Fatwa Shopping For The Layman

Have a lot of blood amin was salatu salam O Allah Subhana, via your mousseline, Nabina

Muhammad Ali he was marine. Allah Allah Allah Allah. Allah Allah Hakeem Allahumma alumna Maya and Farina when signed a memorandum Tana was it not in my era but I mean a la Marina la casa de la, Oriental Balti, La Belle de la was look nice, you know, but what happened to LA heat or what I can do?

So, the topic of photoshopping Now, I know this is one of the topics that people hear about photoshopping. And most people are like, Yeah, I don't I don't do that. Like, that doesn't apply to me. But the reality is that sometimes we're almost forced into photoshopping and I'm going to define what photoshopping is in a bit. But sometimes the environment that we're living in, or I should say, the lack of access to scholars is where we kind of are forced into a situation where we may end up Petra shopping. Now, what exactly is photoshopping? photoshopping is when we go from one scholar to another scholar or one person to another person seeking an answer to a particular question. And it's

usually until we hear what we think is best, or what we think is best for us. And a lot of imams have gotten that phone call. At 2am. In the morning, a guy calls in and says, salary come show

me my wife, we had an argument. And I got really angry. And I pronounced a divorce on her three times, like in a row. Is this divorce Val? Is this a? Is this a? Is this a final divorce? what is called an irrevocable divorce? Or does this only count as the first divorce? And so the chef will give his opinion or the amount will give his opinion and depending on what he says the brothers like, okay, just like a locker. That's what I needed to hear or, Okay, thank you. And then they hang up and they call the next year, or the next email. Well, I heard it's a difference of opinion, and so on and so forth. And I heard there's an opinion out there that says that it only counts as one

divorce. And by the way, I'm not speaking about the correct opinion here. That's not the point of this example. Right. But the other person, the next Imam, the next scholar says, No, I hold the opinion that these three divorces do indeed count as three divorces, even though they were given at the same time. And the person says, okay, you know, I heard there's another opinion out there, let me let me call another email or another shift until they finally get to the person who gives him the opinion says, Yes, I hold the opinion that this count is one divorce, and you're okay. This is the essence of photoshopping, basically looking around until we find the answer that we need. And now,

we this has kind of evolved with the with the advent of social media, and the access to knowledge and fatawa that we have online. It's it's more so and I've gotten this a lot when people call me up. And before a question is even asked to me, I hear the opinions from the questioner. They're like, you know, I looked this up online, I asked

this very famous, well known chair,

one of the biggest shifts in the world, the shift and move to Alabama, Google, right. And I asked him, or I shift Google and I looked around, and I found that these various different opinions. And then the question that is asked to me is not what is the correct opinion? Or what is the strongest opinion? The question is, which opinion Do you follow? Right, and depending on that, maybe I may accept what you have to say or not accept what you have to say. And this is a problem, because in the end of the day, what's actually happening here is that if we ask a question of, you know, we ask five different people the same question. And let's say we get two or three different answers. And

then we leave it there. And we say, Well, now I'm going to make the decision, in terms of which opinion I want to follow. In the end of the day, who becomes the final judge? It's not the scholar. It's basically the person who is asking the question. And if they're a layman, will they have to be because they're the one asked me the question, then they have gone against what they're supposed to do last time to address this first, victory in quantum law, known as the people of remembrance are the people of knowledge. If you don't know, that is the responsibility of the layman. That is what we are going to be questioned about on the Day of Judgment. Did we go to the proper people, but it

doesn't end there. Right. So scholars give different conditions. There's some main conditions. Our responsibility is to ask someone who is knowledgeable, someone who is qualified, and we try our best to find the person who's the most qualified. But beyond that, the person has to be someone who is trustworthy. And we trust them in two areas in two sense. Number one, we trust them.

In their Deen, we trust that obvious

Nobody's perfect, but we trust that they, you know, try their best to stay away from major sins and, and overall, they try their best to follow Islam and to bail us out and to the best of their ability. But beyond that we also trust their

we trust them to convey what they believe to be the most correct. So we trust them, they're not that they're not going to tell us something because they think that's what we want to hear. Right? Sometimes somebody may tell you something, because they they don't they made me feel bad for you, or whatever it may be, that they may hold back from, from what they believe to be most correct, or what they think is the correct answer. Because, you know, they just want to tell you what you want to hear. So you trust them in their Deen and you trust them to convey the message. And lastly, and this is an added point, is that it has to be someone who is accessible. And this is where the problem

occurs. And that's why I said, sometimes we are almost forced into a situation where we have to ask random people. So the average person, or you know, you may talk to someone out there, and you sit and you ask them, like, who do you Who do you? Who do you think is qualified and who do you trust? And they may say someone's name, let's say they say? Shaquille said, apologies, for example, right? Now, my question would be, is that individual accessible to you? Right, yeah, I know, you trust Him, and so on and so forth. But you can you call him up and say, Hey, I have this problem, I have this issue, what is your answer? Can you give me Can you give me a ruling? Can you email them? Can you

message them? When you're in a tight situation? Do you have access to that person? And I would imagine that for most people, these, these, these these National Speakers, or these international speakers, we don't have access to them. So it has to be someone that we have access to. And then the question comes about, well, what if there isn't a scholar in my local community that is qualified, then, you know, I look at my community, and I just see, like students of knowledge and people who have, there's some people who are self taught, and there's some people who, you know, are in the process of studying and there's some people who have studied, but I don't think they're qualified to

give me a federal or they're qualified to give me an answer. What do I do in that case? Well, in that case, it is the responsibility of the students of knowledge, that you find a student of knowledge that you trust, once again, the same conditions you you trust them, and in their, in their knowledge that they're qualified to a certain degree, you trust their Dean, and you trust them to go to the right places. So at that point, it becomes the job of the student of knowledge, to go get access to that knowledge to speak to the scholars to speak to someone who can get you the correct answer. And that is how that responsibility goes on. The problems panela with with going online, the

problem would would, treating Islamic knowledge as just general knowledge is that it can be detrimental not only to ourselves, but to our communities as well. Because speaking on behalf of a Lost Planet, Allah speaking on behalf of the messenger of a loss of I send them is a very, very big responsibility. I mean, we hear about you my Monica him Allah to Allah how seriously he took, giving federa Imam Malik we knows how to live his time he was the Imam of Medina. And they would say about him when he was alive, that he's the most knowledgeable person on the face of this earth. But Imam Malik would say that when somebody would ask me a question,

he would say I would envision myself standing between heaven and hell. Like my answer could either push me towards the Hellfire or push me towards Jenna.

There's a many stories narrative about human medic, one of the stories is that a man comes to him all the way from Shem. When we're talking about the the the the Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon area, all the way from there to Medina, magmatic was in Medina.

And obviously, there were no planes back then. So this journey took a long time. He travels all the way to come see, Imam Malik. And he has like a list of questions. So when people would do back in the day is that they would pick a person from their community, and they would you know, whatever problems they're facing, or issues that they're going through, they would put them write them all down, and they would give them to this individual and say, go to this shift or this scholar and go get the answers and come back to us. So one or two individuals would take that journey, they would travel to the scholar, and they would get the answers and they would come back and convey that to

the community. And so this man travels all the way from Shanghai and comes all the way to Medina. He sits Rima Malik. And there's different narrations of the story, but it's it's about 40 questions or so that he asked Mr. Malik, and to the majority of the two over 20 questions in my mind, it gives an answer but there's almost half of the questions.

The Imam Malik says, Allahu Allah says, Allah Allah, He says, I don't know and a lot knows best. And now this this person, you know, you can imagine he's going through question after question. What is your opinion? What is the you know, what do we do in this case you mathematic gives an answer. He has some another question about Mike says a lot a lot him, and then happens over and over and over again. And this man is getting frustrated. He's getting frustrated with not hearing and not hearing all the answers. And so now at the end of it, he's asked us 40 questions, and almost half of the questions, the mathematic has said, I don't know, well, lower item, this man gets a little bit

frustrated.

And he goes, Oh, mmm, do you know I've come all the way from sham. And I came from a people who told me that there is no one on the face of the earth as knowledgeable as Imam Malik.

He says, What do I go back and tell my people?

In my mind, it says, go back and tell your community tell your people that Imam Malik said number three, my medic said I don't know. And what do you my Medicare is teaching this person and the community is the responsibility of speaking on behalf of the last panel with your Allah, how serious it is. And in ematic, you know, one time man comes to him. He asked him a question. And he says, Listen, I don't know the answer. Let me consult with some other scholars and give you and maybe we can come to a conclusion regarding this, this, this this issue that you've asked me about. And you know, come back to me tomorrow, come back to me at a later time. And it's man goes and he comes back

and says listen, I consulted with the other scholars, and I don't have an answer for you.

And this person says, oh, mmm, it's not a it's not a big deal. Like it's not a big issue. Right? It's just like a little issue. Like we just need an answer, like, just give us just tell us something. In other words, it's just the light matter. And the mathematics is it's a light matter. Haven't you heard a loss of data tell the profits sunlight send them in San Luis de la creme de la, we are sent out upon you a heavy a weighty word. This is a response of a huge responsibility. We know the profits, some allies send them sometimes when he was receiving way from the last panel.

He would feel the physical weight of the way of the revelation from the last panel Adana to the point where sometimes his camel would sit down out of the weight, the physical weight that the Prophet said will I send them as feeling? And what are the profits other than inheritors? What are the what are the scholars other than inheritors of the prophets, the verses of them said in them, and what a certain idea, the the LMR, the scholars, they're the inheritors of the prophets, meaning that's what they did. Profits don't first set up set the precedent, the prophets don't leave behind the dead him nor nor Dino, they don't leave behind wealth, they leave behind knowledge. And so when

a person speaks on behalf of Islam, they are carrying on, they are delivering, they're conveying the message that the prophets brought.

And that is why it is important to feel that responsibility when that is being conveyed. And even as a misstep, the someone who is seeking the Fed, we have to have that we have to we have to understand this sacred nature of this knowledge. And all you have to do is compare how we look at Islamic knowledge compared to I don't know, medicine.

And often says, Pamela, if you have a problem, and you have a medical issue, and someone says, you know, there's this one doctor, go go speak to him or whatever, and they'll tell you what to do. And you go to this doctor, and they say, Yeah, I need and you ask them a question, whatever. And the doctor says, Hey, listen, I need to perform surgery on you. And you're like, Okay, cool. Um, can you tell me like, what your qualifications are? He goes, Yeah, you know, I've read a couple books. I watched a couple of tutorials on YouTube. Right? I've been through them a few times. And like, you know, I've seen how surgeries done and I've performed a couple one You know, I've done a few

surgeries before and I think I'm good to go. Would you be okay with that? This dude just like opening you up and you know, just like checking out your Oregon's this stuff or whatever. Of course not, we would never be okay with that. We'd like run out of that office. Right? Or another common situations out of law. And this is very common amongst my cultures, Allah daisies.

If you ever been at a gathering, where there's like a gathering of uncles, right, or I'm moves for the for the Arabs, and sometimes, you know, the uncles are sitting there and you know, they're just looking for things to talk about. And oftentimes it's politics and this and that, whatever community issues, and then eventually someone brings up an issue related to Islam. And now somehow this is an Islamic issue. And these uncle's had a law and no offense.

uncle's, this happens in every generation was just an example. You may have a doctor sitting there, you may have a lawyer and an architect or businessmen and so on and so forth. But you don't have a scholar sitting there. You don't have someone who's qualified. And an Islamic issue comes up. Right? And every single person has an opinion here, every single person, right? On the other hand, someone brings up a medical issue. And even the doctor sitting there, since it's a DC gathering, there's more than one doctor there, right? Even the doctor sitting there will be reluctant to give their opinion. Why? Because they just don't want that responsibility. Right? They're like, God, if I give

the wrong advice, you know, I don't know, maybe I might get sued or something, right? Like, they just like, I don't want that responsibility. But when it comes to an Islamic issue, every person sitting, there's like, hold on one second, I have a photo for you right here in my pocket. Right. And a lot of times, it's not even like something that they've researched or something that they've talked to someone about whatever. It's like, Oh, I heard, or I grew up hearing this. And we've had a lot It is amazing how people speak about Islamic issues with such conviction.

When even our scholars Pamela,

should be careful. Even the students of knowledge were qualified in these matters, there should be careful when it comes to speaking about Islamic issues. And that is why some had a lot I know, you know, and no offense to anyone, but I one of the things that I don't like doing is me personally, I don't like sitting on panels.

And I'll tell you why. I don't think photography should be conveyed in that manner. Right? I oftentimes, I'll give you I'll give you a personal example, something that I question that I get a lot.

People often ask me about

my haircut, right? Every time I post a picture online on Instagram, or this is that whatever someone's like, Yeah, but is that haircut head on? Right? And inside my head? I'm thinking, no, it's not. Um, but I decided to get a haircut like that anyway, and then post a picture of it online. Right, but whatever. But I don't respond to those questions online. And even though that's that's a common question, because I don't think that's the place to answer that question. For me a question like that. A 50 question should be answered in one of two places, either in an academic setting, right? In a classroom, where you have time to go through and understand and and make sure that the

person that you're explaining this issue to issue to understand the principles, understands fif has has so you know who you're speaking to. Right? So in an automotive seminar, for example, yeah, I'll talk about does actually have a seminar coming up. And there's not a plug, by the way, but I have a seminar coming up in which we talk about difficult clothing. And in that seminar, I have no doubt and shall I'm going to talk about here, I'm going to talk about the beard I'm going to talk about is bad. I'm going to talk about all issues related to clothing, because I think, you know, we can try our best to do justice to those issues. We can go through the evidences in this data and discuss

these issues or whatever. And we can, we can do justice to it.

And in an academic setting, no one is being criticized. We're discussing the issues. Right. The other place is one on one. And that is the way Petra is supposed to be conveyed on a personal level because the part of the responsibility of the Mufti, the person giving the fatwa is to understand that it is to understand who they're giving the photo to. Not that the photo will always change even though the fence what can change. But sometimes how that patois is conveyed can be different. I'll give you another example. The previous class that I used to teach is a class called flip of children. in that class, we discussed the Islamic ruling of music, right? controversial topic,

whatever, like people talk about it all the time. And once again, I always refrain from speaking about this thing online. And the question that I was got is, is it halal haram? And I'm like, No, it's not that simple. Even if you've handled the issue of music, we have to talk about what we mean by music. Because singing can be considered music and beatboxing can be considered music. Are we talking about that? And the sheet can be considered music, it is music? What do you mean by music? We have to define the role, we have to know what we're talking about. We talk about musical instruments, even from a music music, even when it comes to musical instruments, we have percussion,

which there is it which is a different issue than then then other musical instrument stringed instruments, and wind instruments and so on and so forth. Right. But even when it comes to the issue of music, we spent about two to three hours in my class discussing the issue of music, not because I think it's the most important issue in the world. But my thing was that if you're coming to this seminar, that I want you to get a proper understanding of this issue because it is an issue that discuss that gets discussed on a daily basis. It's just one of those issues like moon sighting and the beha

You know, finance, financial issues and all those, those hot topics that always get discussed. So I wanted to go through the evidences, I want to go through the opinions of the scholars. And then there was a second section in this seminar, where we talked about the application of the ruling, how do we apply that in the context that we're living in? Right, you can say, yeah, music's head on, but what do you do in every restaurant you go to? Has music playing in the background? Well, how do we apply that? Right? What do you do when you go to someone's house? And they have music playing? Or what do you do when you go to a wedding? And there's music playing at the wedding? Do you not attend

that wedding? Like what do you do? Right? And all of that, it that is that is that is detail that needs to be discussed. Now, if I come online, and I say musics out on, and you're not allowed to listen to music, that can so easily be abused. Right? That's not a personalized answer. That's, that's not an answer that that can, that can, that can be applied effectively. And even when a person comes up to me, personally, and says, you know, Chef, you know, I heard that you're of the opinion that musical instruments are wrong, or, you know, what is your opinion on musical instruments, I will look at this individual. And I will see where I'll try to get an understanding

of them. I know that there are certain people, they're out of place in their life, they're at a level of aemon they're, they're dedicated to the point where I can say, and I know, for example, they don't even listen to much music, I can say, you know what, I think you should just cut out cut out the heroine types of music just cut it out of your life. Like I don't think you know, there's there's no need for just just leave it. On the other hand, there's another individual entrenched in sins. And they don't, they don't even pray their their their five daily prayers, or they're having issues with their Eamon right, they're having issues in when it comes to their faith. They may not

even believe in God, I'm gonna be like, hold on, like, but we'll talk about music, but there's bigger issues that need to be discussed first. Or there's someone kind of in the middle, there's someone who, you know, they're trying to be better, and so on and so forth. My advice to them may be that he listened, at the very least try to cut down the amount of out on types of music that you listen to, not to say that I think it's held on by and I like I get criticized for this a lot. People like, oh, you're telling people that it's okay to listen to music? No, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying, Let's be Let's be, let's be pragmatic, right? Let's, let's be realistic. For

a moment, there is the ideal, there's the fetzima. But let's look at the ideal situation of the person who has come to us for this photo. Right? after teaching the fifth book show and I taught it for two to three years. There was me teaching in the beginning. And I you know, I began to hear feedback. And a lot of the some of the feedback that I heard in the early days of teaching a seminar is that people came to the seminar. And they got really motivated. And I taught that seminar a little bit differently. In the beginning, it was more so the ruling, I just come back from Medina, right, it was all about the film and the evidences and so on and so forth. We didn't really get into

the practical application in our lives and the spiritual implications, and so on and so forth. And so in that beginning time, some of the feedback that I started getting was Yeah, people came to the seminar, they got really motivated, they cut out all music in their lives. But that only lasted for like a couple weeks, or a month. And then they went back to their old ways. And that seminar is not coming not coming back there again, or whatever. And that's it might feel like, yeah, I tried it. It didn't work. I can't do it. So whatever. Right? And so this issue of of this fetzima, right, or this, this answer to this question can vary. It has to be we have to look at the person that word

that we're giving the answer to. And that is why my personal issue, my personal stance is I don't like being on panels. I don't like people like standing up and saying, I have a question. And then there's like 200 people in the room, or the same thing with giving, giving, giving answer online. When you give an answer online, you're speaking to a blind. I mean, you don't know who you're talking to, you're talking to the individual who has, who's very strong in their email, and you're talking to the individual who may be struggling with their email, you may be speaking to someone who is a student of knowledge, and you may be speaking to someone who has no idea of anything related to

Islam. And that's why festival websites, I think, are a great thing. Right? Something like Islam q&a, I think is amazing for the student of knowledge. But I think for the layman out there, who gets online and opens up this, this website, there's so many problems that happen there. Number one, a layman let's say who's not studied any of them, they open up this this this issue, and they're presented with, let's say, like four different opinions. This is one opinion and second opinion, third opinion and fourth opinion, and then they're given the evidence is right. This is the evidence of this opinion. This is the evidence of this opinion, this, this opinion. And in the end, there is

a answer, right, there's an answer. And this is the correct answer.

pinion. Now for the layman, it's hard to make sense of all of that. Right? And it's that that those evidences even if you've had a luck and confuse the person even more, because now what happens when they go to another federal website, and they hear the hear an opposing opinion, and all of this what this can do, and I've seen it happen, this panel can actually create doubts in the individual. Right? And I've heard people say, like, Look, who knows what's right, right? There's so many opinions out there, because when a person doesn't have their own soul, they don't have their principles, right? They don't understand how rulings are derived. all they see is a ruling and an

evidence. And sometimes a person a layman may look into evidence is that say two different things. Right? The first of them said this here, and then the rest of them said, this here, and the layman's, like, wait, why would the process and him say two opposing things? It makes no sense. Well, maybe the problem is Islam. You know what, maybe it's just, you know, this is just how Islam is. They're just contradictory things and whatever. And they start having doubts in Islam. When a student of knowledge, at least a pseudo knowledge can look at that. And they can say, well, there's reasons why you may have two opposing evidences or evidence that are evidences that are seemingly

opposing.

On the other hand, it's the other issue, right, of what I was talking about before of taking a specific photo, and applying it generally. And this is one of the one of the issues that we're dealing with today in our in our communities, and that is the how on police are people with their photo hammers. Y'all know what a federal hammer is? Yeah. You know, Thor has his hammer. Super Muslim has his federal hammer. Right? What this means is when you see someone doing something wrong, smash him on the head with this federal hammer, right, I learned the ruling of this. And this is how it's applied. How many times you've had a lie, we heard that a sister goes to the masjid. And

someone comes up to her, and they start criticizing her for one thing or the other. And the common example of this is nail polish. Right? And there's been examples and you know, and I've told this story many times about a lot of this sister it goes to the machine for the first time in her life. Right? She's going there for the for the spiritual benefits of the mission. Right? She doesn't pray, she doesn't practice now. Nothing. Someone told her like go to the mission, it's a spiritual place. And she walks into mission and some Auntie or someone comes up to her. And she's like, you know, what? Your prayers not valid? Because, you know, you had no polish on just like what? So yeah, you

know, in order to for your will do to be valid, you can't make will do over nail polish, which is correct, by the way, right? But she tells her Yeah, you know, you had you made nail polish over you made it will do over your nail polish, therefore you will do is not valid is that your will is not valid, your saw is not valid. Right. But you know what this sister hears, the sister hears, this woman is telling me that God is not going to listen to my prayers, because I had no polish on. Right? And what does that do for your spirituality? How does that affect you?

This person is very unlikely to return to this mission.

And that is very irresponsible. That is very irresponsible. And fatawa online or general fatawa are used in the same way. Right? How many times have we seen somebody just like copy and paste stuff online? Right? It's like there's an argument happening online people going back and forth. And now in by the way, these arguments never get solved online. Right. That's why I'm really, really against. That's one of the reasons by the way that I don't answer these questions online. That's one of the reasons I don't answer that that brother, that sister who says is your haircut? halal Haram, because I know this, this is never going to get solved online. Right now. How many times do we see

conversations go down? Comment after comment after comment. 300 comments? And I'm always like, at what? At no point did you think like, Okay, this is never going to be resolved? Like, did you ever think like, okay, we're at 356 comments, did you think that 300 and 57th comment is going to be? Oh, just like, I now see what you're saying. Right? you've convinced me after 300 comments, I now agree with your position. No one ever gets convinced of anything online. It's just people and their egos and wanting to prove the other person wrong. And that's what it is that that's what happens online. Right. And that's a problem. Because nothing is getting solved. And sometimes we push people when

you believe somehow too low. And so when you believe that someone is wrong in the position that they're taking, and you oppose them in a public setting, what you're doing a lot of times is making them firmer, or more firm in their wrong opinion. Right? You feel like someone if you really feel like someone is wrong, and they're they're mistaken, or, or they're misguided, or whatever it may be. And if you truly, truly care about this individual, then go speak to them personally have a real conversation with them. Right? Because that is that is how do we give advice to people and even when it comes to fatawa that is how we're supposed to give fits what we're supposed to know the

individual that we're giving it to. We're supposed to understand their circumstances. We're supposed to understand that

where they're coming from, even spend a lot even in general talks like this, I have said things where I came to realize later at the end of the talk, that depending on your background, the audience's background and where you came from, you can take it in, in different ways. I'll give you another example

is there's a class I was teaching called deception, where we talked about the chiffon and the methods of deception of the chiffon. And one of the things that we talked about was how one of the goals of the ship on is to break apart relationships, especially those relationships, which are established for the sake of Allah subhanaw taala. And we know this from the Hadeeth of the throne, where basically in summary, the police sits on his throne, he sends out the shell thing to go do his bidding, and they come back to him, they start boasting about all the things that they did. And the police is not impressed until one of the shell thing comes back to him and says, I was with a

person. He says, Well, my truck to he that I didn't leave him until I cause separation, or problems between him and his wife. And at least now gets impressed. He says, No, he says, yes, you mean, you're doing my work. So we learned from this headache, that one of the goals of the ship bond is to break apart relationships, especially those relationships, established upon goodness. And one of the things I talk about in the seminar is how prevalent divorce has become, even in the Muslim community. Right, we're not far off from the 50% divorce rate, even in the Muslim community, right, one in two marriages are just crazy, right? But that's where it's at. And I talked about how you

know, the chiffon may work and how it may affect it. And after seeing all of this, at the end of the session,

a sister comes up to me, and she says, You know, I come from a,

I come from a broken home, like my parents are divorced.

And there's a lot of there's a, there's a taboo in our community, when it comes to divorce. Right, we've made it almost as if, you know, there's you should never get divorced. And anybody who has gotten a divorce, that, you know, there's just something wrong with them. And a lot of times, kids who grew up in a divorced family, they may have a harder time getting married, right? And I was like, I had a lot that wasn't my intention at all. Right there are there there are there are times when divorce is not only recommended, it is necessary. And that is why the head he has made an allowance for a divorce. Right? Divorce is neither good nor bad, right? Divorce can be bad, and

divorce can be good, depending on the situation. There are times where where the mom or scholar will say no, don't get divorced, divorce is bad. And you have these problems, work out your problems, work out these issues, work at your relationship and avoid this divorce. But there's times when any mom needs to step in or scholar needs to step in and say you know what, you definitely need to get divorced, maybe because of how your relationship is affecting your kids. If a couple are constantly arguing and fighting and bickering, and there's no relief from that, and that is what the child and the kids are seeing day in and day out, we would say hey, listen, you need to seriously consider

divorce. Because you don't want your child you don't want your children to grow up in this toxic environment, where all they know is their parents fighting and fighting and fighting all the time. And that they learned about a lot, at least maybe on a subconscious level, they learned that that is how you resolve conflict by putting the other person down by creating an argument. So for so and so forth. I was like No, no, that wasn't my intention. Like my intention was to talk about how divorce may be one of the tools of the ship bond. And that was a big learning lesson for me because I realized that even some analysts sitting in the audience, people come from different backgrounds.

And even what I say even if even if it's not a fit, people can take it in different ways. And I think we are past the time now. I think we have to evolve, we have to move forward from the time of these General q&a, these general fatawa photo sessions when people come and ask a photo and then you go back and you say, Oh, this is the answer. Or this is head on. And this is how on and so on so forth. Yes, we're not saying that the rulings change. We're not saying that

we will somehow change the rulings of the last panel of data. But what we're saying is we need to our communities, our new our nuance, right, are the individuals that make up our communities. We're not a monolith. Even if you look at Cipolla ate, like he talked about the DC community or the Arab community and so on. So even within that, right, we are so diverse, even to paddle when we talk about diversity. You can you can talk to somebody who's of the same culture as you the same background as you, but the very fact that they grew up in a different household, then you means that they have a different culture than you do. Right. And people often think that our our culture is

just one thing. Our culture is very nuanced. As a matter of fact, talking about culture. We individually have our own our own cultures as well.

And we have to be sensitive to that. And so that is why the the my advice, inshallah to Allah is that when it comes to seeking federal federal should always be sought on a personal level, it should never be sought in a general way, right? If you want to learn about issues or whatever you want to take a class, that's fine, that's great. I'm all for that, go attend a seminar or go attend one of these other seminars, whatever you want to learn about a topic, that's great. But when you're talking about an individual issue that you're dealing with in your life, go speak to someone, leave Google aside, leave shift work here, PDF aside, right, leave all that aside and go speak to a real a

real person. The other danger inshallah Tada, I'll close with this. One of the other problems that we're dealing with today.

And this may be a little bit controversial, but I think it needs to be said inshallah, tada

the issue of celebrity speakers and celebrity chefs and all that. Well, what has happened is that the waters have almost become muddied, right? We go online, and we see these personalities that have large followings. And it becomes difficult for us to distinguish between a scholar and they dairy. A person who gives dour, someone who, you know, has has YouTube videos, or just that, yeah, they're popular online, but they're not a scholar. They're there they are, they are there. They're preachers, right? They are, they're doing good work. They're trying to bring people closer to a loss of data. And that's great. And I'm not telling people to stop listening to them. But what I'm saying

here is that when it comes to the online world, it may be difficult for us to make that distinction. Because we have this idea of Hey, if you're popular, if you have a big following, then you must know what you're talking about. And that's not always the case. Yes, there are plenty of scholars who are scholars and are popular as well. But sometimes we may not understand that. And even when it comes to qualifications, we need to understand who we're asking a question to. There are people in our communities, there are students of knowledge and even scholars that are qualified, more qualified in one area than another area. And we should seek out those scholars. Right? I'll tell you, for me

personally, I have people that I go to, when I have finance issues. I have people that I go to when I haven't asked the question even my Michelle, if my teachers, there are people that I that I call and message in Medina, there's a shift that I call when it comes to the issues when it comes to issues I call the certain ship. Right? Why? Because I know he's the most qualified in that particular area. So yes, it's a problem that we're dealing with. Now, yes, we don't have access. But we need to figure we need to come together as a community and ask ourselves this question. Who do we seek fetzima from? Do we just haphazardly go out there and ask whoever we can find. We just go

online and see whatever answer we can get as a panelist sometimes it's it's so insane, that we have a question, we go online. And we Google the question, and we just see an answer. And we're just so happy that there's some answer online that we don't even look at the source. We don't even look at who's giving that that that answer. It could be anybody. We're just relieved that somebody spoke about it online. So the very issue that the very fact that we found answer is good enough for us. Right? How many things are how many things are put online that have no basis? If you go on Tumblr today, right? And I'll close with this. And I said, I know I said that a couple times. But if you go

on Tumblr today,

and you look up their ID, or the last time, you will find quote after quote after quote after quote, right? All these beautiful things that it's always quoted to is always it's attributed to any given every thought and in the allotted time, right. And if you actually go check up on those quotes, what you'll find is that the majority of them come from, Shiri sources, right? And as a Sunni Muslim, right, when somebody gives me a quote, or something like that, a lot of times, especially if it's a quote from a scholar, or from from a from especially Sahabi we can there's a way to go and to check and to look at where they whether they really said this or not, but a sheer esource we don't have

that as a Sunni Muslim. I don't have that, that. I can look, it's not credible for me. But it gets propagated not saying that, that all those things are wrong. That's not that's not my point here. My point here is that a lot of stuff that gets put online, and we share it and we put it out there or whatever, and we don't even know if it's authentic or correct or not. And we cannot treat our Deen like that we cannot treat our our data because really, this isn't the end of the day. This is our outcome that we're talking about. It's not even a you know, a medical question is one thing. A question about, you know, building house or whatever is one thing, there's implications in this

life. But when it comes to fatawa these are matters that

Don't not only affect our life, but they affect our Africa as well. And that's why we need to be the responsibility. Yes, we the responsibility is upon the scholars of course, but there's a responsibility that we have as well to make sure that we are going to the correct sources. When it comes to getting the correct answer. And the lowest penalty Allah knows best Subhana Allah from behind the shadow Allah

is still critical to relate which is Kabbalah. Hara was Sara Marie de la jolla barakato