Sami Hamdi – Becoming A Community Of Impact And Change
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of protecting one's identity and respecting others while acknowledging one's actions. They also emphasize the use of praying in anticipation of God's improvement, praying in aigan, and praying in aigan. The use of the "by the way" and "by the way" messages is emphasized as it is necessary for individuals to act like their neighbors. The speakers also discuss struggles with the um molecule of the um body of the body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body of the um body
AI: Summary ©
Here we go. Bismillah,
Alhamdulillah. WA salatu, Asmaa, Rahi wa Sahabi Omen wala, wala
Hawala Koti la bila la Muhammad in philadine o saliva, Salim Mubarak,
Allah Muhammad in Phila Karine o saliva, Salih Mubarak, ala sahidi,
nawala na Muhammad in SallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam,
sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam, sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam, Phil
Mala ilama Deen, Alhamdulillah, we have to begin by thanking Allah
for his generosity, for His grace, for his bounty. Allah is
remarkably, remarkably generous, and the way he blesses us is in
ways that we really, truly don't appreciate and can fathom
sufficiently, because Allah's generosity is beyond, beyond
scope, Alhamdulillah. So we begin by saying Alhamdulillah for Allah.
Alhamdulillah for our messenger, Muhammad, sallAllahu, alayhi wa
sallam. Alhamdulillah for Islam, Allah, what a true name that we
have Islam before. So alhamdulillah for Islam,
Alhamdulillah for the Quran. Alhamdulillah for the life of Al
Habib salAllahu alayhi wa sallam, And Alhamdulillah that Allah
subhanahu wa allows us to continue to be Muslimeen. From those who
say, La Ilaha, illallah, Muhammad, Rasulullah ya mukallubana, Alad Ya
Allah, you the one who alters the hearts. Make our hearts steadfast
upon your deen, because Subhanallah every single day in
this environment that is around us that we're seeing in every way,
socially, politically and otherwise, the beauty and the
bounty of Islam is more and more apparent to us. So may Allah never
deprive us of Al Islam. Alhamdulillah, it's also a
blessing that, Alhamdulillah, we have this Masjid that we just
prayed salatul in congregation. May Allah allow us to always live
in this orbit of the house of Allah, the five daily prayers as
Ali ha righteous companionship. This is what the whole story is
about. Before
Alhamdulillah, we have our with us, our dear brother, Sammy and
Sami, it's a blessing to have you Alhamdulillah. May Allah bless you
and increase you. And you know, Sammy and I have been spending a
little bit of time together. So I've been like, you know, getting
to the bottom of who is this guy that came out of nowhere, right? I
mean, because effectively, we love you, Sammy, but you kind of
appeared out of nowhere.
And, you know, I thought a lot about that, because Sammy is
someone who Allah subhanho wa Taala clearly chose for a
particular role at a point in time when the Ummah, especially the
English speaking Ummah, needed this voice, needed his framing,
his knowledge of geopolitics, ruining it in our tradition,
referencing the Sira, the Quran, Masha, Allah, and that's why I
think in no time, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, everyone wants to listen to
what is Sami going to say?
And so I think
the framing of the first question that I have for you is the
following,
Allah subhanaw taala says, Why do Allahumma callah and prepare for
them, what you can and what you have of power.
And the way I frame you right now in this moment is that you you
were clearly prepared for the moment. You didn't seemingly know
that the moment was going to come where millions of Muslims want to
hear your insights and your thoughts, but you were prepared.
And maybe you didn't even prepare for this. You were just prepared.
You were studying, reading whatever it is, whatever it was,
but there was an evident preparation. And so what I, and I
don't know if this is a curveball for you, but I
I want you to tell us a little bit about that preparation, because it
was like when the mic was on and the camera's on.
Sammy goes,
if you can, inshaAllah, tell us a little bit about your background,
your upbringing and how you became. Sami Handi,
Bismillah to Salamis. It nasula, salaam, Alaikum. Everybody who are
here first,
I'll be brutally honest with you, bigger crowds are quite daunting,
so I don't know if you ever made it worse by turning up. But in any
case, JazakAllah Khidr, sir for having.
Me one thing that is worth noting before I start, whenever there is
an introduction and a generous introduction given as well. I used
to think when I was younger that it would be something to
celebrate, but in reality, it's quite a terrifying thing, because
Allah subhanaw taala says in Surat fat mankind, Allah to Jamia, those
who seek glory let them know all glory belongs to Allah subhanahu
wa The reason this A is terrifying is Allah doesn't use an A in which
he's qualifying His glory. There's no mention here of sharing his
glory. Allah has made it so all glory belongs to him, and has
informed everybody that those who are seeking glory, let them know
all glory belongs to Allah, Subhanahu wa, indicating it is
Allah who elevates and Allah Who humiliates. What you are
resonating with first and foremost is not Samir Hamdi. It is the
cause of Philistine and the justice that Philistine has, and
also Islam and what it calls for in so far as it's about standing
up for justice. The reason why I say that is because those who
stand with Philistine and justice, Allah elevates, and those who
betray Philistine and stand with injustice, Allah humiliates, as
we've seen even in this Raza situation, where we have been
seeing these dividing lines those before, perhaps who were respected
as a result of dubious stances on Philistine and Raza, the community
has essentially where once they elevated, they are tearing them
down. Because the Ummah is not mobilized by personalities. It's
mobilized by causes, as Ali ibn Abi Talib radiallahu anhu said, he
said that the truth is not determined by who says it, but the
character of people is determined on whether they stand with the
truth or not. Know the truth. You'll know the people of the
truth. It's not the other way around.
The reason why I mention all of this first and foremost is that I
believe in the maxim that is stated in Muhammad, as Said's
book, The Road to Mecca, which is that it's not Muslims that make
Islam great. It's Islam that makes Muslims great. It's not Muslims
that make Allah great. It's Allah that makes Muslims Great. Allah,
in reality, has no need of his ibad or his servants. So the honor
is not in doing a favor of Allah, the honors and Allah allowing us
the favor to be vehicles. The reason I've done this long winded
introduction is not to inform you, but to inform my own heart that
Yes, sir, me, as people say, Masha, Allah Sami, remember it is
a favor of Allah subhanahu wa first and foremost. And remember
it is a favor of Allah subhanahu last as well, first, second,
third, no matter which level on the table, it is a favor of Allah
subhanho wa taala, first and foremost. And after that favor,
it's the favor of my beloved father, Muhammad Al Hashim al
Hamadi, who
to put into context you were talking about the upbringing of
the like, there is a situation, there is an event that took place
that you know sums up my father's attitude towards the upbringing.
So my father always wanted me to do law. For those of you who don't
know, my father was head of the student movement amongst the
Islamic party in Tunisia. Once upon a time, he had a sentence on
his head, put in prison at 19 years of age, tortured in prison
as well. Fled Tunisia, came to London, and my father was once
described as somebody who, every day he has a new initiative today,
initiative tomorrow, initiative today, initiative tomorrow.
Initiative and the like my father, when he was being defended in the
courts, he was defended by lawyers, and he always wanted his
children to become lawyers, so he encouraged all of us to go and do
law. You can imagine his disappointment that none of us,
all four siblings, none of us, we all did law. None of us became
lawyers.
But one of these interesting stories. So when I graduated from
law, I went into university wanting to do law, and then when I
left university, or college, as you guys call it here, I realized
I didn't actually want to do law. I didn't know what I wanted to do,
so I did a master's to waste time, very expensive way to waste time.
But in any case,
when I eventually decided to succumb and actually do law, I
managed to get into one of these big firms or the like. And then,
you know, my father was happy, and I started working at, you know, at
one of these big firms. So my dad calls me about 10 days into the
work. And he says, salaam, alaikum. Walik, Salam. How are
you, hamdullah, of everything, very good. Alhamdulillah. So how
is it said, hamdullah Bab, it's all very good, hamdullah, because
what you're working on, for example, yani telling me, I said,
hamdullah, I'm working on these big, mega projects, you know, like
the Mecca Medina Metro, you know, ten billion and I'm working on
this construction project. I'm working on this. And then, and
then, and I'm expecting him to say, Well done, my son, I'm I'm
very proud of you. You made it in these big law firms, and you're
working on these big contracts. My dad went quiet on the phone,
and I said, Baba, and he said, You're enjoying it. Said,
Alhamdulillah, it's really good to be part of these big projects on
the same Yeah. And you.
I raised my son to defend the ummah. Now he is Secretary for big
companies. And
the reason that statement, that statement describes what he was
like when I was 13 years of age, my and first of all, before I
continue the story that the Arabs do say, there is a famous poet who
says, arudu, Bella, him and Kelim at Anna, I seek protection from
the word I so let's start with that before we continue the story
and but the reason why I'm telling this story is because buna
Mohammed, a poet that I celebrate in the Muslim community, had a
famous line that I read when I was in university. He said, I'm not a
scholar or a preacher. I'm just a regular dude who makes mistakes
too, but I can't talk about me without talking about you. So the
idea being that we have shared experiences that reflect each
other, one another. So my mother, when I was 13 years of age, she
essentially grabbed my arm and she told my dad, he's 13 years of age
now he has to stand by your side, and he has to follow you, and you
have to teach him. And my father said, How am I going to teach him?
And then I ended up just following him everywhere, as a very
reluctant teenager, saying, Why do I have to stand next to my father
and follow him? He was a journalist as well, meeting
people. And I used to sit in the meetings and be like, Baba, when
are we going home? Baba, this is so long. And they would talk about
grand issues. They talk about the politics of the day. They talk
about what was happening in the world. They would talk about, you
know, this king was doing this, and the politics and America and
the war on terror and that kind of thing. And I would sit there
thinking that, you know, I'm playing my Zelda and the like, and
I'm waiting to get my character to the next level, or perhaps to go
play football or soccer, as you guys call it, on the Sunday. That
was my passion. What I didn't realize was, the more I stuck
around him, the more I was starting to learn by osmosis, the
more I was starting to realize that I was remembering those
conversations, that I was starting to remember a lot of those
dynamics, or the like. But there is one thing that is very unique
about being in that environment, and the reason why I'm mentioning
this is to push back against the suggestion that this is all
something Sami concluded, or that Sammy came up with, or that Sammy
realized, or that, Sam, you read, it's not I also had a teacher as
well who helped to guide me through experiences or the like,
on top of the experiences that I had. So I would remember, for
example, something would happen, and my father would sit in the
car, and I tell him, Baba, how can this politician do this and do
this and do that and whatever? And then he would come and say, he
would be quiet, and then driving the car, and he'd say, and Nabi
Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, when he was in
hudaybiyyah, when he was signing the treaty. So halano Amar would
say to him that we are not writing Muhammad Rasulullah, because if we
recognize Yazoo salah, would not have written it. He would bring
example of the seerah to calm down my temper whenever I would see
something that I thought was absolutely ridiculous or
despicable, or somebody would make a mistake. He would tell me, Rasul
SallAllahu Sallam once said, Khalid Ibn Walid Rahul to a tribe,
and that tribe transgressed. And when that and Khalid Walid
transgressed against the tribe, and when the Prophet Muhammad
Sallallahu, Sallam heard and he said, Allah, um in the Abraham,
Allah, Khalid. Allah, I'm innocent of what Khalid has done.
He would say that, therefore, yasami, don't be too harsh on this
mistake for Khalid the mulid was sent back into the battlefield. Be
easy in terms of what you're doing. My father, for example,
we'd see another incident that took place. Me and my brother
would fight, and I would say, I will never forgive Yusuf al Hamdi
for what he did in this now I miss my brother eight years he lives in
Tokyo, and now you know the conversation is only via WhatsApp.
You don't realize you love your siblings as much as you do until
they end up living on the other side of the world, and it's much
harder to go and see each other. But the point is that in every
single problem that took place throughout my teenage years and
beyond, whenever I was uncomfortable with the resolution
or the like my father would throw in just casually walk in and be
and suddenly he'd listen to me rant until the end, and then he'd
throw in the Hadith or throw and the reason why I say that is
because he normalized it for me. He made it seem like that's the
norm. Let me be brutally honest with you. There are people who are
saying that Sami is merging Islam and the politics and that kind of
thing, I'm more shocked that That's surprising. I'm more
shocked that that is something that is pleasing, because I was
brought up in a household where that was normal. I was brought up
in a household in which that was just the way things were done. So
when people say it didn't register, Sheik as made the point
to me, and then another Sheik made the point, another Sheik made the
point. And in my mind, I just be thinking, I don't understand. Why
do people consider it so significant? It's only when I
started doing these tours and moving around that I realized that
many people seem to have this conception that the politics and
the deen somehow are completely different. But the second aspect,
aside from the upbringing, and I always say to people, I say, Look,
if you're impressed with my analysis, you have not met my
father. If you're impressed with what I have to say, wait until you
hear Muhammad Al hashimo Hamidi. If you're impressed by the dialog
that I am having, wait till you sit with my father. One day, my
father said to him, when I came back from.
A TV interview with Al Jazeera, you know, my mother tell me, masha
Allah, well done, etcetera. My mother always, she's the always,
the number one cheerleader, you know, like Well done my son. I'm
proud of you. My father is not so easy with Well done my son, you
know. So, you know, you're waiting for him to say something. So I
said to him, so I waited for him to say something. And he said, I
told him, so, Baba, did you watch the interview? And he says, Yes, I
watched it. And I was like quiet. And then he went, son, can I ask
you a question? He said, Yeah, why do you talk like somebody's
chasing after you? Why do you talk Why can't you be a little and then
I heard my mom shouting from the other room. He talks like you.
Hey. He talks like you.
And he said, Yes, I know I talk like that, but why do you talk
like that? But the reason why I say that is that it symbolizes
when I say the concept of a teacher. I watched my father
defend the deen. I watched my father promote activism. I watched
my father strive. I watched my father push. I watched my father
struggle, and I saw how Allah subhanahu wa taala rescued him
every single time he seemed to be in trouble, until the maxim that I
came to the conclusion by the time I was 18 years of age, is that if
Allah, I've seen it with my own eyes, what he did with my father,
I know Allah is the ultimate protector when it comes to me
moving forward. And it was my father again, I mention it again.
And some people might say, Why is he talking so much about it? It's
to deflect from the idea that this is a semi phenomenon. It's not. I
am a graduate of the teacher that is Muhammad Al Hashimi alhamed,
the one who put the book, The Road to Mecca in my hand at 18 years of
age. Literally just went take this book and read it, and then I read
that book, and it completely transformed my life. I read that
book wrote to Mecca, by Muhammad Assad, a Jewish journalist from
Austria who went to cover the Middle East, became Muslim, became
an adviser to Muslim governments, helped to write Pakistan's
constitution, went to represent Pakistan at the United Nations,
and then wrote his tafsir of the Quran. And then wrote his book as
well, which would inspire many Muslims. Muhammad as said, who
said it's not Muslims that make Islam great, it's Islam that makes
Muslims Great. Muhammad as said, who said that when Islam was an
impetus for action, when Islam was an impetus for Muslims to go out,
Allah gave them victory and glory, but when the Muslims started
interpreting Islam as insular only, ascetism to be very within
contain Allah SWT. And when it became habits and rituals, as
opposed to substance, Allah removed the glory from the ummah.
All this room changed my aspect the second dynamic, and I promise
not to go on too long about this, but, but the second dynamic that
was transformative for me was finally seeing in real life what
the Ummah looks like, and I'll explain what I mean. And I know
anecdotes are bad form, but as I said, the only way to explain the
story is through an experience.
So I played soccer for most of my life, and I wasn't a half bad
player. I played for my local team, county team, I played for my
college team. I played, you know, I had a little stint at semi
professional as well. I really enjoyed football, and I was quite
decent at it when in my in our first year in college,
let's talk American in my first year, we did really well in the
league, and we decided wouldn't be a great idea if we went to play
against other universities and other countries. So the team
raised money together, and we know they did car washing, and the
university sponsored us as well. We found a Turkish company
sponsor. The problem was, though, when they arranged to go to
Turkey, when I went and asked my dad, and this is for the
youngsters out here, I will tell you I am a grown man with two
kids, but let me tell you, when Baba says something or mama, the
hierarchy doesn't change. I have Suleiman, my youngest son, four
years old, Suleiman will wake up. We live two doors down from our
parents. When Suleiman wakes up, he says, I'm going to mama's
house, to his grandmother's house. I tell him, hey, who did you ask?
He said, mama said, I can go. So he goes because he knows the
hierarchy. He knows there's a Court of Appeal, and he knows that
Court of Appeal overrules my, my decisions, and they and him and
Selma, they play it to full extent. So my dad told me that,
no, you can't go to Turkey. You have to stay with me. I need you
like nearby. I need you to help me with some work. And I said, Hala,
say is what it is. Allah Karim, you know what? Two weeks before, I
think he felt a bit guilty that this might be an opportunity. And,
you know, I might deny my son the opportunity. So he came to me, and
he said to me, do you still want to go to Turkey? I said, Yeah,
Baba, please. Can I go? And he said, Yeah, I'll go. So I messaged
my football team and I said to them guys, I'm allowed to go. What
do I need to contribute? Because I know I didn't do too much on the
fundraising. They said, all you need to do is pay your ticket to
Turkey and back to Istanbul and back. I said, Really, I had it all
recorded on Facebook. Mama always says, record every conversation in
case somebody screws you later. She's very Mashallah. Zubaydah bin
Tamar is the daughter of a Mujahid who was in the mountains and
fought against the French to kick out the French. And my mother is
very strong when it comes to these affairs. Hello, Mama. But in any
case, so I paid the ticket.
Me. And then my mother comes to me before I'm about to fly.
She says to me, well, Eddie, I don't want you to go. I told her
why. She said to me, I saw a dream that somebody with a long chin
threw you in the bathroom and locked the door on you.
Now we had our captain. He had a long chin. So I knew who she was
talking about. And I said, Mama, who runs their lives based on
dreams. What is this? Yani, what do you mean? Don't go to Turkey
because of a dream? She said, Well, Eddie, I'm worried something
is going to happen. Please. Yeah. Well, Eddie, takerai, I told her
mama, like, seriously, am I supposed to go to the world and
say I'm not go doing something because of a dream? She said,
Okay, talk Allah, but please be careful. Well, I said, harder, as
we're going to the airport. I told two of my non Muslim friends in
the team. I told them, and I said to them, you know my you know my
mother said this. And they laughed. They said, The laga with
the long chain must be this guy. And I laughed, and I said, it's
just a dream. When
we landed in stambur, what you realize is Omar Abu, Khattab, Ravi
Allahu, taala. And there is a story where he asked a man, bring
me somebody who knows you. So the man brought his friend that he
drinks coffee with. So asked the man, he said, Have you traveled
with him? He said, No, have you dealt with money? He said, No. He
said, Go away. Bring me somebody who knows you. I
didn't realize the Hadith until this trip. So we were all well and
good in the football team during the season. You know, I scored a
few goals. We did well. We came second in the league. We almost
won the cup. We were really good. What do you realize is, when you
travel, it's a whole different game. On the first day, it's, Oh,
wow. You pray. What are you saying when you pray? The second day,
it's, let's see how far we can go. They put an alcohol bottle in your
room. The third day is, Oh, you think you're better than us. You
think you're better than us. Guys who goes to a nightclub the night
before a match, why are you doing? Why? Sammy, you can't impose your
views on us, but explain it to me. Guys, why do you go clubbing the
night before a match? It's not what we should be doing. And I
remember one of them saying, Is it because of the match or because of
your Islam? If it's because of the match, we won't go. If it's
because of your Islam, we're going, Yes, see the chalas because
of the match
on the third night or fourth night, one of the guys on the
team, Turkish brother, comes to me, and he says to me, Sammy,
check that they've paid for your ticket to go to Van the eastern
city in eastern Turkey. I said, What do you mean? Check if he's
paid the ticket. He goes, just check. I said, are you listening
to yourself, if they haven't booked the ticket? I'm stranded in
Istanbul for three weeks with no place to stay, and I was broke,
with no money, and I don't want to call Baba. And if I call Baba and
tell him that I'm I'm broke and stuck in Istanbul, he will force
me to fly home. He'll say, Absolutely not. You come home
immediately.
So he said, just check. So I went and I asked the captain, has my
ticket been booked? And he said, No. So what do you mean? No. He
said, Why would you book your ticket? I said, Because I'm member
of the team, and it's University money. He said, No, we have to ask
the team to book a ticket.
I don't understand. Like, are you? Are you going to leave me strand
in Istanbul? Ask the team, if the team are willing to pay, we'll pay
for your ticket. Halas, we go to the restaurant, we'll have a
meeting to ask them not to leave me stranded in Istanbul.
So we have the meeting. And we're sitting down,
and I stood up. I said, Guys, we can just get this over really
quickly. He's saying he wants to leave me stranded in Istanbul. I
contributed some of the money. I appreciate. I was a late comer
because, you know, I couldn't go in the beginning. So, yeah,
Alhamdulillah, there we go. Now, book the ticket. One person. He
said, No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we need to
vote on this. Vote on what? No, no. Only vote. We need to do
secret ballot. Secret ballot,
yeah, Jamal, what's wrong with you? Anyway?
One guy, so they did the secret ballot. 15 members of the team
voted to leave me stranded in Istanbul. Six members voted to for
the ticket. The Turkish brother, who is a translator, came to me
and said to me, saw me be This is so amazing experience for me. I
said, What do you mean? Because I've never seen this democracy
like this. You know, people arranging their affairs by
democracy. I told them, Ali, do you know what they've just
decided, brother, my English not so good, so I didn't understand.
And you all talk so fast, I don't say what happened. They voted to
leave me stranded in Istanbul to pay ticket to van.
These keywords, these, Kufa, these, how can they do this? No
brother asta for Allah. No, no, we will. I will pay for it, you know.
And you will come to van and and we will look after you. Whatever
it was Ramadan at the time. So anyway, he paid. I said, No, no
problem. I can pay that. He goes, No, I'll pay the ticket. I paid
the ticket. We flew to van. When we landed in van, and this is the
point of the story. We went. Levan is a lovely place. It's a small
city with a wonderful lake. Salah Dili stopped there on his way when
he was going to so we went to van, and on our way back from the lake,
you could feel the tension between me and the team the Kurdish driver
is telling the Turkish translator, why is it when we brought food for
him, he refused our food, he says, because he's fasting. He says, O
mashallah, they fast in the West. He said, Yeah.
And then he said, tell him Iftar is in my house. And
he said, Brother, he's dividing me for Iftar in your house. I said,
Listen my tension with the team.
Is, and my father always says it FA ability here ASAN conduct
yourself in that which is best. I don't want to increase that
tension. I want to reconcile. If they see me being treated special,
then maybe do so. The Turkish translator, I realized he's not
translating what I said. He's telling him the story of what
happened in Islam, because I can hear Istanbul da Istanbul, and
I'm thinking, what's going on? So anyway, I see the driver get more
and more angry as the story is being told. So the Kurdish driver
goes, Wallahi, and he says something in Turkish, and the
translator says, brother, he's saying Wallahi Iftar in his house,
and you sleep the night in his house.
So the story spread very quickly. One is a small city. The story
spread very quickly that a Muslim brother fasting in London was
about to be stranded in Istanbul by a football team, and they
showed no remorse. So they stayed in small dormitories, and I was
given a three bedroom flat all to myself on the first night, another
two bedroom Palace to myself just on the other night, and each time
they kept coming to give Iftar. And then the masjid, they gathered
200 Kurds. I'm not exaggerating. The number 200 Kurds came to see
an 18 year old in the masjid, and they said to salaam, Alaikum,
walaikum, as salaam. And we had an Arabic translator. There was one
who spoke, and they looked at me. It was like a long lost family
member had suddenly come to the city. And they were all looking.
They were saying, you know, birada, birada. They were saying,
you know, like birada, welcome. Welcome to Vanua. Come iftaram.
They will come in. No. Iftar mind, no. If that. Okay, let's share the
Iftar lecture. And I remember in the team, he looked, and he went,
guys, I don't understand why they treating Sami that way. And osimu,
Bill, the Turkish translator, said to him, in Islam, we have a
concept of Ummah where we are closer than blood. Sami is like a
relative when he comes here.
I was 18.
I was 18 years of age. I had read about the Ummah, but I realized
I'd never seen it. I had heard about the Ummah, but I realized I
never actually sat with them. I had heard about the bonds of
brotherhood, but never actually felt it. I had heard that the
Ummah was supreme in these values, but I had never actually seen it.
And I loved the experience so much. They treated me with such
love. They loved me for the sake of Allah and His Prophet that when
I got married two, three years later, I took my wife on a
honeymoon to van. I took her to the lake, and she said, Why are
you taking me to this random place everybody else goes to Malaysia
and Turkey? Why aren't you taking me to Anah? I told her, this is
where I found Allah subhanahu wa. This is where I found the deen of
Islam. The following year, and apologies to to go on about it,
but just not on this issue. The following year, the team decided
to go to Ghana,
and there was a black activist with us on the team. Now I used to
be very scared of flying. Now I'm much better. Alhamdulillah, now I
know that, you know, and the pilot once told me that if you put your
hand outside the car when it's going on high speed, you'll notice
that you can't really put your hand down because the force of the
lift, the wind keeps your hand up. So now I'm on the plane, I imagine
that no like it. I'm it's, there's no way that plane is going down
because of the lift. It makes me feel better in any case.
So I'm sitting on the plane. We're going to fly to Lagos transit and
then go to Accra, which is capital of Ghana. So I'm sitting on the
plane. I found my seat, and I'm going
let this hunk of metal or even one piece. Why am I on this plane? Was
football really worth it? Why am I going with this team and whatever?
And then the black activist comes and sits next to me. So he'd been
warned. They said, Listen, don't go to nemash near Sammy. Because
Sammy, when you start something with him, he doesn't let go, you
know, he grabs and he has to prove the argument, you know, he's very
and, you know, and don't drink alcohol in front of Sammy. He
makes a big deal. Don't go to nightclub. He makes a big deal,
you know, like, what? One thing that is noting before I tell you
the story of Ghana, when we came back from Turkey and I told my
mother, my mother didn't say, Oh, how could the team treat you this
way? My mother to talk to you about upbringing. My mother said,
Sammy, it's here. Asen. Invite them to the house and show them a
good time. To show them no hard feelings. This is your chance for
Dawa. And I called the team. I said, come to my house. I promise
you a good time without alcohol. And I remember when they left,
they said, You know what? I didn't think I'd enjoy myself without
alcohol, but that was amazing, and that's not because I did it. It's
because my mother, Bismillah, until two in the morning, was so
dedicated to trying to prove the idea of idfiability as and the
upbringing. This is what I'm talking about. When I went to
Ghana on the plane, he says to me, Sammy, I think that Islam is a
racist religion,
man, I'm about to fly like, why are we doing this? Now?
I said, Islam is not racist, Bilal balaba First, muhavin of Islam.
And he said, but all you guys have is Bilal.
I said, first of all, Sayyid, Bilal Ibn Rabah, Rabbi Allah. And
secondly, Muslims might be racist, but Islam is not because I learnt
from Muhammad. I said.
I.
So then afterwards, we continued. And then I got frustrated. He
said, You know, like for us, when I go back, I feel like I'm going
to go home. I told him, listen to me, Walla, he take it from I was a
bit bratty when I was younger. Wallahim, when we land in Ghana,
they will resonate more with me than you. He said, That's very
offensive, you know, I told him, Walla, Walla, Walla, like this one
wall because I was scared of the plane. Walla, they're gonna
resonate more with you. What Shaki,
so anyway, we land in Lagos for the transit, 12 hour transit. When
we landed me, tahib, Nigerian brother who was one of my
witnesses for my inika and who helped me married my wife, and
Adnan Bosnian brother. I don't like standing next to them.
They're too very tall. So when I stand in the middle of them, I
tell them, move to make some distance, guys, you're towering
over me. So we hadn't prayed Maghreb and Asha, and so we
decided to do Maghreb Asser to join the two.
So Tay did the Akama. I went Allahu, Akbar as soon as I was in
Alhamdulillah Ramin, and I heard a 25
Nigerians, three rows behind us,
and these, one of them suddenly went, brothers, where are You
from?
We're coming from London. Brothers, mashallah, mashaAllah,
Muhammad, we have guests. Bring the food. Brings a try some
Nigerian food. Brother, they bring some food. They sat down, and they
start tell us, what is Islam like in London? And the black activist
is watching, and he looks, and he goes, Excuse me, do you guys know
each other? And the guy said, No. He goes, so what's this? And okusi
mubile, I'm 19 years old, and the Nigerian says to him, in Islam, we
are one Uma, one brotherhood. We are brothers, even if we never met
each other. Tell us Islam in London, mashallah, where, oh, you
are going straight to Ghana, brother. How can you come to
Nigeria and go straight to Ghana? And we sat there for three, four
hours, just talking and conversing. And again, I was a bit
bratty when I was younger, so I went to him, Hey, you see what
Islam is like joy. Come on. Man, like, this is an area for you.
It's not an area for
when we took off and went to Ghana, we landed in Ghana, and the
black activist prostrated in the airport, and he kissed the floor.
He said, I'm home. And as a brat, I went, come on, man, like it's,
you know, it's
so we went to we proceeded to go towards Ghana. And
I know anecdotes are bad form, but, but, but I'm just trying to
convey that the idea of what an ummah looks like. So I said to the
team, I said, Guys, look, Fajr is early here in Ghana. So I think I
should have Tahir or Adnan or AHan in my room so I don't wake anybody
up with the rest of the ah, Sammy, you're causing problems from the
beginning again. Nah, sir. We're going to put all the passports in
a hat, and we're going to choose two passports each, and those will
be the people in the room. And I want Ya Allah. Ya Allah Allahu a
please give me tayyba adna allahuma, please. YALa alamine,
don't do this to me. Don't they picked the teams out. Alex, Nick,
Torian, Jasper Tom, Robert, you know this this Sammy tahib.
Torian, turned around and he went, Sammy got lucky.
The next place, three people in each room. Guys, you heard me pray
in the morning, I need Sammy. Don't Sammy.
Allahu, please. Allah, umm, Allah, Ummah, please don't leave these
people in my room. Let it be tahiba. Adnan. They pick the
passports at the hat. Sammy and Adnan,
the last place, 17 in one room, in the dormitories, four in the old
lady's house. 17 passports get picked the remaining four. Sami,
Adnan, tayb Erhan,
I listen
as a 18, as a 19 year old. Now in Ghana, you're looking at this and
thinking, Allah Ummah, I felt you in van, and I feel you here. But
here is the final anecdote I want to give that transformed my image
of the ummah.
The football matches were 4:30pm and they finished 630 soccer
games. They're not like American football that you play with your
hand.
So
it was Ramadan. We were fasting. It's very humid, and I calculated
that if the match starts 430 and finishes 630 I had the I will have
the water and I'll so we played the match. I played 90 minutes,
and the team had finished all the water. I said, when's the next
place, you know, to where we're going to eat? They said, it's an
hour away. And I went, Oh, I know. Allah said, but it's a license. I
should have taken the license. And I was dying. And I'm sitting there
going like, Oh, I'm so, so arrogant. I should have just, you
know, delayed it and done the fast the other time. And I'm sitting
down the bus, and the black activist is sitting
next to me, Wallahi La Ilaha, illahou, even
when I think about it like I shudder, like because it's
something that I just I can't believe happened.
Somebody not associated with the team, a Ghanaian runs onto the bus
and he says, hey.
I heard there is somebody here who is fasting.
They said, Yeah, it's that guy sitting at the back over there.
Hey, he's here. He's here. They brought a big fat bowl of Jollof
rice with tilapia on the top, with plantain on the side, and the big
bottle of water. And he comes across the black activist over
him, and he puts it in front of me and says, Bismillah. Habibi, go
ahead. The black activist goes and what about me? And wallahim,
the Ghanaian guy, says to him, in Islam, we are one brotherhood. And
Allah gives me a huge reward for feeding my brother who is fasting.
Brother, say, Bismillah and give me the reward in Jannah. And as a
brat, I went, yo. If this ain't a sign for you, I don't know what
is, except quickly, bro, you're in trouble
at the end of that trip. Bear in mind, I say the trip in all these
positive stories, but there were tough times like I remember, you
know, at night time, you know when you make istikfar, so you're lying
at bed, and I'd be there, you know? Top, because every day was
about, why do you pray this way? You think you're better than us,
you think. And I was like, is the one who walks blind the same as
the one who sees there is haqqan. There is Bartel. Ah, Sammy, come
on this and guys, and we talked about a whole range of issues, and
we realized that the Muslims were reinforcing each other. Sammy, the
world that came from a Big Bang. And Adnan would say, No, but have
you heard of chaos theory? What's chaos theory? Order cannot come
from chaos. There has to be order before there is chaos. That's a
physics concept. I said Adnan is a physical concept. Oh, Wallah, bro,
it's a physics concept. I read about it. Masha, Allah, you take
the lead in this debate, and then Tahi would take the lead in this
and we would push back. You know, like, really, they wanted to bring
alcohol in the room. Guys, no, no alcohol in them. Guys, come on.
Show respect. Whatever you could feel it you felt suffocated at
times, you know. And each time you would have to do a peace deal. It
was aid when we were in Ghana. So we went to the market to buy a
goat, true story, for about $100 and we put the goat in a taxi, and
we came back.
And when, and when we got to the home, you know, we put the goat
down, and I went, Bismillah. I'd learnt from my uncles in Tunisia,
Bismillah, Allah, Akbar, we did, somebody went, I'm a vegetarian. I
can't do this. I don't know, when you smell it, you'll eat it. Don't
worry. Habibi, so, and he actually ate it afterwards. So that was
like my peace offering. So it was always, you know, push and pull,
push and pull, until Subhanallah, I remember one instance to show
you how bad it got. It wasn't bad in the sense that we turned on
each other. It was bad like you felt your identity was under
pressure like you felt, you know, like that. They were really trying
to impose their will and push back against your Islam. And I remember
lying on the top bunk, and Dougal was underneath the photographer,
and I in the night time. You know, my dad teaches me say stuff for
Allah, stuff for Allah. So Dougal wasn't supposed to be in my room
because the passports decreed that it's tahibis, but he came to lie
there anyway. And I was like, Allah, it's not night time anyway,
and I'm lying down going stuff for Allah. And he said to me, Samia,
what do you say before you sleep? What is this? You know, I hear you
going like this. I told them. I'm saying, May Allah forgive me. May
Allah forgive me. May Allah forgive me, he said. But I thought
you said you're Muslim, like Muslims are going to heaven. And I
went, No, no, my friend, I may be Muslim, but even I'm not saying if
I'm going to heaven, imagine how I feel for somebody like you,
bro and arhan on the other side of the room
went, but it's to show you how suffocated I felt in my, you know,
with the soul coming out constantly trying to defend the
deen, back and forth, back and forth, and that kind of thing and
and, you know, and then at the end of the trip, I will never forget.
And this will link to this final story. I was having breakfast, and
some of the team, they came and they said, You know what, Sammy,
when you talk about Islam, and we watch you pray and you want Tahir
Adnan, and we think it's amazing that across different
nationalities, you all have one idea, but I just have one problem
with Islam. I said, What?
He said, I just can't believe an angel came down and gave this
message.
It's too early in the morning for this.
Okay. What do you think happened? I think he said that Muhammad
was an incredible philosopher, socialist who had amazing
philosophical ideas and produce this wonderful framework that we
can learn from.
Okay, so you're telling me that an illiterate orphan from the middle
of the desert goes to a cave for three days and comes down and
says, Maharaj al Bahrain Bay na Huma, Barza, hula, Abu Asmaa,
deseas and freshwater. Wood. They don't overlap with each other.
That he went to the illiterate orphan from the middle of the
desert, went to the cave, came down and said, Well, jebela OTA
that the mountains are like pegs, so that the tectonic plates, when
there's an earthquake, they don't completely go over each other.
That a man, illiterate man, from the orphan, went to the cave in
the middle of the desert, and came down and said that the planets,
colon, yes, Bahu, that the planets are swimming in orbit. They're not
moving. They're swimming because there's no gravity over there, he
said. And I said to him, You know what? Based on your logic, listen,
I've got an idea. I know how to cure cancer. I'm going to go sit
by the sea over there and come to me in three days, I'll have the.
Go. He said, Samuel, you're mocking me. I'm not mocking you.
I'm showing you. This is the miracle of the Prophet Muhammad,
sallAllahu, alayhi, wa sallam. And he said, No, I just can't all I'm
saying is I can't believe an angel came down. And I said, Listen,
lakum, dinukum wali Yan on the third year, I didn't go with him.
I said, Listen. I said to tahit, but on the plane back, I said,
Tahir, how do you feel after this trip? He goes, Listen, it felt
like a real battle at times, like they came at us hard, like
criticizing Islam and this kind of that they came out. I said, You
know what? I realized we weren't persecuted doing this. We did four
weeks of it, and we're telling each other we'll never do it
again. The Prophet Muhammad did this for 13 years, and he and he
was persecuted and beaten up for it. Here we are complaining,
feeling like our souls are going to leave our body just because
they challenged us on our deen, the Prophet Muhammad, did this for
13 years, and we all went SubhanAllah. What a magnificent
man. The Prophet Muhammad SAW, is the idea of learning from your
experience. But here's where I really where it cemented the
lesson. And this is where, before I hand back over, I promise.
The third year, they wanted to go to Egypt, Palestine and Israel, my
father said, you can go. And I said to him, Baba, I don't want to
go. He said, why? I tell them I can't do it again. I can't, I
can't, I can't handle the you know, like no alcohol, no this, no
Alhamdulillah. They respected it like they never put me in an
awkward situation. I remember once they brought some girls back to
the room, and I said, guys, none of this here, please. Like, if you
guys want to do your thing, go drink coffee in a cafe. But none
of this stuff in the rooms. Like, I'm sorry. Like, like, they're
like Sammy. Sound like, no, no, no, no, no. They're like Sammy,
man. You were born in the wrong generation. You need to loosen up,
as I Adam, another one you choose. You need to man up. Yahi, move.
You can
tell what kind of character I was. In any case, on the third year, I
said, I'm not traveling with these people again. Like, absolutely no
way. So there was another brother who said that he's going to travel
with them. So he came to me and Tahir, and he sat with us, and he
said, give me advice about traveling with them. I said to
him, Listen, what? How would you describe my relationship with the
team? He said, it's one of respect, and they love you like
they, they really, you know, they like on really good terms, because
my mother told me, it's and every time they came back, we would go
above and beyond to try to
and I said to him, Listen, when they challenge you on Islamic
things, like alcohol, like this kind of things. I told him, don't
buckle. You will feel hard. It will feel hard. You will feel
suffocated. But I promise you, they will respect you for it.
Because when we went to Turkey, I remember Alex Williams told
Joseph, he said, he said to him, Joseph, I want to understand
something. How can you be raised with a set of principles that are
noble but choose to live like us? And Alex used to do stuff that
was, he was a lovely brother, lovely guy. And Joseph said, no,
no, like, it's not like that. And I said, Listen, sometimes Islam is
hard to follow in the West, there's a lot of fitness a lot of
pressure over he goes, Yeah, yeah. But Sammy and Tahir, do it. Why
don't you do it? And I tried to defend Joseph. I said, No, no, no,
it's a bit tough there. He said, Sammy, stay out of this. I'm
talking to him. So Joseph is walking back as we're walking back
to the hotel, and he says, oh, what Alex did was horrible. He
shouldn't have done they should have done that. And I said to him,
Joseph, Joseph. He said, What? Look how you left, Allah subhanahu
wa seeking their river acceptance. And even they won't accept you,
even they look down on you, may Allah prevent me from ever
becoming a Joseph Allahumma at me, and he went, nah, Sammy, That's
harsh. You can't say that to me. I'm saying all I'm saying is you
are an heir for me. When I felt like buckling, You're the heir for
me, that I should hold true to it that Allah will give me Avenue
anyway. Go back to the story that you raise. The context here. So
the I said to the Brother, listen, don't back down when they bring
alcohol to the room. Throw it out when they try to not just, I told
them, they will respect you for it. I promise you, you said they
respected, they will respect you for it. He said, No, but send me
sometimes that you're a bit, you know, you're like a train in
people's faces. Even when you speak, it's
like, you know, like I said, I'm confrontational. Go to akala.
Let's show us your what would you do? He goes, I'll be diplomatic.
I'll make a joke. And I let it slide. So they went on the trip,
and then they came back. I invited Alex Centurion to my house
afterwards. We used to play football together. So I said to
Alex, I said to him, how was the trip? He goes, you know, Sammy, it
was a bit different this time. I said, What do you mean?
He said, We did things that we didn't do in Ghana and in Turkey.
What do you mean? He said, basically the guy who we thought
would be the Oh, don't do this, don't do that, kind of didn't do
it. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. Let me give
you an example. We were in Cairo, and we were walking down the
street, and we found a place that sells alcohol. So as a joke, as a
joke, we said to them, we're going to go in this place and drink
alcohol. Now we thought he'd explode the way you explode, like,
no, no, and there's a football match tomorrow and that kind of
thing.
He said, Yeah, sure, guys, no problem. And they went inside, and
then we were like, What? What? What look has a pan Allah in those
two years, how the attitude has changed. They said what they went
and he said, we sat down on the table, but he goes by this time,
Sammy Alex is telling the story. We're shocked.
And then we were like, Okay, we'll order a pint, a pint of lager, a
pint of beer. And
then the brother ordered orange juice. And.
And Taurean is saying. And Sammy, trust me, like I was getting
angry. I said, Why would you get angry at you know you're ordering.
He goes, No, no, like you haven't heard the next part. I said,
What's the next part? He goes, When are we got the pint? And he
had the orange juice, and he sat and started drinking it. I lost my
temper. I said, You know what? Sami taiban, and then didn't sit
here. And Sammy, do you know what he said to me? He said, Yeah, but
Sammy is a bit extreme in his thinking. I said, you know, there
are some people who believe it. No, no, no, no. Sammy, he threw
you under the bus. Sammy, I said, subhanAllah, when I almost
buckled, that's the reaction they would have had as well.
This was an experience of the ages of 1819, and 20. By the time I
reached 21 years of age,
I no longer doubted. Allah subhanahu wa in his book,
inescapable questions the president of Bosnia. I call him
the philosopher king. There are the three main influences on my
own thinking. Is first, my father. Second, Muhammad, I said. Third,
Ali aziba Govich. Eze begovich has in his book, when he describes his
early life, he says that he flirted with the idea of atheism
and communism, but he says when he was 18, he went back to Islam. And
he said Islam went from being an inherited religion to one that I
embraced wholeheartedly. And therefore I believe I entered
Islam at 18, not during those years before, when it was an
inherited religion. I Islam went from being inherited religion to
entering it completely. And this is the point that I want to make
here. By that time, how could you doubt Allah? How could you doubt
what the Ummah looks like? In my opinion, I've seen what the Ummah
looks like. So when I say, My Ummah is powerful, when I say, let
me tell you about my ummah. I'm talking about the Kurds in Van im
talking about the Ghanaians in Ghana. I'm talking about those in
Lagos who never met me before, never contacted me before, but saw
me say, La Ilaha, illallah, Muhammad, Rasulullah. And it was
as if they elevated me to the high heavens and said, my brother,
welcome home. This is where you belong. Wherever there is a
message, wherever there is Layla, this is where you belong. This is
your family. How could they end up believing anything else? And so
when you open the seerah of the Prophet Muhammad, after those
experiences, the seerah takes on a completely different meaning.
Bilal, you think he's a marginal character. No, you understand why.
And this is when I realized it was after those experiences that when
I opened the Seera book and I read it, you know, when you get to the
point where Jafar goes to habasha and takes the Muslim refugees.
Bilal doesn't go with them. Think about it. If Bilal was so attached
Rahul to his to his nationalist ethnic identity, you would think,
as many people say today, I want to go home, or I want to go back
to my people. Or why doesn't Bilal Rabah take the opportunity to go
to habasha when they choose him. Why does he choose to stay with
the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu? It's it's because he understood
what the Ummah looks like, and knew it doesn't look like an
ethnic basis. It looks like the lalala basis. When I read that, I
said, this is Ghana for me. This was Lagos for me. This was the
center of Bill Raba halawi Allah. And when I saw that the Prophet
Muhammad Sallallahu, alayhi wa sallam, when he was offered the
money to give up his Deen, and he said, if you put the sun on my
right hand and the moon in my left, I will never give up this,
Deen, it reminded me of the brother in the third year who
refused to stand up for what all Islam stood for. So they
disrespected him, but me, who thought they would never like me
again because I told them no alcohol, they ended up respecting
the brothers who did that. Instead, I would read that and say
I understood why the Prophet Muhammad never buckled, because he
knew, even if he did, he would never have the sincerity of the
followers that he required in order to achieve the revolution
that he did. The point I'm making here, and this is the final line I
say. The point I'm making here is this, that when you read the Quran
and the Hadith, sometimes you will read it 1000 times, but won't
appreciate until something happens that makes you appreciate 1000 and
first time, Benjamin is a brother that we know in the UK converted
to Islam after one year of literally very aggressive debates
against Islam with the Muslims at my university or college. So when
Benjamin became Muslim, the second year, we asked him, Benjamin, why
did you become Muslim? He said to me, Sammy, do you know what
I read the area where Allah says that those in Jahannam when they
are burnt, we put their skin back on so that they might suffer the
pain you
became Muslim because of an AION hellfire. Have you lost your mind?
He said, No, no, no, it's not that. I said, Why would an A like
that make you come to Islam? Sammy, how did an illiterate or in
the middle of the desert know that the nerves are in the skin, not in
the blood, so you need to have skin to feel pain? And
I said, the guy's only been Muslim for three months, and he taught me
what I didn't know for 21 years.
And that's when I realized Allah gives wisdom to whom he wills when
he wills at the correct time. You are saying that, Sami, it's as if
you were prepared for this. But.
Let me be brutally honest. Sheik, there were two books that I just
happened to read three weeks before the events in ghaza
happened that had I not read, I would not have the opinion I have
today.
The first of those books was the Quran and Surat hood I was leading
Salat.
And you know, I know almost, you know the whole Quran, and you know
I know me. And so I was reading Suratul. Then I read two areas,
and forgot the third.
Somebody would correct me. I read the fourth. A I forget the fifth.
He reminded me on the on the third time I just went, he reminded me.
And I kept quiet, and I went, Allah Akbar.
So I went back to look at the Surah, to remind it. And as I'm
trying to remember, is it you're reading it, and you're going,
who really tried in skin,
and did Allah destroy his people?
Saleh?
Oh, no, like that. And you think Subhanallah, it feels like, from a
untrained mind or initial is failure after failure, after
failure after failure. These prophets are not succeeding in
convincing their people. So I said my reaction was, subhanAllah, only
Allah knows the outcome, and only Allah decides the outcome. These
prophets May Allah elevate them all the like he gave victory to
the Prophet Muhammad, but chose not to give it to who then these
other Allah decides the outcome. Alhamdulillah, even if I fail, it
doesn't mean I fail in the akhira, the second book was a random book
Sheik. I was talking have a conversation over coffee with a
friend, and we were he said, I want to go to France. I told him,
don't go to France. He Trust me, the French are most less about
what they did in colonization. And then he said, Yeah, yeah, but you
know, we should go there, dawah, give dawah, give dawah. I said,
talking Allah and to go give dawah.
So I decided, when I got home, I said, let me buy a book. So I
decided to go buy a book.
I wanted to find somebody who defends colonization, somebody who
makes excuses for France. I said, even if it's an ugly book, I'm
going to buy it. My wife said to me, but you're going to give him
royalties. I said, Let him have the royalties. I just want to
understand why they want to apologize for colonization. So I
bought this book, and it's a difficult read. It's like, if only
the French had done this, they could have stayed. If only the
French had done that, they could have stayed. But what I found
fascinating is he identified two turning points in the liberation
of Algeria.
The first was the setting up of the Council of Islamic scholars in
1920s by sheikhabdul Hamid bimbadis, and this is where he
reminds me of you. Yes, sheriz Sheik Abdul Hamid bimbadis argued
that because the French had battered the Algerians for 100
years to try to de Islamize. They used to rip the hijab of the
women. Line them up, rip the hijab and say, You are liberated. They
used to go and they used to massacre the men who used to stand
up against them. My great uncle Tijani was the brother of my
grandfather. One day, his cousin, she was pregnant, she was walking,
and the four French soldiers, they saw her, and they said, Yo, let's
see what gender of the gender of the baby is. And they took out a
long knife, and they went and they said, let's check the gender. And
they grabbed her, and they were about to slit her belly open.
Tijani grabs a rifle and shoots at the French soldiers. They run
away. They come the next day in the into his house, and they
riddled him with bullets the French used to they electrocuted
my grandfather when they caught him. They did horrible things in
France. He identifies that as a result of the French trying to
batter the Arabic language and Islamic identity, there were many
Algerians who couldn't speak Arabic as good as they spoke
French. So he decided to set up a council of Islamic scholars and
centers in every city where he would teach the generation the
Quran and Arabic and like not because they had forgotten it, but
to consolidate it. And Adel Hamid bin bedis avoided the politics of
the day and focused on creating a generation that, 30 years later
would be the foot soldiers of the liberation movement. That's the
first thing, the idea, she said, it resembles very much what you're
trying to do with the prophetic living and the like.
The second thing he identifies was the massacre of 1945
and this, for me, was a strange thing. He be said that the
massacre of 30,000 Algerians was the turning point that liberated
Algeria. He argued that when the French massacred 30,000 Algerians,
the French say 12,000 the Algerians say 50,000 I'll go for
the middle because I know sometimes after Egyptian cinema,
we tend to exaggerate. Sometimes no disrespect. But anyway, he
argues that when French celebrated the liberation from Nazi Germany
and the allies were getting together to give freedom to each
other. They didn't want to include indigenous people. But he says
when the French massacre 30,000 Algerians who demanded their own
independence, he said this told the Algerians that Halas there's
only one way forward to go with the French. They will never give
us the equal rights, and Allah gave them liberation. Said.
19 years later, despite he says in his book, despite the Algerians
never being militarily superior to the French, the reason why I'm
saying is to show you these aren't original ideas from Sami. These
are ideas gained from reading these books and trying to
understand these experiences. So when Gaza comes and the death toll
mounts, I heard the Muslim brother say, we are powerless. And I said,
Allah, said this, but Allah said in the following ayah that he had
already decided the outcome and that the punishment is coming. You
said it. It means victory is near, inshallah. And they said, Sammy,
have you lost your mind? I said, No, Allah, open it read, Surah
Hood, you will see it. Then I saw the death toll in Gaza, and people
said, This is it for the Palestinian cause. I said, No, no,
SubhanAllah. I see remnants. I see I see memories of Algeria, 1945 ya
ibad Allah. This could be the turning point, because they're
going to Jannah. And that's the point I want to make, is that at
the end of it,
when you talk about political analysis in the deen, when you
read the seerah of the seerah of the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu
sallam, you realize their gatherings were in the maserjid,
the tactics for battle in the maserjid, the discussions on the
laws in the maserjid, even when Khalid Ibn Walid al Anu was
brought before AB to be demoted, they did it in the masjid. They
tied Khalid wali's hands and they brought him in and they said, You
are demoted. They did it in the masjid. I always ask the question,
when did the masjid stop becoming a place to discuss the Muslim
current affairs? I'm not saying to transgress on the laws of America
section, whatever it is that gives you nice tax benefits. I'm talking
about the idea that, when did we suddenly separate the ideas of
politics and and that's where we now do full circle back to the
beginning, when I said about the influence of my father, where he
raised us in a household where he just made it seamless. So when
everybody said, Oh, you're doing it seamlessly, I was like, Guys,
no disrespect. You are the strange ones, not me.
BarakAllahu
Allah,
bless you and increase you and guide you more and more. I think
you know, listening to his his his story, it really highlights what I
believe are the key ingredients that we need as a community to
ensure that by the permission of Allah. We are worthy of the cause
of Allah.
When Sammy is reflecting, he's reflecting upon his teachers,
primarily his father, and also his mother. His mother is clearly a
teacher, and you can hear it in the power of his mother, the
strength of his mother, the spirituality of his mother. And
that is something that all of us have to think about as parents and
the types of homes that we create for our children, and what are the
values, the morals, the ideals, what is the spirit? How many of us
have called our sons on the phone and said, Is this what I raised
you for? You
know, it's a very striking thing to hear, because I think
especially as as Western Muslims and especially those who live in
the United States,
our family objective has almost become the career for career
itself. It's about financial well being. It's about social comfort.
But to be someone who graduated from a reputable University, and
it's, of course, it's completely okay in Halal on tayu, to go down
that career, I don't think we're disagreeing on whether he should
have not. No, that's not the point. But what the point is that
his father and his mother are both teaching him this notion of that
there is a higher purpose, there's a reason why you live well beyond
and to have that infused in a home is a NEMA beyond measure. And may
Allah for you, and may it be in the scale of your parents,
Wallahi, that they Allah inspired their hearts because they clearly
have a lineage, yasula, they were raised from a reality themselves.
So I hope we highlight this in our hearts and minds. The second
critical takeaway I think we have to highlight and consider is how
important it is to learn and study, study our heritage, study
our legacy, study our sacred lineage. It's profound.
And what Sami is highlighting in these stories is the profundity of
our of our intellectual, spiritual, theological and
civilizational heritage that we're bound by something far more
profound, one of the problems that we have as a community, in
particular in America, is that we are very often not just physically
disconnected, but spiritually and philosophically disconnected from
the ummah. And that's a real problem. That's a real problem.
Los pantola.
Us. Nadihi uma tukumatan, Wahida, this is your ummah, and it is one
ummah. Wa Ana abukum, I am your Lord. For abudun, worship me
so as a community, we can't lose sight of the fact that we are one
ummah. And I took that I hear, I gleaned it from the spirit of his
speech. What his father, his mother, let me ask you a question,
what 1718, year old is going and being what you call yourself a
troublemaker? No, you didn't say you're a brat.
Why is he being a quote, unquote brat?
No alcohol, no girls, no fej, please. Muslims together. This,
you know, also is very intriguing about the story we don't have in
America those kind of friendships where we're being challenged
proactively on our Dean with our friends and our classmates,
because we keep everything in the politics of niceties, cordiality.
Hi. How are you? I hate you. I can't stand you. But I'm not going
to say that. I'm just going to give a fake smile. We know we
because these are all people in the corporate world, in academia
and studying, and we're just not real with each other. You actually
grew up in a culture where is a blessing
to hear and listen and then have an opportunity to engage and
discuss. And so we can't take these points for granted. It's
thoughts that we need to consider in terms of revamping our identity
as a community. The last point that I want to highlight before I
ask my next question, because your average right now is one hour per
question. For anybody at this rate, we're going to be here until
fetch. Ibrahim, do we have Asha? We have Asha. Okay, by the way, in
Egypt, you eat Asha 12, one o'clock in the morning. That's
Asha. So have Asha inshallah after the third question.
But I think the third, the third point to highlight and to really
think about,
is soda is companionship. You kept on mentioning your friends names.
Tahib Adnan, his brothers,
people that he yearned for, people that he was engaging in rich
dialog and discussion. Those were when they were in their downtime.
Those are the conversations you talking. What are you thinking?
Okay, okay, you go forward. How about this and and you understand
the richness of the outcome of those conversations, how profound
it is on your development, on my development as an individual, as
children, to have Suhail, righteous companionship. By the
way, the whole project of Islam is rooted in the project of suhaba,
right? It is the underpinning of it. It's, of course, theology.
It's the Oneness of Allah, Taw Eid, but then it is a Swaha,
righteous companionship. And so I just wanted to ensure that I
highlighted the key ingredients, because I think all of us sitting
here
can attest to the fact that maybe we're not doing it the way we
should. We have a status quo about the way we live our lives, what
drives us, what motivates us. We're always we're really hyper
worried about money and career and basic social well being like
marriage and children, and it's very insular, and it's very self
absorbed.
But when you listen, and I think, Wallahi, Sami Habib, and I'm not,
when I praise, I think you know me, you've, yeah, you know my
personal I don't, oh, I've spent an interesting, yeah, he got a
taste.
And also, in northern New Jersey, we don't actually do the
embellishment stuff and like, we're not, we're not really nice.
I've seen it. We're not the nicest people. Like we're we're good
people. We're just not like, you know, the soft and kind because he
came from California where everyone's, like, smiling. Hey,
how are you?
He was telling me, because that's my, you know, reaction to
California is like, why are you so happy? Bring me a disgruntled
worker who just wants me to be done, you know, like, that's my
speed, not like, Hey, what's going on? I'm gonna talk. No, please.
That's too much.
But in all jokes aside, I think Habib na Sami and I think, and I
use this word in a measured fashion, there is something
inspirational about what you are bringing to the table. Your
commentary on the geopolitics of the region, your ability to marry
between a Masha Allah very astute and capable knowledge of what's
happening in this country, in that country, in the history and the
particularities. But then, and this is the real kicker, and
perhaps game changer, is that it's your knowledge and your obsession
and your joy with the seed of the Pulsar I sent them, how it comes
to life. You know, in your analysis, you.
Yeah, and I would argue, and I think, you know, the audience
would agree with me that perhaps we're not really accustomed to
this, like we're not accustomed to English speaking Muslims who have
this capacity to reference, you know, dates and details and
intricate knowledge of the specifics of what's happening
geopolitically, economically, but also really speak to the
sacredness of our tradition, the power of the Quran and Sunnah. And
so I'm going to now pass the mic back with this question, and
really, don't be shy. Take as long as you all lie. We're happy. I'm
happy to listen to you. Don't worry. And if I'm looking at my
phone, I think it's just because I'm in communication with
the I think you know the say, Do not Omar. He says, ya Allahu, ya
la hum in Deen, lokana. Lahorijal, like, what a remarkable religion
we have. No, what's up? Cup, he says, What a remarkable religion
we have, if it only had rijal
brothers and sisters. Rijal is a category of people. It's men and
women, by the way, and how Allah speaks about these. Rijal is
rijalun sadaqamah ahadu, laha alay. They are rijal. They are
people who are truthful in their convictions and their commitment
to Allah. Rijan Haru, there are people who love to purify
themselves.
I think, I think habina Sami, if you may help us,
how do we as a community become inspired to be from those rijal
meaning that we transition from this very selfish, self absorbed
orientation, where all we're doing all the time is licking our wounds
and feelings and just concerned about our little, you know, micro
fiefdoms. And how do we transition to being a people who care about
the Ummah, who have a qadriya, a cause that extends well beyond
themselves. I think that is something, that reason why we're
so inspired by your commentary, your analysis, and I'm sure
everyone still wants to hear more about what you have to say about
Philistine and what's happening now, what's going to come and
share, whatever you will, in that regard. But how can we transition
to becoming a community of individuals of Inshallah, rijal,
who are Ashab Khadiyah, who are people of a purpose and a cause
that extends beyond themselves.
Barkha lafit,
I know we use the word rijal,
the person who made me understand, or I like to think I understand
it, Inshallah, I have the same conclusions moving forward. The
one who made me understand this particular concept was actually
not a man. It was a woman. It was Zubaydah bin Tamar um Sami, the
mother of Sami.
So my mother, for those who don't, for those who don't know her, my
mother is the kind of woman who will enter a city that she's never
entered before, and she will see five problems on the street. She
will not leave the street until she resolves all five problems,
even though it has absolutely nothing to do with her. My mother
will see a mother arguing with her son, and she will say, excuse me.
Salaam. Alaikum. Excuse me. You know you shouldn't talk to your
mother like that,
but you should leave it softer with your son. What does it have
to do with you? No, no, what is she shouting at you about? The son
will tell her, I've seen this with my own eyes. The son will say,
she's always saying this and always doing that and always doing
that and always doing this, okay, but you know she loves you deep
and down. You know, should that. And you Mother, why do you let me
finish. You know you should did it and SubhanAllah. By the end, the
mother and son have hugged, and she moves to the next one. She
enters a village, and she finds that the daughters have been
removed from the inheritance, and the men have taken the land, and
the women were cut out the inheritance. She will not leave
until the woman have their inheritance back. I saw it with my
own eyes. She went to a village which had pretty much nothing to
do with her, and she found that the women who had married into
families were in destitute poverty, and the men were enjoying
acres of land.
So she, who doesn't mind her own business, turned around and asked,
and she said, So what's the issue with this land thing? Masha Allah,
the men, they have, like, a lot of land. And somebody said to her,
you know, we have in this village. You know, women, they don't
inherit. What do you mean women, they don't inherit? My mother is
my mother is diplomatic in language, but firm mashallah, and
my mother is the kind of woman. So for example, when I married, my
wife is half English, half Algerian. The English side of the
family are still they're not Muslims. Only my wife's my mother
in law is Muslim, but the rest are not Muslims. So when my wife's
grandmother came to visit us in the house, my mother is the kind
of person who, as soon as they sit down, she takes the Quran. Oh,
Masha, Allah, you are Christian. You know, we have the story of
Mary. And this is what Allah says in the story of Mary. So in the SU
we, you know, we what we don't believe is that Jesus is the Son
of God. But look, this is the story of Mary. How we believe in
the mirror.
Can and this kind of thing. And I know sometimes in Christianity,
because, you know, you hear a lot of media and and you're watching
in shock, you're like,
Mama ish Dach, like, why are you involved with this? Like, I don't
understand. They came as a guest, and she will not stop. Like, she's
relentless with it. When we were in school growing up, my mother
would memorize the curriculum of our year to make sure she could
teach us so we could pass the exams. When I was in school, my
mother would go to my teachers, bring a big bowl of baklawa and
say, My son is in your class. Please. Could you email me every
two weeks to tell me how my son is? And the teachers would help
me. They'd be like, Sammy, be quiet. I'm going to email your
mom, and I be like, hey,
when one day
we were playing football, and there was a friend, the football
was his, and we were year seven, year seven. So I must have been
about 12 years old, and we were playing year sevens versus year
10s. So year 10s, of course, they battered us at football. They're
much bigger. We're 12 years old, you know, we don't even have any
air on our faces. So the year 10s, they bullied the owner of the
board, they picked up the ball, they started running after it. And
growing up in a household with my mom, the first thing you do is you
run after him. Mama didn't teach us to sit down and do nothing. So
I ran after him. I pushed the guy from behind and I grabbed the
wall. I give it back. They shout, say shout to my friend said, Sam
is behind you. Sammy is behind you, I turn around and I just see,
boom, straight headbutt onto my nose. I just saw lights, and I
went like that, bang. When I went to the hospital, they told me, has
to have immediate operation to bring his nose back.
The head of year of the school called the house, and he said,
Sammy has been suspended for two weeks. Allah, I get my nose
smashed in, and I get two weeks suspension because I want to get
somebody's ball back. My mother threw the kitchen sink at the
school and got him sacked within two weeks and the suspension, she
would memorize every law required to do with education. She spent
the nights learning the school governance rules. She spent the
lives she wanted to make sure that nobody would be able to take my
rights away as a student, not for me. No, we talk about people of
action. Rijel, people who, when they see something they do,
Zubaydah bent Amar is that woman. She goes in and she does it when
they came to the land. My mother, she found the land that the men
owned it and the women didn't. So she went to the head horn show,
who orchestrated the whole thing, the eldest in the family. And she
said,
You know, first, this is wrong. This is this. He said, It's our
takalid, our customs, and you have no business to get involved in it.
But, you know, the Sharad the Quran, this mama started slowly,
but the Sharad the Quran, that is what right have you to get
involved? Who are you?
Consider me, shaitan, tell me why you took the land from the women.
Ma, I don't think this is something. Oscar, be quiet.
Tell me why you took it away. Then Wallahi, I will not let you have a
single wink of sleep until I remove this land from your hands.
Come with me, ladies, we're going to the lawyers. What we're going
now to the lawyers. I can't come and see you tonight. I have
something to attend to now we go.
Within nine months, the women got their land.
My mother is that kind of women.
When ALLAH SubhanA wa Taala says in the Hadith kodusi, take one
step. I take 10 people see me quote this hadith, and they think
that I'm referring to what we did for ghaza. I'm not. I'm referring
to Zubaydah bint Amr. I'm referring to a woman who, when she
sees something a problem in front of her, she gets involved. And
what I found was, even if people were hostile to her in the
beginning, people always said and I remember seeing people say to
her, yeah, anti Zubaida Wallahi, if you had not got involved, the
vulnum would have continued. You are in a position to say things we
could not say. I remember a mother fell out with her son.
The son wanted to move to a flat in the city,
and she was unhappy about it, because she built on top, hoping
the son would stay close, but he wanted to his work and take his
family. So the local Sheik of the village came and said, tartan, you
have to obey the mother. You have to obey the mother. You have to
obey the mother. Now, my mother does her research before she gets
involved. So she heard a story that the Sheikh's mother has
cancer and is in Tunis, in the in the capital, with no one really
looking after her. So the sheik went, my mother stood up and went,
Tata, very day, pack your bags and go to Tunis. Then pack your bags
and go to your mother coming here and telling people to do Why are
you causing fitna between mother and child and this kind of thing?
What's the big deal? He's 10 minutes away. He can go back and
then and she managed to reconcile between mother and child. My point
is that when we talk about ri JAL, those who go and make a difference
in the community. The reality is that I'm inspired by the stories
of my mother. But one of the reasons why, not necessarily that
it upsets me, but I was lucky to see that I acknowledge that, in my
opinion, and I may be biased, I acknowledge my mother is an
extraordinary woman. I acknowledge even today, wherever we go, she
will walk in.
It in a masjid, she'll see for examples, and she'll say, I need
to fix that. I learned from that in that you should always take
action. But the tragic part of it is that it's my mother who
inspired me to it, whereas in the Quran and the son of the Prophet
Muhammad sallam, the whole story is about people like Zubaydah bin
Ahmad. The whole story is about Sahaba, who, when they saw that,
why did they hate the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu, sallam, it's
because he kept raising the grievances of people who were
being oppressed. The only thing he did wrong in the eyes of Quraysh
was to turn around and say, Why are you guys oppressing the
neighbor? Why do you bury your daughters alive? Why? And they
said, Why are you asking these questions? Why? Why do you ask
these questions? You know, sometimes in society, they tell,
you don't cause fitna, don't cause problems. Don't cause but what was
the Dawah? Why did why is it somebody who's made a
controversial statement? They said, you know, Islam is is a
problem. This is a story a very beloved friend told me.
He said to me, Islam
is problematic. And when the sheik told me a story, I went star for
Allah, He said, Wait a minute. Let me finish. I'm a guy from joy. Is
he telling you back?
Because let me tell you why. He said, The Professor sent him up to
the age of 40. They had no problems with him. He was sadaq,
he was Amin. He was trustworthy, he was generous. They used to
leave their Amana with him. They used to look after him. They used
to everything really. Read this. They loved the Prophet. Saw until
he was 40 years of age. Whenever they wanted to do trade, they
trusted him. He was beloved in Quraysh, when did the problems
happen? When he pointed out the injustice, when he pointed out
what was wrong when he caused fitna, as people would call it
today, when he went and said, yeah, ibad Allah, this isn't
right. Don't cause problems. The problem is in the fitna. The
problem is not in need, calling out the fitna.
He said, Layla Allah, and they went, Whoa, this is, how can you
say that? He said, This is the way you should move forward
when you watch the film that he seller, my dad used to always tell
us watch it, what he made us watch it 20 times from the age of 14 to
18, and we like, oh, Baba, we have to watch this again. We know the
story. Yes, bida has a rock on his chest, and we know he has a, you
know, very ungrateful like a bratty teenager. It's only later
that you watch it one day and you go, Oh, wait a minute. So how much
Sahaba they suffered. So there's a scene, you know, when Jafar is in
front of najashi, and najashi says to him, you know, what is this
thing about Muhammad? And he goes, we worshiped idols of wood and
stone. We oppressed the poor. We were rude to our neighbors. We
were horrible to one another. We lived in a society where they said
that lifting up your brother when he is down, is considered by them
as upsetting the social order. To this madness has come a prophet
who tells us love each other, who tells us stand for justice, who
tells us lift your brother up, who says give to the poor to say good
words. And you watch it, and you think Subhanallah Quraysh got
upset because of that. Quraysh got upset because I said, went to him
and said, Guys don't abuse each other. And that's the point that I
want to make here in that you talked about religion.
And this is where it links back to what I said about Muhammad Asad.
Muhammad Asad said that when Islam became the impetus for action, we
always interpret action as something on a grand scale. He's
talking about the small scale as well. That's what made Islam
great. When Muslims were the first to say that's wrong, when Muslims
were the first to say you were rude when you said that, when
Muslims are the ones who say you said, salaam, Wa Alaikum. Warmly
to him, coldly to him. You hugged him, but didn't shake his hand. I
didn't mean it. It's not about whether you meant it or not. Allah
says, Wakulla Abadi, Akula Leti here ASAN in the shaitana, tell my
believers to say that which is best, not because of you have a
bad intention, but to make sure shaitan doesn't play with the
heart. Be proactive in ensuring shaitan doesn't play with the
heart. The reason why I say this is, when you're an ummah that
mobilizes for the sake of justice at the minor and macro level, you
transform what the Ummah is. And the reason why I say this, I don't
say it in a theoretical way. I say it because I saw my mother do it
in 100 different cities. I remember sitting in a resort on a
beach, swimming, and I look back mama, and she's talking to a
random family, and when I go, she's telling them that, you know,
but Wallahi, in this in this day, your daughter, now she's not
wearing hijab, but ask herself why she's not wearing hijab, you think
they will be happy with you. You think they will celebrate you. You
know what they will do to you later on. You know they will they
will not respect you. But if you were hijab, you will be elegant.
And I'm thinking, Oh, she's talking to a girl about hijab.
It's taboo in the West. Samuscott, what do you mean taboo? And she
had AB go and play her mama harder. How drama do.
The time they finish, I see the other girl in tears talking to
mum, telling her auntie Wallahi, tomorrow I would wear it, Mom,
what did you do? I asked my sister, Zainab, what did mama do?
She did what mama does. She did what my mother she was. She would
look on another table. She would hear somebody say, we can't afford
this pizza. We have to go home. You
see that table, give them a big pepperoni pizza with a pineapple.
Please. Please, Allah, tell her you see my son. When Allah gives
us risk, we have to show our thanks, because Allah said, MELU,
Allah, the wood the Shukra, when you show thanks, Allah didn't say,
say it. He says, MELU, do action to show Shukra. And the other
anecdote for my mother, she has it, if I'm hoping to bring it to
America one day, you know, to say to a Mama, come please. And, you
know, come and join me. You know, it's lonely being in the hotel
room and that kind of thing. But you know, she she has this one
thing where, at every single meeting with a bureaucratic
official, she will be nice, you know, thank you, whatever. By the
way, I'm looking at your face. You need vitamin D.
No, no. You know vitamin D what is? And you see the guy go like,
What's going on over here? No, no, vitamin D. It's because we don't
get enough sunshine. And when I did the test, I found my vitamin D
was low, so I started taking vitamin D, and now I feel much and
what I said it to my sister, and she did the same thing. And you
know what? Give me your address. I will send it to you. I will order
it for you now. Just tell me. I will send a bit. She'll go back
one year later. Ah, your face has vitamin D. Masha Allah, you know
you've and you'll see the other person. Whereas I thought it was
frightening to engage with other people because they might push
back every reaction I see them give. My mother is Barak Allahu,
fiki. Thank you so much. You know, no one cares about me. No one asks
about me. How did it take a random lady to ask about me? Wallahi,
when I tell people, I tell them, there is a lady who came from
London out of nowhere, and she took an interest in me when nobody
else did. And you know what that reminded me of? When he said it,
it reminded me of amrable as Salafi Allah. And he went to the
Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam. And he says, he
says, Before I went, I was convinced I was the dearest person
to the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam. So
he went and asked him. He made the mistake to ask him. He went to ask
the Prophet rasulallah, who is the dearest person to you? He said,
Aisha Rama. I said, okay, okay. But amongst the men,
he said, Abu ha her her father,
and after him, Muhammad and Abu as realized that he wasn't even in
the top 10.
But the reason I find the Hadith so fascinating is it shows you how
the Prophet Muhammad, used to treat people, how he treated them
in a way where they became convinced that he loved them and
he did that he would treat everybody in a way that made them
feel like they were the most important person in the world. How
many people do you talk to in your community today where you talk to
them and they go, yeah, yeah. You were saying, yeah, yeah. I'm
sorry. What was that? Yeah? How many? How many of you you will
talk to somebody kind of think? And you were like, yeah, yeah, you
know, I don't have time for you. How many of you go? When you
greet, you say assalamu, Alaikum, salam, Salam. Salam, sir. One
thing that I like about the Egyptians in particular, when I
used to visit Cairo is, you know, when he said, salam, first time I
went, I was a teenager, and, you know, you walk by and you think,
I'm in a Muslim country, I'm going to try it. Salaam. Alaikum. Wala
Kum. Salaam, travel. They add to it come and you're like, ah,
12.
Okay,
salami, 12. And he'll cut off his bread in two, and he'll give it to
you. And I'm like,
we don't do this in London.
What's going on over here? And he'll give you five minutes
conversation, six minutes conversation, and then you'll be
like, I have to go hamdullah. Habib, Allah mak bar, kalafik.
Habib, oh, your brother. What just happened there? But really, that's
my reaction, because it's so unusual. But when I had that
reaction, I realized you were talking about rijal. You realize
that it's in these aspects that we lack, we think of the grand and
forget the small. And that's why, when eventually you open the seal
of the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu, sallam, I know people
might get tired of me saying that, but opening the book of the
prophet Muhammad, I read the final khutbah. So when I read the final
khutbah,
you read it. And the Prophet Salam stands up and he says, in a demo
and welcome a rather come haram on Alikum kahlman, to Shari. Comme
had a felony. Comme had your blood. Wealth and honor are sacred
to each of you, like the sanctity of this land, of this day, of this
place.
And you read the rest of it. For those who have a blood feud, let
them know that the blood feud of my clan, I have set it aside, so
the rest of you set it aside.
Ibad Allah, Be good to your neighbors. Do not spite one
another. And he goes through and I'm thinking, what am I going to
read? Go out and liberate this. Go out and fight.
Here go at why does the Prophet sallam, who knows he may never
speak to them? Because he says, In the beginning, I may not stand
before you like this again. Abu asmaati said, when he said that I
knew this was the end of the Prophet, Sallam could have said
anything. He could have said, this is, you know that he was going to
talk about the essence of the deen. Why did he focus on what you
consider to be the mundane. Why did he focus on the good word on
the kindness between people? Because this is the politics of
change. The politics of change is not in the macro. The macro is the
result. Somebody asked me on the thinking Muslim podcast on Monday,
when I recorded it, he said, you know, how can we create people of
Jannah like Salah Haddin? I said, Why do you assume that the people
of Jannah are the ones on the podium? Podiums? Why don't you
think the people of Jannah are the ordinary people, the one who
teaches the Quran, the one who goes and tells people be good to
each other, the one who asks about his neighbor, the one who goes and
sees the Father and Son. That is strange. They don't talk to each
other for two, three years, and they go when they say unto each
other, you know, go. You should talk to each other. Let me arrange
a meme in my house so they can talk to another. Why do you not
consider this person piece of Jannah? And then I thought, let me
play on it as well. Musa ibn Umar, radhala Anu, who made Medina
Muslim with his dawah, didn't live to see Fatah Mecca. He didn't live
to see the Muslims in Mecca.
Does that mean he's valued less than those who entered Mecca. Look
at your faces. Go, no.
The reason you're going huh, is because when it clicked in your
head, you were like, oh, wait a minute. I did think he was less in
value when Hamza ravala Anu dies in never seeing the Muslims in
Mecca,
he died at a time in the battle where they were defeated,
Hamza didn't enter Mecca. Is the one who entered Mecca better than
Hamza. Dolla Rasulullah, look at you all go,
because you realize that in your subconscious, you sort of believed
it. But when it's put to you in front of you in blunt terms, you
go, arubila, no, no, no, no. But why? It's because subconsciously
you don't value the small act. You always want to be the people on
the podium, whereas the ones who make change are the small ones.
Salah adubi was the product of nurdin Zinke before him, and Imam
Al Ghazali before him, and those who laid the pathway for the deen
before him, Raza. The change has been made not by the biggest
governments, not by bin Salman or Erdogan or binzaid or these guys
who stood by and did nothing. It was done by the ordinary people
who broke Israel's monopoly on the narrative that made Biden fall in
the polls, that made Blinken panic and result in the shift that made
the Democrats now panic about their elections, that forced the
hostage troops, and that is making Netanyahu panic because he
believes his political future is concerned. It was a small the
ordinary people. How is it that when Ummah reads in the Sira
yashir That Abu Sufyan says to Heraclius, Heraclius says to Abu
Sufyan, who are the people who follow the Prophet Muhammad,
sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam, and Abu Sufyan says it's the poor, the
ordinary people of our society, as if he's trying to insult the
Prophet Muhammad and herakli says this was the way of the prophets
before it's these people who deliver the change, the one who
you think don't have power, but they are the ones who lead the
real change. When you read Surat hood, when Shuaib and nur and
these prophets, they call on their people, they say, We don't believe
your message. One, you've shown us no miracle. And two, the only
people we see following you are the ordinary people.
We don't see the elites following you or that kind of thing. We see
you as a majnun, as in as a person who's crazy. Allah tells you over
and over and over in the Quran and in the Sira that the ones who
deliver the greatest revolution and delivered Islam are the
ordinary people, not the ones on the podium. How is it the Ummah
flipped that conclusion and made it that the people of Jannah are
the podium, not those who paved the way forward? The reason why I
say that is that when you understand this, you realize that
every action you take is a political game changing action.
Yeah. Ibad, Allah, many of you sitting here today, we all have
our issues. Let me tell you interesting story.
My mother,
when, when my great grandfather,
when one of his sons was killed, Tijani,
he took in his wife and his kids into his area, and he built for
them a home on his land.
My grandfather went to him and said, Baba, what you're doing is
wrong, because when you build it on your land, if you don't
separate it in the title deed, when you die, it will be put into
your inheritance and their rights will be taken from them and
divided between us. He said, What are you talking about? They are as
if they are my children, and that scenario won't happen.
He said, Baba, please this. There is a big fitna you might create.
Build a house outside of the land and give them a clear title deed.
Don't build it here to.
Fall into the inheritance of my brothers and my sisters, for it
may well be we might not agree to give it to them afterwards, and
you will not be at peace in your grave. Said, move your Amal
my mother, in 2014
she woke up in a panic, and she said to my dad, I need to take the
kids to Algeria. I need to go. This is many, many years after my
great grandfather died, 25 years after he died, she said, I saw a
dream that my my mom's talking. I saw a dream that my grandfather is
by a river, and he said to me, Yama. Yama, I have this horrible
needle in my gum. Your thorn in my gum. Yamma, I can't get it out.
Yama, please get it out for me. And my mom says in the dream,
she's going, I'm trying. I'm trying. And she pulled it out, and
he said, Thank you Yama, Walla, I was not Marta. I was not at peace.
Thank you so much. And he goes, and he crosses the river. She woke
up, she said, I know what that thorn is, because the thorn was
the house that was built that was never handed over to the orphans
because they were so she went back to Algeria, and in the space of
two weeks, she reconciled two brothers who hadn't talked to each
other for 25 years over this issue. One fell because the older
brother said, we're not giving the land, and my grandfather said, I
will not participate in this volume. I'm leaving the city. I'm
going to stay in the capital. I want to be far away from you the
valama. My mother goes. She brings my grandfather back to his
hometown. She brings the brothers all together, she brings a lawyer.
She brings whatever she's mobilizing. Her siblings are
telling her what, what's she doing? Like, why is she doing all
of these things that what's going on? She gets the lawyer. She gets
the title dude. She gets whatever. She goes, she sits with her great
her her uncle, her uncle, who was known for being a very tough,
aggressive man. She says, Before I went to speak to him, I was
terrified. I thought he'd get up and slap me, because that was he
used to be, like, back in the days. She goes and she says to the
uncle, she says to him, yeah, I'm me. I promise you, if you die in
your current state, I promise you your father is not comfortable in
the grave, you will not be comfortable either. And she went
on, no, no, no, no. And this, and this is how we should do it, and
the title should be given. We can't build a new land, but we can
give the title deed of that piece of land and hand it over. Instead,
she talked for two hours, and then he said, Binti to akal Allah, I'll
sign on whatever document that you need. In those two weeks, the land
finally was given to its rightful owner. My grandfather went back to
Algeria two days after the resolution of handing the land
back to the orphans, my grandfather passed away,
as if Allah kept him alive. And as if Allah extended his life to make
sure he would not return to him with this issue that was
outstanding. The interesting thing about the issue, the week before
Sultan his cousin came to him, and they used to call my grandfather
the sheik, he went to me, said to him, Sheik me, and you are leaving
this world soon. And I was in the conversation, Sultan Allah was
sitting here. My grandfather was sitting here. Sultan says to my
grandfather, Sheik me and you are not long for this world. He said,
What's wrong with you? My grandfather was sometimes quite
gruff. Be What's wrong with you? Eli, he says, Anna, I woke up last
night and I saw a dream that Eunice. Eunice was already dead. I
saw that Eunice had finished praying in the masjid, and he took
his shoes and he left.
And you had finished praying, you took your shoes and you left. And
I was putting my shoes on and saying, yeah, yeah, Sheik, I'm
coming. I'm coming. He said, Sultan, What's this nonsense that
you're coming out with? Sheik, you're going to die soon, and I'm
going to follow you. My grandfather died five days later.
Sultan died two weeks later.
The point that I'm saying is the thorn in my great grandfather's
gum was the result of inaction, of Rijn not taking the responsibility
upon themselves to look at the affairs of their community. Ibad
Allah, I know people say don't get involved in family business or the
like. I understand that. That is very true, but yeah. Ibad Allah,
when you see issues taking place in each other's lives, go and help
each other be that external mediator who reconciles between
father and son. If you see a mother and daughter haven't talked
spoken for ages, do something drastic. Call the mother and say,
Hey, how you doing, how you doing, how you doing, how you doing, talk
to her now, do do it, because you'll find they go and then they
start talking, and the ball starts rolling, because you take one
step, Allah takes 10. Do these initiatives, support your
communities, go and participate in them. The issue is sometimes the
Muslims always want to see the outcome before they mobilize.
Because let's be brutally honest, the reason I gave you the example
of Muslim is that you, and this is the proof that we, even me,
subconsciously believe them to be inferior. Because if I was to ask
you, would you accept to be someone like Musa ibn Umar, to
leave this world having not seen the outcome? Would you accept it?
You would hesitate. I want to be the guy who celebrates at the end.
I want to be the guy that people clap for at the end. I don't want
to be the Forgotten guy who's why? Because subconsciously you believe
the recognition This dunya is better than the recognition of the
akhira, where Allah says, ya Ayato hanafum, Maria fat holy fear.
Ibadi, what Holy janity. I.
The reason why I say all of this, and I promise this is where I
round up, is when I give you these examples, is to demonstrate that
action is easier than you think it is, action is not as complicated
as you think it is, action is not as terrifying as you think it is.
And small actions don't produce small results. Small actions can
produce tremendous, groundbreaking, societally
changing results. Because the Prophet saw him. All he did was he
told him, la Illallah and be just. And he revolutionized the whole
world that 1400 years later, his followers are here in New Jersey,
that the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu, alayhi wa sallam
preached the actions in the small actions, giving the charity,
trying to gather money for a masjid, trying to gather money to
get somebody out of debt, trying to gather mediators. We know these
families are arguing with each other. Go out and reconcile those
families. Ah, Shaykh, I don't think they'll ever talk to each
other. Don't say that the Prophet Sallam sent somebody to a husband
and wife. And when they went, they saw that the wife was beautiful.
So they they perhaps suggested that maybe they wanted them to
divorce. So when they came back, they said to Ya Rasulullah, there
is no hope for these two. The Prophet sallam said, fix your
intention and go back and reconcile. They went back. They
ended up reconciling between the husband and wife. The point here
being ya ibad Allah. Is this hadith. When I read it, it shows
the first attempt might fail, but the second attempt can succeed.
The reality is, what do you want to be in the Summa, or this
ecosystem? Do you want to be very jail? And the reason I use a
woman, Zubaydah, bint Amar, as the example, is to show you that in my
lifetime, I saw the woman have just as much of an impact as the
men I saw my mother sit in a room full of men who are upholding the
injustice of the land, of denying the women the inheritance, I saw
her stare down every single one of them, until when she forced the
court to finally give the order to restore the land they are to this
day, saying curse the days obey the walk through this village, she
ruined our plan to impose dulam. But my mother says, Allah is the
One who gave me the victory. Allah is One Who let me do it. And she
says to me quite she says with me smugly, you see when you fight for
the cause of Allah, you see when you make Allah your goal. You see
when you make Jannah your goal. Allah gives you power where you
never expected son, when we entered the village, did I know
the people? Did I have power? Did I have authority? I didn't. But
because we made the intention and we took the action to make the
change, Allah sent it from where we never even expected it. You
see, my son, don't be a coward. You see my son, be a man of the
ummah. You see my son, be like your father. Do something with
Ummah, my son, we didn't raise you to be somebody who doesn't fight
for this ummah. We raised you holy for this ummah. My son, be on this
responsibility. My son, remember ALLAH, Subhanahu wa my son,
remember Allah gave it to you, my son. Remember Allah gives you the
power. My son. Look at our family, how we've been blessed, and it's
because of Allah subhanahu wa, and if we think it comes from anyone
but Allah, Allah, will humiliate us. Sammy, remember that a mama, I
got it. I got it. Yama, Ma, I got it. Arsenal just scored. I want to
see the highlight
when you grow up in an environment where that's the norm. When you
grow up in environment where that's the norm, it's baffling
when people suggest that the opposite should be the norm. Ibad
Allah, every community has its issues,
and that's fine.
People always say what should be the Ideal Muslim community? They
think Ideal Muslim community is one where there are no problems.
But if that was the case, Allah would not have said in the Quran,
yeah, man, come for interfein, for Doha, illallah, Rasulullah.
Oh, you who believe obey Allah, His Prophet and those who have
authority over you. But if you disagree, Allah is saying, in a
society, he didn't say, leftum When you have a minor
disagreement, he says, Tenez of internet, Niza is like, like that.
That's Niza.
Allah says this can happen in a community. That doesn't mean you
like Iman. When the Prophet Muhammad SAW one of the Hadith
that, oh, the Hadith that throws me completely is when the Prophet
sallam said This grandson of mine, Al Hassan, is a Sayyid, is a
noble, for he will reconcile between two large groups of
Muslims. In that hadith, the Prophet didn't say so Salam, who
was right, who was wrong? He didn't take one out of Islam and
the other in Islam. He celebrated the reconciliation of the ummah.
And it made me realize that when me and my brother Yusuf used to
argue, sometimes we'd argue, you know, you know,
that kind of thing, we realized that when we did the apology, I'm
sorry, I'm sorry, you want to go get somebody to eat? Yeah? Yeah.
Let's go get something to eat. We realized the details of the issue
no longer mattered. It didn't matter what happened kalas it was
done. We.
Set it aside. We didn't bring it up again, that reconciliation. It
didn't matter the justice of who was right who was wrong, because
we realized the pain was that we were estranged from each other,
and that's
what Prophet sallam was elevating in that so sometimes you reconcile
the community like no, but he's right, but he's wrong, but ya.
Ibad Allah, what did you both win? You won nothing. Subhanallah,
you're arguing over something silly. Everybody has their
problems, and omatic community has problems, but that's why Allah
subhanahu wa also said, and I promise is where I finish. I
promise.
In Surat Rafer, there is another area that throws a curve ball that
I read 1000 times and then understand until the 10,001st
time.
Allah says that
you said, Be Hona Bihar, behemona amanu, I love reading it in Juma.
It's my favorite passage to read in Jummah, even though the scholar
say reads sabhi Allah. But I love this particular pass. I tell you
why.
Allah says that those who hold the Throne of Allah, they make this
bik to Allah, and they make istikhar for those who believe.
They make istikhar for us. They say, Ya Allah, forgive them. May
Allah forgive them, may Allah forgive them, may Allah forgive
them, may Allah forgive them. Yahweh. But look who they ask you
forgiveness for a ladina, Amanu, those who believe in Allah. Why
would you make istikhar? Because the angels saw those who emmanu
did something wrong, that there will be problems. So they're
asking, Allah, please have mercy on them. But look at the air that
comes afterwards. So the air goes on for a bit, and then there's the
air afterwards. Wakihi, must say, at wamantaki,
sayula Avi, wakihi mu sayyi at and Allah, wipe out their sins. Wipe
it out. Ya Allah, they're holding the throne saying, wipe out their
sins. But look at this next part. This is the part I'm saying about
the issue of problems. Woman, taka sayoma, I didn't the one whom you
wipe out their sins. They are ones you've shown mercy.
And this is the ultimate victory. So the ultimate victory goes to
who, not the perfect society or the perfect person, not the
perfect community that never makes mistakes, not the perfect person
that never makes mistakes. It goes to those who made the mistakes.
Got Back Up, solved. It tripped over again. Got Back Up, resolved.
It tripped over again. Got Back Up. Resolved. It tripped it again.
Got Back Up. Allah says that person who you look down upon in
the community because they commit sins, that person is capable of
getting the ultimate victory that you might not get. And this is the
point that I want to make here, if you want an ummah with region.
Allah says in Quran that the Sahaba wala, the oppressors and
the represses, but they were merciful between themselves.
Sometimes our Ummah is the opposite. I like to argue
something I like because it's not something to like, but I always
sometimes throw to some students, I tell them, yeah, ibad Allah, the
example I give Khaled ibn Walid Allahumma, I'm innocent of what
Khalid has done. Sometimes, I think the ummah of today would
never have sent Khalid back out into the field. They would have
canceled him because of they would have said, the Prophet said this
about you, there's no way on earth we're going to back you in any
initiative anymore. You're canceled. You're done. It doesn't
matter if you make tobah Go make Toba in your home. You're no
longer allowed to engage in public life or engage in society and
commune activities because what you did was so horrible. A Muslim
will read the ayah fellia for, well, yes, fahu, when Abu Bakr
Sadiq said, I will no longer give charity to the man who accused
Aisha of Zina, I will not give money. Allah sent the air for him
to sit in Philly as far Ya Abu Bakr Sadiq, don't be harsh. The
issue has been resolved. Pardon and forgive Allah to HEB. Allah
comed, do you not wish for Allah to forgive your own sins? The
Muslim reads this ayah and says, Allah, on Allah's mercy, but
refuses to deploy that mercy on his community. The Muslim reads
the ayah and says, Allah, this forgiveness, but will never show
that forgiveness for people in his own community. And that's what I
mean by sometimes the Ummah is opposite, and that's why I argue
that to create the rijal, you have to unlock those subconscious locks
that make you say, You know what, we're going to try and solve this
problem. We failed the first time. AFA, Allah, Salaf, we try the
second time, we try the third time, we try the fourth time. And
eventually you will be people very similar to Zubaydah bin Tamar. You
enter a city, you see five problems. You don't leave till you
fix all five problems onto the next one, next city, five plants.
And then you look at your son. You tell him, Son, this is what the
Ummah should be like. And you say, Yeah, umm, me, ya, abi, I will
never be anything like you, but I will try my best inshallah to do
so, and I will try inshallah to create an ummah, to tell them
about my ummah, of those who do that as well. So create the
result, mobilize and take action. Inshallah,
Allahu, Akbar, takbir, Allahu, Akbar, may Allah, bless your
parents and
please kiss your kiss your kiss your mother's hands for us.
Kiss her hands for us, please. It's we have to learn to kiss the
pins the hands of our elders proposed. He said, lay some in the
mail,
not from amongst us is the one who does not honor their elder. You
know, as as Sami is talking about, Sayyida, Zubaida, my course,
Allah,
you know, I you reflect, you really are impacted by
the motivation, the inspiration, that is rooted in attaining the
pleasure of Allah, Subhanahu, WA and
I think that as a community of believers, those who say, La
Ilaha, illallah, Muhammad Rasulullah, we have to really
appreciate the power of this motivating factor.
You know, because when you're listening to the story of a woman
who goes and travels to a village and has everything perhaps working
against her from a social, material, cultural lens, but she
pushes through and drives and insists and is spiritedly
motivated mashallah that only comes from Allah, that type of
power, that type of confidence, that type of inspiration, that
type of drive, that type of willingness to sacrifice. It only
comes when Allah subhanaw taala bestows that upon the soul, upon
the heart. And that's why you know, as you're sitting here
listening, you know what you should be saying, Ya Rabbi, gift
me that
Allahumma
guide me. That's why these are the of the Prophet sallam, Allahu,
mahdini, Wadi, be waja, Ani, sababin, nimani, tadaya Rabi, make
me well guided. Because when you listen, don't you all naturally,
maybe, perhaps none of us in this room
would do what Sayyida Zubaydah Radi Allahu, ala anha does. That's
you don't like that. That's my business. You come and talk to me
afterwards.
Maybe we sit here and say, Wow, that's just it really, because the
reason I'm saying say this, Zubaydah, because it sounds like
the sahabiyat. It sounds like that.
Maybe you're sitting here, you think I'm so far removed from that
reality of having that drive, that confidence, that inspiration, that
willingness to put myself out there, to make myself
uncomfortable. But you know what it starts with right now as you're
sitting here, is you turn to Allah,
because, as he mentioned briefly the Hadith man attani, mashia and
taitu harwala, the one who comes to Me walking baby steps. I come
to him running. You come to me closely. You come by. You know one
inch, I'll come to you by a mile. Allah subhanho wa Taala is saying,
you just take that first step. We were sitting in a gathering right
before this, and najab, who's in the back, he said, you always have
to be shaking the tree. You shake the tree, didn't he say that
you shake the tree?
Say the who was told to shake the palm tree. Say the Mariam. Right
now, is there any logical physic in terms of physics and
mathematics conception where a woman who just gave birth is going
to shake a tree and that's going to result in the in dates falling?
That is math from a physics perspective, from a scientific
perspective, quote, unquote, not a rational proposition.
But why is Allah telling Sayyida Meriam to shake the tree?
It's because you have to take that first step. You have to show you
know, Ya Allah, because we can't sit here and be so thoroughly
inspired, which I know 100% of us are inspired to be like Abu Sami,
and to be like, um, Sami, correct, we're all is that not the case?
But you know, what would be really, really a sad outcome is if
we don't just lift our hands and hold the palm tree
and just start to say, Ya, Rabbi, I've never done this before. I'm
not accustomed to this. I This my my muscle memory does not exist
towards any concept of like moving fee Sabi Lila, but here,
Bismillah, to Allah, here's my first baby step. And you watch
what Allah, Subhanahu, Allah, will do if you and I, and it's called,
you know what it's called? It's called sit quot Allah. It is a
sincere, motivated motion in the direction of Allah. Ya Rabbi, I'm
coming to you. I'm moving for you. I'm getting out of bed for you.
I'm gonna make this call for you. I'm going to make wudu for you.
I'm going to raise my hands to you and for.
You and because of you, seeking, you, desiring, you, hoping for
your pleasure, hoping for your acceptance.
So you know the whole story of being people of a prophetic order
and a Prophetic Mission and a prophetic spirit
is we recognize that it's ultimately all about just
attaining the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa. You know, we were
talking this afternoon over Yemeni coffee and tea, yes, and you
mentioned, I said, you mentioned the example of Sayyidina Hamza and
Sayyida and Sayyidina Musa AB. But then what we were talking and
we're reflecting over to what about Sayyida Sumaya?
Sayyida Sumaya, she never got the chance to even see the Prophet
Muhammad Sallallahu, alayhi wa sallam speak publicly or teach
this Deen in a public space. She saw zero of the potential
victories, or even like positive steps in the Meccan seal that were
an indication, you know, the ball is moving. At the very least, she
saw none of it,
but she is just as integral and relevant and profoundly impactful
in the story of Al Habib, salallahu, salaam, in the in the
sacred heritage of Islam. Because what she stood for profoundly and
unequivocally was La Ilaha, illAllah, muhammadun, rasulallah.
That's what I have. That's who I am. I'm not walking away from
this. The result of it was she was brutalized and she was martyred.
But
Subhanallah, we were reflecting over how, perhaps over 1400 years,
have people from east to west been inspired by, say, the Sumayya, a
woman sitting in Africa, a man sitting in Bosnia,
thinking about their lives, thinking about oppression, and
then saying, say the Sumayya, RadiAllahu, taala, anha Allah. She
was the first martyr in Islam. I'm going to follow in her footsteps.
I'm going to be like her. I'm going to have her confidence. And
you know what that is? It is saying, La Ilaha, illAllah,
muhammadun, rasulallah, from the depth of your soul, and meaning
it, that's why the first step on this journey of being of the likes
of our brothers and sisters and our forefathers, our parents, the
awliya, the Siddiq IN THE salihi IN THE Shuhada, to be like them is
to begin by a sincere invocation of la ilaha, illAllah, muhammadun,
rasulallah, ya Rabbi, I exist for one objective and none other. It
is for your pleasure that's all that's all I want. And I just beg
you, Ya Allah, that you use me for your deen, you use me for your
cause, and don't assume none of us, whether it's Sami myself or
any of us, should ever assume that we are entitled to be used. No, we
have to be worthy. Allah has to choose us. So that means that it
starts here. I have to, literally, right now, start and say, I'm
going to better myself. I'm going to have better thoughts, better
ideas, better spirituality, better connection to Allah. I'm going to
really fix the way I pray. You
know, Sammy gave beautiful examples of rectifying familial
ties. These are, this is where it starts. It's here. It's I'm going
to be better at coming to the masjid and praying in
congregation. I'm going to be a better son, a better daughter, a
better wife, a better husband. I'm going to be nicer. I'm going to
have better akhlaq. I'm going to change the way I speak, I'm going
to change the way I behave, the way I interact, the way I sit. I'm
going to change myself for Allah. And
then when the time is right, and if Allah deems us worthy, then it
will switch, and you will see how, because, by the way, I was having
this last night in NBIC, Allah does not operate within the
confines of created time. Because Allah created time. Allah exists
in the divine reality, and it's a reality of Be, and it is.
We just have to be worthy. And that restarts with us turning to
Allah. Sincerely, may Allah make us from those who sincerely turn
to him.
I know it's almost 10 o'clock, but I'm imploring you to be patient,
imploring you lovingly, I'll be brief. No, no, no,
no, that's not the problem. I'll tell you a funny story. When I was
in azer, one of my shoe who was in his 80s, we would go sit with him,
and he would start the devs. Of course, there was no, it's not the
West. So it's like, you don't know if it's gonna be two hours or
whatever. One hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, five
hours, six hours, and we're reading
these no stories, like, you know, there's no anecdotes. It's like
thick material. And this is a man in his 80s. And then he he's, you
know, in very gingerly haga,
what's wrong? Are you tired or something?
I.
And we're like,
been
ADINA, so But one last question, and we'll close with this, and
this will be Mr. Kitam Habib na. We're inspired. We're motivated.
We want to change. We want to be better as a community who's
watching what's happening in Philistine and other parts of the
world, but right now, we're so sorely
impacted by the plight of our brothers and sisters. And may
Allah bring them relief, and may
Allah span Tara bring them victory, and may He do away with
oppression and tyranny. Ya rab
with the basic resources that we have. We have a masjid, we have a
community, we have some money, we have the capacity to vote and talk
and advocate and write to our elected officials and etc, and
talk to our coworkers and our talk to our local boards and school
boards and advocate and write letters and everything that we
have.
How would you advise us? And of course, this doesn't have to be
exhaustive,
but as a community who really needs to start to think about its
capacity to impact and change, and over the past many months, in your
streams, in your talks, in the podcast, you've Been talking very
passionately about how the ummah of Sayyidina Muhammad SAW with its
tweets and its shares and so on, has made an impact. But I want you
to talk to us as an American Muslim community, and this is a
representative body of a group of grouping of that. What does impact
look like for us in this moment, if we want to become a community
of impact, we want to build our capacity, how do we need to think
about that and just some guidance on how we should approach that?
Allahu, taala, BarakAllahu. BarakAllahu. FIK, that's a heavy
question and a difficult question to answer in a concise way, but I
will do my absolute best. One of the things that is worth noting is
that when Raza has demonstrated to us is that a lot of our internal
politics and bickering between us really pales in comparison to the
issues that stand before us. By that, I mean that what Raza made
us realize is we're quite limited in terms of our institutions and
capacity to act as it stands now, but those can be remedied quite
quickly, and I'll give you a few examples. Few examples. And I know
this is going to sound very basic in city, and I realize some people
often think that I'm joking when I say it, and I'm maybe it is a semi
joke, but I'm actually 100% serious. When I gave my talk in
Berkeley University, I came
out and wanted some of the students they were having dinner
with me. They wanted me to try a philly steak, philly steak in
California. I thought you have to go Philadelphia for that. But in
any case, I hope I'll go Philadelphia shut on Tuesday, but,
but my sister wants to fly. I told her, let's drive. But in any case,
the
I said to him that, you know, we're doing our best, and we're
tweeting and stuff. And he said, is that all we're doing? I said it
depends on the audience. If all somebody can do is tweet, retweet
and share content, then tell them it makes a difference, because it
does. If somebody has more of a capacity where they have the
ability to influence, tell them to influence. If somebody's in the
media, tell them invite more Palestinian voices onto your
channels. If somebody has money, tell them to fund those
communities that have initiatives that might expand. Everybody has
their powers at the basic level, it's social media. But Allah, in
His mercy, made the basic level an elevated form of resistance. When
the Prophet sallam said that manra, Amin, Kumu, Karan,
faluhair, Obi Ade, omalamisa, those who see something that is
wrong, let them change it with their hands. But if they cannot,
then with their tongue, let them denounce, let them talk, let them
comment, let them retweet. And if they cannot, let them condemn. It
in their hearts. What I'm arguing is the basic form of resistance,
which is social media. Allah, in His mercy, made it an elevated
form of resistance, but you can go beyond that, depending on your
capacity or the like. So when we were sitting in Berkeley, he says,
what about beyond social media? And I said, Look, one of the
things that I've realized about the community is is that in
sometimes we are limited in our imagination, even though we have
the resources to achieve our imagination. For example, when I
came to the US Timberlands, the shoes are much cheaper here than
they are in the UK. I did say it was going to sound like a silly
example, but hear me out. Go with me on this. Timons are much
cheaper here than they are in the UK. Because, for some reason,
these guys decided to only make their shoes here and then ship
them, and you have to pay shipping costs. So in any case, when I
called Sumaya, my wife who parakala of fear, but for her
patience, there's no way I could come out and do these tours or the
like and between us. Just so you guys understand that. You know,
when I was younger, I used to think that Haq was something that
when you stand for it, you always feel at ease. And I've come to
realize that that's actually not the case
for two reasons. The first is, Haqq to stand for it requires
sacrifice. Sacrifice means giving up something that you love.
Life. And naturally, what comes with that is, oh, I know this is
the right thing to do. And yeah, it's going to but for the sake of
Allah Yallah, let's go. And I used to think that reflected bad Imaan
on me, until when I read the seal of the Prophet Muhammad, saw him
again again. I keep going back to it. When Allah tells the Prophet
saw him to leave Mecca to go to Medina. Remember, Allah has given
him the wahi to go to Medina.
But when you read the Sira, when the Prophet Sallam leaves Mecca,
he turns around and he looks at the city and he says, and this is
what surprised me, because of my limited knowledge, Prophet Sallam
says, Wallahi to Makkah, you are the dearest land to me, and if
your people had not driven me from you, I would never have left you.
The point being is Allah has showed him the Haqq and the truth,
and he has accepted it. But that doesn't mean he's not heartbroken.
That doesn't mean now some people will say, Why didn't He use the
example for Timberlands? I'm using it because of the principle, the
idea that it's you can feel distressed at standing for the
Haqq, but Allah has shown us that doesn't mean a lack of iman,
because even the Prophet felt that heartbreak. So I said, Yeah, I
told Sumaya as a so the point is that sometimes when you're doing
these talks and people suddenly say, what's the solution, or the
like, I thought when I was younger that it would be something to
celebrate, but in reality, and maybe you will resonate with this
more, the idea is that sometimes when you sit down and you feel
there's a responsibility thrust upon you. I can't lie, and perhaps
it's not something good to admit, but I was so terrified of it on
two occasions that I tried to fly home early on the December tour,
and I tried to back out of this particular tour. And if this was
not for Sumaya, my beloved wife, for 1314, years now, I married
her. She was 19. I was 20. I married her because I saw her wipe
the floor with somebody in college over an issue. I said to my
friend, who is who is she? Who's he? Said, Why? Why do you like
her? So there ain't the time for this. What's her name? And then I
tried to buy her a Twix in the shop, and she said, Excuse me. And
then she wouldn't talk to me. I tried to make conversation. She
wouldn't make conversation, maybe once or twice, and that's it. And
then eventually I did this tikhara. Three weeks later, I
said, Yeah, Allah, I'm a Khatib in this university. I should not be
involved in any scandal. I clearly have feelings for this person.
Please give me a choice, either remove the feelings or give me a
path forward on the eighth, ninth or ninth night of istikhara,
turaka after Asia. Turaka in the middle of the night. Turquo before
Fajr. Some people always say istikhara is like something that's
a long process. It can be very easy process. And for those who
want to know how I did my istikhara, it's not like a dua
that you need to memorize. My istikhara was literally Allahu
Akman, undeserving servant, and I know I probably don't deserve it,
but Allah, please give me a sign. And please don't give me the sign
where I feel it's the right thing. Please give me a sign like you
gave Musa, alaihi, salam, even though I'm not Musa, please give
me a sign like you gave Zakaria. I Salam, even though I'm not
Zakaria, Allah, I know I'm asking, but you're the one who said a
druni estajib lecom asked, Allah, I'm asking you sincerely, in the
middle of the night, nobody is watching. It's just me and you.
Yarab allahuma, please make it easy, because I can't seem to get
this woman out of my head. So yarab, please. MashaAllah, she
looks she was hijab, she was abaya, she's etc, whatever. My
friends say she's good. Allah, make it easy. Remove the feeling,
or make it easy. On the eighth night, I saw my friend Tahir. He
brought a kourbani, my wife joked. She said, What? I'm a cow in the
dream. So she said, yeah, she brings a Kobani in the dream. And
he says to me, Sammy, it's Eid Ya Allah, and I take the Qurban I go,
Bismillah, Allahu, Akbar. I picked up the phone as soon as I woke up.
I said, Tahir Salaam Alaikum. Go and tell that Somaya girl the Sami
wants to marry her, bro. What do you think this is 1500s What do
you mean? Go and tell her somebody. I said, Walla, she's
going to marry me. Walla, she's going to say, bro. Fear Allah, how
can you use wall in this context? I know what I saw, yahik, she's
going to And subhanAllah. She said, Yes. In mashallah, we have
two wonderful kids and going 14 years strong. So Sumaya, when I
was planning to fly early from the tours because I was so terrified,
she said, What's the problem with it? I told her, Sumaya, like it's
different with the consultancy. I just give my opinion. I give the
receipt. They pay me, and I go home. This one feels like it's
more, there's a responsibility to it, you know, there's, there's a
duty to it that salah. You know, when I see these job videos on
Amar Suleiman and and, yes, sir Kavi and these, like mashallah,
these are people doing active community work, and I see people
trying to tear them down. I don't want that stuff on my back, like
why I'm living happily. I watch arsenal, and I get my heartbreak
when they lose every weekend. And you know this, I'm happy with my
life,
she said to me, and what happens Yom Kiyama, when Allah tells you
that I gave you a chance to be a vehicle and you turned it down and
you came home, and what will Allah say to me when I'm the wife of
somebody given this honor and I'm didn't encourage you to stay out
there and go, let me tell you bluntly, you come here, you won't
find me
in the
house. Allah is what it is,
not of a Masha. Allah. So.
Tell me. So the point is that when it comes to, for example, in the
community and in terms of preparing so I asked for
timberland
So,
but listen, in some ways, somebody said, Sammy, how do you mix all
these things with Timberlands? Whatever? In my opinion, I think
it's an accurate reflection of how the deen and life and politics are
one. They are seamless. They are not separate from each other.
There's no division between them. The reason why you think it's
strange is because in your subconscious, you separated them.
I don't separate them. Allah is not two hours a day. Allah is
every single second of the day, Allah says, Ask me even if it's a
small thing. Allah says, Ask me even if it's a tiny thing. Allah,
Who Wants to Be merciful to his Abad. The problem is we think we
should only ask Allah for the big things, not the small things.
That's why you may think, how did he go from Sira to Sumaya to
marriage, to heaven to Timberlands? Because it's all
within the framework, in my experience, that that's how the
Dean operates in every person's ordinary life anyway, going back
to the point. So with regards to the somebody said
to me, I should be my own Timberlands. Just stop talking
about it. So the student said something very interesting. He
said, You know, we're all boycotting we're all doing all
these things and the like. But are you not having the same problem I
have? What's the problem with boycotting a What are you saying?
No, no, no, I'm boycotting. Alhamdulillah. I'm happy with
that.
Where are the Muslim alternatives?
Like I thought Muslims, we were entrepreneurial, and we do all
these things, but aside from restaurants and cafes and and
food,
we're great in these things.
Where are the alternatives? And I had a theory in that. It's like,
you know, I think I have a theory. I think it's because, you know how
the Prophet Salim said in the Hadith that Allah loves the hand
that strives for its risk, and that hand is better than the hand
that takes charity. I realized the ummah of today, me included. I'm
not saying when I say a lot of these things, when I say Ummah,
I'm more talking about myself rather than ummah. The Ummah added
to the Hadith, the Ummah reads the Hadith and goes, Allah, how
beautiful the hand with the risk is. But Ya Rasulullah, I want to
add to this hadith. It's not just any hand. It's the hand Allah
loves, the hand that gets his risk from medicine, engineering and
law. Sorry, Rajab, I know you're here. You're a lawyer. God bless
you and your law and everything like that. But and,
and I realize honestly, because when you think about it, growing
up, my father was not like that. My father, even though he wanted
me to do law, my father would not have because my brother is a
businessman, and my father supported him, and one was very
happy with it. He speaks Japanese. He's been Tokyo for eight years.
Very strange to see your brother going catch up with that
man. I said, No one may need was mayoniz. You know
that Japanese we do in any case. The point is that I realized that
it's because in some of the families, and this is what I meant
in that when Ibn Khaldun says the Ummah is one generation away from
glory, it's because of examples such as this. I realized the
reason why the Ummah hasn't invested so much in these
industries where the Zionists have invested so heavily is because no
father wanted to tell his brother, whose daughter is a surgeon, that
my son makes shoes,
or my son makes shirts, or my son fixes people's trousers to help
Sammy ensure he doesn't buy from Marks and Spencer. He wants to
make sure Sammy buys from companies that don't support the
Zionists. He will say, Yeah, but my daughter's a surgeon,
and so he feels that humiliation pride. He says, Don't. Don't do
what the Ummah needs do. What makes me have safe face in front
of my relatives. Don't do what the Ummah needs. Don't expand and
build what the Ummah needs do, what makes me safe face in front
of my community. Do what protects my pride. Don't do what the Ummah
needs in terms of making itself a market force. Ibad Allah. Do you
know why Islam spread in Africa? It wasn't by the sword. It's
because when you read about Sahaba, you realize how
extraordinary they were. Abdul, Rahman, Ibrahim, Ravi, Allah,
Anhu. And I did a lot of reading on him, because as a teenager, you
want to be rich, right? And then when you grow older, you realize
money is not everything. But once upon a time, I thought money was
everything, my brother used to say One day, I said to him, Yusuf, you
know, money is not everything. He goes, Yeah, but I'd rather cry in
a Mercedes
and a Toyota. Aris, you're going in any case. So I wanted to study
Abdul Ahmad abnau, to reconcile money with Deen, and I found out
what Abdul Rahman Rao used to do. He'd go into a city and he'd
identify what they needed. You need nails. You need shoes. You
need trousers. You need plates. You need spoons. Halas, he goes
for one month to Syria or to another country, buys exactly what
the city needs, comes back and sells it. Everything he touched
would turn to gold. It was said of Abdul Rahman that when his caravan
would enter Medina, he.
Be in the middle of Medina, and still the caravan had not finished
entering the city.
When the Muslims went to Africa, when they entered the societies,
they didn't say, in our society, the engineers are top so I'm an
engineer. Tell me what you need? Engineering? No, the Muslims said,
What do you need? What does your community need, oh, you need this,
clothes, this whatever, kalas. They go back to Medina, they get
it, and they go and deliver it. They ended up being the powerhouse
in every economic industry that any economic reform the government
had to do. They had to consult who the Muslims. So a simple act of
helping the entrepreneurship in the community and removing that
pride and giving respect to what Allah respects for the Prophet
sallam said, Allah loves the hand that gets his risk. So Allah
respects the hand that you are disrespecting. Allah loves the
hand that you said, Yeah, Allah loves it, but my brother doesn't
love it, so I don't want this hand to be involved in this, though
Allah loves it. His river is more important than Allah. Can't
believe I put it that way,
but it's true, right?
So what ended up happening is Muslims ended up dominant in these
industries. So when the government wanted to do reform, they went and
engaged with who the Muslims. They said, We want to buy more with
this. How should we do reforms? How we can talk taxes? When the
leaders engage with the Muslim traders, they found that the
Muslims weren't swindlers. They found the Muslims were people of
ah. They found that if they overpaid, the Muslim would chase
them and say, Yo, you're overpaid. Take the money back. He says, Why
are you coming giving the money back. You treat us better than our
own people. Tree, what makes you treat this way? They say we fear
Allah, but you can't see Allah. No, but Allah is all seeing. Who
is this Allah that makes them act in this way, even though they
could have swindled me, tell me about this Islam that makes you
like this, and they entered Islam and the Sokoto Caliphate and Tim
baktu and Mali and Baba Ahmed, the scholar who would leave Timbuktu
to teach in Andalusia. They became a center of Islam in their own
right because they were inspired by the mundane actions, mundane, I
say, because you believe it to be mundane. They were inspired by
that I started from the small and I went to the big first answer to
the question here, ibad Allah, let's remove the pride, and let's
start investing in these ideas that reinforce the ability of the
Ummah to do something. Because right now, the pool of money that
we can draw on, let's be honest, is in very limited industries. But
imagine you had the Muslim successful in each industry.
Imagine the pool of money you will be able to amass, it will be more
than what the Zionists have.
The second point, reconcile with each other. Ibad Allah, I'll tell
you two anecdotes, which perhaps so may will get very, very angry
if I say them. But in any case, I'm in America, I'll bear the raft
when I go back.
One of the things that's worth noting is you were talking about
the sukhba earlier, and I'm not talking about this from a
spiritual perspective. I'm going to show you from a practical
perspective. Now, sometimes you argue with your parents, right?
And I'm not immune to it, and I assume nobody else here is immune
to it. Sometimes Baba is a bit or I perceive him to be unreasonable
and staphrallah shaytaan, you were Swiss and the like. And you have a
falling out. And then you walk in and your face is dark, because in
your heart, your heart broken that you fell out with your parents on
that evening, there are two scenarios that can happen. Either
your wife will tell you, yeah, your parents were wrong, or she
will do what Sumaya does. I will lie in the bed. And she will say,
you either go and sleep, or you either go reconcile with your
parents, or you sleep on the couch, for I won't be next to
somebody whose mother is angry with him. For that person, if he
dies in the night, I don't know if he enters Jannah. Go
and reconcile with your parents. Go and do it. Go and do it. No,
no, no, it's not I'll do in the morning. Go and do it. Go. I'll
go. Pave the way. Ya Allah. She puts on the hasdel, the shaliga.
She goes down to my parents house. She goes, she sits down, she
listens to them lambast me. This, so this, we did this for him, who
this for him? And this all because we asked him to do this. All
because he asked him to do that. Yes, yes. Semi is this? Semis
that? Yes, Semi. And even more. And this, whoever. And then
there's and it should come back, and she'll say they are ready. Go
now and speak to them and apologize. You go, yes, semi go,
and I'm like, sometimes I don't know if it was a good decision to
marry you or not. And you leave and you go. When you kiss your
parents hands, you plead for the apology. But you go and you sleep
with your heart content.
When you have a community that inspires this in people, where
they say, Listen, this is shaitan between you. This is fitna between
you. When you have marriages which are built on that basis, when you
have someone who says, I don't like my mother in law, but I know
Allah doesn't like friction between my husband and his mother.
I don't like your mother and my mother in law, but you should go
reconcile anyway. Or I don't like my father in law.
I should treat him well anyway. For the man went to the Prophet
Muhammad, sallAllahu sallam, and said to him, Ya Rasulullah, my
family treat me badly, even though I treat them well, what should I
do? And the Prophet Salam replied, keep treating them well.
And on the base of the Hadith, the wife who maybe she doesn't like
the way her mother in law speaks with her. She says, If the Prophet
said this, I love the Prophet Muhammad sallam, tolerate what is
it two hours a day or three hours in the day? It's just a dinner. Ya
Allah. Let's put up with the mother Lord telling me how
inadequate I am as a mother and how my children are not doing this
properly, and how I don't change the nappies properly, and how my
son is still not still using the potty, and how he hasn't learned
to let me just tolerate it. It is what it is. I'll do it for the
sake of the Prophet. It's having these attitudes
so but is also about, for example, one day you fall out with your
wife, for example, and the way I get angry is not to shout. The way
I get angry is, you know, don't let just leave the house and come
back later. And you sit with a friend and you sit with Tahir. The
importance of Sahaba Tahi, may Allah reward him, my Khalid since
the age of 18, mashallah, even to this day.
And you will say to Tahir, he will say, what's wrong? Why'd you call
me down from my house to sit in the car? I don't know what it is
this last six months. It's stress, it's tough. It's this. It's
whatever I did the bin Salman video. And there was a backlash
from some American mashaya, and there was this, and it's just,
it's a bit burden. And, yes, maybe I shouldn't take it out, but, you
know, I don't know, it's a bit of a tough time. It's this and, but
also her sometimes, you know, Wallace, her tongue, sometimes she
lashes. But you know, it's, it's a bit, you know, you know. And he'll
stop, and he'll go to me,
he done. I'm done.
You know when you go home,
do you always find like, there's food in the house? Like, ready? I
said, Yeah. Has there ever been a time when it hasn't happened? No,
okay,
you know when you travel, when you have travel for work? Does she
ever give you grief? I said, No, she doesn't. She tells me to talk
Allah. Don't worry about him. Okay, you know your children, the
Quran, Salma, Mashallah. She's memorized, you know, like just a
man. And
how many of those? Ayah Did you teach Wallahi? 99% she Sumaya
taught the kids. Mm, okay.
And you know your parents. You've told me before, when you argue
with your parents sometimes, who's the one that goes and reconciles
between
them. She does. And you
know, for example, you know, when you've got guests or that kind of
thing, does your wife tell you go take him to restaurant? Does she
say the honor of my husband? I'm a bit tired, but I'll look after all
my husband. Let him bring her home. She does. Doctor now, bro,
what's wrong with you?
Complain of a tiny issue, and I'm like,
you walk in the house, salaam alaikum. Do you want to watch a
Korean drama? Yeah, okay.
The suhaba that prevents a fire becoming a wildfire in the forest.
The suhaba That reminds you, in that moment of anger, to it ALA,
the suhabad that tells you this beef that you have in a masjid or
in a mosque or between families is not worth it. Where you rush to
say, yeah, ibad Allah, it's not worth it. Where you going to say,
Yeah, okay. Your mother might be harsh on with her tongue, but she
raised you. She looked after you, when you need to go somewhere,
when you're in trouble, where do you go back to just go and say
sorry. Bring us some baklava. All she wanted to hear from you was
salaam, Alaikum. To show some appreciation. Just show some
appreciation. What does it cost you? These things transform
communities. The reason they transform communities is, you
know, when you feel loved,
you're more willing to do something for the community. When
you feel valued, you're more willing to do something for
someone. Sometimes, some brothers who don't get married, and they
get to their 30s and they start watching some red pill stuff to
justify their own insecurities, to say, It's not my fault, it's the
sister's fault, or vice versa. One thing that I noticed is there are
some brothers sometimes I remember the changing, and one brother
said, listen, bro, when I get married, my wife gone Cook, and
she gon click,
and me and tahibu looked at him. We were like mad men with him. Are
you marrying a woman or a slave?
Then I said to him,
by the way, just so you know, a meal cooked out of love tastes
much better than a meal that you asked
a meal cooked because she loves you, because she knows you're
tired, that you came home and she says, I want to spend time with
him, and she sits and she tells you about her day, tastes much
better than a meal. Say, where is the food? To be honest, bro, like
if you want to get there, you have some game as well. You can't talk
to a woman like that. You're going to do this. You're going to do
that. You can do that. You know, even the Prophet said, I'm
encouraged playing with Aisha, Allah anha, bit of poetry, bit of,
you know, asking people that everybody has that story, that
kind of thing. The reason why I say that is, when you make
somebody feel valued, they give you. They sacrifice for you. They
sacrifice for the community. So when you call them to a protest,
they come because of you. When you call.
Them to donate. They donate because of you. When you ask them
to support you in an initiative and you tell them, I might fail,
they tell you, I trust you if you fail, don't worry about it. And
for those who say that sometimes I only support in their initiatives
that succeed, remember the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu, alayhi wa
sallam. In the book of Sira, when the Prophet Sallam is marching out
on Badr, there's a period where he there's a there's a point where he
turns around to his Sahaba, and he says, Ash, advise me. And I
stopped for a second when I read it. I said,
You're the Prophet of Allah. Go with the all follow you. And the
answer replied. They say, as if you're talking to us, ya Rasul,
Allah, as if you're seeking reassurance from us. And the
Prophet says, and if I am, or in another narration, he says, I am,
and sada Namo Avraham says, Ya Rasulullah, here's what he says.
He says, We have given you our oath that we will go with you
whatever happens, win or lose, we are with you.
If the Prophet needed reassurance from the community before he goes
and fights an existential threat, then why is it a bidder? If the
message calls on you and says, I need reassurance that you are with
me, because we're about to take an initiative where we don't know
whether we will succeed or not, but we need you to stand with us
on this path that we're going forward. The reason why I focused
on these things is that I don't believe that the matter of moving
forward has much to do with action, as much as it has to do
with perspective, as much as it has to do with your capacity to
tolerate the struggle that is required to achieve spectacular
changes. When Ibn Khaldun said that the Ummah is one stage ahead
of glory, because the reality is Allah always gives power. Ibn
Khaldun has a theory, and I promise I'm almost wrapping up
here. Ibn Khaldun says that a successful Ummah or dynasty or
civilization lasts only three generations before it repeats. He
says the first generation is a poor generation with little
resources, with nothing to lose. And so they are the capable of
spectacular achievements because of the hardship they endure, and
they establish the Ummah,
the second generation lives half its life in the struggle and half
its life in the prosperity. But because they saw the struggle,
they value the prosperity and continue to sacrifice to preserve
the prosperity.
The third generation is born in prosperity and has never seen the
struggle that led to the prosperity. So they no longer
commit the sacrifices necessary to uphold that prosperity, and they
end up losing it because they don't do the sacrifice necessary
to do so, and the civilization collapses.
The reason why I say this is to emphasize this point of sacrifice,
which is why, Mr. Musa Ibrahim, are you ready to be a Musa
Ibrahim, where you don't see Fatima? Would you accept it for
yourself? Would you accept being Hamza Alain, who Allah and of
Allah but you don't see Fatah Meka? Would you accept being
Sumaya Ravi Allah and her very early on, you don't even see any
of the victories between quotation marks, even though she got the
greatest victory by going straight to Allah subhanahu wa and,
you know, I don't want to say irony. Irony is the wrong word.
But the fascinating thing about the deen is, you know, once you
accept a willingness to be that part in the system, that's where
Allah elevates you to the highest position and glory in that
ecosystem.
When you accept to be the cog, Allah makes you the engine, when
you reconcile in your heart that I'm ready to be the peace required
that this battle, I'm not equipped for it, but she Yes, it is. So
this battle is yours. I'll reinforce you, but you are more
eloquent in this particular issue or in this tech guys, guys, I
don't understand tech, but you guys do. This is your battle, but
I will reinforce you with narratives on social media.
Engineers, you guys know how to build these bridges or the like.
This is your battle go. I'll reinforce you here.
The reason I left the answer vague
is to show that what has shown us is, number one, the boycott shows
that we're lacking in many industries. But two, as a result
of these subconscious locks that we have in our minds, we are not
as quick to react to these issues as we should be, but also we must
be more forgiving of each other, because that's the only way the
initiatives can move forward. Ibad Allah, I finish with this
when the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam did
his The reason why I mentioned that he focused on the neighbors,
the rights of the Muslim on each other is because, in my opinion,
the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam identified that the success
of the Ummah lies not in a particular trajectory, but lies in
the attitude of the ummah. If the Ummah is merciful to each other
face against.
Injustice, forgiving of mistakes, and lifts each other up when it is
proactively engaging with this community,
is that that society will create the change that is required. You
cannot create the change top down. For the Prophet created a bottom
up when the Prophet Muhammad SAW was giving his dawah, he could
have used money to buy Quraysh. He could have bought allies, he could
have bought tribes. Why didn't he do it? Because he knew the mission
is not carried by resources. The mission is carried by the hearts
that always uphold Islam and always uphold what Islam calls
for. That's why yay Alaina, patient and be patient in the
adversity. Persevere. What takula Fear Allah. That's why Allah says,
Be like a rope together. Rope. There can be tensions in the rope,
but you still stay as a rope. There can be tensions in it, but
you still stay because let me be brutally honest with you. Ay, bad
Allah, today, tomorrow, you can start an initiative, but is the
Ummah ready to support that initiative? Have we created an
environment where we lift each other up, where somebody says that
I might trip over, but I know my ummah has my back. You know the
Zionist, somebody will try a company 15 times. They will
forgive him 15 times and help him on the 16th and on the 16th
attempt, he creates Google. He will fail 20 times on the 21st
time, he'll create meta
on the 25th time, he will create if I asked you, at what point will
the Ummah give up on somebody who fails? I think the first time he
fails, we say, Forget it. You wasted 100k I'm not giving you
anymore,
and that's what I mean in that the way you get to the attitude
is by appreciating that the outcome belongs to Allah subhanahu
wa and that your search is to be a vehicle, whether it's a financial
vehicle or an oratory vehicle, or an engineering vehicle, or a tech
vehicle, or a business vehicle, or the like, to find your place with
this ecosystem where you can lend your support. Abdul Ahmed Iraq was
a financial backer. Abu Bakr satik was a spiritual backer to promise
us. Salam hatab was a judicial backer, Ali Bin Abu Talib was a
ferocious backer, fighting backer. We had all the Abdullah bin
masroud was a Quran and tafsir and fiqh backer. Bila Rabah was one
who the Dawa backer. Everybody had their talents in the way that they
were doing so. But the reason why I want to mention the idea of the
outcome of Allah subhanahu wa is to put all of this into context,
ibad Allah. Allah will decide the outcome.
Allah has monopolized the outcome.
Do not pursue initiatives or even the Palestinian cause
on the basis that you want to be celebrated for the outcome. For
Allah has said All glory belongs to him. And Allah has said the
outcome belongs to him.
Pursue your initiatives and pursue
the Palestinian cause on the basis that you want the greatest honor
that any servant can achieve, which is to be the vehicle through
which Allah makes change.
To say, Yeah, Allah,
I trust that you've decided the best outcome. I trust that you are
still in control of everything that is happening. I trust that
those who died in Raza are in Jannah already. Farihana, Bima,
atta, hum Allahumma, happy with what you have given them. They
don't go through punishment of the grave. They don't go through day
of judgment. They don't wait for their book, whether it will be in
the right or the left. They've gone straight there. I trust, Ya
Allah, that you know the best outcome. I trust that you've said
sometimes you will allow oppressors to continue in order to
deliver a great punishment on them.
I accept that, Ya Allah, and I will not dare to suggest that I
know better than you and that you should have done this outcome
instead of the one that you have decreed. Allah, I have accepted
that you're in charge. But Allah, I beg of you to use me as a
vehicle in whatever capacity to bring about that change, whether
it's like Abdul Hamid bin bedis, who didn't see the liberation of
Algeria but set up the foundations of the foot and ranked soldiers
that led to form the rank and file of the FLN that led to the
liberation of Algeria, or whether it's Muhammad, sallAllahu, alayhi
wa sallam, who didn't see the liberation of Al Aqsa, but laid
the groundwork for it by liberating Al Aqsa. Prophet never
saw it, by the way, he never saw Islam in Al Aqsa.
But he didn't need to, because he was the vehicle, and he knew Allah
would handle the rest. Allah, please make me a vehicle through
which you enact change and push change. And there will be some
people here who will say, Yes, Sammy, I don't want to be a small
nail in the piece. I'm too talented for that.
I'm too great for that. I don't want to be somebody forgotten in
the books. I want people after I die to celebrate me the way they
celebrate Salah Hadid. I want to share in the glory of Allah,
Subhanahu wa
Allah. I'm too great to be Muslim who never saw Fatima. I'm too
great to be Sumayya. I need to be there clapping with everybody, and
they say, Yeah, because of him, we liberated it
for those people,
let me tell you, and try to entice you with an outcome that is better
than this,
an outcome in which and
let's be brutally honest,
my heart in particular, and I know your hearts are they are broken
when we see what happened in Raza.
The hospital destroyed babies with their limbs amputated. And I'll
tell you, for those of you who don't have kids, when you have
kids, the pain hits harder. I tell you why, because you see your kids
there.
I see a young daughter with her parents kill the whole family. And
I think, what if Selma was like that.
What if my eight year old was like that, lost Baba? Where is Baba?
Where it breaks the heart?
What if Sulaiman was there and we passed away, and my young, my
sweet four year old boy, although he's a brat sometimes.
What if my Suleiman is left there?
Me and Sumaya aren't there, neither are his grandparents.
What if my son is there?
The despair that you feel
that the Ummah has power, that when you offend bin Salman, he
squeezes Biden to come to Jeddah and beg him for a reason,
but for let's say he doesn't move.
That been saying of UAE normalizes with Israel,
and says not even a genocide will make me reverse it.
That Erdogan says, I need a gas pipeline in the Mediterranean. I
got economic crisis. I want to make good ties with the Israelis.
When will these Palestinians stop doing this thing? Why did they
ruin it for me,
when you see a world that just threw international law out of the
window,
and they threw human rights because the subreddit, the
Palestinians don't look like them,
and when you see a picture of a building that's collapsed, and you
see the arms of the kids who've been crushed by the building, and
their arms are dangling outside the building.
When you see a mother, she carried her children twice in her life,
one in the pregnancy and the second in a janazah, she sees her
four kids lying in corpses in front of her
for no other reason than the world said, We don't want you on this
earth. We're happy with the genocide
that through this heartbreak and this despair and
this pain,
and what compounds the pain is when people look at me and they
say, yes, but we should just stay and do nothing. What's the point
in doing the efforts?
Let me entice you with an outcome better than being on a podium and
having the applause.
It's an outcome where,
let's be honest, we are all terrified of death,
and it's hard to reconcile that one day we will leave this world
and the soul will leave the body,
I believe, in an outcome where, after a lifetime sha Allah
shouting in microphones of
begging my ummah to move, pleading with my ummah to move, trying To
suggest ways they can move, trying to make them realize that the
Western world doesn't control the world. They're just as clueless as
half of the rest of the world, that the Ummah has power, and it's
being repressed because it has power, not because it doesn't have
power. That the Ummah made Blinken Buckle. It made Netanyahu Buckle.
It may Biden buckle. That the Ummah made Biden fall in the
polls, that the Ummah has the deciding vote, Inshallah, in the
upcoming elections in those swing states,
after a lifetime of pleading with my ummah to forgive each other, to
stand with each other, to lift each other, to become one body, to
mobilize, to be able to have differences between us, but
mechanisms to resolve those differences, to be able to move as
one body after a lifetime, when I lie on my deathbed and I say to my
children, Wallahi, I wish I had seen the liberation of Allah. I
wish I had seen the liberation of Allah. I wish I had seen the
liberation of SA Allah. I tried Ya Allah. I tried Ya Allah. I really,
really did what I could. I may not have been wise in what I did, but
ya, Allah, my intention, I tried, and your heart will bleed because
you die and you still see Al Aqsa in chains, and you're leaving this
world having not achieved the outcomes you wanted to achieve.
And you believe the world is more miserable than when you were in
it, when your soul leaves your body, when he died, he said, This
is not how I want.
You to die. I want you to die in the battlefield,
when your soul leaves your body and you have that pain in your
heart after a lifetime of pushing through the heartbreak, pushing
through the despair, pushing through the difficulty, pushing
through those who told you there's no point, pushing through those
when the world said when the world stood against you and he kept
going,
what the beautiful outcome is, you won't hear, yeah, oh, disgusting,
disgusting soul. The angels will say, you know, Allah gave him
power, and he refused to use it for the sake of Allah. You know,
Allah gave him money, and he refused to spend it in the way of
Allah. You know, Allah gave her wisdom, and she kept it to
herself. You know, Allah gave her abilities and talents, and she
wasn't bothered to use them. You know, Allah gave them the ability
to make a difference and punish genocide job, and they didn't, you
know, Allah, subhanaw, taala, gave them this and gave them that, and
gave them NAMA, gave them barakah, but they kept saying they were
weak. You know, Allah gave them this Nama and this NAMA, and they
never said, thank you for it. You know, Allah gave him a huge NAMA,
but they kept looking at the negatives.
You won't hear that.
I pray Inshallah, that when our souls leave our body,
my soul,
that we will hear, yeah, the soul will go up, and the angels will
say, Do you smell that? Do you smell it? Do you smell it? How
beautiful this is. What soul is this? And Azrael will say, this is
a beautiful soul.
This is a soul. Let me tell you the angels on the right shoulder,
the angel on the right shoulder will go up, and he will say,
Hello, I'm back now to Jannah. Let me tell you about this soul. You
know, this soul kept going. They would weep, but they would keep
going. His heart would break, but he kept going. He didn't see the
outcome. He kept going. The world told him there's no point. He kept
going. Masha, some of them would say that what you're going to
liberate the Ummah by talking. But he kept going. He kept telling
people keep moving. He kept telling people keep mobilizing. He
kept trying to do what he could. He didn't see the outcome. He kept
buckling. He'd get up make Toba and keep going. When he made a
mistake and the community lambasted him, he made Toba with
Allah. He didn't let that stop him. He went straight back to the
front line, and he kept going. Look, I have his book. Look at
what he did, look at what he did. And they will say, Look how
beautiful He smells. Look how beautiful your soul. Listen. Don't
cry. I saw you crying when you were dying. Don't cry.
Come back. Let me tell you, Allah is pleased with you, and we know
you didn't see the outcome, but glad tidings. Look at the news.
Allah has told us he's pleased with you. Allah told us he's happy
with you. Mabrou, mahrood, welcome back. Welcome to Jannah. Fat KHULI
fibadi, wet KHULI Jannetty, and then Inshallah, when Allah gives
us for those, gulamin, inshallah gives us Prado. Do you know what I
imagine, Yash? I imagine Inshallah, having cried on my
deathbed that I didn't achieve the outcome, going up to the heavens,
inshallah with the angels saying, you beautiful soul. And I will see
them dressed beautifully as my soul goes higher. And I will
think, where am I? Where am I? SubhanAllah? Why did I do it? Am I
here? Did I achieve it? And then you walk in, you don't know which
gender you're in. You think you deserve hellfire, or maybe the
first Jannah you walk in. And it's things the eyes have never seen.
It's palaces like the eyes have never seen. Everything is
beautiful. It's wonderful. There is no sound of vanity. You obey.
You walk in, you think, what is this place? Subhanallah Sheik is
already in front
of me. Let's have jokes as well. The point is being is that I must
have done something here.
I said she has, and he shut me out. He will shut the door.
I think it's a power cut the Alhamdulillah. When you enter and
you see it and the furdos. And this is the scenario I leave you
with for those who want to be the ones celebrated, the ones, where
you clap for them in the light you walk in, and you see a gathering,
and you see the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam
sitting, and there is a man next to him speaking excitedly, telling
him and Ya Rasulullah after the Battle of Hedin, when we entered
Al Aqsa, ya Rasul Allah, I entered, and we finally took Al
Aqsa again. And Prophet would say, yes, Salah Haddin and ayubi, masha
Allah, aburik and Omar Abu Khattab would be on the other side, rather
Anu. And he will say, but Salah hadn't
What did you do with the Jews? What did you do with the
Christians? Because I know they massacred them when they entered.
And then Salah hadil ayubi will say, Yeah, Amir al mumin, I gave
them their sanctuary, because every time they were persecuted by
Christendom, they came and fled to us.
Us, and we know our beloved prophet, Muhammad Sallallahu,
Sallam told us to give them refuge and Sanctuary. Every single time
he would tell him ascent, and then you will walk in Salaam. Wa,
Alaikum, Wa Alaikum, Salam.
Are you the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu, sallam, I am here.
I'm here with you. Mahaba, sit down. Which generation are you? Ya
Rasul Allah, I don't know what face to show you. We are a
generation that didn't liberate Al Aqsa. We are a generation that
left it in the chains of Zionism. We are in a generation where that
that left it. But ya Rasul Allah, I like to say that we broke the
Zionist monopoly over the narrative.
He would say, Don't speak like that to Allah. You are a blessed
generation. Ya Rasulullah, BarakAllahu and I will sit down
hopefully, next to Saladin Aba rahatab. Then we will see another
man. They will walk. He will come and say, salaam Wa Alaikum, him
and his sister, salaam alaikum. Walaykum as salaam. Which
generation are you? Ya Rasulullah? We are the generation that
liberated Al Aqsa, and I will feel envy in my heart, positive envy,
masha Allah, what a lovely generation. They liberated Al
Aqsa, Sharia. Sin opposite me will say, masha Allah as well. They
liberated Al Aqsa.
And then, to show that I'm not envious, I will be the one to say,
tell me how it was done, to show that I am also happy that he had
the honor that I didn't have to liberate Al Aqsa.
And he will say,
Sam irham Hamidi Shahi as a family, you know, SubhanAllah.
When I was a child, I used to listen to you, and I used to say,
I used to hear and and you used to say, you know, the Muslims can
make a difference. And I believed it. I believe ya rasulallah. When
we were younger, we had this thing called YouTube,
and ya rasulallah, we used to watch it. And I was a teenager
watching it, and I used to think Subhanallah, these Muslims can
make a difference. And semi used to stand up and Subhanallah, he
would as if he had, like, 10 coffees.
But, you know, I used to feel it. And shakirami would give us hota
ban and I would sit with the community, and they would tell us,
we could make a difference. And ya rasulallah,
this convinced us as a generation that Halas, we need to do
something. We can't be like post 911 and go inside. We need to be
outside and say, This is the hat and the truth.
And ya Rasul Allah, we are the ones who liberated Al Aqsa. One
led to another. We changed public opinion. The world. Put sanctions
on the on the Israelis for the apartheid regime, and then the
Palestinians were finally able to get their rights to return to
their lands and finally achieve their justice. And Al Aqsa was
liberated from the Zionist movement. But ya Rasul Allah, I'm
very happy to be sitting alongside the two men who helped me get
there,
and SubhanAllah.
What's a you know, I know I'm making this scenario, but what a
beautiful scenario that would be.
Where they look in this you say, subhanAllah,
I had the greatest honor. I didn't see it, but I was a vehicle.
Alhamdulillah. Allah, blessed me with being the vehicle to do it.
Because I promise you, when you sit in Jannat, Al for those, I
don't think I will look back and say, I wish I had got the outcome
in this dunya,
but Allah, this ummah is incredible.
This Ummah is truly incredible, because when the French were in
Algeria 132 years, they wanted to wipe out Islam completely,
and they did everything they could to do it. They changed the
education curriculum, tried to ban the language, they tried to
massacre. They committed everything that they did. But
after 132 years, do you know what really upset the French. It wasn't
that they were kicked out of Algeria. It was the Algerians.
When they took to the streets, they chanted, yeah, Muhammad.
SallAllahu said, Yeah, Muhammad. Mabuhay Al Jazeera, oh Muhammad,
congratulations, oh Prophet Muhammad. 1400 years later, they
said, Congratulations. Algeria has returned to you. And the French
said, What is it about these people who every single time we
are brutalizing and teaching them what France should be, still they
believe in this man from the desert who said, La Ilaha,
Muhammad rasulallah, Mitterrand, the French president, told Bill
Clinton, I will not accept a Muslim state of Bosnia In the
heart of Europe. I will not accept it. And Bill Clinton said, I felt
the French president was almost supportive of the Serbians in
their genocide of the Bosnians.
Hey, but Allah, they said, We will wipe out Islam from Bosnia.
Did they do it?
The Serbs were backed by Russia. Croatia was backed by Europe. The
UN arms embargo was imposed only on the Bosnians.
Even with the world against the Muslims of Bosnia rose in the
middle of Europe.
They can't wipe it out
at attack in.
Post secularism in Turkey, and told the military, if you smell a
whiff of Islam in our new system, wipe it out. Do a coup. They
banned the printing of the Quran, the ordinary Muslim who you
believe to be insignificant. Kept teaching the Quran and the Hadith.
They kept teaching the deen when the hijabis couldn't go to
university, they would teach them at home, and the regime would say,
what is it? Why won't they give this Deen up? And then the Muslims
managed to make a crack in the system. They delivered Adnan
mendere In 1960s Mandir is one of the first thing he does. He
changes the Adhan back to the Adhan of the Prophet Muhammad
Sallallahu. The military do a coup on him. They execute him because
he removed, he brought the Adhan back. But they weren't powerful
enough to reverse the Adhan back to at attacks version, because the
Muslims had made those gains. Some people at the time, they said,
what you're celebrating? An ad, they said, We will celebrate the
Adhan.
We celebrate this, because it's our efforts. 1981 1982 the Muslims
cracked the system. Again, the military came and did a coup.
Again.
The Muslims, some of them, said to them, there's no point. It's
always military coup. It's useless. It's pointless. You're
powerless. There's no point. They didn't believe in the Muslims,
because they love Allah, the Turks. They kept going. 1996 97
Arab Bakan comes to power. They started. No one's cracking the
system. They dented it. They dented the system. Erbakan comes
to power. Re islamizes. The military does a coup. But five
years later, the Muslims, when bulls smashed the system and
Erdogan came to power, whatever you think of him, Turkey today is
a haven for Muslims. In a way it wasn't during those 90 years,
which is why. Which is why, when I went to Turkey and I said to them,
Erdogan perhaps has a bit gone off in the last two years. He told me,
abi, Erdogan
is the product of 90 years of our jihad, FISA Bilal. They wanted to
quash Islam, and we refuse to do so. If there is a problem in our
struggles, that's natural. Everybody makes mistakes, but we
will fix him, not America and Europe, because it was my father
who died for the cause and my mother, who died for the cause, we
are the ones struggling in the hope to get Allah's pleasure.
When you see the way the Ummah mobilizes and makes these gains
and gets these victories, how can you say the Ummah is weak? How can
you say the Ummah is poor? The reason you think the Ummah is weak
is because you believe yourself to be weak, and you're projecting it
on the Ummah, which means that you are the one in Dalai. You are the
one who is blinded, whereas the rest of the Ummah continues in its
struggle and making victory. The question that was put in the
beginning was, what can we do as a community, as a masjid, as a
community, in order to make a difference for Haza and for FASD,
ibad Allah?
How about starting to believe in Allah the way Blinken does.
Blinken feared Allah's power so much he wants to ban accounts on
social media to make sure the voice of the Haqq does not reach
the people of America. Because he realized when the people of
America heard the Haqq, although Ghazi is being pummeled, people
are entering Islam because of ghaza,
although Ghazi is being bombarded, people are entering Islam because
of the resilience of the Muslims. Of
you try to pity those in ghaza, but they are showing unimaginable
strength that has made the American who grew up on Hollywood
and Kim Kardashian and all these others, making them leave that
sort of life to embrace Allah, subhana wa Taala and this Prophet
you say the Ummah is weak, if the Ummah was weak, why these people
joining a weak ummah? Because they don't see the Ummah as weak. They
see it as so strong that despite the repression and oppression and
bombardment and the like, these people refuse to give up la Ilala
Muhammad, they refuse to give it up. And that's power. That
strength, and when you realize that Allah will open those
opportunities in front of you to make the difference,
when the Sahaba, with the Prophet Muhammad, saw him, there is an air
in the Quran that the zulzilu, they were shaking in their hearts,
hath Alas, until the Prophet and the Sahaba would say, When is the
victory coming according to their political analysis, they did not
know where victory would come from. The same way, people always
ask me, Sammy, how will it play out? I don't know. I'm only
analyzing dynamics and potential scenarios.
But even the Prophet Sallam and his Sahaba said, Where is the
victory coming from? We don't see it in front of us. Where will
liberation of come from? Where will liberation of Philistine come
from?
But I ask you this, why did that not stop the Sahaba from moving?
Why did that not stop the Prophet Muhammad from moving? Why does it
stop you from moving? But did it stop them from moving? You?
Because they knew Allah subhanahu wa they knew his outcome, and
that's what I mean by get to know Allah subhana wa taala, and you'll
realize that even if you can't see what's on the other side, no
problem, Bismillah, whom you keep moving forward, and you'll
suddenly find that, hang on, this is a dark place. It's a dark
place. Oh, wait, I see light.
And that's why ibad Allah, mean on fauna, those who strive for the
way of Allah, and they believe in Allah. So they are striving on the
basis they know that Allah is in control. Allah says their striving
is rewarded, not the result the striving, because Allah is telling
you, I decide the outcome. May Allah make us the Vehicles for
Change. May Allah make us the Vehicles for Change. And may Allah
remove from our hearts the arrogance that makes us not move
because we won't get credit. May Allah remove the arrogance that
makes us believe we know the outcome better than him. May Allah
remove the arrogance that makes us believe we are better than Sahaba.
May Allah allow us to have the peace of heart, to accept to be a
vehicle in any capacity, whether it's sumay or Lana omel, or
whether it's those who entered Makkah and entered with the
Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu, alayhi wa sallam, ibad Allah, you
want to make change. Move. You want to make change. Mobilize. You
want to make change. Step forward. You want to make change. Do
something
if you make the mistake, get back up. If you do something wrong, get
back up. If you trip along the way, get back up. If you see
someone trip, lift them up. If you see someone make a mistake, carry
them until they're ready to walk again.
If you see them, make an effort, even if you don't think it's the
right way, tell them I got you go.
If you think they have an idea you don't agree with let's try it.
Then we try mine.
If they ask for your support for a good cause, do it? You know, when
my wife came to me, she said, let's set up a travel company to
take Muslims around to reconnect their memories after they would
Muslims really be adventurous to go to different countries or the
like she did a whole presentation miskina, because she knew I wasn't
moved by it, and I read it and I didn't understand anything. Two,
$50 billion market, women decide to travel destinations more than
men. Women spend more than men,
families. They spend a lot travelers families. So I told the
Sumeria, I think it's a bad idea. I don't think we should do it. She
came to me about six months later with the same presentation, but
this time, the week before, I'd read an article about the story of
Netflix. And sure, the story of Netflix is, they went to
Blockbuster, which was the biggest company at the time, and they
said, This is the future. And blockbuster said, What do you
mean? This is the future. This is nonsense. What kind of stupid idea
is this? So when she brought it, I still didn't understand what the
project you know that you would succeed. I was like, I think this
is a nonsense project. But I was too scared to be blockbuster, so I
told the Bismillah, totally, you seem to know what you're doing.
Go. I wasn't convinced you would succeed. I said, Go. I have your
back. I don't know it will succeed. I have your back.
We take 1000s of people to different countries all around the
world now,
and every time she reminds you the story, she goes, You see, I told
you, I told her. I didn't say I know the *. I'm a jahilan. This
was proves I'm a jail. My point here is, ya, ibad. Allah, Be an
ummah that loves each other. Be an ummah that wants to see each other
succeed. Be an ummah that says he looks like he needs support. Ya.
Allah, take it. Be an ummah where you see somebody alone standing on
a stall selling lemonade. Say, Allah, meskini looks alone. I'll
join you for an hour. Allah, be that kind of ummah. Be an ummah
like the Prophet Muhammad SAW would walk his Sahaba through the
streets, and would see a Muslim who would sit there by himself,
and he say, maybe he's lonely, let me go. Come as salaam, Alaikum,
Walaikum Salaam. And he would sit with them and converse with them
to make them feel valued, to the extent that amrullahs, who was the
one who went to najashi to bring back the Muslims to torture them.
Abu, as said, That man who wanted to persecute the Muslims felt he
was the most beloved of the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu,
alayhi wa sallam,
abadullah, be kind to each other, forgive each other, lift each
other, be gentle with each other. Sometimes, when people are harsh
with me, they say, you know, Sami or how can you do this? I told
them, bro, Allah said the Quran to Musa, either for cool to Pharaoh,
he's committed a transgression, and speak to him gently. If
Pharaoh deserves to be spoken to gently. Surely, I'm better than
Pharaoh.
If you know you're not good with words, bring somebody who is, if
you know you're not talented in something, bring somebody who is,
lift each other, and you will make the change because Wallahi
Raza today, no matter what happens when it.
Finishes, public opinion has shifted so much
that, in the words of a Zionist, Israel will never be able to rely
on its allies to rush to its aid again in the way that it has in
the past.
And now you have an opportunity
Allah subhanahu wa it's as if he made the states that will decide
the election. The states that decide the election, it is the
Muslims who now have the deciding vote,
Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and three, four other states.
Axios reported that if Biden loses even a sliver of the Muslim vote
in any of these states, he loses the election.
If Biden loses 100,000 votes in Michigan from the Muslims, Biden
loses the election, according to Axios and political
Allah subhanahu wa taala, is as if he's put the power in your hands.
Do you know why the Zionist lobby is considered to be a strong
lobby? It's not because they deliver candidates. Muslims
deliver help to deliver bush in 2000 Why did Bush turn his back on
the Muslims? Because he knew they could deliver candidates, but he
also knew they couldn't punish.
The Zionist know how to punish. That's where their power lies,
which is why even when they deliver candidates, they stick
with the Zionist line.
This is the first time in the history of American politics and
the views expressed by the speaker reflect the Speaker himself and do
not reflect those of the organization. They didn't ask me
what I would say, and they didn't ask I didn't tell them either. I'm
surprising them with this. So this is all me. This is not them. I'm
just saying
I don't
know why they happen.
What makes the Zionist lobby so strong is not that they deliver
candidates. If all they could do was deliver candidates, all the
congress people would betray them after going to power. What makes
them powerful is the ability to punish that makes the congress
people terrified of going against the Zionist line. This is the
first time in the history of American politics where Muslims
potentially have the chance to punish a candidate, a sitting US
President. For the first time ever.
You If you punish Biden, you would be elevated to the status of the
Zionist and the black caucuses, the two blocks that are the
minorities that can punish candidates, some of you will say,
but what if Trump is worse? What if the other candidate is worse?
Ibad Allah? You have a man who committed a genocide and the man
who might commit a genocide in a court of law, who is found guilty,
the one who committed the genocide? That's the first point.
The second point,
if genocide, Joe wins the election for the second term. Right now you
I assume you have representatives who come here from time to time.
You know they come to say, assama, mameko, Mubarak, Eid, and all
these they come, you know they you're important enough to visit,
not important enough to learn the phrases properly.
If genocide Joe wins the second term, what do you think the
adviser of the Congress people will say to them,
dude, you don't need to go to the masjid. Why
Biden committed a genocide of 20,000 people and they still voted
for him. Why on earth you need to visit them? They'll always vote
for you anyway. Even a genocide could turn them against Biden.
Don't want Don't waste your time, but surely I'll give some
greeting. Don't even greet them. Tell the Imams they don't need to
come, and
they will never respect you again.
But imagine if the world says that Biden lost the election because
the Muslims never forgave him for the genocide.
Imagine the Congress person will probably come here and even pray
to hajid with you. Really, he might even do an Iftar, and he
might be the one to say, to give a DUA, banah Atina hasana, really,
like he will learn it, because he knows you have the ability to
punish some of you might think, but I'm handing over the state to
Trump.
I'm not endorsing Trump is a racist and a bigger opinions
Express are those who the speaker. Those are the organization. There
is a political way in which you can punish Biden and ensure Trump
doesn't win the house.
To do that, you need to mobilize with a strategy to identify the
areas where your votes can make a difference. I was horrified to
find areas in certain states where the population of the Muslims is
15,000 2000 went to vote and the deciding votes for the election
was 3000 which means if 5000 of the Muslims had gone to vote of
the 15,000 they could have decided who wins that. And then when the
Muslim doesn't participate, when they get poor candidates, they
say, Ah, this is all useless. It doesn't work. At least try it.
You have the ability to identify, for those of you tech savvy,
because you'll be here,
I ask you to please compile and ask.
Or a website that helps to identify the numbers that are
required to cause a shift in the constituencies. Then I ask you,
then I ask you, then I ask you to make it easy on the layman. Easy
on the layman. Don't tell me there's this number and this
number. He said, No, no, no, no, just tell me, this is the area.
You can make a difference. Go and vote here. You'll make a
difference. That's all I need to know. Don't over complicate it for
me.
Then I need the community leaders, not the massager, because by law,
they cannot. I need community leaders outside the massager, in
personal capacities,
to say to people that we need to punish Biden, and it doesn't
matter who comes after, because the victory is in the punishing
and elevating the status of the community from one that is taken
for granted to one that has the ability to punish.
After that. If you find that in your state, it doesn't make a
difference,
gather your money together and prepare teams to go out to the
states where you can make a difference and lend your support
to the body of the ummah. Go to them and say, yeah, ummati, I am
here. La Baker, umm, METI, I am here. I'm here to help you in
terms to achieve the aim of punishing Biden.
I'm here to lend you my support, my my area. There's no point. We
can't make a difference here. But I know here you can, oh, you can't
do all of these areas in one day. You need a week. I'll bring 10
teams. We can do all this area instead of one week. We can do in
a day. You have the resources. I've seen. You guys got resources,
Masha, Allah and you, I've seen your fundraising. You know, when I
went fundraiser, almost Salaman in Dallas, and the guy actually stood
up the fundraiser, and he went, let's start. Let's start $5,000.05
and I went,
5000 and everybody
went, Allah, increase you. But I've never seen this in London
before. Ever. No one starts at 5000 and they said, bro, 5000 is
low. Sometimes we start 50,000
Allah, 50,000 is enough to send five teams to Michigan
to help them out.
Ibad, Allah, start planning, start strategizing, start identifying
it. Use your skills and contribute to it. The Ummah is capable of
moving as one body. Yahibad, Allah, it may well be, Allah has
written that Biden will not lose. It may well be, but that's not for
us to decide. What's for us to decide is to analyze the set of
skills and powers that we have as a community that we can deploy to
make a difference. And I am saying to you that as a political
analyst, not a particularly great one, but as a political analyst,
you can make the difference. And people are saying, Sammy, what are
you doing in America? I get messages from London. Sammy, then,
why are the Americans taking you? Come back to London. Do we need
you here? I told them, Well, listen, I have identified that
these people can make the difference here, and I am begging
and pleading with them to make the difference. And the day, I look in
their eyes and I see and they're looking at me. When I tell them
they have power, and they look me back with the ferocity and say,
Yes, I believe I have power. You know, I look at my daughter. I'm
like, Selma, you're a winner. I'm a winner. You can do it. I can do
it. You're adorable. I'm adorable. Bismillah. Bismillah. I'm ready,
Baba. Let's go. I want to see my own when I tell them, you have the
power, I have the power. I made blink and buckle. I made Blinken
Bucha. I mean, it's I made Biden Bucha. I made him fall in the
pose. I made him fall in the pose. I can punch it. I can punch it.
Let's go. Let's go. Allah, that's what I want to see from the
umbrella. The
views expressed are those of the speaker, not those of the
organization and the community at large. They're free to do as they
wish. And I think New Jersey, anyway, is already sorted, so you
don't need to worry about it inshallah. And more that, you
know, if there's any rental car deals that might take them
elsewhere, you know, to say. But in any case, it's my opinion, and
I'm a rabble rouser anyway. I'm just a guy on a camera. You know,
don't judge me too harshly. And please, I'd love to come back
across the border again inshallah with my 10 year visa.
What? Whatever happens after November, there are two more
things, I promise, you I promise. Two more things, I promise, I
promise, I promise, I promise. Everyone's going to hate me for
this. You know, I'm the worst behaved speaker.
Two more things.
One, the Democrats are gambling that you will forget by November
that after the ceasefire, the fervor will ease, and then you
will forget,
in the event you do
when September comes, those of you who won't forget, we need to start
a campaign of reminding.
We need to get ready and remind. Of course, I will be shouting from
the LAOs from London. I'll be like across the point.
Je genocide. Say no to genocide. Joe, some people might say no, no
nose. We heard this message now for nine months. We're bored of
it. You need new content, as if Huck is something you just change
every day. You know, as if the truth is something you just
change. What do you mean? New content? I need you. I need you to
give me something different, bro, like you've been saying it now for
nine.
Months, you know, Prophet saw him said the same message, 1400 the
Quran 14. Listen, we're in a market now. You need to for the
algorithm. You need to have new content. For Allah the nerve
somebody actually said it to me, I need new content, bro. Do you mean
new content? Do you think genocide is a joke? I need like a dancer.
Dance Off.
When September comes, some people in the Omar will forget. It's up
to you to remind them. You must remind them through social media
that has broken Israel's monopoly on the narrative. You need the
videos. You need to archive them. You need to archive your
messaging. You need to simplify the messaging. Again, the views
expressed are those of the speaker, not those organization.
You need to have your hashtags ready. Say no to genocide. Joe,
abandon. Biden is a bit weak. Say no to genocide. Joe, we
will not forget. Never again.
You need to have those ready for September to remind the ummah.
Then when November comes and Inshallah, you lift the spirits of
the Ummah by punishing genocide. Joe, the person who comes after,
might be worse than Biden domestically, because, as a
political analyst, I can't lie to you the Muslim world. It wasn't so
bad when the other side wasn't. I know domestically was hard for you
guys, but I promise you, he was withdrawing US troops from
different countries, and he was ripping up the alliances with
Europe, and he was doing all these funky stuff to be honest, like, I
can't, I know domestically he was bad. And I know it sounds stupid
for me to say, because I'm in London and you guys will be the
one suffering, but I promise you, you know, I'll make dua for you
when I'm in London.
After what happens next? It may well be you have the fire to your
feet, but let me put it to you this way, the polarization of
American politics means you will never be the sole victim. They
will always lump everybody else to you. The Democrats might say to
you, you deserve it. You you deserve, you deserve to suffer for
one year. But eventually they will realize you punish them. Once you
can punish them again, they will come back, and they will probably
learn half of Surat
Fatiha when that comes because you're under the fire the feet is
under your fire, because now you realize you made the difference in
Raza, because you realized you made the difference in toppling
genocide. Joe, now you've tasted power. You know the Ummah has
power. It's about entrenching that power. How do you entrench that
power by starting to build your institutions, by starting to build
your community initiatives, by locking hands with each other and
saying, Halas. Now we did it when we were together. We will continue
together in the same vein, those four years Inshallah, you would
build those institutions, and you will entrench the new power that
you have, which is to punish candidates, you will entrench the
new found power that allows Muslims to move as one block. For
Allah said in the Quran, yeah, man ulataf, Shalu, wata, Habari,
hokum, do not be Tenez or between yourselves, for your scent will
disappear. You would fail and your scent will disappear. Right now,
your scent is lovely because you're united, and now that's why
you have the threat you need to keep that unity going. How by
having goals, and the goals that you do is through the building of
institutions. But I will finish on this year. Ibad Allah, all the
scenarios are possible. Allah, Subhanahu wa Taala is the only one
who knows what happens after November. Sam al Hamdi doesn't
know it's true. Sometimes analysis I get right, sometimes I get it
wrong. On Monday, when I didn't think of Muslim podcast, I
analyzed the dynamics from my lens, and I thought, There's no
way Biden will hit the Houthis. So that makes no sense. Why does he
want to expand the war? I said maybe there is a 1% chance he will
hit the Houthis, but if he does so, it because he's so Zionist
that he will throw all logic out the window when he hit the
Houthis, every analyst in the industry went, Whoa, he's a
highness. And I
was like, it shows you no one knows the *. Sami doesn't know
the *. Only Allah knows. But do you trust Allah?
Do you believe he's the best being to trust? Do you believe that
Allah will have your best interest at heart? Then let's punish Joe
Biden and then leave the rest to Allah subhanahu wa when you read
surah Al Kahf next week, I want you to focus on the ayat about
Musa and Khidr. Alayhi wa sallam,
Musa is told that Khidr knows the unknown. That doesn't stop Musa
from rebuking hidr. Why Allah is showing you that he that you don't
know the unknown, so that will lead you sometimes to take actions
that are contrary to what Allah wants. It
doesn't mean Musa was wrong. Musa was doing what he was obliged to
do. He sees a munkar, and he goes to try to rectify it. Allah was
telling him, sometimes you will fail to rectify the munkar, but
because there is a hekma behind it, doesn't tell Musa, you know,
stop doing it, or stop whatever. He tells him, don't ask me about
it. But he doesn't tell him that Musa is wrong for asking. He just
says, don't ask me, because Allah is saying in the Surah. Musah's
job was not to stop saying it. Moses job was to understand that
sometimes you'll take an action for a particular outcome and Allah
will produce a different outcome, because Allah decides the outcome.
But that doesn't mean Musa should stop mobilizing right now. We see
a battle that's in front of us. We don't know what's on the other
side, but what we do know is somebody committed a genocide, and
wallah ILA.
Her in Lahu, we will never allow it to be said that somebody can
have a second term in the presidency after committing a
genocide of 20,000 Muslims. We will say to the world, no way in
any system on earth is this going to be allowed. And whatever
happens afterwards, we will deal with it when it comes but the
reality is this, the nusay No to genocide. Joe Biden won't win
inshallah. He won't win because of the Muslims, and that as after he
loses Inshallah, he will find that the whole ummah will shout, Biden,
you lost because from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free
and barakallah, I'm in
trouble. I think
next question,
may
Allah accept this was mashallah, a journey. We were definitely on
that journey, roller coaster ride, everything, every metaphor you can
think of we went on,
and I pray that Allah subhanaw taala grants us the good of this
night, ya rab and may Allah subhanho wa Taala spark within us
a deep, deep, deep love and care for Allah and his ummah. May,
really, may our hearts be inspired to care deeply and to be motivated
and to mobilize and to move in a manner pleasing to Allah, subhanho
wa taala. Don't ever forget. Don't ever forget. We are the inheritors
of Al Habib, salallahu, alayhi wa sallam, where Allah said about
him, wama, arsalaka, ILA, rahmat, Al Alameen, we have not sent you
but as a mercy to all of creation, all of existence. So we hope in
2024
to be agents of prophetic mercy, really, that we are proprietors of
that prophetic mercy that Allah uses, uses us as conduits for that
prophetic reality. So may Allah, Subhanahu wa choose us and use us
and be pleased with us. All mean. May Allah bless our dear brother,
Sammy. May Allah increase you and use you for khair. May Allah bless
your family, your parents, your wife, your blessed wife, your
children, your siblings. May Allah bring you together, always in
khair and happiness and joy, and may you always be with the ones
you love and me and surrounded by them and nourished by them. And
may that be for all of us. May Allah grant us beautiful families.
May Allah bless us with remarkable communities. May Allah grant us
profound institutions. May Allah, SubhanAllah, really inspire us to
come together and build and support and grow. May Allah bless
this message for us. ICPC, may it be truly a beacon of light of
goodness. May Allah bless all of our initiatives that these humble
initiatives, like prophetic living and otherwise, were aspiring to be
a part of this beautiful mosaic of khidma, beautiful mosaic of
service. May Allah use us all for that cause. May Allah bless our
brothers and sisters of Philistine. May he bring them so
much relief, sweet, sweet happiness in this life and the
next Wallahi, we hope from the bottom of our hearts and Ya Allah,
but we ask you as your humble servants that we you give them the
best of the best of this life and the best of the best of the
afterlife, bring them immediate relief, immediate comfort,
immediate peace, immediate security, immediate safety now and
not later. And we beg you, Allah, by the power of being. It is
a show us by your magnificent capacity of being. It is your
magnificent capacity to end evil and tyranny and oppression. Ya
Allah, Ya Karim, bikun, fayakun, we ask You to bless and protect
and honor our brothers and sisters in Sudan. Ya Rabbi, bring them
ease and comfort and relief, our brothers and sisters the UR bring
them ease and comfort and peace and security. Ya Allah, our
brothers and sisters in Kashmir, our brothers and sisters in
Europe, in Asia, in Arabia, all across from east to us, from north
to south, bring beautiful ease and comfort. Ya rab to all of our
brothers and sisters into all of our lands, Ya Allah man we are,
Rahim BarakAllahu fikom, may Allah accept from us all this night and
may be a start of a beautiful journey in this dunya of ours,
barakallah Muhammad wana and then hamdullah Alameen.
Still
happy to meet.