Sarah Sultan – Faith after Betrayal- Processing Pain & Anger in Light of Recent Events
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the need for action to prevent similar experiences and educate women on negative emotions associated with betrayal. They stress the importance of trusting subhana wa ta ta and finding truths in words to protect oneself and avoid future accidents. The speakers also stress the need for healing and re-scripting experiences to re-script one's experiences and use energy to change the sound pattern of words. Consent is crucial for mental health issues and actions, and privacy and open conversations are crucial for healing. memorizing quran is also crucial for one's behavior.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh everyone.
Jazakumullah khair for joining us on today's webinar
on faith after betrayal.
It feels very surreal to be addressing you
all like this and I wish from the
bottom of my heart that this was under
any other circumstances for any other reason.
My name is Hafsa, I am the host
for a lot of Al-Maghrib's programming.
I had the honour to be able to
work with thousands of you all as students
and to support you all on your personal
journeys, to hear your personal stories and your
pain over the past five plus years at
Al-Maghrib and to work in programs where
we support people who have experienced the worst
of traumas as early as last week, one
week to this day.
And as a human, as a woman, this
is kind of, this is a nightmare and
a shock and unfortunately it brings to light
a fear that far too many women have
in spiritual spaces.
Of our lack of safety and Al-Maghrib
has been and has continued and has continued
to be a safe space for us, for
me and for thousands of you all.
So I just want to say that your
pain is our pain, your sadness is our
sadness, your feelings of betrayal are our feelings
of betrayal.
What you're feeling, what everyone is in the
community, there are students especially those who are
particularly traumatized by the details of this heinous
crime.
We share all of that with you.
There's not enough words genuinely to condemn the
actions that have come to light and I
know I will not be able to do
justice to them, I just wanted to take
a second to sit there with that and
to share in that with you all.
And I know this webinar is not going
to be enough to uncover and to unpack
and to heal everything that we're all feeling
right now.
I know the topic is important, faith after
betrayal, I think this is what everyone is
feeling right now and I am honored Alhamdulillah
to be joined today by two people who
are far more qualified to get to justice
to this topic and to hopefully start us
on this healing journey.
Usada Sara Sultan is our resident expert on
mental health and Islamic psychology.
She's taught in-depth courses with us dealing
with grief and trauma and other mental health
challenges.
She's also a licensed mental health professional.
We go to her, she's got a decade
of experience in counseling Muslims and she's just
brings a wealth of much-needed kind of
experience to this session that I hope that
you will all benefit from.
Sheikh Aman al-Shukri is a director, one
of our resident instructors at Al-Maghrib and
he covers matters of theology and tazkiyah and
he brings of course another element of experience
on how to connect with Allah in trying
times.
So Alhamdulillah I am honored to have them
join me on screen inshallah and I'm going
to give a second to Sheikh Ammar to
just address you all inshallah before we jump
into the remainder of the session.
I do want to let you all know
we do have a Q&A box here.
MashaAllah there's many of you, I don't think
we'll be able to fairly manage and support
you all in but we want to make
sure I know everyone has a lot of
questions that they want answers to so please
do submit your questions to the Q&A
box that we have in the chat here
and with that I will pass it off
to Sheikh Ammar.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh everybody.
Alhamdulillah I hope you all are doing well.
In this very very difficult time I know
that I speak for everybody when I say
that we're you know extremely hurt, we're enraged,
we're disturbed, we're terrified, we're upset, feeling betrayed
by the the allegations that came out last
week regarding Hussam Sharif and the sexual abuse
of a minor as a father of two
daughters myself.
It's I know my worst nightmare it is
when it comes to that child when we
read the depraved report the vulnerability of that
child and how it was taken advantage of
in such a evil way it was hard
to read through and we've all been reeling
over the past week you know trying to
make sense of it trying to see how
we can grow and I want to begin
just by a couple of points that you
know people have been asking about with regards
to what were the events that took place
and from a moment of standpoint I just
want to mention a few things to begin
the first was last week Hussam didn't make
it to class we were worried about his
well-being we reached out to a local
AQL team that's his own company where he
teaches Quran through as well and they discovered
that he was under arrest so we did
our own internal investigation and found out that
he had a inappropriate relationship with an adult
student and so we immediately fired him and
released the first statement so the first statement
that was the cause of the firing was
that he had a inappropriate relationship with an
adult student and after that we learned about
the investigation when the minor issue came to
play the abuse of the minor and then
we released the second statement and I want
to begin by just saying unequivocally on behalf
of the motive as you heard from Hafsa
as well that we would never under any
circumstance support ignore or cover up any abuse
sexual abuses wrong spiritual abuse is wrong and
using religion to take advantage of anybody is
unacceptable and it's evil and I remember the
first day that you know we were reeling
as staff in a team you know Sheikh
Waleed our president he asked the question and
he said you know one of the things
that we have to ask is what does
Allah want from us what is our growth
chart from here and I know that that's
a question that I've heard over and over
and over the past couple of days what
is al-Maghrib going to do how is
al-Maghrib going to be better how are
our communities going to be better and so
we listen to our students we listen to
our instructors we listen to our community members
we listen to our staff members many of
whom are female and worked and the answer
was we want you al-Maghrib to do
your best so that this never happens again
we want you to make our communities safer
we don't want words we want action and
so from the get-go as far as
action I want to let you know on
behalf of al-Maghrib that we are taking
action inshallah we are going to launch a
campaign against sexual abuse that's only the beginning
we will work with those who have also
done work in that space you know we're
going to be doing a lot of collabs
with imams with scholars mental health professionals and
community leaders across the nation we're going to
be mobilizing them inshallah and we're very aware
of the pain and the anger that everyone
feels because we feel that pain and we
feel that anger and feel that ourselves and
this issue is a systemic issue it is
beyond this one incident it continues to sting
our communities and we have to ask the
bigger questions of how we got here and
what's needed and then do it this has
to be a bigger reaction than just this
incident it has to be a movement and
inshallah it will be a movement that will
educate a movement that will empower a movement
that will protect we'll be organizing workshops forums
resources that address prevention accountability and healing and
we'll be creating environments inshallah where everyone can
feel safe to come forward without fear that's
the test it's not anything that we'll be
able to do today or tomorrow or the
day after but we're going to take the
steps we've already started taking the steps alhamdulillah
and we need you to continue to support
us to help us inshallah in the weeks
to come so that this doesn't happen again
inshallah that our communities are better that's our
goal that is the test and the task
that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given
us and we inshallah will rise to the
challenge and i want to welcome sister sarah
how are you doing i know that you've
taught a number of courses within maghreb um
you know recently just one with regards to
dealing with uh with sadness through the lens
of the prophets and you know this is
work that you continuously have been doing for
over 10 years so i want to open
up the floor you're definitely the the lead
of this session today and i'll just be
reflecting your light inshallah so please the floor
is yours so
i had actually made that not to cry
um but subhanallah there's there's a reason for
everything i will say going into this session
obviously feeling very emotional feeling very anxious as
well as i'm sure many of you have
been experiencing the past few days um there's
a feeling of responsibility in wanting to convey
what words can't convey wanting to bring healing
when we are not the source of healing
allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the source
of healing but um but feeling that anxiety
regardless and you know i was reflecting a
lot of times when people talk about betrayal
they describe it as a punch in the
gut right like feeling as though the wind
has been knocked out of you and i
think that that was a very apt description
for myself um a very apt description for
for many of you um a very apt
description for the instructors and staff who have
worked with this person and so in grieving
this betrayal of somebody entrusted to convey islamic
knowledge it hits on so many different levels
it hits on so many different levels for
me and it hits on so many different
levels for you as somebody who is first
and foremost a servant of allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala um alhamdulillah a muslima it hits
in hearing the words of allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala being used to abuse another person
in seeing spiritual abuse in um in a
way that was so stark as a mother
to children realizing the dangers that can be
lurking so close to home as a therapist
who has worked with counsel countless i mean
subhanallah survivors of sexual abuse from within their
families from within communities um and then as
somebody who works with him right somebody who
i have been a student of almarib since
since my college years subhanallah it has been
an institute that has brought me so much
knowledge alhamdulillah so much joy the close some
of the closest friendships that i still have
to this day and then being an instructor
with it so it it hit on so
many different levels and it was a really
intense punch to the gut as i'm sure
so many of you have experienced and so
i want to talk about that and i
want to talk about the things that have
been running through my mind that i've been
reminding myself of um that i hope inshallah
can bring some comfort in a time when
words can only do so much right and
so so the first thing that i want
to acknowledge is that betrayal is the betrayal
of trust and the the breach of trust
is a very unique type of trauma betrayal
trauma is in a lot of ways more
difficult than the death of a person right
you know it both they both involve an
intense loss but a betrayal involves a loss
that's on purpose a loss that was a
choice and death is not a choice but
hurting others is a choice and that hurts
more and so trauma that comes with the
betrayal and the anger and the anxiety and
the the disappointment and the disgust and the
overwhelm it it affects us so so deeply
especially when this betrayal is coming from somebody
who is supposed to be in high religious
standing right when it's not even just a
shortcoming it's not a simple mistake this is
this is a crime and this is a
crime where somebody you know has been really
really hurt right and so this can really
shake us very very deeply and whatever emotions
you're feeling whatever intensity of emotion that you're
feeling like i'm sure you're you're seeing this
trickle down into your personal life too right
you might notice that your your fuse with
your kids is a little bit shorter you're
not as patient you might notice yourself feeling
just kind of jumbled and maybe struggling to
focus at work or in your day-to
-day life and that's to be expected right
because something this big when something news like
this hits it it just feels like it
shakes everything right and so and so whatever
you're feeling whatever you're you're navigating it's it's
normal it's normal because this is not a
normal situation and so whatever abnormal feelings we're
experiencing are normal in this situation and so
you know i i took comfort one of
the verses i took comfort in is in
surah al-baqarah where talks about how the
believers were afflicted with so much pain so
much suffering and it's described as they were
so violently shaken that even the messengers and
believers cried out when will allah's help come
and i found that that verse really was
an you know an apt description of that
shaken feeling that that i had been experiencing
and i found a lot of comfort in
the end of that verse where indeed allah's
help is always near even in situations where
we we feel as though like i i
can't this this this astonishment this disgust of
the things that happen is remembering that allah's
help is always near it's always near and
so i was trying to you know rack
my brain and i know you know i've
i've gotten feedback from so many people about
this is what needs to be done this
is what needs to be done this is
and i think people have such amazing suggestions
and what i see in people right is
just this desire for change this this desire
to channel this emotion in a positive direction
and i think that is absolutely the best
step forward is when we have strong emotions
is how do we channel it in a
way that's going to be productive in a
way that's pleasing to allah in a way
where where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
tells us that our responsibility is you help
your brother where whether this your brother is
the oppressed or the oppressor and his companions
ask well okay we understand how to help
the oppressed like we want to free them
from oppression but how do you help an
oppressor right and and he responded by seizing
his hand by stopping the oppression not allowing
him to oppress right and that's what that's
what we as as a muslim community as
muslim organizations as all of these this is
what this should be propelling us to move
forward to ensure that voices are heard and
not suppressed to ensure that there are safe
places that exist for people to share their
experiences so that even you and i in
our own personal lives when somebody comes and
tells us about an experience that didn't feel
quite right that's not just brushed to the
side next steps have to be thought about
right to ensure that like all of these
things are not brushed under the rug and
to break these cycles to break these cycles
so that we don't keep being blindsided by
these things that are happening also realizing one
of the things that i've been thinking to
myself is and telling myself is that you
know we were we were deceived we were
deceived right i think that we always look
back in situations like this we look back
and we think okay well like maybe did
i did i miss something did i did
i miss like did i miss a major
sign that could have told me that this
was a reality that this person could do
and that's in this situation and in so
many other situations that i'm sure you've just
been if you're like me just drained and
exhausted hearing about over the year over the
years all of these different situations that have
been coming up in our community and and
realizing that it's not your judgment that's the
issue here right this is one person's one
person's intense intense failing and this is this
is not something that you have to question
your judgment about where like how could i
learn from him how could i learn from
him i should have known i should have
known people beat themselves up because hindsight is
20 20 but this was not your responsibility
to bear and it doesn't have it this
is not about your personal judgment and the
example that i thought of was when a
prophet of allah was told not to eat
from a particular tree and shaitan encouraged him
deceived him to eat from that tree and
how did he do it he said he
swore to them allah says in the quran
that shaitan swore to them saying i am
truly your sincere advisor a prophet of allah
can can can listen to the whisperings of
shaitan and so it's not about it's not
about that judgment right so you're not alone
and having been deceived this is not a
reflection on your judgment it's not a reflection
on the person that that you chose to
teach you quran right the prophet told us
that towards the end of time there they're
going to be people who seek the world
in the name of religion who seek the
world in the name of that they're that
sometimes people are in a position of power
and that's what they're there for is for
that power not necessarily for religion and they
will put on lamb skin for the sake
of appearances with tongues sweeter than sugar and
hearts like those of wolves the prophet described
it right so this is not about your
judgment but now it's not your responsibility to
question your judgment it's not your responsibility to
think okay well now can i can i
have can i even trust anybody anymore is
my other favorite speaker going to do the
same thing is something else going to happen
right and then that fear prevents you that
fear prevents you from learning the religion that
you love that's not that's not the path
that's going to bring about healing right our
responsibility is to guard our faith our responsibility
is to realize that our faith is not
in the hands of people like abu bakr
told his his people our ummah when the
rasul died he said whoever worships muhammad then
let them know that muhammad has died but
whoever worships allah let them know allah lives
and never dies right and so this is
something that that is so important and i
for us to remember that our hearts are
not in the hands of people our hearts
are between the fingers of allah and so
these attachments that don't serve us we have
to channel that emotion in a into our
connection with allah subhana wa ta'ala but
i also want to normalize the fact that
whatever doubts you might be experiencing whatever fear
you might be experiencing that's normal right it's
you know what's really interesting when you look
at the brain is the brain area that
is required to build trust that same brain
area used to trust people is also used
to trust allah subhana wa ta'ala and
so when when you get like a punch
to that brain area sometimes it can shake
you so deeply and it can even affect
the connection with allah subhana wa ta'ala
which is exactly what you need right now
and that's one of the worst experiences and
i think that's the worst symptom of spiritual
abuse is that it affects our connection with
the source of healing with the source of
safety which is allah subhana wa ta'ala
and but one of the most beautiful things
is that the way allah subhana wa ta
'ala created us is that our brains are
flexible our hearts can change right and so
knowing that even if that's something that you're
struggling with right now and you're thinking to
yourself like i'm just i'm afraid to learn
from anybody more i even i'm afraid to
learn about my faith anymore i'm done with
all of these organizations i'm done you know
with the people that i that i learned
from just and even if that fear now
extends to allah subhana wa ta'ala like
what if i feel like i can't trust
allah subhana wa ta'ala anymore what you're
thinking and what you're feeling is a symptom
of the betrayal like the companion some companions
came to the rasul and they told him
we find in ourselves thoughts that are too
terrible to speak of and the rasul asked
them like you know are you really experiencing
this are you really suffering from this like
they had thoughts about allah subhana wa ta
'ala that they were ashamed to mention and
then they said yes we are experiencing this
and he said that this is a sign
of clear faith meaning the fact that you
have these thoughts and they're bothering you so
much that they hurt you so much is
a sign of your faith and so we
say the same thing to you is that
if this is something that you're struggling with
that's a sign of how much you love
allah subhana wa ta'ala that you don't
want to have these thoughts you don't want
to have this experience and the thing with
betrayal trauma is that it's different because it
jeopardizes the safety of a relationship that you
would have turned to for comfort when you
were distressed other traumatic experiences don't do that
other traumatic experiences or you get into a
car accident and it's a it's it's a
stranger it's a it's a stranger who wasn't
careful and they hit you right but betrayal
trauma is here's somebody i respected here's somebody
i trusted this this was supposed to be
safe and now not only are is that
is there a betrayal of trust but now
the safety of that relationship that relationship has
been eliminated and so if you were a
student then you know maybe you're or watching
videos of this person was an outlet for
you and now that outlet is no longer
accessible and that outlet makes you feel the
complete opposite emotion that's incredibly shattering right and
so so just realize that that that experience
it absolutely does does shake you and it's
important to remember that when it comes to
allah subhana wa ta'ala that he is
beyond what our minds can imagine and that
we actually trust allah subhana wa ta'ala
in every single moment of every single day
whether we acknowledge it or not every breath
that you're taking as you're listening that's a
trust in allah subhana wa ta'ala that
he's going to allow that inhalation to reach
your lungs we trust allah subhana wa ta
'ala with every every moment that we go
to sleep that inshallah we're going to wake
up we trust that when we take a
bite to eat that that nourishment is going
to access the parts of our body that
we needed to access we're trusting allah subhana
wa ta'ala in our everyday lives and
so when these feelings come realize that these
feelings of mistrust and allah subhana wa ta
'ala are just that their feelings they're not
facts and that the fact is that you
are trusting allah subhana wa ta'ala in
every single moment and so every second of
our life our lives really contradicts that that
thought another thing that i found comforting and
you know in whatever way that we can
be slightly comforted is knowing that our reward
is multiplied the harder the test right and
that when we're tested in this way as
a community the reward is multiplied right where
allah subhana wa ta'ala tells us that
he's made people as a trial for others
will will we have patience and that allah
subhana wa ta'ala your lord and ever
is your lord seeing that allah subhana wa
ta'ala is all seeing he sees this
he sees what's happening and this is this
is our test knowing that our reward is
going to be multiplied and so you know
what i had to do is you know
i had to make the conscious decision to
pick up the quran right and choose to
read it because my my relationship with the
quran my relationship with the words of allah
subhana wa ta'ala are not going to
be dependent on anybody else right and neither
is yours and so when you choose to
pick up the quran or when you choose
to listen to a reciter and when you're
driving somewhere that is your choice to connect
with allah subhana wa ta'ala in a
moment of intense vulnerability and pain and know
that your reward is multiplied because this is
an intense test and also thinking to myself
one of the things that that you know
i i was thinking about through through this
in terms of lessons as a community what
we need to do and then also lessons
for myself as an individual is considering our
own weaknesses the hidden the hidden weaknesses that
we would hate others to know about knowing
that shaitan preys on people with an individualized
attack plan this one this situation is incredibly
depraved so this is an incredibly extreme example
but understanding ourselves and our struggles so that
we can be preemptive in protecting ourselves is
incredibly important and doing good deeds in private
that nobody knows about so that we can
be our best selves in private in the
eyes of allah subhana wa ta'ala not
in the eyes of people and to to
never stay quiet if we if we see
something if we notice something if we feel
like there's something off if there's ever a
situation like that it's so important to be
able to voice that and one of the
things that comes from situations like this is
that we pray that it's going to be
a path towards starting to break these cycles
that when anything happens that doesn't feel right
it is not considered backbiting to talk about
to report it to the right person and
in our communities this is where sometimes spiritual
abuse is is comes into play is using
islamic principles of hiding one another's sins in
a way that perpetuates violence that perpetuates more
harm that is not the mission of islam
right so don't allow people to ever ever
put that doubt in your mind about speaking
the truth and so i wanted to just
um you know leave with just one one
last thing that i want to say and
i'm sorry i've taken time um that in
moments like this i think that myself and
you know so many of us we get
stuck in the fear-based thoughts right we
get stuck in the in the pain-based
thoughts because how else what what else that
that's what we're feeling we're feeling fear we're
feeling pain and so i think it's incredibly
powerful to replace those pain and fear-based
thoughts with truths and where do we find
these truths we find these truths in the
words words of all us nothing not in
the words of people not in the actions
of people but in the words of all
us and so reminding ourselves that you know
people are fallible but allah is not right
where allah tells us that he's allah there's
no god except him he's the king the
most holy the all-perfect the source of
serenity the watcher of all and he describes
himself people may betray you they may forsake
their principles but allah is never gonna leave
you he's never gonna leave you though he
promises us that when he talks to us
that your lord has not abandoned you he
hasn't become hateful of you remembering remembering these
things that people might lie but allah is
the truth allah promises us that in the
quran as well and that people might break
their promises but the promise of allah is
true where allah promises us so be patient
for the promise of certainly is true and
do not be disturbed by those who have
no sure faith our islam our connection to
allah our connection to the quran it's not
dependent on any human being feel what you
need to feel you can't those feelings are
beyond your control like you can't hear news
like this and not feel but remember remember
that your connection to allah is not dependent
on any one person this is a personal
relationship between you and him and i ask
all this to guide us to allow us
to be our best selves in private to
protect us to protect our community and to
grant our community and organizations a way forward
in in the absolute best of ways and
in a way that can that can protect
the most vulnerable amongst us Allahumma Ameen.
Ameen.
JazakAllah khair.
Ustada that was uh very very healing may
allah reward you and you touched on so
much that i would really love to reflect
on but that last thing that you mentioned
is uh or of the last things that
you mentioned you talked about reading the quran
as i was reading through some of the
comments just now uh i can't help but
think two things uh the first is the
idea of when i read the quran this
is the person who taught me how to
read the quran or this is the person
whose videos i watch reading the quran um
and i think it's it's very important for
everybody to remember that you're not reading the
words of the teacher you're reading the words
of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and whether
it's him with regards to the quran or
anytime anybody false and allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala protect us all you remember that the
thing that attracted you to them was not
them it was what they spoke of of
the deen you were attracted to them because
of the quran that they were teaching you
were attracted to them because of the sunnah
that they were propagating and so your attachment
needs to be to the quran and to
the sunnah of the the deen that they
were a vessel of as opposed to the
vessel itself and so if the vessel breaks
that which they were carrying continues to be
beneficial to you um and i'm reminded of
the really important statements of abdullah ibn masrood
the companion of the prophet and he gave
us this advice he's a companion he's giving
this advice and it's one that's held true
for every generation that's alive he says whoever
of you is seeking to the path of
anybody if you're going to take anybody as
a follower in your life then let them
follow those who have passed away let them
follow those who have passed away because someone
who's alive you don't know if they're going
to pass their tests and their trials people
who are alive every single one of us
is susceptible to to to failure in that
sense and we ask allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala to protect us all but when you're
following somebody follow those who have passed away
make sure that and he's talking about the
companions of the prophet but generally that we
always make sure that we recognize that those
who are alive we hope well for them
we we we love what they are teaching
and we love them for what they are
teaching but we don't attach our hearts and
our ultimate iman to anybody after rasulullah and
the companions of rasulullah i wanted to get
your thoughts on that as well jazakum allah
khair i i want to touch on the
the point you mentioned for you know students
who who you know if you if you
have a relationship with the quran that has
been very strongly affected by a particular person
or in this case um we stand that
you know for some of for some people
hearing it hearing it can be very triggering
right and so one of the things you
therapeutically that can help is is having a
um you need to re-script your experience
that's what it's called it's called re-scripting
and so you know for for right now
like listen to a different reciter particularly choose
a different reciter for my sisters out there
choose you you can choose female reciter too
you know there there's access to to female
reciters as well listen to that and you
know i think that your point that these
are not the words of the teacher these
are the words of allah hearing it in
a different voice will help to drive that
point home and then hearing in your own
voice right you yourself aloud reciting the quran
is going to be a powerful re-scripting
experience and so that's something that i would
just recommend to anybody who is maybe struggling
with that is finding a way to to
to to change the sound you know to
change kind of the the sound pattern of
it another point that you mentioned early in
your session but i just wanted to touch
on as well is the importance of channeling
energy like all of this energy really by
caused by the the depravity of the the
allegations i was speaking to a trauma therapist
yesterday and she was telling me she said
you know this is something she listed a
number of cases in the state that she
lives in this case in this case and
she said you know we really just need
to as a community come together and and
tackle this head-on and to tackle it
with courage and there was a question that
amongst the number of questions that i just
saw about like how do we tackle this
and so this like i mentioned at the
beginning this isn't something that we're necessarily going
to to figure out today as we're continuing
to to you know absorb really the effects
of everything that just happened but we are
going to be taking major steps inshallah and
we're we're we're committed to that and we
look forward to inshallah doing it you know
at the beginning when you when you said
you were hoping to not cry i was
hoping to not cry at the beginning too
and someone had asked the question they said
how come women seem to care more than
men maybe my caring doesn't appear with regards
to tears but it's definitely affected us heavily
over the past five days you know the
everything's been messed up with regards to the
way that i've been able to carry myself
but inshallah ta'ala we plan on getting
through this together as a community may allah
bless you all i wanted to open up
for hafsa if you have any uh questions
from the audience inshallah ta'ala we have
maybe around 10 15 minutes left we can
begin with that inshallah unless you have one
more point that you want to address no
i just like you know i think that
you know like you like you said people
people express their pain and their grief in
different ways and and i see it in
i see it in my friends i see
it on the comments on instagram you see
you see the way different people express it
like some people are like okay they they
can't like there are people who have commented
and sent sent like 10 point plans right
like here's what everything this is what needs
to be done right like they're doers and
then there's some people who really need to
just process that emotion and and let it
out and they're venters right and so whatever
way and there are some people who don't
vent at all they don't even speak they're
just quiet yeah some people need to decompress
on their own right like just just in
private and they need to have that that
space you know and so um i will
say that this the past few days um
it this is when i wish i could
have gone back to being a student at
almarib instead of an instructor subhanallah the uh
i think that as you as you see
the um you know a lot of comments
have come through of like why is it
women that are that are speaking out and
not men and i think that you know
or like the male instructors and i think
one thing i i would like to request
of all of you is that to realize
that they're they're human i'm human right we're
all we're all human beings and the the
betrayal that comes from somebody who has worked
with an individual side by side is intense
and now they're not allowed to grieve in
private right like that feeling of not being
able to grieve in private and having to
to be there to be there to support
the community at this time which is which
is a responsibility and it's definitely something that
i felt on my shoulders personally i know
sheikh ammar you felt this too but to
realize that there's a lot of grieving a
lot of grieving too and so to just
to just realize that that's that's something that
that we're all we're all coping with not
just the automotive instructors and the automotive students
but also the automotive staff people who've been
working with your sound for the past nine
years and that point that you mentioned at
the beginning was very profound that to lose
a person to disappointment is sometimes even greater
than to lose them to loss and so
we ask allah to heal all of our
hearts and especially the hearts of the minor
victim that allah heals her heart and that
we become better as a community and so
i want to open up the floor for
whatever questions we have inshallah i know it's
hard to do justice to all the feelings
and all the the needs of the community
but i hope this has been a good
start there's been there's so many questions and
such amazing and relevant and helpful ones right
now we're going to do our best to
get through as many as we can inshallah
in the time that we have allotted the
first one that i want to raise is
that's been submitted is how do we deal
with our kids who are going through a
dip in faith due to their own trauma
when such things come up um that's yeah
so how much so i think it's important
to not like again this is one of
those things that doesn't get brushed under the
rug you know when it comes to this
but you but with children um the the
particular details of the the the interactions and
the crime and the abuse don't need to
be shared so i i would be very
straightforward with them you know of you're no
longer able to do your your lessons or
you're no longer able to watch these videos
by this person because it was found that
he was behaving in a way that's that
a muslim shouldn't behave and we are we
are careful to take our religion we're careful
to learn from people who uphold islam and
once and and once it was found that
he that he he doesn't do that then
now you know we're not we're not going
to take our we're not going to take
our knowledge from there and so having a
brainstorm session with them about you know what
are other resources what are other ways that
we're going to continue our learning how are
you you know and then also giving them
a lot of space to talk about the
dip in faith that they're feeling what are
the thoughts that are going through their mind
validating that it's all normal and then being
able to to to counter that with some
of the truths right but the first step
is always validation like these are very intense
feelings and and kids not knowing the details
of what's going on can't fully understand it
and so it really requires taking a lot
of space for for um how they're feeling
you know what questions do they have they
might ask you know what did he do
and you use your judgment in terms of
how how far you you go with that
i would be very cautious about not going
too far because that would add to the
trauma um but um but yeah just giving
them a lot of space to share those
thoughts without judgment so no like astaghfirullah he's
just a person you we worship allah we
don't worship none of that just yeah you
know i was really i was really hurt
too when you know to so validating and
and sharing that experience i think is a
good first step and then talking about well
how are we going to continue to get
closer to Allah subhana wa ta'ala jazakumullah
khair sir sarah for that beautiful response i
just want to quickly address that we have
hit the cap for the so i do
want to reassure folks have been asking are
we going to record set send this out
so yes everyone who's rsvp'd anyone who wasn't
able to make it to the session because
of time zones etc inshallah we'll be sending
out the recording to you so that you
have a chance to review it with some
more time inshallah um the next question um
that i had submitted was um this crime
slash sin was done so secretly if the
wife hadn't discovered and then reported it then
it wouldn't have continued unnoticed the digital world
makes these sins so easy to hide so
how in the world can someone like this
be prevented from having sorry something like this
be prevented from happening again i don't see
a way so uh the way that so
when i mentioned at the beginning that the
challenge for a model is that the community
is asking is to help stop this in
the future then the way that we approach
it inshallah to add it even if it's
not we're not talking about this particular case
and the privacy that it involves but making
sure that our community is literate with regards
to sexual abuse making sure that there are
toolkits available making sure that we create communities
where men are able to check each other
because we've opened up lines of communication and
we've shifted the culture to where people can
address each other that we make sure that
khatibs are well versed on this topic to
make sure that there are councils of imams
and other things inshallah to add i mean
i don't wanna i'm just brainstorming off the
top of my head but there are many
many things inshallah to add that people are
inshallah you know discussing and as a model
as the board we're going to be knocking
on all of these doors inshallah to move
the conversation in our communities to a place
where our communities are safer that's the goal
inshallah that's the task that we see in
front of us Allah tested us with this
for a reason we believe that inshallah we're
going to move forward with strength and inshallah
the community is going to be better in
the future that's the goal um the next
question i have for sarah is um from
an attendee who's saying i'm just coming out
of a situation at work where i was
subject to a sexual to sexually charged comments
from someone i report to um i always
felt like i had a part to play
and blame and getting into this situation um
and obviously the manner the person in charge
is non-muslim they don't have any morals
about this what advice would you give to
help me um to keep healing from this
and to move forward from it as well
may allah make it easy on you and
grant you a path forward and healing and
safety and embrace you in his protection you
know um you go to work to make
a livelihood not to be put in a
situation like that where you feel so unsafe
and so at risk and um and so
the dread in now having to go to
work and be in this environment is is
very intense so first thing i would definitely
uh recommend that you take the appropriate channels
at work if you depending on the the
type of place that you're at contact hr
file a report don't stay silent about it
um this is something and i think a
lot of times silence is something that is
um it can be scary to speak up
it can be scary to speak up but
one thing to remind yourself of is you're
doing this for you you're doing this for
your healing one of the first steps to
healing is to when you have a traumatic
experience you feel powerless you feel unseen and
so one of the antidotes to that is
to reclaim that power to empower yourself and
to feel seen right you can seen with
allah but you can also feel seen in
the in the dunya by reporting this and
also potentially adding on to reports that other
women before you or other women after you
might be struggling with but i would definitely
recommend that you pursue therapy for this too
because any type of sexual trauma is going
to naturally have uh have an impact and
it does require a lot of a lot
of personal one-on-one work with a
with a therapist to be able to to
to unpack that um and so first steps
to advocate for yourself in trauma in this
and to pursue your own healing through therapy
and trauma the next question that i have
so many we have a few that are
in this um context you know specifically um
from students who are saying you know i'm
kind of in a state of shock that
after a long time i found a good
teacher someone that i trusted and every time
that i'm now reading quran or i'm praying
um i like you know i'm thinking of
his words i'm thinking of his the sound
of his voice and i don't know whether
i should start you know i should still
take the lessons that i learned or start
afresh for my quran journey um and i
don't know at this stage who to trust
and if we know someone is genuine before
you know we trust them into a position
like this in our lives and you know
sorry i'm trying to summarize that but how
do we know which teacher is right how
do we know if a person is safe
for us to learn from i i just
want to say at the beginning of the
offset there's still a lot of good people
out there you know there's um that's part
of allah tells us that one of the
duas of the believers is do not make
us a fitna for the disbelievers do not
make us a trial for the disbelievers that's
one of the duas that the believers make
so it is even more disastrous that a
person be a trial for the believers that
a person be a a source of this
uh this this loss of faith for the
believers and so i want to say that
don't be suspicious of everybody but you should
always have a caution that causes you to
stay at the limits of allah the guidelines
of islam and what i mean by that
is when people look at religious figures at
times they feel like they can lower their
guard down a little bit more because this
person is the individual that you know knows
what the guidelines are or this person is
somebody who's incredibly righteous there's no level of
righteousness that should pick up make a person
let their guard down from the things that
are islamic guidelines so being in physical privacy
for example with a person of the opposite
gender doesn't matter if you're the greatest sheikh
in the world or it doesn't matter or
if you're if you're in the presence of
the greatest scholar in the world that's not
allowed being careful with regards to your interactions
that it is respectful that it is uh
very very limited if it's of the opposite
gender protecting yourself from all of these things
because it is at the end of the
day about not trusting shaitan not trusting shaitan
guiding a person down an evil path and
so i think it's very important that you
always exercise healthy caution no matter who it
is but suspicion of people that's unfounded that
becomes very unhealthy in society as well and
actually another question um for you as well
is um i'm scared that i may go
astray when a person like that with so
much knowledge could do those things like who
am i how do i calm that fear
um so is that for me yes that's
for you it's for you you should we're
all afraid that we may go astray it
doesn't matter who that person is the most
righteous person on earth what do they have
to say 17 times a day they say
guide us the straight path that's our most
consistent du'a that we make in salah
is guide me to the straight path of
the most consistent du'as that the prophet
used to make eternal hearts make my heart
firm upon your uh your religion and i
says that the prophet never used to leave
his house except he used to look up
to the sky and make a beautiful du
'a he used to say oh allah i
seek refuge in you that i slip or
that i be led to slip or that
i be misguided or i misguide others or
that i be oppressed or that i oppress
anybody or that i be ignorant or that
ignorance be done towards me that these du
'as for protection i think in a time
like this when a person feels afraid and
when a person sees a cautionary tale from
somebody else because wisdom is to benefit from
the mistakes of others that i realize that
you know what i should never be deluded
by whatever standard i think i've reached with
regards to religious practice with regards to knowledge
and that i fear slipping at any point
in time myself and so it is i
believe a healthy fear as long as it
doesn't make a person despair or think ill
of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala can i
add one thing to that uh as well
i think that you know part of our
faith is muhasabah right which is holding yourself
to account and being able to hold yourself
to account takes a level of self-awareness
and so i think one of the most
powerful things that we can do is learn
about ourselves to to understand go back on
our days and understand where did i fall
short every single if i cannot go back
in my day and find 10 mistakes 10
things i could have done better then i'm
not being self-reflective enough and this is
not like like shaykh ammar said this is
not to despair this is not to feel
a sense of hopelessness about how bad you
are this is to hold yourself to account
and get better and that's what's different right
is that it's not i'm going through a
checklist of why i'm i'm bad it's i
want to understand what i what i could
have improved on and work on that and
then also really prioritizing private good deeds good
deeds that it's only between you and allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala nobody else knows about
it and so the intention can't be mixed
right there's only the intention between you and
allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and there's no
more beautiful way to grow spiritually than than
um than to do that and that's a
real form of protection because remembering that shaitan
comes to us in small ways and so
trying to build trying to build a fortress
around ourselves to equip ourselves so that okay
if one wall falls there's another wall there's
another there's 10 other walls before before the
main one does and that's that's what we
you know that that's one of the ways
we can protect ourselves inshallah and the next
question i had was for you as well
regarding sexual abuse someone is saying sexual abuse
has been occurring across our various cultures and
the most innocent beings are often hurt by
those closest to them how do we help
victims through local muslim organizations and misogynists so
that they have a place to go when
sometimes even their home isn't safe yeah i
would ideally love to see every community have
have things have access to resources like that
and i think that that's where we go
back to community as a whole right creating
creating safe spaces is not just it's not
just through organizations but it's also through individuals
right being that person on the school playground
who gets to know you know to get
to know the kids you have family friends
where you feel like there are other adults
that your kids can also talk to right
and i think that education as a mom
whenever things like this happen whenever i have
a session with a client where i hear
about sexual abuse every every single time it
becomes a conversation with my kids like from
from the age of at least two i
i think it's important to start talking about
body safety to educate them and there are
amazing resources out there and you'll you'll be
seeing them making their their rounds now but
being able to educate our our children and
educate ourselves as adults i think a lot
of times we you know we put our
trust in people and like uh like she
how much said we don't need to have
like suspicion that everybody is going to fail
and in such a profound way but we
have to safeguard and we have to safeguard
our kids and part of that requires supervision
on our end so you know any type
of online classes in person anything having that
kind of supervision but also having these conversations
we need to have these open conversations because
if we don't start when our kids are
young they're not going to be comfortable to
you know to know that it's safe to
come and talk to to us about anything
that makes them uncomfortable so so that's definitely
i think as a community a place where
where we need to to see some change
so now sarah i'm mindful of the time
i think we'll take maybe one more question
inshallah um and shaykh umar if you can
answer this um person's asking we believe that
memorizing the quran protects you how do we
reconcile this in light of this incident as
we know he memorized the quran and taught
the quran so it's very hard to process
this so i don't want to speak about
the particulars because at the end of the
day Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows best
what people's intentions are and all of these
types of things but the quran does preserve
the quran does preserve but a person also
has to fear things like when i'm reciting
the quran what am i doing it for
what's my ibadah regimen like like ustada sarah
mentioned you know doing worship in private what's
my consistency what's my true religiosity because the
prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us in
a hadith that's reported by abu huraira that
the first three people that the hellfire will
be kindled with one of them is a
scholar there are lots of scholars in the
world who give fatwas and legislate you know
the killing of thousands of people for example
and they have the quran memorized and the
quran doesn't protect them in that way from
doing that which is cut off and so
yes the quran is a tool memorizing the
quran is a tool but memorizing the quran
is a tool when it's followed by actions
the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us
that there are some people who recite the
quran and the quran curses them as they
recite it and allah protect us all why
because they're reciting the quran but they're not
acting in according to the quran and so
it's not just enough that a person memorizes
the quran in the sense of memorizing it
and recites it in the tongue but the
challenge that we all have is that we
present our actions to the quran we present
our actions to the book and we see
am i living in and then the quran
pretends it's when it is recited by the
tongue and it is acted upon by the
heart and the limbs and and it's for
my end to conclude i just want to
say uh number one that's you know it's
just it's just been a very very very
very difficult week for us all and we
we want to make sure inshallah that our
community our muslim community is better off in
the future inshallah that our community is protected
in the future our students are protected but
our muslim communities are protected and so inshallah
we ask you for your duas your support
your ideas inshallah and your energy because it
can't stop today and it can't stop in
a week or two weeks or whenever the
news cycle changes we're committed inshallah to making
this world a better place for our children
inshallah and let this be the catalyst may
allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept from us
all and please inshallah continue to to spread
uh spread the word with regards to you
know um the need for education in our
communities about sexual violence final remarks from you
to um to everybody who who decided to
join today and may allah grant healing and
um and justice to the victim of all
of this may allah allow our communities to
to grow in incredibly profound ways from the
the lessons gleaned from this and may allah
protect us all protect our families protect our
children and um and allow us to to
to grow stronger in our ability to protect
the most vulnerable amongst us allahumma ameen subhanakallah
alhamdulillah and for everyone um for your time
and your attention during this webinar i know
this has not been an easy topic this
has not been an easy time for any
of us um i pray that this is
beneficial the the guidance the discussion that we've
had so far the questions the tip of
the iceberg that we've been able to address
um i do want to say just as
we close off that alhamdulillah um is committed
as we mentioned to this journey going forward
this is not something we are going to
hide from this is something that we are
going to learn from and we are going
to help to educate the community on because
this is what we do as an organization
we don't shy away we don't you know
push things underneath the rug i know it's
been a very quick timeline people have really
big expectations and it's a burden that we
are great you know happy to carry on
as an institution there is a responsibility that
we hold and we will inshallah do justice
to that responsibility with your support we will
be having a another educational session um inshallah
this sunday we'll share more details especially with
those of you who have rsvp'd for this
one um and on and we'll be specifically
discussing healing through the quran please look out
for more details in your email about this
but know that we have a record of
speaking aggressively on when it comes to spiritual
abuse sexual abuse mental health and supporting victims
of trauma we are going to continue to
do that inshallah and as shaykh omar mentioned
we ask for your we ask for your
support and jazakumullahu khair to everyone those who
have given advice those who have given you
know positive criticism trying to help us improve
in our approach we'll continue to take all
of that on we'll continue to improve and
we'll continue to do better inshallah we're gonna
get this through this together inshallah jazakumullahu khair
please take care stay healthy stay safe and
we'll see you guys very soon