Shadee Elmasry – A Good Married Life – NBF 394
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of acceptance of Islam as a man's partner and understanding of men's and women's rights in marriage, including their rights to partners and their mother. They stress the need for focus, discipline, and storytelling in learning the fundamentals of Islam, avoiding distraction, and embracing good character for marriage. The importance of physical contact, social media, and modeling is emphasized, along with the importance of respecting signs of Islam and not denying spousal marriages. The importance of practicing learning in language learning and incorporating the SunGeneration into education programs is emphasized, along with the importance of the Bible and shaping the world. The segment ends with a brief advertisement and a YouTube video.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, the most Gracious,
the most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, and peace
and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah
and upon his family and companions.
And may even surpass them, because there were
some checks that are not counted in the
launch good.
And that was all by your support and
all the volunteers and everyone who helped out.
Of course, La Cocina is a soup kitchen.
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367 of course being the address.
Because La Cocina, there's so many La Cocinas
out there.
Restaurants, usually Mexican restaurants.
We're here only a mile out from the
famous Bob Wood Medical Center and University Hospital
too.
Very prestigious one.
And we're brought to you by GRT, Global
Relief Trust.
Which is always raising funds for, raising funds
for Gaza.
And we have helped them raise over 110
,000 GBP, Great British Pounds.
And Omar, that's not even visible, that one.
They gotta give us one with a white
background.
Yeah.
But anyway, today let's get straight to our
program.
You know I despise podcasts that have these
long intros.
And you gotta wait.
Let's get straight to our guest today.
And our subject matter.
So the first thing we're going to cover
is the subject of what makes a good
married life.
You know we just started Starboard.
And maybe Sheikh Mahdi one day can be
one of our mentors.
Because he knows his stuff.
And mashallah, starboardmarriage.com, we've started it.
We also now give mentorship to people who
haven't, they're trying to get married.
We give mentorship now to people who are
engaged and people who are already married.
But they never got mentorship.
People need to learn, that's why.
This is a subject that requires knowledge.
Sheikh Mahdi, you all know Sheikh Mahdi a
lot.
He teaches our Shafi'i Fiqh and our
Arabic language.
Bismillah.
Mashallah.
Salam.
Alhamdulillah.
So the question about what makes a good
marriage.
This is becoming a hot topic.
And it's getting hotter and hotter.
I've definitely noticed this being out in the
west, in the UK.
Because I've been, as you may be aware,
I've been going around different masjids.
I've been doing talks on the Depression &
Anxiety book, other books.
And of course, this book that we're talking
about right now, Haqqa Zujayn.
I've done a few talks on this.
And there are huge problems now with divorce.
We're getting very, very high divorce rates in
Muslim communities.
I was in Birmingham, for example, the second
largest city in the UK, back in the
summer.
And I was actually one of the biggest
masjids in the city.
And I spoke to one of the brothers
in charge there.
And he said that they're dealing with several
divorce cases every week.
Getting to the point where he's actually had
to deal with a case where a couple
is getting married on Monday.
And the divorce is being done on Friday.
We're going into stuff without knowledge.
That's really what it is, without contemplation.
Yeah.
So, alhamdulillah, yesterday we started this course at
British Muslim College last night.
It's an online course.
I've been doing it for eight weeks.
Covering this book by Shaykh Abdul-Khalid Al
-Kharsa, who's a great Hanafi marja from Damascus.
And so what I laid out in my
introduction, I built it up.
And I said, well, number one, your most
important relationship is with Allah.
That's number one.
This is the foundation of every other relationship
you're going to have.
The first relationship is your relationship with Allah.
Your relationship with Allah has to be sound.
And by that, obviously, I do not mean
perfect.
I mean it's sound in the sense that
when you do slip, you turn back to
Allah.
And you seek to repent and you seek
to rectify yourself.
And then when that is in place and
when you accept that you have the relationship
with Allah.
And furthermore, I talked about how you are
Allah's slave.
Now, obviously, I know people have this aversion
to the word slave.
But yes, to be a slave to another
human being is humiliating.
To be a slave to another human being
is degrading.
But to be a slave to Allah is
an honor.
To be a slave to Allah is sharaf.
It's an honor.
And this is one of the things that
al-Qadir Iyad said, the great Maliki scholar.
When he said, what increases me in sharaf,
so much so that I feel like I'm
walking on the Pleiades.
Like I'm walking on Thuraya.
Is that Allah, you've included me in your
statement, ya ibadi.
Subhanallah.
I'm part of that.
When you say, ya ibadi, all my slaves,
I'm part of that.
And then he said after that, and then
you've made Ahmed my prophet.
Subhanallah.
So, to be a slave to Allah is
a sharaf.
It's an immense thing.
The fact that with Allah, you can call
Allah at any time.
You can talk to Allah at any time.
Which is completely different when you're dealing with
human beings and earthly rulers and so forth.
Where you have to book an appointment well
ahead of time.
And then when they finally agree to see
you, it's going to be, for short, maybe
15 minutes.
And when you're with this person, he's going
to be distracted.
And they have other phone calls coming in,
people coming out of the room.
But with Allah, it's prestigious.
It's what Imam al-Sha'rabi called it.
It's prestigious.
Slavehood with Allah.
But my point is, when you accept that,
then you accept that Allah knows you best.
Allah created you and Allah knows you best.
Allah knows what you need.
Allah knows what you need to do to
be happy.
Allah knows what you need to function on
this earth.
And therefore, you're going to accept what the
Messenger of Allah ﷺ has told you.
What Allah has told you and what the
Messenger of Allah ﷺ has told you.
About how to be a husband, how to
be a wife.
What your rights are.
What your responsibilities are.
Because if you think that your happiness in
general and your happiness in a marriage is
going to lie outside of that, then you're
deluded.
You're just mistaken.
You have to accept what Allah has laid
out and what the Messenger of Allah ﷺ
has laid out for you.
So, when we've established that, then we're ready
to accept that.
Again, this is what you were saying before.
This is the big problem.
People are getting into marriages and they have
no idea what their rights and responsibilities are.
Just last week, for example, with the Shafi
'i fiqh class, the essentials class.
We're doing this out of Jamia.
We came across this hadith.
Seeking knowledge and obligation upon every Muslim.
So, what does that mean?
Obviously, yes.
Every Muslim prays.
Every Muslim has to know.
You have to know the fiqh of wudu.
You have to know what is water.
What is Muslim.
Because, Whatever the wajib needs to be completed
is also wajib.
And then I went through the list.
And I said, okay, do you fast?
Okay, well, if you're able to fast, you
have the sita'at of fasting.
Do you have to know the fiqh of
fasting?
Do you have money?
Do you pay zakat?
Do you have money saved up?
Do you have zakat al-fidr?
Are you involved in business?
Do you have trade goods?
Do you have a farm?
Do you have livestock?
Well, then you need to know the zakat.
Let's not do these things.
Are you going to go for Hajj or
Umrah?
You need to know the fiqh of that.
You can't just, don't do what a lot
of people do, just get on a plane
and land in Mecca and hope that someone
will take you by the hand.
No.
Like Imam Nuh makes this very, very clear
in his book Al-Ida.
He says, before you go for Hajj, number
one, you praise the Qarah to see if
this is the year where Allah has invited
you.
And then number two, you do the fiqh.
You study the fiqh.
And then the same thing applies to transactions.
The same thing applies if you're involved in
any sort of business, a shariqah.
Well, you need to know the fiqh of
that shariqah, whatever shariqah you've set up.
Whether you're doing a waqf, you're doing whatever
it is.
You need to know.
And then, obviously, when it comes to marriage,
you need to know the aqam of marriage.
So why are people diving into marriage with
I don't know what kind of expectations, but
not knowing anything about, okay, what are my
husband's rights over me?
What are my wife's rights over me?
What am I expected to do?
Who comes, who takes priority?
Like the very, very first hadith we covered
yesterday, the very, very first, this is the
first hadith that Shaykh starts with, is a
hadith where the Messenger of Allah, says that
the person who has the most right over
a woman is her husband.
And the person who has the most right
over a man is his parents.
Right?
Or his mother.
The Messenger of Allah says his mother, and
then the Shaykh says, by extension, the father
is implied in this.
But, for example, once you have that laid
out, okay, now it's a simple system.
So if you're a woman and you're getting
caught between, okay, well, my dad's saying this,
and my brother's saying this, and my mom
is saying this, okay, what is your husband
telling you to do?
Humans need order.
Exactly, exactly.
We need oneness and focus.
In anything, oneness of focus actually beautifies it.
Whereas, and distraction, even in storytelling, and filmmaking,
and novel writing, they always look at the
unicity of the attention of the reader or
of the viewer.
Same thing with paintings.
Same thing with companies.
In building a company, this is something totally
unrelated, but it also connects with human psychology.
What are you communicating to the customer?
How many different things are you communicating?
You're distracting him.
Whenever human beings are focused, our minds are
stable, our hearts are stable, and we're able
to build upon that.
But without that certain things, how do we
know how to focus it?
Without revelation, how would we know, who do
I owe number one priority to?
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
This is why the Shaykh, Abdul Haidil Kharissa,
he says in the introduction, he says, how
many are the people who they get married
and then they're just absolutely miserable, and that
leads to divorce?
He said, these people, he said, you can
count them amongst the living, but they're really
among the dead.
They're just living such horrible, miserable lives, and
they don't know why.
One of the things I said last night
is people have to have a realistic grasp
of marriage.
Some people have very idealistic ideas of marriage.
They watch Bollywood movies or Hollywood movies or
they think you're going to ride off into
the sunset and it's going to be all
hunky-dory, like a fairy tale.
Then when the first issue comes up, they
go, my marriage is a failure.
I got to end it now.
It's like, no, no, no.
This is human life.
Welcome to planet Earth.
This is how you're going to have trials
and tribulations.
I remember, I was talking to a brother
about this recently.
He had a marriage issue, but I remember
when I first got married, when I was
first considering getting married to my wife, now
my wife, mashallah, she's known for her, she's
a tajweed teacher.
She's known for her tajweed, mashallah.
I remember I was talking to a sheikh,
I know in Leeds, Sheikh Mohammed Tawhid.
He's a Libyan sheikh.
He's been in Leeds for a long, long
time, and I used to translate his khutbahs
way back in the day, like 20 years
ago.
I was seeking his advice, his counsel, and
he was just very, very blunt with me.
He said, okay, so why do you want
to marry her?
I said, oh, well, mashallah, she's got excellent
tajweed.
He's like, okay, so you think marriage is
a giant tajweed lesson?
Is that what, is that your understanding?
You're just going to sit down, and she's
going to recite Quran to you for the
next 75 years.
Again, I'm not saying that's not, it's a
good thing, obviously, but people don't, people don't
see the reality of it.
Again, I was talking to a brother about
this as well.
People, because we have the ahadith when you're
choosing a partner.
The Masha'allah also said, a woman is
married for four things.
She's married for her beauty, and her lineage,
and her wealth, but go for the deen.
But what we discussed, we said that when
people think of deen, they tend to restrict
it to ibadah.
We tend to have a very narrow understanding
of what deen is.
Okay, so I'm going to marry this woman
because, okay, good, she prays five times a
day, she recites Quran, she fasts Ramadan, she
pays her zakat, she's done hajj.
Okay, but what about her character?
Or his character?
Both of them.
What about his or her character?
Are these people, this person that you're marrying,
is he or she affectionate?
Are they compassionate?
Do they, because again, we have this expression,
it's in the Quran, وَيَمْنَعُونَ الْمَعْعُونَ وَيَمْنَعُونَ الْمَعْعُونَ
which we translate as small kindness, and we
call them small, but they have such a
huge effect in a marriage.
It's so significant to have a partner who
just says nice words to you, gives you
a hug, gives you a kiss.
These are such crucial things, a pat on
the back, a shoulder rub.
These are things that people sort of overlook,
and when I've done talks on this book
and so forth, I find it weird to
me, questions come up, people say, okay, I've
been married to so and so, but my
husband never talks to me, or never acknowledges
me, or never says anything.
It's like, okay, well, what's going on?
Are some people assuming, are some husbands assuming
that their role in the marriage is merely
financial?
Is that it?
You're just there to put a roof over
their head and pay the bills?
Yeah.
So, and in Hanafi Fiqh, for example, in
Hanafi Fiqh, I think it's mentioned in this
book, it's also mentioned by Muhammad Zuhayli in
his mawlid, his encyclopedia, that that can be
grounds for a divorce.
A woman can complain to a qadi about
that, and say, my husband is not showing
me affection, he doesn't acknowledge me, he doesn't
say anything nice to me, he doesn't.
So, we have to expand our understanding of
deen.
Deen is not just the ritual worship, because
all that ritual worship, the prayer, the fast,
all of that is meant to refine your
character.
We seem to overlook that.
It's not having an impact.
Yeah, because in a salat, the prayer would
preclude all those things, it would prevent all
those things.
So, we need to be in a situation
where people are embracing the character, taking on
the good character of husband and wife, and
when you embrace that good character of husband
and wife, which is rooted in slavehood to
Allah, rooted in love of Allah, rooted in
the love of the Messenger of Allah, peace
be upon him, then your marriage is not
going to be a case where the two
of you are viewing it like merely contractually,
and you're walking around clipboards, like ticking the
box and saying, yes, I got my right
today.
You actually love each other, and you're doing
these things out of the goodness of your
heart, and moving forward, and just basking in
Allah's glory as you do it.
But, these seem to be lost, people seem
to have these ideas of that marriage is
going to be some wonderful thing.
I'm not going to have any child tribulations.
I've met Mr. Perfect, or Mr. Right, or
Mrs. Wonderful, whatever it is, and then people
get sorely disappointed, and then they just want
to head for the nearest exit.
You know, this subject is so fluid.
Marriage is so fluid.
There are so many different factors.
There are so many different cases, certain scenarios,
people that are in different scenarios.
It's like an ocean, and the bigger something
is, the more constant it needs to be
talked about.
And there, I think that there are very
few dawabits.
You can't take marriage like, you can take
Hajj, and let's divide it up.
Okay, let's divide it up into the Arkan,
and then the Fara'id, and then what
nullifies your Ihram, and then what nullifies all
your Hajj, and other things.
You can't take it like, it's very hard,
I should say.
Maybe you can, but you're always going to
need to discuss other things, because children are
an X factor.
Location of in-laws is an X factor.
Like, so many different possibilities.
Order of children will affect marriage.
The gap between children will affect marriage.
What you have around you, your resources, your
wealth, your schools, your community, that will affect
a person's marriage.
Like, there's a huge difference between a couple
that has a massive support system, and friends,
and Masajid, and a place to go, and
people who don't.
I mean, I talked to a guy, he's
got six kids, they don't have a Masajid
to go to.
Right?
There's no youth center Masajid that has any,
it's a huge factor, right?
Because you're lacking support.
Convert, not convert.
Culture, different culture, inner culture.
There are so many X factors.
The only solution is to constantly non-stop
talk about it in any way, shape, and
form.
People study a lot of stuff, but they
don't study this thing, right?
And this thing can be made better by
study.
What do you think?
I have an idea.
I have an idea.
This is something I am working on, and
much of the British Muslim College have taken
on this study as well.
And I would love your feedback on this,
and here we are declaring it here on
NBF.
In Malaysia, in the Muslim majority states, in
Malaysia, you have to pass an exam.
Yeah.
And do a hard passing, or to do
Hajj.
And it's this, and you actually practice on
a mock cab and everything.
And they have the same thing for marriage.
Before the state is going to marry you
off, you have to do a course, pass
an exam, show that you know what you're
getting into, and then they will marry you
off, right?
And I've spoken to people here in this
country about that.
I even spoke to Dr. Jan Sherazan, I
believe you know.
And he said to me that he looked
into this, and when they did this in
Malaysia, they managed to bring divorce rates down
by about 70%.
It's insane.
You have to pass a class to drive
a car, to make Hajj, in Malaysia, right?
Yeah.
Probably Indonesia too, maybe?
I don't know about Indonesia, but Malaysia definitely,
and they used to do it in Singapore,
they used to do it in Singapore as
well.
You need to pass a class to do
a lot of things in this country.
Right?
You can't touch gas in people's homes, you
know, fixing the gas lines and stuff, without
extensive certification.
Plumbing.
Yeah.
You can't do a lot of that without
extensive certification.
But let's get involved with each other's lives,
let's physically produce a child, and let's just
take it and roll the dice, and let's
just wing it.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
This makes no sense, right?
On a hope and a prayer.
Yeah, it literally makes no sense.
Yeah, so what I've been thinking about trying
to do, I've been trying really hard through
my contacts, I'm trying to get that course
material that they have in Malaysia.
I would love to take that course material
that they have in Malaysia, and then sort
of tweak it for more of a Western
audience, English-speaking audience.
And I've spoken to Mechids about this in
the UK, and there's people who are on
board.
I even spoke to Dr. Mahmoud Aboulti in
Syria about it, and he was like, he's
like, get it for me too.
You know, we can use it.
And I said, obviously, out here in the
West, we can't do that, obviously, at the
government level, but I'm saying, if Mechids, for
example, if Mechids, for example, said to couples,
said to couples, listen, we will not marry
you until you do this course.
Like, you have to do this course, pass
the exam, and then we will marry you.
And if you do our course, pass the
exam, and we marry you, and after that,
you have problems, we will counsel you.
But if you don't do our course, we're
not going to counsel you.
Right?
You're on your own.
Right?
Just put that marker down, that you need
to do this course.
So, for example, that's what's happening with British
Muslim College.
Like, they're, because they've been running, which is
part of Bradford Muslim College, British Muslim College
is the online version, but because they have,
they've been running strong for many, many years
now, and they have a big pool of
students, they've actually said to their students, like,
if you're going to be, they want to
start like a marriage service, like an internal
marriage service, but they said, okay, in order
for this to happen, you need to do
the course, the course I'm delivering now, you
need to do this course.
And they'll do an exam at the end,
and then you're eligible for the marriage service.
Then we will start looking for a potential
spouse for you.
So, I think this is the way we
can move forward, is we need to be
a lot more strict about who we help
get married.
Like, we can't just be doing a nikah
here and there, especially people in the position
of masjid or imam.
You can't just be marrying people off, marrying
people off, marrying people off.
And it's clear that, like, what do these
people actually know?
I'd like to take it a step back
too.
And you need to actually go into the
junior high level, middle school, sixth, seventh, eighth
grade, ninth grade, 10th grade.
You're not going to talk much about marriage,
but you are going to talk about life,
and that this is the natural progression of
life that Allah created for us, and this
is the best.
Nothing makes you happier in life as Allah
made us, more than imam, number one, and
then another person, right?
The opposite gender that you marry, then you
become close to them in every single way
possible, and that's what marriage is, right?
You're not going to be friends with a
lot of other people, but you're not going
to touch each other.
So, it's far more intimate than anything else.
Look at how Allah Ta'ala created Adam.
He created Adam as Arif.
He knew Allah Ta'ala.
He was created saying, Bismillah walhamdulillah.
He created Adam, alayhi salam, and the first
thing he gave him was knowledge.
Then Adam gave a speech to the angels.
Then Adam went and explored an amazing creation,
non-human, and was tired of it after
some period of time to the point that
he took a nap from it, right?
Which is why they say that, al-jar
qabla al-dar, right?
Like the human is more important than the
house that you buy.
It's like who are you living with, amongst.
So, more important than anything else, being in
paradise, is who am I there with?
Am I going to be all alone?
So, then Allah Ta'ala created Hawwa from
him, and that was her first lived experience,
as with Adam, alayhi salam, as his wife.
She didn't live alone, and then marry him.
What is Allah telling us through this?
Like we can glean messages from this.
The first message is that Iman is the
number one thing that makes a human being
happy.
Number two thing that makes a human being
happy is a spouse to marry and having
a good married life.
Look at psychology today.
The number one, two reasons for suicide.
Number one, I don't know my purpose in
life.
Number two, nobody loves me.
And that's why I'm not backing down from
some of these people on Instagram who are
so, I guess you could say, programmed, is
the right word.
They're so programmed that the moment that you
say marriage is more important than career, they
literally have a breakdown, going to a rage.
I would want to respond, but I couldn't
find any substance to respond to.
But they go on a rage.
But we're not backing down from this.
Rage all you want, and maybe that's exactly
going to be this type of behavior is
exactly why people aren't getting married.
But if you're acting like that, that's probably
why you're not getting along with anybody, because
you rage.
That's why no one wants to marry you.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
So the socialization, the belief in society has
to be trickled down from an early age.
And we really have to break down, there
is a stigma.
It's great to talk about divorce and bemoan
divorce.
That's acceptable in society.
But to actually tell people openly in their
Islamic centers, in their Islamic schools, wake up
to real life.
The number one thing is your deen, and
number two thing is your household.
Number three thing is going to be the
money that you make, because, and it is
a thing, it's really important to make, otherwise
you're not going to have a marriage if
you don't make money.
And when you talk about deen, one of
your religious obligations is to support your family.
So when the Prophet said, ترضون دينه و
خلقه from his deen is to fulfill the
obligation financially, right?
So that is huge.
It's a humongous part of it.
But look at the weight that we're putting
on things in comparison to what we are
all admitting is far more important.
From like sixth, seventh, eighth grade, all right,
prepare for high school.
All right, prepare for college.
All right, prepare for grad school.
For what?
So you can work and have a career
and make money.
All right, fine.
That's priority number three.
So if you're spending eight hours a day
on priority number three for 12 years, right?
Then what is priority number two getting?
Yeah, exactly.
Priority two is getting like a five-hour
pre-marital course.
That's probably.
All right, continue for us.
But I've got to say, I know there
are a lot of people who are not
Muslims who have put onto this, right?
Even people like more like the right side
of the spectrum.
I mean, I remember like Jordan Peterson talked
about this stuff before going full-blown Zionist.
Stefan Molyneux, like he was like an atheist.
He talked about this because I mean, he
used to tell, I remember seeing videos of
this way back, this might be 10 years
ago, but telling people, like telling women who
are, especially women who are so driven in
that career mindset, saying, but listen, when you
are old and sick, your clients and customers
aren't going to give a rip about you.
They're not going to come see you.
Right?
When you're old and you're disabled or you're
weak and you need help, none of these
clients and customers, none of them are going
to care about you.
Yeah.
But if you have kids, if you have
grandkids, if you have a spouse, they will
look after you.
They will be there for you.
That's some of the people that just don't
value.
I mean, for example, I was just talking
to, because we were talking earlier about the
importance of physical contact and having that affection
and the compassion, the intimacy.
I was talking again to a brother yesterday,
and I think I mentioned this in the
course yesterday, how during, back to COVID lockdown
days, and there's some pictures that really hurt.
There's a hurt, but painful to look at
because there are elderly people.
These are not Muslims.
These are elderly people in care homes who
prior to the lockdowns, they would have their
grandkids and their kids visit them.
Yeah.
Right?
And their kids would also come into the
care home and spend time with them.
Obviously, there would be physical contact.
There would be the hugging and the kissing
and then the cuddling and whatnot.
And then the lockdowns happen, and then the
contact is reduced to just like waving out
the window.
That's terrible, man.
They all probably died really quick.
Yeah, because I saw the picture.
I saw it before and after pictures, and
it's heartbreaking.
You want to cry because people are, I
saw pictures of people like literally shrivel up.
Like literally shrivel up.
Like you see the woman, like before, she
looks like a grape, and then she looks
like a raisin.
It's like, just how damaged- grief and
loneliness is the number one people, number one
reason old people break down really quick.
And the number one reason why a certain
breakdown could actually be leveled off and slowed
down is love, attention, and keeping them busy.
Right?
Distraction.
All those things.
Keep your mind sharp.
Keep your heart pumping because you care about
something now, right?
And you got people encouraging you.
You got people feeding you.
You got people- and looking at old
age, when people take their parents in, they
get very, very, very intimate, and they become
very knowledgeable on the nature of old age.
And you realize there is nothing better in
old age than pious kids who will go
- who will do what no government care
- whatever a nursing home will do.
The idea of a nursing home is almost
like- I know some people have to
do it.
They have no choice, but it's like torture.
It's like going to jail.
These people don't care about you.
Yeah.
Right?
And their abuse, the amount of abuse that
happens there is unspeakable.
The person can't even talk.
The old person can't even remember.
Can't report anything.
And they're getting abused.
It's like a type of torture.
And it's all connected.
All these family things are connected.
And someone is saying here why we have
to talk about this so much.
Let me ask you something.
What is society made out of?
Is it not made out of families?
Yeah.
The human being cannot exist by himself.
You don't have a proton.
You have a cell.
Right?
Or you have an atom.
You have protons, neutrons, electrons.
You don't see protons going around.
The proton says, I want to leave.
Right?
I'll live on my own.
You can't exist.
It doesn't exist.
It does not exist.
Right?
You are part of this system whether you
like it or not.
The better off it is, the better off
human beings are and society is.
So if you look at Iblis, his number
one attack is on this.
The proof being the Hadith of the Prophet,
peace be upon him.
This is everybody, all the devils report back
to Iblis at the end of the day.
And they say, what did you do?
I did this.
I made him skip a prayer.
I made him smoke.
I made him do this, that, or the
other.
And he's not impressed by any of that.
Finally, one guy says, I've been working on
a project for a long time.
I finally got a couple divorced.
And Iblis says, you come right next to
me here.
And he seats him next to him, meaning
like you are now honored.
Because once you do that, you create so
much trauma in people.
Right?
So much trauma that sometimes they never recover.
In 10 years, they'll be filled with rage.
Right?
So that's why I think it's got to
go back to the priority.
It's got to be, we got to even
go back to elevating this as a priority
that trickles down in Masajid that this is
really the number two thing that's going to
benefit your life.
And if you think otherwise, you're just flat
out wrong.
People think otherwise, well, think it.
Until you're all alone, you're flat out wrong.
That's it.
I remember, also, I think Sheikh Yusuf Gober
was talking about this, how the fact that,
if Allah says, إِنِ جَعَلْ فِى أَرْضِ خَلِيفَ
We are Allah's vicegerents on earth.
How is that maintained unless we procreate and
reproduce?
And how do we procreate and reproduce unless
we get married?
This is absolutely crucial to our entire function
and purpose, why we're even here.
And the point you make, yeah, about taking
care of parents and what that means.
I remember Imam Masha'allah, he made this
beautiful point in his Tafsir about the beautiful
thing of a three-generation household.
When you have children growing up and they
can see the parents, like the dad going
to work or the mother in the house,
but then they see the grandparents in the
house as well.
And so they see people at the end
of their life.
So they see the grandparents praying, preparing, and
so they can see the whole trajectory in
front of them.
So they know, okay, I'm going to grow
up to come to that and then I'm
going to end up like that.
They see the path.
That's so important.
Keep going.
Sorry to cut you off.
Yeah.
So if people are deprived of that, they
don't see how life progresses and how it
ends, then you're just cut off.
You're not seeing the whole thing.
And again, that's how we're supposed to be.
We're supposed to be family based.
We're not individualists like in the West where
people make such a big deal about my
individual good, my own individual benefit.
And then you go and you run off
with your career or whatever, but then you
don't have anyone.
Before we take steps, major decisions, we like
to consider, okay, how is this going to
affect my family?
How will this affect my parents?
How will this affect my siblings?
We think about these things.
It's not just like this is my career
and I'm off with it.
When you mix up ages, you get that
mental stability because I see like, all right,
that's where I'm going with my life.
And youth, when they hang out with the
older brothers of their friends, it's so powerful.
Like when a 15-year-old or a
14-year-old hangs out with an 18
- and a 23-year-old, and that's
actually what happened organically in our communities in
the past and in the present is that
you always had a friend who had an
older brother and that older brother had his
friends.
So by necessity and just organically, you got
a bunch of 14-year-olds and sort
of on the second level of the friendship
are these 23-year-olds, 22-year-olds
because they're connected through the sibling and then
connecting to other guys.
So what you do is you get examples
and human beings need modeling more than anything
else, more important than a book.
That's why I was going to tell you
that this stuff is like a senate and
the senate is what company you keep.
The senate is the idea of like I
saw that guy.
Okay, that's what he's doing.
He's going to medical school.
He has a job.
He's getting engaged.
He's getting married and then you're always following
them.
If they're like 10 years ahead of you,
you're always following seeing what trajectory they're taking
and also sometimes they make terrible mistakes.
You learn from those mistakes too.
It's not just the good that you learn
from.
You learn from their mistakes as well.
What does the Western Society do?
It says no, take people, just put them
in one age.
Yeah, grade school.
Yeah, put them in their grade school and
when they're in college, like they're only altogether.
I think it's one of the most artificial.
The nursing home, the university, they're like extremes.
You're in college, people will say this especially
if they're dorming and they live there.
You're with one set of age bracket for
four years.
Your mental balance is off on what life
is, what's important in life and what's not.
I think it's like completely messes you up.
Yeah.
Well, it's completely like this whole the Prussian
school model that we have in the West
which John Terragatto was an expert talking about
this stuff.
It's so fake this idea that you just
need to be with your own age group
the whole time.
Yeah, yeah.
It's ridiculous.
You're just always with eight year olds, always
with nine year olds.
I've been a school teacher and I've been
in situations like that where I've seen I've
seen like teenage boys they're all 13 years
old and when they're all together in class
they're goofing off, they're really out of control
but then you take them to like the
mesh in the evening for like an adult
class and all of a sudden they're behaving
really well.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like, well, why is that?
Even in one school they're having the scene
in our local Islamic school they're having the
seniors and the juniors teach the little kids
Wudu, right?
Yeah.
How to make Wudu.
It's an example for them.
The older people are like, oh shoot, I'm
actually an example now, right?
So I actually need to these kids look
up to me.
I need to actually act accordingly.
They need to be mature now.
Yeah.
Give them some sense of responsibility.
So all that's really critical.
What else would you like to add to
this subject matter?
I think I would finish this point.
Yes, we've talked about the importance of getting
this course together.
I think that's definitely a big step for
us for helping Muslims in the West is
to have these courses set up and that
we sort of are strict about who we
let get married and who we support to
get married and we make people do a
course and pass an exam and so forth.
I also remember something else that I talked
about last night because you mentioned as well
earlier.
Again, we have to have a purpose and
an objective and I think a lot of
people, again, it's not just marriage but you
mentioned kids.
And one of the things I said last
night to my students is I said that
when you have kids your objective has to
be that you're going to raise righteous kids
and those righteous kids will not only look
after you when you're old but they'll make
du'a for you when you're gone.
Yeah.
If that's not your objective, I don't know
why you're having kids.
If that's not...
What's the point?
Is it just seems like a hiatus dunya
like Allah says?
Is that what it is?
If they're not going to make du'a
for you and read Quran for you and
do other good deeds for you after you
left this world, what is the point?
It seems completely...
And it's like I don't care how many
houses you own or how many millions of
dollars you have, you're a failure.
Yeah.
It's a straight up failure with your kids
if you're not doing that.
I also, I think, to finish on this
section, on this segment, is a beautiful ayah
that is in the book, at the beginning
of the book where Allah says in Surah
Al-Rum that Allah has put an ayah,
I mean ayatihi, right?
That he's about to free.
And I remember Shaykh Yusuf al-Ghabar, like
he made this point on that ayah.
And he said, I don't know if people
realize this, but Allah has made very clear
in this ayah that your spouse is a
sign of Allah.
So whatever you do, even if your marriage
falls apart, never, ever, ever denigrate your spouse.
Never, ever denigrate your spouse.
Even if it goes wrong and you have
to end it for whatever reason, even in
that case, never denigrate your spouse because at
the end of the day, it's still a
sign of Allah.
Yeah.
And you have to respect the signs of
Allah.
So inshallah, if we move forward and we
learn to take these things seriously and when
we root this, we root our marriages in
the Ubudiyah to Allah and the love of
Allah and the love and the message of
Allah to us and we root it in
knowledge and we know what we're doing and
inshallah, as people who run communities and have
missions that we actually step up our game
and make sure that we're not just marrying
people off.
Yeah.
We're actually testing them.
Any group of people that gives enough attention
to a destination and focuses on getting there
will get to that destination and if you
look around you, whether we like it or
not, the bare bone basics of any community
are numbers and having a lot of numbers,
maybe not just, maybe not the goal, but
it definitely is a protective force, right?
It helps in the persuasion even of Islam.
So when I look around, if you were
to look today and I look around and
one out of a thousand people are Muslims
in the world versus looking around and saying
one out of three in every four people,
soon to be one out of three.
One out of four people is a Muslim.
That's not a strong proof but it's definitely
a persuasive measure that will persuade me.
Okay, a quarter of the world is not
going to be that dumb, right?
I'm sure they had some people thinking, right?
It is a number.
That's why shaytan, if you always look at
it, he always tries to make his Janood,
he likes to expand them.
And he likes to make people feel, oh
my gosh, everyone's out to get you.
But that actual reality, right, that's just an
intimidation tactic that there are so many.
And what does the Prophet do to reassure
us?
He says, every single one of you has
10 angels protecting him.
Hadith of Arthmanab, you have an angel on
your right, on your left.
There's so many angels around us to give
us the feeling of numbers, right?
Where I lived in Toms River, New Jersey,
there was a city called Lakewood above us.
Lakewood had the Hasidic Jews look.
Every time we drive up Route 9 north,
you pass by, you spend about five minutes
driving through Lakewood, New Jersey.
And we would look out and these people
are so odd.
They're so weird, right?
And one of their habits, because it was
like sloppy.
It was almost like a ghetto, right?
All the cars are broken.
It smells bad.
The street's not clean.
And you always looked and you just saw
every family has nine and 10 kids.
I'm not kidding you.
It's like a kindergarten was taking a field
trip and it's just a family.
It's like one or two families.
It's like a kindergarten class taking a field
trip, crossing the streets like ducks, right?
And you look, they got 10 kids and
the mom and dad are so young.
It's like, how many kids do these people
produce?
So, and we're like, oh, these people are
so weird.
Like, what kind of life is this?
You live in this little apartment with 10
kids.
All right, fast forward.
To 25 years later.
That area now, the second generation has taken.
They are dominate the whole city of Lakewood.
They run every single position in Lakewood and
the whole city is based upon their needs,
right?
Because they run all the, they voted themselves
into every position.
They're probably 80 to 90% of the
population and they're getting wealthy.
There are restaurants now and the stores, even
the shop rate, they bought it.
The local shop rate, they bought it and
it's now like, I don't know, Glatt something.
Kosher shop rate, right?
And it's high end.
Everything there is high end now.
And now they're seeping into Tom's River.
And our town is trying to stop them.
So what do they do?
They just buy properties cash, live in Lakewood,
but they're now residents in Tom's River too.
Oh, wow.
Now that you're residents, what can you do?
You can vote, right?
Yeah.
It's almost like just look at the clock
and look at your watch and in five
years, Tom's River will be- Instead of
Jewish community.
Yeah.
So it's not that, it just speaks to
the power of population.
Any group of people that focuses on having
more kids is just by sheer brute force
going to defeat their rival opposition who doesn't
believe in having kids.
Yeah.
Right?
It's just a matter of time.
You can hit your head against the wall
if you don't like it, but that's the
result.
That's what's going to happen.
It's just pure demographics.
That's it.
Pure demographics.
Yeah.
And the prophet, peace be upon him, what
did he say to us?
He said, because many people say that the
prophet, peace be upon him, described us at
the end of time.
We're so many, but we're weak.
So therefore, we don't care about numbers.
That's true in one sense, but also, the
prophet did command us to increase your numbers.
I'm going to be proud of this on
the Day of Judgment.
Yeah.
He also said, I'll outnumber you as well.
I'll outnumber the other ummah to improve you.
So let's now turn to your, let's shift
gears here unless you have any final thing
to say.
No, I think we've covered that, inshallah, and
I would just say to people that this
course is currently running live at British Muslim
College.
So you can find it on my Instagram
or Telegram.
We still have seven sessions to go and
it's on, it's recorded, it's available on demand.
So if you're able to join, come join.
It's 8 p.m. UK time, which is
three, well, this week, 4 p.m. That's
a great idea.
That's a great idea to have this course.
Do you have notes?
Slides?
I'm just using the book.
Inshallah.
I'm using the book.
Honestly, the slides are just the hadith on
the screen, but it's the book, alhamdulillah.
Could you put the book up so everyone
can see?
Yep.
So that's it, right?
So the husband and wife.
Very good, inshallah.
You translated it.
Yeah, this was a couple years ago back,
inshallah.
And it's available on?
It's Amazon.
It should be on all the Amazon site.
Very good.
Beautiful.
And it's on nowabooks.com as well.
Very nice.
Nowabooks.com.
Very nice.
And I think, I think they're dose books
as well in the U.S. They have
a U.S. account for dose books.
I think they do.
I think they have some copies as well,
inshallah.
Very good.
All right, so that ends our first segment,
and you can, you want marriage mentorship, go
to starboardmarriage.com, and maybe one day we'll
have an online event with Starboard where you
give a lecture on this, right?
Inshallah, yeah.
That's what we need.
We need attention.
We need movement, right?
It needs attention.
It needs movement.
It needs whatever we could throw at it,
and we go with all our force, and
we'll get to our destination, and things will
be better.
Inshallah.
So let's now turn to another subject.
Why is Arabic one of the most important
subjects?
Well, you don't learn anything about Allah and
His Messenger when you do it, and some
people get bored of it really quick, and
they think it's all theory.
Okay.
Alhamdulillah.
So this is what we were talking about
earlier in our private conversations, and this, I
found this beautiful story.
This is from Dr. Ayman Shihwa, a big
Damascan linguist who's now doing a course on
sha'un fi al-arabiya, just like issues
with the Arabic language, and the great linguist
Tha'lab, he had this complaint.
He complained to a student, al-Mujahid, he
complained to him, and he said, I look
at the people of Quran, and they've busied
themselves with the Quran fafazu, right?
They've engrossed themselves with the Quran, and they've
become successful.
I look at the people of hadith.
They've busied themselves with the hadith, and they've
become successful.
I look at the people of fiqh.
They've busied themselves with fiqh, they've become successful,
and he says, what about me?
I've busied myself with Amr and Zayd, because
that's like the fa'ah, the bufu bihi,
and so forth.
And he says, what's my outcome?
So his students, I think the full name
is Abu Bakr al-Mujahid, he said, I
walked away, and then I had a dream
that night, and I saw the Messenger of
Allah, so I saw the Messenger of Allah,
so he said to me, he said, convey
my salams to Thalib.
He said this in a dream that night,
the Messenger of Allah, said to Abu Bakr,
he said, give my salams to Thalib, and
tell him that he is the sahib of
al-ilm al-mustaqeel, which literally, it's like
the prolonged science, but the meaning, you can
think of it as the all-encompassing science.
It's the science that undergirds everything.
Like you said to me earlier, it improves
everything, because the point is, how do you
understand the Qur'an without Arabic?
How do you understand the hadith without Arabic?
How do you understand books of fiqh without
Arabic?
Like Dr. Ayman, for example, in that dars,
he says, like if a man says, he
al-paulik in dhahabat hunak, wa he al
-paulik an dhahabat hunak.
It's a difference in meaning completely.
In and an.
In and an.
If I say in, that's shartiya, right?
So she's divorced if she goes over there.
But if I say an, it's already done.
Because she went over there.
Exactly.
You see?
That's simply the difference of a hamz, of
a kasr, and a fatzat.
Right?
So, Arabic is that science that just undergirds
everything.
It is the access to everything.
this is what the Metropolitan Law was conveying
in that dream, that you don't underplay this.
And, when we look at the grid, they've
never, they never downplayed Arabic.
They never downplayed Arabic.
Especially people like Muhammad Shafi, people, all the
foreign members, they all put a huge emphasis
on Arabic.
Because Arabic is what opens up the brain
to so many other sciences.
And that's what, that's the feedback I get
from my students.
When they get really into the Arabic, and
they start having to do writing assignments or
reading assignments.
They say, I feel like the neurons in
my brain are reactivated.
It's like things are, things are happening that
weren't there anymore.
It's like foggy, like brain fog goes away.
Yeah.
So, it's, it's a, it's a huge thing.
And the fact that there's about 13 ayats
in the Qur'an where Allah talks about
the Qur'an as being Arabic, right?
This is an Arabic Qur'an.
And the fact that what the Arabs mean,
when they, the meaning of the word Arab
in Arabic is this, is clarity, right?
It's clarity, whereas the word adjunct, the word
that's used for a foreigner, the word adjunct
tends to mean someone who speaks unclearly, someone
who speaks in a way that is hard
to understand.
Which is why we have the word mu
'ajim for dictionary because that helps you catch
the person.
Words that you don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, words that are unclear.
Can you please put up the something, banner
of sorts for the Arabic class of Sheikh
Mehdi?
Yeah.
Sheikh Mehdi will take you up the mountain
of Arabic language and if you're on Instagram,
hop over to Safin Asadi's YouTube channel so
you can see both pictures.
We are with Sheikh Mehdi Lakh.
Right now, he teaches Arabic for Arkview.
He teaches three, three different levels.
He'll take you from scratch and he will
take you up level by level by level.
Go to Arkview.org to become his student.
Let's get back to the critical and important
nature of the Arabic language.
Is that thing on the screen?
The chart?
Okay.
He's going to put it up in a
second.
I wish we had a simple poster for
it.
Maybe Salman could make that for us.
Or you can just put a banner.
Study Arabic with Sheikh Mehdi Lakh at Arkview
.org.
Alhamdulillah.
So yeah, we'll talk about it because that
banner is actually about the levels we're looking
at.
So Arabic has that, it has that rank,
it has that prestige.
And there's no alim worth his salt who
didn't have a long hand in Arabic.
It's just absolutely crucial.
You just don't get, and even in this
day and age, you cannot claim to be,
even if you're dealing with Western academia, with
rare exception, would you claim to be some
sort of expert in the field of Islam
if the Arabic's not there and you're just
relying on translation?
It's so crucial.
But I think also, and this is why
I want to bring up the importance of
the proficiency test, is we have to understand
that right now the world is changing.
So we are moving away from a Western
-dominated world.
We're moving towards what they call a multi
-polar world where English is not going to
be the dominant medium.
It is right now, and it has been
for several decades, but we're going to be
looking at a place where obviously languages like
Russian, like Mandarin, Chinese, they're going to come
up to the fore.
And Arabic is going to come to the
fore.
Arabic is going to become more important.
So what we're aiming to do here with
Arcview Arabic is we, and this is crucial
for anything, but especially for this, we want
to make sure that everyone has a very
clear goal of where they're headed forward.
So what's been picking up recently in the
Arab world, and I still have my contacts,
my links in Jeddah and other parts of
Saudi Arabia, is that we're now moving to
feel, of course, Arabic proficiency tests.
Because obviously with English, yes, it's been the
case for several decades where there's a whole
structure in place where, okay, if you want
to be an English teacher, you take a
TEFL course or a CELTA course, like these
120-hour programs, and you become a qualified
English teacher.
And then we have these exams that test
English proficiency that have international recognition, like TOEFL,
which has been around for 60 years, IELTS,
which has been around for about 40-plus
years.
So, you know, older than I am, these
tests.
And...
What's the Arabic one?
There isn't one.
That's the thing.
There isn't one.
You see, because there hasn't been that demand.
The one that I'm looking at right now
for our fee right now, which I think
we'll do, is the HAMZA test, which has
only been around for like maybe 18 months,
right, or if that.
Because, again, as you can imagine, because of
sheer economic reasons, there's been a huge motivation
over the past several decades for people from,
say, the Arab world or from Asia, from
Africa, from Latin America, even from Europe, to
go to the UK or to go to
the US and get a PhD or a
degree in English from an American or British
university, because people attach prestige to that.
And then they go back to their home
countries and they get good jobs and they
get a lot of respect and so forth.
Like, wow, you did it.
You got a PhD from America.
And that's how it's been.
But now we're at the growing stage.
We're at the early stages of a shift
where, again, people are not going to be
looking just at America or just at Britain
or just at, you know, people are going
to be looking, OK, well, maybe I can
study in Russia.
Maybe I can study in China.
Maybe I can study somewhere in the Arab
world.
And some of these Arab universities, like Hezbollah
University, for example, they're getting more and more
recognition for their research and things like this.
So these proficiency tests for Arabic are going
to start coming to the fore.
Because, again, you have to understand the demand
has not been there.
I think you know this better than I
do how people flock, people are flocking to
America to get, you know, American degrees or
British degrees and so forth.
But that's starting to change.
So, yes, when I did my MA at
King Abdullah Ziz University, I didn't do an
Arabic proficiency test.
They asked me to do an aptitude test.
I did an aptitude test in Arabic.
Right?
But that wasn't, like, language specific.
That was just to make sure I'm not,
you know, mentally challenged or anything.
Alhamdulillah, I'm not in Arabic.
So we got that.
So what's happening now is there's a test
called the Hamza test, which is the King
Salman Global Academy for the Arabic Language.
It's a new thing.
And they've set up a proficiency test.
And the way these proficiency tests work, especially
we look at English as an example, is
that they're based on something called the Common
European Framework.
Right?
And I believe it's called the Common European
Framework because the Europeans have so many languages.
Right?
So obviously, they're always testing each other to
see if your French is good enough, if
your German is good enough, if you're going
to move around Europe and study different places.
But this is what people are using in
the Arab world.
This is what people use in America as
well for English and so forth.
So, what I'm getting at is, in the
Common European Framework, you basically have six levels.
I forgot.
I only have five fingers on this hand.
So, it's like A1, A2, B1, B2, C1,
C2.
C2 being the highest, A1 being the lowest.
What I've looked in this matter, and I'm
now in active conversation now with the people
who run the Hamza test in Saudi Arabia
through my contacts.
I'm now openly we're discussing how to get
our students onto this exam and so forth.
Is that chart available on the screen?
The chart that's on the website?
Yeah, yeah.
From A1 through to C2?
Yeah, there you go.
There you go.
It's on the screen?
Omar will put it up right now.
Okay.
So, when you look at this chart, what
you'll notice is that this exam covers levels
from A2 to C1.
So, the point here is obviously A1 is
too low to test.
That's people who are basically, they know the
alphabet, they can read a few words and
write a few words and it's just basic,
basic.
There's no point testing that.
And then C2 is seen as too high.
Like C2 is like that's where you pretty
much sound like an English speaker and you
probably have a very, very good vocabulary.
And that's beyond the requirements of most academic
institutions and employers.
Like if you're going to get a job
like in English, no one's going to ask
you for C2 proficiency unless it's something highly
specialized.
So, if you are if you are applying
for like let's say if you're a non
-native English speaker and you're going to apply
to study at a university in the U
.S. or the U.K., they're going to
ask you if you do IELTS, which is
probably the most famous English proficiency test stands
for International English Language Testing Systems.
If you get on a scale of 10,
if you get 6 you can get into
an undergrad program.
Right?
And if you get 6.5 that should
be good enough for like an M.A.
or Ph.D. program.
Now, 6 to 7 now 6 to 7
on an IELTS scale is basically equivalent of
B2.
That's basically upper intermediate level.
That's B2 level.
Right?
So, if that's the case for English, then
I can see that's basically what would happen
with Arabic.
So, with our program with our program with
ARCV, we use especially for the Monday and
Tuesday classes and the intermediate classes is we're
using the Antikythera Series.
The Antikythera Series is based on that model.
Right?
So, like starter like absolute 101 that's your
A1 book.
And then when you move into elementary level
that's your A2 level.
So, basically I have my Monday group is
like halfway through the A2 level.
My Tuesday group is halfway through the B1
level or beyond.
No.
They're halfway through.
So, what this means Alhamdulillah is we have
now we have very, very clear dates now.
Because I've always said to people like it's
a five-year program.
It's a five-year program.
And now we can actually put dates on
this.
So, I would say that for my Tuesday
group they will have completed the B2 book
by December 2027.
Right?
By December 2027 and that's when they will
be and that's basically after just over three
years and a bit of studying they should
be ready to do the Hamza test and
come away with B2 proficiency.
And then the Monday group they would just
be one year behind that.
So, like for them three years by roughly
December 2027 they should be ready to do
the Hamza proficiency test.
And also people who join later catch up
with the recordings they might do it quicker.
But Alhamdulillah that's a clear goal for people.
And part of the reason why this Hamza
test chosen obviously there are not a lot
of tests out there but the good thing
about this is because this actually is officially
run by the government of Saudi Arabia.
So, if for people who again we're trying
to think of the bigger picture I know
I know there are a lot of people
not only where I am in the UK
the people in the US they are thinking
about like should I get up and move
to Medina should I get up and live
in these places should I get a job
in these places this is going to help
you.
Right, obviously if you land in these countries
whatever your field is whether it's dentistry or
engineering whatever and you apply to jobs in
these countries and then you can demonstrate that
you have like B2 at least B2 proficiency
in Arabic as objectively measured and tested by
a government institution Saudi Arabia then you're set
you're set inshallah.
Quick question are you talking about just modern
standard Arabic Fusha Arabic or as Stephen A.
Smith calls it Fusha Arabic or are you
talking about any specific spoken Arabic?
I'm talking about both I'm talking about both
because we have to get we have to
get sort of out of that idea level
because we tend to think a lot about
MSA Quranic Arabic but we have to see
Arabic as bigger than that Arabic is the
language of life it's the language of life
and it's if we just think about for
example we just think about Quranic Arabic we
have to remember that Quranic Arabic is passive
in the sense that yes you can read
the Quran and you can get wonderful and
beautiful gleanings of how Allah speaks to you
based on the words that are used like
something like Dr. Fala Samarai says when you
break down the Quran you see that not
only does every word have like a deliberate
artistic intent it's like every letter does right
and there's meanings that you derive from that
but the point is because it's Allah's speech
it cannot be imitated yeah it cannot be
imitated so we need so you need to
incorporate more of the Sunnah for example because
the Sunnah is the peak of human speech
so people need to focus a lot more
on the Sunnah and read more of the
Ahadi I was talking to some students earlier
on Whatsapp and they were saying what can
we read that's you know that's acceptable for
us that would be easy for us and
I said get a copy I sent them
get a copy of the Dar al-Minhaj
edition not just any edition but the Dar
al-Minhaj edition of the Lethqar of Imam
Hanoi right because that's fully it's beautiful print
it's a beautiful book of education but on
top of that it's fully vocalized all the
haraqats are there all the haraqats are there
and Imam Hanoi's English is very his Arabic
I wish his Arabic is very very straightforward
he's just telling you this is the dhikr
this is the dhikr that you make at
this time this is the dhikr that you
make at that time these are some that
are related to Ahkam and we've read parts
of it like in our Q&A sessions
we got together and just read parts of
the Lethqar together I had my students translate
parts of it we did I actually got
them to translate like a page from it
during the summer like we're doing a Bridge
the Gap course which was our comparative Arabic
English grammar course we did that in the
summer and students loved it and they did
it very very well because so that's what
we're trying to incorporate so the Etiketlem series
that's giving you both that's showing you like
classical Arabic but it's also giving you modern
standard Arabic it's giving you the modern expressions
and phrases so you're learning how to function
in the Arab world you're learning how to
book a flight how to go to a
hotel how to go to a restaurant you're
getting all that but you're also learning about
how to we're covering I incorporate as well
like how to read Ayat how to read
Hadith how to look at these other things
and that's especially what I'm doing with my
advanced class because we've done the Ajramiyya we've
done the Sharjah of the Sunniyya by by
Shaykh Mohamed Ahmed Hamid Rahim Mollah the great
Egyptian Shaykh of grammar at Al-Azhar and
now we're doing on Sarf we're covering Sarf
now we're doing the book called Sarf Al
-Arabi Ahkam Wa Ma'anin so like Arabic
morphology the rulings as well as the meanings
right which is deep people need to know
the meanings so this is and this is
by Dr. Mohamed Fadl Samarai a great Iraqi
scholar and he's the son of Fadl Samarai
who's like probably the greatest living Arabic linguist
right now his videos are great Fadl Samarai
his Tafsir is something else yeah yeah so
that's what we're trying to incorporate and we
want to do the Fadl's book we want
to do we want to do his book
At-Tabeel Qurani Next that's what we want
to do next year and so that's so
that Wednesday group I want us to keep
carry on just just reading reading more beneficial
books so we're trying to incorporate it all
I don't want to be like just chronic
Arabic I don't want to be just be
like Martian Arabic we're trying to incorporate everything
and give people Arabic that has day to
day usage but also Arabic that gives you
the access to the text access to the
great like wonderful amazing corpus of literature that
we have so that's what we're working towards
I think that's a great approach and when
I taught Arabic the textbook that we used
did have sections on that it would have
it was like all classical Arabic but then
it'll have a section here on the side
on very common common sayings in the Egyptian
dialect then a little bit in the Moroccan
dialect then a Syrian dialect just to give
the student a little bit of a background
idea that of how things are said if
they ever were to travel abroad so it
is useful it is very useful very good
yeah so I just think it's really really
important that again that students have a goal
because like you know I've had this discussion
privately that you know I don't we don't
we don't want people to be joining Arthur
Arabic because I've seen other institutes do this
unfortunately where they create like a dependency culture
and it's like that's it you know I'm
your Arabic teacher for life no that's not
what we're trying to do here we want
students to have a clear target like this
is what I'm aiming for and then once
I complete this to these many levels then
I go for my proficiency test I pass
my proficiency test and then I'm free to
go right and again if you're welcome you're
welcome to stay we're not kicking you out
you know I'll teach you forever if I
can in the name of Allah I'll keep
teaching Arabic but you know if you once
you reach that benchmark and you pass proficiency
test and now that's it you're qualified you
can go off you can study at an
Arabic university you can get a job in
the Arab world go for it go for
it so we want to make sure people
have that understanding that's a great idea it's
the Hamza proficiency test is what we're looking
to to get you to pass that test
it gives you an objective document to say
this is what I know right and you
could refer them and say yes they passed
this exam right and so it gives us
just like in a medheb there are certain
books to be covered it gives you an
idea of how far along am I we're
able to talk as well if I'm gonna
for example if I need you to to
teach me or I need you to teach
someone else I can simply ask like what
did you read under right and then you
should have a reference you should be willing
to easily say go ask someone so we
write it with them so the idea of
objectivity and reference it gives great structure to
our study rather than just swimming around and
we don't know what we're doing where we're
going and as I said earlier when humans
have a destination when there's an end goal
then we usually get there humans usually get
to their destination most people don't achieve anything
it's not because of inability it's lack of
a destination or they have one but they
keep changing it and it's a lack of
certainty people can't really that's what I was
saying to you it's like a marketing technique
for example I was listening to this guy
in the UK he was explaining this point
he was saying if you're an airline never
ever tell never ever if your flight's delayed
never ever tell people at the airport your
flight's delayed what does that mean?
exactly but if you tell people your flight's
delayed by an hour it's an inconvenience it's
an inconvenience but they know I have an
hour I can work around that I can
go to the bathroom I can eat a
meal I can buy some souvenirs they have
something to do leaving it open-ended is
a disaster it paralyzes people it absolutely paralyzes
people because you don't know what can you
do?
what does delayed mean?
so we do not want people in that
situation where it's like how long are you
going to be here?
now it's very clear so we can now
say that if you come in and you
start at the A1-101 level you are
looking at 130 if you follow the live
sessions you're looking at 130 weeks basically 130
weeks, right?
which is if we do 30 weeks a
year that's 150 weeks in 5 years right?
but if you get 130 weeks that means
in just over 4 years you would go
from A1 and you would finish B2 level
right?
so after just over 4 years you can
actually go and apply for go for the
proficiency test and get B2 level which should
be good enough for you and if you
want to go for C1 level yes, that's
fine that's fine but like B2 should be
good enough for educational purposes or for professional
purposes in the Arab world ok, very good
it's so important to always bring up this
subject we got to keep pushing Arabic every
discipline has a language right?
pretty much medical the medical field all in
English worldwide coding the coders throughout the world
they're speaking the same language they're coding the
same 1 or 2 or 3 languages so
likewise in our Deen we have a language
and Allah Ta'ala is most wise in
giving setting one language some people ask wouldn't
it have been better if revelation came in
everyone's language?
yeah, that happened in the past but it
didn't unite people it caused division it caused
more division but when you have one language
it brings people together same thing as concept
of one prophet so thank you very much
for coming on really appreciate your time you're
in England right now so it's maybe 9
or 10 o'clock it's 7, 7 Alhamdulillah
7 o'clock in Bradford, England thank you
for coming on Sheikh Mehdi is on at
least once every 2 months always having something
interesting to say he's a prolific translator of
the books of the Syrian scholars he teaches,
he leads our Arabic and Shafi'i Fiqh
course here Shafi'i, both from zero up
the mountain he'll take you Insha'Allah Ta
'ala so sign up at Arkview.org for
Sheikh Mehdi's Arabic Arabic course if you're a
Shafi'i for Shafi'i Fiqh thank you
very much for coming on Alright, shukran Wa
'alaikum Assalam Wa'alaikum Assalam Alright let's take
1 or 2 questions for a wrap up
we're going to take class earlier today I'm
seeing a number of pretty good questions here
about Sheikh Mehdi yes he is a of
European background Russian there's some British there's some
Canadian some American in there but yes he
is a Caucasian convert into Islam he's been
studying for over 25 years and he has
lived in Jeddah Jeddah some people call it
Jeddah Jeddah Jeddah and now he lives in
the UK he lives in England why is
there some discussion about Iblis Iblis' relatives here
did Iblis have an offspring I don't know
but jinns do have offspring yes do we
know that is it kufr or misguided to
believe that his grandson became a Muslim why
would that be kufr Abu Lahab's kids became
Muslim right right Abu Jahl Ibn Abi Jahl
entered Islam it's not so much that that
is a kufr it's just that where would
you get that piece of information the only
place you would get that is a mukashifa
from a person someone saw it in a
dream at that point it's not the belief
it's the fact itself is very speculative at
that point one person saw it as a
dream or whatever mukashifa where is that I
put it on the totem pole of certainty
it's pretty low it's just dhani if you
trust that person who knows if that dream
what the nature of that dream was right
it's definitely not going to be a point
of certainty it's just a statement maybe that
that person had such a dream but ilmul
la yanfa wa jahlul la yadur it's knowledge
that really doesn't benefit and it's ignorance that
doesn't harm you but more important than you
asking about the ruling step back take this
as a learning example don't ask about the
ruling ask about the certainty of the piece
of information where did it come from where
would such an unseen knowledge come from it
can only come from I don't think there's
any hadith about this no ayahs of Quran
about this it's only going to come through
the mukashifa of a sheikh mukashifa or like
a vision or a dream immediately right there
it's speculative it could be right it could
be wrong it's not an insult to the
sheikh at all to say well it's dhanni
so I don't have to believe that it's
not an insult at all those mukashifa those
claims of those spiritual visions if you trust
the person then you may believe it as
a permissible to believe that he had that
vision it could be a very righteous person
and he could see incorrectly you see a
dream that he saw two different things just
like a righteous person who says oh there
he is John is robbing Bob he may
be mistaken that might not be John that
might not be Bob he thought he saw
John visions are no different dream visions are
no different I thought I saw this dream
but it was actually different history books so
where would they have gotten it from so
mukashifa still mukashifa yeah we can immediately say
it's based on a speculative source in the
first place so becomes therefore as a thinking
pattern don't immediately entertain whether it's a valid
or not go back to the actual fact
and question the fact right is that just
like in court John stole says who it
says Bob all right I'm not going to
argue with Bob I'm going to see if
Bob is even a credible witness I'm going
to try to destroy him as a witness
that's called jarh and if he withstands that
then I can discuss his testimony so don't
discuss the testimony right away go back and
see if what the source of the knowledge
is all right are petty bribes permitted such
as getting out of a parking ticket probably
those are minor sins breaking those civil laws
like those those roadway laws all those probably
minor sins thoughts
on muta marriages they're not allowed in Islam
misyar marriages if the misyar marriage in Islam
they formally agree that the women the wife
does not have certain rights which Allah gave
her that part of it is not allowed
it is always her right but in the
marriage itself she may forego it but it's
still her right what's the difference the difference
is that you're entering in saying these are
not my rights anymore that you can't do
yeah but you can get married saying listen
I know these are my rights I understand
you have a certain situation I have a
certain situation and I understand that I have
the right to forego these rights of mine
that is permitted because it's not officially foregoing
her rights Allah gave her certain rights but
within the marriage she may forego those rights
because the reason that that's permitted is because
the moment she no longer wants to forego
her rights she says I'm no longer foregoing
my right and I demand my rights fasting
on behalf of the deceased yeah the Hanafi
school allows you to donate any good deeds
to the deceased and the living the Mariki
school they agree fully on money charitable acts
to the deceased and they disagree on dhikr
but the latter Mariki said that in light
of what all the other Madahib are doing
then we should continue to do that there's
no loss in that at the very least
it's a dua for them even if your
good deeds don't reach them ladies and gentlemen
I'm sorry but we gotta run there's a
lot of questions here there are a lot
of questions here that I'd like to get
to but we gotta run Jazakum Allah Khayran
folks we will see you tomorrow Subhanak Allahumma
wa bihamdik nashhadu an la ilaha illa anta
nastaqfuruk wa natubu ilayk wa al'asr inna
al-insana lafee khusr illa allatheena amanu wa
aminu al-salihat wa tawassu bil-haqq wa
tawassu bil-sabr wasalamu alaykum qibla
as-salamu ala al-jinn sujalu asma'
al-jinnah Ya Allah, Hu
Allah Qalb-e-sirqan-e-Allah