A Balanced Approach To Religion
Date:
Channel: Nouman Ali Khan
File Size: 54.48MB
Episode Notes
Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan delivers a brilliant lecture that aims at striking a balance in a world constantly pushing us to life-altering extremes. Difficult as it may be, the Holy Quran not only emphasizes balance in our lives but also provides us a solution. The following ideas and pointers are dealt with in this mesmerizing lecture:
- On the one hand, we have people who have knowledge but no good actions and there are others without knowledge and henceforth, no good deeds.
- When Allah SWT talks about the sky in Surah Ar Rahman which is to illustrate the majesty and lay our focus on one of the best Creation of Allah SWT.
- Allah SWT lays stress on all His creations and emphasizes that all His designs are in balance and in perfect harmony with each other.
Islam wants us to emphasize moderation and balance in all aspects of life, whether it is religion, relationships, ideas, or daily activities. Principled moderation is one of the most important characteristics of a person with good character in Islam. We have created such a dose of imbalance in our lives that it is proving detrimental in our personal domain. We just do excessive of both extremes and hence, land ourselves in a mess that could have been conveniently avoided, had we chosen to stay firm on the path of Islam advocated by Allah SWT – the Path of Moderation and Balance.
Listen intently to this enlightening lecture replete with astonishingly simplified analogies that will surely illuminate your lives in the right direction.
AI Generated Transcript ©
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hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa salatu wa salam O Allah Allah al anbiya wa sallim ala alihi wa sahbihi wa minister in the vicinity
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whatever sobin, Huck whatever solve the sub menu, but I mean.
So I'm interested to know who my childhood friends are because I moved here when I was a teenager.
Curious But anyway,
I'd like to start actually, with a sentiment that I've been feeling since I landed here.
This is the place certainly of my youth, I've been in new I've spent most of my adult life I could still say safely in this city. And I think I can safely say also, I discovered Islam in the city. My Arabic teachers are from the city, my foreign teachers are from the city. I owe basically what whenever allows, the agenda has planned for me in my life, is attributed to this place. So I have a special place in my heart for the city. And of course, some of my dearest friends. More than half of whom I've already successfully moved to Texas, are still in the city. Some of them are still left, I'm here back for them, not for you, actually.
But anyway, when I do come back, especially when I hang out in Queens, I'm reminded of some poetry in the Arabic language. The poet says, yum, yum. And there is Elena and NOFA. Home, which Daniel Nakula che embody kumada mo,
he tells his friend, you know, it's so hard for me, you're the one that it's so hard to part with. And everything I find after you is like finding nothing. Like I haven't really found anything once I left you Not that I feel like that what New York. But there are certain things about this city that just truly very hard to forget. And they have a really special place in my heart. So my daughters go to this community all the time. And as a matter of fact, just to just to reiterate my emotional attachment to this place. And the gratitude, I feel to some of the elders and, you know, the old friends that I have here. I as a matter of fact, as a matter of policy, I don't speak at
fundraisers. I can't I can't do it.
One, it's a danger to my health. I'm allergic to boredom. So I can't do it. That's the first reason. The second reason is because if I say yes to one fundraiser, guess how many emails I get? About 1000 a week for fundraising requests. And then if I say No, only 21 of them, they say, well, you like those guys. You hate us, huh? We hate you back. So I started making enemies because I attended a fundraiser so I, I can't do it. Unless one of the elders from New York calls me and says, Hey, we're having a fundraiser. And I can't say no. So I got to come back in May and do a fundraiser. It's gonna kill me. But I'm still coming back to charlo. But anyway, that's just the sort of relationship
I have with the city. Now, coming to the topic of tonight.
I actually chose a misleading topic on purpose. Fine, you know, what's the topic that I gave you guys? Anyone even read the flyer?
I know I technically I came here late, which is okay for you to forget why you were here. But I came here late because I work on a certain process. I thought this this will be the same as a Pakistani wedding, which means I was three hours early. But
But what was the topic again, tell me
a balanced approach to religion. Yeah, that is completely misleading. That is not what I'm going to be talking to you about today. Or at least that's what I wanted you to think of balanced approach to religion. But there is some truth to this topic. What I want to start with is a central theme of the Quran. That's where I want to start so our minds are headed in a particular direction. I have an agenda for all of you tonight. And the agenda I have for you the the theme of the Quran I want to highlight is that of balance, a lot of xojo makes a pretty big deal out of talking about balance in one way or another over and over and over again in the Quran. It begins with the Fatiha the idea of
balance starts with and five and then it goes on to others. If your kids are really crazy, then take a walk otherwise, they're fine. If they scream louder than me, then they have to take a walk otherwise they
have to put this on better.
Okay.
All right. So what was the theme in the Quran I was talking about balance. Now.
The first example of balance I want to share with you is just some things about the Fatiha
at the end of the party when we ask Allah for a straight path in the Nostradamus 13
we actually also asked a lot of protect us from two possible directions that can go off the path. So on the one hand, salata Latina and anti lay him, there's where we want to be available to be, I lay him on the one hand, and a bar lean will avoid lean. On the other hand, there are two possible roads that we don't want to be on. And if you can find the road in between, that is a stellata muster
Yes. So even if you don't look at a deeper analysis of those ions of the Fatiha, you already appreciate something about balance. Now, slightly deeper look, Alma Du Bois de him is actually a reference to those who do wrong, even though they know it's wrong.
It's the kind of people who know something they shouldn't be doing. They do it anyway. Something they know they're supposed to do. And they don't do it anyway, that people who don't care about what they know. In other words, what they want to do what they feel like doing what the urge says they should do overrides anything that they know have to be right or wrong. So a young man gets angry at his parents and decides to just explode on them and just yell at them at the top of his lungs. And even if at the time he's reminded when a taco lahoma ofin wallet and her home as the Mashallah the young curry recited, don't you say even off to them? Which means don't you? Don't you even look
frustrated towards them? don't even have that. Look. At the time he's reminding us. I know. I know. But this is a special time. You don't know what they said to me. You don't know what my dad just did. And he justifies it. This is the kind of thing almost overlay him do.
They know something is wrong. But when the time comes to live by it, they say I know I know, but not right now. Well, actually, that was given to you for this occasion. Not for another occasion when it doesn't apply, you understand that's bothering him. On the other side. His side is a law lien a Bollinger people who do the wrong thing? Sure. But it's not because they knew it and did it anyway, actually, most of the time have been mean, the ones that are lost, do the wrong thing, because they don't know any better.
They just don't know any better. So somebody can Is it possible that somebody makes a mistake or does something wrong? Because they just didn't know it was wrong? Sure. Somebody can actually even practice an entire religion or living entire lifestyle, never realizing that this is the wrong way to live. Somebody can believe even within the Muslim community, somebody can believe something about this religion about Islam, and live by it for a long time only to realize much later on in life. But it has nothing to do with the religion. They were being manipulated, they were lost. And as if you would think that you know, the one who's lost, it's not their fault. But actually, because in the
party, how we ask a lot not to be from them. We don't want to be from the people that are lost. It is as though we're asking a lot. What do I do again? Just the water. Okay, sorry, I thought you're mad at me, what's the last thing I did to you? Okay.
So they figure you know, because we don't know any better, we're not responsible. But because we asked a lot to not be of those people. It is as though we're asking Allah, Allah, make sure that we are of the people who do in fact, know, because people who know can't get lost, just like when you know, directions, you can get lost. Just like when you know where to go is impossible for you to get lost. So by asking a lot not to be from those who are lost. It's like we're asking a lot to be of the educated oma. It is like that. So I'll just summarize this, this brief idea of balance. On the one hand, you have people who know and do the wrong thing. On the other hand, you have people who
don't know, and therefore do the wrong thing, right? I'll summarize it one more time. There are people who have knowledge, but no good action, knowledge, but what what did I say I need you to repeat. So you stay awake, it's hot in here. knowledge with no good action. On the other hand, you have people have no knowledge, and therefore no good action, you see that? Are they acting out of good? They think it's a good thing they're doing? They're acting without knowledge. The balanced path is in between these two, isn't it? What is that balance path, you have to have knowledge. And then you have to act according to that knowledge. Like you learn something in order to transform
yourself. The knowledge of Islam is something that's supposed to transform you. If it's not making a change in you personally, then you're not really learning Islam. I'm not really learning Islam. Every ayah that we learn, every every Hadees that we learn every little bit of Islam that we learn is supposed to cause some kind of change. It's meant to cause the kind of change, it's supposed to put us to motion in some way or another. Okay, so that's the first example of balance I wanted to share with you. The second is actually one of the most difficult areas of discussing this topic. In my opinion, it's very abstract, but I hope I can do a good job of explaining it to you in shallow
Tarana. And that is when Allah actually inserted Rahman talked about the sky.
He said was sama arafa water armies on
the sky. In fact, he elevated it and he put a scale in it. Now before I go further, you need to appreciate something about that AI itself. You see in Arabic, you can say alpha sama. Well, the reason he elevated he raised the sky and he put a balance in it. But he said was sama Aha.
And this is unusual language, which is almost impossible to communicate in translation. The grammatical concept involved here is called Alma Chabot Luan, who, and I know most of you don't know what that means. That's why I'm here. I'm here to make that simple. inshallah. Basically, the idea is when you do something that is extraordinary, like you, you know, a child who's really lousy at homework, one time he does this homework, and it's so neat. It's like the accomplishment of his or her life.
If you have children, you know, sometimes when they do math homework, they like to write their numbers on top of each other. So when they're doing multiplication problems, and they're supposed to like line the numbers up, you literally have to draw a map of where one number goes under the other. So you have to teach them how to write the numbers neatly and this a got it and they do it again, and they do it again, and they do it again. But this one time, this child makes this homework assignment, a masterpiece, the numbers are separated. There's so beautifully, I mean, and the number that got carried over is in the right place. And he didn't draw an entire solar system around the
number that it's so beautiful. And he says, this homework.
I did it.
He doesn't just say I did this homework. He kind of mentioned his homework first, right here.
And then he says I did it. The word it goes back to the homework, doesn't it? It's like he talked about the homework, or she talked about the homework twice. Right about the same thing twice. This is done. When you want someone's attention of what you've done on what you've done. You don't normally talk like that. Oh, that flyer I made that.
Oh, that event rmsa. put that together.
You see what he said that event and then put it put it together? You mentioned it twice. That is when not only are you proud of what you've done, you want somebody's real attention on this accomplishment. You mentioned it twice, you get it. Now Elon normally doesn't do this in the Quran. Normally, you don't find as much value on who Allah created the mountains. He didn't say the mountains, I made them. He doesn't do that. He didn't say the rivers I made them float. He doesn't do that. But particularly for the sky on more than one occasion, he said was summer of Osama bin
Laden. I'm also on multiple occasions, this rare concept of Arabic is used to illustrate the power, the majesty and the in the focus, Allah wants to have us develop onto the sky.
He really wants us to focus on the sky. So I moved from New York to Texas and the Chinese when they used to work on the railroad in Texas, they used to say the sky is bigger in Texas. The reason they said that is they don't have any buildings out there. Right, you can see 1015 miles out 1015 miles out for you is another country called the Bronx. You know, that's for you. It's a different country. But in Texas, 1015 mile right there, I'll see right there, you know, in 15 minutes you can get from your house to the next block in New York City, in a car.
In 15 minutes, you can be pretty much in Mexico or something you can, it's open as wide open. But you know, one of the things I don't miss about New York,
I never looked at the sky
and just never looked at the sky. You waiting on a bus, everybody's heads hanging low, you get into the subway, everybody's trying to avoid eye contact, you know, you get into the city, you wouldn't want to look up because some you bump into something. So you just kind of resist looking down here. Nobody has time to look at the sky. It's it's up there all the time, but we never look at it. And of course, this is a fast paced city. So we don't have the time. We think people that sit around, you know, in a park and they're just staring at the sky have some kind of Psychotic Disorder. So we make sure we sit as far as possible from them in our lunch break or whatever you know, so people that do
spend time to just appreciate the sky must be weird. They can't be normal. You see, this is one thing I don't miss about this city is one of the appreciation of nature that you're supposed to have normally as a normal part of your life. And some things that I really want you to pay attention to, really, really wants your attention on. What is missing is this God is taken from us. Those of you that drive next time you get stuck in traffic, just take a couple of seconds and just kind of appreciate the sunset. Appreciate a shafique what Allah swears by phenoxy will be shafique that act just appreciating the beauty of the sky is actually fulfilling a request of the Quran. Think of it
like that. You just did something alone wanted you to do just as simple as staring at the sky. But now coming back to what why did he What did I mention was somewhat out of the sky he elevated it now how much higher is the sky from us infinitely higher, isn't it? It's we don't know the end of it. We can't put a number on how high above us The sky is it's an it's an abstract almost to us.
This idea came in the context of how Allah honored the human being. And the love first mentioned how he created the human being. And he taught him how to speak. And then he says, By the way, I've honored other creations to just like I have raised your level, I have raised other things too, like the sky.
So when you think about how much Allah has honored you, one of the things that will make you appreciate how much Allah has honored you how high he made your status, think of the fact that he mentioned the height of the sky after you not before you.
He mentioned that after you was somewhat out of haha.
Now we're reflecting on the sky. And Allah tells us what should we think about the sky? Please pay attention to this part because this is the part I'm worried about not being able to communicate clearly. He says, Well, what about armies on, he placed down the scale, and meezan and it's an ally in the Arabic language comes from the word lesson, while the unknown or the unknown, will do speakers no wasn't confident, or maybe better. Haha, that one same word
was it means typically, it means Wait, wait, but actually, the word wasn't in the Arabic language is a device or a means
by which you determine the value or the weight of something, and wasn't itself is putting a weight to something. And Allah says Allah balanced the sky. And that's why Amazon is called a balanced because on the, in the ancient times the two sides have a balance, you put a standard weight on this side, and then you weigh something, rice, potatoes, whatever it is on the other side, when it balances out, it is this, you know piece of metal that is at a standard weight that determines the value of the food or the item you put on the other side, isn't it. That's why it's called Amazon because things are being weighed. Now Allah says he designed the entire universe, and he put a scale
of balance in it. And you put things in proportionate weight in it. And let's talk about this for a moment. Even though I'm not a science person in scientific terms, if the sun was any bigger than it is now, then it would have more gravitational pole.
And if it weren't, the planet wouldn't be where it is. It had to be a particular weight, a particular size and the earth had to be a particular size not to get pulled into clothes, and not to get pulled away too far for the climate that we have to exist. Yes. Is this the only solar system around? No, every solar system, every galaxy, every planet, every moon, every orbit is there in place because of a particular weight and a particular value to every planet. And that weight came as a result of every single atom that is on that planet.
That's that's where we got the weight of this this planet of ours from and unless as he did that, he put that in place. So if it's even a little bit off, it'll fall apart now, just to make you appreciate what Ally's doing when he's balancing the universe. And the universe is too big to think about. So let's just think about the earth. The faculty is balancing between the Earth and the Sun and the Moon. You take a like a toothpick and you try to balance something on it easy or hard. It's hard. It's hard. And you know, like my kids and I sometimes you play Jenga blocks. You ever play Jenga blocks, okay, you try to build Jenga blocks but taller, they got easier to balance a harder to
balance, it gets harder to balance. The more elaborate you build something, the more intricate the balance becomes, you can't do it anymore. even smaller things easier to balance bigger things harder to balance. Now appreciate what Allah has done when he made balance between the sky and the earth. Well, we'll do
one more thing about about this a lot is our God is the Creator. You can even consider him the manufacturer. When he talks snap ins and is used for allows origin to the manufacturer. Now I mentioned that word in particular because we are a people, not just Muslims, but humanity today are people that are obsessed, and are almost victims of brands and manufacturers. Right. And you can tell a particular brand by its signature design. So if somebody is holding a phone, and it is of the eye brand, you can tell from a distance. And some who are really good man, you still got the five you need to get the five CSP w whatever you need to you know,
somebody else has, you know, a phone, that's pretty much the size of a plate, you're like, oh, Samsung, Okay, there we go, you know, eat off of that, too. But anyway, so
it does everything so
but the idea is when you have a brand, you know, their brands, cars, the cars that are, you know, certain elite brands, they have a certain design to them. And you can see it from a distance you didn't even see the logo, you can tell that I know that guy that's a Mercedes. When you get closer you find out it's a Hyundai because they copy everything but still, you know,
it was Koreans, you know,
confusing people's brand, you know, school of thought but anyway, so the idea is we appreciate
Brand by the manufacturer by the design. And not just the appearance, that's the one thing by appearance, you can tell the manufacturer, but also when you take a closer look by the quality, you know, every company or every manufacturer has something that makes its brand sort of unique. You know, this, this manufacturer, their textile materials are really good. This builder, this architect, his buildings have this certain element to them, you know, this car, there's something unique about the transmission of this vehicle, or the the acceleration of this vehicle or the duration, you know, the durability of this vehicle, whatever it may be, right. So there are
particular unique qualities of a brand that attract people, one of them, obviously, his appearance, right. But beyond the appearance, when you dig deeper, there's always something that kind of sets the company apart. This is their model, this is how this is the drives everything they do. Right. So just because it's closer to home to everybody, and we appreciate you know how these things work nowadays. I mean, look at the apple brand. For example. Their motto is we don't care if it's the most user, most elaborate technology, we just care that it's the most user friendly, we just want it to be convenient. Convenience is our number one thing.
And it's it's it gets so light, you can't even feel you have it in your hand. That's how like they want it to be, they eventually want it to float in the air. And then you know, the icons are simple and easy to follow. And the easier it gets, the more it annoys geeks, because geeks wants to think want things to be complicated, and they want to code it themselves. And they don't want to do any of that because they want it for people who are
you know, they just want that. So that's the thing that defines them. It's easy. Look at how easy it is. Look at how smooth it is. Right? That's their signature. Now I bring all of this up because it's tied to the subject of balance. Because a law says pay attention to the sky and pay attention to my design signature. As a manufacturer, as one thing I love in the things I create is balance.
A lot signature. Because like every every painter leaves a signature on the painting. Every car leaves, leaves its logo, when Allah designed something with a love put something together, his signature is what in the ayah is balance. Things are an order thing, multiple things are working with each other in harmony with each other. That's what he likes to create.
I'll give you another example of the balance of a law that is so deep like if this lecture was just about that. I will come back for that one. That one's heavy, but I'll just give you a snippet of it.
A lot. Whatever no Quran told us to pay attention to the honeybee.
Okay, Allah revealed to the honeybee and those who love Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam interestingly enough compared the believer to a honeybee,
we got compared to an insect, you don't want to let us that comparison. And the Prophet does that comparison, it makes me think I really need to study Islam, and part of studying Islam is studying honeybees.
When I studied that, I must have watched four or five documentaries on honeybees easily. And I've read several articles on just honeybees. And every one of the lines I'm reading from these are not written by Muslim scholars, by the way. But as I'm studying the honeybee, I'm not thinking I'm reading some secular article, or I'm reading something that has nothing to do with Islam. I'm actually learning Islam. And one of the things I learned about the honeybee is when it sits on a flower.
It can be far more aggressive than it actually is. It has the power to be but it takes from the flower just so much to not break it and damage it and make it render it no good for the next B to come.
It Lee it takes but just so much, and then it leaves it. And it doesn't break the there's a relationship between the flower and the bee. But it's a very loving, caring relationship. And actually, the bee gives it life because it carries pollen over to it and takes from it so it never takes something without giving. And actually it gives a lot more than it takes. It gives a lot more pollen than it takes.
And it leaves and because other bees from its hive may be able to benefit from the same flower. So it goes back to the hive and does a what's called a bee dance. It does a dance and it lets the other bees know the address of that flower and its neighbors you guys can have from that too. I've had my share. I don't need to have more. I'm not worried about competition, you guys can have enough there's enough lemonade for everybody.
Wow. Balance.
The bee nose balance as it was designed from the universe to a bee. He just created things in balance, you know. Now, this is a was designed as a manufacturer, let's take it one step further.
What Allah wants you to appreciate is how things work with each other in harmony. That's what balance is really when things are in harmony with each other and they're not falling into chaos. Down to the the atomic level. Things or animals are in harmony with each other. There's an ecosystem in place. environments are in harmony with the animals that live in those environments. oceans are in harmony with the animals that sea creatures that live inside them right now, this is our summer urahara
Other than pay attention to the sky, look at how he created the sky and put down a balance in the sky. The next idea is the complication Tato film is on, I did all of that. So that I'm here and suburbia, it's called. So I made the universe, the sky balanced for the following reason. Here's the reason a lotta too low A anthem. So you people do not violate, in the matter of the scale. When it comes to balance that you don't, you don't mess up the balance.
A lie saying he made the sky balanced to teach you and to teach me the lesson of not losing our sense of balance. And let me tell you how that works. There's a guy that runs a grocery store, probably in Flushing. And he sells all kinds of important goods like shark masala, and bananas, or whatever.
You know, just to make things interesting Indian movies, whatever. So he's, so he sells this stuff. Now he puts when the customer comes and he puts bananas on the scale. And his skill is supposed to weighs this one pound one and a half pounds, two pounds or whatever. But he's kind of messed with the scale a little bit.
So that even if the customer puts like three quarters of a pound, it still shows one pound. Right, and she still sells one pound, which means he can make, I don't know, 50 cents extra dollar extra every time. He could be an if the state inspectors coming, then you can kind of fix it again. And it's within the margin of error. You know, he could do that. I'm not if you're working from flushing, I am sorry, I did not mean that personally. Okay. So, by the way, casino Boulevard in the house.
But anyway, so the the idea in this ayah is that when that same grocery store owner, when he sees the state Inspector, the FDA guy or whoever coming in to check the skills, he fixes it, yes.
But the idea of this is so long as that grocery store owner has access to be able to see the sky,
just the sky, that should be enough for him to get his act together.
He looks up sky stool in order, oh my god, I better get my act together. The sky is a constant reminder, to live a balanced life.
The Quran changes the way the Muslim thinks we're not a people of text only. Our text makes us profound thinkers about reality around us. We're supposed to see things in the reality around us that nobody else sees. Nobody else looks at the sky, except says say things like those are pretty clouds. That looks like a teddy bear. But we see, I haven't called my mom in three days.
I've been I've been way too angry, I need to tone it down. You kind of explore your own balance, because the skies balance is there. And by the way, by the way, the irony of this creation that Allah made, a lot of film is on, I created the sky in balance. So you don't violate the balance. The irony of it is that today, as we have it, the sky isn't balanced. But then a day is coming when the sky will be torn apart and it will lose its balance. It's going to be torn open. And when that day comes, then another scale will be established. Your scale and my scale. The marathon will be established when other armies on August neoman qiyamah. We're going to establish the scale that is
absolute justice on judgment day. In other words, right now, so long as that balance is there, yours You still got a chance to fix yourself.
And the moment that goes away, your turn, how balanced were you and then all of our debit and credit will be accounted for the entire audit will take place. That is the reminder of the sky. That's what the sky is supposed to be a balanced approach to religion. This is the first thing I wanted to share with you in this talk.
And I again I want to tie this theme Finally, of how Allah Himself subhanahu wa taala makes us think about this ourselves in the same way that he makes in the same breath that he makes us think about the sky. He says for so for so well who knows what so hoonah sobre sama What? He balanced them even the mountain to seven skies. Only Allah knows what seven skies means but we know that he balanced them. So well who knows. So what makes something even, okay, and that we also means to make something equal. Okay. About the human being is as well as the halaqa.
So worker, Adela.
He's the one who created you and he's the one who put balance in you. He balanced you. Now when Allah says he balanced me.
He's talking about the physical balance for sure.
He didn't just say to work, I just had an so worker button. And so Waka giesemann. He says he physically balanced you so that your two feet you stand up and you're balanced, you can uphold yourself, you can you can hold your neck, you know, a child, a baby's neck goes everywhere. But as the child grows, they can hold themselves up high, they learn to balance themselves on their two feet, and they don't walk like a gorilla anymore. They can, they can stand up, this is a kind of balance. But a lead didn't limit the conversation to physical balance. When a law doesn't limit something, we don't have the right to limit it, it's called it was sort of a minor expanding the
meaning. So love balance does in every possible way, every possible situation you're going to come across in life, there is something a lot put inside you that can help you attain balance,
as well he put in you for that wider look, then you may even do or even he he went further than the sky. So well. Now, that's it for the sky. But so work of either luck also on top of that. So he did something special for you. He hasn't done for any other creation. I felt this conversation was necessary for the following, you know, multiple reasons. The first reason I wanted to bring up this conversation is because the world itself is losing balance.
We don't have pretty much everything that used to be in place and was balanced and nobody questioned it is all falling apart
from the simplest things that the way we eat food, we don't have balanced nutrition anymore. Our nutritions are overwhelmingly, you know, poisonous to us. There was a survey done in the United States of nutrition 85% of what you find in a grocery store is saturated with fat and artifice are fat and sugar
artificially, which means you're You and I are not you know, you even go you say I'm gonna go healthy, I'm gonna go buy bread, just look on the side of the ingredients, even for your bread, you know, fructose corn syrup, this much sugar this much, you know, preservative, oh, my God, I thought I was eating bread. We're losing balance in even our nutrition. And by the way, what we eat affects us even spiritually, and has an impact on us from the advice of a little soul sallallahu alayhi wasallam. In any case, we don't have balance in that we don't have the balance between work and family.
We no longer have that balance. People that that are really successful in their career have really terrible family lives.
And they say, Well, I had to make some sacrifices.
People have had to work to earn a living throughout history, nobody had a free ride. Nobody had a free right. 2000 years ago, nobody had a free ride. 5000 years ago, nobody has a free ride today everybody has to work. We're not in any different position than before. But people were able to maintain a balance between work and family. And then between work and family and the self, just having time for yourself. People used to be able to do that. Now people are really successful, career wise. But they don't even have time for themselves. They're only working and they're miserable. And when people are miserable, they're really good at making other people miserable
around them. You know,
we have no balance in life. People say I want to study young young students, you know men anyway, I want to study. But I also want to get married. So but you know what? I'm going to finish med school. And then I'm going to finish law school and then I'm going to think about getting married.
And then you finish med school. And if you're a Pakistani you're past the expiration date. I'm sorry.
And then you then you come to 71 nobody proposes because I'm a doctor and I'm 28 oh 28 that's like communist Pakistan. It's like
you're that's on the one side we even career wise, we've pushed a certain idea. Why can't you get married while you're in school? Why not? Especially if you've taken the long road to school. This needs to part of your plan. You need to balance between your career goals, your educational goals, your family goals. It's not one you can stop one part of your life and then do another that stop that one part of your life and do another we have this approach towards religion. Somebody says I want to study Deen, which means I must drop everything and study Dean. Okay, I just want to serve to the dean. So what do you what else you got nothing. Just study Dean.
Who's gonna take care of parents, Allah subhanho wa Taala.
We, we've created such an imbalance in our minds, all or nothing, overdose of everything. When you go into something, you really go into it. When you abandon something, you totally abandon it. Right, we're not able to juggle multiple things at the same time, or at least not in a successful way. And this is actually a lot loss of balance in our personal lives. And because most of humanity is so prone towards one kind of imbalance or another. We've taken this idea this this tendency that we have, and we've started looking at our religion in an imbalanced way.
Human beings were created naturally balanced. When we lose that nature, then we lose the ability to look at things in a balanced way. And unfortunately, if you yourself or I myself are suffering from invalid
Then, and then we study our religion, then we we're going to come up with imbalanced conclusions about our religion.
We're not going to come up with the right conclusions.
You have people, for example, in cultures where women are treated like garbage,
they're treated on Muslim cultures, I have to say like it is they are treated like garbage. And when when these women get even a little bit of an education, and they find even a little bit of independence, they want nothing to do with this religion. You know why? Because they've done being treated like garbage was constantly justified through the lens of the religion.
I outwork quoted at them, I had these were quoted at them. And they were told, this is why you're nothing. This is why you can't get an education. This is why you, you know, you just have to serve. Your position is this. There are indo Pak women that have lived in their kitchen for 50 years. You know, how psychologically traumatic that is for a person? Why do you think they're horrible mother in laws?
It's not their fault.
Honestly, I know you're like, no, my mother in law's this her fault. It's her fault.
And the mother in law said he was like, I knew it was my fault.
Just record that part and give it to me.
two loops it when the kid when the daughter in law comes over, it's not our fault. It's not our fault.
But you know what religion was quoted to them. I have students that want to come to me, they come to me, and they study, they study Arabic with me, and they study is
they come to Texas from all over the United States. And you know, when I, when I teach them, and they learn something, then they come to me. And these are sisters in a job and they've traveled to study and they memorize Quran and stuff. This is one Hadith. It hurt me so much. I'm sorry to say it, I don't I don't know another way to say it. It just hurt me so much. I was like, tell me what it is. And she tells me the Hadith. And I'm sitting there like, Who did you hear this from?
Because it's not the Hadith that's imbalanced. It's not the ayah, that's imbalanced, it's the guy representing it. The guy teaching it, the person who doesn't have balanced themselves is going to paint the entire religion in a corrupt way, meaning their own or in light of their own personal psychological problems. And what that's done for an entire generation of Muslims isn't scared them away from Islam.
A balanced approach to religion, if you don't have it, you're going to see an exodus from the religion, you're going to see people running from the religion.
You have, you know, the hadith of, you know, oma or the Allahu taala, and how she comes in complaints to the Prophet alayhi salam. And actually, this is a famous study, I'll tell you one part of it, and I sat with Chef chef.
Actually, he's the gem over here, you have to learn me about this hadith. And he explained this to me, and I wasn't just like, you have to come to our campus and explain this to our students. And he said, he can travel. So you're lucky he can even travel. He's here. He's just lucky.
So anyway, I'm talking about this hadith. And this hadith is used to quote or to tell people that women should pray in the innermost part of their home.
The most private part of your home, that's where you're supposed to pray. Okay? And this is how you justify that you shouldn't come to women shouldn't come to the masjid. We should pray in the innermost part of their home, you study the entire Hadith you first of all, there are other ahaadeeth also, other Hadith where women complain to the Prophet sites on them. We come for salon fudger Where do they come
as much as we come to salon fudger. But on our path on our way, there is sewage. So it gets on our close. Can we stay home and pray? He said, No, the rest of the dirt on the way will wipe it off because you still come.
And that's fudger for women that have to go through sewage to come to pray the machine.
We don't call that one.
By the way, my story, this woman who the Prophet told you should pray the innermost part of your home when she asked to pray at the machine. When you learn the whole story. You learned some lots, lots of fun things. She was in a troubled marriage. Her husband was super jealous of her, like protective of her.
He used to poke her while she prayed.
Yep.
And the Prophet called because he came to the premises in another direction. She came to him and said, he poked me while I prayed. And so he asked her, why do you Why do you do that? Because she stole my solos.
In other words, he led her in prayer. She heard his Koran. She memorized it. She started praying on our own. He's like she's praying all by herself. I'm not leading her in prayer. And actually he felt left out that she was praying on her own she's a poker and slot and then she when he comes to the mustard debris gets really angry because he's so obsessed with his wife. He can't spend 10 minutes without her. So the fact that she's in the in the mush it just drives him crazy just wants her with her all the time. So the promises I'm told her look, you need to see
Your marriage first, basically, your marriage is in shambles. At this point, you need to spend more time at home and it's currently the better thing for you is not to come to the machine By the way, in order that he doesn't poke, you find the innermost part of your home to pray. So that at least you can pray in peace because he's driving you nuts.
Now, if you don't know the background, and you say women should pray in the innermost part of their home,
and somebody who's got like a psychological disorder against women, you know, and he gets married, and he's yelling at his wife, because she didn't pray in the closet, and he pulls out and he, you know,
he's got to delete him. He's got the evidence. But he's, there's no balance. There's, this is not balanced. You see, this is it's funny, but it's also really, really sad. people's lives are ruined, in the name of Dean,
in the name of Dean, Dean that came to remove sadness, this Dean that came to provide human beings the opportunity to live a balanced life, in everything that they do.
We have so fragmented the idea of balance in our lives. I was on an interview with a student group in Pakistan. It was like a radio thing like online radio thing. And so they were live QA and the student asked me in the QA session, he asked me, well, how am I supposed to practice my religion during exam season? I don't have time to practice Islam during exam season, I have to focus on my studies.
And for a moment, I was so stand by the question, I didn't know what to say. I was just completely baffled. I did not know what to say. And here's why I didn't know what to say, in this poor guy's mind. If you are doing something for religion, you have to stop everything else you're doing. You see, serving religion to him means somehow you can't be studying for your exams. I was like the fact that you're studying for your exams, and you're not cheating, like every fourth guy in your classroom, and you're not paying off the teacher to give you a higher grade.
And the fact that you're doing due diligence to the money your parents worked hard to pay for your schooling for you are observing your religion. And what is it? How long does it take you to take some time out and mix a lot? I don't have time to do you take cigarette breaks? I know you're in Karachi. I know.
A lot. What do you mean, I don't have time to practice my religion? What do you think the religion is asking you? Because you know what people when they think of religion, they just think of prayer going to the masjid, fasting, memorizing acts of worship, certain things, that's religion, everything else is just life. They're just separated things, that's an imbalanced view, that itself is an imbalanced view, you know? So we have to this is a serious, serious matter, in my view, developing a balanced way of thinking, I know, I know, it's really serious.
Developing a really balanced view towards this.
Now, in the I told you, we look at the sky and we find balance, yes, we're reminded of balance. Allah says what a pebble was not below Christy, we'll talk soon means on another idea in the same passage, by the way, now that you've observed the sky, and now that you've learned, I made the sky so you find balance, then he says, whenever you establish wasn't, and wasn't means when you weigh something, do it, make sure you're not unfair and kissed actually doesn't mean fairness. It's not all of that. And kissed in Arabic means to make sure that you're not biased, that you're not unfair. That's what this means. Allah says, when you're gonna weigh between things, make sure you don't
become unfair. We have to stop here and figure out what that means for us personally. Not every one of us is a grocery store owner. So we don't have a weighing machine at home. So we say, Well, this is about you know, we would balance No, but it wasn't also has majaz in it is figurative language also. What that means then is in your life, there are lots of relationships.
You have siblings, younger siblings, you have parents, a lot of your college students, so you're not many of you aren't married yet. So, you have your parents, you have your studies, you have friends, you have community, you know, you have the MSA, what changed the definition of which changes year by year or semester by semester. You know, you have lots of relationships in life.
And unless as you have to establish a balance and yourself by the way, your self also your own religious growth, also your own spiritual growth, also your own physical well being as well. You have to balance all of this stuff.
When someone in fantasy love Your love of Thailand who goes to your dad's house, and he sees this is before the I out of a job they used to go to and you know, so she came out and she was complete. She looked like she went through a tornado or something motor but data is used for her which is a really like, heck, she looked like a wreck. That's all translated. She looked like a wreck.
And he looked at her and he said What is wrong with you?
And he said, You're your brother, meaning he has no interest in this world.
He's always doing about that he's always worshipping crazy.
dharwad cetera, et cetera, he has no time for me. So why should I make myself look nice? And, you know, why should I have a romantic life? It's, he's, he's just lost in the world. And actually, when a woman doesn't take care of herself like that, actually, it means that she also she's suffering.
She's suffering, she's sad. And the fact that she immediately when he said, What's wrong with you? Instead of making excuses, she was blunt about it and said, it's actually has to do with my husband, he doesn't care. He doesn't even look at me. And I've I've turned myself into this and he still doesn't look at me and doesn't even you came and said, What's wrong with you? He never said that.
Right. So then he comes to his house and he says about the verse a good host, he says, eat, he said, I'm not gonna eat until you read us on fasting. Because break your fast and eat with me. This is before the out of Ramadan.
sama Farsi made him break the fast and they ate together.
Then he is about to go to sleep. He says, Why don't you sleep? You know what I'm going to pray, sleep broke.
He made him sleep.
And then he got off 4pm and then he woke him up and then they prayed. And then he turned to him. And he gave him some brotherly advice. This is a man in Farsi talking to his brother his friend. And he says, In Arabic Anika Hakan you're alone Lord, your master in fact, he does have rights over your right over you. When not enough seek Arnica? How can you have to take care of yourself to your own personal self has rights over you? Allah is not asking you to sacrifice yourself and your daily life for him. He's not asking that. And then when he when he Anika Anika can in your family, your wife has rights over you, man.
You gotta take care of your wife. For articulately. How can hopko then give everyone who has a right the right?
give everybody the right now this is another fallacy is not a prophet. He's a Sahabi a very wise one at that. And he's giving another Sahabi some advice. Look, you're going a bit overboard with the whole prayer thing. You haven't laid down in bed next to your wife for I don't know how long and look at her she's depressed, like, you know, you hate her or something. You know, you need to give your wife some time. What's wrong with you? Why are you fasting all the time, stop fasting, eat something, you know, by the way, if the if he stops fasting, at least he's going to have lunch at home. And when you have lunch, you're gonna sit with your wife and eat and eating with your spouse
also is an act of love. When the husband and wife don't eat at the same time it destroyed breaks the home apart, you know that eating together itself is an act of love. It keeps the household together. How often is it you eat together?
How often and you tell the wife, hey, come eat? No, no, I already ate no elite leader, or the wife is eating and she says to the husband, no, no, hold on the COVID reports on
Hold on, I'll eat which is also imbalanced because you shouldn't eat that late.
We don't eat together. The advice is really profound. So I would love that because you know, he wants to take this advice, but he needs to know if this is legit. He goes to the gym. And he says, Hey man, so the man's right.
This woman's right. So now FRC is right, you should do that. The proper size and balance validated all of the things in the order. That's a man with the following said why cuz we got to balance this stuff. We don't go into one thing and forget about everything else. You know, this is the core issue of imbalance. I want to get to a couple of ions in shallow tada after I give you a break because I watch I respect the attention span. I'm only going to have two sessions with you babe Mila one before and after the break and I'm almost there. To the point where I can give you a break and tell you guys doing okay so far. Okay, good. hamdulillah
there's other balance balancing belief.
So hard. I recently just actually on the flight here, I checked my email. And I received an email from a German Jordanian man who was Christian born and raised Christian, Arab Christian, moved to England to do higher studies and found his faith meaning Christianity later on in life, started going to the church regularly married a British woman lived a very spiritual life actually volunteered at the church studied the Bible with the with the minister. And you know, he was he was actually very engaged in biblical studies for a long, long, long, long time. And he started developing certain questions later on in life, about our surrounding the birth of Isa, his son, the
virgin birth, he developed certain questions, and he asked his minister to answer those questions. And he the answers that he gave actually made him lose faith even more. So he started getting distanced from religion. Because of the answers. He got to his questions. And later on, he actually just kind of he was stuck looking for the answers to those questions. But he was looking for those answers in Arabic. He was doing the search on medium Salama Allah in Arabic. And if you do Google searches on medium, you're gonna find Christian sources but you're definitely going to run into what Muslim sources Islamic sources, sources and his email he said, What are the draft unelma see here
millio nagaraja x aminul Islam I knew I knew that
Christianity is a million times better than Islam, but I read it anyway. I read the Quran anyway. And all my questions were answered in such a balanced way in that one place. All the questions that were raised for me in the Bible, all of them were resolved in one passage about Mary in one place, and I took that to my minister and he got really mad at me. Then my wife threatened to divorce me just because I call it a passage from the Quran. Then on top of that, pretty much everybody left me, all my friends, everybody left me, and I haven't even accepted Islam.
I just call it the Quran. That's all I did. They panicked, you know, and then he's telling me what he's been studying over the last few years, he's been studying the Quran, he still hasn't accepted Islam. When he wrote me this email, he still hadn't accepted Islam. He said you, Barack Obama, such as a loony Islamic law Muslim.
Maybe you're gonna ask me when I became Muslim, I haven't.
But I can't stop reading put on.
So he told me,
it's like something's in me that I you know, something's me that's keeping me maybe it's fear, maybe it's something else. But I do find one thing and he told me, what I find in the Quran is balance.
Because what he told me was what attracted him his balance, things are in order, not one thing over where you don't take one profit and make him into divine it's imbalanced. It's too far. He took it too far, you know? And so we're going to talk inshallah, after the break, we're going to talk about how within the religious discussion within religion, how can you lose balance? You know, and you might not even realize it, but you you and I may have an imbalanced approach to the study of our Deen and how do we make sure that we have a balanced approach to art our Deen that we can pass on to a generation that comes after us, because we'll learn he will lie, he will lie. If we fail to do
that, then our next generation will not have something that they will want to keep.
They're not want if you don't give them a balanced religion. They're not going to want to keep it our Deen is beautiful. It has to be presented in the most beautiful way. It really really does. So enjoy your first break. I'm going to give you exactly 10 minutes left
hamdulillahi Rabbil alameen wa sallahu wa salam O Allah al anbiya, even more sallim ala alihi wa sahbihi mama bad. I'd like to start with this session inshallah with an Arabic word and some some vocabulary for you. And I think this will structure our conversation in a good direction. The word in the Arabic language is Allah Hulu, the root letters are hain lamb and wow, a Hulu for the three of you that are taking notes. Okay? aloha Allah they say in Arabic, Nikita refers develop the word that literally means
expensive to be expensive to be high valued, something that is unusually pricey.
Or, you know, inflated in value has Hulu in it, or gala in it. That's why it's the opposite of Eros, which means cheapness.
Allah is also used in Arabic When you overfeed someone, or you overestimate the value of something and you over consume it and it poisons you. So sama Allah comes in the meaning of poisoning, also. And the idea here is just because something's expensive.
And you say, Well, I, you got an opportunity to consume it, you consume too much of it, and it can actually kill you, it can hurt you. Right? Then the word color also means my job was to own a job, my job was to hide frequently Shay, going overboard in any matter is called Hulu. In other words, putting a because it came from the idea of expensive when you value something above other things, and therefore you give it more of your time, more of your attention, spend more of your money on it, etc, then you are engaged in the idea of or the crime of Hulu, really. And Hulu also leads to the seminar argues that it leads to animosity against others. In other words, when you value something
really, really high, you end up violating somebody else's rights and therefore make end up making enemies. That's one way to think about it. Another way to think about it is when you value something really high, and you're all about it, that's all you do all the time, then eventually you burn out and you hate the very thing you loved. The idea is when you really you're really into something like I'll give you an example of a contemporary example of Hulu is some song comes out and people are downloading it and they love it and they're listening to it like 100 they've looped it and they're listening to it over and over and over again. And a week goes by and if they hear it they haven't
severe allergic reaction. Like I hate that turn that off. I'm tired of it, you see. So that's actually Hulu, you you took too much of it until it almost became poisonous to you. And now you hate it. You can't stand it anymore. Okay. So that's what happens even when you take something that you love, and you go too far in it, then you lose that love for it. You have to take it in moderation. That's the idea behind Hulu. And then finally alcohol is interesting term because the Arabs like to think of, you know, abstract ideas of like going overboard or being extreme.
They'd like to think of it in the sense of imagery, though. So they say, and Macaulay, Sam, Mojave, Sam raffia. Sam, you need to be here.
So there's a guy with a bow and arrow, and he's stretched his arrow as far back as you can possibly go. And he's held it up higher at an angle, the aim of which is to go further than any other error shooter has ever gone. His purpose isn't to hit a target, his purpose is to go farther than anyone has ever gone. He wants to break the record basically of distance, right? So to go really far, or to aim to go further than anyone else in something that is Hulu. So for instance, you have nowadays we're in the age of video games, right? So you have, you know, PlayStation and Xbox or whatever. These are the video games that come out, they have an online component now, right? So and they have
rankings. So you're like the 38,500 and 63rd deadliest assassin and Assassin's Creed. Right. And if you really suffer from Hulu, you will not sleep until you're number one. And you will like pat yourself on the back when you reach 25,000 and then 11,008 and ranked 1000. You know, I had a student this year at the dream program we introduce ourselves in the beginning of the year. And one of our obligations, the way we introduce ourselves as you tell me where you're from, what your name is, where you're from, and tell me one interesting thing about yourself. So one student said, my name is so and so I'm from this place. I'm ranked 115 and FIFA.
I've been calling him FIFA for eight months now. So
you know, but that's a it's a form of glue where you keep wanting to want to keep breaking records and you don't even know why you're doing it. You just want to do it. You want to earn all the trophies. You want to get 100% you want to land that combo in the game and you're gonna keep practicing it like it. You know, your Acura, depends on it. You know?
You know, there are people have you ever heard of what's that? Comic Con? I think it's called right Comic Con. Look and to the board people master like things like Street Fighter and like their Mortal Kombat tournament and people from all over the world that have spent hundreds of hours trying to like, perfect the 18 hit combo from a Kumar's something. That's all. That's cool. There are people that become movie buffs. They have to have a collection. They have to have seen everything they have to have all this trivia. People that become sports buffs, they become they get Hulu and sports, they have to have they know all the statistics. I'm there. They're literally deadly. Why authors are
here. From like, where this guy went to college, who recruited him what his career was, how many you know, how many rings is he earned all of it. It's incredible. But it's all Hulu, it's overboard. It's overboard, you keep going digging deeper and deeper and deeper, you become an enthusiast and eventually a fanatic. An example a contemporary example of Hulu. Of course, it's not as it's not as hot anymore, but it was for a long time. Star Wars. Star Wars as a kind of Hulu people went to Star Wars movies dressed in a harem and proper like legit attire. You know?
This is serious stuff. Or you will take this stuff very, very seriously when you get into something you really get into something. A social media example of Hulu would be people that are that can't get off of their Facebook page like that lady over there. You know, nobody I just I just pointed randomly. And just because
I've done that pretty much every speech I've given that never gets old. But at least she got off of Facebook anyway.
So why am I dividing Hulu for you? Because two places in the Quran, Allah turned his attention to the Christian community, not us. The Christian community. Allah says yeah, Al Kitab Adolphe Dini calm People of the Book. Don't do a Hulu what I just described to you don't become extreme. Don't go overboard in your religion, which is very strange language, especially for the Christians. I've spoken to multiple denominations of Christians in my limited career, and I've have gained lots of insights from the study of the Bible. Recently, more recently, I've been studying the Bible, in order to understand the Quran better not to verify the Quran, but to appreciate the beauty and the
perfection of the Quran by studying the Bible. I can't really begin to tell you how profoundly it has changed my appreciation of the Quran. It really really has and even the study of Christian history has changed my appreciation of the Quran it's a new dimension altogether. Give you a little taste just before because I mentioned that tangent I have to give you a little taste. Just a little Sunday sunset inside. Okay.
So you guys have heard of the people of the cave. Did you know there are churches to this day around in, you know, around the ancient city of Ephesus, churches to this day in parts of Jordan and Turkey. You know in Greece even that have you know how churches have stained windows. They have stained windows with paint.
have seven people came up,
bound inside a cave and a dog with them. Yep. And they have a day of the Feast. They celebrate the saints that died inside for their faith. They were true Christians. And they sing a chant that a Greek minister wrote. And when they sing it, they believe that the saints souls come back into the church, and they pray for them. And there is actually a place where they believe in the intensity of emphasis. It's pretty funny in Turkey, there's a big sign that says Seven Sleepers this way.
Silly But anyway, so they go there. And they actually a lot of Christians actually from those denominations. They go and they pray there, like for a few days, they stay there, because they want this saints to bless them. Right, so they literally became Olia to them, who have literally became Alia to them. And if you read solotica, half, you will find that they were the ones that said Allah has no earlier.
Right, so because they became Olia, like came to their defense. And this is not in the Bible. This is poetry written afterwards, right? It's not in the Bible. But they had been taken as earlier. And a lot of his origin came to redeem their integrity as people of tawheed. You know, and they, they're actually their legacy, unfortunately, had become the exact opposite of what they came to preach. So let's set the record straight. You know, Subhana Allah, and what you won't appreciate how clear The truth is, when you until you study the legend of the Seven Sleepers from different civilizations. And you see what they have to say, and you compared with the Quran, and you say, oh,
wow, it's incredible. And that's just one example. I've been reading some other stuff, too, but I'll tell you about it later. Okay. Yeah, I think it out. People love the book, lots of loopy Dini calm. Don't go overboard in your book, don't go overboard in your religion.
Don't go overboard in your religion. How can that be? The Christian community, many denominations have it basically abandoned the law of God. They said the Bible's laws no longer apply to us, we don't have to abide by them, the blood of Jesus is enough to save us. We're already saved. The law was a means by which our souls were cleansed. We no longer need the law, because Jesus already paid for our sins. So how can they go overboard in their religion, they got nothing to go overboard in. What is the last panel with Allah talking about what Allah is always talking about now is something very powerful. And we have to really, really understand this. our beliefs, that not just our
practices, our beliefs, are about balance, our balance, we have to balance our beliefs about Allah,
with our beliefs about the prophets, with our beliefs about the angels, with our beliefs, about the books, with our beliefs about the afterlife, there are these a lot of these unseen realms, right. And even the prophets have become in a sense, the unseen to us, because they're in history to us. They're the unseen to us to now, right. And even to those who were in front of them, the fact that they are messengers was also a belief in the unseen because they see a physical man, they don't see the angel talking to him. They don't see the IOD coming down, even believing in a messenger in his physical presence was a belief in the unseen. But these unseen matters, you have to keep a proper, a
very delicate balance between all of these entities. And if the only thing that can keep that balance is the authentic revelation from Allah. When you lose touch with that revelation, you start coming up with your own ideas about Allah, and what he means your own ideas about the prophet and what he means your own ideas about revelation and what it might mean. And your own. You decide to highlight some things, emphasize some things and de emphasize other things entirely on your own terms. And if you have the right to do so, then the next person following this religion has the right to do so. So you end up with an innumerable amount of variations in beliefs. And you're all
calling yourselves Muslims, or you're all calling yourselves Christians. We're living in those times. So you have for example, I mean, I listened to a lot of different kinds of podcasts. One of the podcasts I listened to a speaking of faith. Yes, I listened to NPR. Yeah, it's sad, but I do. So this this show, speaking of faith, they interviewed three or four American Muslims. Right? Faith in faith, Islamic faith in America. That's what the show was called. It's an interesting podcast. And these all four of these people, three women and one guy that originally the guys from Atlantis, I think that one of the women's, originally Iranian, her ancestry z, Ronnie, another one's Indian,
another one's Arab, I think, and they're all talking about well, you know, here's what Islam means to me. It's not actually doesn't mean to me that you have to believe in a god you just have to believe in a higher power.
So long as you believe in a higher power, it's fine. And then the other one introduced herself. She said, I am the alcohol drinking fornicating bubble and she made a list and at the last adjective she gave herself was Muslim, and proud.
You know, and as I'm listening to this, close to getting into a car accident, I realized something.
I realized something we are living at a time where people will decide the terms of their religion themselves.
We are living in a religious, religiously free society. Whether you practice this faith alone practices is entirely up to you. No matter how much somebody yells and screams at you, you're going to make your own decisions, aren't you?
And so everybody, you know, every person sitting here may end up with a very different and very, very deep understanding of what Islam actually means. There is going to be a variation, that's a natural, inevitable fact. There's no denying it, there's no hiding from it. There's no running from it, the only thing we can do,
instead of yelling and scream, by the way, the group that yells and screams the most gets listened to the least
the group that gets the frustrated the most, and gets angry at the people the most, why are they not believing like we do? We quoted the IRS, they still don't listen to us. Yeah, that's why they don't listen to you. Can you talk like that? And people who are listening to you don't want to listen to you. You know, it hurts their ears.
But the group the variation of when people are experimenting, right, I will even Muslims are experimenting with their religion. If you go to different communities, and you talk to different circles, this is one kind of circle. But I've had the blessing of go to going to different Muslim circles that aren't so religious, but they're Muslim, too. And they define religion for themselves very, very differently. Not the same way as you and I would. And we're not used to that. But you know, what will survive after all of these experiments? What will survive is what meets the what meets the test of reason.
And what what can balance the needs of the heart and the mind at the same time, the Balanced View will survive. Everything else will wither away because people will get tired of it. It just doesn't last. It's a phase people go through and it burns out. I want to tell you in this opportunity that I have before you a little New York story as I get to these ions. La Lu fi Dini Comm. Don't go overboard in your religion. When I was a college student in 1875 in New York City
I was at Baruch broken the house by the way, broken house by a very good like the people very good.
Nothing much has changed at Royal College.
Did a year in Queens to identify him here. Yeah.
Okay.
So when I was at College in New York, I wasn't really interested in religion, but when I found religion,
New York is one of the coolest places to find Islam. Because you get every possible flavor of Islam.
every possible one.
I'm not I'm not sure if that has changed much is still as colorful as still pretty colorful. Okay. And depends on which mustard you end up in which streets in Jamaica?
Or you know, where you end up in Jackson Heights versus Woodhaven? You're gonna end up with a very different hutzpah.
You know where you are in Brooklyn can entirely determine your school of thought your Akita like depends on where you are in Steinway in Astoria.
It is different, very, very different. So you know, I ended up in one place, right? I'm a couple of friends that you need to come to this halaqa It's awesome. You need to come there and study. So I was like, hey, I want to learn my religion. And now that I've just discovered religion, I want to soak it all in I want to take it all in, and I want to live by it. I just want the Pure religion. So I go to this group, and they teach me that everyone else unfortunately, outside of this Masjid, they think they're Muslim.
You see, but they don't have the proper beliefs. It's very sad. And we're the only place that has survived with the correct faith. And Allah did say that this is I know, this might seem strange to you. But the prophet does tell us for two ballyhoura congratulations to the strange ones. We are it.
You know, and you need to save yourself and you need to save your faith. So even though you've been and I was enthusiastically in there, yeah. You know, after mustard after a lot. This is how old I am. After Juma. I used to go outside and he used to be a guy. He's still there on 29th Street by Washington. He used to have a stand with like, you know, nowadays, DVDs, but back in the day VHS baby tape cassettes of different speakers lined up. And I used to buy one every week and put it in my Walkman. Yes, I had a Walkman. I am not I'm proud to admit this, you know. And I used to listen to all these different speakers. I went in there and I said, Hey, have you heard of this speaker and
this speaker that no, no, no, no, no, you don't listen to them. These people are calling to the hellfire. You need to protect your faith. You need to have the right beliefs. You need to make sure you learn from us and I said okay, okay.
And I did. I put those tapes away. And I wouldn't even look at them. And even though I've benefited tremendously from them, I said no, I must be wrong. I must not have thought clearly about this. And I started going to these lockers. And I'm going week after week after week after week, and I'm getting more and more indoctrinated until I feel I miss my friends that aren't weird yet. Right? I haven't saved them yet. So I go back to my friends in college bro. You got to come to this. Amazing
you know what's amazing? What have you it's
The only right religion. That's why, you know, man, I love you. You're my bro. We have pizza together every time. But you're headed for the Hellfire, bro.
You're so bad for you. So I need to save you with me. We need to go to Jamaica and we need to sort this out. Right? I didn't mention which machines in Jamaica on purpose because there's a lot of them and humbler. Okay. So anyway, so we're doing this for a while until I had a friend, slightly older than me 34 years older than me that has been around the block a little bit. And one time I'm trying to save his soul. And he sits me down. And he goes, Oh,
shut up.
Okay. I'm gonna tell you two things. You're wrong, and you're stupid.
And other makes me but I have the evidence. I have the belief, I have the desire. He said, Listen, you're being played with Here's how. And he sits me down for two hours. And I go put put put, and he crushes me Did I go. But but but he crushes me again. Okay, fine.
I need you to and I understood something, then I need to keep an open mind.
This religion is appealing, because it asks people to think
for themselves.
And if you are part of any variation of this religion that is requesting from you to stop what thinking
it's no longer Islam. I don't know what that is. It's some mutated version of something. So Islam,
the reflection, the thought, the critical thinking is something never ends. It never ends. It only adds to our conviction. I'm not talking about the kind of thinking where you go on a
walk. And you're just wonderful. You run from one doubt, to another doubt, to another doubt to another doubt for home tip him you do not like that. But when you hear something you said, where'd you get that from? How do you know that's a valid position? How do you how do we authenticate that? What are the scholarly positions behind it? Let's look at this in more depth. I don't doubt my religion. But I'm starting to doubt the way you're looking at this hadith. I'm having a bit of a doubt about the way you explained that I have a right to have that doubt. I'm not doubting ullas book. I'm not doubting doubting the words of the prophets. I saw them. But I need clarification. And
you know what this Dean came to change the stereotype of religion? Where do you you come into this religion? You learn something about it, you don't understand and you are supposed to ask, criticize, criticize, and it's okay, if you're not satisfied with the answer, and you keep asking until you get an answer.
Maybe it's maybe you frame the question the wrong way. But until you get to someone who can intellectually sit you down and clarify things to you, you your request continues, your journey continues. And it comes with a humility also, maybe there are I have the Quran and there's really are that I will never understand. Maybe I will never understand how I mean, maybe I will never understand that somehow. Or maybe I'll never understand that. That's part of the humility. But I'll keep asking, I'll keep exploring, I'll keep wondering, my wonder won't stop. That's what the beauty of this faith is, human beings were granted this beautiful gift of the intellect and now we're being
asked now to use it. And when you are asked not to use it, that is when imbalance begins.
That's where imbalance begins. And when it happens for a few generations, then we get to the state where we are now. So you're a college student, or you're in your master's program or you're 2728 years old, and you're a woman and you're looking to get married but your parents say No, only from Pakistan.
And you said there's a good brother at the college he hasn't proposed or anything but I think that he might be a good match. No, no, no, no, no. If you do this, if you bring this up again, I will kill myself the mother says or the father says I'm holding his holding his hand on the Quran. I've seen those two. I've also if you do this, if you ever bring this again You are not my daughter. What do you what movie? Did you watch that in row? What do you get that from?
Like, what's the drama?
Because you have to listen to your parents. You know what this is? And you can't ask questions like why what's what's wrong with that? You can and you will never get a straight answer. Because we said
because Islam Muslim what Islam?
In other words, your answer becomes more legitimate if you raise the volume on the same wrong answer.
You know,
this is one time those his uncle who was like justifying some racist comment he made and I was like, did you get this from it's in the books?
And I said which books? All of them
go read?
I can't beat that.
You got me?
You know, it's in the books all of them. Yes, the mind calm is a pretty fun read.
But you know, we this this
generation of Muslims. We are a start at the drawing board. So, um, I was telling you about my journey and I, you know, I didn't ask questions. And I said no, because now this one person had kind of shifted my thinking a little bit. Maybe he is right, I should trust him. Everything he does, I'm gonna do cuz he slapped sense into me, you know? And so I'm going to just follow what do you do? We've got to go to this Hello class, I go start going to this halaqa
and I attended, I really enjoy it. And even though they never said this, subconsciously, I started thinking everything else was garbage
disposal or so everybody's just waiting to be slapped by my friend. And if they got slapped by my friend, they'd been the silica two.
And this journey continued, and I went from one group, one mustered one etiology, one worldview of Islam to another, to another, to another to another. Oh, there were lots of them. There were lots of them. Somebody brought me a pamphlet from one of them today. What do you think about this? And
I've been there
since 1998, right?
You guys don't even know all of this. Been there on that. It's all done. Old. You know, who's still going through this England?
Want to go to England? People ask me questions. And I chuckle like this guy. Literally. Seriously. I was driving in the car, but then he goes, so bruv What do you take your knowledge?
When you take knowledge from, you know, who are your shakes? Now's like
awkward silence for a moment.
That was like,
I'm sorry, bro. I didn't answer you immediately. Because I for a second, I thought I was traveling through time. Because when you take your knowledge is a question from 1997. We already finished this. We're past this already. What do you have you been in the same? Like, are you do you visit geo cities calm? What? What are you? Where are you from? Like, if people don't even know Jesus citizen. That's funny. That's how old I am. Anyway. So you know. But people were stuck in a rut, we find one thing and we train ourselves to think about Islam one way, and everybody else has to think about it this way. And if they don't, they must be wrong. And we have litmus tests for this. I literally used
to go visit massages in New York, where there's a door there's a guy there. You on the sofa?
And I'd be like, what else is there?
All right.
That's a good litmus test. What am I gonna say? No, of course not. That
doesn't make any sense. I went to massage it in England. Check this out. I went on one machine when we went to I went to visit. This is the tragedy of this. We I went to visit a Akram nadwi shahabad. These are the leading we had the throne of the oma today. The man has written a 50 volume book on just a female collectors of Hadith in Islamic history, life profiles of 2500 women, I can't read 50 pages, he's written 50 volumes on this one subject just because he said we we think Islamic Studies is the realm of men. That's actually historically inaccurate. I'm going to show you why.
You know, the he lists first the teachers of Mambo hierarchy mohalla that were women, and what their lives were, where they studied from, and then the student among the students and so on. So just
the 20 minute conversation I had with him at his house, first of all, his real honor to be at his house, the 20 minute conversation I had in his house, answered questions I've had for 10 years.
And the people around him don't even know
don't even know
what a tragedy. You know, we It is so easy for you to dismiss people when you don't know enough. So easy. You know, Allah says, Don't do Hulu in your religion, don't go overboard. So I was going from one group to another to another, to another to another to another and guess what happened? Eventually. I burnt out.
What does Hulu mean? You go into something too far.
And you start hating it just burnt out not going to the machine.
Not really hanging out with anybody just kind of depressed.
Just depressed.
And the only time you hear about Islam is you hear one group D legitimizing another. speaking out against another, that's all you hear you don't hear anything about Islam itself.
You just don't hear it.
So I started thinking back about all these groups,
that all all the groups I've been through all the different machines, all the different adapters, all the different shapes, all of them. And I realized something all of them had something beautiful.
They had something very ugly, and they also had something very beautiful. Why should I let go of the beautiful parts?
Why should I do that? Why can I hold on to the good stuff
Keep it. And my litmus test, I don't impose this on you my litmus test became the moment any group starts speaking out against another,
I'm gonna put the mute button on.
I don't care about that stuff, I just need to learn something that will make me a better Muslim. It's all I care about. All I, if you give me something that will make me think of my brother and my sister as less, I don't want that she's not interested doesn't interest me. It takes away from my love of other Muslims, I can't take it. I will still disagree with Muslims. I will disagree with scholars even sometimes respectfully. But I will never use that to think less of them.
That's going overboard in your religion.
You can love the ideas you believe in. But don't hate the people who don't believe in them.
It's not cool. That's actually pride. You know, this is a battlefield of ideas, I am free to share my ideas, you are free to disagree with me. And after even the strongest disagreement, if we can openly talk in a space where none of us are threatened. None of us are raising our voices. You know, none of us are going crazy. We can just have a civil conversation. That's when this oma moves forward. Whereas the conversation, we've become a people that talk at each other.
Everybody gives a if somebody you know what we do, somebody gives a speech, somebody gives a counter speech, somebody writes an article, somebody writes a counter article, nobody says let me give this brother a call. And let me share with him, here are my disagreements with you. What do you think about them? Let's have a conversation about it. I invite you to my house and let's discuss let our kids play together. Let our wives meet. And let us just talk about this, you know, this issue that I don't agree with you in? I want to know your perspective. When do we do that? Isn't that brotherhood?
Isn't that brotherhood? Instead of talking at people, you talk to them?
You talk to them.
People told me some time ago about my side, I don't really care. Honestly, I don't care what people say online. It doesn't faze me at all. I don't have the time. I have too many things to do for my parents and my kids and my students to worry about what happens online, honestly, you know, so people don't Oh, you know, they're saying that you follow some deviant of fear. I was like, Who are they? I want to go to their house. Can I invite them to my house? I may have good ice cream in my house. I'd love to sit and talk to them.
No, no, no, the street scholars have refuted you. I was like, okay, that's great.
What does refutation mean? Can I can I still come out of my house? Do I have to wear a headband of some special sort? What does that mean? You refuted me? What does the Muslim do refuting another Muslim? What? How does that work? If you don't like what I have to say, which is perfectly fine. I'm no prophet. You're no prophet. It's okay. If we don't like what he has to say. You can come to me and say I disagree with you. You can write to me and say, you know, here's what I don't like, here are my concerns. This is why one of my best friends in life is chiffon works with Avon.
Honestly, I love this man.
I've just I really love him. He's my He's my bigger younger brother.
You know,
it's confused an oxymoron walking around.
But you know, he he'll listen to something I said he'll go at me and say you shouldn't have said that. That's wrong. There. Okay, I'll undo that one in the next club. Okay, cool. He says something I say Why do you say that man? That hurt.
But you see, someone will get hurt with that. He's like, yeah, you're right. Okay, I'll undo that. One. We can openly talk to each other. We can disagree. We can have a conversation. That is when Hulu dies when or when we stop talking to each other. And we start Quick, quick to judge quick to judge quick to judge quick to validate your own position. You're so in love with your own position. You can't let it go. I was in that I was in these when I was in a group. I love that group. I was that group. I was the ambassador of that group. And when I heard something that countered the ideas I was carrying, I was ready to crush it. Oh boy, you better not stand in front of me. When you give
me a counter delete, I will destroy you. I've memorized all the lines. I know which angles you're gonna come from bro. I trained myself in this. I did.
But then I realized my loyalty is no longer to Islam. My loyalties become to these particular understandings of Islam and the way I'm protecting them. I have to check myself. I've caged myself and I'm trying to cage others. So years go by when I realized this, I did dedicate myself to one thing, I realized I will never be able to understand all of Islam, it's too big for me. I'm going to dedicate myself to trying to better my own understanding of the language and some things about Allah's book, maybe if I can get one or two drops out of this book, I will lead a happy life. I'll be okay. So I focused myself on that for the last 10 years. And in that time, as I traveled, I would
meet some kids that are still in one of those, you know, those one of those phases that I've already been through, and they sit me down Brother, you know, nice speech, but I have some concerns, and they'll walk me through the spiel.
But I know the spiel bro I used to do it myself. So he gets to point one and point two and I stop him a point that
this was point three right?
And this was the point for you we're gonna make
he goes maybe
I was like how long you been attending the Holocaust?
He goes what Holocaust because you know, I know.
I know, bro
because perhaps I've been attending some Holocaust, I was like yeah, and you have Hokulea late night afterwards discussing how you're gonna bring Islam to society? Usually Miss fudger haven't called your parents in a while, developed a smoking habit in addition to the hookah that wasn't enough for you.
Perhaps.
And then I said, Listen, Bro,
I know you really want to do this for Islam. You want to debate me for Islam. I just I'm asking you to things. Call your mom and dad every day and pray fudger
just work on that. Okay, we'll establish Islam together. Just work on that.
You get caught up in this stuff in one thing or another and the world becomes nothing to you. And I tell you, I tell you, I tell you, when you get caught up in these ideologies, the first thing to suffer is your family.
The first thing to suffer, I'm being very real with you. This is Lulu indeed. For us. We get we hang on to one idea. we tell ourselves we're serving Islam by spending nights and nights and nights discussing something or another at these late night restaurants with questionable content on the TV screens. We do this in on Steinway Street and we do this on Atlantic I know we do this authentic, we do this by chicken guy. Right? And we do this and then you know the mother doesn't know where you are. The father doesn't know where you are. Nobody's ever checked the cache on your laptop.
You know, and we do this and we think we're serving Islam. Doing something for our Deen. Stop kidding yourself.
The first thing that Dean fixes is your relationships.
If you're really serving your deen, you will see a tremendous change in your relationships the way you are with your brother, your sister, your parents, you know, your loved ones closest to you are drawn to the perfection of your clock.
That was what little suicide salon did. First, he had that even before rissalah he had the perfection of a clock character, the people most impressed with him or his family. Today you will find young people when they get into the field of data that people least impressed with them or who? Their family, everybody else. Oh, and the family says it.
You know?
Honestly,
honestly,
if you want to become a speaker, you want to give that whatever you want to convince people of it's not Where's your family's time with your family. This is Hulu and religion. We've got to balance all of this stuff. And if you're living in New York, you're already used to balancing crazy numbers of things. You've got work, you're living hand to mouth, it's not an easy life here is one of the most expensive places to live in the world. That's where you chose to live. You know?
I know I know. You don't think there's nothing outside of this in America. Everybody else has got straw in their mouth, and they're just you know, and a banjo in the trunk.
I call my old friends. How's Texas Dong Dong Dong Dong.
Looks pretty good out there. You know.
But, uh, you live here. So yeah, it's hard, even harder to balance here because you have time for nothing. You have time for nothing, you leave six in the morning, an hour and a half, 45 minutes, whatever it is in the subway and after being pushed around to the bus, then you go to work, then you go to school, then you do some more work, then you get some pizza and then you get back on the train. And then by the time you get home, you're done. You don't see your parents you don't see the wife You don't see the child you'll see nothing. You know, and you know what, if that's the case with you, you need to figure out a way to make time for your family.
The balanced approach to religion means you learn to balance all of this stuff, and you don't lose your soul in the process. If you have 45 minutes on the train, then just memorize some Quran at that time. keep yourself busy with something productive.
Do suddenly bada every second count when you every letter you recite is 10 good deeds. Imagine how much you can rack up over time. I remember memorizing a little israa and social graph on the subway when I was in college, you know, one day I was I didn't even know Arabic at the time, which is like okay, just go when I did when I when I do. You know, it's not hard, you could do it. So now at least you have some spiritual Avenue maybe you didn't get to sit looking at the sky. Maybe you didn't get to do camelina mustard, but you've got to find ways to serve to fill fulfill the needs of your of your heart. during your day. You have to make that time. You have to make the time to reach out to
your parents and text messages aren't enough.
Text Message I'll call you later. That's not how I would talk to my parents. I told my mom to call me later.
You want to text her? Tell her you She loves you love her. And if you tell your mother You love her and she says No, you don't.
That means there's something wrong with you.
That means you You keep saying it, but you've done nothing for it. You've never spent any time with her. You've been ignoring her. So those words offend her, because he can see right through them. So you don't get I told my mom, I love her. She said, No, you don't know actually, she said, Where's the proof? You've been, you've been ignoring me all this time was saying I love you changes everything. These are empty words to you.
If you love someone, you spend time with them.
Without your phone, without your laptop, you sit with them. If you love your father, you do that. You spend time with them. You know, for the young men here learn to get up for fudger men stop hanging out late night. It's New York, I'm just being real. We could give theoretical lectures, you're not getting up for fudger, wake up, stop going to sleep late. That's balancing your religion don't go out late night, I know the restaurants are open till whenever I know you're used to the nightlife. I know it's tempting, it's fun. When else you're going to do it, you need to let loose, there should be a time you can let loose, that's fine. But if it's hurting your slot, man, you just
got to stop. You got to find some other way. You know,
young man here, you know, you should have a relationship with a machine where you go where nobody knows you. And you go every once in a couple of weeks, and you spend a few hours just sitting there reciting code onto a wall. You're just sitting there on your own, nobody's around you. You're just doing that it'll, it'll help you, it'll give you peace. If you can't go to a machine go to like Flushing Meadows Park and sit by the water and recite put on.
Or nobody cares about anything, nobody's gonna be around. You know, just do that you have to find that time. This is Hulu and religion. And if we don't if we don't find it, and when you get Hulu and religion, things go crazy. The Christians developed Hulu overboard attitudes and their religion, it led them to even worshipping their prophet. That's why it's mentioned twice la Takeuchi, Dini come back the second time in Central America, without any justification, you're going to go overboard in one thing or another without justification. It's gonna mess you up and mess the people up around you. The final bit of advice that I have for myself and for all of you, when it comes to a balanced
approach to religion. This is my final bit of advice. I pray you take it seriously, this is something I've saved me a lot of trouble. And I hope it saves you a lot of trouble too. In my personal life, this is something personal. I realized that in Islam in the realm of Islam, no one scholar, no one school of thought, or no one person, no one individual has all the answers.
And they shouldn't.
Allah didn't do that Allah made us shuru, which means we depend on one another. Just the nature of things.
So if somebody is giving you knowledge of Akita,
for example, you're studying Aikido, which is a great thing to study. That doesn't necessarily mean that's your source for film.
If you're studying film from someone, that doesn't necessarily mean that's your source for the seat.
If you're setting the scene with someone, that's not necessarily mean, that's your source for Hadeeth.
If you're studying Hadith with someone, it doesn't necessarily mean that's your source for history.
You have to go to people that are specialists in their field.
If you really want genuine answers and deep and profound answers, you have to go to people that specialize in their fields. One of the things that's caused an insane amount of damage to Islam in the last century, is people who know a little about a lot of things. When you have a little bit about a lot of things, it seems like it's a lot of knowledge, but none of it is deep. You see, you can quote a lot of different things, but you have depth and nothing. You see, somebody came to me during the question answer session and asked me about
you know, donating donating body parts donating organs. Oh, no. But you studied the Quran? Yes, that's a fair question. I don't know. That's not my field. You need to ask someone who knows? I said, That's a hard question. Somebody asked me a question about IP, or about history. I don't know. You need to ask somebody who studies aqidah in depth and they can explain it to you in a way that is more appropriate to the concerns you have. I can't answer that. What about this thesis here? I don't know. But it's in Buhari, I still don't know because that's not my field. People write about me and they complain somebody emailed me, why don't you ever talk about Hadith? I said, because I'm not a
more Hadith
because I have too much respect for that subject.
I only quote a hadith. I only mentioned a hadith if I have sat with a scholar myself, and have understood it from a scholar. And I've done that with only a few IDs. I've read a lot of ahaadeeth. I've studied a lot of ahaadeeth I don't talk about them because I have too much respect for that subject. I don't want to make that a casual subject. Because I've seen the damage that does I've seen the damage it does when I
High school or a college student, Google's
Hadeeth on this, that or the other, and they don't even know the Arabic nor the chain of narration, nor the nuances nor the context, and they're ready to quote it in the face of their MSA friend who they're trying to beat an election or something. I've seen it that's a disrespect to the words of the school. So some these words are sacred, you have to have some respect for them. Some respect for the nuance that's in them. And you can do a lot of damage to people. If you don't know what you're talking about you can you think you're quoting the words of a suicide, saddam, you're doing damage to people. And that's why not only should we not speak about things, we don't have deep knowledge of
don't talk, you know, you can give people advice, you can tell people about being regular in their prayer, you can tell people to stop lying, stop being angry. These are universal pieces of advice. You don't need to be a scholar for those things. But when it comes to shadow, any matters what's hot, and what's hot, um, you know, what should a married couple do when they're having trouble? They shouldn't be going to a tee, they should be going to a counselor. That's a counseling realm. That's not a that's not a you know, what does Islam say about my husband? Who does this is this? No, no, no, no, no, there's a lot more to that story than your husband doing this. There's this. There's,
there's you've been married for some time. There's a lot of issues there. You need to sort out before you say my husband does XYZ, I need an Islamic answer doesn't work that way. does not work that way. You're oversimplifying and you're trying to use the religion as a weapon against your loved one. Don't do it. And don't do it against your wife, either. Husband and wife don't get along and how's the wife is crying. And he says, What's the matter? No, I don't know. Talk to me. I want to talk to you. And he calls to Hades. You know the if you're displeased with me, the angels will curse you the entire night.
It's a he Hades. Hades, but you know what? You know what? Even if she turns towards you, even if she turns towards you, you think it's because of love? That love?
You just you were okay with threatening her with the curse of angels. You call that a marriage? Is that what it was? Who gave that some alone where it was um, shame on you? How dare you quote that? People beat their wives and this Eldridge? ancova Muna Nisa How dare you? How dare you disrupt the word of a lot like that? region como una de una means kawaii I give him a bottle and JMC occur when I came last. But we're a wom is actually off while in meme. It shares a route with one of the last names Alka yom.
yom is actually well you know Allahu Allah, Allah, Allah will hire you and kill you when the Arabic language is sacred, because Allah chose it for Quran. And within the Arabic language. The letters that make up a last names are even more sacred. So when you think you know what Kabbalah means, think again, it's a letter. These are letters that are one of the names of Allah come from these letters. So before you draw any conclusions study, know what it means first, and it means caretaker, the one who stands up for someone, the one who does activities with someone, it has over 100 meanings, and beading is not one of them. Neither is authority.
Neither is authority, terrible transition men or authority over women, the authority of men is establishing the other is not this one, somebody know what you're talking about? This blaspheme is, you know, this is who knew, indeed, this is the abuse of religion. That's what we have to prevent as a people.
This is what it's happening and it hurts. I hear people quote, in a Hadith, just because somebody is quoting Iota Hadith doesn't mean they're right. Their own imbalance is seeing things in an imbalanced way. You have to become critical thinkers. You can't look at something in a shallow way and say, Okay, okay, that's what it is. No, no, no, no, no, I need more understanding. I need depth. I don't care if you don't know the whole Quran, it's okay. If you know to know them in depth. I don't care if you don't know all of the body, it's fine. If you know to IR to to a hadith. You No wonder I know it in depth. Know It, well spend time on one thing, you know, really internalize it
and then move on, then move on to something else. It's all become about quantity and not quality. You know? Can you imagine if the ocean that looks so beautiful. By the way, if the ocean wasn't as deep as it is, it was just six inches deep, it would still look like it does. From a distance, you'd say, Oh, wow. But there's no depth. That's what we've become in our Islam. No depth, and no appreciation for depth. Those of you who listened to my foot was how many I had to I coordinate.
Usually how many as you know,
young guys come and ask me.
I'm giving cocoa for the first time can you give me a bunch of my art
and they write like a four page thesis that they're gonna. Today's hooked by is going to be about taqwa. Allah subhanho wa Taala says, and he says, and he says, And oh, what else did he say? Where did it go? Okay, that's a lot.
When you're recording one if one had if one if one had one, if one had if one story one, one had if you didn't stop at one, I am a fan of cron, why don't you think deeply about the Quran via Wi Fi so they can think deeply about the ayat. This is thinking deeply or just moving along.
I mean, when you see a beautiful mountain,
do you just say, Oh, that's nice.
Do you do that? Or do you stand there and go, Whoa.
When you see an incredible painting,
you just stand there stunned by it, or you just go.
We don't even do that with things that are created in this world. We're stunned. Nobody goes to the beach for one second.
Oh, such a beautiful sun. Hello. Next thing mountain. Where's the mountain? well forget about it. Let's get this out of the way. You know,
when you are when you're experiencing something beautiful, you want to stop. You want to taste it. You want to take it in. You want to be able to appreciate it because this might not come again. Why don't we have that attitude towards the text? Because we have Hulu. Just give me the quick version.
will give me the quick version. Let me move. This book is so beautiful. This one is so beautiful. The results word sallalahu are so beautiful. They will make you cry if you just spend time on them. If you want to find balance in your life, I know I said the last advice Can I give you one more bit of advice. One last one. I promise one last one.
If you and I want to find find balance in our lives, here's where we begin. We begin by conversing with Allah.
If you're not personally talking to Allah, you're never going to find balance in Islam.
Talking to Allah means you have to learn the etiquette and manners of making Doha. You have to learn what it means to pray to Allah. And it's okay if you don't know Arabic and you don't memorize Well, you can pray to a lion or do it's fine Punjabi, I'm not sure but we'll do is fine.
You should be okay with although Okay, if are you these Guyanese is okay. Okay.
But it's good for you if you were to memorize some of the prayers of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam because that's how he used to converse with Allah.
Our messenger Allah converse with him and he Converse back with Allah. The Quran is how Allah conversed with him, that the eyes of the Prophet are how the Prophet says I'm conversed with Allah. It's a two way conversation, right? So every Muslim should own a copy of the fortress of the Muslim, you should have a plan on how in the next week, you're going to know one more draw just what as a family, the whole family will learn one word on you'll sit there and you'll think about what Ally's asking you to say. When you enter the house. What are you actually saying, When you enter the machine? What are you actually saying? Think about it, it will make you different people. It will
just absolutely make you different people and it will make you comfortable speaking to your master, and those who speak to their master, Allah guides them in ways you can't even imagine. You would think Australia's in the middle of all of these groups, and all of these ideologies and all of this information on the internet and all of the attacks on Islam, there's so much confusion, how in the world are we supposed to find guidance? How are we going to find guidance? And my answer to you is if you talk to Allah, then you could be in the darkest times and in the most hopeless situation. And Allah will find a way to guide you. This is how I wanted to end this. The story of Robert De villa.
You know who that is? No, you don't because I do.
Three months ago, I gave hooked by in Fort Worth. I haven't been to that much than four or five years and they invited me for some reason. And I went and I gave her brother my hotel was about Dora. An Egyptian fellow comes up to me a young man came up to me afterwards he goes, Allah fulfilled my daughter today.
And I said, What's your dog? He said my dog was that no man alikhan should meet Robert Davila. Sir.
Are you Robert Davila? He goes Nope, I am not Robert Davila. Robert Davila is my friend. But I think a less fulfilling my dog. I was like, fire away. I want to know. Robert Davila is a young man who lives in a town 40 minutes past Fort Worth. He's a he was a farmer young guy. And he was hit with some sort of genetic disorder that kicked in later on in his life and he became paralyzed from the neck down.
And he was he's actually he lives in a nursing home. Most people in that nursing home are 90 years. 100 years are really really old people and then there's, you know, his room where he's paralyzed neck down. He's the only 30 something year old that is in the nursing home, okay. And he's been in that nursing home for the last 10 years.
His family got a computer for him that's voice activated so he can give voice commands. But I had fallen on Google stuff in search stuff so you can surf the web and find information in his room. in his room, and by the way, staunch Christian family, the Minister comes in praise for him.
Every You know, every week and things like that, and his best friend was in the bed next to him, one of his best friends, he became best friends because he met him at the nursing home. This person was also paralyzed and he needed a new liver. Okay, a liver transplant, he was waiting for a liver transplant and they used to talk about, you know, God and things like that all the time. They were good friends. Finally, his best friend got a call that there's a donor available for the liver.
So he's so excited. He goes, Robert, I'm gonna miss you. But I'm going, I've got it. I've got a donor. So they take his friend, and they go on the up into the operation and his friend died at the operating table.
Now his friend, was also a Christian, the deceased friend, his sister, took one of the the amulets of his friend a crucifix. And she gave it as a gift to Robert. This is a reminder of your old buddy. So he hung it on the side of his hospital bed.
Robert properties a lot of lives a pretty decent life in there that the nurses take care of is a happy guy. And one day he goes to sleep and he sees a man in his dream.
The man says his name is Muhammad.
And he says, pointing at the crucifix.
God did not send messengers. So they would worship the messengers. God says message sent messengers so that you could worship God. And Jesus was just a man, he walked into markets, and he ate food.
He walked into markets, and he ate food, and the dream stopped. He only knows that Jesus was just a man. He knows there's a man that named Mohammed that said that to him. He said that messengers came so people could worship God and not the messengers. This is all he knows. So he starts googling Mohammed.
He finds Islam.
He takes Shahada
when you take Shahada, he wants to learn about the Quran. So he goes on these chat sessions and find somebody needs to teach me Koran. He finds a brother in Egypt that he gets together with on Skype to try to learn Arabic, learn the Arabic alphabet. Once he learned the Arabic alphabet, he learned to recite the Quran. He memorized 10 solos from his hospital bed.
Then he said, I'm beginning to memorize the Quran, and beginning to learn about this prophet, but I need to understand the Quran. So he starts googling how to understand the Quran. And for some reason, he ends up on my videos.
And he starts watching my stuff.
And he watched almost everything.
And then he told and then, here's the other here's the kicker. In the nursing home, there was an Egyptian fellow that used to come in and do some, you know, repair work. The Egyptian fellow has his own awesome story. The guy had basically lost faith. He wasn't religious, the nearest mustard to him was 50 miles away. So he didn't really go to Jamal much anymore. But he felt a spiritual void. So he started going to the church just to feel closer to Allah.
Raised Muslim, he goes to the churches to feel closer to Allah. He's passing by Roberts on one day, and he hears when lastly in LA in San Jose.
So he walks into his room and says, Robert, what are you listening to? Robert says nothing. That was me.
And the guy says, You're Muslim. He goes, Yeah, I became Muslim.
And now this friend is in shock.
How does Allah guide someone in the middle of church town, USA, in a nursing home, with a crucifix on the side of his bed, that he doesn't even have the physical strength to move? And the guy himself says, I want to come back to Allah.
So he tells him about his demo, the friend he found online. No, Manali, Han. So the Egyptian fellow starts watching my videos. And then he says, I wish I could meet him one day. And he says, Okay, I'll pray for you. And after five years, that Egyptian friend shows up at the same machine that I haven't been to in four years. And after Jumana says, I think Allah wants to fulfill my friend's daughter and my daughter.
So I said, I think he does. Let's go. So I took a few of us and we went, and we met with Robert. We had an beautiful conversation with him and inshallah, for four, we're gonna go to his, his nursing home again. They were actually the nursing was pretty shocked. You're all here to meet Robert.
Yep.
Why do you want to meet him? He's an inspiration.
Let me check if we can better call the heartbeat, the hospice administrator and all this stuff, and then eventually let us in. And Robertson shark and then I meet with Robert were talking and I was like, hey, Robert, so I heard you memorize some sutras. He says, Yeah, can you recite one for me? So he decided so it's
not one of us was not crying. We're just in tears. When when somebody turns to Allah,
when somebody turns to Allah, don't worry about the means. Guidance will come. Balance will come. I want to tell you some more about Robert because young guys are here. Younger
I play basketball, the young guys that are healthy young guys that have ambition.
I told you What's his paralysis from where to where.
leg down. He has a special wheelchair that has to hold pretty much every part of his body in place. He can't just sit in a wheelchair, it holds his neck, and it holds every other part of his body in place because he has no control over his limbs. And he has to have a special van where the wheelchair locks in. So that if it goes through a bump or whatever, he doesn't, you know, receive the shock. So he made a request, he wants to go to the Friday prayer.
They didn't have the special van. So they put them in a regular van.
And so he went to the regular van and a few bumps and his spine got even more hurt. He went to jamara he came back in excruciating pain. And they said, I'm sorry, Robert, you're no longer able to sit in your wheelchair, you're gonna have to stay in your bed for the next six months at least if you see recovery, then you can get back up again. I met him in those in that span he'd already been in that bed for for three months already. And the reason he was in that bed as he went to Juma prayer, and he told me about the Juma prayer, he said, I've never felt more peace in my life than I was in that machine. And you know what I'm going to do, brother, No, man, when I can consider my
chair again. I'm going to go to Juma.
I'm gonna go to the machine because I've never felt like that before.
There's someone who has nothing but control over his his mouth and his eyes.
And he says, I only find peace in the machine. And here we are.
These massage it I don't care what ideology, what school of thought, what they're talking about in the machine, what fitness there I don't care. It's still a large house. Just go to pray. Don't go there to talk to people go there to talk to Allah.
Just go to talk to Allah.
You're not you're just going for you and Allah. That's it. That's it.
Other things will come but you're not going for them. You're just going there to find peace. You'll become different people. If we're lucky and guide Robert Davila, Allah guide everybody. And then he said, You know, sometimes I wonder why Allah put me in this position. And then I say to myself, What am I kidding? Allah has given me so much. I'm so grateful for it he gave me and if this is the way he was gonna bring me to Islam, it's all worth it.
so worth it.
You have Muslims that lose a little bit of health. And they say, why is Allah doing this to me? And this man, if you would think you know, nowadays, atheists argue because of suffering. There's no God. If one man has a position in a position to say, I don't believe in God, if there was a guy, why would I be in this position? It would be Robert Davila. That guy would say, I don't believe in God. If there was one, why would I be in this mess?
And yet he's in this position. And I've never seen him face with more nude. Never. I've never seen a face that has more contentment on a so satisfied with life. He's so happy. He's just happy.
The last seven or eight couples I've given
are actually based on one sentence per each on one sentence that he said in his conversation. Has that profound
he's been he's a teacher to me. I consider him a teacher. He's somebody says, who's your chef? I said Robert Davila.
Really, is that is there a pizza place? Or? No? No, you know,
people, the guidance is all around us. You don't have to get worried about what's not there. There's plenty there. You know what Allah did for the people of the cave.
You know, he even guided them in where to sleep.
You know, he even guided them on where to turn.
As the sun was coming, they turn away from it as the sun came from the other side, they turned the other way.
Allah will guide you in your asleep. When you make god damn.
He'll even guide you in your sleep.
Every toss and turn will be guided by Allah. Can you imagine? Who's we shouldn't be skeptical and allows guidance. We shouldn't worry about how am I going to find balance? No, that's a lost job to guide you. Your job is to talk to him. Your job is to get sincere. That is the message I have for you. That is how we're going to find balance. Honestly, with no and if once you do that, once you become sincere to Allah, Allah will open doors, Allah will give you friends, a lot will give you teachers a lot will give you access to resources, all of which are going to bring you closer and closer and closer to Him and to the truth and make life better for the people around you. This is
really the gist of what I wanted to share with you. I don't want to speak longer. I've spoken too long already. I love coming back to New York and I'm so so grateful for Queens College. And the MSE here Mashallah they put up with me, I give them a hard time and they still put up with me. I show up half an hour late and they're still really nice to me. They didn't give me the look of death that I used to give to speakers when I was the MSA guy and a mom said it sounds like
it's okay. It's okay. It's okay.
You're doing good. You do good.
Okay, fine.
Since you put it that way,
so except that, you know, but I'm very grateful for you guys, you know, and, you know, putting up with this crowd, we're not easy to deal with. We have lots of complaints too. So if you see an MSA person, just, you know, pat them on the back or say thank you or whatever, appreciate the effort that they've done. I'd also like to thank all the moms that are here with their little kids, because that's hard. It got hot in here. And it's, it's, I'm amazed at the children that didn't scream and yell more than what I heard. I didn't hear I heard very little was the crazy kid was over here.
Was that was her?
iPhone, okay.
Okay, that's the other thing I'm grateful for. And finally, of course, I'd like to, I want to share some kind of share some news with you. that okay with you. Okay.
This is cool. So I went to
last summer, I got a chance to go to Malaysia. And 100 I made some really cool friends in Malaysia, it was like a life altering trip. The part of the trip was Singapore, and also stopped over in Bahrain, and had the honor of being at the International Islamic University of Malaysia. And I spoke also with a number of media outlets there. And I realized something we've been cooking an idea back home and debating laboratories,
which basically has to do with bringing meaningful content to Muslims. I think Alhamdulillah the lecture thing is great. But it can only go so far. But what we really really need is engaging media. Well, I think it's really important that we have engaging media so we have this idea for a basically a talk show, but that's a mix of social commentary, special reports and accomplished Muslims. Like I want to interview people that are doing cool things in the oma I want people to have journalism that's positive about things that are happening in the Muslim world so there's interest already and they're trying to pick it up in Malaysia inshallah Allah mcdata that works out. And I'm going in
Ramadan again to Yes, I know. I got it, I got it.
So, but the cool thing is, we are actually going to build Bina studios I want to make I want to beat Oprah.
In Texas, inshallah, we're building a we're hoping to actually buy a church that's on sale, and turn it into a like a live audience studio and start talk shows and discussions there. That will be broadcast online, and it will also be broadcast in TV stations around the world inshallah Tada. Now, if you would like to contribute towards that, we don't do fundraising. But what we do ask you to do is subscribe to billionaire TV. But you know that TV, because the next couple of months of subscriptions are going to go towards the perfect purchase of the campus, you subscribe and you get access to the translation of the Quran, the Arabic courses, all the stuff that's on there, and all
the new stuff that's coming on there. How many people are familiar with being a TV here? Quite a few. Mashallah. That's great. So the sisters, this might interest you. The two new upcoming things on being a TV, the recent one was the hijab lecture. What is hijab anyway? So I did a, like a four hour piece on just the idea of a job, because there's some confusion about it, apparently. So I figured, let's just talk about the AI. Let's sort that out a little bit. And the next idea that I'm going to be working on in a month and a half time, is the idea about beating women.
Because if we don't love the IOD, where's our human, if the author giving us trouble, then we have to fix that, don't we? We have to love the IOD. Thank you so very, very much for listening and being patient with me as I come along.