Mustafa Khattab – Talk the Talk 1
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Bluff or a public speech. Okay?
So someone might ask, why am I coming
to this, lecture? Okay. What why do I
need to learn about public speak?
Okay.
If you're giving a presentation at school, you'll
need how to to learn how to deal
with people and how to talk to people
and you get your message through how to
communicate with people.
If you, for example,
are doing your masters or PhD, you need
to to learn how to communicate with your
professors
and how to express yourself
so you can pass the, the, the face
of your dissertation or your thesis.
Also, sometimes, in some of the, schools in
Almas,
they have a big number of Muslim students,
so sometimes they get one of them to
give the for.
Okay? So they also need some training.
Also,
in some cases, like in the Somali community,
for example, before the, the marriage, someone from
the man's family will stand up and give
a talk. He will basically say, you guys
are good people and I'm proposing to your
daughter. And then somebody from the lady's family
will stand up and give a talk. So
k? And they will, respond to the proposal
by acceptance. But they usually speak for about
5 to 10 minutes and I've seen,
Yali, some Fidbus like this before.
So in any case, you will need to
learn how to face the audiences.
Why?
The thing is most of the time because
when we talk to people 1 on 1,
we have no problem but when you stand
up in front of, an audience to give
a talk.
And now you see, if if you have
a 1,000 people in front of you,
now you
have 2,000
eyes looking at you and 2,000 ears are
listening to you. So you get this feeling
that,
oh, I might make a mistake. So
by thinking about making mistakes before you speak,
you will do a lot of mistakes.
Okay. So when you talk to people,
talk to them in a friendly way, just
like you're talking to your friends. Okay? You're
not afraid of them because nobody's afraid of
their friends.
Okay. So talk to them
and
express yourself
in a friendly way. So today, Michelle, I'm
gonna give you some, tips on how to
give
a good, speech.
As I said, there are different reasons why
someone someone would stand up and talk in
front of a group of people.
It could be a lecture, representation,
or a marriage, or a and so on
and so forth.
As I said before,
before you're able to do something and succeed
at succeed at doing something, you have to
have 2 things. You have to have the
ability to do it and you have to
have the desire to do it.
Without the ability
or without the desire, you will never be
able to succeed at anything.
Always hoped to play basketball. Now, just look
at me. Okay.
Desire to to play basketball, but if if
you have a second visit, I'm a short
guy. Okay? I couldn't
do it. Right? So I have the desire,
but I don't have the ability. I don't
have the physical ability. So I couldn't
don't have the physical ability. So I couldn't
succeed.
But I made a career of, soccer. Okay?
I'm a good soccer player. Okay? This is
what my enemies say.
And those who play with, Rashid Rashid Soccer
Club, they know rule number 1, if you
play with the shim, you win. And Usafa
knows. If you play with the shim, you
win. So this is rule number 1. Rule
number 2, if you play against the shim,
you lose. So both of them are basically
the same thing.
So
I have the desire but I don't have
the ability. Number 2, if you have the
ability but no desire, you know, you will
never succeed.
Back home,
a lot of students, they graduate
from high school with
high marks a's in math and science.
So of course, their families always push them
to go to the, medicine school or engineering
school. And they don't like to go there
because they want to study literature. They want
to study poetry. They want to study cooking.
Something completely different.
If their family pushes them to join medicine
or engineering,
although they have the scientific ability,
the math and science and all that stuff,
but they don't have the desire to to
join that department.
They always fail. And I've seen a lot
of examples.
Some of my friends in Egypt, they were
the, like, the top students in the whole
country. I'm not talking about the class.
Medicine and they failed because they wanted to
do something else.
Okay. So you have to have the ability
and the desire.
He
was known
for yeah. And he didn't like to give
public speeches.
He used to be shy in front of
me.
So the first time he became a and
he became a Khalifa, that was not a
big success. Okay.
He didn't speak for too long. He just
said the basics and he couldn't continue. So
he couldn't, you know
so he basically
public speaking was not one of his top,
you know, things that he wanted to do.
Okay. Maybe he had the desire, but who
knows?
Mohammed, that is superior superior the law and
who the first football he gave when he
became the,
the mayor or the governor in CUFA,
and I love, was a disaster.
Okay. He basically,
he prepared a nice photo.
So when he stood up to give the
talk, he didn't remember anything.
So what he basically said, he said,
I was rehearsing something nice for you today,
but I basically don't remember your thing. But
you need a governor who is a doer.
You don't need a governor who is a
token.
You need someone who works, not someone who
talks.
And next time, inshallah and I see you,
I will give you a good speech.
So this is all he said. He didn't
remember anything.
Why are we all with alarm?
Sometimes
And some people, they have to be the
talk in front of people and,
they're terrified.
They are afraid to speak to people because
they are afraid to make a mistake. And
I remember one time,
I used to work as,
supervisor in on channel in Egypt. It's it's
called a fashion channel.
So this brother, Mashallah, is half an
a ham, tashweed, and qilat, and everything.
In front of the camera and record. No
problem. And he was happy.
The night before
he was scheduled to decide Quran and appear
before the audience,
he called me and he said, I'm I'm
terrified. I can't come. Please cancel.
I remember talking to him over the phone
for about half an hour, and I said,
do you know this actor?
So and so? Yes. I know.
Do you know this ballet dancer? Yes.
Do you know that politician? Yes.
And I taught them all of them why
all the time. And whenever they stand on
the stage to speak or dance
or sing in front of people, they never
blink, but they are because they they have
this courage.
Although
they have shaitan behind them,
supporting them. Now, you have Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala behind you, and you're saying the truth.
You are saying Quran,
and listen to music and movies and all
that stuff. So at the end, he was
motivated, Alhamdulillah, and he came on time, and
he did an excellent job. So
I tried basically to motivate him to, to
speak.
Of course, when you talk to somebody,
you have to master
the language,
they understand.
Okay. So for example, if I'm talking to
you in Arabic or English, this is a
language that I know.
But if I speak to you in Somali,
that would be a disaster.
I remember many years back, at the last
time, we received the ambassador of China,
in Cairo. And he came and he started
to give us a talk for about 3
hours about the relations
the relationship between Egypt and China.
And he's starting to talk about 5000 years
of history, and he was talking in Arabic.
All the grammar was wrong,
and all the vocabulary was wrong.
I didn't know what the guy was
Okay? So that was a disaster.
So you have to master the language, yeah,
so you can communicate the message to the
people.
Also,
presentability.
You have to look good when you talk
to people. Okay? The looks are important. You
can't just go to people and you smell
like onions and garlic and you smell like
terrible
and you expect people
Okay.
The projector is about to explode.
This is what it says. Okay.
So
they have this story back in,
in Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia.
Yes. They have this story in Ethiopia,
Captured.
Okay. There was this
scholar, Adam.
He was coming from work. He was doing
he was taking care of something. And,
he remembered he had a dinner invitation at
the Palace of Richmond.
So he was coming from the farm. He
was a skeleton. He was a farmer. Okay?
So he decided to go to the palace
to, for the dinner invitation.
He was entering the palace and they saw
the guards. They saw him in the door.
So they said, where do you think you're
going with with this kind of clothes? He
said, but I'm I'm the court. I'm this
this scholar. You don't know me? They said,
no. No. No.
So he went home. He put his massive
clothes and I buy everything and the sword
and the turban and everything, and he came
back. And of course, when they saw him,
He started to kiss his hands, please go
inside and everything finished it in the first
line.
Not me.
K?
It's a good thing to remember.
Fake humility.
Fake humility when you basically stand in front
of an audience like this and you start
to tell them you're trying to be humble.
You know, guys,
I'm not a despond to speak about this
topic, you know.
I'm not a scholar.
I was fighting to, I was trying to
to join a bus and I go to
Egypt. My my mother died and my father
went to jail, you know. So
I'm not a scholar. I'm an idiot basically.
You can't say this to how can they
trust you if you say something like this?
There is nothing wrong with being humble,
but don't make an idiot of idiot of
yourself. Okay? Okay. If you studied something, if
you know something, Alhamdulillah. But don't try to
be extremely humble
or you will have more credibility in front
of the people. If you're not qualified to
speak about something, you are not qualified. Tell
us, you don't speak. But if you are
qualified, tell us, Forget about fake humility.
The wisdom is the most important thing.
Okay?
If you have 30% knowledge,
70%
eikma knowledge, wisdom, then yours come.
If you have 95%
knowledge
and 5% IGMA,
you are basically an idiot.
Okay.
There are so many people here in the
west.
They have PhDs in Islamic studies. Okay. At
Harvard and Yale and Berlin, all these places,
and they are
atheist.
I know some people,
from my country Egypt,
they are Christian, non Muslim, and they know
the whole Quran by heart. They studied it
when they're young, so they memorized, and there
are some examples back then. So your knowledge
of the Quran and your knowledge in Islam
didn't benefit you in any way. Okay?
So reading a book does not make you
a scholar. It makes you another copy of
the book. Hikma is the most important thing
in the world.
And I said, we get Hikma
because not everyone in this dunya, in this
world has a Hikma.
So they said one of the ways to
get hikmah is to follow the sunnah of
prophet Sasa. Because we said before in the
book, but every time the word hikmah is
mentioned wisdom is mentioned in the Quran,
it means one thing.
The sunnah of the prophet Sasa.
For example,
and remember
what is decided in your house. The first
is talking to the the household of the
prophet
from the book and the wisdom. So in
the books of the tafasir,
interpretation of the Quran, they say the book
is the Quran, the taykma, and the wisdom
is the sunnah of the prophet
In the same way, another verse says that
Allah has
bestowed a favor on the believers when he
sent a prophet from among them to teach
them the book,
Quran, and the Hikmah, the Sunn.
So this is what the scholars of the
firsir say. So if you follow the example
of the prophet, if you study a seal
or biography,
is a hadith, you will learn a hikmah.
There was this guy,
2 people there was this is the story
we have back home in Egypt. There was
this guy,
he was standing on the top of a
mountain, and he was about to jump to
kill himself.
You look right to me. You're you're okay.
Okay?
If you know what is in my bag,
I'm gonna give you the biggest orange I
have inside.
So what do I have in this bag?
So the guy said, do you have apples?
So the the mister z basically, he pushed
them off the mountain.
Apple boy. Kicked them
off. So if I'm gonna give you the
biggest orange in the bag, it means it's
full of oranges. Okay? So you don't have
to be a genius to figure this out.
Al Tawatkin,
the Khalifa of the Muslims,
he had a cook or a servant in
his palace.
So the cook fell sick for
the servant. So he visited him in his
house,
and he he saw his little kid, the
the the the son of the cook or
the servant.
So I'm talking to to,
you know,
to joke with him and
so he
said,
now, look at this,
diamond ring I have.
Had a big diamond. And he said, have
you seen anything more precious than this diamond
ring?
The little kid said he was 6, 7
years old. He said,
yes. Your finger is more precious than this
ring.
Okay. He said, this guy is smart. Then
he said,
is your he said, I'm gonna get him
this style.
Is your
house
built
or the palace of the king built the
the palace of Khalifa?
He said, well,
if you are in the palace, then the
palace is better than my father's house. But
if you are in my father's house, then
my father's house is better than your palace.
So he basically gave them the ring. He
was an intelligent guy.
Also, there's this story
of some of the,
Khalifa Omar and Abdul Aziz when he became
the Khalifa, the delegations, they started to come
to pay allegiance and stuff.
So a delegation came from the Bedouins,
Arab.
It was a big delegation, and they have
60 and 70 year old people and stuff,
and they introduced
a 9 year old kid to speak to
represent a delegation.
So the haditha said, what is this? A
kid to speak in front of the haditha?
So he said, why don't you guys find
somebody else older guy? Why is our guy
to speak in front of me?
So the little kid said, listen, Khalifa.
A human being the most important organs in
a human being are his
tongue and heart.
And if it was if
if if if if everything was about age,
then
there are a lot of people, millions among
muslims, who are
older than you and therefore, they are more
qualified to become Khalifa than you.
To practice what you preach. Other otherwise, people
would not listen to you. So if you
give a flip flop
button,
smoking is a terrible thing.
And you tell them, listen, guys, if you
smoke, you are an idiot. Okay?
Smoke.
Nobody will listen to him.
If you tell people pray and die and
you don't pray at all, okay, nobody will
listen to
you. They say that Imam Khunifa at his
time, he was a scholar. Imam Abu Hanifa.
The people came to him and and they
said,
we want you to give a wonderful Fatwa
to encourage people to free their slaves.
He said, okay.
So the first quote by the game, he
spoke about a Hindu Abacha.
He didn't talk about slavery. Okay?
What does a Hindu Abacha have to do
with slavery in English? No.
The next quote by the started to talk
about hash.
Okay?
You did a excellent job, but
too late now. Okay? We have been expecting
you for for a whole month to speak
about slave.
He said, I wanted to motivate people to
speak about freemers slaves, and I didn't
have a slave himself. So what I did
basically, I waited so I put collect some
money. I bought a slave and I freed
him.
Now I can talk to people about freeing
slaves.
But if I give them the talk,
and I never free free the slave before,
they will say, okay. What do you know
about slaves?
You don't have slaves.
Also,
knowledge is a very important thing. I said
knowledge within.
Okay?
And
you have to have knowledge of the topic
you're talking about, and you have to have.
And we'll talk about in a minute.
And I remember I gave this example a
long time ago.
In a Muslim country in Southeast Asia,
they didn't have any man basically. But there
was this guy named Moelai from the Quran,
go alloha and the fat and stuff.
Okay. So they got this guy off the
street because he knew some surahs from the
Quran and he became the imam in the
bush because he is the best one in
the village. It's a remote village and most
people are not educated.
So basically, he started to lead salah and
after some time he started to give talks,
khutbahs in front of everyone.
Then it was Raheem Al Khattaim, so he
was giving them a talk and he basically
was using a book of
to read and explain to them.
So he was reading from a book.
A book by itself is not enough. Allah
never sends a book
without a prophet. Right?
A book never came by itself. It has
to come with a prophet to explain.
Line
in
the book. He was talking about. So he
says, in Arabic, this is true. It is
recommended recommended to have for the.
So what he understood basically is you have
to have
to
for the for the for the animal. So
what he understood basically is you have to
make for the animal before you kill it.
So he told him you have to watch
the feet and the mouth and the nose
and the feet of the animal.
Of course, what is understood from this ruling
in 5th that the person himself who offers
the animal it is recommended to have a
law, but if you don't understand it, it's
not a big deal. Okay?
So he told him you have to to
wash the animal before you kill it. So
this poor guy, he came from the back
of the masjid, and he was terrified, and
he said, Sheikh,
may Allah forgive me, I'm ignorant. Last year,
I offered an animal, but I didn't know
this golden rule,
and I didn't pick wudu for the animal.
Is it accepted? He said, no. No. No.
No. This is najat.
This is a mute. Can you pray with
that to Udu? I said, no. He said,
can you offer an animal without Udu? Can
you offer a ray without Udu?
Oh,
Oh, same thing. Of course, this is not
true.
Of
course,
when you talk to people, you have to
choose the right time. Okay? So for example,
when I when it is Ramadan time,
why would I talk about the,
polar
bear in my book?
It has nothing to do with the thing.
If you are in the in the age
of
why should I talk about Ramadan?
Two different things. You have to talk about
the topic
relevant to the time and relevant to the
people. So for example, if I talk about,
a group of doctors, I'm supposed to go
to doctors,
at
a hospital to speak to them about the
riots
of a Muslim patient. How to deal with
the Muslim patient? And we we get this
all the time.
So why would I go to them and
and talk about
anything else? Why would I go to them
and talk about tourism in Egypt?
It's not on their business. Okay? This is
not the right time and this is not
the right topic. You have to talk about
something relevant to the people and relevant
to the audience.
And of course, you have to be considerate
of the audience
condition. And for example,
if you are talking to a highly educated
audience, you have to talk to them in
a certain level. If you talk to an
uneducated
audience, you have to talk to them in
a different level. If you speak to children,
if you speak to women, if you speak
to men, you have to
tailor your speech to fit the people.
Also, one of the mistakes, as I said
before, when you talk to people, talk to
them in a way they can understand.
So for example, if I'm giving a talk
to revert Muslims, new Muslims, they just accepted
Islam last night.
So I go to them, my name is
Ijwal al Aqawati. Inshallah tonight, sa'ataka katna moo
for you about Al Aqlaq al Maslato Mustaqeem.
What did they get from this?
Nothing. Nothing. Because I'm talking in Arabic. All
the terminology,
there are still new Muslims. I don't know
what I'm talking about. So you have to
make it simple to them.
So public speaking is a is a gift
from Allah SubhanAllah.
The other day, I was watching Malcolm X.
And this guy,
he was not in high level educated. He
dropped out of school when he was in
the 3rd grade or
something. And he couldn't read. He couldn't write.
And he educated himself in jail. And when
he accepted Islam, you know, he changed completely.
And I was listening to some of the
talks he was giving and how he motivated
people and people almost fainted when they listened
to him. And They were crying sometimes. They
were laughing sometimes. He was an excellent speaker.
He's
may Allah forgive him and give him a
genuine.
Most of the African Americans in the US
are Muslim now because of him.
I saw that his life were best. And
this is a great brother, and I wish
inshallah would be with him in in