Sami Hamdi – Think Like a Political Analyst, Gaza Resistance, the Iran choke on Saudi and More
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AI: Transcript ©
As soon as October 7, happened, the Israeli propaganda machine
started going in full swing. Lloyd Austin is reinforcing us support
for Israel. The Muslims here, we didn't have a voice. And then out
of nowhere, you come along. Sami Hamdi is here. Sami Hamdi, my dear
brother, Sami Hamdi. Sami Hamdi, editor of the international
interest, joins me now and then you kind of tie it all together to
have power. You never didn't have power. It's roaring, even though
Israel is pummeling Gaza. It's roaring even though there is a
death toll in Gaza. Move, here ibad Allah. Move, don't be an
omelet. That does nothing. That's action, that's Islamic. That's
what the Muslims. Move, don't be an omelet. Silent. Move and do
something. I know that it looks bleak, but I promise you that
those who stand against the Muslims do not believe we're in a
bleak position.
Assalamu,
Alaikum. Welcome to another episode of the prophetic mentality
podcast. I am your host, ahmedab, joined by my co host, manir, with
a very special guest. Very special guest this evening, Sami Hamdi,
salaam alaikum. Thank you very much for having me. Alhamdulillah.
And if you guys don't know by this point, Sami Hamdi is the managing
director of the international interest, a political risk
consultancy group. Thank you so much for joining us. Sammy, late
this evening you've been doing your rounds in Southern
California, mashallah, we've been so blessed and so happy to have
you here. Hamdullah, Alhamdulillah. And I just want to
preface this by
so this, I was not very like aware of your full knowledge of, you
know, the geopolitical landscape up until, like, your third episode
with the thinking on the thinking Muslim, with Muhammad Jalal. And I
think the biggest thing for me was
as soon as October 7 happened, and then the Israeli propaganda
machine started going in full swing. I
felt like the Muslims here, we didn't have a voice. We were, you
know, putting up things on Twitter, putting up things on
Twitter, putting up things on YouTube, putting up things on
Facebook, but it was very I would say it was to me, it didn't seem
very cohesive. Whereas the propagandists, the Zionists, the
racists, they kind of had their talking points, and they were
hitting them every single day to kind of drive the narrative home.
But then slowly you see attitude shift. You know, big personalities
maybe change their minds, and then out of nowhere, you come along,
and then you kind of tie it all together. You kind of become the
voice that ties this narrative together, and it brings voice back
into the movement. So for that, I will say that's probably, for me,
one of the most beneficial things that I've gotten from you so far,
Alhamdulillah.
And that will kind of segue into today's topic, which is, we kind
of want to get in the mind of the political analyst. How are you
able to look at these geopolitical situations tie in? You know,
different things that are happening, maybe 1000s of miles
away, but you connect the dots, and at the same time you're
relating it back to Quran and Sunnah, that is a framework that I
think many of us would benefit from, being able to think this way
and being able to articulate thoughts and ideas this way, to
kind of understand the world around us. So this is kind of
where we want to take today's podcast inshallah. I'll
ask you. I'll preface it with one thing. So my teacher pointed me in
the direction of a book called Super forecasting. Maybe you've
heard of it. It's the art science of prediction. So what this guy
did is he went and he found that he did a big survey of a group of
people. Some are experts in the field. It's like quote, unquote,
political analysts, whatever else in government. And some are lay
people, a guy who retired from like pipe cleaning, a baker and
whatever else. And he found that even expert predictions are only
slightly better than chance, like if you just guessed, you might
have just gotten the same result on what was going to happen in
Egypt, Syria, etc. But then he did find there's a group of people who
are very good at guessing, quote, unquote guessing. They were really
good at forecasting. And he had some traits that he said about
them. They're open minded, they're intellectual, intellectually
humble, etc. So with that in mind, so you obviously do this for a
living. So we want us for the audience, for people in the
future, even listening to this, what do you think of when you get
and we'll give you a case study. Let's say tomorrow. This is
conceivable. Iran decides we're going to invade Saudi we want
Mecca Medina. What is the first thing you're thinking and how do
you start laying things out for yourself, too, due to risk
consulting for other people, come to you.
Baraka, I think, first of all, thank you very much for the
generous introduction as well. Even though sometimes generous
introductions can be quite terrifying, because the assumption
is that I have done something, when is in reality, one should be
aware that Allah subhanaw taala is the one who gives blessing,
skills, wisdom and the like. And while I don't claim to have many
of those, and that's not an exaggerated humility, it's more an
awareness that in political analysis itself, the first step is
always to assume that you don't know as much as you think that you
know, and the reason why you were talking about.
The Quran and Sunnah before is because at 18 years of age, my
father put in my hands the book The road to Mecca by Muhammad
Assad, and he told me, son, read this before you go to university.
And I was very I was of the opinion that when you enter
university, there's only two ways you come out, a kafir or Muslim.
There's no way. There's no middle way. You know, it's difficult. You
go straight in and suddenly there's responsibility and
mistakes carry a heavier price than they do during your teenage
years. When I read Muhammad Assad's book, I came across
phrases such as, it is not Muslims that made Islam great. It is Islam
that made the Muslims great. I came across concepts where
Muhammad Assad argues that when Islam became an inspiration for
action, when it drove people out to actually do action, Allah
elevated the Ummah and made it powerful. But when Islam became
defined as habitual rituals and just habits and the like Allah
subhanahu wa took away the power of this ummah, because Islam is,
in its very essence, a plan of action when I was 16 years of age.
And again, this will link back to your question. When I was 16 years
of age, I still had it memorized, a big Surah that you could show
off in front of your friends. So I needed to learn a surah to show
off. And this is the intention that came. And the reason why I
say that is that many people assume that to approach it, you
must be pure of heart. The reality is that Allah subhanahu wa guides
whom He wills, and sometimes he guides you even when you're not
necessarily looking for it in surah Taha, when you're looking at
the story of Musa alaihi salam, what struck me as a 16 year old is
Musa answers back a lot to Allah. Allah shows him two signs, talks
to him directly, and Musa is still asking to for Harun to be sent
with him, saying his stutter, doesn't, you know, allow him to
speak properly to Pharaoh even after he's seen the sign. He says,
you know,
Rabban in a Oh, Ayat ra Allah. And I'm reading the 16 year old and
saying, My goodness, he's a prophet. He's supposed to obey
immediately. Allah punishes those who don't obey immediately. Allah
is supposed to be strict, and the prophets are supposed to be
obedient, like robots that go by. Why is Allah tolerating that back
and forth? Why does Allah say, you know it habila, Farah in the hota,
Rahul layin and speak to Pharaoh in a gentle way. I have a joke
with my friends. Whenever they're harsh on with me, when I do a
video, they say, No, you were too. How can you talk about Vincent man
or Erdogan or this or the Libyans? This way I tell them, whoa, whoa,
whoa. Allah told Musa to speak to Pharaoh gently. I'm at least
better than Pharaoh. I like to think you can speak gently to me
as well. Yeah, and maybe it's that's something that some other
people should consider as well. But the point is that you read
that as a 16 year old, and that stays in your mind, but you
haven't put it in a political format per se. All that's done is
it's redefined your perception of Allah, redefine your perception of
the prophets, and redefine the parameters within which you're
allowed to make mistakes, redefine the parameters within which you're
allowed to feel hesitation, allowed to feel confused, allowed
to not know things but still go forward anyway, because they
become clearer once you take that first step. When I was once, I
learned surah Taha, and I felt it was great. I came across somebody
who also knew surah Taha, so I thought, I need to one up him. So
I went for Surat Mariam and Surat Mariam, you come across, you know,
for Ajah *, mahadu, ilajude and nach letter Khalid, any mid to
kablaha, contuni tells us she's going to be the vehicle for a
miracle. Allah says that he elevates her. But when the miracle
comes, she says, I wish I died and never been born. And as a 17 year
old, my reaction was a ruler. You know, really, you think like, how
if Allah had spoken to me and shown me signs, you know, you
arrogantly assume. And here's the point between candidates, you
arrogantly assume that your reaction will be one of havari
Arab, I will go immediately. But what the Quran is telling you is,
No, you wouldn't do that, because you also have human attributes,
that politics is human, and politics is the science of human
relations in and of its essence. And when Allah responds to Maryam
alaihi salam and says, fennel and tatiah, Allah, tahazani, Kajal
abuki, tatiki sariya, do not be sad. Mariam, I've made the earth
as a mattress for you and given you the ripeness of dates, you
begin to accept in political analysis that it's okay to make
mistakes, it's okay to be wrong. It's okay to assume that you don't
know. And therefore the starting position is not that you know, the
starting position is, let me take a step back and put myself in the
shoes of Mohammed bin Salman. Let me take a step back and put myself
in the shoes of AMR or in the shoes of Munir, and let me try to
see it from their perspective. And that's why I think that when it
comes to this idea of the premise of starting political analysis,
the book wrote to Mecca redefined how I viewed it, and later
inescapable questions by Ali azibavitch, because Ali azbagovic,
the Muslim philosopher king, was in situations where he had to
apply his Islamic principles to unfavorable circumstances. It was
realpolitik, the way he tried to reconcile all of it. The point
here, the point here that I'm making, is that while it does
sound like I may know what I'm talking about. If you listen
carefully, I am presenting dynamics and potential scenarios
and then gaging whether each scenario will come to will come
true or not based on those particular dynamics. To give you
an example. Now back to your example, Saudi Iran, even though
it sounds like ASE, where's your air? And I did that. But the point
is that when it comes to Saudi and Iran, i.
People all are always assessed that politics is either good or
evil, and to suggest that they are gray is wrong. But I think you
know Allah says, you know that
he talks about there yet that people want to do that. Wheel,
wamaya, mutta, wheel, Illallah muta, shabihat Asmaa, but the
point is that sometimes there are areas that appear gray area, and
Allah determines their intention based on that two wheel of that
particular area. When it comes to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman, for example, about Iran, people often say the war in
Yemen is horrific. What the Saudis have done, what the Saudis have
done other countries, is wrong. But put yourself in the Saudi
position. Put yourself in a position where we are sitting, all
three of us, together with the Saudi crumpets. Let's do political
analysis. What are the threats that are posing on the kingdom?
Low oil prices, our economy is based on oil in 2015 2016 1/6 of
our treasury was wiped out because of low oil prices. We panicked. We
need a high oil price, and we need to diversify the economy. How do
we do that? We need to win the dependency on oil. We need an
economic initiative. Bin Salman has called that vision 2030 in
theory, there's nothing wrong with that. When you look to your north,
you have militias that are allied with Iran. You look to yourself,
you have the Houthis allied to Iran. You've got Iran in the east,
and you've got Iranian proxies such as Abu mahdin muhandis,
killed in 2019 saying, I want to come after Riyadh. If you're
sitting in that room with Bin Salman, do you say that it's
exaggerated to fear Iran? It's not exaggerate. You believe that there
is a genuine threat that and therefore you will react. React
accordingly. You consider your options. Do I trust the Saudi army
to help me against those militias? They failed in Yemen in 2009 when
Khalid bin Sultan went in, and Khalid bin Sultan's career was
ruined. He was going to be Crown Prince, and then he got ruined.
You don't trust the Saudi army, because they've tried eight years
against the Houthis in supporting the Yemenis, and they failed
miserably. So you don't trust your army to do anything despite all
those weapons, right? You
want to rely on the Americans. You know, later,
if do not take the non Muslims as protected, except in and Allah
goes in certain second. So somebody comes and gives you a
wheel and says, Yes, Mullah, maybe you can do it. He twists the air a
little bit. So you go to the Americans, and you've got an
American security agreement, 2019 the Houthis hit the oil facility.
Americans don't come rushing in to protect you. So I can't trust my
army, and I can't trust the Americans, but my heart is
breaking doing this analysis of justifying bin Salman, but I'm
giving an example of how the political analyst is thinking and
providing those scenarios. Yeah, I feel bad now, sir. But you know,
it's to appreciate that. Yes, while I criticize bin Salman, I
understand where it's coming from, yeah. So you can't trust the army,
the Americans and Russia, again, the Iranians are getting closer.
They're talking about Mecca, Medina, the Houthis now
establishing themselves in northern Yemen. And at the same
time, Iran is facing a lot of you know, embargoes and the America is
hitting their economy, but it's not stopping. But it's not in
fact, in fact, yeah, instead of stopping them, Biden sends his
team, Robert Mali and these others, to talk about a nuclear
deal with the Iranians that will entrench the Iranian influence.
When Obama merged Iran's militias with the Iraqi army, Obama was
saying, I'm not interested in going against the Iranians. Here
is a reward. He allowed the militias to merge with the army,
meaning the army effectively going under the pro Iran militias. Put
yourself in the position of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, the economy is in crisis, existential crisis, probably only
a decade before you really need to diversify. You don't trust your
army, you can't trust the Americans. And then somebody turns
up like Donald Trump and says, normalize ties with Israel, and I
promise to protect you from the Iranians. Normalize ties with
Israel, and I promise to give you a nuclear program. Normalize ties
with Israel, and I promise to bring all the American companies
that have the money, the technology and the innovation to
vision 2030 to rebuild your economy. At this point, it's not
far fetched to assume that bin Salman believes this is a bargain.
I don't have to like the Israelis, but if I normalize and they manage
to help me deal with all of these existential crisis, then why not?
Then when Sami comes along in a podcast and says, No believe in
the ummah. Bin Salman says, Let me tell you about the Ummah that you
have in Qatar, el Odate base, where the American planes are
willing to take off in order to bomb Saudi if I do something
wrong, and the Qataris would support it. The UAE has its
military bases. American planes would take off from there and they
would hit me, and the UAE would support it. You talk about an
ummah that has brought the American military bases not to
protect them from Western countries, but to point those guns
at me in the event that I ever choose to force them into a
position that they don't like. Put yourself now in the position
Naruto BiLlah can't believe I did all this, but in the position of
the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, suddenly the option of
normalization seems reasonable,
so we bring Shakira in.
The issue. Here comes now, and this is where the Islamic side
comes into the political analysis.
Now you do all of that argument, and you get to that conclusion
that sounds reasonable and rational. Then I open the Quran
and I go to.
Surat hood, where Allah subhana wa taala, when he describes ad and
famud, he doesn't describe them as people who are poor. He doesn't
describe them as a people who were weak. He doesn't describe them as
a people whose economy was failing. He describes them as a
people ilama, that Imad al latila, mikhala Bilad, that they had
innovation that hadn't been seen in the world at the time, that
they were economically prosperous, that AMR Nahan, that they were
spread, that they had a lot of people, or the like. So when the
Prophet goes to them and says to them and warns them that Allah
will punish you if you are not just, that Allah who will punish
you if you do not worship Allah, that Allah will punish you if you
do not do right by your neighbor, that if you don't uphold the just
rights of everybody else, Allah will destroy you, and they don't
listen to hood, and Allah destroys them, implying it doesn't matter
about the economic prosperity or political power. Rather, it is, as
Ibn Khaldun said, Allah, Assassin mulk, that justice is the
foundation of dominion. So you're telling me that we should do all
these left wing things, Shakira, Nicki, Minaj, Mariah, Carey and
the like, in order to build a prosperous economy. But I'm
reading this Quran that's telling me that it doesn't matter the
economic prosperity if it's built on injustice, it will be
destroyed. That's a political fact that feeds into the analysis,
which leads to the conclusion in my reports that while vision 2030
makes sense in terms of economic development, the injustice that is
being spread in Saudi Arabia means that the social contract is one of
bread and circuses. And while, even though Saudis may feel
there's an economic improvement, they won't tolerate living without
dignity for many, for many years, and we've seen that in other
countries as well, that it's not a compensation that leads you to a
Qaeda, like a general framework in which you're interpreting how the
political analyst is thinking in terms of the cost of the Quran or
the Sunnah or the like. And the point here being, and I won't go
on too long about this, is that when you've analyzed all of that,
you come to the conclusion that bin Salman's idea that
normalization is what leads to the prosperity is wrong, because it's
an unjust thing to do. But then you start considering, what are
the other alternatives? And the reality is, there are other
alternatives. The first you keep Iran at bay by offering a
rapprochement process. That's what Vincent man has started to do to
offer the rapprochement process. But what is that? Where you tell
the Iranians, you make a deal with them, get off my back for five
years. And here's the exchange. You sign a treaty with them, and
you say to them, get off my back, give me time. You know? Secondly,
you change the attitude of your population. You tell them, guys, I
know you lived off patronage for a long time, but now we're under
serious situation. We need to raise a generation that is ready
to defend the Saudi borders or the like from this incoming threat. My
point is that there are other ways through which you can actually
progress. There are ways in which you can reach out to Turkey.
Already. He's doing it to try to bring about Turkish weapons, the
bioactive drones, to try to advance his technology and get
Turkish know how he could go on to Malaysia or to Pakistan, try to
build these little alliances here. There are many ways he could do
it. The reason he doesn't do it is because he has certain ideological
fixation on the idea of building cities that look like Miami. But
the overall concept here, going back to your question, in terms of
political analyst, where does the Quran come in? Is because, while
it may look rational, what they are doing with regards to vision
2030, or the threat of Iran, or the like Allah is reminding you
from high above that what sounds rational actually leads to
destruction. And that's what Ibn Khaldun says, Abdul Mahmud. And
the reason Ibn Khaldun says Abdul Mahmud, that oppression leads to
destruction civilization, he actually explains it in his book,
because we I used to think of it when they said it when I was
younger, as a maxim that is a spiritual thing. Doesn't matter if
you have good economy, Allah still destroys it. That's not Ibn
Khaldun said. Ibn Khaldun said that when you have oppression,
what happens is that even if you have a strong economy, eventually
people stop innovating. Because they say, what's the point? I
become rich, and I get all these lands, and the government just
takes it from me. So they stop innovating, they stop progressing.
And then what ends up happening is, you have less products on the
market. With less products on the market, people go elsewhere,
elsewhere to find it. Then you have a brain drain and a brain
talent. Then your market shrinks further. So the local population
believe your city is no longer important, so they also abandon
that city. And it ends up this spiral which leads towards the
destruction, which is why justice is the foundation. Because justice
means if I do right, I'm not punished. I can do what I like,
and I'm only punished if I do wrong. So these maxims, they help
to temper the worst of political analysis. They help to temper the
idea of pragmatism that we have to do this because it's the only way.
What the Quran is telling you is, yes, that might seem the only way,
but Allah will not reward that way. So we have to think about the
harder choice, which is how to establish justice, to be patient.
And that's where you get into the Sira. That's when the Sira starts
coming in where you look at how the Prophet Muhammad SAW used to
handle his relations with the Sahaba, or how he used to approach
politics, and here is where you start having maxims that perhaps
sometimes you know it throws you a curveball. So I remember being
younger looking at when honorable Khattab, after the Prophet Salam
dies, and he's talking to Ansar. There's an interesting statement
that he makes where Ansar is saying, one Khalifa from us, one
Khalifa from you. And Omar khatab says, but the people will not
follow your tribe. They will only follow somebody from Quraysh. And
Ansar acknowledged that. Now, that sounds like tribalism, but that's
rather an astute awareness of the political dynamics of the time.
We.
Omar Rahab is concerned about stability of the state, and they
will only follow Quraysh. What do you make of that? What I interpret
from it is every society has its unique dynamics, and you need to
appreciate that whenever like you're moving forward. But the
reason why I mentioned that in the seerah and even the way Professor
Selim used to forgive sab Sahabah when he entered makhani, forgave
them and he managed to win them over, or the like, is because when
you see those maxims, they temper the worst of the political
analysis, there are people now talking about, we should normalize
ties with Israel. And the reason some people are entertaining it is
because, as we showed earlier, if you follow it from A to B, you can
get to a situation where staph, aladim, it does make sense, but if
you don't have the political maxim that the Quran is telling you in
which is destined to fail, because there are other people who've
normalized before. The Qataris in 1996 were the first to establish
ties with Israel willingly. The others were peace treaties. The
Qataris were the first to invite the Israelis in 1996 to push back
against the Saudis. After Hamad bin Khalifa toppled his dad, and
the dad said to the Saudis, please rescue me. The Saudis were getting
ready to invade to restore the Father. The son said to the
Americans, I'll give you the largest military base, and I'll
establish ties with Israel if you get the Saudis off my back. And
the Americans rushed in, and they established the military base, and
they established the ties, but the Qataris haven't really benefited
from it. They still ended up on the blockade on 2017 and the
Saudis in the UAE, and even now they're wrestling with the UEE in
Washington or the like, without going too long on this. But the
point is that you analyze politics, and you use the Quran to
try to reorient whether those politics will succeed or not. I
know that sounds vague, but when you have case studies, it becomes
much more clearer.
I literally
had as like, Oh, I'm gonna ask about five different lenses to
talk about it, Quran, Syracuse, history and economics, and hit all
five sabbatical, but even the Quran, so even I give an example.
So you know, everybody reads this, the AI and I give an example, just
just of the thinking. So everybody reads women Assan. I mean that
when you give that, there is no better speech than one who gives
dawah and does good deeds and says, I am from the Muslims. And
you read that, and you think, okay, dawah is wonderful. Dawah is
great. Dawah is etc. And I didn't realize this until recently, where
two areas later, Allah says it fab ability, as I know all you and
Hami Omar khalina, that conduct yourself in that which is best for
it may be the one with whom you have an enmity today, tomorrow
becomes your almost ally
again, a friend next to me. Read it as a spiritual air. But you
read it and you think, Okay, hang on a second. So right now we're
all calling out for Philistine. We're all shouting loudly about
Philistine, and we're all loudly, and some people are saying that
there's no point to it. So what we are shouting? And so what? What
comes afterwards, you know, and you know, but Allah saying women
as a woman, that illAllah. So we know this is the best speech,
because we're calling to that which is right, which is calling
that which is just, which is part of dawah, that this is for
Palestinians or the like that a it fab ability * and as if it's
responding to those who say there is no point, because Allah saying
conduct yourself in that which is best. So be tactical, Be clever in
the way on how you are using your speech to convey the cause. And
Allah is almost reassuring you that, yes, it looks like
everybody's against you. It looks like the odds are, it looks like
they're attacking you and they're repressing you. Remember, he says
enmity. Beno adawa, there is enmity. It says, if they're coming
against you the same way we're seeing them clamp down on campuses
or the like, or trying to restrict the reach on social media or the
like. But Allah is not only telling you that you might win.
He's saying, you know the person who is trying to shut you down on
the other side. You know some of those who, perhaps before,
supported Israel. Tomorrow, you may see them. They are supporting
Palestine, and they end up your closest allies. Who are the people
who did the sitting in Congress, who are the ones who did the who
blocked the White House, the Jewish community. It was the
Jewish community. So those who we thought we had an enmity with
ended up our warmest allies. Because, let me put it bluntly, if
it was Muslims who did the sitting in the Congress, the reaction
would have been very different, but Allah knew that, and he
delivered those who we thought we had the enmity towards us, and
instead, Allah made them our warmest allies by warm being that
they are carrying those voices to the Congress and making it very
difficult for the other side to call us anti Semites. And who is
where Allah, subhanaw taala gives you the rebuke straight
afterwards. Wama ulakaha, illa, Lady na sabaru, telling those who
say that there's no point, this result is not for you guys who
aren't patient. It's not for you who because you can't see the
result, you don't mobilize. Wama, you look in the sabaru wama
ulakahavanadim. So those who continue doing it, continue
speaking, continue retweeting, keep doing it, despite the fact
they can't see the other side. They are the ones do have an avim
blessed by Allah in a mighty way. So when I read that ayah, that's a
political ayah, that's an ayah that says to me that, guys, I know
that it sounds tough at the time, and this is why I say to people, I
know it sounds hard, I know it sounds difficult, but the
political Maxim in the Quran is do it, and if you're patient, Allah,
subhana, Allah, will make those enemies today turn into our
warmest allies. That's a maxim that you apply today with
Philistine. It's a maxim that you apply today, for example, when
you're criticizing things that are happening in Saudi Arabia or in
Turkey or in Qatar or the like, if you embark on this initiative and
you see it as beyond the spiritual sense, you see the change that
we're seeing today. Because to put it quite frankly, why is the
Telegraph in the UK saying we should ban Tiktok? Why are they
talking about shadow banning?
Social media accounts, because who shouted first about Philistine? It
was us who talked first about it. It was us who were the first to
retweet Martha azazah and plasti and Muhammad Al qurdan. It will we
were the ones who initially were retweeting them. Then we carried
then the allies came. So we did the Dawah, and we did the good
deed, and we said we're doing it because we're Muslims, and Allah
made those who opposed us into our own. So that's just an example.
Yeah. I mean, it's gone to the point now where people are saying,
oh, you know, Osama bin Laden's, you know, trending on Tiktok. No,
no, I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's just funny, because
you have veterans who are coming, you know, who fought in Desert
Storm. Now they've complete 180 and they have a huge following on
social media, speaking against Zionism, saying, I was a fool to
have fallen for these lies.
And again, social media, even though they try their best to ban
these hashtags and crack down on things, just because we've been
sharing it so much and retweeting it so much, it just keeps going up
and up and up. But notice, even on that point, so that's that's an
outcome that if you'd asked me four weeks ago we could achieve, I
would have told you I really don't know. When people, sometimes
people ask me, they say to me, Sammy, what should I be doing in
order to achieve an outcome? And I always tell them I don't know what
the outcome is. All I know is, when you move the outcome starts
to show itself. And the reason being is that you are asking about
the Quran for example, and I'll be honest you another political
example is Musa, as in front of the magicians, you know, he's seen
all the signs and he's talked to Allah, but still Allah says, in
Surah for Josephine, Musa, he stands in front of them. Allah has
told him that he's with him and showed them the signs and said
that I will support you. But all Musa and sees in front of him is
while he has a promise from Allah. He sees a crowd that is
antagonistic to him, that is booing him, that is insulting him.
He sees magic magicians who are jeering him. He sees a pharaoh
that could kill him at any time. Everything around him suggests
that he's by himself and he's isolated, and every objective
assessment of that situation says that he's a lunatic. Staph Aladdin
for standing in front of the magicians and throwing it. Allah
then reminds him, reminds him, yeah, and says, you know,
Intel, Allah reminding him. So Musa needs another reassurance.
And not only that, he needs to be reminded what he has to do, what
Al kme sanaw, you know, throw what's in your right hand. It will
sort everybody up. All he did was, all he had to do is throw it.
That's it. And Allah took care of the rest Exactly. Allah told them,
take the action. Don't do an action. Yes, take the action,
throw it, leave the rest to me. Musa couldn't alaihi salam could
not see the outcome. This is the point I want to make. When you're
asking, Why does the Quran give you a political framework? Nobody
knows what the outcome is. People plan, even diplomats, they plan.
When we were doing this scenario, when I gave you the dynamics we I
gave the example, sitting on the table and planning. If Iran does
this, what are our options? Do we trust the Saudi army? Dude? We're
planning, we're planning. We're planning, but we're not certain of
the outcome. When bin Salman is going to try to normalize ties
with Israel, he's not certain of the outcome. He's doing it because
he's determined this is the best solution in light of the dynamics
that he's considering, at the time, the same way that we do,
what the Quran tells you is, is it's not wrong to not know the
outcome. If you don't know the outcome, that's fine, but move and
do something about it, and Allah will handle the outcome. And I
think that even when you look at the Palestine Israel, the reality
is that Netanyahu and Blinken in the beginning, their outcome was
will ethnically cleanse Gaza, and we will demolish the Palestinians
and will bring the Palestinian authority to rule over Gaza and
get rid of Hamas. But they couldn't achieve that outcome.
Why? Which shows they don't have all the think about today that
we're talking about the hostage exchange and the ceasefire. Do you
think Netanyahu this was his ideal scenario
five days ago? They first off, they wanted to level Gaza. Any
talk of ceasefire, any talk of hostage exchange was completely
out the window. They were bombing indiscriminately and then going in
and taking the photo ops later. Look what Hamas did. They burned
our hostages. So the fact that there's a ceasefire now shows that
there's a complete 181 in the situation. And the question gets
posted as a political analyst, why? What forced that 180 Firstly,
it shows that they had an outcome in mind that they're unable to
achieve. Yes, So alhamdulillah, all power belongs to Allah. That
should encourage everybody who is saying, We can't see the outcome.
So it's no point they couldn't see the outcome. So it shows you
should mobilize as well. The second point is, it wasn't because
of the Muslim governments. Wasn't because of Bin Salman or bin Zayed
or Erdogan. It was because of you, because of public opinion. Now, as
a political analyst, when I see that, I get excited. I get my
whiteboard out. I'm like, Okay, wow. So public opinion, I knew
would make a difference, but did I think it would make the difference
in achieving what it's achieved so far? I would have thought Elon
Musk buying Twitter was the number one catalyst of freeing Palace. I
was against Elon Musk buying Twitter. Now I think all good on
him. If it was the previous administration, then the shadow
bans would have been in from immediately. You don't know where
Allah's hekma is. Basim Yusuf, who contributed to the coup in Egypt,
somebody who I really like. I was really upset at Israeli Egypt
coup, Egypt coup. Allah used him as a vehicle. He gave the best
interview with Piers Morgan. He's the one who managed to shift a
lot. Allah chooses the vehicles that and that's why I think
sometimes that when people focus on the outcome too much, they
forget that.
Politics is not about outcomes. Politics is the science of human
relations and also the science of opportunities, and creating those
opportunities. It's like, I know here in the US, you know, you
have, I think it's sacrilege and blasphemous, but you call it
football, you know, you're American football, even though
they don't. I watched American football game for the first time
in my hotel room a few days ago, and you don't use the feet at all.
You know, like it's a disgrace. You call it football. But anyway,
in American football, if you notice the aim of the game, you're
winning yards, you know, you get ready and you try to win as many
yards as possible, then you start again. I think that a lot of it is
like this, because the more yards you win, the more opportunities
you have to get to the outcome that you're trying to and you
think about, where's the different opportunity? Should we go to the
right? Should we go to the left? Yes. Should you go deeper a bit
and all those tactics to take those opportunities? And I think
the Quran tells you the same as well, because the Allah, and he
says, Woman, Allah, mean on for Allah. The reason this ayah drove
me to insanity for about six months is because, why doesn't
Allah say the result is rewarded? Why does Allah say that those who
strive and believe in Allah, the Allah rewards the striving. Why
didn't Allah say he reward the result? So is there a scenario
where I go my whole life trying to achieve something and I'll never
achieve it? Why is that fair? And then I read this as a teenager,
and you think, you think, then you start memorizing Surah, NUHA, and
you see no Hala, salam, how he says to La Rabi, any doubt to call
me Layla, wanna Hara? Well, let me sit him. Do I fear? Arara wa
nikula, dautom, Lita, Fira, see, no,
you know, when I read it, I don't know if it's the Jews to say it,
but you can feel his pain, how he's lamenting it. Allah. I'm
trying. I told him, day and night, calling them. And every time I
call them, they run away from me. And when I say to them, they put
their fingers in their ears and they humiliate me by covering
their faces. I know it gets away from us for 900 years. Think about
it, 900 years Allah, who refuses to give him any power to force his
people to believe in Allah. So in other words, when you read that,
that's how you reconcile the striving and that Allah, in
reality, is not asking you for an outcome. Allah already is in
charge of the outcome, and he's decided it the honor Allah has
given you is, do you want to be a vehicle to achieve that outcome?
Do you want to position yourself as a vehicle to achieve that
outcome? And so when you start putting bringing that back into
politics, you start realizing that politics is not about achieving
outcomes, per se, as much as it's about altering the dynamics of the
powers to create new opportunities. For example,
Erdogan going to the Russians. When the Americans pressed him, it
wasn't that he liked the Russians, where he wanted an alliance. He
realized, to push back against the Americans, I need to force a
change in the power balance. So he went to the Russians. I understood
it. You know, even though I've decided what the Russians are
doing in Syria or the like. It gave him breathing space in order
to be able to assert himself in Muslim countries such as Libya or
Central Asia or these other places. I can appreciate that. I
don't know if it's right or wrong, but I understand why he's doing
it. But I also think the Quran in this context gives you an example
in that at the end of the day, even when you're analyzing
politics or you're mobilizing towards politics, you don't need
to see the outcome. What you need to do is be a player where the
other players have to adapt, and that creates opportunities in and
of itself. And I think life is much more exciting when you come
to that conclusion. So don't automatically when you're going
through a political scenario, or if you're trying to figure out
which way the movement should go. Don't just be result necessarily
result oriented. We have to achieve this deal or this
partnership to gain this goal. Maybe you are, like you said,
trying to change the dynamic. Am I understanding that? Right? Here's
an example for America. So sure. So I can you frame it with an
LGBTQ? Because that's like a big let's start with the US, with
regards to Biden and Gaza and Israel, and then Palestine, and
then we'll talk about LGBT afterwards. Okay, so I came here
to the US, and one of the reasons that I agreed to the LA
invitation, even though I thought, What's the point in flying 13 and
a half hours all the way to a dinner the ends of the world
where, where everything is far away, where you have freeways, and
there's nothing free about the freeway, because there's always
traffic, and everything is one hour away, or one hour 15 minutes
away, like and I thought, okay, it's a bit far out on the other
side, but here's what it is. One of the reasons that I was very
fascinated in being here in America, and it's only my second
time here, first time on the West Coast, is I wanted to see what is
the Muslim political thinking now that Allah has given them a power
in which they are potentially the deciding vote in four of the swing
states, that Biden is behind trumping, correct? And I find that
many Muslims are saying it's either Biden or it's either Trump.
But I was confused in that. Do you remember when Biden there was a
talk about whether he'd run for a second term? Yes. Do you remember
how top Democrats refused to say whether he would run for a second
term? And do you remember how some of his close aides were suggesting
he would not run for a second term? Yes. And then Biden
blindsided them by coming out of a helicopter or coming off a plane,
and he said, I am running for a second term. And people said that
he did it because there was growing voices in the Democrats
that he shouldn't run, and he was cutting them off quickly by
announcing he would run for a second term so there would be no
revolt and no rebellion, which suggests that there is a strand in
the Democrats that is significant enough that believes that Biden.
Run for a second term, and perhaps they might still hold those
opinions. Now, Gavin Newsom here locally, for example, okay, so, so
let's, let's, let's go with it politically, right? So you have
already a scenario in which there are some Democrats who don't want
Biden to run for a second term, right? And you also have the
Democrats. Kamala Harris has come out with a video announcing a new
counter Islamophobia initiative, not because she suddenly woke up
and said Wallahi. She doesn't say Wallahi, but she's not because she
suddenly woke up and said mesekin. These poor Palestinians. It's
because the Democrats The only conclusion. They sat on a table
and they said, we're behind in full swing states, Muslims might
be the deciding vote. They're very angry with us. How can we appease
them? So the one of the tactics is we're willing to counter
Islamophobia, and the other tactic is an email that the Democrats
sent out six days ago from this recording, in which they said,
Trump wants to bring the Muslim ban. We're against the Muslim ban.
That shows to me that Democrats are aware that the weak point that
they have in their in their armor, is the Muslim vote, right? If I
balance the US saying, how do you bring these events and bring them
all together? Right? So I have a Democrats who are willingly, who
don't want Biden to run second term. And I have the Democrats now
chasing the Muslim vote. So I know that Muslims have power. The
Democrats have recognized it. And I also know there's a potential
scenario, 5% scenario, where Democrats, if they have the
chance, they will remove Biden and put another candidate instead,
because they don't want him to run for a second term. How can I force
this potential scenario? Then what is preventing the Democrats from
changing Biden? It is because they believe that there is a chance
that they can keep Biden and the Muslims will still vote. Which
means to change that perception, I need to try to convince the
Muslims to mobilize in a way where the Democrats come to the
conclusion that 100% were going to lose those swing states, and if
they come to the conclusion that 100% were going to lose those
swing states, they're not going to sit there waiting to lose they're
going to take action. What action could they viably take? They could
viably remove Biden and viably put another candidate in place. And if
they put the other candidate in place, all of the journalists will
say that the Muslim minority, which had technically had no power
before, brought down a sitting US president and forced a change in
the candidate. I think this is a very viable plan that the Muslims
could go to, and I'm already seeing campaigns hashtag no to
genocide, Joe, but the Muslims responded to me, some of them, and
said, but what if the other representative is worse? And here
is where we look about the idea, what is it that you're focused on?
They're focused on the outcome in that I want the other person to be
perfect. I'm saying that the victory is not in what the other
person does. The victory is in you demonstrating that the Muslims
have the power to punish, that the Muslim is a political group, that
if you upset them, they can punish you politically that power. Think
about the Zionist lobby. The Zionist lobby is not powerful
because their representatives are perfect. The Zionist lobby is
powerful because if that representatives goes left or
right, they have the power to bring them down. You want to show
and prove that you have that equal power. So even if the candidate
ends up being worse than Biden, that's not the victory. The
victory is you demonstrated that you have the power in order to
bring change and in order to punish you force their hand, that
you force their hand. And I think, as a political analyst, it would
be very exciting to see if Muslims would be able to mobilize in this
regard, in the UK, for example. Okay, UK, for example, some of the
Muslims are mobilizing, and we're talking about this idea. And
Muhammad Jalal is also pursuing it as well. The idea that the there
are, he says there are 80 constituencies. I think maybe
there might be about 40 or 50 constituencies out of 300 and
something parliamentarians, where the Muslims have the deciding
vote, where you could topple that sitting MP, and you could bring
about independence. In the beginning, many Muslims were like,
Oh, the system is always rigged. There's no point. The usual
arguments, let's sit at home stuff. Allah Adim, I know this
sounds controversial. I'm not saying that they are these people.
I'm simply saying that when they say it, this comes to my mind, I
repeat. I'm not saying that those who say it are these people. I'm
saying that when they say it, this is the air that comes to my mind,
which is when Ben Israel told Musa Ill have anti war buchala In a
Haruna, we are go, you and your Lord and fight, because there's no
way we'll be able to defeat those people. And so they said that, and
Allah forbid it for them for 40 years. Anyway, Andrew Ma, the top
political commentator in the United Kingdom, last week, did a
video for the New Statesman, in which he said, I am hearing rumor
that Imams across the country are telling Muslims to now go and vote
for independent MPs to split the Labor Party Vote, and that there
are at least 40 or 30 constituencies where this is
possible. And while some, many, some people, are saying that this
is all hype, in a tight election between the Conservatives and the
Labor Party, in the tight election, 30 seats decides between
the winners and decides who the winner is going to be. In other
words, it gives you king maker status. So the point here being is
that even now, when you look at the US, and this is what I was
trying to tell people while I'm here, Allah has given you a unique
position whereby you are able to exert power disproportionately in
an objective way as a result of the way the system is designed.
Are you ready to use it? Are you willing to mobilize? Have you
identified it? Have you calculated the dynamics in order to push
forward? Are you able to come to and this is what I mean by
political analysis, in that you're analyzing possibilities. A is
doing this, B is doing this, C is doing this. D is doing this. Why
they doing they're all reacting to each other. These are the.
Potential scenarios that might potentially unfold. And I think
that it's an exciting time in that I think that this is unprecedented
the level of power that the Muslim communities have in both the UK
and the US. What I am concerned about is that the Ummah has a self
defeatist mentality that is ingrained in their subconscious,
that even when this opportunity is now presented to them, they're not
sure that if they should be taken or not. And those who are telling
them to take it, they are looking at them and saying, I'm still not
convinced that you will be able to take it. And they are talking
about side issues as to whether that representative would be good
or not. And as I said, the point is not about the representatives.
The point is showing that the Muslims you cannot trample on
their vote. If you upset them, they punish you. And that's the
point that I think that that's an example in the American example.
So even if they bring someone in that doesn't work out for us, then
it's like, well, you're on your way out the next time around,
exactly. And that's the power to punish that's put yourself in the
position of the politician you know, put seven division
politician where he knows, or she knows that they almost lost the
election because of the Muslim vote, and they had to change Biden
for another candidate in order to secure the Muslim vote for the
Democrats, like they're barely scraping by. They're barely
scraping by when they think about the consideration for the next
elections. What's the calculation? The calculation is, instead of
visiting 10 mosques, I should visit every mosque in the district
just to be safe. I need to learn more about what Muslims want. I
need to learn more about what they're thinking, I need to sit
down with them more. Some people will say, Yeah, but how does that
translate? But dude, they're not coming to you right now at the
moment, because they think you have no choice. They're not taking
you seriously because they think you have no choice. I don't know
if you were following the last election, but we had some
prominent political activists that were heavily involved, like Linda
Sarsour. She was heavily involved. And then, I think at the drop of a
hat, they dropped her
due to her comments on Palestine. They completely shunned her from
the movement the and then they had like, had to apologize and bring
her back. But it just showed how. But take, for example, care. But
one of, one of the things that I think that the the greatest
injustice that the Ummah inflicts on itself is that the Ummah
appreciates how far it's actually come. Over the past 90 years,
I had friends who and bear in mind, sometimes you have the
critics. So some people who say Sammy, you always have an
optimistic take on the ummah. And so sometimes they want to, and
it's because of how I've interpreted the Quran, at least,
and I hope it's the right way of interpreting it. But the point is
that, so I remember a friend of mine when Rashida Tlaib got
censored for her comments on Palestine, yeah, and a friend of
mine sent me the news, and he said, Look, you keep talking about
social media. Ha, look, they censored Rashida Tlaib. So I
opened my phone, and I sat there looking at it, and he's next to
me, and he's saying to me, Go on, say something. Where's your
eloquence now? Where's your tongue gone now? And I looked and I
looked, and I was like, 192
he said, What 192
I said, 192 That's mad. He goes, Yeah, it's 252
people. They vote to Congress. People, they vote. I said, Yeah,
but 192 didn't. When have you ever seen 192 congress people defy
Israel? When have you ever seen 192 congress people refused to tow
the Israeli line? That's unprecedented. The Muslim
community hasn't even mobilized yet. They haven't even tried to
deploy their power, and already, Israel is losing their grip on
many of those congress people because of like social media,
because of social media. You saw the what was his name? He's
running for Senate, and AIPAC offered him 20 million. I forgot
his name public, and he came out and he said, yes, they offered me
20 million to run against Rashida Tlaib. So Rashida Tlaib is heavily
criticized by many in the Muslim community. So is Ilhan AMR and I
keep getting asked Sami, what's your opinion Rashida Tlaib and
Ilhan Omar, and my opinion is bluntly this, for all of the
mistakes that they make. The reason why I am struggling with
the opinion of them is because when I see right wing politicians
frothing at the mouth when they see Ilhan or frothing at the mouth
when Rashida raises her voice for Palestine, I always argue. I say,
okay, they may be imperfect representatives, but the other
side is clearly seeing an impact that they're concerned about.
They're seeing a trajectory that they're concerned about. But this
goes back to how you were talking about the Quran and Sunnah
framework. Okay, the the other side is frothing at the mouth. The
other side is very upset to see them, but at the same time, they
are making slave throws under the bus. It's pretty bluntly in
Michigan to when they were Muslims, went to schools to
advocate against trans, LGBT stuff in the books. She's different for
one of the big ones who said Muslims are these are extremists,
need to shut up, type of thing, Ilhan. Ilhan voted for the Israeli
funding the last time around. No. And I'm just saying you there's
like a sympathy towards them, but at the same time, you know, if
we're supporting them, and they're supporting all this FACA, right,
then, wouldn't that, at the end of the day, not work out from like a
sunnah framework, right? So let's take a step back. Let's take a
step let's take a step back. Okay, I'm trying to be a political
analyst. No, no, let's take a step as political analyst. 100. This is
exactly what we're going to do. Okay, step back. You're asking as
a political Analy to analyze the phenomenon of Ilhan Omar Rashida.
If I was to ask you the extent to which the Muslim community engages
with the political system, you would say it's limited. If I was
to ask you the levels of engagement that.
Ordinary Muslims have with the system, you'd say it's limited for
a number of reasons. We don't need to go into them. So your limited
engagement, your deformed state of engagement, is producing
representatives that you believe to be in terms of values and the
like deform. The level of your effort and striving is producing a
certain result. You are getting exactly what you are investing
into your efforts, the level of your efforts is producing a
certain level and caliber of Representatives. No, the
conclusion is not, oh, this is what the system produces. The
conclusion should be, if I put a bit more effort in terms of the
community and how it mobilizes, it a lot, the logic follows that you
will get a better caliber of representative, which is why I
made the point. That the reason I struggle with the idea of what
conclusion you should make about them is, I can see that the right
wing is frothing not at Ilhan Omar per se, and that's why I said
earlier, frothing at the trajectory. If today is Ilhan Omar
tomorrow, it is somebody who doesn't do the things that made
that Ilhan Omar did. That made everybody upset. If 15 years ago,
there weren't even Muslims who were dressed in a way that
suggested that they were Muslim, if today, 15 years ago, they were
and today there are. The trajectory suggests that we're
going towards representatives of a higher caliber, more closely
aligned with the values of the Muslim community, and that the
Muslim community is getting stronger. So there are two
conclusions people reach. One conclusion says that because of
Ilhan na Rashida, there is no point. But the reason I don't like
that conclusion is because it assumes that your maximum effort
produced that, whereas I argue that your minimal effort produced
that. The correct conclusion is that if minimal effort produces
representatives, we don't like imagine what maximum effort would
produce in terms of the caliber or the like. You were looking at
values such as LGBT or the conservative values or the like,
but let's be honest, there is a conservative backlash to a lot of
those values. I know people in the Muslim community, they were
talking about right wing allies, left wing allies, or the like. But
I think the reality is that that it's it's a debate that doesn't
really have any standing, because the Muslim is not reacting to the
conservatives, because they are conservatives, they are aligning
with an issue, and when they look at the issue, they are looking who
is standing with the issue, and that's how they are forming their
alliances. It's like Ali bin Abi talaan Who where he said that you
don't judge truth based on who said it. You judge people based on
whether they say the truth. The point here being is we look at the
idea the cause. We have certain values that we uphold. As we
pursue those values, we look at who is standing around those
values, and on that particular issue, we form our alliances on
other issues where they are not standing with those values, where
we don't find them there, we don't stand with them. I don't
understand why it has to be one or the other, particularly when you
Well, it seems like here, when we stand by somebody, it's an all for
nothing, all or nothing. We just go all the way. And I know that's
and I think a lot of that has to do with the Muslim mental I'll
give an example, a social example as a Muslim community is when
we're brought up in the UK, if ethnic parents, if ethnic like you
know, I'm born and raised in London, but if I went to my dad
and I said to my dad, for university, I want to take a gap
year because I Want to go backpacking in the Himalayas, he
tell me, yeah, if you backwards, I work hard. And I came on whatever
to ensure that you can go do backpacking in the Himalayas.
Yeah, you know, like, You have no shame, really, honestly, yeah. And
then I'd look at, for example, like my white friends in the
football team casual, they went to do, I don't know, work in a school
in Ghana. And then they for a gap year, and then they went and did
volunteering. They were waiters in Athens in Greece. And then they
came to university, and they were very calm. They were the point
here being is that as a the point here being is as a community and
and sometimes I say this experience, and many people have
the same as a community, we're very It's do or die. You know,
it's everything or nothing. It's we're under heavy pressure. It's
we have to take the opportunities now. It's, you know, as if there's
a threat that is looming over us, and we have to keep mobile and
keep moving. And I think that sometimes that is that mentality
is reflected in the way that we judge our representatives, in that
they must be perfect or not. And what changed my mind about it?
And, you know, it's not that I'm stretching the area, but I'm
telling people that this is my current observations, and I'm
aware that all wisdom and knowledge belongs to Allah, and
Allah is the One who gives it to whom He will. So I'm aware that
this is my conclusion, as it stands when Allah and Sura says,
wakihi musay at waman, Taka, saya to Yoma Ibn fakaraheem, when Allah
says, And pardon them their sins, this is the angels who are holding
the thrones of Allah, and they are making Istighfar for those who
believe and asking Allah to forgive them and their parents and
their children and the like. And they say, and Allah wipe out their
sins. Wakihi must say, yet it's not just Istighfar, it's wipe it
out completely so that they never held to account for it. Wamantaki
Say, Yoma, idin, fakat, rahimta, and the one whom whose sins you
wipe out, you've shown mercy, were there like a whole Adim. And this
is the greatest of victories. The point I'm making here is look who
the characteristics of the people who Allah has given the greatest
victory. He didn't say it's the perfect one who does everything
perfectly and does he didn't say it's the one who a.
I don't know who, who praise all the Salat and all the Sunnah with
it and tahajjud alike. Allah said that those who've committed their
sins and those who've repented for their sins, Allah, when your wife
said, that's the greatest of victory, suggesting that those who
buckle, who make mistakes, who then apologize for their mistakes,
who try to rectify, who take and then buckle again, and then they
make a mistake they make, to and then they buckle again, and then
they try again. The idea of buckling make a mistake and
reorganizing and re strategizing and moving again is not wrong in
Islam. In fact, Allah is telling you that there's no problem with
it. That's fine. It's okay to make the mistakes. Allah is rafor
Rahman forgives what He wills it's not the sense you should take it
lightly. The point is, Allah says you are not condemned by the
mistake that you make forever that is good to mobilize and to keep.
And I think that with the representatives and the like, the
reality is that I think that politics is hard. You know, I
always say I have an example here in soccer, as you guys call it.
And I played the soccer at university. And I remember,
because I think he says it. He says it. He says, American actor,
what position to play, midfield. Okay, so one thing that my coach
used to say, we all played soccer, yeah,
so it's much better than American football. But anyway, so one thing
that you notice is that we, you know, when, when, when you get
picked ahead of somebody and the other person is grumbling on the
bench, oh, look at that pass. Oh, what is that? And the coach used
to say that everybody's a genius on the bench. When you're sitting
and you're not involved in the play, it's easy to see what you
should and should have done, yeah, when you're in it. And you know
you've played football before, finding the right pass is not
easy. You know, over 90 minutes, you know, knowing when to shoot,
when to pass, when to lay off the ball, when to dribble when you've
got two defenders bearing down on you or two midfielders shutting up
this way, it's not easy. And I think that sometimes, and I know
it sounds bad, and this is just a suggestion for people to consider.
I do think that when Allah talks about the Sahaba and says, you
know, they are Ashe day, or Al qufair or Hama obey Noh, that they
are tough on the disbelievers and merciful between themselves, I
sometimes thinking, then in some situations, that this ummah is
tough on the believers and soft on the on they make more excuses for
Andrew Tate than they do for, you know, for example, somebody who's
really been grounded in the community. I'm going to push back,
because while I do agree right, that maybe sometimes we can be a
little bit hard on ourselves, and that maybe we should think of it
as an iterative process. Maybe the next one will be better. The trend
seems to be that when someone gets voted in, or someone becomes a
representative of the community, then it becomes the maxim that the
entire community has to rally around this person regardless of
whatever mistakes they make or will make and they are the best,
and we have to support them every single election, there doesn't
seem to be any sort of recalibration process is non
existent. Like Ilhan Omar, there was another person that was trying
to run against her who was, uh,
she was like a conservative hijabi who served in the military who
hates LGBTQ. No one ever heard of her, but she, she's, she's also,
she's also African American, so, but there was no Muslim support
for her because she was Republican rather than being a Democrat. So I
think for us here, I think we have to, kind of, we don't have to be
so married to the to that person every single time they win. I
think we get really scared. Oh, this person won this but, you
know, I think to Sammy point, I think he made a very good point in
that
the iterative process comes from that striving. And I don't think
our community does any striving when it comes to, I'll be honest,
I think you made a very good point that really recalibrated the way I
thought about, you know, like Islam and politics and like action
and activism, you made the point that most of this haba did not die
in Medina, because they understood from the past. I said to them,
someone who'd lived in Mecca, Medina and died there, that our
role is not here. It's to prayam, Siyam, all that good stuff, but
just go out and spread ourselves and die in it's in dying China and
dying India and dying Egypt, and die wherever, far, far away from
the best place to die, Medina. So I think to sammy's point that,
yes, these politicians are there, but I think they're continuously
there, because I didn't get more active in politics, to be honest,
when she was there, more and more and more like I don't think the
community is getting more involved necessarily. We have a structure
in America that supports these politicians, and you have
organizations that prop them up, that send out flyers to donate for
them. They exist and they're not. I don't think they're interested
in supporting another candidate, but let me flip what you said. So
you're talking about the situation as it is today and and let's
assume that I accept what you said is the status quo as it is today.
I think that if you look at it over the past 1020 years, you're
perfectly right. But I think that more than 20 years ago, we didn't
have these sorts of Representatives, and we also
didn't have this kind of mobilization, or even this kind of
position or state.
Is in the system. The point here being is that we are talking about
a situation that is relatively recent compared to the past 90
years of the development of rights, of the role of the
Muslims, of the power that the Muslims have, or the like 1968 you
guys were still talking about civil rights for black people. And
I mean, not you stuff a lot, but, but America itself, yeah, we
weren't born. Yeah, you weren't born 1968 you know, they still got
civil rights for the Americans in the 1980s our elders, they came to
London, for example, or to the UK. There were no mosques. They did
the proliferation of mosques. In the 1990s they began to engage
with the system. They started, tentatively, putting in
representatives in the councils or the like. In the 2000s we started
getting MPs, you know, as in, it's the next level. We started getting
MPs in Parliament, some Muslim representatives. We had about
five, six or the like, in the 2000 and 10s, we had a bit more. We're
talking about now, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, comes in. And
the point here being is that even when Sadiq Khan were talking about
the issue of the LGBT, the reality is that it feels like it's always
been the case. But what I'm arguing is that it hasn't always
been the case, and rather, the problems that we're talking about
feel like they've always been there, but I'm arguing they are
new problems that have been brought about as a result of the
advances that the community has made in its engagement with the
system. Once upon a time, we were struggling to get representatives
into the system. Now that we've got representatives into the
system, we're faced with a new problem. The problem before is we
couldn't get into the system. The problem once we resolved that
problem, we got our representatives, and now we have a
new problem in that they don't really align with much of the
values of the Muslim community, and they're expecting us to rally
around them every single time. The point that I'm making here is that
your framing suggests this has always been the case. My framing
is suggesting that this is a recent phenomenon in which the
initial strategy the community had was to always rally behind them,
and now you're analyzing that and saying, guys, in this recent
phenomenon that has come about as a result of the gains that the
community has made over the past few decades, as a result of us
being in a position that our forefathers weren't in, and that
they worked to get us here, we're now presented with a new problem,
because the previous problems have been resolved in terms of our
massage in the communities. We'd have the luxury now of not having
to focus on those issues. We now have a new issue, which is the
representatives that we're putting forward don't represent us. This
is what I mean in that it's not an optimistic take, but rather the
framing of the debate is important, because if you frame it
as a situation, and I promise to finish it, if you frame it as a
situation that's always been there, it creates hopelessness and
despair in the discussion for how to move forward. But if you frame
it as a recent phenomenon in which we've taken a decision and that
decision was wrong, you frame it as okay, it's recent. We tried
this that didn't work. Now let's try that. The approach with which
you address the problem, this is politics in his very essence, yes,
the politics and the montalar, the basis on which you approach the
problem. The two approaches produce very different
opportunities and potential solutions. And I think if you
focus on the framing, on not your framing, because I know you were
just presenting you the way some people talk here, I think that
produces negative results. This potentially produces positive
results. I 100% agree with you. Percent agree with you. And if you
do want to think of it as a recent phenomenon, then yeah, maybe you
can date it to say post 911 Muslim Muslims engaging in politics where
it's lowest hanging fruit. Grab whatever you can scramble to get a
seat at the table, no matter the cause. It was like that, exactly.
And then maybe within the past, like you said, Now, Democrats are
freaking out. Kamala Harris comes out last second. No one even sees
her anymore, and all of a sudden she's talking about, you know,
Islamophobia, to the point where, sorry, she's controlling Biden
with his neuralink, yeah, to the point where the Ben Shapiro is
freaking out, saying, you know, Hamas. Hamas is destroying the
Israel. You know, they're killing babies, and the White House is
talking about Islamophobia. So there is that power shift, that
dynamic is happening. So maybe this is the tipping point for
Muslims where we can have a rethinking, right, a recalibration
of maybe we have way more power than we think, right?
And it's not just with the vote. It's if you talk about societal
change, which communities seem to be the most stable, right?
America's America's thinking about its birth rate. Just because it's
not being talked about on on the news, it's not a forefront news
doesn't mean it's not an issue. So which, which communities have the
best families, which communities have the most developed community,
safe communities, it all happens to be the Muslim communities. So
there's a lot of social, social leverage that we can excise
in continuing to recalibrate. So I did like your point about how you
said, you know, don't think of it as the status quo, always there
and forever, but think of it as maybe a recent phenomena. So then
you can reframe your thinking, but to put this into context, because,
yeah, sometimes people, people always ask the question, Sammy,
where do you get this information? Where do you get this thinking
from? Otherwise, the reality is, it comes from mistakes. It doesn't
come from reading. So this view that I have, it didn't emerge
because I read it in a book. It emerged because I had a.
Conversation with a journalist once of a French paper in Paris,
and we were talking, we were talking about France, where it's
headed. And he said to me that, Sammy, you know, we have a crisis
here in France. I said, What? Because I don't see no crime.
Macron is racist. He's cracking down on Muslims. He's whatever
he's, you know, Muslims and the mosques are being whatever. And he
said to me, no, we have a problem. The heroes of the new French
generation are the Muslim Paul Pogba, Muslim ngolo County, Muslim
Karim Benzema, Muslims in Edin Zidan, the new French generation
will no longer know what it means to be French. It is transforming
what the French identity is and how the French perceive what it
means to be French. And this was coming at a time in which people
was, you know, debating the religiosity of some of these
figures. You know, Karim Benzema might have got involved in some
things, but, you know, he he said he went to Jeddah because he wants
to be close to Mecca or the like, you know, and but, but the point
is that when you look at the way that they're viewing the
trajectory that the Muslim community is taking, this is why I
mean that the Ummah needs to appreciate where it came from. It
needs to appreciate what's been achieved over the past 90 years.
You can see that the language and debate that's taking place in
France is one in which they're concerned that while the Muslims
don't have the power that you want them to have, they're concerned
that the Muslims are gaining power and that more French people are
entering Islam, and they don't know how to handle that
phenomenon. And the reason why I change a lot of my opinion in
terms of whether the Ummah is bleak or not, is because when I
went to Bosnia, for example, and I see that under communism and under
Yugoslavia, the way they tried to smash the Muslims, smash the
mosques or the like, and then there was attempted genocide by
the Serbs, and still, Islam is thriving more than ever and
preserved. The point is, they wanted to eliminate Islam, but
they couldn't. When you go to the Bosnians and you see how they
celebrate that no matter what they still, I give an example like for
people to reconsider. So there's one of the most scenic train
journeys you can take in Europe, is from Mostar to Sarajevo in
Bosnia. So I wanted to try the train journey because my wife and
I, we run this tour company, and I thought sometimes we'll do in the
minibus from Sarajevo to mustard, because it's nice, but we'll take
the train back in case they're a bit tired. It makes it easier. So
let's test it out. So while we're on the train, there's a train.
There's a woman sitting next to me. She must have been about 6065,
she's wearing tight trousers, a tight top, she's done her hair up
and everything, and she's sitting next to her husband. And there's
an Australian guy who's heard that we speak English and we're
conversing. So he's asking me, Oh, do you come to Bosnia often? I
say, I come Bozo often, because, you know, like I love the history
here, and I love iz begovich, and they make me feel like the Ummah
is thriving. And, and I said, you know, and what the Serbs did. And,
and she turns around to me, and bear in mind, she doesn't dress in
a way that suggests that she's Muslim. She turns around, she
said, they hate us because we believe in Allah and we are
Muslims.
And you know what I looked at, and my jaw just dropped, because you
look and you're thinking, Subhan, You know that her eyes it, she
believed it wholeheartedly. Do you know? I mean, like for all of the
criticisms that the community might make over the way she
dressed, or the like, or whatnot, she said it, you know, in a way
that was so defined, you got chills in your body. You were
like, This is certain. The point here being is they had the aim of
removing Islam, but this ummah is in different areas. They're all
fighting their own battles, etc. So that's what I mean in that it's
about how you view the Ummah, the way I view the American Muslim
community is that 10 years ago or 20 years ago, you're in a very
different place completely. Today, you're in a much more advanced
place. Yes, it's not ideal. Yes, it's not where you would want to
be at this moment in time, or where you would like to be. Sorry,
but the point here being is that today, you're talking about very
different problems from those you were talking about before. And
what I fear is that if the framing is that this has always been the
status quo, you will always be limited in your solutions. And the
maxim we have in Islam is the maximum. Ibn Khaldun al halaya
doom. A status quo never lasts. Allah subhanahu wa taala is always
changing the status quo over people. And that's why I always
argue that again, we're going back to the religious framework, the
political religious framework. When Allah says in Allah and
fussy, we every time I tell you true story in this context. So I
got invited by a university to give a talk about Philistine and
Ghazi in the second or third week of the of the outbreak. This is in
the UK, in the UK, so, you know, and I felt that after the yakin
podcast, and you know, people were saying, You know what khalas We're
making? And I thought, I'm just going to scream from the rooftops,
whoever will have me. Yeah, ibad, Allah, keep going. I'm seeing
blink and Baku, please believe you have power. Everywhere I got was
like, please believe you have power. So I stood up, and there
was a shirk who, until then, I respected very deeply. And he was
next to me, and I was very honored to be next to him when he was
speaking as well. So I was like, you know, was like, you know, you
know, yeah, ibad Allah blinking is buckling in Washington Post said
he wants to tap down on public anger. Oliver Valhalla of the EU
wants to restrict Twitter. Your social media is making a
difference. And you know, if you can't change it with your hand,
change it with your tongue, etc. And I finished, I said, you know,
and they will, Allah. And I said, then the sheik stood up and he
said, This, Ummah wants to fight with forwarding WhatsApps. This
Ummah wants to fight with social media, and they can't even pray
turquoise before Fajr. I was like, Sheik, it's not the time for the
Shih, please. He said, No. And I said, Yeah, Sheik, you are
separating the two. Or as I read the Sira, like they've always been
joined together, and that's why I read that.
In Allah, people read it as a spiritual air, fix your ibadah,
fix your Salat, fix it, and everything will improve. And while
that's true, I think that's a half truth. When Allah says you have to
take action as well, when you move forward and you take the action,
that's when Allah changes the affairs of a people. When you're
able to mobilize to in the markets, giving dawah, going out
to striving to resist the injustice, and that's when Allah
changes the affairs of the people. One of the things that's quite
fascinating is that when Muhammad, as it says in his book, The quote
that it's not Muslims who made Islam great, it's Islam that made
the Muslims great, he means that when Islam was the impetus for
action, the Ummah became great. When Islam made the Muslims go
out, as you mentioned earlier, it will go out into the world and the
like, and say, We want to act. We're going to go to places where
we don't understand the language and learn the language, and spread
the deen and Islam spread to the four corners of the earth. That's
when Allah elevated this particular Ummah, and that's why,
I think that sometimes even when we're looking at, you know, the
Ummah experience, yes, you may not be happy with the gains, but
imagine how no Hala salaam felt 900 years and his conclusions,
Allah destroys his people. Imagine how who Dalai Salam felt, you
know, he's to cause his people, and then Allah destroys them. The
outcome doesn't belong to you. What belongs to you is you're
facing a certain set every generation is facing a certain set
of battles, and Allah has given this ummah a certain set of powers
to address those. Will the Ummah use those powers to address those
battles. You don't have to be the guy at the end who stands up and
says, yeah, guys, I did it because that glory belongs to Allah.
Mankind fell Illah to Jamia. Once you accept and you reconcile these
things, that's when, instead of looking at the representatives who
are deformed in the way that they represent the values of the
community, you don't say, there's no point. You say, Okay, this
level of engagement produced that. What might this level of
engagement produce? And that's why I think even Palestinian ghazana
Allah has given Palestine a special Hebrew, a special status.
The reality is that we're all united. Those who supported assets
genocide are supporting the Palestinians. Those who supported
the sectarian killings in Iraq are supporting Palestine. Those who
supported Erdogan are supporting but those who supported UAE are
supporting Palestine. Those who support CC are supporting, yeah,
who support it's it beg his belief. Sometimes I'm on Twitter
and I'm like, how did he go from yesterday supporting essence,
brutal bombing of Idlib or the like, whatever. And today's point,
Allah has given Palestine something special status. Fine,
Allah. The question is now is we have a set of options in front of
us, as we explained earlier, with Biden Trump and the like. Will the
Muslim community use their powers? Will they come together and try to
channel that into actually making that change, you know? And I think
that sometimes, if you look at it in this perspective, that this is
a unique challenge, a unique opportunity. When have you ever,
let me ask you a question, When have you ever been the deciding
vote in an election? When has the Muslim community ever been the
deciding vote between the Democrats and between the
Republicans. Maybe bush and maybe, maybe Russia, maybe bush. But even
Bush, you saying maybe, here you are definitely the deciding vote
in four swing states. You know, you are this. Some people bring
back the bush. They're like, Yeah, we did Bush and Bush went to Iraq.
But that's not the point. The point is, at that time, you used
power and you delivered bush, and now you have the chance to punish,
you know, the President Biden and Muslim swept from that actually.
But the point is that you made that mistake, and you learn from
it, and you move forward. And the point is that the Ummah keeps
moving forward. I think that one of the reasons why I always say
people should read the Syrah as a political book is because look at
the Syria. Look at the life of rasa Salam politically, 13 years
he gives Dawa to his people, and they persecute him. They boycott
him. Khadijah LAN, who dies during the boycott, Abu. Abu Talib dies
during the boycott. The Muslims are being beaten up. And for 13
years, Allah refuses to give the Prophet any power over Quraysh,
any power to resist them. Hamza Alain was getting angry. Why? Why
are we just tolerating this? You know? And he refuses. Allah
refuses to give him any power. Then when he goes to Medina, and
they're celebrating, 1000 Quraysh come out against 300 Muslims
already, they're under pressure. They win in Badr, but they lose in
Uhud, Khalid Walid brings, brings the forces behind. After losing,
they're building trenches the khandak. It's existential crisis.
They come along. You look at the political politics one by one, the
reality is that, and I'm not saying it because, because this is
what I believe I'm saying, what a political analyst might have said
at the time that Muhammad saw him has been going now for 1819,
years, and the situation just keeps getting worse. Persecuted in
Quraysh, defeated in Uhud. Now he's building a trench. The one of
your Quran was saying the whole Arabia has gathered against him,
and he's talking about the pearls of Persia while digging a trench
and praying on the on fathill, praying and saying, Allah, please
rescue us on the light. But the reality is that when you look at
the outcomes of that, you look and you think, okay, things are
deteriorating. But that's not what the prophet sallam was sent.
Prophet sallam was sent to strive with the Sahaba until they said to
him, matter. And as the Sahaba said to Prophet, Salam ya
rasulallah, we've been with you for so long now. We've gone with
you. We've striven with you. We've strived with you. Everything but
matter Allah, it's it's getting to a level which is too much. And
Allah responded, says, Allah I Salah khalib, meaning that when
they said it to the Prophet sallam, they couldn't see the
outcome when they were with the Prophet sallam, their conclusion
of the political dynamics of the time, where we have no idea where
this victory is going to come.
From. But that didn't stop them from mobilizing and moving
forward, and Allah truly did give them the victory later, when the
Prophet Sallam took Mecca. But even when he took Mecca, what if I
throw you a curveball, even when he took Mecca, Mecca and Medina
were cities that the Persians did not consider worth conquering.
Neither did the Romans. Cyrus, for those who watched the film, the
message, when the when the process, Selim sends the letter to
Cyrus. Cyrus receives a letter and says, I don't understand you.
Arabs come out of a desert smelling like rats to tell Persia
it should bow its head, really. That's because the magnificence of
the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sallam was not in the cities that
he conquered. The magnificence was in the spirit that said, Never
give up. Never Say Die. Never sit on your couch. Always move. Always
mobilize. If you trip over, get up and keep moving. If you lose an
AUD, get up and keep moving. If they all come against you dig your
trench and pray to Allah and resist. It doesn't matter how bad
the situation is. The Muslim does not stop. The Muslim keeps moving.
And Allah is telling you through these examples that you might
think the situation is bleak, but if you keep moving, I will give
you that victory, and that's what I meant, that the seer is a
political book, and that we're talking about the issues that we
have at this moment in time, and you are identifying the obstacles
that are in front of us at this time. But when I look at the
seerah, I see okay, they had worse obstacles. We have these
obstacles. These obstacles, shouldn't put us off. We should be
actively, and I'm happy, Alhamdulillah, that this is the
way the discussion has gone in this podcast, actively considering
ways in which we can go over those obstacles in order to win those
battles. And in a way, it may well be ham and Munier that by the time
we die, probably people will say the previous generation only
achieved an advance of this much. But Allah subhanaw taala said,
can, if I can, Asmaa, Allah won't reward us based on the result that
we achieved in terms of moving forward. He'll reward the fact
that, despite when it looked like the odds were against us, I'm
Ramani and Sami got together and said, What powers do we have to
advance it? Let's do a podcast to try to inspire other Muslims to
mobilize. And Allah will say, said this, say mash Qura, even if it
doesn't achieve the result that they want to achieve. Look my
angels. Look at my Abadi, how I have given them the powers. Look
how they are trying to deploy their powers within the means to
celebrate and praise me and to advance my Deen. I have forgiven
their sins. I will admit them into Jannah. And that's why I think
it's fascinating. And I finished on this point, which I think is
quite fascinating. Every Prophet, alayhi wa salatu wa salam, before
they die, it is said they are offered a choice between staying
in the dunya until day of judgment, or to go back to Allah.
And they all chose to go back to Allah, because, for them, Truly,
they felt they were travelers in this dunya and that they wanted
Jannah, and that was the outcome they wanted. The idea being being
a traveler is, you go through your life you see injustice. Oh,
there's injustice there, let me resist it. And you keep walking.
Oh, injustice there. And you keep walking. And it's like, I'm not
getting attached to any of it here. I want to go to Jannah, but
to get there, I have to do side quests. I have to, you know,
really, you know, like the RPG game, to get there. And I think
when you come to a conclusion that Allah, Subhanahu wa has not made
incumbent on you the outcome, but has made incumbent on you the
striving. I think you become a much happier Muslim. I think that
when you sit around people, you're always planning new initiatives
and new mobilization going forward. And let's be brutally
honest, and I promise, I'll finish on this point, even though that
statement I say every single time somebody said to me, now, if you
name your if you start a substack like I asked, please name it that.
No, there's a friend. There's a friend of mine who said, so. I
said, Guys, guys I know like and I promise to finish it. And now
people in the crowd have started going, don't promise. Don't
promise, because you keep breaking it. Don't frown. But the point is
that even you look at us sitting on this table below ilahila, and I
tell you, on my part, if you had told me five weeks ago I'd be in
LA sitting with you guys, I would have thought, why? What would
Earth would take me to LA to sit with, with those two brothers,
Allah, you guys strove, and I strove, and other brothers strove.
Allah decided that though we couldn't see what shape that
striving should take, we did what we could. And Allah now has
brought your efforts that were going this way. My efforts. Allah
believed and wrote, wrote that I want to join the efforts of these
two and see and amplify that as well. So the point here being is
that even on a short term, we didn't know the outcome, how the
efforts would produce, but the outcomes have produced the result
in which we've met together, and we ask Allah to make it a
blessing, like gathering. But the point here being is that when you
choose to strive, you don't always know the best methodology. You
don't always know how it's good the direction is going to go. And
that's why I think that the hadith of when you take one step, Allah
takes 10 again, people read it as a spiritual but I think it's a
political Hadith, because what it means is, why does Allah take 10
steps? Why does he cover the nine? It's because Allah said, because
you've taken one step, I'm going to make sure you don't make eight
wrong steps. So as soon as you take that one step, because I love
that you've taken the one step. I'm going to make sure you don't
take nine wrong steps by covering those nine and shifting your
trajectory this way. I thought the trajectory should have been this
way. Allah brought me towards AMR and Muni, for example. I thought
the trajectory were this way. Allah took me to Yaqeen, for
example. I thought the trajectory was this way. Took me to Sky News,
for example, or to mass LA or.
Were like, I'm happy Allah came nine steps, because imagine the
mistakes I would have made on those eight steps to get the 10
step. It's a political area. Take one step then, and the
opportunities that you don't see at the moment will start to become
clear. Stay at home and do nothing, and you will never see
the opportunities. It's just like water, yeah, once, once, if it
doesn't move, it becomes stale, it becomes gross, it grows diseases.
That's in Muhammad a book as well.
I think, I think, oh, one reason why this resonates so much with
our generation, especially we're a generation that is the generation
of entitlement, of quick fixes, right? Of push it and I get it on
my app tomorrow, Amazon, now I don't want primo now, like, within
hours, right? Do you guys have that? Yes, yeah. And do you get
London? We have it in few hours. London, if I have a few hours, no,
but you got to catch a few hours. Yeah, I can order something at
noon and it shows up at five. I complain if it doesn't come the
next day. No, no, oh, I can order something at midnight. It's on my
doorstep 4am mashallah,
America. Welcome to America.
You know, when I came, when I came to New York for the first time,
there were two things I wanted to do. The first was, I wanted a taxi
to come near me, and I go, Hey, I'm walking over here. And I
really wanted to do it badly, you know. And I saw Trevor Noah had
the same thing. I was like, yeah, yeah, I want to do the same. And
the second thing was, I wanted to have the water war exchange. So I
was on the plane with with Alaya krukar shanahi. He was getting
married. He lives in North Carolina, so when we landed, so
when I landed, he was already in America at the time. So I met him
at the airport in New York, and I said to him, he said, Me, what do
you want to eat? I said, I want to go bagel shop, like because they
got bagel shops here. So I went to the bagel shop. I ordered my egg
bagel. So I walked in. I said, Hey guys, how are you can I have a
bagel please? And they said, Sure. So I took the bag, and I felt
really happy. I said, havifi NFIE, America, you know,
guys, I did it. I'm in the movie, you know, like Mashallah. Everyone
here talks like the movies. And then Abu Bakr Al qur went. He
said, Excuse me. Can I have a bottle of water, please? They
went, what? Can Have some water?
Water. Water. And I'm looking, I'm thinking, and then from the other
from the other side, I went, war, war. He wants war. And he went,
Oh, war, here you go. And he looked at me, I will not say war.
When in Rome? When in Rome, have you? But you know
some, the thing is, you never know sometimes, where Allah, subhana,
Allah, will take you, or where your life some people, people
always say, you know, like, like, in terms of career choice, you
mentioned about political analyst. If you had told me in uni that I'd
be doing the job I do today, I'd have told you, I don't see it. I
don't know. I don't see how I do it. If you're told money, and I in
college, that would be in front of Mike, what are you talking about?
Yeah, just things happen, yeah. But that's the way. And I think
that what is bewildering for me is how you can see that, like you can
see it in your daily lives, that you've plotted your you made a
plan, and Allah had other plans and and it happens every single
day in your lives. So why do you accept it for your life? But you
won't accept it in terms of your strategies that you choose to move
forward the idea being okay? I don't have the full plan here, but
you know, Julius Caesar used to say that a good general always
leaves room for mistakes. A good always whenever you make a plan,
when you move. And I think that's why. And I think it's quite
fascinating that, and this is where I'm where I mean sometimes
where I think one of the dilemmas of the Ummah is the division
between the spiritual and the and the political. And I think
Muhammad as epitomizes quite well, where he says, uh, when he was
Jewish, when he was a Jewish journalist, he said he went to
Jerusalem, and he goes by a farmer who he describes, had a few tooth
loose or like, and, you know, wasn't dressed in the best way. He
was praying. So he said that, he asked the farmer, he said, Why do
you do all these actions? What use does your Lord have with these
actions? Why don't you be like the Hindus or the Buddhist or the
like? Will you focus on the spiritual censor. And he says, the
farmer, without skipping a beat, turns around to misses. To him, my
friend, God created body and soul, right? He said, Yeah. So how does
it make sense to worship with half and leave the other half and and
that's why I think sometimes, even when I think one of the things
with the Ummah is we read the Quran as a spiritual book, and I
get that Allah, bedikalah, kulb, I understand that. But I when you
read the Sira, I can't find the sahabi who argues that his
interpretation of Islam is not to act, is to focus solely on, you
know, a bad even though it's important all the Sahaba, when you
see them, there's a wonderful, indivisible merging between the
dunya and between what he's trying to achieve spiritually, you know,
he does this to head in the night and the next day he's out in the
market, you know, during the reason I argue that Abu Hanifa is
the most prominent meh is because Abu Hanifa, I think, is one of the
only Imams who lived his life trading as a trader and the like.
So his fatawa that ended up coming out, people just found that it
resonated more with their daily lives, as opposed to, you know
this, I'm not criticizing that particular aspect of it. What I'm
saying is that, how do you read an area where Allah Subhanallah says
its ability Assan Fauci and hamim? How can you read an area that the
one who's your enemy today, tomorrow will be a warm ally? You
read it in the context of a family member, but you can't seem to
interpret it in the context of Philistine and Gaza when those
Jewish.
Lies are taking Congress, for example. You know that
interpretation seems to go over people's heads, and that's what I
mean in that. I don't claim that I have the answers. Everything that
I've said here is simply my interpretation, and I could be
wrong in it, but my interpretation of Islam is the Ummah has never
truly been weak, or the Ummah always has power that Allah has
given it. But the state of the Ummah is determined by the extent
to which the Ummah is prepared to strive. People always pose the
question, okay, you're a political analyst, what should a Muslim
state look like? I don't know what a Muslim state looks like because
I don't think a Muslim state is defined by what it looks like. Is
defined by the spirit of its people are the people in that
Muslim state, a people innovating, a people striving. And a good
example would be when the Sahaba read, you know, Maharaj al
Bahraini, Al taqiyyah Bay, Noma, Barza, Hola abriyan, that the seas
there is a barrier where they don't overlap. They didn't say,
masha Allah, on to the next area. They said, I want to know why,
where is this barrier? Oh, guys, let's go on the boat and go and
go. You know, it inspired them to go out. You know, when, you know,
when the Allah says, well, jebela OTA, mountains are like pegs. You
know, Sahaba didn't read it and say, you know, for Masha Allah, on
to the next area. They said, What does it mean by pegs? And then
they discovered that it means because the tectonic plates, when
an earthquake happens, they go over each other. The mountains
prevent the tectonic plates from completely, you know, making the
earth, you know, fall apart. They were people who read the area in a
way that forced them into action, even when you look at, for
example, you know, failures for who Allah to HEB Allah come to
know back on that ayah, when it comes down, people look at, okay,
I should forgive people, but they forget that a lot. It came down in
Abu Bakr as Sadiq, when he said that, you know, I'm not going to
fund the person who is slandered. I shall Allah anha. And so Allah
was telling him, No, take the action, go and forgive them. And
forgive them and forgiveness. What does it mean? It doesn't mean
forgive and forget. Allah was rebuking him for threatening to
withdraw the livelihood that Abu Bakr was Allah was telling him,
continue doing the action, don't withdraw. Forgiveness is not about
reconciling. It only in your heart. It's about showing the
action. And one of the areas that always throws the curveball for me
about the idea of the way you show gratitude to Allah subhanahu wa is
the MELU Allah Shukra MELU do actions to show you're thankful to
thankfulness to Allah. And this is where the terrifying thing for me
comes, and why I hold strong to these interpretations. Because
when I was 1920 I wanted again. I'd learnt surah Taha, and then
the brother learnt surah Taha, so I couldn't have a one up on him.
So I learned Surat Maryam, and then he learned Surat Miriam. So I
thought, I'm gonna go for a big one, Surat Al Imran. So when I
dissolut el Imran, you come across the verse, You know what? Rabin, a
bad day 10 hour habladoon karama in aka until Wahab.
The people who say that are ulul Al Bab. So this is an ordinary
Muslim saying they are ullul Al Bab. They are people who know
Allah, Subhanahu wa, there are people there a bad, you know, they
are thinking of Allah, standing, sitting, lying down. They are
looking at the heavens. You know, they saying Rabbana like we're not
talking about people who, you know, Miss Fajr sometime. We're
talking about people who dedicate their life to a bad of Allah.
Their conclusion is Rabban Allah, data, Allah, please do not take us
out of the deen after you have guided us. Now imagine me as a 19
year old. Alhamdulillah, I've never had the issue with prayer.
Ever. Sunna, hamdullah, no problem. But the point is, imagine
my reaction that somebody pious close to Allah, this is the dua
they're making that Allah, please don't take us out of the deen,
suggesting that they're aware that Allah, that being Muslim is not a
right. It's a privilege. It's something Allah gave you as a
mercy. And if Allah gave it to you as a mercy, and it's not alright,
Allah can equally take that away. The way you keep something is by
showing gratitude. How do you show the gratitude? You show the
gratitude through the action. And that's why I fear that one of the
reasons that many Muslims don't mobilize is because they sort of
look at their Islam as something that's guaranteed I can just coast
through life, and I will get to Jannah after I die. And I think
that that's an inaccurate interpretation of how Islam should
be. I think that if you are Muslim, there are obligations with
it to act, and if you fail to show those obligations, there is the
terrifying scenario where Allah says, I gave you the deen, I gave
you the mercy, I gave you the blessings, but you did nothing
with it. You interpreted it as doing nothing and simply staying.
Oh, and to emphasize this, when the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu,
sallAllahu, Sallam says, yamukali alainic, they are, O you who flip
the hearts, keep my heart on the deen, that's a Prophet saying it
that. That's a prophet. You know, that's one of those we think. Yo,
if a prophet is saying that, imagine what it means for somebody
like me. And I think that when you have that mentality, that urgency,
that I need to show gratitude for the Mercy Allah bestowed upon me,
at that point, I'll be honest, I'm no longer concerned about the
outcome. I move because I'm terrified that Allah might think
that I'm being ungrateful. I move and I mobilize, not because I
believe I can truly make the change. I move and I mobilize
because I'm terrified. So if you don't like the carrot, there's
also the stick behind you, that if I don't show gratitude for Allah
gave me, Allah might take it away from me, and that's a terrifying
prospect. And I think that's why Sahaba used to weep, because they
understood how fragile the deen was in their hearts, not.
Because they didn't believe, but because they acknowledge, it's not
a right, it's a mercy. And Rahma from Allah, and we are obliged to
show thanks for that mercy through the actions that we take. One of
our teachers here, he'd say he's a convert. He'd say one thing. He'd
say is, first of all, I didn't convert. I don't say convert,
Revert conversation, but all those nonsense I submitted the summer
one, and he said the other one is people like, Oh, I'm so proud to
be a Muslim. Pride. Pride is how you get to health. Get to *.
You should be thankful. To be thankful to be a Muslim. This is a
gift. This is a gift. It's truly a gift. And I think what Philistine
and what events and Gaza have shown, in my opinion, I think it's
in some ways, you know, Gaza is saving us, showing a mercy on us,
because what Gaza did was it forced us into mobilization, and
what it did is that, now that we've seen the effects of our
mobilization, because, let's be brutally honest, the reason
there's a ceasefire hostages is not because any Muslim
governments. Is because public opinion resulted in a fall in the
polls in the US, which led Biden to tell the Americans, according
to CNN, that you no longer have months, you probably don't even
have weeks. It's the public opinion that led the hostages to
go in, the families of the hostages in Tel Aviv, to surround
Netanyahu house and demand that Netanyahu now take the hostage
seriously. Public opinion is what is what shifted that what have
shown mercy on us is that they've shown us that when we mobilize,
Allah does amplify it. Let's be brutally honest. Objectively, all
we did was retweet and share, but Allah amplified that. It's Allah
Who amplified it and caused it, because when we took the one step,
he took 10. So the question here is this now that Allah has
reminded us, and that's a mercy, reminded us that if we move, we
can make a difference. I think the gratitude should be, how can we
advance and channel that mobilization into something that
is lasting? And that's what I meant early in terms of, how do we
move forward? Allah give you power to affect the elections, or it
might be something to do with the community, or it might be, you
know, advancing greater cooperation between them,
asserted. Or it might be, in the case of, there was a school that I
met some of the parents, there's a school that sent out an email in
support of Israel in the beginning, and for three weeks
they lobbied. They said, why? It's a school like, you know, we're
going to make our kids feel unsafe. And Allah sent them, a
Jewish ally, mashallah, and she spoke very strongly, and the
school went back to a neutral statement. And so the parents were
like, you know, what should we do now? Should we walk out the
school? Should put more pressure? And you know, you were like, no,
but he asked. And you know, you want, you got the victory already.
This superintendent is going to be over. You know, his hand, his
power over your children over the next six, seven years. You don't
need an enemy in that position. Go take him baklava and win him and
say there was nothing personal. You know, we we want to build
tires. We want to you know, even these little things, people are
thinking about the grand scale of change. But even these little
things, engagement with your schools, you know, engagement with
your societies. One of the reasons that we were taken aback is
because our lack of engagement with the communities meant that we
were unable to build the protective walls that we needed to
prevent them coming after us in those situations. When Allah says,
Were adula Homa sat at a min Kuwa that prepare yourselves in defense
against them as much as you can, Allah doesn't say, well, adula hom
Kowa, Masta Tam, masa Tam, meaning within the limits, within your
capacity that you have. So if all you can do is engage with your
schools to ensure they don't bully your children over Palestinian
Cause, do it, it's not a waste. And that's why. And the reason I
say that is because somebody asked me and said, You know, I listen to
you, and I think, yeah, I want to do something, but I don't know
what. And the reality is is, because everybody has their own
environment in which they can do something, you don't have to be on
the grand scale. It can be a simple case of engaging with your
local schools and councils. And that's why I think that going on,
going back to this idea of gratitude. Alhamdulillah, think
about it. Allah has blessed us with this. Deen blessed us with
hide, blessed us with the seer that gives us examples and bless
us with the Quran that reminds us constantly that you know that
Allah is there and that he's in charge of the outcome. To show
gratitude, we should mobilize and move forward. I just want to add
to your point about
the superintendent. Should we? Should we get rid of him? And you
said, No, actually, maybe treat him with some kindness. This
actually reminds me of all the scenes we've been seeing of the
hostage releases, right? Because the way, the way Hamas is dealing
with these hostages, you know, they could be very well dealing
with somebody that is actually in their occupied home. They occupied
their home, and now they're a hostage in their territory, and
now they're releasing these hostages. And these hostages look
like they're happy, they're at least right, like there was this
meme going around, like, find you, find you, find your wife, like,
you know, that looks at you like this girl looks at her mass captor
or something, right? Because she just looks like she was so
enamored, right? But, but, but, but. Here's the thing that I
always say to people, yeah, here's thing I always say, what is dearer
to you that your enemy goes to * fire, or that your enemy
becomes Muslim and guided? This is the twist ending that people don't
think about. Which is, which is dearer to you? The Prophet
Muhammad, he entered Mecca. Remember, he entered as a
conqueror, like his army there, he had finally won against Abu
Sufyan. He chooses not to take revenge on any of them. Yeah, and
not only that, Allah, he doesn't even just forgive them. He employs
them. Amrug Lanu becomes governor of Egypt. Muawi, the son of Abu
Sufyan, becomes governor of Syria. Suhail Ibn a.
Who had mocked the Prophet Muhammad the Treaty of Uday Bea,
when Ali Bin Abu Tala brought Muhammad rasulallah. And so,
rasulallah Ya, Muhammad, if we thought you were rasulallah Ma, we
would not have resisted you afford you remove this. And Abu Talib was
so angry, he says, I'm not removing it. Prophesied, said, we
write Muhammad bin Abdullah. But the point is that Suhail I
Muhammad is the one who when the Prophet sallallahu died and
Quraysh taught about leaving a deen so helium, Muhammad is one
who stood on the Kaaba and said, Ya Quraysh, we were the last to
enter. Will you have people laugh at us by saying, We're the first
to leave? So Allah used those very people and made them tools and
assets in Islam, and we celebrate them today. Like Khalid al mulhe
Rahul, who is the one who led the horsemen behind qad, we celebrate
the examples of when the enemy becomes the Muslim, or when the
enemy becomes guided. But the question here is this, why do we
celebrate it when you read the stories but don't manifest it in
the actions that in which we conduct ourselves? Yeah, with the
people that we would that we conduct ourselves. And I think
it's these things that I call and I speak of myself. I'm not I'm not
passing, I'm not saying, this is you or anybody else watching, but,
but for me, it exposes my own subconscious hypocrisies that I
celebrate what I don't employ in my own thinking, No. And you know,
honestly, we have to consider it's a if you look at history, the
Mongols invaded, destroyed the Muslim ummah as much as they
could. And then what happened a generation later, mass conversion
and the winter took Islam back. Yeah. And that's why I think that
one of the who was our greatest ally when we did it, the grandson.
And that's why I think that one of the things that is that is quite
fascinating, is, and this is what I meant in that I think the
greatest tragedy of colonization was not actually the physical
colonization itself. It's what colonization did in terms of the
way it cut our memories of the Ummah from each other, because,
for example, we're very rich in memories this way, when you go to
Bosnia and you see the struggle, you can't say the Ummah is looking
bleak. You're saying the Ummah is winning, because for Yugoslavia,
communism in Serbia and Islam is still thriving there, and the
like. When you go to Turkey, for whatever problems Erdogan might
have. He's the product of the Muslim movement since the 1920s
reading Quran in private and trying to get their people into
the system and trying to engage, getting Adnan Mendez in 1960
surviving military coups, many people being executed, many people
being tortured. But they kept going. They kept going. They kept
going. 1996 1987 Erbakan becomes prime minister. They're finally
breaking through. Erbakan is toppled in a military coup because
they accuse him Islam, as they say. Then Erdogan comes, and it's
like boom straight out of the system. They finally broke that
glass ceiling. After 90 years of Johor, of striving and the like
and Erdogan has transformed Turkey, you can't say that they're
losing. They're winning. You know, they spent struggling and
striving, and they're winning. You can't say the Ummah is losing.
When Algeria got its independence after 132 years, two to two years
of French rule, the reason the French was so upset is because
they said, How is it 132 years? And we've shown them French
values. We've shown them what the French are like. We brought the
civilizing mission, but they won't let go of Muhammad Sallallahu,
alayhi wa sallam. They won't let go of these Arabs and Turks who
colonized them. They won't let go of this message that entered their
hearts. Why are they shouting on independence? Yeah, Muhammad
mabuhay Al Jazeera League, oh, Muhammad Sallallahu, sallam,
congratulations. Algeria has been returned to you. It's the way
Islam penetrates the hearts. And I think in that example itself is a
rebuke for the Ummah itself, because we say that the Ummah
looks bleak, but Islam is the fastest growing religion. It's as
if Allah is saying that you might not be taking action. And you
might think the Ummah is looking bleak, but I'm guiding more and
more people to the deen, more and more Americans becoming Muslim.
You saw on Tiktok, there was that girl in the beginning of the
conflict where she said, I want to know where to get their
resilience. I'm going to open the Quran. Three weeks later, she
became Muslim, and I saw her with heyfa Yunus in a picture, no, but
really, but you look how Allah is saying, Ya, ibad, Allah, I don't
need you to spread the deen. You are not the ones honoring me. I
honor you by allowing you to choose to be the vehicle. And I
think that's the terrifying part, because Eunice Ali Salem left his
people, and then, you know, in frustration, when he came back, he
found them guided. You know, that's Allah saying, you know,
really I don't need and I think that when you when you appreciate
that, I think, I think what you end up doing is you say,
Alhamdulillah, left where we are. Alhamdulillah, for what our
forefathers did. Alhamdulillah, they want battles that I don't
have to fight today. Today, this is my time to fight these battles
to make sure the generation comes after me don't have to fight them.
I may not see the conclusion that I want, but I'll enjoy the ride
while I go, because Allah has honored me for being the vehicle
to get there. Yeah, it's spreading on it's spreading on Tiktok, which
is run by China, who hate Muslims. Somehow, it's incredible. What
vehicles Allah, Subhanahu, Tala uses, no, really, it is.
Seriously. I point, but our generation, because it's
entitlement and quick reaction thing, there is no striving for a
lot of us. They call like, deadbeat men, and we're just like,
Oh, I'm working on it. What are you doing with your life? Oh, I'm
figuring it out. I'm starting a business. I'm starting side
hustling. And they don't have, like, a real striving, because
we're so results oriented, that's everything has to be practical.
Oh, that's not practical. Where what are you going to do with
that? What are you going to what are you going to do with the
whatever polycy degree or whatever you got, right? These questions
come up, and because people are, I mean, a previous generation, like
you said, like you did, I want to go to Himalayas like, whoa. I
strove and struggled for you to get this XYZ degree. Our
generation. I think a reason we're so narrow minded, so pessimistic
is because first.
Of all our generation is not used to striving. We have not had to
work hard a day in our lives. And then the other way. And then that
informs the way we look at politics and the world and the
Ummah, like, oh my god, the Prophet said, Whoever says the
Ummah is destroyed, two interpretations, he's destroyed
them, or he's the most destroyed of them. So both ways, you are
manifesting that energy, you know, it's negative energy to the whole
mod depressing everyone, or Allah saying, actually you're the one
who or the Prophet saying you're the one who's been destroyed. It's
and that's why I think that if you change the perspective, at the end
of the day, Prophet Salla managed to transform the Sahaba in one
generation. And people say, is that possible today? I think it's
possible today, because a lot of it is a matter of perspective,
first and foremost. And I think a lot of it is about altering the
perspective. And I think that sometimes, you know, one of the
things that I found quite fascinating is, if you look at the
end of the seerah, the Prophet in WADA has the chance to convey the
conclusion of his message, because he acknowledged, he says, You
know, I may not stand here again after this, after today. And you'd
think, I thought, you know, as a naive teenager reading it, and
this is why I always say as a teenager when you read it, because
teenager, you can be a bit brazen in the way you conclude certain
things and get away with it. So I'd be like, be like, what's he
gonna say? Go out and conquer, go out and do, take your armies and
go and carry the flag, you know, things like that. And instead, he
just reminds them, because in a demo and well, akumar, other come
Harmon Alaikum at AFI Shari Kumar, if he Bela DICOM had your blood
honor and property are sacred to each other, so look after it.
Don't let people abuse it in terms of revenge. I let go of the blood
feud between me and this other tribe, and I urge you all to do
the same. I urge you all to look after your neighbors. I urge you
it's all things that the Ummah should be doing between
themselves. Now the question here is this, why the Prophet Muse
These and many people interpret that, again, in the spiritual way?
Because it makes you feel good, but I actually think it's very
political. Because when you consider, for example, that you
know you stand up for each other in the community, you protect each
other's honor. In the community, you come to each other's aid.
Imagine what it feels like to be able to move forward knowing your
community has your back. Imagine what it feels like to know that if
you buckle your community will tell you, don't worry about it.
Get back up. We're still with you. Move forward that you make your
total repentance. Move forward. Go keep doing the good that you're
doing in your society. Imagine what kind of community that
creates. Imagine what kind of community it creates. When Ahmed,
who said that the Prophet saw him, used to treat me in such a way
that I was convinced I was the dearest person to Prophet
Muhammad. And then he makes the mistake of asking him. He went to
Prophet Salla. He says to him, who's the dearest person? He said,
Aisha Lal, he said, amongst the men her father, and after Abu Bakr
Omar buchad Ali said, the more I kept asking, the more I realized
my name was not there. But the point of the hadith is the way
Prophet Sallam used to make, used to make people feel you know, even
in these little things, when you consider people think, okay, I
should make people feel good. No, the reason AMR balas put his life
on the line for Islam and the Prophet sallam, who he had fought
before and opposed the way Prophet Sallam won his heart so
wholeheartedly that he went and took Islam to Egypt. Is because of
the way Prophet Sallam treated. It was a political thing just as much
as it was a spiritual thing. It is about winning people's hearts so
that they fight with you for the sake of Allah subhanho wa taala,
and that they believe in the sake of Allah subhanaw Taal. When ALLAH
SubhanA wa Taala says, you know Allam taraqi, father of Allah and
not seen how Allah has given the example of the good word as a
tree, its branches are high and its roots are deep, and it has all
the seasonal fruits. People read it and say, okay, yes, say nice
words. But look at how Allah describes it deep roots, because
it's the establishes the roots in the community and the society. Why
did the Prophet Sallam say afshallam abeoku, say, salaam
alaikum. When, you know, when I walk down the street and I say
Muslim, and, you know, usually you look eye contact, eye contact icon
said, I'm like while I come as salam, and you, even if you don't
know them, you it's pleasant when you walk in, for example, you
know, through a door and someone says, salaam alaikum. Was I do to
my daughter? I said to my daughter, when she said, Baba, is
it true? Like all Muslims are like brothers and sisters, I took her
to a Somali cafe. I said, Salma. Walk in and say, salaam alaikum,
salaam alaikum. She walked in, salaam alaikum, and the whole
cafe, walaykum as salaamu. And she loves it. She walks in groups of
Muslims just because she loves the effect. She walks in, she's eight
now. She walks in, she goes, Salaam warah. And she loves the
way everybody automatically responds, because it gives her a
thrill. It gives her that sense of belonging. You think it's just
spiritual, but that's how you build the community that stands by
you and ends up mobilizing. It's automatic. It's automatic. And
that's why the Prophet Salim chose that for his final khutbah,
because that's how you build the community that lends it, and
that's why and I finish on this point in in Badr, when the Muslims
went out, I promise the process, when he goes out in Badr, there's
nothing wrong with asking your community. To back you. When the
Prophet mobilized and moved and went out before he went to the
battlefield, he turns on and he says, Ashira Alaya, and the
answer, and sad Muhammad says, As if you're asking ASI ya
rasulallah, as if you want to know if we're ready to go with you all.
And he said, Yes, I want to know. So even the Prophet needed the
reassurance from Ansar. And I think sometimes when it comes to
the community, I think we need to consider, who should we consider
how we can support those who are making the effort, and if they
buckle along the way, are we a community that says, Okay, you
made a mistake, but don't worry. Get back up. Keep going, son. I
got you. Don't worry. Like or are we coming to that says, Oh, and
you condemn him, you know, forever and you.
Bring down all the good that they do. And I think that the Ummah has
power. It's always had power. The reason it's being repressed is
because there's concern over the power that it might be able to
manifest. And the only reason you're not seeing that power at
the moment is because there's a lack of striving. And that's why
on every podcast, somebody made a made a joke. On Twitter, they
said, you know, Sammy says the same thing in every single
interview, but just in different ways. But I like it. I say it's
true because the Quran has been there 1400 years with the same
message, and it is as relevant today as it's been 1400
years.
Well, I think actually, this is a good point. We can summarize the
points that were brought up, and then we can go into part two,
if they'll if they'll tolerate it's weird. So sometimes I get
Chris, it's true. I speak quite quickly. It is true. And I
remember my father when he saw me once on my first interview, LGBT
English. So I went home and I said, Baba, how was it because me,
son, I have a question. He said, What? Why do you talk like
somebody's chasing after you? Why can't you be you become? Just do
minus
0.75,
it's the passion coming through, you know, how about this? I can
end it on. You can? You want to summarize. I have one. I think we
can end it on. It's not necessarily summarize the whole
thing. I just wanted to bring about the main points, which is
one of the first ones was, you know, reframe right? Don't, don't
be pessimistic. When you look at the when you look at the
situation, reframe it into a positive thing. So for example, I
brought up the, you know, the Muslim politicians and how it's
always been this way. And then Sammy countered with, well, why
don't you think of it as a recent phenomena that can easily change?
Right? So reframe your your idea. The second thing was the movement
constantly keep moving, even if the goal is even if the result is
not readily available to you, just the movement itself. There's al
Harka, Baraka, the
Senate guys. You saw them?
Yeah, there is always Baraka in movement. There's barakah in
movement, right? There's blessings in movement. So even, and also, by
the way, there's also, if there is a delay in the outcome, there is
blessing in it, there is good in it, even if it doesn't come when
you want it to. So I think we can summarize the entire the framework
based on, you know, those, those those two points. And I think when
you're had one more point before, I mean, just there's such optimism
in that striving, because you're not, when you're not looking for
an end goal, you're just going to keep moving. Because I don't care
where this ends up, all I know is I'm acting according to Quran
sunnah framework, which is, I think, extremely important for the
Muslims to remember, like this is how all are striving to be. We
don't want it to be, sorry. Don't need those who strive, literally,
they're striving. Allah is the same word was wasted in this life
in Zionist 101, but to end it, this whole striving thing, how
does Allah speak of the reward of that and Suzanne sent as we were
mentioning, he says, wasafam there. Rob pours himself. Is the
one
pouring the drinks for the people in Jannah. So this is a reward
beyond, you know, imagination, and that's all okay. And as I home,
ashgura and a lot right after that, he says, because their
striving was thanked. And to end it on this point as well, some you
know when somebody said to me, Okay, Sam, you've said all this
and the striving, but don't you really, do you really not envisage
any outcome? And I said to them, yes, I do envision outcome, my
ideal outcome, the outcome that I long for, that I dream for, that I
long for, is that at the moment of my soul goes up. The angels say,
Yeah, to Anna sin,
I plead with Allah honestly that after everything, that after
everything, I don't mind that I don't see an outcome in this
dunya, because the only outcome, and I say this sincerely, the only
outcome I want is that when my soul is my body, the angels say,
Yeah, yet to have some identity. At that point, at that moment, at
that moment, I'll know I've won. It doesn't matter what I've left
behind in this dunya, I will know that I've won, that that's it.
It's over. That's the outcome for me. The I don't see an outcome is
dunya, but I know the outcome on the other side, which is that
Jannah, that's what I want. I know. And to get there, Allah will
not tell me, change the whole world. And Allah will say, use the
powers that you have in this dunya. I'll decide the outcome.
But show me you want to strive, and I promise to give you Jannah.
So if anybody does say that, all of this discussion has been so
what we're supposed to do all this with no outcome? No, there is an
outcome. The outcome is that jannah inshallah and Allah makes
us from the people of jannah inshallah,
may Allah empower us to use the blessings He gave us for
the good of Islam and the spreading of Islam. And
so we're not ending yet.
We still got a little bit we got a little bit more so like on the
prophetic mentality podcast, we always try to have, like we said,
Evergreen conversations. You can listen to this conversation three
years from now. Five years from now, it'll still be relevant. We
don't really talk too much about current events, but this is a very
important moment right now, Pivotal. So we do want to get your
opinion on the CS.
Fire, the ongoing ceasefire. Now, where do you think it's going to
go? Do you think this could continue, like it may be a
prolonged situation, and they may have some sort of additional
negotiation? Or do you think this is just a pause on some very big,
massive I'm waiting for the false flag? Hamas attacked us first.
Where they Well, I will say first and foremost. What I will say
first and foremost is you've asked the question that a few clients
have asked, and that the clients are paying and you're not paying.
But so after this podcast goes out, you didn't have to tell that.
Yeah. So after this podcast goes out, no client is going to come to
me to ask the question. But anyway, regardless,
yeah, do you want to? Do you want an answer? No, no, but, but by
clients. But to answer this question, and we'll put the
political analyst hat on, the reason the truce has come about is
because Netanyahu is under pressure domestically, and Biden
is under pressure domestically. Before they didn't want the truth,
so they implemented it, which means they've been forced into a
truce. They're forced into a situation that they don't want,
suggesting that what Netanyahu wants is a return to the military
operations. The reason he can't return to the military operations
is because of that domestic pressure. When Blinken went to
Netanyahu to propose the humanitarian pause, Axios reported
that Blinken told Netanyahu, help us, to help you, because your
atrocities is turning public opinion, but also that Netanyahu
said to Blinken that I need to know that this humanitarian pause
is, quote, not a plan from Biden to lure me into a ceasefire,
suggesting that we think their hearts are united, but koloboum
Chapter. The reason why I mentioned that is, it does appear
that with the extension of the ceasefire now for two days before
I entered in here and a few hours ago, I saw the news has been
extended for two days. It does appear that this might be a
situation that leads to a permanent ceasefire, again in
rebuy and Allah. But I think the dynamics do suggest that there is
a move towards a permanent ceasefire. And one of the ways
that the reason I say that is because Ben Veer, the right wing,
ally of Netanyahu, is loudly condemning the truce and the
hostage exchange, because he believes that this means that
there will not be a military operation after this truce. The
second point worth noting is that the Times of Israel, when the
elderly hostages were released by Hamas, the Times of Israel
reported two weeks ago. You can find this on Google. Actually,
they reported that Netanyahu and the IDF were, quote, frustrated
and annoyed that the hostages were being released because it would
reduce it would threaten the support for a military operation
in Gaza, suggesting that if the hostages are released, Israel will
not have the international support to continue military operation.
The third dynamic worth noting here is that there is increasingly
loud voices now from Israeli allies that have turned against
Israel. The BBC itself actually reported. BBC Wama adrak reported
and said that the in the international allies of Israel
genuinely believe that they're now at a stage where they will
permanently lose their ability to win support from the global south
and lose public opinion, because everybody can see the double
standards. So David Cameron, the new Foreign Minister of the UK,
has now come out criticizing Israel, and what it's doing. The
Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium is calling for sanctions. Macron
has already called for a ceasefire. Spain has said it's
ready to recognize a Palestinian state, and we're already seeing
the Saudis, who ideally want to have normalization, but find
themselves being forced now to increasingly criticize the
Israelis. All of that suggests that the wind of opportunity for
Israel to return to military operations is now closing, and
that's what I think. And I could be wrong. I think that the dynamic
suggests that it is more likely that this will end up a permanent,
unofficial ceasefire. By unofficial, I mean, if you look at
Yemen, for example, there's no official ceasefire between the
Houthis and the Saudis, but it hasn't been fighting for a year
and a half or two years they may. And the reason why Saudi doesn't
want to sign a deal that legitimizes the Houthis, but
doesn't want to fight, and the Houthis don't want to fight, so
they've accepted the ceasefire. It may well be that we will see
extension after extension after extension, not because the
Israelis think they will go back to military operations, but
because the Israelis do not want to be humiliated into recognizing
Hamas by signing a permanent ceasefire. So there will be a de
facto ceasefire, and the debate will shift to, what do we do in
Gaza? Do we bring the Palestinian Authority? Do we recognize Hamas
again? And I think the final thing worth noting is that Netanyahu
party in the Knesset in the parliament is trying to pass a
bill to accelerate the establishment of settlements in
northern Gaza. The reason they're pushing the bill to accelerate. It
suggests that they're racing against time in order to try to
entrench the gains that they've made, suggesting there's a concern
it could be reversed, which suggests that there is a sentiment
that the military operation to further make gains is no longer an
option, so let's entrench what we've already had. So all of those
are simply signs. You know, you're assessing what's happening in
news, but I think it's more likely that the de facto ceasefire will
continue. The Qatari Foreign Minister, ministry spokesman Lulu
al Qatar is in Gaza at the moment as well, which suggested the
Qataris and the official presence there suggest they believe,
certainly that there will be a prolong ceasefire. So Derek
answered your questions, I think there is a good chance there will
be a prolonged ceasefire.
That, I think that Netanyahu is uncomfortable with it, but has
very limited room to maneuver. Okay?
So their only option is, well, to make the gains, because part of
the ceasefire is that anyone who went south can't go back north,
right? So they're going to resettle there, or not resettle.
They're going to settle there, and then, you know, Benjamin will try
to do whatever he can to salvage his party. And I think one of the
reasons that that is becoming a hot topic is because Biden has
suggested that Israel should not reoccupy Gaza and that there
shouldn't be settlements in northern Gaza. And I think that
now what's happening is that as public opinion increases the
pressure, I think there's increasing divergence in terms of
what the end result should be between the Americans and the
Israeli. And the Israelis. Because Biden, according to Politico and
even ener Dugan, also said it as well. There is a growing sense
among Israel allies that nobody wants Netanyahu in power. After
all, this is finished, that Benny Gantz is expected to take over
Netanyahu, and that Biden has made clear to Netanyahu, I don't want
you there. Also the presence of William Burns, the head of the
CIA, for those who don't know, in the political field, when Blinken
is in charge of something that's like a first attempt by diplomatic
officials, when William Burns gets on a plane, that's when the big
boys come out. That's when something serious is and this
Cesar actually came about after William Burns left Washington to
go negotiate it, suggesting that there's a view that Blinken messed
up, and Blinken has been messed and there's they're no longer
tolerating the nonsense that he's doing. And I think that in that
particular context, it may well be that now the polls in Israel, I
think two days ago, they suggested that Netanyahu and his and his
entire alliance would lose any elections that are held today. I
think that Netanyahu now is facing an existential threat to his own
political future. And I think that it appears that as public opinion
increases and Biden gets increasing in trouble, I think
that will only increase the divergence between the Americans
and the Israelis. Having said that, that's a good thing, having
said that, I don't think, I don't think Biden will come out openly
and say, I've turned against the Israelis, but we will see that
sort of soft, that that pressure behind the scenes. And I think
that, and for anybody who says no, I think they'll be returned to war
again, I go back to that point, the fact we have a hostage truce
when Netanyahu is adamantly refusing, means that pressure has
been brought to bear that forced him into a situation that he did
not want, which means there is a force that is in operation at the
moment forcing the Israelis to buckle. I think that's public
opinion. That's why I think everybody should keep shouting
loud and keep roaring about the issue of Palestine and keep
highlighting it. And I think the Americans now are hoping, given
that November is next year, they're hoping, let's end this so
that Muslims have one year to forget, so that they will go and
vote Democrat again. Okay, Abdullah winner. Did you want
anything else to add, yeah, just, I'm curious. Let's say Bibi's
replaced. Does that change? What happens? I mean, what happens to
us? I mean, put it that way, like, what happens now that you have a
half the population displaced? How do things go back to normal on a
besieged country like that? I think that, I think that at the
moment, there are a number of ideas that are being touted. The
first is that an Arab force goes in and acts as a peacekeeping
force in Gaza. CC suggested that they will demilitarize Gaza and
Sisi will offer to keep the Palestinians chained on behalf of
the Israelis in exchange and keep them there so that they don't
threaten the Israelis again. I don't know to what extent Egypt
will actually allow this. The UAE, the suggestions that the UAE
suggested an Arab force could also be placed there, but the Jordanian
Foreign Minister has come out and said, We will not accept any
international forces Arab or non Arab, in Gaza, the Palestinian
Authority, Muhammad Abbas, is worried that he will seem to be
complicit with the Israelis if he takes over Gaza, so he's reluctant
to send the Palestinian Authority over there, Hamas. If you look at
the hostage exchange, a lot of their forces, or the images coming
out, is from the north. So Hamas making a statement that while
they've bombarded and carpet bombed the North Hamas are still
there. Hamas is making that statement to say that we're not as
defeated or weak as you think we are. I think all of those dynamics
suggest that there is no clear plan as to what happens to Gaza
afterwards, or who should rule Gaza. And that's why I think that
we'll go through sort of this sort of stalemate where everybody tries
to present ideas but struggles to implement any of those particular
ideas that chaotic status quo leaves room for a lot of tension
and potentially another war. What I will say, even though it sounds
like I said a lot of words, but didn't say anything at all, the
reason what I will say is that these dynamics and this
uncertainty is a stark contrast to the situations before, before you
could say that the Israelis and the Americans were firmly in
control. The fact that we're speaking in such uncertain
language is, in and of itself, a new development in that it shows
how much the dynamics have changed, that these powers are no
longer in this have this overwhelming control whereby they
can dictate what happens next. The fact you pose that question, what
happens next in Gaza and that no one can answer. It shows the
extent to which the Israeli and US grip on the narrative of the
conflict and the future of the conflict has been weakened over
the years by what the Palestinians have done in terms of activism or
the like. That's a positive in and of itself. I think that when it
comes to something tangible about where Gaza and Palestine go.
Go from here? The blunt answer is, I don't know, but the most precise
answer is that, if you look at history, I think this may well be
the turning point for two reasons. The first is clear that we're
going through a period of the Great Awakening. Public opinion
has shifted so far in favor of the Palestinians everywhere, including
amongst those who supported Israel, it's hard to imagine
Israel ever winning that back there was a Times article. The
Times article, The Times being one of the most prominent papers in
the UK, which said that Israel is losing friends and fast. And we
also saw here in the Hill last week, where they said that
Netanyahu has done such damage to Israel's image, and Israel has
lost public opinion to such an extent that we may not be that our
allies, that he's speaking, quote, our allies, may not rush to
Israel's aid again in future. And the second point here, aside from
the public opinion the Great Awakening, is that
one of the things, and perhaps this lends itself to the point I
made earlier in that people say, you know, where do you get your
knowledge? Or whatever, from Allah subhanaw taala sometimes brings
knowledge at the right time. I, one month ago, was just suddenly
curious in finding a writer sympathetic to colonization, to
see how they view Algeria's colonization. So I found a
historian, Alistair Thorn, who writes a book about Algeria's
independence, and in it, he says, If only the French had done this,
they could have stayed. If they did this, they could have but I
wanted to read it to see how they view the world. And one of the
quite fascinating things, he marks two developments in the Algerian
liberation movement that led to liberation. The first, he says,
was Abdul Hamid bin bedis and his establishment of the jamay al
Muslimeen, the Council of Islamic scholars. He says, the
reinvigoration of the Islamic schools across the country
produced a generation that could speak fluent Arabic, that had an
Islamic understanding of the world view, and they formed the bulk of
the FLN that later emerged 30 years later. And the second point,
he said, was 1945 when France was liberated from Nazi Germany, when
they were writing in the Geneva Convention, every man is born
free. France celebrated in Paris. And then Algerians, because they
felt that they were going to be rewarded with freedom for their
support to France in World War Two and support for the allies,
Algerians in Steve in galma and harata, took to the streets in
that week, France killed 30,000 Algerians. The French say that
book that I'm talking about, they say, the French say 12,000 the
Algerians say 50,000 so I've gone for the halfway point 30,000 so
they killed 30,000 in one week. That historian writes that the
French were convinced that that massacre ended the resistance of
the Algerians. They wouldn't dare to resist again. But he argues
that that massacre was so great that it changed international
support for France, and it also changed the Algerian sentiment
towards the need to finally take to the to the ground and actually
turf and turf the French The point being, is the turning point. Was a
tragic massacre, in the same way that this tragedy might be the
turning point for Philistine.
Okay, it just
seems like there's no way back, like it can't just stop, like 2014
but the world never goes back. Sometimes people always talk about
a return to the status quo, status quo. But there is, I mean, 90
years ago, this world wasn't the official colonization, official
then we had, you know, we had the 1973 oil embargo. We had wrestling
matches. We had China, and then the US. And we had the Cold War.
We had the Iron Curtain, East Germany, West Germany. 1980s we
had the war Iran Iraq. And 1990s you have the Gulf War. You have
Sudan being put under sanctions. So many things happening in the
2000s war on terrorism, Afghanistan or the like 2000 and
10s, you have whatever, Brexit. Nothing ever stays. The world just
keeps moving. I think that those who keep talking about status quo,
I don't know what status quo they're talking the world keeps
moving. The water keeps flowing. It's about whether you're ready to
flow with the water and try to alter its course, or whether you
just get swept up in it and end up suffering through all the stones
and rocks that are being carried in the water itself. Yeah, I think
it's just hard to imagine what it looks like for the people living
in Raza like if they occupy the north and then the population
density is twice as much now in an area that's completely but have
you seen the Iman? Though it's extraordinary, I remember I saw so
So I saw one Gaza shopkeeper, where old, old man bites a few
teeth missing, and he's sitting in a shop, and he goes, SubhanAllah.
They send two aircraft carriers, they send their planes, they send
their ships, then Ashanti. Because Wow, are we that strong? Is that
how they I saw, you know, somebody, his brother died, and he
said, In lalala, when aleha, my brother, Shahid, hamdullah, Asmaa,
rakit, he goes straight, you know, to Jen, you see the way, and
another man in the hospital shouting, we don't cry. Guys, sure
there, sure that it's extraordinary the Iman,
extraordinary, the Iman that they are displaying any man that, and
I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I am better than anyone in
any way. I honestly, truly be if I was in that situation. I don't
know if I would say the same thing. I don't. I really don't.
And you know, it goes back to this idea, even political analysis, the
starting point is always, I don't know what I would do in that
situation. So let me start by putting myself in those shoes. And
often you find honestly, like, it's extraordinary. And I think,
think about it, the reason people are entering Islam i.
In this period that's supposed to be tragic and we're supposed to be
defeated, is because people are marveling at the resilience of the
Palestinian Gaza. And for those who say, but this is a bit of a
callous approach, given that lots of people are dying, I remind
them. Allah says, well at the office, and it's a prolonged area.
It's elongated area to really convince you and reaffirm that
Allah SWT says, do not consider those who've died for the sake of
Allah as dead, but they are with Allah, happy with what he's giving
them. And Allah says, And they call out to the rest of us. They
are calling out to us and saying that they are happy with what
Allah has given and they no longer feel pain or sadness and that they
are celebrating what Allah has given them. Allah doesn't put them
through limbo. They don't go through Day of Judgment, automatic
boom straight there with Allah in Jannah. And I think now it's up to
us who've been left behind to decide what we do, because they
got hamdulillah straight to Jannah. We need to get there
ourselves. So that's why we need to keep striving and keep moving.
And so I think it is two points here. One, I don't think people
know this, but as a percentage of a population, Raza has the most
fault of when you take it percentage wise, like their
population to the number of people. So that's one thing. Like,
where's this Iman coming from? It's like very Quran oriented
community, very, very, very heavily. And another thing, this
whole perspective thing, I mean, this, this whole situation, has
minimalized so many of the Western doubts that we have about, oh, I
was wondering, no one comes out of the rubble from Raza and saying,
like Ahmed, he goes, Oh, you know, I was down there for a while. And
I thought to myself, why did the Prophet marry Aisha? He did, you
know, like no one comes out with these, all these weird, these
doubts that we have in the Western world. I mean, that's not even
secondary, tertiary issues that somehow, someway, someone's losing
their entire faith. No one Allah says, says, Why would Allah evil
happen to us here? The problem evil, all of them coming out.
Hamdan, das, abhan, Allah, Allahu, Akbar, Shahid, Shahid, etc, etc.
That's their framing of Islam and Iman, et cetera. Like, really puts
in perspective for the Western audience to really look at and
say, like, what matters at the end of the day? I mean, these issues
you think, like, oh, I became atheist because of XYZ. Really,
was that really worth it? Well, the guy being bombed and losing a
leg or two says, hamilda, I'll go to Jannah. Have suffered on this
that really places people like their mindset, where they're they
should be. No, it is a perspective, which is why I think
sometimes we, and we in the West, I'll be honest with you, we're in
a very luxurious or privileged position in that. And this is what
I meant in that sometimes when you travel to the other body parts of
the Ummah, because the Ummah is one body, and you see what they've
gone through, how they strived, how they never gave up how Turkey
now is more Muslim than it's been over the past 90 years because of
the efforts of the Muslim community, how Erdogan won the
last election, not because of the economy, but because the Muslim
movement said, we're not compromising on our gains. We're
continuing to protect our gains. We will fix Erdogan in our own
way. We won't allow those who are nostalgic for our oppression to
come back into power. Erdogan might have his faults, but we will
fix our brother, not you. I think when you look at Bosnia, the way
that the mosques now are getting increasingly full, they fought
against communism, or like the reality is, when I go to these
countries and I see those struggles, or Uzbekistan, which is
shaking off the Soviet chains, and other mosques are filling up once
more again as those restrictions are lifted, because the Muslim
community never said, Never said, no, they kept resisting under
oppression, torture and brutality. Let's be brutally honest, like
we're in a much better position. It doesn't compare to the
struggles that the other parts of the Ummah did. And that's why I
think that it is very strange that when you go to those countries,
they don't tell you the Ummah is bleak. They tell you, we keep
going. But the people who live in better circumstances are the ones
who are saying that the Ummah is bleak, and I think that's why
sometimes, I think it's about our perspective and shifting those
perspectives. Allah subhanahu is always in control. He knows what
he's doing. Allah has given a certain set of powers. Let's
deploy it and leave the rest to him. Yeah, 2016 I think was a
tipping point. They tried to take out Urdu then, and I think that's
like the last time, and the people took the streets and said, No way,
yeah. I think that's the when the Western world woke up and it's
like, maybe we can't play these games anymore. Games anymore.
Yeah, we're the community that, have you heard the unmasked
movement, or that most like a documentary that's UK, yeah, you
guys, yeah, we got some clowns over
here. People, this whole thing was, you go to the Majid and the
auntie the uncle is really mean to you, so you'd leave the masjid,
like, oh, it's not, it's not accepting environment for me. And
yeah, like they tell you, you know your hijab is improper, or, you
know your beard's not long enough. The board is very strict, whatever
else, right? They have no control. So you leave them, I don't go back
to the masjid and you Well, I unmasked. I have friends from
Uzbekistan. I remember meeting like, is this like six, seven
years ago? It's not even that long ago. He's telling us how they
cannot go to the masjid because they keep track of who's going to
Jama every Friday. He's like, I have to go to different mosques.
So they don't keep track of me going to the same mosque every now
and then. Right? Are you saying they're literally taking these
Soviet shackles are still coming off, even in a quote, unquote
Muslim country, they can't go to Masjid freely, and they're trying
to, they're going out of their way to figure out, how do I go to a
different Masjid every now and you're like, Oh, it's so tough.
The I remember, even in Turkish elections, like the night before
the first round of the vote, usually Turkish presidents go to
advertise grave, to, you know, to survey said, yeah, you saw the
scenes Erdogan and Aya Sophia, when he went there, and
everybody's there, you know, 1000s of people making dua. That was,
think about it, in the past 90 years. When did you see that in
Turkey? That's Erdogan going and me and making a statement that my
victory will will come from Allah. Some people are like, Yeah, okay,
it was, it was PR. It was, that's irrelevant. The fact is that
Erdogan believed that to win the election, he should go to the
mosque and draw on the Islamic identity to ensure that he can win
that election, not through Ataturk. That's a mighty shift in
Turkey, and that's why I think that sometimes the T people tend
to focus on the buckles and the trips that along the way, but they
neglect the overarching trajectory and trend that is changing from 90
years ago being under official colonization to independence and
liberation to Arab Spring, where we're threatening the
authoritarian regimes. And now, yes, I know it's chaotic and there
are wars, but chaos comes about when one power is unable to
dominate the other they used to dominate, but now they cannot. And
that chaos is not because there's something wrong. It's because
because now the power dynamics have been threatened, because the
people are banging on the door to freedom, the repression is harder,
because the desire for freedom and the advances the Ummah is making
is so strong and so well that they're trying to repress that
once more, I think when people see the struggle, they view it as
weakness, whereas I'm saying that the harder the repression, the
more success you are getting. That requires a harder repression to
push back against you. When you see them repressing harder, it's
because they're concerned a power is growing and manifesting and
beginning to assert itself in a manner that requires a greater
form of repression. So yes, it's getting harder, but that's because
you're moving forward. And that's why I think that Martin Luther
King has a lovely phrase, and I actually think it's a very Islamic
phrase in which he says, you know, if you can fly, fly, if you can't
fly, run, if you can't run, walk, if you can't walk, crawl, but by
God, keep moving. You keep keep moving, keep mobilizing. And I
think that's the spirit that this ummah has, and that's why I think
that those who aren't moving, I think that they're in the
minority. I actually think that those who aren't moving, they are
the ones who the Ummah in Bosnia and Turkey and Uzbekistan in
Malaysia and Indonesia and these they're all mobilizing. And Islam
is growing. And we see in France the Muslim community growing. We
see in Europe Muslim being the fastest growing religion. Why do
they talking? They keep talking about Islamophobia and Muslims
because more and more people are becoming Muslims, not because
they're targeting they all. They are perceiving it as a threat.
Because more and more people are entering Islam. It's because the
Muslims are getting stronger that the repression, equally is getting
stronger. And that's why I think it's all a matter of perspective.
Because when you see it that way, you no longer feel despair. You
feel okay. If we are getting stronger and the repression, how
can I reinforce my brothers and sisters in these places, and
that's why part of you know, I'd like to think that Allah helped
and enabled us to be here, to come to America. And I put it even
today, I said, Look, I thank mass LA and those who brought me here
to LA, but you know, and I said to them for giving me a chance to
plead with the with the Muslims here, the Ummah here, to change
their perspective and to use the power that they have and to show
them what the Ummah looks like through my eyes, because the Ummah
and my eyes look strong, it looks capable, and it has power, and I'm
pleading with them to use that power.
I think that's a great note to end the podcast.
Sammy for joining us this evening. Allah, it's, it's, it's been, it's
been a pleasure. I'm the winner, honorable light, have you? And I
think, well, just so, you know, the reason you, I think you've
resonated with so many people, not to push you up, I can put you down
later, but yeah, from that idea. But really the reason is because
we are so used to political talk. Being so divorced from the Quran
and Sunnah. We are so used to there are very few politicians I
can name off top my head, California and South Carolina,
like one that gives what was here, and he's regular, but he's, you
know, quote, unquote religious. The rest of them are so, you know,
like the the ones we were naming earlier, they just, they're so
divorced from the Quran. And you don't, they don't quote Quran
anywhere even you're saying your own political analysis when you're
talking to quote, unquote non Muslims. It's still in the back of
your mind. And you can frame it like I'm doing, puts it in a great
way, and you use that framework to say, I can still take how the
Quran teaches us and says, there's a moral boundary here, but what
does that moral boundary lead to? And that itself can be
communicated to even a non Muslim audience. So may Allah keep you on
that. I mean, Quran, your family be Quran. All of us, Inshallah,
Samia, actually have a request. You can reject it if you'd like.
But could you just end if there's like, a certain portion of Quran
that you you really enjoy or like they think is relevant because
recited to
end this off, how do believe star rejim In lady one? Yet in
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coronavirus, coronavirus
Subah.
Rabbana become
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benefit Allah
to
fusina while I Prophetic
mentality
podcast, signing off
as.