the government is the one who has purified it is already successful, and the one who is corrupted is already a failure.

So the point I'm making to you is that in terms of sitting and sitting, keep sitting. Because that was the question that was asked, how would you avoid that? You have to number one,

you have to acknowledge that you are an addict.

That is the first thing, don't deny it any more. Okay? You have to sit with yourself and say, Okay, I'm repeating this behavior. So, so then you say to yourself, ha, I am a pornography addict. Hopefully no one's gonna take this and sniff it up.

This this one piece of the video I'm not gonna know but that's what it is. Or I am I don't know such and such opium addict or I am could be vape addict or whatever it could be cigarette addict or

addict or whatever. Once you've identified that's what you are, okay.

Then the second stage is okay, what am I going to do about it? So, the answer is, I have to want to want to get rid of this behavior. In other words, I have to have motivation to remove it.

Before I remove it, you can't just remove it like that you have to have motivation to remove it. After you've got motivation to read, the third step is, then you have to know

if if you go into this area, these boundaries that you're likely to fail.

So for example, in the case of pornography addiction, you might know for a fact that if you're alone in this area, in these conditions, the likelihood is 60% 70% You're going to go on someone Hara

likelihood is 80% Maybe for someone 90% And if you if you go in this environment with this man or this woman in this particular environment, then the likelihood that something bad will happen between you is 6070 80%. So when you know that for a fact based on past experiences, why would you put yourself in a position like that? So you have to start being honest with yourself okay, the likelihoods and percentage basis that I'm going to fall into x y Zed sin, if this condition is met is 70%, which means I have to remove this thing which leads to this behavior, which is why Allah says the Quran will attack caribou Zina, he's gonna say don't well, that test No, he didn't say God

don't do Zina. He said, Don't come near it. Because it's a slippery slope.

It is a slippery slope. So you've got to be careful about that. These are the three stages that in terms of sins, in terms of addictions in terms of anything you'd like, if you follow them, you will be successful. Charla let's go for the next question. Yes, sir.

Sam.

Different settings.

But is there any way?

So the question he asked was that is there any way to unite the Muslim ummah, and there's almost 2 billion of us, I think, 2 billion Muslims now. And the more you have of people is difficult, the more difficult is to unite them.

Now, the truth of the matter is, we need to detail exactly what it is that we think is a desirable outcome. There is a difference between unity and uniformity. Okay, unit uniformity is that everyone? Can all the Muslims come, and we all must believe in the same thing. Now, I'll be honest with you, if that's what we're looking for, we're not going to find that.

That's impossible, I would say that as the likelihood of that happening is 1% 0%.

However, unity is we think of one issue, for example, the Palestine issue, okay. Or, for example, India and Kashmir, for example. All for example, the Rohingya, you know, in Burma, whatever issue it may be, and we say we're going to all work together on decision. Now, these are ways in which you can unify the Ummah through issues. Another one is through political leadership.

Now, that's something which requires all the nation states 59 of them which are Muslim effectively, to realize that it's in their best interest to come together. In my opinion, the best way to do that is not through religion. Because if you try and tell these people look, tequila, right now, they're not going to do it. But it can be done through a shrewd political method, someone comes and says, look, for an economic bloc, you'll get some benefits out of it. Like what the Europeans on the European Union? For example, why can't we have the Islamic union? I think if we had the Islamic union, right, and we do have like councils and stuff, I'm saying a proper Union, where you can

transfer populations and, and things can be, you know, even maybe not gonna unite a unified currency. But we can think about these things and see what makes sense and what doesn't, if we have something like that, that's one step away from what we want.

But that's what it took them a World War to realize that that was good for them. What the West is actually quite good at now,

is bringing people of different opinions together, and having a civil society. We need to do that for the Muslim world, the moment we do that, for the Muslim world,

our standards of living our standards of dying, our standards of procreating, everything's gonna go up. We're going to succeed and dunya and Dean. So the way to do that, I think, really on a political level is that, like, there needs to be someone that shows these Muslim leaders, that there's a benefit and economic benefit in that. I'll be honest, that's what I think has to happen. If you ask me, from a political perspective, how are we going to do it practically, of course, that there will be the religious incentivization as well. But I'm saying that that is one of the things that I think if we did it, we had some kind of a union.

You know, even a military unit they got they got NATO, they got the EU, they got all these kinds of organizations, we could do the same kind of thing. In fact, I mean, look at five countries, we've got 59 or the Muslim majority and five of them came together we would have something which competes with the West immediately.

If you think about it, if Pakistan came together with Turkey and Egypt and Indonesia, and I don't know, Nigeria or something like that, that's five big countries. We're talking about what like 800 million people or something or some 100 million people with big armies and strong infrastructure and stuff like that, you know, they have to see the military, the strategic, the geopolitical and the economic effects, benefits of it. And if I think someone can sell this to them,

I do believe that, because that's one step away from Okay, let's just have one leader in the whole thing, the whole block. And you know what that means?

So the point is, is there's a practical way of, of doing it, and I don't think it's inconceivable in the years 1960s? Three, I think it was, yes, maybe not in 63 964, when the Israelis were attacking,

you know, Syria, and Jordan, and Lebanon are these countries. There were three countries that actually came together and made one country. I don't know if you know this, but it was Yemen, Egypt and Syria, they made one country and they put Gamal Abdel Nasser, as the President of that one country. Now, it was a failure. I mean, in many ways, it was a failure. But it just shows you that this can happen. It's not like without precedent, you can get countries together and then have one single precedent, if you get four or five big countries together. And and, you know,

so I think there's a way of doing it politically, but you have to sell it. Someone has to be like, if you look at how Germany came together, because Germany was not one country, it was different states and stuff, right.

And someone like von Bismarck, who's a huge figure, he put them all together, he pulled the states together. This has happened many times in history in Muslim and non Muslim history, I think that is very possible to happen again. But we just need to be able to sell it to the Muslim governments, I think we can

actually have two questions. The first question is, what are your thoughts?

Some position these days really wrap every ensemble thing with their every paper is presenting to the Muslim majority, like

Islamic democracy, Islamic banking, Islamic, you know, like how feminism is part of this part of Islam? So that's the first question. And the second question is, what are your thoughts and public debate with Piers Morgan? And the ban on this with eBay that followed in the UK? So what was the first question again? Sorry, what are your thoughts on the culture of Islamization these days? You know, so you take things from outside the religion, and then you wrap them to the wrapping paper? Okay, that's what I mean by that. Okay. Well, I mean, look,

these are complicated issues, because it's not all like, for example, you mentioned Islamic finance. That was one of the things I mentioned, I had this whole long conversation with your grand mufti should move to telehealth, man, he that's his field. I mean, he's, I don't know how old he is now. 18 years old. And I asked him about that, because I had the same question as you. And it's more complicated, like I told him a few models and stuff. And he said, this one's got this problem. And this one's got this problem. And this one, if you tweak it in this way, can become Sharia compliant. And if you do this, so it's not black and white, I have to say, and I'm not really in a position to

say, Okay, this one is the right one, and this one's the wrong one. And this one is the good one, or whatever it is, there's a difference of opinion among the scholars of the different Islamic finance products out there. That's the honest truth of the matter. Some people have a very staunch stance, which is anti and they say, you might as well just get a mortgage from the normal retail bank, for example. I don't really know if they agree with that, because it's as chef to that kind of money. He said that that one is very clear, the other ones are not as clean. So that's number one.

It's not just Islamic finance, this, like you said this different things, and each of them have their own analysis. As for the banning of Hezbollah here, I was called in to speak about that, with Piers Morgan. He called me a few times. I mean, it's not really a subject that I wanted to speak to them about. However, I'll be honest with you, I think the labeling of terrorist organization in the West is a joke. And it's done for pragmatic reasons. And I tried to bring that to the table when I was speaking to Piers Morgan, especially in the second debate, because what is the criterion by which and through which these Western governments decide who was a terrorist organization? Is it

hate speeches that call for violence? What is it exactly? Because if it is all those things, and we have to ask ourselves is, is hospitality falling into that because I have not seen that from them. Frankly, I've not seen them talk about violence and all these kinds of things in the way in which say, for example, the IDF is doing and clearly genocide in the Palestinian people. So I think it's just convenient for the Western people. There.

They're doing what works for them geopolitically, and strategically. We know the game now the mosques have completely dropped. And frankly, you know, this is a great lesson for us as Muslim people. And there's a verse in the Quran which kind of epitomizes all of that in half a sentence, which is her and to lay to a bone or home, where are you gonna come? That you are Muslims, you love them and they don't love you. For all this time, we've had an asymmetrical relationship with the West. That's what we've had. There's many people in this country, we talk about the Islamization of certain things. But let's really talk about the feminization and the liberalization and the

secularization, because that's happening here in Pakistan, for example, right? We see a lot of this pockets of secular liberal feminists communities, the kind of feminism we're talking about the kind of liberalism is a western knowledge production, like the the sword and the flavor of it isn't, it comes from the west. So the point is, what the Palestine thing has shown us is that, frankly, feminists of the West don't care about women of the rest. When was the last time What have for example, feminists of the Western for the woman in Kashmir? That's my question. I want to know what campaign has been done by feminists of the West about the woman in Kashmir here who have been

brutally destroyed and raped and pillaged? If it's meant to be an international movement, right? If, if feminism is meant to help women everywhere, what about the 15,000 women that were slaughtered and they're killed? Kids were slaughtered in Palestine recently. What what campaign, what global campaign have we seen from feminists in the West, for example, on that, if you really do an analysis on the kinds of talking points you see from these kinds of people, feminists in the western liberals in the West, you will see the talking points relate to their own self interest,

was talking about abortion and equal rights, equal pay, I should say in England. But that's not meant to be that's not an international movement. And so when I say the Palestine thing has allowed the mass to drop,

you know, people in this country and other parts of the Muslim world should see, they don't really care about you. And it goes back to the verse in the Quran, you love them, you watch their Netflix shows, you watch their movies, you have the relationship and a connection with them. But believe me, if they saw your own children being killed, they would turn out they wouldn't care. A lot of them wouldn't care. Not all of them, of course, not generalizing, but a lot of them wouldn't care. They wouldn't care as much as they care about their own projects, and equal pay and abortion and all these things that talk about in the West. So feminism, Western feminism has focused effectively on

the conveniences of the white woman in the West. That's why it's focused on and then when the second or third wave came, a bit of the black movement and black feminism came into it, but it's black feminism. And in America, they don't care about Nigerian women as much.

Although there was a woman in Gozi, who she was by dual nationals, she was Nigerian, and she wrote a book called The feminist manifesto. But she knows she knows she knows herself. That Okay, actually, these other feminists are not the same as me, because I'm coming with a different perspective. What I'm saying to you is, you cannot be sold a lie.

And the masks have dropped.

And you don't want an asymmetrical relationship and to be intellectually colonized by people who genuinely for the most part, do not care that much. They do not care that much of the butchering of the of the I went to Bangladesh, maybe I think it was six, seven years ago.

And I went to a place called Cox's bazaar.

And I met Rohingya women. And this is online and stuff. And I spoke to them. And their experiences were completely underreported in the Western media, I was shocked. The stuff that I was hearing from them was shocking that they were sexually abused that that one of them said that they saw their child being thrown into a fire

and that they had to live and she was crying and these kind of things that we had to translators, one translator from their language to bang, bang, Boolean boolean to English.

And they were telling us all these stories. And so with all due respect, you need to we as the Muslim people, we need to realize that the ones who care about us the most is us.

This is what this should have showed you this whole situation with Palestine and the Kashmir situation the Rohingya situation all those situations show us that the West doesn't care too much about the even the people the populace does not care too much about what's happening here.

It doesn't. So you need to care. We need to care about ourselves.

And we've gotten we've gotten the greatest asset from the pure the pure product of Islam. We

We know that historically, objectively, we've never had more prosperity militarily, economically, politically or otherwise than through Islam. Every other model has not worked here. Democracy hasn't worked in Pakistan, as you saw.

Sorry to say, that's not worked.

So what I'm saying to you is,

when need to start thinking about our own models and our own futures.

And don't be fooled by the West, I've been living there all my life. You know, they are many of the people that and it's not all of them, but many of the people there, especially the elites, they don't even care about the the ethnic minorities. I mean, look what happened with the black community in America. Like how they're treated for example.

So yeah, I mean, I think we need to start thinking about our own

our own projects inshallah.

Yes.

Muslim to Islam is complete, sufficient, obeying commands.

But nowadays is our way.

Especially why start with fabric, because I believe Starbucks is more worse than that was communism and the actual issue, which are real among women, especially is that

they really don't want

quality, which is the big issue for

independence.

Whenever Islamic speaker talks to Pakistan, they have raised a lot like that, on that speaker, like, how do you talk about this, and I really want to acquire this.

She's talking about Islamic feminism, and she says was advice. I wrote a small book, okay. It's called fifth wave feminism. Okay. And we all know that feminism went through waves first wave feminism, second wave feminism, third wave feminism, and some say fourth, so I made a book called Fifth Wave. Okay, because anyway, the point of the book was on the third and fourth waves, if you want even call that a fourth wave.

What one of the main themes of the feminist project was actually something called intersectionality? Okay. intersectionality. So let me explain what's going on. second wave feminism, focused on these issues that were spoken about before things like abortion, things like equal pay, and these kinds of things, right. third wave feminism is where you'll find, for example, the transgender movement. Yeah. So it's, it's someone like Judith Butler, who will say something to the effect of woman has not made she's basically the woman is a social construct, not just a gender, but even sex is a social construct, you'll find these kinds of radical ideas that right? In her book, gender troubles,

you say something like that. So the transgender movement or third wave feminism and second wave feminism themselves, they're in a dispute.

Because second wave feminists, for example, they maintain this idea that it's a patriarchy that there's men exploiting women and all these kinds of things. Third Wave feminists are not speaking in those terms in these what they would call binary terms.

Why? Because for them, gender is fluid. Gender is fluid. So this, we can't speak of a male patriarchy because males are not, we don't know if they're all males in the first place. I mean, we'd have to go and check their pronouns, we'd have to see because gender is a fluid concept. So patriarchy has to be fluid as well, the way you think about it. Now, there is this, for example, I watched this interesting debate between one of the spearheading founding mothers of second wave feminism called Germaine Greer,

who wrote many of her books herself with this transgenders, and she was taking an anti view actually, the point I'm making to you is this.

Islamic feminism, what is it exactly? I mean, if we say, Okay, I want to understand what is it exactly? Is it a proposition that you're a Muslim and a feminist at the same time? Okay, so what part of Islam and what part of feminism and what exactly are we talking about? Are we saying, for example, that you are someone who believes in women's rights and you're a Muslim? Well, I believe in women's rights, and I also believe that women's rights and men's rights and animals rights and everyone is found through Islam, rather than despite it, you know, the verse in the Quran, there's one poor version of Francis M SHA, Allah Homina Dini, M la misura cat shadow lamina dini? MALAMI

them Billa do they have short can? Do they have partners with God, who have legislated to them? Something from the religion and they don't have permission from Allah.

What I'm saying is that Islam tells you what right and wrong

Guess it has the monopoly we believe as Muslims, that Allah tells us what right and wrong it has the monopoly on morality, objective morality. So why do I need anything else? Liberalism feminism, or Marxism? Why do I need a knowledge production that has come from the west from the white woman? Why do I need to mix that with something? I really believe this to be true.

You see the point you say, well, it doesn't have to be the white woman. We have Pakistani feminism, for example. Say okay, what is that? explained to me philosophically? Where does that stand? What are the books of Pakistani feminism that I can read or Malaysian feminism, which starts from the bottom up, meaning for example,

Simone de Beauvoir,

she was an existentialist, Judith Butler. She's a postmodernist, she's they start from a philosophical beginning. I don't know of any knowledge production in the Eastern world that has that kind of philosophical bottom up approach. It doesn't exist, all Pakistani feminists or Arab feminists or Malaysian feminists are what they're doing effectively, is copy and pasting from the white woman. That's what I see. I've not seen anything different with all due respect, just issue based stuff. You know, this here, abortion, this and that, okay, fine. We can all speak about abortion, we can speak about this in that, me as a Muslim, I can speak about abortion from an

Islamic perspective. Why do I need to go outside of Islam speak about abortion? I mean, Islam has very detailed laws about abortion, for example, or equal pay. We can talk about that from an Islamic perspective. You might be surprised that we might agree more than you think, for example, but why do I need to add a label to my identity to refer to myself as a feminist for example?

Okay, let me ask another question. Why is because feminism.

I mean, femme is talking about the woman, right? Okay.

Well, the female to be more specific, why is that the primary? Why should that be the primary analysis? For example, Why are women more important than children, for example, or religion, or tribe, or race? Now, this is the question that the intersection list actually faced. The third wave feminists, they said, Look, Kimberly Crenshaw, she said, look, there's all these overlapping and intersectional things that come together. And we can't say for a fact that being a woman is the most important thing. It could be being this being that but the other. So I'm saying to you, for us, surely being a Muslim is the most important thing. Because that one is going to define your

afterlife situation, nothing else from your identity marker markers are going to do that. Nothing else is going to do going to define what happens to you in the in the hereafter.

So what I'm saying is that if you want to believe in women's rights, you don't have to be a feminist, you don't have to believe in a colonial knowledge production that has come from the west and as extensions, you don't need to do that. You can still believe in women's rights. You can believe in children's rights you can be of an animal rights, you can believe in everybody's rights. Without being a feminist. You don't need the white woman to tell you how to live your life. Why do you need that? The British were already here. And then they left

their boots left this land, but the idea is stayed here.

Why do you need to voluntarily put yourself under the the boot the intellectual boot of a white woman? Why do you need to do that? If you truly believe okay, this is from my perspective, I'm a Muslim. So I believe that this Muhammad Salah was a true prophet believe ALLAH has been exists. I can argue all of these things, someone has also proved I can say this is the proof 123.

So if I believe in that I don't need anything else outside of that in order to inform my ideology, or how I live my life. So to answer your question,

when it comes to Islamic feminism, or Islamic liberalism or anything else, one has to ascertain what the person even means by that. If they mean women's rights. That's not a problem at all. No issues. We all believe that we should all believe in women's rights. The professor salon said is still sweeping this idea Hydra. Be good to women, effectively. That's it. He in his final speech, he mentioned two things he mentioned gender and race.

You know, in his final speech that he gave in front of so many people he mentioned gender is also been inserted Hira and he said Ledford law. He says no virtue of a black man over a white man or woman or a black man. He told us this a very long time ago. Now, how we go about doing that through Islam? Why do we need the prescriptions of the for me I have not got a good answer from any secular liberal feminist that lives in the east as to why we need to rely on a knowledge production. That is a Western specific knowledge production, for the most part

We don't need them

and it's a kind of inferiority complex they call it here the girl complex

especially when some of these people in these countries like the Arab feminists with Arab liberal when the acts and arrogant manner, so you are backward person, you're this and that why don't you do this and do that the other?

Excuse me? I mean, why do you have the audacity to question my morality based on a white man's morality that you have swallowed up?

What will surely be a few color women, Nigella recovery, it's like the golden calf for you. You've swallowed up an ideology, and you come and try and talk to me about it. As if I have to follow the West. I don't have to follow the West.

And I guarantee you, if you go to any in Pakistan, do this experiment. Just trust me on this? Yes, you go to any liberal feminists, whatever they identify, like that. Say to them, name me. Five arguments for the veracity, the philosophical veracity of feminism, why feminism is true. Five arguments. In fact, forget five, three. Okay, I'm gonna go down one argument.

I promise you, they will not be able to answer this question. If I were to ask, what is the philosophical rational justification for why feminism is true as an objective morality?

There is no answer to this question.

There is no because it's not true. If you do the same thing with liberalism, they won't be able to answer the question.

Could have a warhammer come in quantum Saudi Finn could bring your evidence if you're truthful, if you're saying this is the truth that we should bring evidence for it.

So that's how I would answer that question. Yes.

Just like you said, about slamming feminism.

Feminism

is more calling in Pakistan.

Democracy, okay.

Not feminism is coined by some of you. Okay. That's just the point.

But it's fine with democracy is an idea, which is propagated by Islamic issues.

See, the motion is a little bit more complicated. Okay. The reason why is because democracy is, when we're talking about democracy, traditionally, it's been divided into two, okay, you have direct democracy, and you have representative democracy. So direct democracy is what the Athenians done back in Athens, and this is, by the way, democracy is older than Christianity and Islam. Okay. It's when we say Islam, obviously, we're talking about the Prophet Muhammad wa Salam is we're talking about democracy is over 2500 years. So it's an ancient

ideology, right.

And what they did was that they used to, basically asked everyone referendum style, what should be done in a certain place for each issue.

It's called direct democracy that we're not talking about that we're talking about representative democracy. So the reason why it's a little bit different is because representative democracy, although it's not seen as an objective morality, okay? Some scholars have allowed it to be used instrumentally in order for Muslims to get into power, or for good to be done. And that is the majority view, by the way, like the majority view throughout the world of scholars, from all schools of thought is that democracy can be used instrumentally. Now there's a difference between using something incrementally as an instrument and believing it's true,

fully, because democracy, unlike most of these other ideologies, has a propensity to self destruct. And I always give this these kinds of

thought experiments to people who, in the West, I say, say for example, they say, you know, in Pakistan, they don't have democracy, for example, okay. It's true. Okay. Maybe they don't. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't whatever. Yeah.

And Egypt, they don't have democracy, okay, in this place, and they are fine. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, it's not my business yet. But what I will say is this.

Let's say we had direct democracy, the purest and cleanest type of democracy you can get now and without a referendum and we ask the people who

should what should be the punishment for cutting some for theft,

and 99% of the population or 95 90%, a strong majority said what? Cutting the hand of amputation.

Now, according to this reasoning, surely cutting the hand has a has a democratic mandate, for example, now as a democratic mandate, so now you put the person in a very tricky position because if they are

liberal critics of Islam, they have to allow Islam to exist through democracy. The problem with the West is that they say have democracy, then when the East uses it, they're not happy with the results of it.

So you can you can make your decision, okay, we've made our decision, we want this person or that person know, which

you see the West is in control of the democratic process here in Pakistan, and in other places. And so really, you don't even have it. So that's number one. Number two is this.

Number two is say you had democracy. Right? And we do once we get the referendum referendum, we make a decision to remove democracy through democracy.

Like Caitlin did it sorry to say, I'm not saying that he did that through the consent of the people, because there was a he, I mean, he did it without the consent of the people. But let's just say for the sake of argument, we have a vote, do we want democracy? And everyone says, No, then it's an ironic and paradoxical situation, because then you can use democracy to remove democracy.

You see what I mean? So if someone says, Why are you removing Why are you removing democracies, because these people they want it

and that was their democratic prerogative.

So democracy, by the way, is not always in line with liberalism and or feminism, definitely not liberalism. It's conceivable to have democratic totalitarianism. It's conceivable to have democratic authoritarianism, because democracy is just getting the will of the people and getting the mandate.

You don't have to have liberalism and democracy coexist. So to answer your question, because the beginning you asked about Islamic democracy, it's not Islamic. I don't like those I've seen on Colorado is what he had to say about this. I read it and other scholars that Islam in democracy is part of Islam because it's like Shura, what amerihome Shula VEDA from a woman when I was economic fifth one is chapter 42 of the Quran, it says that consultation, this is not the same as that this is not if we're being academically honest, Shura is a consultation process, which is done traditionally by ethanol Hallyu locked by a certain group of people. And there's books that are

written about it, for example, LDS you buy as God and that chemical Tawnya of morality and others,

nothing to do with what you're talking about. However,

you the question is not whether it's democracy is part of Islam, because most scholars will tell you it's not except for Canada and a few others. Yeah. The question is, can we use democracy for Islam? That's the question. And I'm of the opinion that you can use effectively any instrument for some.

And the evidence for that we mentioned at the beginning is use of a slang

use of Alehissalaam. What did he do? He went into a government, which is a non Muslim government.

Do you think about it? Because the king of Egypt at that time, he did not believe in Islam?

How do we know that conservative itself says, Matt, can I hold the goofy deal Malik that he was not going to the dean of the Malik was different. The religion of the Malik was different to the religion of Islam, even Taymiyah, who's scriptural literalist, in this, he says, this shows you that in order to make a bad situation better, you can enter something like politics into this, that the other so what I'm saying to you is, sometimes you can

enter these fields

using democracy, but there's a difference between saying we're going to use democracy and asserting that it's part of Islam. We're not saying it's part of Islam. We're saying the majority of scholars of Islam say you can use it because if you don't use it, the alternative is you're going to have some

some other guy you know, who doesn't have the Islamic values and use is gonna lead us astray. So that that is the what the majority of scholars in the world today say