What Type of Muslim Are You
Date:
Channel: Nouman Ali Khan
File Size: 32.86MB
Episode Notes
Ustadh Nouman speaks about the 7 types of different Muslims.
AI Generated Transcript ©
So, let's get started right away. And the first topic that I wanted to talk about is something very personal to me. I don't come from a very religious background. And when I did come towards Islam, I was in New York. And the thing about New York is depending on which mustard you go, you get a different brand of Islam.
So, and each, they don't just call themselves Muslim, they have another label next to them, we are this kind of Muslim, that kind of Muslim, this school of thought that school of thought this Gemma, Gemma, there are these different names. And we're not going to be naming names in this discussion. But certainly, it was the case that each each of those groups, some more accepting of others than then than others, some of them are very exclusive. If you're not part of us, then you're not even in proper Islam, you're misguided and all those people are going to hell, etc, etc. Right. And their majority of their energy was spent talking about how they're right and everybody else is wrong. And
yet other groups, their emphasis was on some completely different thing, some other piece of Islam. And they said, if you don't emphasize on this, if this is not what you're about, then how are you even Muslim? Right? So each of these groups or each of these kinds of identities, they have their own very distinct, very strong brand of Islam. And this is not just a problem in New York City, it's actually a problem across the oma. Right? So a lot of times when I travel, I get asked what kind of Muslim I am. And I all I can say is the weird kind, I don't know what else
what to tell you. Because then you need to put some kind of label there, right. And it is Alhamdulillah. Like, for many Muslims, this is not a problem, they've been raised in a village, everybody's the same, and there's never gonna they're not going to see a Muslim that looks different, or has a different school of thought. But you know, we're in a, in a cosmopolitan world. Now, you guys are living in cities that are international, and people are coming and they're praying in Salah together that don't belong to the same school of thought, no two people are holding hands in the same place. Right? And whether or not people are sitting there for 10 minutes for the door
after the salon, df Corolla, some people are getting up and leaving, and the people who are sitting there getting offended by the guys that are leaving, and the guys who are leaving and saying these guys are so confused, why are they still sitting there? So there's, there's all of this, these dynamics that can create unnecessary tension between Muslims. Right, and it can it can create a kind of resentment, mistrust, and an unhealthy attitude towards the Muslim community because we we check whether or not they're close enough to us before we think of them as Muslim, right. And so I wanted to bring that to, at least in my observation, it's been something that I've learned to, like, let go
of, and not make an emphasis in my life, when people come up to me and talk to me about them being Muslim, I don't ask what kind of Muslim they are, you know, I just, I just want to talk to them. The fact that they accept a line is messenger is good enough for me. The rest is with, you know, their own journey and chala they grow in it, etc. But I wanted to get you guys's thoughts on your experiences are different from mine. So I wanted to hear from you, you know, how you've dealt with sectarianism and where you think we can go as an Omar to get beyond it, inshallah.
So just to keep the conversation a little bit more informal and on a personal level, because I think that's the vibe that you're going for. I grew up in a community. many of y'all like both of y'all were attracted to the community that, you know, we all live in now, because of the absence of a lot of that mentality. And there was a lot more cohesion and unity across the board. But it wasn't always like that. And there were definitely different pockets of the community. So I grew up in a community where there was a lot of division in that regard. You are one type of Muslim or you are another type of Muslim or you just were, you know, maybe not even Muslim to a lot of the other
people.
And one of the perspectives that I kind of grew up with was,
I had a huge realization about like, 15 years ago, where I realized a lot of the guys and you know, sisters that grew up in my generation, who grew up in the middle of that type of ideological warfare.
Most a lot of them ended up losing their Islam. A lot of them ended up not losing completely their eemaan but definitely giving up on being part of the community ever.
And because of this, because of this, because it was Islam basically became just something you fight about.
Islam was demonstrated as being something
You fight about.
And so a lot of times when I'm asked a question by students or community members, because we talk a lot about community all of us do, and kind of our vision and perspective on community, so they kind of, they asked me, where does your perspective or vision on community come from? So I end up telling them that I grew up in a community that was very divisive. So I just decided to look back at that entire experience, and noted down as what not to do in the community. And one realization that I came to is one extreme breeds the other. And almost all of these movements and different mentalities are very reactionary to one another. They all justify their conduct, their behavior, their
perspective, their rhetoric against other people, they justified as a response to somebody else. So you know, when I was learning, one of the,
my formula became if I'm listening to some shake or something, and I'm very old, so you listen to cassette tapes. And so when I listen to them, if they're in their tapes, they were talking about how misguided or deviated those people are, I stopped listening.
Like, I don't have time to learn about what's wrong. I just I'd rather learn something that's right, kind of thing. You know, there was just far too much energy spent on here are the eight groups that are going to help like,
Okay, can we talk about the group is going to heaven, like,
over. So I think that we can't be shallow about this, we have to be realistic about it. Historically speaking, most calls for pluralism in any faith tradition have actually failed miserably, because they were too superficial. They were they ignored just realities that were that were going to always be there. And instead of confronting issues at the core, they just tried, they were just general calls very shallow calls, very happy go lucky calls of Let's all it was a very fluffy call for pluralism. So I think we have to be very honest, number one,
one thing that we can agree upon first and foremost, and it's sad that we even have to mention this in this day and age is that you don't you don't actually become violence against any other group of Muslims, any any group of people period over theological differences. I mean, I don't even know have you thought about the last time he was killed by the hell out of he was killed by one of, you know, this violent group that the prophets lie, some said would resurface in every single generation in some way, shape, or form, basically, people that make tuck feet of other Muslims and people that will kill people and so on, so forth. But when he was asked whether they're whether we should
consider them non Muslims, he said, he said at one level, I think they are our brothers who have transgressed against us, that we're not going to resort to their, you know, understanding and their labeling and so on, so forth. So, number one, it has to be very clear that no matter how deviant if a person is, indeed deviance because these, these were, indeed, deviant people beyond deviant people, you don't get to a point where you start becoming a tech theorist and you start saying things about other people and so on so forth, then you have to understand levels of sectarianism. There are schools of thought, which have been acceptable throughout the history of the oma one thing
that has always made Islam very unique is that, that there is a creed that is that that unites us as an Alma almost almost across the board, that 90% of the oma loosely associates with the same major tenets within creed that's not heard of in any other faith tradition, right? You see sex and other faith traditions, they disagree on fundamentals and creed and theology, we don't have that. So the idea is, then filk differences are acceptable. But how you act with those differences, where we have to be also very honest, that we're not living in a time of amount of No, you don't have a large Rosati or even Tamia at least people that knew how to deal with differences in a civilized fashion.
So then it's about it's not about changing. It's not about making those differences disappear. It's about teaching people how to how to have mature discourse about those differences without becoming uncivilized or abusive towards the other person. Yeah, like, I mean, give you a practical example. I've been in massages where, you know, the there's a group that believes that you cannot do massage over your socks unless they're leather. And the mom is okay with cotton socks. Now, they're not about me, by the way. Oh, really? You're okay with that? So I don't know. I didn't check out your socks, but anyway.
But uh, would you like to know?
They're probably too long.
I put your socks on, they'll more like stockings. But anyway.
But anyway,
as I say, yes. So they see the mount guy lead the prayer and they're like, maybe he did muster over his cotton socks. And they'll repeat their prayer. to like, just go in the back of the machine and repeat their prayers. They wouldn't even pray behind me. They just pray.
During the demo, will they be played by mistake because they joined the second car.
So that's why they joined in. But then they find out that Oh my God, this guy, his feet are so nudgers right now. And then they go back and they, you know, repeat. And that, to me is pretty disturbing. That's a pretty disturbing, like, okay, it's a fifth difference, but it's now become like, division inside a machine. And about even something as basic as the acceptability of salon. So it can become pretty extreme. What do you think about that?
Yeah, it's, it's basically, a lot of times, there's two, there's two dynamics that present themselves, at least what I've seen, there's a lack of education.
And, you know, there's a, there's an undeniable quality of knowledge and education that so many people have experienced, when they begin to educate themselves, and they start to learn is that education and learning will always broaden your mind. It'll always broaden your perspective. Well, it depends if you're learning from a cult, the know. Exactly. And then there's learning.
So that, then there's a critique in terms of the quality of the education, right? So whenever there's quality of education, and some of these putting the knowledge first and foremost, and letting so it comes up the issue of information bias, if you if you approach knowledge within information bias, then it's not going to have the desired result and outcome. Right. So there's that one issue that, I'll tell you my thoughts on this, like, you guys are free to critique them. From an average Muslims perspective, I have a few observations, one, we don't have a basic education in Shetty, or faith and things like that. These are not things that most Muslims are well acquainted
with. They're just not practically speaking. So they're going to rely on somebody who knows more than them, or they're going to Google, whatever they're going to Google, right, which means that pretty much all of us are going to have a different conclusion, because we relied on virtually different sources to get our answers, right, that's the first thing. The second thing is we're not nearly as, as an oma, we're not nearly on the same page on even basic things anymore, as we used to be, we have too much access to information. And we our minds operate very, very differently. So we're going to get different conclusions, all of us. And then you're going to come to someone like
me, or chef or chef Homer more qualified and check on blosser like and say, Well, I heard that you can pray like this. But I also heard you can do it like this. And also, can you tell me which ones right? Because you're gonna hear like eight things, and you don't know which one to go with? And in that scenario, I think the only practical thing to do for me, my The advice I have for myself and I'd have for all of you is you have to find somebody you can trust that knows more than you. in your community online, wherever you find them.
No, not me. Not. Not online, not online. No. Okay, no, absolutely not online, that's part of the problem is that it's online. You can't You can't go to a Facebook, you can't go to a federal website and structure your own school of thought in your own practices in accordance with that you have to have at least someone what even if they're not a scholar, someone that's at least somewhat of a student of knowledge that can properly process that information. And bring it to your level. That's actually one of the problems is the online education. I mean, pure online education. So that's one step. But there's a problem with that step two. And the problem with that step is when you rely on
somebody else for information, they're human being right, and they they may, they may tell you something that your heart is not settled on like, wait, that doesn't make sense to me. That doesn't add up. And then you feel like, well, if questioning them is the same as questioning Islam itself, that's not true. This religion is actually rooted in you having the right and the ability to ask critical questions. If you don't understand something, or you're not convinced of something. You're not at Garfield, or a facet, or a deadline for asking questions. You can totally ask questions. And you can totally say, Well, that doesn't make sense to me, could you help me understand this better?
And the answer to that is not supposed to be well, how can you disagree? Who are you, you should be ashamed of yourself. And instead of this guilt tripping, we need to create a culture, especially among people of knowledge, that they patiently answer questions with convincing arguments, not guilt tripping, and not reminding people that well, by the way, we're scholars and you're not, because that's just not going to in one generations time, you're going to get a huge population of Muslims who want nothing to do with religiously knowledgeable people, because they'll say these people to think too highly of themselves. And they don't dignify us with intelligent answers. They just say,
well take it from me because I'm gonna share kind of thing. And I don't think that's going to fly in this generation will. The second thing I was going to mention was that aside from just an absence of even basic education, the second factor that I feel contributes to this a lot of times is the absence or a vacuum of leadership. Good qualified, trained leadership creates a lot of these dynamics and problems. I had a particular experience it's gonna sound very obscure, random but
with some of my teachers,
We actually traveled I studied in Pakistan. And then we traveled through parts of the country that were like very rural. Yeah. So we ended up in like, the mountain regions. And we were just kind of going through there, carrying supplies and picking things. And we cut this part of the recording later.
But went into the mountains and party.
It's there.
It was like relief work. Okay. Yeah, really? Yeah. So
we were visiting all these like villages and rural folks. And we saw two very different cultures in different villages, different towns, there were some of them that didn't have any type of, like you just said, maybe not like some scholar, super scholar, but even just a generally qualified student of knowledge, advanced student of knowledge, didn't have anybody. And just their understanding of Islam was very warm, there was a lot more sectarianism, a lot more division, a lot more bizarre things in their ideas. And then we came across some villages where there was like a very, you know, moderate, humble II mom, who wasn't maybe the most qualified person, but I had studied for a few
years with some teachers, and the culture of that entire village. And those people was so drastically different. They were so enlightened and open minded and that person was accessible. Exactly. So there's a there's a, there's an absence of leadership that contributes to a lot of these things. And so now, a lot of general folks here, I would say, or maybe asking, what are we supposed to do about that? That's why it's kind of reciprocal. Leadership serves and builds a community, but communities when they realize that they have an absence of leadership, communities need to commit themselves and their resources to training and developing leadership. And that needs to be a
community initiative that how do we develop more leaders from within our community from within our young people? How do we pull some of our talent together to develop young leadership that can help to bridge that gap in the community. And I think that that's one of the things is making scholarship, so unapproachable, like, as if it's a class of profits, you know, and also this idea that you can only that either go overseas, whatever that even means anymore, and study and become an item or don't touch Islamic knowledge at all. Whereas many of the things that we learn in our institutions now are pretty much what the average Muslim would have known decades and centuries ago.
These are things now that require you to become a chef, right? Or that you go through this program, and that makes you into a scholar or student of knowledge, or whatever you have, these were things that the basic Muslim would know. And so the problem, I mean, the way that you i think that that you, at least in this situation. And and I'll say this, I think our situation, when it comes to sectarianism on the physical level, on the physical level is actually not as bad as it's been in most times. We're actually progressive in that sense, okay. Now, when it comes to scholarship, being approachable allows us to
ask the people of knowledge and consume that animal, if you don't know, one of the reasons for the backlash that the Catholic Church has faced is because there was this unapproachable religious class that you know, most people that converted from Catholicism to Islam will tell you that when I grew up in my Catholic Church, when I asked my not a question, I got smacked across the face. And many people had a similar upbringing within an Islamic context as well, that if they ask questions, they were reprimanded and they were chastised. What that does is it reflects an insecurity on the part of the scholar or on the part of the teacher. And then it also causes an unnatural aversion, you
haven't solved the problem of doubt within that person, that within that young person, that's actually you've only convinced them that you don't have the answer, right? That's what's so you have to find that way to to, to speak to them. And when it comes to fit, I mean, it's a very simple solution method without me,
army released momentum, that the commoner does not have a school of thought his school of thought is the school of thought of his share of his scholar, the person that he goes to the person that he responds to, but that shift should be approachable, that she should be able to answer questions that she should not treat himself like he's infallible. If that person does not give answers to those questions, and if that person does not live a lifestyle, that's also, you know, indicative of the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu wasallam, then that's a person that I don't need to be talking to or going to for my Islamic knowledge, that this is this, this person should represent the product
that I want to arrive at as well. The state that I want to arrive at as well. And it should be a realistic, attainable state with my own daily living and so on, so forth. So it has to be it has to be a two way street. Like you said, You can't have cultish like scholars, or people that put themselves in positions of infallibility. And you can't have followers that know absolutely nothing about the religion where they can't. They can't distinguish the most deviant concepts of the religion, or deviant concepts that have come into the religion. Yeah, and when
That factors into this something we've talked about extensively over the years is a lot of times the monopolization of Islamic knowledge as well, you just alluded to it where it's an all or nothing mentality, either you study for 10 years, or then you have nothing to do with knowledge altogether. One of the things that I'm very grateful to Allah for and I kind of pride, you know, myself on is a lot of what we've been able to do and kind of how we've approached that. Right that why does there have to be an all or nothing mentality, mentality with Islamic knowledge, right? Granted, somebody who studied, you know, maybe a couple of years should not qualify themselves at some at the level of
somebody who studied 10 years. But nevertheless, there should, there should be options at all different levels. That's why we have something like the dream program. And then students come to column at the seminary and we do Quran intensive and, you know, different layers and levels of qualification knowledge are also very important. So people can start to develop their own filters for what they're being told, and what they're being fed, as, at the end of the day, what it is folks, like, I think it's just being about being a knowledgeable consumer. Like, the more you're not gonna, maybe you don't want to become a good analogy, knowledgeable consumer. Yeah. Because you
know, you have some basic information, you're constantly learning for yourself. And as you learn more, you learn to ask more intelligent questions, right. If you never learn to begin with, then you're just going to be spoon fed, whatever you're told, and you're not going to know whether this is right or wrong, you're going to always be unsure about or you're just going to be a lot of times you'll just be taken for a ride and taken advantage of, you know, there are there are people that teach religion and take advantage of people. And that happens in the oma, it's collective as well, by the way, as an oma, we we let politics dictate our sectarianism. And what that means is, we
foolishly buy into the narrative, that all of a sudden, all of these ideological wars are arising organically in the oma. And we we actually buy into these proxy wars that are taking place in you know, in the Middle East, and we actually consume them here as well, and we take them and it's it just doesn't make sense, you know, people when, when situations are stable, and countries, when people have economic and political stability, they tend to get along, even if they have theological differences, when they're when there are other things at stake. That's when the religious rhetoric is, you know, becomes inflammatory. Yeah, because it benefits one group's political situation or
economic situation. So we have that we also can't be fooled and just buy into this and think, Hey, you know, now all of a sudden, you know, we have to fight this group, and we have to fight that group, we need to be a little bit smarter about not being played by external forces into these, you know, into these arguments and into these wars. I just had a couple of quick things, and we'll move on to the next subject. I think that,
like, at least for myself, I realized a lot of people send me emails, right, they asked me questions, and they asked me, you know, questions. And a particular kind of question is, what do you think about this book? What do you think about this group? What do you think about this scholar? And what they said here? And what do you think about this or that or the other, right? So you're constantly being asked to critique something out there that's being said by somebody. The problem is, that is an infinite amount of stuff. So you can either spend your time commenting and criticizing what everybody else is doing, and figuring out whether they're right or wrong. Or you
can embark on your own journey, right? Just get on your own journey, do something beneficial for yourself, stop worrying about who is so wrong, and so right. They're not going to destroy Islam, that is something Allah Himself protected, they're not going to get rid of the Quran, they're not going to get rid of the truth. You know, if we don't answer them, then all hell you know, the oma will be gone and shaitaan will take over if you don't respond to this incident right now, or this, this book, if you don't write an article against this book, then all is lost. No, all is not lost. Plenty of stupid books were written before. And nobody knows about them. Now, I'm on to this, I
think a very powerful point. When the Quran was still not yet compiled into a full most half, there was already a fake plan and the plan of maceda Okay, that yes, there already was a person propagating a new plan. And not a single companion bothered to refute that copy, because it was understood that this was deviant that this was out of the scope, because there's always going to be endless deviant literature, you have to get to a point where you know, your fundamentals and your essentials to where you can navigate that yourself. And you can say, this doesn't sound right. And this doesn't feel right. I was I was gonna say, I met a guy back in back in New York when I was
still learning. And I just decided, you know, 15 years ago, I'm just gonna focus on learning caught on I really enjoy learning Quran. And this guy came to me and said, so you're studying Islam? Have you understood what the different deviant groups are? I was like, No.
Do you know what this is? And he started naming these different groups. Do you know what their what their corruptions are? This group this group, this group description I was like, I don't know any of that stuff. Because how are you studying Islam? I was like, I'm studying certain Bukhara
and then he's like, but you have to learn this first before you said you put on I was like, no
I don't. And then I got upset with and I was like, dude, you don't even like, you don't even know like three solos.
Like even short ones, and you're you got all these names and hit lists of people that you hate, and they're going to hell and all this stuff. Like, I have to make a decision, am I going to learn something productive? That's going to bring me closer to Allah? Or am I going to learn something that's just gonna make me hate people? You know, at the end of the day, so is there a balance there? The balance is that you can't tell people to approach the text, without any guidance and any mentorship as well. So it has to be but so there's a difference between just pure hate speech, go after them, hate these people and then learn your Islam. And, you know, look, you need to start with
the sources with the fundamentals with open minded, you know, balanced mentors and outlets that can guide you on that path. Okay, so the second thing I wanted to talk to everybody about is everybody's familiar with what happened in Paris recently. And it's a it's just one of many incidents that have been plaguing the oma one after the other. And every time something like that happens, we're put in a position to have to respond. Right? And I you guys probably know, I've responded Chicago has responded to organizers responded to these incidents with hold buzz talks, every time they happen. And it's become pretty much exhausting, because we say the same thing over and over again. It's not
like we have anything new to say we are against it. It's absurd. It's an insult to our religion. It's against the fundamental teachings of Islam. But yet again, we feel pressure every time on having to respond to these incidents. And what do we how do we think about this as an oma? How do we think about it as a, you know, as a group, I've been in some strategy groups and some other kinds of discussions with other academics, not just Muslim scholars that are trying to look at the problem of violent extremism and salt frame this discussion a little bit before I take you guys's input and Charla, so basically, the what I found the most comprehensive analysis was that people that turn
towards extremist behavior, violent behavior, there are multiple factors. So one factor is their grievances. Maybe they have a political grievance, they have a problem in their country, they were treated, mistreated, or they were, they were they were exiled, or they were turned into refugees, whatever happened to them, like some something wrong was done to them. Or maybe it's being done to them for a long time, right. And that's why now they are prone to respond and retaliate in ways that you may or may not find reasonable. But that's been the case for them. They have these unaddressed grievances, that's one problem. The second set is actually people that don't have these grievances,
but they have other socio or psychological problems. So you have young people that have depression, that are that have low self esteem, that are online for 810 hours a day, even though they live in a nice neighborhood, you know, and they have high speed internet. So they can have a 10 hours of internet a day on the computer. But like there, they see they feel very low worth for themselves. And this kind of these kinds of ideas, make them feel very powerful. Like they're finally in control of something, right. And it gives them a chance to be angry, not just at themselves, but at the world. Right. And it psychologically transfers some of that anger that way. So an angry reading of
Islam and angry reading of like, you know, how we're going to destroy, like, Islam will come and dominate and crush everything in its path, and you're going to help us do it, you're only you can do it, etc, etc. It's a very empowering thing for people that have very low self esteem. So they become young people become very easy prey to that sort of thing for psychological reasons, social and psychological reasons. So the first is kind of political. And the second is social and psychological.
The third piece of this is actually, you can call it brainwashing. But there are groups elements out there that are very smart, they know where to start someone like what to expose them to first, and then how to take them from there to step two to step three to step four to Step five, to turn them into a super crazy person. And so this kid was totally normal, five, six steps ago, but they know how to take them gradually up a scale of aggressive thinking, to the point where, and I've met these kids, I've met kids that have gone down this trajectory, when they're halfway through this trajectory, they are trained, but anybody who tries to refute you or correct you is actually a
hypocrite and cheban coming to get you stay strong. So the block everybody else out, right? And so they learn to block their parents out the Imam out the scholars are everybody out, because now the truth is only coming from this one source. So this is a very important piece of this and there are people very smart people that are behind this kind of machinery, a lot of money is put in this kind of machinery, right? So there are these three different factors there is the political side of it, which I don't know if I can do anything about there's the psychological side of it, which we can do something about. There is the religious rhetoric that's used systematically used manipulated out
I'll start this off. And I want to hear from you guys, some data analysts that I talked to, you know, what they've come to they've arrived at the conclusion that you know, the signs of Judgment Day, like the the coming of the Mandy, Lisa, Lisa, you know, the black flag, all of that stuff. That that is the most common way for a young person to get on a track where they don't want anything to do with life, didn't want anything to do with their career, or college or family, because the oma is about to clash with the john. So we need to make Angela, and we need to go fight some someone or something, because the world's coming to an end, and I better pack my bags. Right? And that's the
first subject if you get and it's a very powerful subject. And if you guys even watched a video or two on the science of the Day of Judgment, you get scared, like, Oh my god, did you see the dollar bill, it's got this, this is a one eye on there.
The jaws in my pocket, you know, like,
you know, the minions
you know, that starts messing with this stuff really starts messing with you. And then you start becoming like, conspiracy theory on top of conspiracy theory where you don't want anything to do with society. Right? So there is a sight, there is a part of this where Islamic Studies Islamic subjects are used, or I would say misused to head people down this path, right. And these are the two areas where I think we can do something, a lot of times we spend all of our energy talking about the political grievances, and doing protests. But the problem is we've been producing prototypes for 70 years. Right? And we like, that's fine, we can do them. But there are other areas that we're
ignoring. And if you continue to ignore them, we're gonna get a bigger and bigger problem. You know, because that's, that's where the supply chain is. That's where the real victims are. These are not criminals. To me, these are victims. These are 18 1716 year old victims that get manipulated, you know, and I want some of you guys's thoughts on this too, inshallah. All right, so for me, it's it's multifaceted. Number one, I think we should refuse wholeheartedly to accept the narrative that people read the Quran and the Sunnah and become violent as a result of that. I don't think that's the right narrative. I don't think we should subdue ourselves to that narrative essay. Yeah, you're
right, we should take responsibility for that. However, when a person has gone through the other filters that you've mentioned, then at that point, religiously, inflammatory messaging can become far more dangerous than any other form that religion is a powerful tool. Religion is a powerful tool, it can turn people in many different directions. However, it's we should not treat it as an isolated thing, because that's the narrative that islamophobes want to push on the people that ignores even even that the Paris bombers as they're talking about their lives. Now, you can already see these are really, really unstable homes. I mean, the first guy that they interviewed his family,
his dad said, he was a devil, and I'm glad he's dead. Can you imagine a father saying that about a son? He was a devil, and I'm glad he's dead. So you're already talking about I mean, the Boston bombers, we saw that their families immediately disassociated and said, they haven't talked to us for years anyway, and so on, so forth. So we can't accept that narrative when it comes to religious rhetoric. And what we have to take accountability for and responsibility for, look black and white messaging is not good. Even black and white messaging that, that makes a distinction and says, No, you know, it'll say everything evil about this person. But we're not going to make tuck feet of this
person. We're going to call them deviants. We're going to call them innovators. We're going to say this about them this about them No, no, but we don't accept disbelief and we don't expect except people to be killed. But you've created a block
in that person's head, eventually, they're gonna flip and they've they've learned to hate you. I hate you so much, that we're getting death threats from them. Right and that Yeah, their their initial teachers told them that we were deviant and told them that you know, that they shouldn't listen to us. But eventually, they created such a hatred for people and created such a, a black and white world that eventually they went off the tip of the iceberg. So wait, people hate me.
I just realized you said that I wasn't paying attention.
But But I do. But I do want to also add here, look for everyone that's here. Learn to be productive.
Learn to be productive. What is productive is usually not exciting strategy. If any of you have ever been to anything, have any have ever strategized in any profession, it's usually boring. It usually seems too slow. It usually seems too calculated. And it seems to long term learn to be productive. I was having this conversation with both of them. And you know, we were talking about BDS for example, the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement. How many of you have heard of BDS? Do you guys even hear that in Singapore? Okay. BDS is a is a non violence is a global non violent response to Israeli apartheid. It was not started by very religious Muslims. It's only a decade old movement that has
been endorsed by the Presbyterian Church that isn't that they have Jewish organizations that have endorsed and so on and so forth. The Muslims were the last to jump on this bandwagon and some of them are still not convinced because it's not exciting enough, there's no there's not enough bloodshed and so on so forth. And it is, it is
The most efficient from a statistical perspective has been the most efficient political response to Zionism but it's not exciting right it doesn't have all the all the bells and whistles when we read all the glorious stories of people in the past. And there isn't not the Salaam Rahim Allah to Allah when he talked about when he wrote about, you know the topics surrounding Jihad and so on and so forth. He said that one of the problems is that it becomes more it becomes about your own Muslim versus the Muslim of the month your own benefit versus the benefit of the oma, I'm going to go to this place and do this because I've been terrible. And I need to find a way to redeem myself and I
don't care what that does for the
what good comes out of these actions. Let's say that let's say that you were able to pull out some weird interpretation and say these things are justifiable, and they're legal. And they do this to our women and children. So we can do this to their women and children. Tell me what benefitted, brought to the, our families are being threatened we live in where our data was hindered. I mean, look, the prophets lie. Selim was concerned about public perception. And you know, let's face it here, he said that he did not kill our beloved no Raven said Who, who committed treason over and over and over again for nine years retablo he said, Why layer Colin and Mohammed uncanny X would
have I don't want people to say to have material to say that Mohammed spice I'm used to kill his companions. The prophets lie son was concerned about public perception. It kills our day, our efforts, it kills our ability, it puts our families in danger, it hinders every single good What benefit comes out of this, even if you were to some way, pull out of pull out of wherever that this is headed, that it's justifiable to kill innocent civilians in response to your own innocent civilians being killed. If anything, it feeds the machine, you give them excuses. That's why islamophobes love it. Whenever people actually fall and succumb to this stuff. They want that this
clash of civilizations is exactly what they're calling for. It's not smart, it's exciting. It's about you. It's selfish. It's about your own personal redemption, or your sense of redemption for the terrible life that you you've lived, as opposed to actually taking the oma to places and that long term versus short term vision, not what the prophets lie some of it was could they be? Right The Treaty of Could they be of some of the Muslims didn't want to treat you? But that treaty was called by Allah It was called the conquest by Allah Islam thrives in in peace, shiftless. dunman Tamia, Rahim, Allah to Allah said, Islam spread through an hedger, wilbraham lab is safe, you will
pit on, it spread through intellectual proofs, it spread through convincing people and mannerisms and so on, so forth, not by the sword. And by murder, that's what the islamophobes say. And we sit there and we say, yeah, that's exactly how it spreads, we respond and we basically give credence to their cause. So what good comes out of these different types of things, even if you were able to able to justify them, which you cannot texturally do anyway, I will say this, I want to hear from you in a sec.
When it comes to our, the way we think about ourselves, and the way we think about Muslims and their relationship with the rest of the world. For a lot of Muslims, the with the things they've heard their whole life and football talks, whatever they let read little bit, they do start thinking that there's a clash, that it's us against everybody else. And there is bound to be some kind of conflict. We're not we can't harmoniously exist with the rest of the world. Right. So these things are bound to happen. They're always going to hate us, they're always going to get us that kind of thing. You know, what I thought.
And this narrative, this kind of thinking, I believe, is actually very, like, it's really unproductive. And it keeps the Muslims from being what they're supposed to be. Muslims are supposed to be the, you know, Hydra, mutton witness, best of people derive for humanity. Like, for example, the Muslims are supposed to be if they're if they're a minority in Singapore, for example, everybody here, every non Muslim here should know that if they were to ever need any help they can turn to a Muslim.
They should know that. They should know that if someone they can trust it should be a Muslim, or someone they can rely on it should be almost like they, that's our job to establish wherever we are. That's our job. Our job is not to establish, those people are not just those people are filth, they're local. They're going to help Oh, by the way, I had a coffee sitting next to me on the bus the other day. And I was just talking like, this is not the attitude. The attitude is these people allies always have give us this beautiful religion so we can share its goodness with everybody else, not just in converting them, but also in them seeing that this spreads justice, fairness, kindness,
courtesy, mercy, it spreads these things wherever it goes, you know. And we we have to bring that narrative back because that is actually one of the fundamental essences of this oma is that it spreads goodness, wherever it goes. about the issue of kind of countering, I guess you can say, extremist ideologies. You You said three things that were very interesting about the political or social grievances the personal or psychological issues and problems. And then third thing was the messaging.
And that's where and I don't mean to just keep
using this as an opportunity for endorsements, but it's just it's it's an opportunity for us to be able to tell everybody why we do what we do. Right? Why we do not everybody knows what we do, but part of the thing is why we do what we do. And that's been a huge part of the consideration, that if you look at if you look back at the earlier generations, you look at the first generation, that the Prophet sallallahu Sallam trained and taught himself the Sahaba. And then the next generation, you look that they had a methodology to understanding the religion. And that was built off of two primary resources. We say for an incident not to but but to be more nuanced. Right? It was the Quran
meaning understanding the application of the Quran within their daily lives. Number one, the relevance of the Quran to their lives. And number two, specifically within the Sunnah, there was a huge appreciation and understanding for what we call the sila, the life of the prophets a lot, because then the Sierra serves as the backdrop of the Quran. You see how the Quran is applied within real life. And that's why you see quotations from people like Saad bin to be well cos, the Ali Hussain Ignalina, the Allahu taala, on whom you see these quotes from these amazing people in the generation of Sahaba and tabea. Own that they say that ganando Alamo, Allah Donna Maharaja,
rasulillah salam Shem, commando Alamo, masura middle Quran, we started teaching our children the life of the Prophet tells him the CETA just as we were teaching them sutras of the Quran. So there was this again, I came back to that word that I talked about earlier, that kind of holistic approach of we're going to teach them the sutras and we're gonna teach them the life that the process them, and show how this sutra applies in real life. I'll tell you something about that. Yeah, I'll tell you a crazy story. I felt like I was cheated. So I studied CLR first from certain books, the life of the Prophet slice of them. And I read certain incidents, and this the couple those studies in the
CLR, with certain sutras of the Quran, and I was taught certain lessons. And like, one of those lessons was, for example, in amenas, logical logical model, welcome, Catherine, that you know, you're you're from your children and your spouse's, there are enemies for you watch out for them. Allah wants you to serve the dean, and Dean is for the ohana, and your children and your wife, they are dunya. So put them aside because they're enemies for you and serve the deen.
And they don't you know, because this is dunya if you're taking care of your kids, and you're being good to your spouse, etc, that's dunya. But if you're gonna do that law, and you're gonna, you know, study and you're gonna go, you know, travel and this and that this is Dean, right? And this was taught to me through the Quran, like the people that were perpetrating this, were teaching this to the Quran, and I accepted it. I was like, Yeah, I don't want to do I wanna, I wanna do.
So you want to abandon all of that? Because that's, and then you later on, when you decide there's something smacks you in the head, and you said, Maybe I should study that over again. And you start studying it in depth yourself, you realize, wait a second, taking care of my family is Dean. That wasn't dunya.
That who, what did I just got cheated. I guess I just got gypped. It's the same sealer. It's the same cron. But there are some people that have such a deep bias. And they teach it with that aggressive bias, and they mess you up. Right. And so I felt like I was so motivated to continuously study the Quran. And I liked it. When I study a surah. When I studied like an ayat of the Quran, I make no assumptions, I assume that I don't know this at all. I'm going to start from scratch. Because I know the danger of making assumptions. From before I assumed this is what the I meant, and it led me down a bad road, I'm going to let a last word dictate and the word of Allah dictate. And
the research dictates where I'm going to go, I'm not going to put any suppositions on top of it, you know, and this is something that we have to learn to do in the oma there are a lot of things that we think about that have become part of our Islam that are actually not as well. They're just outside they're very harmful. And they're sitting there in our subconscious, you know, and they can become very extreme child. So okay. Do you want something? Go ahead? Yeah, so one of the things as well. And this is sort of an advice for us all. I mean, I think that
there are certain elements of our religion, and when we try to ignore those elements altogether, rather than understand them in a mature way and channel people's frustrations and grievances properly, we actually do a disservice.
What that means is statistically speaking, as well, those that are joining extremist groups are coming from groups that were completely politically quiets political quietism was what they called it is the term that these are the types of groups this trend actually leads people to the opposite extreme. Instead of saying You have no right to be frustrated, you have no right to have agreements, you should not be angry about what
Did the French bombed a school in Iraq or something and killed 28 children that you should not be angry about this you should not be angry about Syrian refugees. instead? How do you channel that frustration into something that's productive? That's long term? That's viable? Not, don't talk about it. No, you should talk about it, it should hurt you. It shouldn't be something you think about. But it's not just the Facebook status people.
You can do something about it. You know, I in Dallas, I told them we, you know, we had we had Syrian refugees in Dallas when that when that child washed up
at that Turkish resort, well, I that was a shame on the entire oma, that was a shame on the world. The level, the pitiful level, pathetic level that humanity has reached that you have babies washing up at resorts. And and you know, we could scream about Arab nations and scream about nations not doing enough to accept refugees, but I was in Dallas, I was like, people, we have 1000s of refugees here. Have you visited them once? Have you done anything for them? Have you supported those refugees? Have you given them a you know, an Outlook or perspective on life, there are refugees at the border in Jordan? I've seen them with my own two eyes, they don't get squat, they have Christian
missionaries there. They don't have Muslims there. Why aren't we doing anything about that? So channel your anger and frustration in a way that's productive, not just these hyper angry statuses. And it's funny when people comment online, they say, Well, what about this, you didn't mention this, you didn't mention that. It's not about mentions, it's about working. It's about doing something productive, you should care you should have you should have a leader in your heart. When Messiah upsized under occupation, that means something But what good is it going to do for you to scream about it and shout about it become active within your own circles find ways to be productive and
actually influence policy long term, no policy has changed in the interest of any group in history, at least not not in the United States, as a result of short term lashing out, it's always been long term calculated strategic moving people in a certain direction, changing mindsets, because even if you, you know, it's at the end of the day, you have to influence public perceptions, politics moves in regards to public perception, when you have media dominated by people whose interests are in complete direct opposition to ours, then you have a tall battle. So you have to change people's mindsets. When people's mindsets change. Politicians go with the flow. What are you doing to change
public perception about the Palestinian cause, and about the Muslim woman so on so forth, that is a productive way. And that's more about the oma than your own self, you know, feeling great about yourself and feeling like you're a brave person that's changed the situation in the Muslim world.
Onto happier subjects.
stockings?
No, we're not talking about your socks anymore. Okay. So
what I also this is the last discussion, by the way, inshallah, and I wanted to talk about it because there are a lot of young people in the audience.
So a lot of you aren't married,
and you'd like to be.
And so we're announcing.
No, and there's a lot of, you know,
look, there are families that are very conservative, there are families that are not as conservative you come from religious backgrounds. Some of you don't come from religious backgrounds. But the fact that you're here in an audience like this one means that you care about Islam. And you you even if you want to get married, you'd like to do the right thing, right? And maybe you're interested in somebody, maybe you're already talking to them, maybe they're here with you, I don't know, you know, but you're not married yet. So I wanted to actually, first of all accept a reality, the reality of it as we're not living in righteous times. Right? The Muslims unfortunately, are dating, they are
going out to dinner, they are chatting it up late at night, whatever it is they're doing, and it's it's happening, it's become a reality. And
we have to deal with that reality. Our religion does not accept something that's wrong. And so I can't endorse something that's wrong. No, we don't have the right tune because this Deen is bigger than us. Right? We are in submission to Allah's principles. But at the same time, there are practical this Deen is also practical, like it gives it doesn't give people idealistic solutions. It gives them realistic solutions. There's dean at every step I started studying this Dean, and any principal in this Dean I come away with this thing is so practical. It's so it's it takes into consideration the realistic temptations of people, their tendencies, their temperaments, their
situations, their difficulties, Allah did not send Islam to angels. He sent it to you and me. He knows who he created. And he knows who needs guidance, right? So if we are if you know, there are audience members that are in this circumstance, some of you are parents, you know, your sons and daughters are dating and you don't know what to do about it, and how to go about and you're in this strange bind. And it's embarrassing to talk about, because who do you tell, you know, that sort of thing, or you're, you know, your daughter's insisting that she wants
Marry this guy or your sentences, he wants to marry this girl or something like that. And she's not even Muslim. You know, that happens to or she's ready to accept Islam but the mother says, except,
you know, nobody talks, you know, they don't know mothers Don't talk like that.
Mothers hold a knife behind their back and say no, bring it over and they're over. I'll give her the Shahada.
She'll be a Shaheed
Can you act that emotional? Yes, I for camera again. It was not on the mountains.
But anyway, what I wanted to ask you guys, because you guys are that, you know, I'm allergic to fish. So that's why these two guys are here. So
like, what do you do in situations like this guy wants to marry this girl, they've already been talking or whatever, going out to dinner. And now they want to do the right thing. Right? Or they want to get the family involved. They want to take good steps. Well, what did they do?
help them out?
Hope that went out over there. Look, he's shaking his head. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I don't see you.
Now I do. got up and left. Okay.
Well, I mean, obviously, you got to just talk to people, right? So you're gonna have to at some point, there's this bizarre delusion
that a lot of times young people live in that, you know, like, somehow I can just proceed in this manner forward. Without ever dealing with the situation at hand, you are going to have to find a way to end up bringing your parents, your family into the situation, you're going to have to sit down and talk to them. And one of the things I tell a lot of young people is, and I'm going to get to the parents in a second, but I'm just speaking generally outside of any type of abnormality. You know, most normal parents, like I said earlier in the lecture, they love their children more than they you know, love life itself.
So there's there's an there's a, it's not so much about what you're saying. It's how you say it. So storming into your house and kind of saying, like, Hey, listen, this is what's happening, this is who it is. And this is what's going to happen, there's a way that conversation is going to go and it's not going to go very well. And then there's another tone of the conversation where you sit down and you kind of say that, look,
I want to be happy.
And I want to find the right person, how long have you wanted to be happy.
And I want to find the right person. And the last thing I'd want to do is hurt you or offend you in any way. But I really feel like this is the right person for me. I want you to help me out here. Right? There's, there's, there's a chance
there's a chance that that conversation might go a little bit better. But that brings me to the other side of what he just demonstrated that there's another reality
that your mom might be like no mom.
Parents are not perfect. And that's probably one of the biggest taboos that boast taboo things you can say in the Muslim community, whether it be America or Singapore, right. Parents are not perfect. Nobody wants to hear that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's just a reality. And so that's where what I'll tell young people is if you are trying to make things right, as you said, maybe you did things wrong, but now you're trying to make them right. Or maybe you Mashallah you're one of those young people who are trying to do things the right way from the very getgo. And your parents are not being they're not perfect, and they're not being reasonable, then try to find some type of ally, right.
But be careful not to kind of go at your own. But try to find some type of ally and I have plenty of personal situations, meaning very close family and friends, community members, students and things like that, whose parents were not being reasonable. I can say with 100% competencies, young people, they were trying to do things the right way from the very getgo. They were being right, they would come in correct. And the parents were not being reasonable. They instead of just completely flying solo. They ended up trying to get some type of allies on their side. Maybe it was an uncle, maybe it was a grandparent, maybe it was the mom of the community maybe to somebody, right? Yeah, they did.
If you're trying to get around.
I haven't used you I have. I have the most amazing stories. I had a mom throwing plates at me. I was like dodging plates.
It was
Amazing.
Because the moms like, okay, please tell him he can't marry her. And I said, Well,
actually, I just did that.
I was like, I can't, I can't, I can't, it's completely valid for these two people to get married, especially her father, you know, even from the fifth position that the one of the girl has to be involved her father's completely on board. I've spoken to him on the phone, he's completely down. So he actually can and I even think should marry her. And that was she was like, I'll be right back, she came back with a place. And she just started throwing plates at me, you get out of my house, I said, Okay.
But, uh, it's, you know, so that might be the reality where the parents are not being reasonable, because parents aren't always perfect either. But in that situation, make sure you try to get some type of allies on your side. And here comes a little bitter pill for young people. If you're not able to get anybody that can see the your logic, you can't get anybody to see your side.
Yeah, you're probably going things about the wrong way. So one thing that I would say, and I don't know if it's understood yet or not, but
you don't wait a year to take your parents into confidence on these things. Either. You do it from the get go. You do it from the get go, you don't go get emotionally attached to someone start going about things the wrong way in a hot arm fashion in a way that we're not talking about cultural norms. Now, see, here's the thing. Let's face it here that there is no way to know, for a fact what type of person you're going to marry until you actually married them. There is no way. And in fact, you know, psychologically speaking, dating will not do you any favors, it's not going to help you know that person more, it's going to help that person make a better impression on you, not help you
know them more. Because until you live with the person, there is no way to completely know them. So that's something that is, you know, the degree of a lost panorama and things happen in this. That's true. But let's face it collectively as a society, are we moving deeper into a marriage crisis? Are we getting better because we've loosened restrictions and so on so forth? Right? Whether it's the Muslim world or the Western world, or what have you, because there were certain decency thing, the cultural norms from a decency perspective, that were in place, even in the non Muslim world in the secular world, and there is a crisis in every part of the world in this regard. So when it comes to
the Islamic perspective, now we believe that a loss penalty is the Turner of hearts right? We understand that a loss of hands as the Turner of hearts, don't think that you can disobey Allah subhana wa Tada. Do things come with the intention that you will write it one day, and I lost the pants I was gonna put back on your relationship.
You're fooling yourself. You're not gonna fool Allah subhanaw taala you are fooling yourself. Now there is a difference between two people and even the Shetty makes a distinction here of two people that started something wrong, and they generally make Toba and a lot less than ambiguous. They actually made Toba. They actually repented. They actually. And it wasn't a Toba that was conditional on me marrying this person. It was Toba of like, wow, I did something cut on a stuff fetullah Let me now go and approach this right? It wasn't fine. Mom, Dad, I'm sorry. But I still need to marry that person. And that's the only way that it's going to happen. You have to take them into consideration
from the very beginning. And when parents are unreasonable, I will say this as well. You learn this the hard way, sometimes very later on very much later in your life. But your parents are not seasonal. The whole world will turn their backs on you before your parents turn your back on their backs. And you will learn that the hard way, right many, many times in life with friends, sometimes with spouses, with whoever it made with mesh is with your teachers. With your closest friends, you will find that other people will be seasoned a lot of times your parents will never be seasonal, they will not even when your parents say I'm not going to talk to you because you've decided to go
forth with this. They don't really mean it. Right? They're saying that as a threat, hoping that you'll realize recognize the situation now, when parents are wrong when they're dead wrong. And when they're standing in the way of something that is headed. Something that is completely pure, something that's been pursued in the right way, then at that point, there is the option in Islam to override them through a through a particular process. But even then you have to ask yourself if it's worth it, even then if you have to ask yourself if it's worth it. So I have a tough question for both of you. I have a hard question for both of you. Okay, there are people in the audience in
Sharla. They're not but there are people in the oma that are dating for a long time, a year, two years, three years.
And the first advice that comes in my head is just get married doesn't matter who says what? Because you're not you're clearly not going to let each other go. You don't. I completely disagree. That's setting them up. That's giving a temporary solution that will make them happy for now, but their relationship is going to fall apart. Look, I do marriages and divorces I've been I mean I've been doing it for 10 years, personally.
And most of the time when when we gave in and said, Okay, fine, just let them get married, they were divorced within three months, because they've already gotten past all the rosy part of the relationship. What I would say instead is that you have to step back and see and and seek rational advisors like chef of the Nasir set that will let you know if whether or not this is a good idea or not. And if it's a good idea, and if the if the fundamentals are there, and the foundations are there, and you can work through it, and so on, so forth, then it's better to make it's better for you not to make a long term mistake, something that's going to damage you for the rest of your life,
just because you made a short term mistake, and it's going to hurt you to get away from that mentor cache. anila Auto item when you leave something for a loss on site gives you something better than that. So look, if you've been in a relationship for a very long time, and you really feel bad, you want to make Toba, take a step back ask Allah sincerely for forgiveness, then try to approach it rationally. seek advice from people whether or not you think this can be a good marriage or not going forward, don't try to just take the pill that's going to make you feel good now and let you get married and then everything falls apart. Because you did not marriage is a rational decision.
Marriage is not an emotional decision. It is supposed to be a rational decision. It's not supposed to be an emotional decision. So that's the point here, you look for compatibility. What is the main reason that people fall apart or in relationships, compatibility, correct. Lack of compatibility. You look for compatibility, you can't find that if I'm just gonna stop now, because
I'm totally listening.
You cast as you can determine whether or not a person is compatible, if the only thing you've seen are roses and nice restaurants and sneaking off into movie theaters and having conversations where half of the conversation is just fluff.
No, it's it's you can't determine which which, when you're when you're in this situation, you're basically blinded by your own emotions and what's going on. Right. So what you're saying is, like we see this in any situation, you bring in a fresh set of eyes, you bring in a fresh, different outsider's perspective, we know that in business all the time, you bring in a consultant who's not in the company, right? Who can
it's not, it's not but there are certain human realities, right in the human reality about when you are in when you are in an experience when you are experiencing it at that moment. You just there there are certain blinders that you have on, you're just not being able to see the big picture here. Here's the thing. Here's why I disagree with both of you. And that's I'm totally okay with disagreeing with people I have learned to revel in disagreement. I am. It is my dessert.
So how many marriages and divorces have you done? Oh,
I was I knew you when I used to eat the adult meal and used to get the Chucky cheese meal.
Okay, so happy meal.
Together the Happy Meal toy and McDonald's. And they used to look at a disguise a child.
six foot six.
Anyway, anyway.
So what was I saying? Yes. If there are people that are in, like a religiously not sanctioned relationship they're dating. And I specifically mentioned they're involved in this kind of relationship for years. My argument, my problem is that these people are emotionally invested in each other. And they have spent quite a bit of time together. Right or wrong. They've already done that. My personal problem is, why does some other men, why should this be some other man's fault that his now wife has emotionally already invested herself in someone else who's not going to leave her head anytime soon. And this is going to be a problem later later on. Like they almost almost
like they deserve each other at this point. Like this is my thinking about this problem. And maybe they don't get married fine. But at least they should be given the option to pursue this. If you want to add the rational element to this to they were never actually black and white. Why don't we agree that it's not black and white? That's shows by case situation? Sure. It is a case by case situation but this is the problem becomes with these families, they say well, you can marry anything you want not hurt.
That's the one Well, no, that's still very much a possibility. And yeah, I don't disagree with you there. What I think we're talking about two different issues. I think that as far as the family is concerned, the family has to kind of resigned themselves to the reality at this point that these two individuals are so emotionally invested into each other that they're going to be useful, useless to any other human being actually they're going to destroy somebody.
else's life? Yeah, that's right. No, no. So I think from the family perspective, that's fine. I think what we're talking about is, those two individuals themselves, they just have to understand that the premise, this amazingly solid foundation that they think that their relationship is built on is actually really flimsy and very superficial. That's what we're just saying. So maybe you're saying that if they're going to fail, you have to sometimes kind of let people fail to know that they made a mistake, how many people actually end up marrying their first crushes or end up marrying the person that they thought was going to be their, you know, Princeton signing armor, and that was
going to be there, you know, how many people end up actually going forth with that marrying that and end up in happy marriages, it's a very small portion of humanity, not just very turbulent relationships. And what happens is one of the things that a loss of identity tries to protect us from with the and I don't even want to call them restrictions, because us lifted ESEA and eba, the basis of all things and show you guys that it's permissible, unless it's proven to be how long, but one of the reasons why our last presenter directs us in this way, is that our interactions before marriage should be in a way that is as rational as possible that that the position that we're taking
that that when we're deciding to go into this life long commitments, the average divorce rate worldwide now is 48%. In America, it's close to 60%.
That is going to happen, it's inevitable, there was divorce, those numbers are skewed, because like 50% of the population doesn't even believe in marriage anymore. So only 50% of people get married and 60% of them end up divorced. Right. So the numbers are actually catastrophic. And then 30%, do this and 20% go and then and then 10%, and then a lot of numbers.
So it's very natural. I was just doing math. Okay, but
no, so you're talking about 3.2% of what
I'm just saying, the reality is only 30% of people in America are married. That's it. That's so there's the extreme of which we were taught was ideal Islam, which I've heard many times I've heard, and I'm sure you've heard this as well, parents that will tell their children I married your mom without even seeing her. Right? You have or something? Or we did. Or we or we you know, we didn't we didn't even know each other and have the lot worked out, but they're miserable, and so on. Right? There is a son of precedence here. The sooner
they send the precedence of this is people should people who want to get married, should talk to each other, not ask each other what your favorite color is, or what's your favorite song are? You know, do you like long walks on the beach too, and no, but like actually have serious conversations about compatibility should actually sit down and discuss things within a controlled environment where their emotions can not get the best of them. And that's the whole purpose of not allowing absolute Hello absolute seclusion, because when you're in it, that's why I lost sight. It's called a spider's web. And uncovered, right, las panatela describes as the most flimsy of houses, when you're
in a spider web, when you're caught. You're caught, you can't see outside of it. It's the most flimsy of homes, but a bug that's caught inside of it. Right is not getting out. Why? Because you can't see past IDs, you think that that's your reality, and you've resigned yourself to that. And it's irresponsible for everyone to say, okay, fine, fine. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead and ruin your life. No, it's something that because you're talking about parents that stood in the way of something that was unjust, that they were not justified in doing so that's where the amount comes in. Or that's where someone comes in, or an ally comes in and says to the parents, you need to
chill, you need to calm down and have that at least it's a Muslim, at least as someone that you know that at least they pursued each other for the right reasons. Yes, maybe because of the circumstances, they they thought it would be an innocent phone call, they ended up talking to many times, they ended up meeting a few times, and so on, so forth. But there was still some level of contents. And let me hold back for the sake of a loss. At that point, you act as a facilitator. At that point, you act as a facilitator, but it's not black and white. And at the end of the day, we need to understand that when we go through relationship after relationship after relationship up,
we're killing our own ability to have meaningful relationships. A lot does not want that for us. It's not healthy for us to go through relationship after relationship after relationship and be broken down over and over and over again, to where when we go into our seventh eighth relationship. And so this is the one we already are questioning and we're already you know, we're already we already have this sense of paranoia that there's no way that it's going to work out we've already lost our own capacity to love. So try to pursue things as right as you can. And then when people stand in the way in a wrong fashion, that's when you resort to those other protocols. Now, if you
are what what the reality if you've been in a relationship for a very long time, the first thing you need to do is what?
The first thing you need to do is disengage Toba, you need
To ask Allah for forgiveness. The first party you should be concerned with in anything that happens in your life as a Muslim as a believer is what is the law think about this? What have I done to offend Allah subhana wa Tada. The first thing you need to do is seek forgiveness. seek forgiveness sincerely from a loss of hundreds out no matter what the outcome of the situation is a staff in a live messed up Oh Allah, guide me to what's best for me, I've messed up. Because then you you bring back the bottle cover loss of handle, it's out of the earshot, that guidance from Allah subhanaw taala in your direction in life. But when you take that out of the equation, then it's always going
to be you know, you're all it's always gonna be risky, no matter what, but you make it so much more risky, and you're still not going to pursue a path. I'm going to conclude this session with a draw that Allah allows all of the young people here and the all the unmarried here, the blessing of a good, you know, permissible and sustained and healthy and nurturing and happy marriage. And I pray that Allah azza wa jal gives, you know the parents happiness with them in the marriage of their children and the children happiness in the marriage to each other and love provides them with Rachel Rachel children that can carry the flag of Assam in the future, inshallah tada