Taking Back our Narrative

Without further ado, I'm going to introduce

the Fine, fine.

Fine is the founder and CEO of Vayner, as well as the lead instructor for a number of Vayner courses including fundamentals of classic Arabic and divine speech. His first exposure to Arabic study was in Riyadh Saudi, where he completed his elementary education and continued Arabic grammar study in Pakistan, where he received received a scholarship for ranking among the top scores in the national Arabic studies board examinations in 1993. But it's serious training in Arabic and began in the United States in 1999. Thunder doctor, I'm just semi founder and former principal of God and college Faisalabad, Pakistan

Ah, darn it, yeah. faizabad proxxon, who happened to be touring the US for intensive lectures in subsea Arabic and Arabic studies under Dr. Norman developed a keen methodological understanding of Arabic grammar. He further benefited from the semi by in turn internalizing his unique teaching methods and later translating his work into English for the benefit of his own students. nomen served as Professor of Arabic at Nassau Community College until oh six and is taught Modern Standard and classic Arabic at various venues for nearly seven years, with over 10,000 students, students nationwide. Currently, he has dedicated himself to a seven year long project of conducting a

linguistics and literary focus with an active series series in English. Without further ado, Family Fun

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as pumped as I am to hear that

I'm also very grateful that they're married my job and my thoughts clear.

When we talk about taking our narrative back,

I think we have to divide the conversation in two parts.

The conversation has to be taken back from forces outside of ourselves and also forces within ourselves.

And so when we talk about the forces outside of ourselves that are trying to hijack this narrative, the only thing I'd like to add is a reminder.

It's not something new.

All messengers of Allah alayhi wa Salatu was Salam are faced with a hijacking of their narrative.

They were portrayed with something they weren't

whether that portrayals started with character assassination,

they were accused of having agendas other than their actual agenda.

Or it was merely a point of ridicule, how could you follow something so, you know, so not not not even close to the truth? Whether it was words like magic, or sorcery, whether it was be they were accused of being liars, all of this was what it was essentially an attempt to hijack narratives. One of the greatest examples of that that are repeated in the Quran is the discourse between phenomenon Lana, hula and Musashi Salaam as repeated over and over again.

And I want to share with you a couple of really remarkable places in regards to that before I talk about the challenge within the oma itself.

Although in her danila Satriani

the narrative given by the mother the leaders of Iran, the Chiefs have their own and in his ministry, the unanimous press release was these two are nothing but magicians. What am I talking about? lose these two

positions

But he didn't stop there. He said, don't be impressed by their tricks. This is just magic, no big deal. But he doesn't stop there. And I'll look at what they go go further to say, you need any annual free jar boom. When

we say free Hema, they intend to get you kicked out of your land by means of their magic. There we go, going around to the population and telling them not only are these guys magicians, so don't be impressed. There's nothing special. On top of that, if you do listen to them, watch out their real agenda is to get this land away from you, they'll get you kicked out of your land, these people are a threat to Homeland Security

is what they are,

you know. And so in here, I want to just ask you to ponder for a moment, this is the same sort of one who in other places in the Quran, he says, and he said he

don't I alone exclusively owned the dominion of Egypt will have an outage, even dusty. And these rivers flow beneath my feet. He used to speak of the ownership of Egypt and his kingdom above it for himself exclusively. But when he saw that Musa alayhis, salaam and his messages, gaining power, and people are actually starting to listen, he couldn't tell people don't listen to him, because he will take away my land. He had to change the narrative and say, No, no, no, he's not a threat to me, he's a threat to your land is your land.

We're all in this together. They weren't in this together before.

But now that he sees this shift of power happening by nothing else, but the words Amazon is the words that Allah has given him, the consistency and the constancy that he has, if you want to stay steady in the Quran responds to propaganda, just study how Musa alayhis salaam talks to Pharaoh and just study that carefully. You'll find amazing things

for omoto, this way, and that way, in that way, and that we didn't you commit this crime? Didn't you do that? Didn't we raise you here? What kind of trader are you?

He goes this way. And that went the other way. And phenomenal. Financial is everything you can but musante, some stays on point. He doesn't budge. He doesn't move from his position.

But I hear I want to tell you something else about this narrative. And I think it will sound familiar to you as it does to me. When he's a threat to your land, he'll get you kicked out of your land. So if you really love your land, and if it's a part of you, it's part of your identities to love the land that you belong to, and you have any sense of patriotism, then part of your patriotism will be to hate this message. You can't love this message. You can't even be attracted or consider this message, because that would be being a traitor to your own country. So the narrative is made that either you love your country, you love your people, you love your tribe, you love Mecca, you

love your fellow myth, family members of Quraysh you love your beloved your your glorious history and past or you consider Islam. Because the two cannot go together in this hijacked narrative. This one or the other. It's painted that way. To this day, I have friends I have friends that recently became Muslim, you know what they're told by their families? How could you be a traitor to America? How could you do that? What kind of an American Are you became, listen, the religion of the enemy. See what see what a What an amazing job they've done. You got to commend them, somehow the law that the two things have been made polar opposites. And people are really truly convinced of this

narrative. And sometimes we are too. And I don't I don't actually consider Muslims innocent in this discussion. I think our ignorance has a lot to do with it. I know many Muslims when they talk about non Muslims, they say I met an American friend today.

What does that mean? That an American friend what they mean by that is a castle.

Are you kidding me?

Seriously, you know, somehow the law that we in our minds also these two things have become synonymous. We have to first look deep into ourselves and see how big a victim we have become of this propaganda. But the the discussion of Iran and the shifts is not done. I want to finish the show with you. You know what else they said they might do? why you shouldn't consider this message. Well, yeah, I have a deeper Riccati comb and Muslim amazing words in the Koran.

If you listen to these guys, they will get rid of the hub by an Arabic to go but when it comes with the preposition of buy, it needs to remove, they will remove, they will erase what will they erase, but he catacomb your lifestyle. You don't believe in Arabic is a path but for the feminine form is a path that you live life in lifestyle. It's the figure to form but he but he can muster your exemplary lifestyle. I want to explain the word Muslim to you. So you appreciate what is being said here. The word Muslim is the feminine form of uncertain uncertain is the best possible example you can give. What they are saying is our lifestyle is so awesome. Everybody else when they talk about

the best possible kind of life they give our example. And these two prophets, these messengers of yours that

Gotta get rid of your perfect lifestyle that everybody else loves. The whole world wants to be like us. And these people want to get rid of it. We're habitually Muslim.

Does that sound familiar? Oh, hello. There's nothing new. That's the first point I wanted to make that this. This this propaganda war is not new, and ally did not leave us without guidance. He did not leave us without instruction, without his wisdom in how to deal with this propaganda, and how to take the path of Musa alayhis salaam as our messenger himself did. So.

That's the first thing I wanted to share with you.

Quickly The second thing that I wanted to share with you

is what do you do? On the one hand, you have a multi billion dollar propaganda machine, which does something in a very synchronized fashion, if you notice some of the buzz words that are used. They're used across channels and across media outlets and across newspapers that even belong to and Jon Stewart does a good job of making fun of that right. But there's something peculiar about that that all these different media outlets apparently independent of each other are saying the exact same thing I want to share with you a little bit of the next ayah on a Jimmy Okay, that

surrounds us to his ministers. He says, unify your plot edgemere Qaeda, unify your plot be synced,

be synchronized in your plot in your planning. And then he says so much to soften, then come at them in rows upon rows. Come at the end come against musante cinnamon rolls be unified in your attack sumac to soften, well cut a flat nominee stand up

and know for sure the only one who will succeed today is the one who is able to show his superiority. In other words, your job is not to prove how great you are. Your job is to prove how terrible they are. That's all you have to worry about. You just have to demonize them. You don't even have to show people how good you are. I was just interestingly enough, what an interesting weekend I had, I was just in Atlanta, and there's an eradicating Islamophobia conference going on there. And you guys are hanging out in Sha 200. Tomorrow with the magazine? Correct. I was just hanging out with him today. yesterday. One of the most brilliant things he said, he said all this

attention on the Muslim Boogey Man was apparently also your dentist.

Also the guy that you know, works at the gas station next door or whatever, but he's like this terribly scary entity. Why all this attention on him because you have to take attention from other things. Jobs are shipping overseas, you know, and there's enough money in government to put, you know, scanners that apparently aren't even impressive to the Israeli airports.

We have money for that. Because there are some special interest groups that are that are making clear bucks on it. It's not even like hidden news. This is like national news at this point, that there are, you know, private interests involved. And their hand is deeply tied.

You know, attention has to be taken away from that. So somebody has to be escaped good, where the easy target. We really are. But this is the external. I'm going to quickly talk about the internal challenge. And I, you know, I had a lot of things to share with you guys. But I know I missed my flight and all that stuff. So I'm going to give you the 10 minute version of the four hour thing I was going to do. So I'm going to pick and choose obviously. But the thing I want to talk about the most especially because this is an MSA crowd, you guys are young, you have your lives ahead of you. You have also your understandings of Islam to mature and ferment, you know, you're in the process of

developing your understanding yourselves. And you're being exposed to many different speakers, writers books, you know, blogs, YouTube videos, whatever you you know, whatever you have. So you're still developing your thoughts and understandings. And in this time, it is very important that I mentioned that you need to become savvy, and you need you need not be naive.

You need to have an open mind, and you need to understand when a game is being played with you. Because it is I see too many youths today the games are being played with and they don't even know it.

What I'm talking about is the exact propaganda that is Islam is being painted with by certain fringe media outlets. that exact narrative is being duplicated by certain Muslims that are calling for their definition of jihad to be the law. And they're writing blogs and articles and papers. And they are in a hadith quoted one after another a string of Biafra hobbies, and at the end of which a call is being made to impressionable stupid teenage Muslim kids.

And many of you are victim to it. Many of you are victim to it. And if you're not going to do something by actions and your thoughts you've already been sold.

Watch out for this, this new propaganda

because what this is, I'll break it down very basic as basically as I can for you. You know, in genuine studies, whether it's Islamic studies or any other studies in genuine studies, you never make your conclusion first. What do you do first in genuine studies, you do research you study

You study the evidences you study you embark upon a quest of finding all the facts you can and eventually you make your conclusion. Your conclusion never comes first. Is it possible however, let's just talk about the Quran? Is it possible that I make a conclusion? I make a conclusion, I want to justify the killing of innocence, I want to I already have that conclusion, is it possible I can take a string of ions, a string of ahaadeeth, put them all together and make it sound like by the time you're done reading all of this, my conclusion makes perfect sense is impossible. It is. And it's happening.

This is a disingenuous approach to Islamic Studies. But someone who doesn't know any Arabic hasn't ever sat with our island doesn't know the first thing about the schooling, or the derivation of principles doesn't understand the intricacies involved in deriving shediac principles, knows, knows knows none of those things, just knows that this guy quoted a lot of the lead man, he quoted a lot iaat. And at the end of it, he said, This is what we got to do. So obviously, he knows what he's talking about.

If that's the simplistic view of Islam, you take, then you are heading down a dangerous path. And so the bit of advice, I know, I'm just going to be a long discussion. But the bit of advice I have for all of you, is that you have to make a distinction between those who are seeking knowledge still, and those who are knowledgeable, more than you, relatively speaking and those who are scholars. I'm not a scholar. I really am not, I get I get deeply offended when people call me shake. I have eight people call me shake today. No, man, stop it.

But it's become a relative term everybody shift nowadays, right. So, but understand there's a difference between people that are that are somewhat knowledgeable that may may know a little more than you do. And actual scholars, actual research scholars, you know, and we have to show respect to that, nowadays that the standards of Islamic studies have dropped so much that we are willing to call pretty much anybody a scholar,

pretty much, and even the institution I am, I'm gonna just say something bold, I just have to say what I feel what I'm convinced of the academic standards of many Islamic institutions in the Muslim world that are supposedly producing scholars have dropped dramatically. They have dropped dramatically. I've met Allah, for example, from Egypt, or from India that are like in the 80s and 90s. And when you ask them about the same madrasa they graduated from, what do you think about it nowadays, this is what we didn't like, before we got to the other side of the Graduate now.

You know, the standards have dropped, I met an alum from India, in Ohio, in Dayton, Ohio. You know, I didn't know he's early, we just after the seminar just starts talking to me, he's quoting this a machete, the linguistic, you know, it's a seed of Quran he's quoting it, but from memory, just talking to me, you know, once you go to school, that's incredible. He knows like 1000s of lines of jaggedy poetry by heart, this Indian scholar, right. And he's just chillin, he lives with his grandkids. You know, just he's not any mom or not, they just guys, you know, hanging out uncle. They call him uncle.

You know? And he says, Yeah, what we did what we did in the first year, now they do in the ninth year.

They do in the ninth year, the standards have dropped. The standards of what is considered a scholar in many institutions is dropped. And in some institutions, it's scary. Well, it it is scary. I have met people from institutions that have graduated, that are calling touting themselves as a mom and chef and scholar and are saying all kinds of ridiculous things. But when you sit them down with an eye of the front and you say, Can you explain this grammar to me, please? Now how do you get the translation of this?

When we become shallow in our study of our own team, when our own Dean's studies, and are those who are supposedly our leaders, their studies themselves are shallow, they're nothing more than empty rhetoric, then we're all in a heap of trouble. All of you need to be pursuing knowledge of Islam, but know what the limits of that knowledge are. Know that you don't know everything. Know that. Actually, the Illuminati there's someone above someone who has more knowledge above, you know, somebody on the way here, I was asked about, you know, whether we can combine motivation.

I'm not gonna answer your question. I'm not

gonna do my limits.

Young people have to know their limits. When you're young you think you know, everything. I was there, too. I've been there. Believe me, thank God, those videos are not on YouTube.

Right. So you know that that's a really strong bit of advice I have for you that our our narrative is right now being hijacked by trolls underneath YouTube videos, and blogger comments on you know, on blogs and things, and there are a handful of crazies that are bullying all the rest of us and being quiet because they paint us as sellouts or this or that or the other. But understand if we're true to our Deen and we explain and understand and teach this book the way it's supposed to be taught. There is nothing to be ashamed of. There is no controversy. There's nothing, there's nothing that we need to hide. And so here's my last spiel to all of you

as negative as the environment.

is the messenger Ali Sato Salaam you have to believe you have to believe what he had to face was worse.

As toughest times are what he had to go through was worse and a lie in this ayah that I'm sharing with you alaric xojo talks about the people of the boat, not accepting. He talks about the Mashallah goon Cobra Lucia kina mata rahula he

is really big on the people of shake, they can accept what you're calling to. It's very hard on them. You know, if somebody else says it's hard on them, they're not going to accept I'll say, you know what, I'll still try a lot himself as really hard on like an accent to Buddha Allah Krishna kita masa bromelain teleconnection Allahu

Allah called Sam, whoever he wants, you can try but in the end, who's gonna bring them to Allah, He Himself, He will guide whoever he wants, we are the ILA human you need.

And so this, these challenges are laid out. And then those are external challenges, right that people have the books and we should call external challenges in the life of the processor, the next Iowa Moto,

Moto E Unbeknown, they didn't fall into disagreement, until after knowledge came out of arrogance among themselves out of ego clashes among themselves, people of knowledge will have fights within this is an external problem or an internal problem.

This is an internal problem, people have knowledge fighting each other, we see that and do much of it or no, we see that problem too. And after listing all of these problems, a lot closes messenger, just one simple. And as a result of all of this, and therefore we say and therefore at the end of our speeches, that's the Arabic word.

And therefore in conclusion for Lisa, Annika, in response to all of that for stuck in

what you know, for the Delica federal was talking about with Mr. And in response to all of that you keep on inviting

and you stay firm, like you've been told, was stuck in come out with Mr. You remain where you are, like you've been told, what are the

and don't follow into their, their their main desires. We know what the iron you know, you've heard that before, right? Or this, this kind of expression from the Quran. Don't follow their desires, right? I need you to understand what it means here. It means don't get weak in your call and don't become loose in your commitment. Because if you do that is their desire. You stop making your Darla, you stop standing up for what is truth in your speech and in your character. That is exactly what the desire of theirs is. When I get to be

woken up by Angela lumen Kitab in and say openly and clearly I have come to believe in what Allah has sent down from from the book. But we'll move to the added avena calm and I have been commanded to do justice between you. What I'm calling for is justice. Nothing else. Then I'm aluna Kumar, Maluku. We have our deeds, they speak for themselves. What are Kumamoto command, you have yours and they speak for themselves? Just allow

me to understand what that means. People don't understand the IO tsutenkaku lacantina. camellia Dean. You know what D means? Was the mean anybody? No.

It's more than that. kimata Dino to dine in classical Arabic. The means what you get.

You're gonna get what you have coming to you. I'm going to get what I have coming to me. That's part of the meaning of

what you're up to. Because that's what I was doing right? You're afraid you're gonna get something because of that. And I'm refusing to worship that gopher, so I'm gonna get something because of what I'm doing. That's part of the deen.

Here he says. Mr. Luna, welcome. Monaco, Lockwood, jetavana. No brainer. There is no room for there's there's no need to make a case you against me and me against you. You know what, let's just do what we're doing. Now we'll just have been unavailable. And the purpose of that is don't get tangled into unnecessary debates will lie. There they come. You know, there are certain elements there. There's a great by the way, I have to be honest, there's a great majority of the people in this country that are genuinely just not aware of what Islam is. And a huge population among them genuinely curious about what Islam is to good people. You're curious about what Islam is. But we

haven't gone to the public library and done a seminar on the Quran. How about before you decide to burn it once you learn it? Right? We haven't done that. You know, we didn't do our job.

So we you know, we have to be honest about that. You know, and there are people who hate us, that's fine, and they're gonna hate us no matter what we do. The messenger was the nicest guy someone Mahoney said he had no reason to hate him you got really got no reason to hate him. You have to be really despicable to hate the Messenger of Allah Islam. So it's not like just because we're nice, they're gonna like us, that's not gonna happen. There are some people that are gonna hate us no matter what. But there's a significant population of the people in this country that are genuinely good. And we haven't done our job reaching out to them. Now for just a minimum

Lonely edge Margarita, Wally musty, Allah will cause union between us it's almost a dying desire, even though it's a proclamation to eventually a level cause union judgment day all people will be gathered, but also means hopefully those of you that are good, maybe it may be union between us, we must lead and then we have to return anyway. And only to him. It's an open call, it is an open call, I tell you, the Muslim youth in this country, and inshallah Allah, you guys are pioneers, you don't know the kind of weight that's on your shoulders. And one of the major, major causes of our decline intellectually, spiritually, you know, and, and a major cause of us not even being aware of our

narrative is the root cause, I would say, is our distance from a less book, we're distant from a less book, we don't know what this book has to say. We're not educated in it. When people quote the IR, we don't know the IR before they know it. We don't know what pseudo that came from. We don't know what its actual context was. We don't know how we understand it before we can say no, no, there misquoting it, we don't even know it ourselves. We have to have a campaign of Quran education for ourselves. And that would give birth to a Quran education for the masses of people. It would do that, you know. So instead of the entire narrative around this book being this is a book that makes

people kill others, and it's craziness and all of that great stuff. You know, instead of that we can call people to you know what, this is a marvel of literature. This is one beautiful book. Here's a seminar and how beautiful the 30 hires open to the public. Has you emulator pancakes.

I say pancakes because I just moved to Texas, it's a big thing.

Right, so but this is what we have to I know you. I'm going to stop right now. So I'm almost done, almost done.

Put on education. take it very seriously. Take it, you know, and I'm very appreciative of efforts like Amanda Chocolat, who started a series on starting from bokhara. I think he spent quite a few sessions on,

on the bus by itself, I hope you take advantage of that our podcasts are there. Hopefully, there are some benefits on our website and shout outs and other other amounts of HIV weapons and quite a bit of work on tissues. If you're not the type to read, and it helps you sleep, then at least listen, at least listen, become more aware of what this book has to say. You have to do that you have a role to play. And your awareness of this book will lie it will open your eyes. This book is not like any other religion in any other religion, you can say, Oh, you're so lost in the religion, you don't know what's going on in the world around you not for on, if you truly study for on, it makes you see

the world for what it really is, it opens your eyes, it doesn't close them, you know, at all, you know Mahela silahkan, and our mate woman at avani. The messenger was told, this is my hobbies and meeting this is my path. I call two people with eyes open either with either the spirit in with eyes open, I call people with full knowledge, full understanding. We have to be people that understand the times in which we live, we need to understand this book of allows that wisdom as best we possibly can. And you have to start now all of you and shout out to Allah, as this massive responsibility rests on your shoulders, May Allah give us the ability to carry this message as it

should be carried in our speech in our character in our actions. May Allah make us of those who even if we don't open our mouth, just because of how we kept ourselves how we behaved at this conference, and how we took care of the trash, and how we left in orderly fashion when it was done, and how we greeted non Muslims and we didn't give them dirty looks. And when the security in the campus was walking around, we stopped over and said thank you for what you're doing. Just because of that they'll know there's something about Muslims is different than we should carry ourselves differently. You know, the way we act the way we behave, it should be different. And just because

you're angry at what's happening in the world, don't show that anger to your fellow neighbor. They're not policymakers, that's just a guy, man. It's just, it's just a dude goes next door. He's No, he's not in charge of foreign policy. Okay, so, you know, you can be good to your neighbors, actually, you're not you have to be. That's part of our narrative. If we were truly good to our neighbors, there was no, there's no room for that our neighbor to watch, watch CNN all day wouldn't hate us. Like I clean my snow. I'm not gonna hate that guy. I didn't even ask him.

You know.

And that's the kind of people we have to become. I pray that we're able to take this advice to heart and really that you are a source of pride for generations to come. I really pray that, that your parents, their daughters are fulfilled, that you are a source of light in the midst of all this darkness. And I pray that Allah will protect you from vanity from not having not finding a higher purpose in life from becoming people that whose only greatest purpose in life is to finish a video game or to you know, to keep up with certain fashions or update your

profile. Right? That you your life means more than these things, that you're able to find that and commit yourselves to that. And I pray that Allah makes us that people have balanced martial law. He welcomes that. I'm

sorry.

The

first thing is I have decided a couple of years back that I'm just not going to MSA programs because obviously just to do anything, but you've seen my opinion,

organization and consistency and just hard work I saw here, it's, it's showing myself up. So I'm very happy to see that it's revived my spirit and my aspirations for what Msh can do.

That's one. The second thing.

This is basically an announcement for those of you who are considering or thinking about Arabic studies seriously, that you give us some consideration. The program is called the dream program, but you know.com slash dream va YYIMH is the only program of its kind in the country at this point. It's a 10 month, full time Arabic intensive program. And we're trying to make this an alternative to Arabic studies abroad. that's becoming increasingly difficult hamdulillah we started this year, we have a few people from LA also actually in our program. This year, we have 60 students altogether. And they are now in their fourth month and have to support at this juncture. What we're doing right

now is they're reading Arabic texts without a sheet and they're not spoken to in English at this point on campus. So they've reached that level of sophistication at this point, but they have six more months to go. So those of you that are curious about that would like to know more registrations for next year. The program starts in September and runs until the summer, so you skip out two semesters, but it's worth about 16 credits in college. So if you don't lose it entirely, those of you who would like to know more, I'll stick around a little bit in Sharla but you can watch a video about our campus. We basically set up a mini college, our brothers and sisters, those who would like

to watch a video by it, it will be shown here tomorrow I spoke to the organizers inshallah. So look for that tomorrow inshallah. Tada. Again, I'll stick around for any questions. If you have any