Mohammed Hijab – University Of Malaysia
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Your greatest gift to us.
In conjunction with this event, we ask for
your help and guidance.
Your work,
kindly give us strength
and courage
to face the struggle to find and get
knowledge.
Kindly, it's still racing and physical
and spiritual
health, fitness of mind, peace of mind, strength
of truth.
You
to serve for people, society,
nation, and religion.
Your law, make our country
as a country who got the blessings
Amin
Aminya Balalami.
Thank you to mister Ashok Lee.
Ladies and gentlemen,
without further ado, I would like to invite
mister Ashok Lee, the director of Unity Talk,
reaching to Islam to give his welcoming remarks.
Our
distinguished speaker
AMI, Ladies and gentlemen,
and a very good
evening to all.
We are delighted
to welcome over
180 participants
tonight. I hope that everyone is comfortably
seated
and ready to engage with this meaningful dialogue.
Are you in
the, comfortable
are you comfortable right now? Yes. Okay.
I hope,
your presence here is a testament to your
commitment to building a harmonious
campus community.
So let me start with the, objective first.
The main objective
of this program is none other than to
foster a sense of togetherness.
III
think a sense of
a sense of togetherness among students
with Islam
as a solution.
We aim to create a space where unity
and understanding can flourish,
guided by the principles of
our faith, Islam.
I would like to
extend my heartfelt thanks to our sponsors,
the Malaysian
Ullama Association, Safar Ullama,
the Interactive Dawah and Tabia Association,
for bringing mister Hijab, mister Hijab here and.
A special appreciation also goes to,
National,
Islamic Youth Student Association, Bamina, and
also our,
PMI, Abzat Omar, sister Islam.
Lastly,
I apologize for any shortcoming throughout this program,
whether they have already appealed or may happen.
I hope that everyone gains valuable insights from
tonight's session. I hope,
Most importantly,
let's let this insight take root in your
heart, helping us
create as a more harmonious and tolerant canvas.
Thank you, and may our Lord bless our
effort.
Moving on, I would like to welcome mister
Lukman bin Hakim, president of Asadwa,
Mahasid Sur Islam, mister
Our distinguished speaker, brother Mohammad Hijab,
delegates,
from Interactive Dawa and Tarbia
Association and also
Qurandi,
and also the committee committee members,
ladies and gentlemen who will present tonight.
Present tonight. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum.
Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum.
Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum.
Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum. Assalamu alaykum.
Only
I want to speak about the importance of
unity,
from the perspective of Islam.
And, also, I want to share my hopes,
for this program,
which is we want to foster a a
deeper understanding
of Islam
principle of unity.
In Islam,
unity is not only a virtue.
It is a fundamental
pillar that holds the community together.
The Quran emphasized this in surah Al Khujra
verse 10, which means,
the believers
are but brothers.
So make settlement
between your brothers,
and fear Allah that you may receive mercy.
This verse underscores the importance of brotherhood
and resolving the differences,
amicably.
And also, unity in Islam, transverse
race,
ethnicity,
social status, and also advocating for a community
where mutual respect
and cooperation thrive.
And before I
finish,
my speech,
this program,
for your information, is a collaboration effort
between the Myanmar UN, both being a UN,
and also the Interactive Dawah and Taliban Association.
Together,
we aim
to rekindle the foundational purpose of PMIUM,
which is
serving as a platform for the understanding
of Islam among University of Malaya students.
Additionally,
the Unity Top program also provides
an opportunity for us, Prem IUM, to engage
with the
international students.
And, also,
I am very pleased to highlight that PEM
IOM has been a steadfast platform for Muslim
students
since the establish establishment
in 1956
by Doctor. Syed Akhipaladas.
And I hope that this unity talk will
receive a positive response from other student movement,
serving as a call to strengthen our unity.
And let us work together to make our
beloved Basquiat,
a beacon of intellectual and community excellence, excellence,
admired for its knowledge and cohesion.
I think that's all from me.
Thank you, mister Lubak bin Hakim.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we gather here today to discuss an important
topic,
Unity Top, reaching to Islam.
In Malaysia,
where diverse cultures,
ethnicities,
and religions
coexist,
the principle of unity and harmony
are very essential.
Islam, as a comprehensive
and inclusive religion,
perfects us tools to build bridges of understanding
and cooperation.
Without further ado, I would like to invite
our honorable guest, mister Muhammad Hijjah, to deliver
his stature
on leadership's top vision. Please
welcome.
How are you guys doing?
It's good to be here. MashaAllah. Beautiful university
with
exuberant and enthusiastic
students.
I've heard good things about the people
here, and today's topic is an important 1.
It's 1 that we are in dire need
of,
1 of unity.
However, after I finish this topic, and I
don't want to speak for too long, I
want to open the floor
for questions and answers,
and I'm hoping that the majority of today's
session
will be, in fact, an interactive 1 where
we can speak together
about the important topics, and you you're free
to answer. Ask any question you like, whether
you're Muslim or non Muslim. If you have
a question about Islam,
about Muslims or anything else, you're free to
do so.
In Islam,
unity is of different grades.
The idea of unity
is of different levels and grades.
And that's not just in Islam,
That's in human life. Human beings as a
social creatures
find what you refer to as in group,
out group dynamics.
They create them for themselves.
So for example,
at the very simplistic level,
you have a family. Okay? You have, let's
say, for the sake of argument, a nuclear
family.
Of course, today, in the age that we
live in, a nuclear family seems a normative
thing,
which is itself under attack. I mean, especially
where I'm from, living in the West,
the nuclear family, the man, the woman, and
the kids, this model is seen as, in
many ways, outdated. There are homosexual families or
there
are transgender families and so on. But that's
another discussion for another day. Okay?
Not getting into the complexity of that.
At the very basic level, you have a
family.
And if I were just to say let's
do a thought experiment,
and
let's imagine
you're a father or a mother, if you're
not already 1,
and there are 2 people drowning
in a sea or in a river somewhere.
1 of them happens to be your own
son or daughter,
and the other person is someone else's son
or daughter,
and you only have time to rescue 1.
Okay. You only have time to rescue 1.
I think, and I'm not gonna ask you
this, but the majority of us would see
an added obligation,
you see,
in rescuing our own children.
Not to say that the other child is
not worthy of being rescued,
but we prioritize our family, and it comes
naturally, biologically
over and
above, let's say, nonmembers of our family.
And in fact, that is an Islamic
precept as well.
Because when in the Quran from the Islamic
perspective,
the things the order of things is mentioned,
The akhirabun
or those who are closest to you
is usually mentioned first. So it's natural, it's
instinctive,
but it's also Islamic as well
for you to prioritize
your own family members
above and beyond non family members. That's
basically
the reality.
But then you say, okay. What about what
comes next?
Human beings throughout the ages
have prioritized tribe tribesmen and women, for example,
because they're close in proximity. And in many
ways, they can be an extended family sometimes
to that person's family.
And then you have the nation. Before we
started, they've done the national anthem
because there's a sense of national pride. Now,
obviously, that can
be problematic at times
when nations become fascistic.
You know, we've seen in World War 1
and World War 2 what nationalism can do.
But to have a sense of patriotism for
one's country or for one's province is not
seen as a negative thing,
and that's a natural thing because it goes
by order of proximity.
Then for us as Muslims,
we
prioritize
what is referred to as Al Ummah Al
Islamiyah.
The Ummah Al Islamiyah actually is prioritized above
and beyond any national identity.
The way it should work is the Ummah
Islamiyah or the Islamic Ummah
is the most important unit,
and within that unit, you have the family.
So the Islamic identity from the Islamic perspective
is the most important identity.
And the reason for that is because
Islam
tells you what the purpose of life is.
Nothing else can tell you what the purpose
of life is. Religion
offers answers
to what are referred to as the ultimate
questions of life.
The ultimate questions.
Karl Popper, a philosopher of science,
he dubbed this term the ultimate questions. Ultimate
questions are questions about existence.
Where did we come from?
What are we doing here?
What is our purpose?
Islam gives you the answer to those questions
and as such,
Islam is to be prioritized.
That's why the Quran states
hold together
to the rope of Allah
and do not divide
which means to say that the rope of
Allah,
it is
the Quran. It is the sunnah. It is
Islam itself
because it is the rope it's only the
rope of Allah that can save you
in the hereafter.
So the basic diagnostic is
that Islam offers a solution for humankind,
and that is to unite upon ultimate purpose,
not arbitrary measures.
It's kind of comical to realize
that human beings throughout the ages have killed
each other
on the basis
of artificial borders.
Can you imagine?
They
constructed, as a social construct, these images
of themselves as superior
because they are further away from somebody else.
You saw, and I've mentioned this before, what
happened to World War 1 and World War
2. They're effectively a series of nationalistic wars.
And so there's no objective reason why you
should kill somebody else because they're so different
from you.
But there is an objective reason why you
should unite with someone else because they're so
similar to you.
And the most important unit of similarity
is similarity
on purpose.
So from the Islamic perspective, the question is
how do you do that when you have
so many Muslims?
You've got 2, 000, 000, 000 Muslims on
the earth.
Okay? And the the number is growing. In
fact, according to Pew Research,
Muslims will account for 1 of every 3
human beings on the Earth by the end
of the century.
A third of the world's population
will be Muslim by the end of the
century according
to Pew Research, which is the gold standard
statistical agency in the world which offers statistics.
So how do you do that? The way
you do that is
you realize that there is a difference between
unity
and uniformity.
Unity
is to come together upon a cause or
a motive or a mission
despite differences you may have with people.
Uniformity
is where you try and get everyone to
believe in the same thing,
and you cannot get everyone to believe in
the same thing, whether it be in Islam
or outside of Islam.
If you try and force that,
it actually backfires in a very significant manner.
1 thing I must give the West credit
for.
Okay. I'm a critic of the West. I
criticize
the West in many ways, but I have
to give them credit
because in their formulation of civil society,
they have been able to formulate societies, okay,
which for the most part can tolerate difference
but still function. We must give them some
level of credit for that.
They can tolerate difference but still function.
We, the Muslims, have been able to achieve
that historically, yes,
but because there is not a unifying
government
like they used to be with a caliphate
or something like that,
we have not been able to do so
with the same levels of success in the
last 100 100 years,
in particular, since 1924,
with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
So how do you do that?
The reas the the howness of that is
you must
put aside
differences
when you're engaging in community projects.
Do not make as a prerequisite
of someone joining your project or your institute
or whatever it may be that they must
be the same as you
in every single way.
This is how to foster the healthy kind
of tolerance,
which will, in fact, help us as Muslims
gain the strength that we once had.
1 of the
English historians, Arnold Toynbee,
referred to Islam
as a sleeping giant.
The civilization of Islam, not the religion of
Islam. Civilization of Islam as a sleeping giant,
and it's a very interesting
imagery.
The reason why it's interesting is because
a giant
can
do lots of damage,
has lots of consequential power,
is
I know that because I'm a giant myself.
I'm a giant.
But, no, a giant is Islam.
If it wakes up,
I mean, everyone is in trouble in many
ways.
But it's very interesting. I was I I
was listening to and I mentioned this in
yesterday's talk as well. Samuel p Huntington, he
was having a conversation. He wrote this book
called The Clash of Civilizations. It was an
article,
and it then became a book.
He actually said if Islam was united he
said this, and he's a critic of Islam.
He's a critic of Islamic civilization.
In fact, he advised America
on how to
disempower Islam and Muslims. He said you have
to divide and conquer them, etcetera.
But he said that if you did have
an Islamic unity,
that would make the world a safer place.
The reason why is because the balance of
power will be spread more evenly.
When the balance of power is spread less
evenly, that's when you find oppression.
Let me let me show you an example.
Look at what is happening now in Palestine.
Okay.
The reason why that is allowed to happen
is because of the hegemonic status of the
United States of America.
If there was I mean, there are countries
that can stand up to United States, Russia,
China, fine, but it's they wouldn't do it
for this cause.
If there were Islamic countries that could stand
up
strongly enough
to the United States, which is the hegemonic
power,
okay, and they were of a similar size
and strength,
then we wouldn't see what we're seeing now.
A bully can only do
what a bully wants to do
because the bully has the opportunity to do
it.
On a side note and an interesting side
note,
not to ruffle any feathers here,
but I was looking at domestic violence in
different family households,
and there's interesting statistics about lesbian
households.
Lesbian is like when 2 women are together,
you know, in a relationship.
I'm acting as if you guys don't already
know.
And apparently, the domestic violence in that relationship
is very high.
More so, apparently, according to some stats
than a normal male female relationship.
And the reason a lot of sociologists say
that's the case,
they say it's because the power is similar.
When the when the power is similar,
sometimes it can cause
more fighting.
But if you have a great power that
can stop something,
then you can stop the oppression.
That's why, you know, sometimes you have 2
brothers. Maybe if you were a brother 1
time, you used to fight your brother all
the time, but then the father comes in
and says stop.
You
see? Because like, say for example, my marriage,
my wife's tried everything, but physical is not
1 of those things she has tried. Well,
she can hurt me in other ways.
She has techniques.
Point being,
in order to defend ourselves as Muslim people
against things that we're seeing like Palestine, like
Rohingya,
like the the Uighur, like this, like all
these things that we're seeing around the world,
the best way to do so is to
actually gain strength through unity.
That's the best way of doing it. We
can't depend upon America to do it for
us.
The mercy of America. United States of America
doesn't act morally strategically.
It doesn't act
morally consistently. It only acts strategically consistently.
So unity is a prerequisite for safety,
actually.
It's a matter of survival
now that will become unified, and we'll put
differences aside.
And for us to do that, we have
to struggle with some of the spiritual things
that we have, issues.
Chief, most among which
are jealousy and resentment, these 2 emotions.
And you might think, what's that got to
do with anything?
Jealousy
causes somebody
to act a certain way against somebody who
may be close to them
because they wanna see the
elimination of their blessings.
Okay?
And many people in the same categories will
act jealous with each other, So you'll find
jealousy
happens, for example, between
brother and brother,
you see, or sister and sister.
Sometimes it can be because there's 1 subject
of attention.
So the issue between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law,
there's not it's not just out of nothing
that sometimes there's a bad relationship between the
daughter-in-law that sometimes there's a good relationship, but
it's because of jealousy. A lot of it
is because of jealousy.
A lot of the crimes that happen
are between people of the same race. You
wonder why is it? It's because when jealousy
becomes overbearing
and they're in the same category, they're doing
the same things, people kill each other because
of it. And we have stories in the
Quran.
For example, the sons of Adam,
which indicate what jealousy can do.
So 1 of the things that we must
do as Muslims, if we want true unity,
it's not just, okay, strategically, we have to
cooperate with people who have different opinions. Yes.
But we have to work spiritually
as well and psychologically
to remove
the jealousy that we may have
from people
who are on the same mission as us.
That takes
psychological work, self accountability,
self reflection.
Resentment is when you start disliking someone
because you feel that they've hurt you.
Okay.
You start to resent them. In Arabic this
is called hekd,
it's called hekd
and the Quran says,
Oh Allah, do not put in our hearts
resentment for those who believe.
Resentment is not a good trait.
It destroys
relationships.
When you dislike somebody, You start acting passive
aggressively towards them or even aggressively towards them.
You start disliking them,
and that is an obstacle
to community relations and relationship building.
You cannot achieve unity when you have those
emotions inside of you.
So you have to ask yourself an honest
question. I have to ask myself this question,
and you have to ask yourself this question.
Do you really do you are you jealous
of somebody?
I mean, if someone I'm not jealous of
anyone.
At some point in our lives, maybe we
felt jealous about someone.
Maybe it's your brother, maybe it's your friend,
maybe it's this, maybe that. Now,
what do you do about this?
There are ways in which you can combat
jealousy, you can remove jealousy.
Number 1 is through gratitude. Jealousy is removed
through gratitude.
Because when you remember what you have and
by the way, in Western academia now, they
have gratitude studies,
and they show that when you do something
called gratitude journaling and something like this, it
increases your mood. It increases your dopamine. It
does all kinds of good things for you.
And that's why these self help gurus actually
promote gratitude journaling.
So you sit down
every day
and you say, Alhamdulillah,
which means
praise and thanks belong to God, and maybe
you think about 1 thing at a time
that God has given you. That will elevate
your state.
If you do that regularly,
it's harder for you to become jealous of
someone else's blessings.
Imam al Ghazali mentioned in Nahi'al al Mu'din,
1 of his compendious works.
In the book, he he dedicates an entire
book
on jealousy and resentment.
He says that,
essentially, when someone is jealous of someone else,
they are jealous because they are not happy
with the division of God.
You see, God, we are we believe in
God. We believe in Allah,
the creator of the heavens and the earth.
And we believe God is the provider of
Al Arzak
provisions.
It's like you've gone into someone's house, you're
a guest,
and
the host is giving you certain amount of
provisions, food, drink.
Allah in our lives is giving us a
certain amount of provisions, food, drink,
marriages, this, that, whatever.
And notice how I put an s at
the end of that word.
These are all Arzak
or provisions.
You see?
You cannot be unhappy
with the provision of God
because if you say, I wish I had
what this other guy had,
effectively, you're protesting
against the division of god.
That's what you're doing. You're saying, I'm not
happy with god's
the way he divided things. God is effectively,
you're gonna say, God is wrong for this.
I deserve it more than him.
So at the at the heart of jealousy
is actually ingratitude,
and the only remedy of that is gratitude.
So So you have to sit down and
enumerate the the blessings of God.
Allah says, and if you enumerate the blessings
of God,
you will not be able to count them.
God has given you so many blessings.
Everyone in the world has something to be
grateful for.
Even someone with just a heartbeat,
that's something enough to be grateful for.
Resentment
happens when you dislike someone,
and usually that takes place after you've been
hurt by them.
Someone hurt you, said something bad to you,
hurt your fragile ego,
now you've become so hateful towards them because
you think you're the center of the earth,
and your ego says, no, I hate this
person.
The way
to overcome that is to become empathetic.
Even Robert Greene, who's a he's an author,
has written books about
how rulers and other people can gain power.
He's written a book called 48 laws of
power, and he he wrote another book called
human nature,
The Art of Seduction. He's written these kinds
of books,
and he says that empathy can be used
strategically. If you are incapable of being empathetic,
it's actually unstrategic. Empathy is when you put
yourself in the shoes of somebody else.
If you want unity to happen between communities
and peoples, you must be able to put
yourself in the shoes of somebody else.
It's a disability
for you not to be able to put
yourself in the shoes of somebody else.
I'm not saying
empathy should be used for morality.
There's actually a book
by Paul Bloom called Against Empathy.
It's an interesting book, where he talks about
why that is not a good strategy, and
I refer you to that book for further
information.
But empathy is a psychological tactic.
It demolishes resentment and hatred towards other people.
So sit down and think,
why is this person behaving to me like
this?
What is going through their mind? Try and
sympathize or empathize with them, see where they're
coming from.
So these are what I would call the
psycho spiritual tactics
to achieving unity
because unity is not just, I'll say, strategies,
it's psychological
states.
You need to train yourself
to be magnanimous,
forgiving,
even when you think you're right
to train yourself.
Forgiveness
is a very powerful and courageous thing to
do.
Forgiveness
is emphasized very heavily in the Quran.
Pardoning and forgiving.
It's it's emphasized. And not just in the
Quran, actually many different books. Because when people
forgive each other
and pardon 1 another,
they're able to
go to the next step and work together
and get more benefit in life. For for
the most part, having resentment actually does not
get you any benefit in this life. It's
like a fire. It just eats itself. Resentment
is like a fire. It eats itself.
You you gain no benefit from being like
this.
So if you teach yourself
to be grateful,
empathetic,
and forgiving,
then you can achieve unity.
So there is, as we mentioned, a strategic
element and there's a psycho
spiritual element as well.
With that, I will conclude and open for
questions and answers, and you're you're
welcome
to ask any question you want on Islam.
Okay. So we've got somebody here who wants
to ask a question.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Actually.
I'm thinking of the value of anyone who
asks for
that. Mhmm. I'm thinking it's like, I'm not
sure if it's the exact meaning, but I'd
love to think of it
waking up after death and being judged makes
more sense to me that we don't even
wake up in the first place and just
remain here. Because if
and or, like, oppressing, feeling any type of
negative
impact to society in general
really is senseless and basic at that time.
It doesn't make sense to me anymore.
Waking waking waking up after death makes more
sense than death.
Yeah. It makes sense to No. You make
a you make a good point. No. Thank
you for the contribution. I think, it's an
interesting thing you said.
Yeah. Thank you. So let's I just want
to share this. No. No. It's thank you
for sharing it. No. It's a good point.
Good point. Alright. Thank you so much. Let's
get someone else. Yes. Good.
Thank you, brother.
Yeah. Anybody else? Yes.
Yeah. It's very clear.
And the answer to your question depends on
the context
because unity is an abstract term, you see,
and it can only be really understood
when it's contextualized.
So So unity is not just something which
happens abstract.
For instance, like, if if you had a
daughter who's gonna get married, okay,
and she says, okay, well, let's say she's
a Sunni. Right? She says, I wanna get
married to a Shiite.
Maybe the family will say this kind of
unity is unacceptable
because there's too much of a difference here
in this context
or vice versa, you know, a Shi'ite and
a Sunnaite. They say you don't wanna marry
each other because it's gonna create confusion for
the child.
I fully understand that, and that's correct.
But let's say, for example, you have
a situation in Palestine,
and we can both help each other here
and
defend certain things here or raise money here,
that's a kind of unity.
I mean the Quran
says
do not
or come together on
and do not come together on evil deeds
and that's a general verse. It's called an,
a as on an.
It's a general verse.
It includes everybody. In fact, in many ways,
we could unify with non Muslim people on
certain good causes.
If someone says today, you know, let's do
a charity
for Gaza. We're not gonna say, okay, only
Muslims can contribute.
If non Muslims want to contribute, they can
contribute.
So
the the point I'm making to you is
it really does depend on the context,
and each context requires a discussion.
And it requires us to look at what's
in the benefit of the majority of people.
In fact, Al Ghazali mentions this. He wrote
a book called El Mustasfar.
Yeah, it's a it's a book of Usul
al Firkh. In fact, 1 of the most
important books of Usul al Firkh ever written.
And he has a chapter
on something called Al Maslaha Al Mursala.
Okay.
In that chapter, he gives you the conditions
of
acting in the in the benefit of
the majority of people
or Maslaha of the people. He says if
3 conditions are met, it's very interesting how
the in-depth he he goes into this, by
the way.
He says it has to be
and it has to be,
in the muscle how of the people.
So, for example,
if there's a situation he actually gives his
thought experiments. He says, if you have a
boat and there's 3 people in the boat,
is it acceptable to throw the 3rd person
off
the boat if the other 2 people will
survive? He says, no. In this in this
context, it's not allowed to do that.
But he gives an example
of what if you have an enemy
army coming in,
and
to defend yourself, you have to do such
and such,
this thing called.
Can you do it in order to save
the majority? He says in that context, it's
allowed. So context is king when it comes
to the discussion here,
and as I mentioned, each context has specific
parameters,
so there is not a 1 size fits
all approach to this question,
and it depends on
exactly what sect we're talking about within Islam
or even outside of Islam, so all of
that is dependent.
How about personal life?
Yeah. Sorry? How about personal life? Yeah. So
I I gave the example of marriage. That's
kind of like a personal thing.
Right? Like, for example, like, business. Okay?
Business, you're unifying on a project.
Can you have a shariq,
someone who is a business partner, who's a
non Muslim? Yes. You can,
for example. That's a kind of unity.
Right? What I'm saying is it really does
depend on what we're talking
about,
personal or communal.
Yeah.
Versus the more Western,
Yirpah. When we study gratitude, we learn in
English. Yes. But I don't think we really
understand what sugar means. My second question was,
Muslims in the west,
they use the
are you seeing Muslims,
on the Syria as a kind of like
a role model? They Which which which Muslims?
Sorry.
A Visinian from the A Visinian. Oh, okay.
Yeah. Yeah. As kind of like a role
model minority living in a in a in
a foreign, you know, non. However, I feel
like,
those non Muslims,
the Saudi, they came back eventually to the
Muslim lands. So do you think that Muslims
living in the west should try to come
back and support the local economies to kind
of reduce the green rain that you're having
over here, if that makes sense? Yeah.
So the first question was just remind me
of the first question. The first question was
of the software difference between the Islamic understanding
of sugar and other practices.
It's,
I actually watched a video on his channel.
It's called I think it's called Kokesegard or
something like that. It's a German channel.
And it was it's very interesting. They they
have these very expensive animations that they bring
out.
I'm not sure if you've seen it. Some
of you are nodding. It's about gratitude. There's
1 there's 1 specific
episode they've done all about gratitude. And in
the description box,
they put all of these
studies, western studies of gratitude journaling and on
the effects of gratitude journaling,
and they and they were basically making the
case, and these are, you know, secular atheists,
but they were making the case
that gratitude
increases your mood, it makes you happier, it's
the key to life.
They were saying this.
And as they were saying this, there was
a key ingredient
that was missing.
It is
kind of unusual to say the least to
say that your gratitude
without naming the subject of gratitude.
Like, for example,
if I went to if 1 of my
friends took me or, you know, gave me
a lift to the university, to this university,
like 1 of my friends did give me
a lift, you know. And at the end
of it, I say thank you. I'm saying
it to my friend who gave me a
lift to the university.
But if I say thank you and there's
no object or there's no 1 I'm actually
directing that to,
it's a weaker form of gratitude, to say
the least.
So you're not getting the raw product of
gratitude.
The only raw product or the pure product
of gratitude
can be achieved
when you direct
your gratitude
to the object
most worthy of that gratitude.
Now in our tradition as Muslims, we have
a hadith that says,
Whoever does not thank the people does not
thank God. So there is a form of
being grateful to people in your life.
If someone is doing good to you, find
them as a mother, father. You know, it's
healthy for you to say, you know what?
You've done so much good for me. I
just wanna say thank you for everything good
that you've done for me.
This is something Islamic and it's something good
for you to do psychologically.
But there's something even better than
that, which is to thank
the entity
ultimately responsible for your life and your sustenance
and your maintenance
for the position that you're in And we
call that entity Allah or God
who created you and fashioned you and sustained
you and is maintaining you.
There is no greater entity worthy of gratitude
than the entity that is allowing and is
responsible
for every other aspect
which you can be grateful for.
That's why it's the purest
and the most raw form
of gratitude that you can achieve.
And it's very interesting because there's only 1
study that I've come across
that mentions Islamic
or Muslim people in general in the in
the vis a vis quality of life or
satisfaction of life. And it is 1 study
that was
conducted, I think, in the University of
Mein Hamm or 1 of these German universities.
In 2019,
and 1 of I remember 1 of the
people of the study, her name was Laura
Tobin,
and I think the name of the study
was
life satisfaction among different groups or something like
this.
And she actually concluded,
or they conclude because it was a conglomerate
of scholars,
that people with the highest quality of life,
according to them, were Muslim people.
Now you might say that's
contradictory to what we understand of the happy
index,
or the human development index, or these economic
indicators,
But that's not actually
correct because the Happy Index and these other
economic indicators
are not
psychological indicators of people's actual happiness. They mentioned
this in their website.
If you go on happyindex.com,
they've changed it up. I don't know what
it's called now. They just call it the
happy index, but it's not a psychological measure.
When you study the most depressed nations in
the world, according to the WHO, the World
Health Organization, and Forbes Magazine,
19 out of 20 of them are actually
Western nations.
So there is something wrong. There's something going
wrong.
In the West, their form of gratitude
is incorrect
despite it's called the paradox
of unhappiness,
despite economic achievement,
despite having tall skyscrapers.
Look at Japan as an ultimate example.
They have a forest that the
suicide forest.
They're an excellent community in terms of cleanliness
and order and technology. They're the global leaders.
Just like some of the Scandinavian countries, they
are putting everyone to shame when it comes
to that stuff. But why is it that
those most technological
people and most advanced minds,
that they are unhappy.
This is the question.
Why are they killing themselves? Why suicide rates
pound for pound as a ratio so high
in those countries?
It's because they have lack of meaning in
their lives.
The brother was making an interesting monologue before,
and I was listening to what he was
saying, very interesting stuff. And he was saying,
imagine if there was no afterlife and no
day of judgment, etcetera, etcetera.
And that's a very healthy thought experiment.
Imagine if you had 3 days left to
live.
Imagine if you are on the sick bed,
in a hospital somewhere,
and someone told you you're gonna die in
a week.
What would give you more comfort to know
that you're gonna switch off? That your children,
that your friends, that your memories,
they mean nothing.
That you are essentially
an aggregate
of atoms.
Carbon.
You're a carbon machine,
you're like a snowman
that you could be hacked away and it
will just be a rearrangement of atoms.
If you are on the bed and you
thought, that's it. I'm gonna die. I'm going
to be rearranged and go back onto the
Earth.
Or if you think
that actually there's something more to it than
this. There's afterlife.
I'm not saying therefore, god exists, and this
is an argument for god's existence. I'm not
making an argument for god's existence. I'm simply
saying
this level of nihilism or this level of
bleakness, lack of meaning,
it causes nothing
but depression at the highest level,
no matter how much money you think you
can make.
So when you have gratitude that is undirected
to an ultimate source of gratitude,
it becomes shallow gratitude, weak gratitude.
It will still have an effect, but it
will not have that potent effect that it
would otherwise have if you were to spiritualize
it in the theological manner aforementioned.
Let's see. Some of the sisters have any
questions as well as try and be as
inclusive as possible.
Okay. We've got a brother here.
Yes. Thanks, Sam. I have a few questions.
The first 1 is 6 adults
Yeah. So you would set the guidelines
you would set the guidelines in different ways.
You have to have a subject. Like, for
example, if you're playing football, you know, I
don't know, soccer, football. You call it football
here. Right?
You play football. I mean, no one's gonna
talk about a kid on the pitch, for
example.
Playing darts or pool or something. So when
you say set the guideline,
context is king.
Context changes everything.
Context can make or break a situation.
Context can make the difference between life and
death.
So all you have to do is be
a master at changing the context in the
favor of whatever it is objective you're trying
to achieve.
And so if you allow
a forum where people and sometimes, by the
way, it's good to disagree.
You have to give people a chance to
disagree. People wanna have akhida discussions and this
1 that 1 talk about *. We'll say
we have akhida debate class.
Okay? But there's 2 or 3 criteria. 1
of them is you have to agree to
disagree.
Second thing is you have to shake each
other's hand. 3rd thing is you have to
do something else so you can decide whatever
it is. Have to subscribe to Mohammed Hajjabi's
YouTube channel.
You have to do something beneficial for the
community, you know,
wherever it may be. But what I'm saying
is setting the context
is is a skill,
and it's like parenting.
You have kids that wanna fight each other,
make it into a formal competition.
I have by the way, I have 3
kids. Yes.
And the way I try to control them
now
is I made something called obedience game.
This is a true story.
And every time they do something which is
obedience
in my favor, they get 5 points.
Okay. And they all compete with 1 another
and the champion gets a championship belt and
becomes the obedience champ.
And honestly, they fight over this
and the cry the loser cries and this
and that and she won this time. And
the and the winner parades around the house
like a like a WWE
superstar.
So if if people
naturally want to
be combative sometimes, you don't wanna always restrain
that,
just give it an outlet.
Give it an outlet.
If people wanna fight each other and have
you ever seen MMA or boxing?
You'll notice that in the press conferences, everyone
is swearing at each other,
talking about each other's wife and this and
that. All kinds of horrible things will be
said said.
After the fight is complete, what do you
see?
They start hugging each other and raising each
other's hand. Why? Because their ego has been
removed.
You've given them an outlet now to get
rid of their resentment or anger, whatever it
is, and
after they respect each other.
So sometimes
the way to
remove
unnecessary
hatred for someone else is to create competitive
environments.
Sometimes it's to try and circumnavigate it some
other way.
So that's what I would do,
And Allah knows best. Let's see. If there's
any sisters that have any questions, we'll prioritize
you because you wanna any women?
Yeah.
Yes.
A question that I'm curious about. Yeah. Of
course. I'm just wondering how would you describe
the relationship between, I guess, Muslims and Allah?
Like, for example, is it is it just
a
Yeah. It's a great question. It's a great
question. Thank you for asking it. So we
believe that Allah is known through the attributes
of God. Okay.
Attributes are
things that describe what God is about.
So we have many attributes of God in
the Quran mentioned in the Quran. Attributes
like he's powerful. He's all knowledgeable.
He's got ultimate will.
He is a rub, which means he is
the nourisher and the sustainer and the maintainer.
He is al Hayyum,
which means he's ever living.
He is maintaining everything,
but also
we believe that god is forgiving.
You see? He's
he's pardoning,
and importantly, he's loving.
You see,
he is.
This is 1 of the things because
people don't realize I mean, they think it's
a Christian specific thing that God is love.
We actually believe God is love as well.
So the relationship between
the believers
and Allah
at the highest point of it is a
love relationship.
The highest form
of relationship between you and the creator
is that you love
the creator.
Some of the scholars of Islam actually described
worship
as
or the highest form of love
Because if you think about the human emotions
okay.
I was considering this myself. What is the
most powerful human emotion? This is the question.
So first, I thought it must be lust
and sexual desire
because it's a very powerful emotion.
But if you're in a situation, I'm sorry
to put you in this thought experiment, right,
where you are at the height of your
sexual arousal. Okay. Sorry to put you
But someone came in with a gun to
your head.
What would happen?
You would you would remove all your sexual
arousal in maybe 1 second.
Maybe 2 seconds.
I don't wanna go in details in this
thought experiment.
But you imagine if, like, you know, you're
very aroused and someone comes and pulls out
a gun. So then fear is more powerful
than lust,
and fear is more powerful than anger in
many cases. Imagine someone let me put you
in another situation, less explicit. Okay?
You're walking in the street
and someone barges you like this.
Maybe you look at them and get a
bit angry. Right?
You get angry, they pull out a gun.
How do you feel now?
You feel fearful again. So fear
can override anger.
Fear can override
sexual desire.
Fear is a very very very powerful emotion.
It's up there. So I thought maybe fear
is the most powerful emotion.
But I only thought of 1 other emotion
that is more powerful than fear,
and that is love.
Because imagine now the guy has pulled out
the gun.
He's about to kill somebody,
and but you have a mother
who loves her children, for example.
Her love for her children
will override the fear of the gun many
of the times.
So only love can overtake
fear,
which shows you,
frankly, that love is the most powerful human
emotion
and, frankly, the most pleasurable 1 as well.
Someone was if I were to ask you
as like, let's do a hedonistic exercise.
Okay?
What's the most pleasure you ever felt in
your life?
Someone might say it was when I was
eating some food. That's a very
shallow pleasure.
I mean, I don't have any great memories
of, yeah, food eating is fantastic. I like
the rendang. I like this. I like
that. Curry, no problem.
But it's not gonna be like, okay, it
can give you a good feeling, right, when
you eat good food. A good steak and
potato, this and that. Yes.
Yes.
It's a fantastic feeling. We have to do
that after after this talk.
Get some steak get some steak so it
can feel viscerally fantastic. I'm not gonna be
inappropriate here but sexual
ecstasy
is fantastic.
Some say it's overrated. I say, no. It's
not.
No. It's not. It's a fantastic experience.
But higher and in this world, the most
pleasure you can ever get
is love. Trust me.
There's nothing more pleasurable than you can get
than love
because you would live, die, and commit suicide
on the basis of love.
You wouldn't do that for food or drink
or *. You wouldn't.
And I'm not saying anyone should commit suicide
here just in case someone's paying attention saying
this guy's talking about suicide.
But love is powerful. Romantic love,
paternal love, maternal love, all that love. But
above and beyond
paternal love,
maternal love, romantic love
that is station let's call it a.
But station a star,
the highest level is the love you have
for the creator
because that gives you stability.
That gives you a kind of what you
call Tamatnina, tranquility.
It's
the best emotion you can feel. So to
answer your question,
the pinnacle
of the relationship
between creator and creation
from the Muslim perspective
is a love relationship between the creator and
the creation.
It's not a fair relationship. It's not an
employee. Although all of that is there, we
fear the punishment of God. Yes. We but
love overtakes
everything
else. That's how I would answer the question.
See.
Yes, sir.
This is not good enough. 1 of is
not good enough. He has to be the
favorite.
Okay.
Pass on my regards, inshallah.
Okay, sir. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. So
coming up to my question Yes. So that
I will have to take it back to
at the beginning, the opportunity No. No. Of
course. Fine. Yeah. Okay.
So,
it's mentioned that
or you mentioned that Islam was united, that
makes the world a safer space or a
safer sorry, a safer place. Yeah.
So to achieve this, do you think
unity comes first, then uniformity, or vice versa?
Unicy and then what was the other word?
Uniformity.
No. I'm yeah.
I don't think we should try and be
uniform.
You see? I don't think we should try
everyone should be the same.
I think we need to find mechanisms
of disagreement,
but that we still unify on political and
social objectives.
So what comes first is
someone in certain areas, you can say in
a country level, on a geographic level, on
a state level, whatever it is,
deciding,
okay, we're going to collaborate with this other
group for this purpose
because it has this effect.
When that decision is then made,
then unity can be achieved,
then you can add on to that.
But there has to be a culture of
unity.
There has to be a culture of
let's create unity within
the community.
So uniformity is not what we're aiming for.
Uniformity is actually unachievable.
Okay. It's unachievable.
Immunity
is something the Quran commands.
Okay.
Any other questions?
Maybe we should go to some more females,
sisters because we wanna
get everyone involved.
If there's any female who prioritize you. Yeah?
What? I don't think you're a female, brother,
unless you wanna declare your pronouns.
Okay. If there's no females, we can go
for a we can go for a male.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah. Okay. Let me tell you what I
think. Okay.
I live in the West. We have a
right wing movement.
It's ultra right wing with far right. We
call them far right.
Now these are, for the most part, like,
usually white guys, men usually is men but
they can have women as well,
who don't like the existence,
who are not happy with the existence
of ethnic and religious minorities in the West,
and they are growing in number.
Okay.
And I unfortunately clashed with them many times.
You see these these people that sometimes they
ask for deportation.
They'll say we want you to come out
of the country. Sometimes they'll ask for stopping
immigration. Sometimes they ask for this, that, or
the other.
I asked around and maybe I'm wrong, but
maybe you guys are here. You can correct
me. If there exists an equivalent movement here
in Malaysia
where there is, you know, a right wing
Malay movement
that are telling all of the, you know,
say, Chinese or the Indians or the other
minorities to leave the country. And why I
was told is that that doesn't actually exist.
Am I right?
It doesn't exist in the same way as
the far right movement exists,
yes, in the West. You would agree with
this.
So isn't it interesting
that those far
right figures in the western world
attack Islam
on the basis of alleged
intolerance
when they themselves
are being intolerant in a way that a
Muslim majority country like Malaysia, because it's still
a Muslim majority country,
isn't doing?
Because
I think it's something to be proud of
as Malaysians, to be honest,
that you do have these other minorities in
the in the country
and that they are allowed to be proud
to be, actually,
Malaysian and Chinese or Malaysian and Indian at
the same time. They can practice their religion,
you see.
That's something to be proud of and that
you don't have these extremist elements
that exist in the West
and that is something
unexpected
especially to the Western mind.
Because they always say I mean, this is
something I've I've I've seen and read a
lot of the time, If it was a
Muslim majority country,
this wouldn't be allowed. If it was a
Muslim majority country, that wouldn't be allowed or
or or but Malaysia is the ultimate example
of the contrary of that
because you have non Muslim minorities
who are living and prospering
from the country.
I've heard, for example, the Chinese community are
doing very well economically,
which is a great thing
which is a great thing. No, honestly, it's
a great thing. And
and they like to be in this no
one's leaving.
No one's leaving. It's a Muslim majority country,
and they're happy to be Malay and Chinese
at the same time,
or Malay I don't know how the politically
correct terms to use here, so forgive me
if I'm saying this wrong, and Indian at
the same time or whatever it may be.
Like, you know, they have dual heritage or
they consider themselves Malaysian, but this is a
good thing. It shows you that
it shows you that the image they have
of Muslim majority countries is a false image.
To your question of Muslim firsts and all
this kind of thing. Look. In Islam, it
doesn't matter
whether or not you buy or sell from
a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew.
I'm being honest with you. Right? It doesn't
really matter. I mean, the prophet of alaihi
wa sallam bought the prophet Mohammed
bought from Jews.
He sold from Jews.
He bought from Christians. He sold from there's
no issue with it
whatsoever.
If someone, for for whatever reason, decides that
they want to support their Muslim brother first
or whatever. I'm not saying they're wrong for
doing this, but they cannot say
that other Muslims who decide to do business
with non Muslims are wrong either because it's
not wrong. Do you see the point?
So if they want to do that, they
can do that. It's their prerogative.
That's no problem. You can give if you
want to give your money to only Muslim
businesses, this is fine. You can do this.
But you cannot say to other Muslims who
are giving their money to Chinese guy or
to Indian guy who's who's not a Muslim
or whatever it may be that he's wrong
because that's fine. It's it's his business
to do that or not to do that,
and there's nothing haram about that in the
religion of Islam.
So that's how I would answer the question,
if that if that makes sense.
Yes.
Anything from the sisters?
Yeah.
No. No. It's up to you. I mean,
I'm just trying to be as inclusive as
possible.
Yeah. Just I would like to say thank
you very much for your work and Thank
you.
The CPA Institute.
And, thank you for coming to Asia. No.
It's fine. Thank you very much for having
me. Yeah. So the next time you come
to Asia, perhaps you could invite your friends
at I'll do that. I'll do that. I'll
do that.
I'm Hamza. Yes. Hamza Hamza, I mean, I
mean, he talks. Yes. He's always there. Yeah.
He's always there. Yes. So my question is
He needs to get a Malay citizenship as
well.
We might need it. If the right wing
have their way, we might have to come
here and and stay in Malaysia
just like Zach and I did it. We
might we might need to seek asylum here
in in Malaysia.
Go ahead, brother. Alright. Prajna,
earlier you mentioned a lot
have empathy towards the towards the Zionist,
towards the IDF?
Yes.
Yeah. That's just my question. You can have
empathy towards the devil himself.
No. Empathy, it doesn't mean you agree with
the person. It just means you're putting yourself
in their shoes. Now you can put yourself
in their shoes and still disagree with them,
by the way.
Do you see what I mean?
Like,
when I have arguments with my wife,
I'm I'm only gonna I'm only gonna do
this all the time but empathy doesn't mean
agreement. Okay.
You can be compassionate
to an enemy.
And the best way to be compassionate with
an enemy like the IDF
is to be brutal with them
because that's stopping them from oppression.
Now, how do you be empathetic to someone
like the IDF? Put yourself
in the position of a psychopath.
No.
No. Now
psychopathy is an interesting psychological situation.
According to psychologists, 1% of the population is
psychopath, but it's interesting that you can train
yourself to be a psychopath. There are studies
that show
that you can train yourself to be a
psychopath.
That's very interesting. There's actually a guy who
who done a whole documentary with psychopaths
and his name was Piers Borgen.
He has a whole documentary with Psycho Pass.
I'm surprised he didn't interview himself.
No. But it's interesting because when he's having
these interviews I'm not sure if you've seen
it. In he goes to prisons. Yes.
And he's speaking to these psychopaths.
Do you know when someone says, I don't
care what people think?
You know, this is I don't I don't
care what people think. Everyone cares what we
think. This is how we are. So except
for psychopaths.
These psychopaths, if you look at the interviews
with Piers Morgan
and especially the Israeli psychopaths on his other
program,
you'll see that they genuinely don't care
what people think. So they'll do things like
they'll start giggling.
You'll tell them, oh, you killed this guy,
you killed this child and the hedgehog, and
you killed this 1. And there's yes, I
did.
They they don't they actually don't care.
Okay. Now you can get to a level
of psychopathy
by say, for example, if you see a
child, usually this is like a telltale sign,
and he starts harming an animal and laughing,
you know.
You think you look at the child and
say, okay, he's building up his psychopathy here.
When he gets older, like, sorry to say,
a lot of men in the West,
the way they use women
yes. Because women are objectified in the West,
you see. We we there's a huge prostitution
industry. There's this and that. You know?
So they are objectified. They just use this
sexual a lot of women, not all women,
but are objectified as sexual objects.
And so the man doesn't think about this
human being in front of him. A lot
of men would just think of her as
a sexual object,
like a * entity walking with legs,
like basically a big handkerchief.
Doesn't think of anything else.
And then he does it once, twice, 3
times, 10 times, 20 times, 50 times,
and he downloads this app called Tinder.
Hopefully, no 1 knows what that 1 is
here.
No. Honestly and then they keep swiping and
this and that meeting and then leaving, meeting,
leaving, meeting, and then they
become psychopathic now. They don't look at woman
as if she's a human being now. They
look at as if she's there to and
it can happen.
So you have to put yourself in the
shoes of someone like this.
Why did they do that? Usually, someone who
does that has some kind of insecure insecurity
complex,
inferiority complex.
They might do that because they think they're
a victim.
You see,
when you think you're a victim, you think
the whole world owes you owes you everything.
They might do that for theological reasons, and
this might be controversial.
But there are aspects, I'm not saying all,
so I'm being very careful here, of Jewish
theology which says this,
that the whole world, the Goyim are there
to serve you.
Like the whole world is there to serve
you and you are the master race.
There are some, you know, rabbis
who have in the Talmud and this kind
of thing. You'll see these kinds of quotations.
So some of them have religious justification for
it.
You see, and they'll say, well, we are
entitled to this.
So you have to put yourself in the
shoes of an entitled person in in the
shoes of a psychopath,
and then you realize, okay, this is a
very dangerous person. How do you what's the
best way to deal with a psychopath
that's killing children?
It's the same way to deal with a
dangerous dog, is to put them down.
This is honestly, there there are some people
you cannot actually reason with. The the point
of reason is gone. So the IDF, therefore,
the best way to deal with them is
to actually put them down, to kill them,
to defend yourself against them. But, of course,
the problem is that Ummah
doesn't have the power to stand up to
the hegemonic power of the United States of
America. Sometimes you do have to stand up
to the enemy, but that's how I would
answer. Empathy does not mean always agreeing with
the person you're empathizing with.
Yes.
Yes,
sir.
Unless there's a sister that wants to yeah.
Okay. Go ahead.
Oh, who's asking? I can't see you. Yeah.
Yeah.
Right here. Oh, yes.
Assalamu alaikum.
So first of all, thank you for coming
here. Thanks for having me.
Actually, I have Oh, you've got a lot
of questions. Too many questions. Just 1 will
do, my friend.
How how do you perceive
what is your take
on the idea,
meaning your personal take
is it the case that if if because
every frequency is true,
therefore,
we can have
Yeah. So, in in philosophy, there are 3
opinions on 3 major schools of thought on
free will. Okay.
1 of them is called libertarian free will
that you mentioned. The second 1 is called
compatibilism,
and the third 1 is called determinism. These
are the 3 schools of thought in secular
philosophy. Okay?
Now, the 2 most dominant in the Western
Academy
is compatibilism
and
determinism. Those 2.
The the problem with libertarian free will is
that it's not just making an argument that
human beings have free will.
Compatibilists
also agree that human beings have free will.
It's it has to refute
the idea of a cause and effect
because for libertarian free will to hold true
in an absolute sense,
the cause effect relationship would have to not
be true. Because how does the determinist prove
that things are happening
deterministically? They say there's an uninterrupted causal chain.
So for someone to be a truly libertarian
free will advocate they have to first refute
the cause and effect chain.
That's why a lot of them use quantum
mechanics, for example, to do so. They say,
well, this is the quantum fluctuation
and this and that and what whatever.
Unfortunately,
it's very difficult to refute
something like the chain of cause and effect
and therefore not many philosophers adopt this view.
In terms of
moral reasoning,
you can still have the idea of being
a moral actor
if you believe in a combination of
libertarian or not libertarian, but free will and
a kind of determinism, and it's called the
compatibilist position.
But because this is very technical, what I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna refer you to
something I've written
on the Sapiens Institute. It's called
free will and determinism because it's a question
that many people ask. If God has determined
everything, then how do we have free will?
So I answered that in an entire essay
that you can see free of charge on
the Sapiens Institute. But because it's very technical,
I feel like if I were to speak
more about it, the benefit would be,
very,
limited. Do you see what I mean? Because
you're a PhD student. It's very difficult to,
you know, it's it's it's a very technical
topic.
Yes.
Yes, sister. Go ahead.
Hi. Hi.
Yes. Absolutely. It's a very good question. A
good 1 is generosity.
Yeah?
Being generous means to give someone something without
expecting a return.
Okay? So if you have the first thing
is if you have members of your family
who are less well off than you are,
if you are making more money than them,
then you should bring them in and help
them out and be generous towards them. But
it's not just money you can be generous
with, you can be generous with your time.
You can be generous
with your support. You can be generous with
different things you can you can do.
So I think that if I were to
add another thing to what I've mentioned already,
generosity is a very powerful especially if you're
continuously generous.
If you're continuously generous to somebody
there's less likelihood that they will become disunified
with you or other people.
And if you're generous to multiple people,
then they're more likely to be good with
each other because you're being generous with them.
So if I have 2 children or 3
I I have 3 children.
You know, I'm trying to be generous with
each of them.
But if they're not generous with 1 another,
I withhold my
my money.
You see, I say, look, you've been very
bad, and then they start crying and this
kind of thing. But that's the way to
control behavior sometimes. You can be strategically generous.
That's what the United States does. They're not
generous. They just, they use bribe bribery,
and there's a fine line
between bribery
and generosity, so just be aware of that.
But generosity
is 1 of the other ways you can
you can do that.
Any other questions?
There's a there's a man at the back.
Yes. I understand
that. But we have, we need to
To wrap up. Yeah. For a session for
crunch.
Quran? Okay. We have 1 more question. We
do it. Yeah? Okay. We have the man
at the back there was yeah. His hand
up. Last question, and then he's gonna do
some Quran.
So on the first issue,
there's 2 premises. It's a very interesting saying.
1 of them is do not interrupt your
enemy when they're making a mistake. Okay? That's
1 thing people say. Don't but it's also
the case that do not
do not interrupt your enemy when they're helping
you out. They're doing something to help you
out. Now
Iran, for example, is a tricky topic because
people look at Iran, and they have all
kinds of things to say, and I have
many things to say about Iran and, you
know, the government and the practices and that
kind of thing. But if they're taking a
better stance
than the majority of other neighboring nations, I'm
not going to say, okay, listen, you are
Shiite,
please stop helping.
If it was a non Muslim country, no
1 would even have a question about this.
But because we have a taboo
with the whole Sunni Shia thing, there's a
discussion about it. But I don't see it
as even a questionable thing. Okay? If someone
is helping,
anything
is allowed now in terms of help because
these guys are being killed en masse.
Of course,
you could argue Iran is being performative and
playing its own game and having its own
geopolitical thing and and all those things, you
can make the argument, and I'm sympathetic to
those arguments. However, for me, I don't care
because,
eventually or essentially, you know, I just wanna
see the suffering of the Palestinian people go
down.
You see? And if Iran's gonna throw some
drones and stuff that's gonna make the Israelis
scared,
then the more the merrier. In fact, maybe
they should strike them harder, really. So I
haven't got an issue with this.
That's 1 thing. So in terms of
accepting help, it look, at darraat to be
hamathurat, it's a very clear, it's a Usu'ul
principle, anyway.
You know, you can't blame people that are
being massacred
sects.
I consider that to be actually quite it's
actually childish. It's a childish thing to say.
But at the same time, it doesn't mean
we're gonna agree with them on the, you
know, on the issues where we disagree.
We're gonna disagree on certain issues. That's fine.
So that's the first thing. In terms of
the second thing that you said about the
faith journey
and and and that thing,
look,
everybody looks for the truth, or least everyone
should try and look for the truth. And
I think the the pursuit of truth
is more important than the pursuit of happiness.
In America, there's actually a film that they
produced called The Pursuit of Happiness.
It's ironic because happiness is 1 of those
things, when you try and pursue it, you
usually fail in pursuing it.
Happiness is a byproduct of purpose.
It's not something you try and seek in
its own right.
So
the point I'm making is
the essential question that you have to ask
yourself is what is the purpose of life?
Why am I here?
And if you say, okay, it's to worship
God, it's to submit to the creator of
all that exists,
then the next question is how do you
do so most effectively?
That's where you have the difference of opinion
in different religions and different sects.
But I don't think religion is meant to
be that complicated.
It's not meant to be some kind of
very complicated exam that if you get the
answers wrong, that you're going to * and
you're going to be burning in hellfire forever.
I genuinely think that if someone is sincere
and they ask God in His oneness to
guide them
that they will be guided by God that's
what I believe and Allah mentions that in
the Quran he says
upon us is guidance
Allah mentions in Quran
Quran that if my slave asks me about
me,
I am near.
I answer the caller call of the caller
when he calls.
So this is an open thing for all
of humanity.
Islam is not an exclusivist religion to a
specific tribe or a specific race or a
specific ethnicity.
Islam is an international religion
for all people
from all walks of life. So long as
you're a human being,
you qualify
to be a Muslim, you're invited
to be a Muslim,
you're
welcomed to be a Muslim, you'll be equal
to other Muslims, you will not be lesser
than other Muslims, that's how it should be.
Allah says
in Quran,
Oh, humankind, we have created you from from
2, from a man and a woman and
we've made you into tribes and nations so
that you may get to know 1 another.
That the best of you are those who
are most pious. And the prophet told us
there is no virtue
of a white man over a black man
or an Arab over a non Arab that
the best of you are those who are
best in
piety.
So to answer your question, if you're sincere
and you ask Allah to help you and
guide you, you'll be guided
and there's a dua that the prophet used
to make which is
that oh Allah show us the truth for
what it is
and give us or provide for us
to follow that truth.
And I think that's the best place to
end this talk.
To everyone, and Assalamu alaikum.
Thank you, mister Mahwahija,
for the 2nd lecture.
Ladies and gentlemen,
now
we'll take a short commercial break.
Please enjoy the special advertisement
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Thank you, Quran and Things, for the amazing
video.
Ladies and gentlemen,
let's ask if Badri Hijab to answer the
questions from audience
and conclude again our discussion.
Badri Hijab,
this stage is yours.
Please welcome. Go again. Yeah?
We'll continue the question answer session. Continue. Yes.
Okay. That's good.
I've got more I've got more in the
tank. So long as we get the steak
afterwards, I mean, it's always alright.
Any females that have any questions?
Any
sisters?
You might not get this golden opportunity again,
sisters.
Don't be shy.
Oh, okay.
My thoughts on that is it depends on
what the reason for the visitation is. So,
for example, there are things in Islam that
you have to do as a matter of.
For example,
Say, for example, you're from such a country,
but your mom or dad live in the
other country that is oppressing the Muslims,
and you have to go and visit your
mom or dad. So it could be the
case that it could be a lesser of
2 evils for you to
to give money to the, you know, the
whoever it may be, the plane tickets or
something for you to visit that country in
order for you to visit your mom or
dad. It might be your paternal auntie or
uncle. It could be your grandma or granddad.
This all falls under the agreement of Silas
al Rahm
and so I'm giving you an example of
such a situation. You could go to that
country, for example, not to do something but
to do something which is.
For instance, some will go to countries like
this to help with charity.
So you your presence in the country will
have a net benefit.
So it depends on the situation,
you know. It's like anything else. Context is
king.
There's not a 1 size fits all policy
but then almost every country in the world
and I say almost because we have some
good countries,
but almost every country in the world is
doing some crime of some sort.
What does it mean? Like, for example, after
the United Kingdom, when I go and get
a sandwich from the shop
some of my money is being used to
to fund some nuclear weapon,
for example. Should I stop eating sandwiches in
the shop, you know. So you have to
start kind of look at things like this
as well, like,
what are you running away from and what
you're running away to?
Because the whole boycott thing,
we can boycott certain brands. Some people have
like a list of 300 brands
for the Israeli boycott.
That sometimes that can be too much
for someone to even remember let alone to
follow. It can be sometimes better to have
5 or 10 brands that you've worked on.
Could be
for the sake of argument.
And so we have to be strategic about
this but we also have to be realistic
about
this. So these are my thoughts.
Yeah.
So I study international politics,
and,
I will ask a question about this,
field. There have always been political economic,
ideologies,
that have affected the world's socioeconomics
or shaped the societies,
for example, Marxism, communism,
socialism, or increased, 21st century,
capitalism.
Mhmm. So
in,
your opinion, which socioeconomic
ideology
So the way you've got to look at
political ideology is that
for the most part, they have their own
premises
and that they are secular premises for the
most part. Islam has its own system
and the premise of it is la ilaha
illallah. It's a theological premise that God is
the,
the ultimate lawgiver,
that he is the only 1 responsible for
divine commands.
In the west,
like you mentioned, you got a capitalist system
which is based on free market economics,
but you've got also a liberal social order.
So if we take that and unpack it,
okay,
free market economics, okay, we don't have too
much of an issue with it from the
Islamic perspective.
And the evidence of that is that 1
time someone came to the prophet Muhammad salallahu
alaihi wa sallam
and asked him. They said these people are
raising the price so high.
So can you fix the price?
He responded in hadith. He said that Allah
is Al Musa'ir.
He is the 1 who sets the price.
It's very interesting because the West then discovered
what they call the invisible hand of the
market economy. I'm not sure if you've heard
of this phrase.
Ricardo and Adam Smith who wrote famously about
the invisible hand of the market economy.
So we believe
in Allah. He is the 1 who sets
up a meaning,
leave the market to do its thing. Okay.
We have obviously redistribution models. We have zakat.
We have sadaqa.
But controversially, you'd be surprised taxation
is not really an Islamic precept
in a in a general sense. I'm not
saying
that, therefore, there should be no taxes. I'm
just saying it's not something that comes from
emanates from Islam.
So it's actually quite a rigorous free market
model, if you think about it, with a
redistribution
clause attached to it.
And in fact, not just in but
in feh and as well. This idea of
before when they used to conquer lands, they
used to take this kind of spoils of
war. And there's an interesting verse in Suratul
Hasho
which
says so that it does not become.
So money does not circulate among the elites
amongst you.
It's an interesting precept that money shouldn't just
circulate between
the elites. There should be some level of
parity. And now in economics, they have something
called the Gini coefficient,
which is they look at the poorest and
the the the the richest in 1 society,
and they look at the difference between them.
So it shouldn't be a great disparity between
the 2.
So free market economics is acceptable
with all of those caveats and clauses.
Liberalism
and or capitalism is not really acceptable because
it's based on riba. It's based on this
idea of interest.
And Islam is vehemently against
this idea of riba
or of interest market economies. In fact, the
prophet Muhammad predicted in the future that the
whole economy will be based on interest.
And he said,
Whoever does not consume it will be affected
by its dust.
But the Quran says
There's many verses that say that those who
consume riba will not be resurrected except for
someone who's been touched by the devil and
so on, you know. In fact, there will
be
that if you go into riba
that you've declared war with Allah and their
messenger.
So it's a major sin in Islam actually,
the consumption of riba and interest.
And so capitalist economies, which are
interest based, is something Islam does not endorse
the fact it's vehemently against.
Thirdly,
social liberalism is 1 of the issues
because
you'll find, like, when people ask you about
Islam,
a lot of the misconceptions about Islam or
some of the questions and interrogations about Islam
have
liberalistic presuppositions.
So someone will say, for example, why does
Islam
have a death penalty?
You know, in Islam why is it that
the thief
Why do you have to cut the hand
of a thief?
Why is this? Why that? Why is it
flogging?
Why is this allowed? Interesting. There's a book
called In Defense of Flogging.
A Westerner wrote it. It's called In Defense
of Flogging and he was saying that why
flogging is a good thing. But his his
name is Peter Moscos. But putting that to
the side,
a lot of these questions are based on
the idea
of liberalism
that you should be able to do whatever
you want. Why is there apostasy in Islam?
Why is there blasphemy in Islam? This and
that. Why is these things there?
And liberalism is social liberalism is the idea
that you can do whatever you want so
long as you don't harm anyone else.
That's something Islam doesn't say.
Islam doesn't say you can do whatever you
want so long as you don't harm anyone
else.
There are things you can't do.
For example,
homosexuality.
Yeah. LGBT
and stuff like that. Now that is the
birth child of liberalism
because they say look, the argument is if
you have 2 people that are homosexual and
they're doing
their thing, they're not harming anyone else. What
Who are you to get involved in that?
So we question the premise that it doesn't
harm anybody else, but we also say that
Islam is a religion
which governs
certain aspects
of family life.
So it's not a free for all.
And now 1 of the holy cows
of liberalism is freedom of expression and speech.
They say, you know, you should have as
much expression and speech as you want.
But then again, they contradict this
many in many things, and you know what
those things are. If you've got plagiarism, copyright
laws, You can't just take someone's material, intellectual
property, and use it. This is called
infringement, copyright infringement.
So laws, they protect it when it comes
to the monetary capitalistic interest
of the people, for example.
Plagiarism is not allowed. You know that, being
university students. You can't say, well, I plagiarized
this guy but it's freedom of speech and
expression.
You can't say this.
Although, an absolute freedom of speech and expression
should allow plagiarism, really, if you think about
it.
Other things like child * is not allowed,
but they will argue that it's because it
harms the child.
But then you can argue what if you
create an AI image of the child. Now
we have all these things, AI programs. You
can make a fake child. Why can't you
make a * of a child that doesn't
exist?
That's illegal. In all all Western countries, it's
illegal.
But they will say because we have certain
sentimentalities
towards the idea of child *.
We say, okay. Well, then you are infringing
a kind of freedom of speech because you
realize it shouldn't be applicable in all cases
all times.
So who gets to set the bar
of what is acceptable freedom of speech legalistically
or socially?
For them, the real the real answer which
they're too shy to say is the white
man gets to set it.
And I always use this example. For example,
if I go into a bank in the
United Kingdom, if I go into a school
where there's children there, I've never gone into
a bank in the United Kingdom
or the United States or anywhere in the
West, and I've practically covered the whole Western
world, traveled to most of the countries there.
Have never gone into a bank
and seen a woman with a bikini inside.
Now, it might be a strange thing to
say
but social norm doesn't dictate that you will
find a woman with a bikini inside the
bank.
But if you go to the beach, you'll
find many some of them don't even wear
the bikini.
So who gets to say this is acceptable
and this is unacceptable? I can guarantee you,
if there was a a teacher in the
United Kingdom, a woman teacher, a female teacher,
who came into school with a bikini, she
would be fired.
She would be fired.
In most schools, this is they were considerably
indecent.
She cannot be a feminist and say, well,
I can wear whatever I want. You say,
you can wear whatever you want in your
home.
They will act like a
traditional husband. The school prime minister no, prime
minister. Head teacher will say go and do
what you want at home. You cannot wear
this in front of the kids. You cannot
be in a nursery
or a secondary school or primary school and
wear a bikini in the United States or
United Kingdom. I don't know any school
that that is the case. So freedom of
expression of speech whether it's legalistic,
there are limitations.
Those who say we believe in freedom of
speech okay. To what extent do you believe
in it?
That's the question Because we've already given 5
or 6 examples
where freedom of speech and expression is limited
and everyone agrees it should be limited.
Child *,
child cartoon *,
infringement
of copyrights,
plagiarism.
Even if someone if I came out and
and and demonstrated in the University of Malay
how to make a bomb,
some will say no, you cannot teach this
thing because then you're you're encouraging
you're encouraging a kind of criminal behavior. There
are many things which can be considered freedom
of speech and expression,
which we would say, consequently,
are harmful to society and it shouldn't be
done.
J. S. Mill himself,
who is the father of social liberalism, he
said that if you're walking in the street
and you see people having * sorry to
say this.
He said this should not be allowed. It
should be illegal for that to happen.
He he didn't say he's the father of
social liberalism but even he has limits.
So you should be Now they're doing this,
by the way. There are some places in
the Yannick where people do that in the
West. There are some people where they can
Yani, I live in a place in London
where they have something called the carnival. I
don't know if you've seen this.
I came out of the mosque 1 time.
Okay,
and I saw a practically a naked woman.
Yani, I was just doing salah.
I came out and she she had, like,
sorry to say, stickers on just to cover
the *. Danny, what's the point? What is
this? And down the road,
they were doing stuff, like, openly in the
streets.
Openly and videos, everything. This is London.
Isn't it a blessing to be here in
Malaysia then?
It's a blessing.
Some of the brothers will say, actually, we
need to go to visit London. That's it.
So
trust me, though, because in the carnival, they
also have criminal behavior. They bring out the
knife and this and that.
So what all I'm saying to you is
that freedom of speech and expression,
it contradicts
what is considered to be consequentially
wrong for or bad for the community, and
when they when it happens at a level
where everyone can recognize it, they they forbid
it. So all we're saying is who gets
to to choose
the lines?
We as Muslims have our own
understanding of human rights, our own understanding of
freedom of speech, our own understanding of human
expression, and it's not based on those fake
arbitrary subjective
lines that are drawn by the white man
and his tastes and and and and his
preferences.
So
we shouldn't try and embrace,
you see, other people's ideologies.
We should have we should be proud in
our own
religious and cultural identities.
Okay. That was a long answer.
Yeah.
God bless you, and I'll guide you in
all of us. So, my question is, what
is the necessity of using philosophy in giving
dawah, and how do we know the borderline
of using a philosophy in dawah? Because as
we know,
I mean, in philosophy,
etymologically,
the word comes from the
the word love of wisdom,
Philo Sophies, right, which means love of wisdom.
So in a in a broad sense, philosophy
is just using your mind.
It's just using rationality. That's what philosophy is.
That's really what philosophy is.
In early Islam, those groups went astray
because they used a specific kind of philosophy
and they mixed it with Islamic Aqidah.
They mixed it
and what's happening today is we don't have
Mu'tazilis around anymore. Okay. But what we have
is liberal Muslims.
Okay. Or feminist Muslim.
They'll mix ideas of feminism and ideas of
Islam together like a like a cocktail,
like a poisonous cocktail,
and then drink it and everyone drink and
get sick.
Because
what it was is that, at the time,
those particular Marteseles were very impressed with Greek
philosophy because, frankly, there's a lot to be
impressed with. Yes?
So they incorporated it in. What's the limit
of it?
You should use it to come to the
conclusion of Islam
not to try and change Islam.
So when you mix it with the akhidah
of Islam, this is where it becomes unacceptable.
If you're using standard rational argumentation
to bring people to a common ground, this
is fine.
But when you start mixing it with the
beliefs of Islam, this is where it becomes
unacceptable.
Yeah. Sister, he wants to ask maybe a
question.
You said women and what was the other
thing you said?
In term of priority.
So what what woman should prioritize? Yeah. Oh,
okay. In in Islam. In Islam. In this
time. In this time. Okay.
Look. I mean,
the
thing both men and women have to prioritize
is worshiping Allah. Okay. What is specific to
women
in Islam
is the idea of motherhood.
Okay?
Now not every woman can be a mother
because Allah says in the Quran,
Not every woman can give birth. Allah gives
some women
male children,
some women female children. He gives other women
male and female children and some women he
doesn't they cannot have any children.
So for those women who can become mothers,
it's clear that Islam prioritizes the institution of
motherhood.
Modern day feminism
has degraded this institution.
In fact, if you look at some of
the feminist works in the 19 sixties,
for example, Betty Friedan
in her famous book
A Feminine Mystique or
Simone de Beauvoir in her famous book The
Second *. All of them
basically
degrade the mother. You shouldn't be a mother.
It's an oppressive institution etcetera etcetera. That's what
Simone de Beauvoir mentioned, for example. And there
has been a sentiment and attitude ever since
that being a mother
is actually an oppressive thing to be.
It's
a humiliating thing to be.
It's
an unequal and unfair thing to be.
But what's interesting is that most studies have
shown
women who are in a high career,
for example, like the famous study of Blanche
Flower and Oswald
from 1970
to 2000
which is the largest study ever conducted
by a 100000 participants both in the US
and UK
have
shown that actually women,
after the new rights and civil rights and
all this kind of thing and after they
have gone into the workplace, have actually felt
worse
as a result of this. And they call
this another study called the the paradox of
female
unhappiness.
There's other studies like many studies about this.
There's no evidence that being a career woman
gives you more satisfaction
or more quality of life than being a
mother. In fact, almost all the evidence is
in the opposite direction.
Now, that doesn't mean that women shouldn't work
or they can't work or I'm not making
any of those arguments. If a woman wants
to work, she can work. I mean, no
problem. But I'm saying if the priority becomes
I want to become a career woman,
then the Western experience shown has shown us
that being a career woman
doesn't actually bring about
this satisfaction that you think it brings about.
It doesn't. There's no evidence of that.
There's 0 evidence. In fact, many of the
things show the opposite. The study showed the
opposite.
So I think Islam by telling a woman
that we should prioritize the institution of motherhood,
prioritize your family,
prioritize your worship,
prioritize your health. Yes, you can work. No
problem. If you need to work, if there's
something, no problem. But if you prioritize this
and it becomes
you you get involved in the rat race
and start competing and stuff. Well, if you
get involved in the rat race, you have
to remember you're still a rat.
See, this is the truth of the matter.
So
in that in that sense,
this is the second thing you should prioritize.
Motherhood,
family,
etcetera etcetera. And, of course, Dawah is open
for everybody, men and women,
propagating of
Islam, bringing people to Islam, charity, and everything
else is the same. But this obviously is
the thing that sticks out as a differentiator.
That and obviously being a great wife, I
mean, that sticks out as well.
I hope, I've said that enough to my
own mind but I don't think it's it's
worth.
But what I'm saying is being a great
wife is very important because
it is the it's just like you're the
midfielder in the pitch.
You hold the center of the the ring.
It's a very important role.
Having a family, being the mother, being the
good wife, things
can get done.
Someone could argue, and this has been argued,
well, if you're saying that what will happen
is, okay,
you'll exclude half of the population from the
economy
and therefore the the country will go down
in terms of money.
Okay? This is the argument that's being made.
The counterargument
to that is as follows.
Studies have shown
that when you have 2 parents outside of
the household,
that children are more likely
to be delinquent,
to have pathology,
and to have a lower satisfaction
in life.
That actually costs money to the state to
do that.
When you have children who are depressed,
others who are committing suicide, others who are
becoming obese because they need comfort food and
this and that,
the state is then expended with all all
of that. And number 2, even if we
agree
that you'll be losing some money in the
short term in terms of in terms of
that, What's the point of having money as
an economy if you're not going to use
it in the things that you enjoy the
most?
And having a great family
is the thing that you will enjoy the
most as we mentioned.
Having imagine being a mother,
having children,
Your children cannot grow up and say to
you, you're fired.
I mean, unfortunately, maybe in the west they
do that. Hopefully, in Malaysia,
they basically say that. I mean, they don't
say you're fine but say I don't want
anything to do with you. But your employer
can say that to you.
You see, you can work with your employer
for 20 years. Show them all dedication
and 1 day you come into work and
say I'm sorry, we don't need you anymore.
That can happen in economy, it can't happen
in family. That's why 1 study that was
done in a Harvard University,
it's a longitudinal
study.
It said 1 of the things that makes
people most happy in life is good relationships.
So if you foster good relationships
as a man or a woman
or if you foster great relationships, loving
relationships,
relationship with your family, relationship with your Lord,
that is the highest thing you can achieve
in this world and will grant you the
most satisfaction
of anything else you can do.
It's that last question.
Oh, you got a sister here. Yes.
Okay.
Yeah. Of course.
Thank you for giving me the chance to
ask the last question. Of course. And thank
you for talking. So from your talking, the
the tolerate
others is a form of self discipline.
If you can tolerate others, you can also
resolve conflicts
to a quick extent.
So for example,
you have someone in distress, but when you
are in need, they remain indifferent.
You still choose to help them, but internally,
you despise them. So your actions are drawn
by your inner beliefs.
From this perspective, I think, religion can help
other, oneself go and also help others. So,
however,
my question is, if you continuously
practice, tolerance and consistently
receive,
latching feedbacks,
We just did consider tournaments as a good
way to invite people.
So, specifically,
as a lovely thing,
I greatly appreciate the core teachings of Islam,
especially,
compassion.
As you said, love is a powerful allergy,
and its willingness is most evident in situations
involving
life and death. However,
in our energy life, I believe, tolerance is
more about educating oneself.
For those who lack empathy,
it might become enabling environment. So I want
to ask you, what do you think about
this question? Thank you. Yeah. No. Thank you.
I think, it was, very very good points
you made there, actually, and
you're absolutely right. I think at 1 point
when you were when you were posing the
question, you asked about at what point does
tolerance become too much? Sometimes you can be
very tolerant to somebody but then they're not
tolerant back.
And tolerance
there's a there's a beautiful hadith of the
prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam mentioned
That aid your brother whether they are oppressed
or they are the oppressor.
And they said how the companions said how
do you aid your brother if he is
the oppressor?
So the prophet Mohammed said
you stop him from the oppression.
So sometimes
the best way to be tolerant against with
someone is to stop him from being oppressive.
It's not all the time you're going to
be tolerant. If someone's a thief or is
a murderer or something like that, justice is
a prerequisite
for tolerance and for compassion and for anything
else.
So sometimes you have to stop somebody if
they're harming you. You can be nice to
them and if they're harming you, you must
stop them from harming you because no 1
should harm you like that, you see.
The way you have to do it is
you have to respond in the energy that
they give you. I think if you negative
energy negative energy negative energy then maybe you
give them negative energy too because that way
they can stop. But if there's someone like
your mother or your father or your sister
or your brother then you have more tolerance
because these are important relationships you want to
preserve.
If it is your spouse or your child
or your auntie or your whatever
And also in Islam there's ideas of seniority.
So for example, your father has more right
upon you than your friend.
And so if you respect
those aspects
then you will be able to have a
fruitful life. But, of course, if someone is
giving you a hard time, a stranger or
something like that, Islam doesn't say turn the
other cheek. This is a Christian pre precept.
In the in the bible it says if
someone slaps you on Monjee
then give them the other 1, let them
slap you there as well. I have yet
to meet a Christian,
okay,
who
has told me please give me,
let me slap you.
I mean, I would like actually, I've never
met 1. I I've never met 1. 1
Christian in my life who said okay let
can let me can I slap?
I want to slap. They say please slap.
I've never seen.
The Quran says
and this is an interesting verse
That the recompense of a sin is a
sin like it. Meaning, if someone hits you,
you could hit them in the same way
as they hit you.
If they hit you in 1 way then
you can hit them in the same way
as they hit you
but it is better
from
an for the 1 who is forgiving or
pardoning then Allah will reward him.
Allah will reward him. Yes. If they are
if you forgive his reward, okay, you slap
me. I'm not gonna give you the other
cheek. Why should I give you? That means
I'm increasing you to be crazy. Then you're
gonna slap somebody else. You're gonna be a
bully. Be a narcissist. I'm encouraging narcissism
by letting you slap the other 1. I
mean, you're making normalizing bad behavior.
I would not do this
and so what I mean is
the way to do it is if someone
hits you, hit them with exactly the amount,
but it's better forgive them. And of course,
if they're close family members,
then
you can be more tolerant towards them as
well. I
think with that, we will conclude.
Thank you very much.
Thank you,
for
answering question from the audience.
We truly appreciate your time and efforts
Thank you,
Thank you, my girl.
You're nice.
Now I can see. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.