Shadee Elmasry – NBF 63 College Trends (Special Guest Chaplain Kaiser Aslam)
AI: Summary ©
The conversation covers the history and culture of Connecticut, including past and current events and guest performers. The speakers emphasize the importance of finding a mentor and sharing stories of people who have experienced similar experiences. They touch on trends on social media, including Facebook's "monster" mentality and the "monster" mentality of young people. They stress the importance of finding a reference point for one's own values and finding a way to create a authentic life. They also touch on the negative impact of social media on people's feelings and perception of their bodies, and the importance of understanding and learning about a certain text of what is done to their language.
AI: Summary ©
For others it's too detail oriented
like second level the third second or third suitable because easy to
read too for beginners beginners Karen Armstrong says if that's
true that's up
now
he will be human Well welcome everybody to nothing but Facts.
Today we have some guests, masha Allah we have a
special guest who's basically like our colleague from down the road.
You are working with the Rucker students as a chaplain or brother
case of
Islam, Islam Islam, because you know we have case your alum Yeah.
Very well. Yes. Everyone is confusing case out. I love him in
case he's a great guy. Yeah, he is. He's a tutor, by the way.
So okay, so Adam,
South Brunswick case on esalaam is the chaplain at Rutgers
University. So Michelle Lata you've been there for four years
now so far I just finished my six six Wow.
Active she comes to this
She's from Connecticut. I don't know if she's here right now, but
we're about to badmouth Connecticut, and say all sorts of
terrible things. There are some beautiful things that come out of
interesting spaces. Yeah. So I mean, that's a good way to put it.
There, because they're, hey, guys you do here?
And
what's going on? What did they say?
You'll take care of okay, so
Connecticut is a place where, to me was a good place to completely
just disappear, and be with my family when I went on with them.
Yeah. Because when we were just growing up and having kids and
stuff like that, and it was literally nothing to do. No
distractions. That's true. Right now we're the exact opposite. Now
there's like, constant non stop, a wedding, a funeral. I mean, party
invitation, this event, this event, this event, this event,
like there's never a day where like, there's nothing on the
schedule, even if there's not as someone will knock on the door.
Right? We have neighbors, the kids are out, right? They're just
always stuff going on. So I guess that's really good for the middle
of a family's life. But in the beginning, this idea that were
like there's literally nothing to do with Connecticut. And that was
the first five years, let's say of when we started having kids and
stuff. But they there was literally nothing to do except go
to the halal market. Yeah, by the meat, maybe whatever, they have
the new new, have a bite out, nothing else to do. So now Chicago
that was very much like New Jersey in that people who are born there
tend to stay there. That's true. That's very true. You have entire
generations that go through there. And I think one of the interesting
things about Connecticut also was it's very transitory to the point
where people go there either for school, and then they leave
Chicago, CONNECTICUT, Connecticut, or they go there for maybe a work
placement thing, and then they leave. And as soon as you get
there, and you're involved in the community, there's almost this
jadedness that people have, like, how long do we have you for?
That's exactly it. They're not completely willing to invest in
you or that relationship just yet, because they're not sure if you're
going to stay for a while. And exactly, it's a safety mechanism
on their end, so totally, and completely appreciate it. I
remember one time, we had a crew, and Omar Bajwa, and a couple other
families. There was a Friday night we'd get together, right? And do
stuff. And he was sometimes busy with the job and see, but all the
other families would I remember one summer, we lost like 75% of
the Yeah, they all left different jobs in different areas. Then it
was like, Oh, this is how it works. This is how it is here.
Right. And then we eventually were one of the people who left so that
was exactly as I as much as I wanted to ensure people like no,
it sounds like we're gonna keep we left after three years. Yeah. So.
But even that isolation element I will appreciate and I think I had
the similar experience of I had just gotten married, and I moved
there and I was actually able to study which you almost never get
to do in a city like Chicago, at least where I grew up. If you try
to sit down back, take the semester off to do what to study,
you know, you're not
going on all the time. You're way too busy. And they're they're the
idea that you have to
Connecticut to leave, everyone's leaving, except that people who
can't afford to leave, right? Yeah, even those guys who want to
leave, you ask the people who actually live in that they want to
leave to Yeah, right and the only thing that I don't think is
actually I don't count as Connecticut as a top north of
Connecticut, where their life is in is in Boston. That's really
true. And the bottom is by themselves and they never show up
to the Connecticut events. Yeah, they're all New York. So Stamford,
which I'm actually going to Stanford June 24 Stamford all
those Eric Greenwich. They don't consider themselves they're not
Connecticut. They're they're they're in New York, especially
because I mean Nyack and stuff is right, right there. You go to New
York City. Go up a little bit. You have Nyack, West Nyack, all those
really nice suburbs in New York City. And Greenwich and Stamford.
Just have a line between them as an artificial border, but
culturally, they're all the same. Yeah. So you Chicago people are
born there. They stay there. New Jersey, same thing. I can't say
the same thing for Virginia. There's a lot of transitory Enos
in Virginia, there's a lot of universities people go there for
university leave, right? Most Rutgers students, their jersey
base kits, right? They are. And there's they're planning to stay
here. Right. So that's what I love about these two places when you go
there. He's I went to hang out in Chicago one time I saw huge groups
of friends. Yeah, right. Like tons of dudes. And they all knew each
other from childhood. So that was the nice part of Chicago and I
think
New York, Jersey is the same thing. Like Central Jersey. We got
friendships from ages and then now we're on second generation stuff.
Yeah, so that's really nice. Now, you you came over to Jersey, you
became the champion in the first place. You were traveling. I was
this is the third place I was a child.
100 in terms of at a university setting, yeah, but this is the
first time where the organization is an Islamic organization. That's
definitely true. Yeah, it was hired by universities beforehand
to from the ground up established a chaplaincy was very different.
That's really hard. So it was very difficult in that way. But it was
also it's been so much more rewarding as a result. Yeah. So
you know, when I got my, when I finished my PhD, I can a, I missed
the first round, because I had some corrections. Because when you
get to a PhD, they give you corrections. I had the same thing
for my master's dissertation. They give you these annoying patches.
And they asked me to add a chapter. I was like, oh, there's
it takes six months. Not that cost me to miss the academic hiring
cycle. So I had to get any old job. And one of the jobs I
actually applied for was Trinity College. Okay, not as a job but as
a chaplain. So I signed up for Arabic. I said, Well, we do have
an opening for chaplain. Yeah. I have no training in this right.
Like I. So they she sits me down. And I sit down and have an
interview with the head chaplain.
Chaplain reed, reed. Yeah. I know that just because I was at
Wesleyan, which is the sister school of
reading read, and somebody else and and we had this interview, but
it very quickly on I realized, like, I realized that this is not
going to work, they really not going to work. And then we just
were chit chatting after a while. Yeah. And that was my only setting
in the world of chaplaincy. But how does it feel for you to when
you're almost like Connecticut, but reverse now the students
coming in? And they're going to be gone? Yeah. Right. So it's similar
feeling right?
I hadn't thought about it that way. But yeah, very much. So
there's a 25%, like, at least 25% change have the entire student
community for a year. And oftentimes, it's more than that,
because I see, usually, the Muslim leadership community is it's
usually two to three years, it's not actually that full four year,
so it's actually an even bigger change per year. And yes, it's
interesting, because I've seen my role go from being kind of more of
like someone who guides what's happening to observing trends and
pointing them out. Because one of the things I've started to realize
and really appreciate, throughout kind of observing the Muslim
community is sometimes there's trends that are healthy to have,
we try to let individuals go through it while the community
progresses, because it's healthy for the individual. But when you
look at it from a communal perspective, it might be damaging.
So we try to walk them through that realizing it might be good
for them, but try to make it so that they can fully process it
rather than harming it anytime a genius. Give me an example.
Because I mean, the classic example that you'll see,
especially in like a mentorship role will be oftentimes someone
inshallah get some guidance for the first time, right, like they
hadn't taken the deed seriously. And they suddenly are overzealous
in compensating for maybe some of the things they had done in their
past. And may Allah accept their efforts. But they oftentimes adopt
a style of approach maybe, or lifestyle, that's way too limiting
of themselves. So even of themselves, it might not last them
for a very long time, or they start imposing this on their
family and friends. And this is where the problem comes in, it's
probably healthy for them. Because of course, we have a belief
system, even in like elbow works, one of the ways that the size of
an accepted Doba, that you make up for the sin that you've just done.
So you introduce a bunch of good habits into your system. And
that's good for you. But the issue is that other people might not be
able to keep up or even you might not be able to keep that up in the
long term. So oftentimes, as you're observing this happen, you
have to recognize that this is good for you. But to spread it to
everyone right now, they might not be ready for it. And it might make
them think that the deen is more restrictive, or this lifestyle is
more unrealistic than it actually needs to be. And that's why I
think that can only happen if there's people are getting their
own guidance on their own without a mentor, or without very close
link to somebody who's been around the block that they could look up
to. And unfortunately, like a lot of us may have come into a
situation where there are elders, but you don't look up to them.
Like they're not you. They're not something special. So we don't pay
any attention to them. Right. And we don't want to be and we don't
want to be like somebody who we see on the internet, we actually
we don't see his real life. Yeah. And we have no idea what phases
they've went through. And all of this we have like this weird
snapshot of who they are, which oftentimes, I think that's one of
things we don't appreciate is that when you have a face to face
interaction with someone you can sit with, they can share with you
a narrative that they've been through when you have like a video
of them at this trough weird peek at that there. You don't get that
human element and recognizing oh, maybe they're actually more
relatable than even I thought they were or that they you're just
seeing like lectures or something or retreats or something like
that. You're not seeing them how they actually live with their
Neighbors like when he's picking cucumbers is you have a turban on
this big and Trader Joe's right? Picking the cucumbers, right? So
there's that element of having your role model sheet or shape or
something that's far away. That's what I went through. Right? I'd
never we never had like we had local the local Imams, but not to
say that we were it was arrogant, but it wasn't the charm that I was
looking for. Right. So I ignored them. And then I was looking for I
think a lot of us can relate to this. You're looking at someone
that you saw online, right? Yeah. And you don't know how they live
in regular everyday life, you have these huge gaps, right?
Do you think like, on Saturday morning, he's just he's he's doing
the same thing he's doing on YouTube, or on? Well, there wasn't
even YouTube at the time, there was just the snapshot of the
intensive, right, and the memory of the intent. That's all you saw
him at. So you don't know what he's doing. So you filling in the
blanks on your own, and without doubt, making big mistakes, right,
and lacking experience, lacking common sense, etc. So that's the
idea where if there are shoe they're living there, and the
people, this is why they say in the books, you see them in all
their states, which means you see them as a dad, you see them as an
employee, you see him as a businessman, you see him as a
regular masala in the community. You see them and all that that's
how you actually can smooth out that religious kick phase that can
be really detrimental if people are filling in the blanks on their
own. Yeah.
So that'll be kind of one example of like, an individual goes
through a trend and the community maybe like girl becomes observing
it, making sure that inshallah the pitfalls don't happen, because
some of that is healthy, like this idea of like, overzealousness, and
then kind of falling back and then okay, what have you learned, like
having conversation after the fact or during? What have you learned?
What if, from last semester this semester, it really listening to
someone as they process it, just pointing things out that they've
already kind of figured out? Okay, so what's you? The, the best and
the worst? What's the worst trend that you see that's, like really
deadly? And what is the most optimistic and the best thing that
you see?
Well, I think the worst will be
this culture of profiles. And I think that a lot of young people
are growing up in and out. To be fair, I also grew up in this to an
extent, though I'm more of a foreigner to it. But this idea
that from a very young age, you had to make a profile that other
people could see, and you're judged on it, and your curation of
it brings you some degree of happiness. We'd like to think of
fake self, essentially. Yeah. And to be fair, a lot of college
students, they grew up in elementary schools having
Facebook's Yeah, and then eventually moving to other forms
of social media. And then the darker sides of it of like when
they're apps that other people will literally rate them based on
this are their opportunities will be presented based on what profile
they put forward.
To think that that doesn't turn into a religious profile, or a
spiritual profile that they have. It's this, this weird mentality
that gets found these social media trends find themselves into how we
run a community, how would we think of ourselves? That's I would
say, like some of the worst trends that I've seen, and it just
completely represented, and that leads to also this like weird
polarization as well, because part of how you define a profile is by
what you're not, it's not just by what you are, but you have to
forcibly remove yourself from what you're not, for example, so
how would you do that on your social media? Yeah. So on your
social media, it would be if you wear certain clothing, you don't
wear certain other clothing, if you take if you always represent
yourself in a certain way of lighting, quote, unquote,
right? Certain spaces that you would affiliate yourself certain
music that you associate yourself with colors, all of these type of
things, they form even in terms of how we talk about the community
that we're a part of. So some of the debates that we have of like
someone's spiritual or someone's more like, Where's the proof of
this? Which community are you coming from what's ethnic
background is coming from, I think that makes itself it's makes its
way into this spiritual communities as well. And to me,
that ends up being extremely detrimental and becomes polarized
very, very quickly. And you start wearing even sometimes knowledge
or religious affiliation or communal affiliation as a badge of
like, I'm part of this, look, I've taken this class, people used to
post like, this is happening, and that becomes the duty of social
capital. Yeah, rather than what it was supposed to do. Like it was
supposed to increase the humility, increase your understanding, of
course, the ultimate truth of creator and creation, like that
was supposed to be only distinction. But what it does
instead is adds a bunch more delineations of how do I see
myself versus the rest of the people around me? So I'm sure
psychiatrists have written about this. And for everyone out there,
the topic on Wednesday is always current, current affairs of the
Muslims. That's the topic on Wednesdays and then we close out
with a DUA. Right?
Especially specifically on Wednesday, and today's I guess you
could say our topic for today is basically trends on
On campus, right? So Ryan, if you want to put this and for some
peoples who are here
want to wonder what the topic is? It's most of them related trends
on campuses, right? And you're gonna be the person who is at the
forefront of all that and the best person to tell us about this. So
we never mentioned our sponsors today. I guess we have to mention
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Sure. Are you familiar with Mecca books and author? Do you ever
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Nursing the Nursing exam, right in the annex, PT, whatever, Nursing
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online and on site. So number three, your art classes Ark
view.org, our classes have started up the extension of the spring
term has started up. So people want to follow with that you can
go to arc view dot O R G, and then you can go to
patreon.com backslash Safina society, and you can give us
support by through our patreon account. So with that
introduction, and now you all know what the topic of the day is, is
current affairs of the OMA trends on campus. And I feel so bad
sitting like above at a higher level than you. But this is, this
is the first time we've had a face to face before that people sitting
here. And it's like I'm turning my neck and it's terrible, right. But
this is the first time we did a face to face. So inshallah we'll
get better as time goes on. But the topic being the worst trend on
campus. And then the best trend, the worst trend, this idea that
people are curating a fake self, right from a young age is really
weird, because now at that point, that person may not have a
reference point to the fact that that's not real right now. And
what's real. And the idea of a reference point to me is so
important. The reference point concept is so important, because
things are going to happen, you're going to develop with certain
things, but you need to be able to say that this is real or fake,
good or bad relative to what Yeah, so that's the idea of, of the pure
upbringing, right? And when I say pure, I just mean simple, right? A
really simple old fashioned upbringing, up to, let's say, late
high school, mid or late high school. Now you have a good solid
number of years by which to say, yeah, that's real. That's life.
And this is that's fan life and family life. And this is something
new, this is something else. Right? But what you're saying is
that when they're curating their lives, from a young age, and now
the curation is increasingly all visible, visual, yeah, like
Instagram is successful, because it's a completely visual app.
Right? And Instagram is successful, because you open it up
and you go straight to it. face for the Facebook app, to me has
become way too complex, right? You open the Facebook app, and then
I use another one, but
which is the Facebook, like pages, right pages for Facebook? I don't
know if that's what you guys see. But I can't by the time I get to
what I need to get to, right, like 10 seconds have passed. And I've
been distracted. Twitter's a much better app, you go straight to it,
and boom, your tweets are there, right? Instagram is straight
visual, right? You as soon as you open it, right? You get the
visuals right away, which probably will really mess up people's self
esteem. Because not everyone is perfectly visible. Like, their
visual is not that great, right? Yeah. So they're gonna I'm sure
there's psychiatrists and stuff. And psychologists, I should say,
who are who have a lot to say about this concept and idea of
creating for yourself
a profile Yeah, a young age where you don't even not even familiar
with reality yet. And I think that that extends into what I would
classify as like another major problem would be that when someone
then tries to tell you how to change something, yeah, it's it's
it sounds like a social attack, even though it wasn't so even
simple things of criticism, like bettering this or doing this, it
has with it like Oh no, you're debasing me in some way because
Isn't my value is based on this image. But if you've criticized
that image, you're criticizing me, which is, in my opinion, so
counterintuitive to a lot of what our tradition says of like the
Skia is built purification building yourself. Yeah. And
sometimes through some pain or growth or burning that type of
thing. So you get better. And you get into this trend of like, you
can't tell me what to do. Because if you do that, you've taken
something away. And then the other side of this is, it doesn't matter
what you do, as long as it's you. Yeah, is that is another just like
extension of this as well, which I think it's all very much related.
Here's another thing with like, it's almost like a GISTIC were in
the old days, you're on the same platform of life, that same
theater or arena of life as everyone else. So an old man, he's
on the same he's gonna He's He's lived on the same arena of life
that you're gonna live in. No different. Whereas the elders of
today, they're not on the same. Yeah, like youth are coming up on
that platform, whether it's whatever the app is, and it's now
it's Instagram probably is and Tik Tok, right, whatever it is, these
are they're always going to change. And then you have elders
that you're looking at, we're trying to give you a piece of
advice. And you're like, you don't even have Yeah, like life on that
platform. So your entire value is totally downgraded. Yeah, right.
And I've seen the way people have looked at like their grandparents,
or even like, even slightly older people, that naughty wouldn't even
be their parents who aren't on those other platforms, those
platforms never existed. And they like aged out of it, they're not
going to open a tick tock account, right? And they got a 49 year old
doctor, right? Who's pretty set in their career. Now. They're not
going to have a tick tock account, they're going to open up a tick
tock, or maybe not even any account, right? Yeah. This guy's
made men. And then he's got like a nephew who's like, 14, he looks at
him like someone who is in another planet. Completely. Yeah, he's not
in the same arena. So they don't value anything that they have to
say. I love this. This actually makes me think of the moving to
thoughts on this one is, yeah, just by the sheer technology
element, people aren't going to be present. Who really should we
should be benefiting from our fathers, uncles, random people in
the community that should have an influence, rather than it being
this chosen group of people because they happen to be on the
technology that's there. And it gets into the echo chamber
discussion of not only that, but you get to curate who you listen
to, when like which group you want to associate with that becomes so
much more emphasized. But the other side of this, I think is, I
think this also explains why certain figures rise to the top
who maybe break out of that mold, and I know right now there's
there's a lot of conversation on like college campuses for people
like Jordan Peterson, for example, I just recently heard his
conversation with Hamza Yusuf. And I was actually very well done. But
why do people like that rise to the top so much? It's because
well, we don't they're usually not here. So when one does break, Oh,
I see becomes that much more important and impactful? And I'm
conflicted, whether that's totally a good thing or a bad thing?
Because do I think some good is happening? Yes. But is it at the
expense of is that the amalgamation of all of your older
male influences that should have been in your life but instead
you've chosen to glob onto this one? So you're saying because he's
like a older professor, you don't expect him to be
in these in these spaces, but because he is suddenly becomes
that much more important or like we should all listen to him and
this and this in the other side of this will be like this invention
of celebrity that's always there. It's just it's just a very odd
phenomenon. Yeah. So that's, that is one of the worst trends and
let's see what people are saying here. First of all,
you have fanclub here Haroon owes money you know, Haroon
this Karim's brother can't be visited. You recognize it? No, no,
no, that is not creams. No, no.
No de Palestinian brothers, you came to drop off the big shipment
for Miss. Oh, okay. So he's not creams, brother. What's created
brothers call it Tom. Okay. I assume Rockstar, graduated Trinity
College. And my siblings went to Wesleyan, Wesleyan was rated as
the number one most atheist school. It is such a secular
experience. But that's what made the Muslim community kind of need
some degree of kind of like a space to be because it was such a
secular environment that
we needed the escape that was provided by the community there
was it was super important and relevant. And they had one
chaplaincy Trinity was things but it was it was joint for a while
when I got there. They had split it and since then, I think we've
kept it separate because there's enough work to be done on both
campuses.
Okay, so let's see who else you have.
The chaplain at Rutgers has done wonders working with the Muslim.
College students. May Allah bless him. I show love. That's your man
I'd met. You know? Okay. All right.
Facebook's UI is a dumpster fire. I totally agree. No was agreeing
with me. You go on to the Facebook app. It's like, a maze of buttons
to find where you want to go.
Nimra says this generation of men are seeing more 10 out of 10
looking women in five minutes than most men in history would have
seen their entire life. Yes, is not normal. Why did you delete
that number? Oh, that was a good comment.
I read it huge.
She is totally right. I don't know how real these women are even
right? How much airbrushing is going on filtering is going on.
Right? And how much is that messing you up in the head?
whether it's real or not? Doesn't in my opinion, even matter? Yeah.
Because what what is the impact that it's having? On a practical
level? That's, that's significant? Yeah. Let me actually fix this
house, can you get that chair back there?
I'm gonna move this so that you're more centered? There you go. Now,
if I come over here, straight,
much better a
little bit more.
Much better.
So she's 100%. Right about that comment? And I think that might
actually be
the case with men. Yeah, and how many dudes are 10 out of 10? Guys
that are that are shown, you know, in these feeds and commercials and
everything that, you know, that aren't? How does how does that
affect the women? To me? It started with women. Yeah, like
women and commercials and magazines. But now it's guys too.
And I would, I would say the impact I'm not sure which one is
actually more the impact that men seeing women or even men seeing
men and women seeing women or women seeking men. Like, I think
it's very similar in terms of what it's doing. I remember reading
just two days ago that it came out that a lot of these like superhero
actors. They've been taking steroids, but they've been silent
about it. Why? Because it's the same thing that's happening.
People look at it, and they're like, Oh, yes. Something that
we're supposed to be trying to achieve. It's having a pretty
significant impact on them as well. Yeah. And I mean, so you
know, these workout videos where the guy says 20 minutes a day.
Yeah, but that's after, first of all, you two, you're 23 years old,
so you're not getting fat in the first place. Now, second thing is
that you're doing 20 minutes a day, after four years of doing
this eight hours a day. Yeah, right. That was like your whole
life was was, was making sure that not an ounce of fat remains on
you. And now you're trying to sell me 20 minutes a day, right? Let's
see you do 20 minutes a day,
at the age of 45, right, and see what it gets you right. So
now, it's such an issue completely, you know, just takes
away everything. I think it's probably the least talked about
like vise and it's so prevalent and the amount. One of the things
that I've had the opportunity of doing is having conversations with
young people as they're on their journey of getting off of
*. Yeah. And what that does is it literally you don't
recognize someone, someone who couldn't make eye contact with
you, someone who like quite literally their social skills were
completely destroyed. They start regaining their life once this
this this vise that had been on hold on them for so long, starts
disappearing. If we look at simply the new Susan, the texts of the
dean, this is the worst thing. Yeah, like this is worse than fake
profiles. This is worse than
all the dietary stuff that we have like, Okay, our food is terrible,
blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. What else do people talk about?
Right? I think this is the worst thing. Yeah, this will make just
make your boss era your your inner eye just completely shut. Yeah,
it's also linked on a psychological level so much that
you
feel guilty about it, but don't want to represent it with other
people you know, you're doing so you can't draw the constraints a
lot anymore, because maybe this is on your mind. Of course, we know
that anything you consume in any way shape or form is it stays with
you. So like a memory becomes becomes a memory that you might go
back to and then if it's guilted you're hiding it, it already
features is that I hide certain things. The most authentic part of
me is maybe hidden somewhere else. It's got so many different
impacts. And if we get into even on like a neurological level, your
pathways of how you feel accomplishment, which is typically
like endorphins in your mind that are completely shot up because
you're experiencing this in a really perverted way. And then the
other side, it's going to be of oxytocin of connection like
genuine connection when you make eye contact with someone shake
hands with someone that's supposed to feel like it did something but
if you're just experiencing the highest levels of that, now people
hold a tie
Have people? Yeah.
In the old days, even in the 80s and 90s, when I was young, like,
you're home alone, you're bored out of your minds, right? Someone
knocks on the door. It's like huge, humongous, right? Someone
knocks on the door. But now it's like, oh, I can't stand the idea
of a human being there right? Now it's when you text somebody, they
these kids don't even answer back. I stopped texting certain people
under the age of now that maybe under the age of 25, or 20, I
don't even talk to them, right? Because they do not have a concept
that if someone texts you, you text back, right, let alone if you
call, like, they'll never pick up the call, they're thinking like
someone died. I mean, something simple. Like when you had texted
me just a few days ago, like one of the things I really
appreciated, there was an exclamation point at the end of
everything. And it like, it seems, seems like a small thing. But
like, I really appreciated that element of like, oh, there's some
degree of excitement within this. That's why emojis are actually the
most useful invention.
Because actually,
you could you can tell like, you can tell the person that you're
excited, you could tell the person that you're sarcastic.
Or you could just say you could you can send an emoji without any
words, and it tells you what how they're feeling. Right? It makes
me think like there's a nation to the prophets of life that um, that
said that the guest brings with them their own it is yeah, and
happiness is a form of events from Allah. So it's this idea amazing
when someone interacts with you, or they come to you, whether it's
digital or not, there shouldn't be some idea of like, this has been
brought to this is so true. I've never thought about that, that
guests, they bring their own risk. And they bring the risk of
oftentimes, there's some friction in the house. There could be
friction in the house, a guests come in, we all have to smile. But
then afterwards, it turns into something real, it actually
becomes real, unfortunately, to become more presentable, right.
I've had many types of attacks on the dirt low, quick, let's create,
right or pick the toys out there on the floor from the kids. And
there used to be a time where people knocked randomly, like,
there were no phones. So I remember one guy he had a summer
home every time in the summer he would be on the way he wouldn't
tell us he just like I'm on the way there's no way I could just
pass your house it's an hour away. Right? He lives in our way he's
going to summer there's no way I could pass by without coming by.
So he'll come by he'll have tea. Sometimes we'll just we'll take
out the food right? And it was completely random right that was
so exciting right? Because he had kid my age and then he do the same
thing on the way back and sometimes it just go with him
right so all that stuff now it's it's people like they don't like
it because as you said the endorphins have that does not
compare to the endorphins of some something new on the screen. But
what's new on the screen is so useless. It's like alright, likes
a five legs, five followers. But you know that the investment that
that person put into that is nothing. Oh, nice click, that's
the investment. Whereas other human beings they're actually
investing effort, you know, in real life relationships. So that's
the one thing you keep having a lot of messages your muscle they
have a big fan club here.
He's who else you have. Someone is asking for a ride. You take them
to ignite.
Let's see Zhi Shan Qureshi. You take Zhi Shan crazy to
put you on the spot, you have to say yes. Now, let's wait a second.
Is he saying he's probably going with his wife and his kid now? I
haven't played with me. And I'm going a little bit late because I
have to do a wedding on Saturday and then go chocolate is not a
single dude. Anyone who's just got nothing to do. Right? He's got a
wife. He's got his his baby. How old? Is she now? Three? She's six.
She's six. Yeah, she she was three weeks when I moved here. Oh, my
goodness. Yes. kids every year, they get older by one.
measure how long I've been in New Jersey by just looking at it. I'm
like, Oh, I'm that I do that with my, my, one of my girls till she
was born, like to one month after we came. So I just measure her by
that. All right. Have you dealt with a Muslim college student who
wants to come out and change their identity?
Or come out as proud? Or in other words, gay or different gender? Do
we want to go there? I guess we have to go there because it's in
the air. And it's like the only thing the whole world of soccer.
That's true. That's true. This is a question from Solomon. Solomon,
we're going to answer your question, right? Yeah. Yeah. Have
you dealt with that? Yes, I should. So I'll I'll I'll say that
in in a couple of ways. One is Yes, I have dealt with it. But I
think it's overblown to the point where like, so I'm gonna just as
numbers go, I think 100 I've had an opportunity of having about
6000 meetings with students. So 1000 meetings a year, about 1000
meetings a year, so roughly six, five to 600 every semester. If we
if we do the math, personal one to one office hours, one to one
office hours, and in that time, I've probably talked to about 4000
unique students.
And I can tell you that have I had this conversation? Yeah, a handful
of times. So. So what you can remember that I can tell you, I'm
not going to tell you the names because out of 4000 students, you
can actually put in put it right in a list. So that's not a lot.
Your point is that that's not my point is that it's sometimes it's
this gets so overblown in terms of like, it's on everyone's minds,
and like it's affecting every other student or something like
that. It isn't. So that's, that's the one component or it could just
be I have a, I have a very specific group that I'm talking
to. Even if I was to do those corrections, I don't think it's as
prevalent as sometimes like, it's like this, the the end of the
world is coming because of this. So that's one element. Of course,
we do believe there are eschatological kind of links to be
associated here. But that's the one kind of component of like,
that's there. The other part of this is that everyone who wants to
have a conversation about this wants to change the deen in some
way, is the other kind of major, in my opinion, misconception that
if there's a Muslim who's dealing with maybe like, same *
attraction, that this means that they want to make this hello for
them, and they want to change faith and change marriage laws and
make, like, that's not what's happening oftentimes, like, at
least the conversations I've had, the questions are, can I still be
Muslim? Does my prayer still count?
What do I do with this? My family is forcing me to get married. What
do I do now? It's very brash, political. Yeah. It's someone who
is recognizing that this is something that he's not going to
alter his religion with, or he's not going to alter the deen. Or
that they're at that point of I oftentimes see it as Subhanallah
look at the the man that's presented present in front of me
that someone who's dealing with something very, very difficult.
And that's a tribulation that you would never even imagine how
you're going to handle that. Yeah. So I've had a lot that it's it's
it's so difficult, and like there's just pure like beautiful
Iman in front of you. That's that's the one of the ways that I
like I've seen that happen more often than the worst fear that
people have, like, these people are going to come and corrupt and
they're going to do that's what I think that there, there, it's
being pushed out on social media so much, that it's probably, you
know, faker than it actually really is. Yeah. Right? Because
you're on the grounds, right? And Amman, in a sense on the ground
with with some of the teens, like before they go to college, they're
at the masjid, then they disappear. They're hanging out
with you. Right. And I sort of still see some of them.
So I guess, combined, we have a lot of interaction with with the
community. And so you might be right. And I hope that that is the
case that it's more overblown, online, because there are groups
pushing us. Yeah. And I've honestly seen this as well, where
sometimes they'll go to another counselor who like really tells
them really explore this and like, this is your time, live into who
you are. And oftentimes, my conversation will be more along
the lines of like, let's understand this. But like, you
don't have to act. And what I mean by that is like, take your time,
our tradition has always been one of like, don't act hastily. And I
say this specifically here, that's usually my go to is, let's have a
conversation of like, all of the impacts this is going to have on
your life. Yeah. And go through it. And your spiritual life is a
part of it, your family life, your community, that you're a part of
you as a person, the goals that you have, as you start going
through it, the logical answer starts coming through. And our
tradition also approaches this in a very nice and balanced way.
Subhan Allah, I had a couple of calls on this, I remember vividly
that, you know, mbyc, has like an anonymous call, just call in. And
one guy, he had such a tribulation, which is he couldn't
tell his family that he's not attracted to women. Right.
But they want to get married. I mean, what a Columbia that so that
was one guy, another guy. He actually did get married to
another guy.
All right. And it was sort of funny, but not funny at the same
time. Sad at one point, but funny another point. The sad part is
that he's trending. The good part is that he's turning his life
around, right? And he's gonna stop this behavior and you stop
everything. This then he said, but I feel like I'm betraying this guy
because we have an emotional bond. Right? And so he said, I want to
know your advice on how to tattoo I tell this guy, right, who's my
husband needs? Consider like that, because he did get married in that
whatever, civil union or whatever.
And then he said, I want to know how do I perform the tilak? Right?
Do I pronounce to like, once, what do I do?
And he was broke because I said brother wouldn't have been
recognized. If not, you can only it's
Funny in the books of thick, they say they have the head. The love
requires a Mahad means there must be a valid legitimate source or
object that you are divorcing. Yeah. So if you haven't married
yet, you can't have a Tilak if the marriage is invalid,
I've had that same question for someone say, Do I have to do with
the last time my girlfriend? And I'm like, Oh,
this poor guy, I told him, No, you just you can say whatever words
you need to say like, Okay, we're going to separate, we're going to
split up, the city does not require you to have to look,
because it's not a valid marriage in the first place. So I had to
convince him of that. Alright. Secondly, he said, you know, it
was very emotional bond between him and the other dude. And he's
got some and I had to try to be practical about because I've never
experienced this. But I said, Look,
I don't think that
you maybe you're going to, you're going to cut him off in the sense
that you're never going to look at his face again, or talk to him.
Because I don't think that's practical. Either take people to
an opposite end. Yeah, you're selling your tell him to do
something that's really difficult. So I said, Listen, you first thing
is you
get out of the it's not a marriage in the first place. But stop this
behavior. That's the most important thing, right? And then
he was really committed to that. But it was really
a call that I've never had before, because it never had a Muslim who
actually did get married. Yeah, and another guy and said, I'm
making Toba and I'm leaving this thing. I think this is where more
empathy Well, of course, in our tradition, like gentleness, and
it's typically translated, so Rama would probably recognize like
empathy, more empathy, never made the things more problematic. And
what I mean by that is like, it didn't lead to the truth being
less apparent. I think gut reaction, we have this because
we're so oftentimes, like young Muslims, or even Muslim leaders
fall into this, we're so afraid that we're not going to eventually
get to say like the Islamic point on things that we won't be willing
to listen to what's, what someone is going through. And this
oftentimes, when you listen long enough, they know the solution,
you just have to keep them talking. They don't want someone
else to tell them what to do. It's along the lines of why is this so
hard? Well, let's talk through it. Why does this not make sense to
you? Well, let's, let's get into what you're right about, and then
get into maybe there's a logical inconsistency that you've missed
here. And we'll allow people to go through that. I haven't found them
trying to significantly change something or I'm going to leave
the Dean because of this. And oftentimes, we find actually, it's
the opposite of the dean is vaster than he is. And a lot of times, we
maybe rush sometimes to point out the Islamic prohibition something
not for the person, but for the others who are watching. Yeah,
because they're going to be watching, are you going to soften
on this, you're going to be accepted? And sometimes it's
innocently done. Yeah, like a youth is like, a really no need to
know, like, what position is going to take on this right? The youth
Kenton might not necessarily be able to balance the idea that you
may have to not make I mean, I have to say this right now. Like
young people may not realize that, um, when I say youth, I'm talking
about, like, preteens and stuff, because their world is black and
white. If some of the Psalms say It's haram, but you might not want
to say that to a person right away in their in their face, because it
would sort of completely ruin any chance of them.
Changing. Yeah, right. And that's hard for youth to say, Well, why
don't you just say it was?
Because this is gonna sound almost like a cliche, but like, the
journey is as important as the destination that you got to. But
if you people often sometimes don't know what they're actually
saying that we're so slow organized at times that if someone
says this, they don't, they don't mean good for me, or someone
doesn't say this. It's bad for me. There's so lateness tests. Yeah,
they're so into that, again, that label of like, this label is good.
For me, this label is bad for me that they don't authentically
actually get to go through the process of arriving at a decision.
And when you provide that space,
at least in my experience, it's been positive, elegant, Adam says
about watching TV, do you remember when watching TV was a thing?
Yeah, the only reason that you ever need to watch TV anymore is
for sports. Because that has to be done live, right? Yeah, but you
could do it on your phone. And now.
Right, you know, like, it's it goes towards the disappearance of
physical space. Yeah. Where in the past, you know, you have to
actually go home, say you're at work. Now you have to run home
because you want to go home, and you want to switch on the TV
because the game is on because you want to watch the fun. Yeah. But
now you could do it anywhere. So you know, there's no space where
you have to go. There's really a shrinking of that. That's 100%
right, because now I used to rush home to catch something. Let's say
I'm wanting to watch with that's live. Oh,
Oh, but now I don't have to, like I just put it on. I just stream
it. I stream it all from these illegal websites, right? So not,
not all of them are streaming on purpose, right. But they're
getting streamed through these illegal websites, right? My wife
and I had joked about this just a couple of days ago that he used to
have duck club on Saturday morning cartoons. Yeah. Right. And it's
like, why, like, why is that duck? Well, well think about it. We used
to prepare the night before, like, we went to sleep earlier. So we
could get up because it starts at 6am 7am. And then you set
everything out, put the blankets, go there and watch me, my siblings
and watch it together. And we had Dakhla to how we got entertained.
Like we had awareness, prepare preparation awareness. Yeah, those
are the bests those Looney Tunes, right? For four hours or two
hours, I remember. And it was just one day. Yeah. And everyone will
be asleep. Only my mom would be awake. And she would get cereal
and everything. And those are some really fun days.
Also, one thing in the PJs, has to be in the PJs in the family room.
We never haven't experienced that. Because yeah.
Yeah. But one thing is like, to one of the previous points is
that, you know, the idea of forgiveness has gone to, you know,
with this Kancil culture, you know, like, it's just once someone
becomes like a social pariah, if, for example, you know, like the
person that you're describing, you know, they had a gay relationship
and other out of it. Yeah. Now, how difficult is it going to be
for us Muslims, to actually reintegrate them into our society?
I remember in Ramadan, the story that we read over the live stream,
in Barrow demo, like I just can't stop thinking about it. It was a
Schiff, who literally commits Ryda becomes a Christian. And then not
only that, but he comes back, and eventually his students accept
him. And it's announced and his students say, Oh, this, you know,
he was the willie of Allah. What kind of that level of forgiveness
Yeah, soprano. It's just unbelievable. And he marries that
woman, that Christian woman and she's the one who has she has the
vision of Satan Ali, who guides her to Islam, and says Allah will
not. She said, Go to him. Allah will not test you with a worldly
from his Olia. And then why just like, Yeah, this guy's a pretty
well known UFC jurist. Yeah, so he has a solution to the shutdown,
that hasn't been canceled, right, he has not been canceled. And you
know, the canceling must be done by people who don't experience
life, when you experience life, you realize there's not a single
soul that you're going to meet in this world where you're gonna have
an absolute perfect relationship with, there's going to be bumping
of heads, at some point, there's going to be a quality that you
don't like about this person, or a habit or weakness, right? And
guess what you're gonna live with that. And the prophets I said and
said about husbands and wives is that if you don't like something,
you're gonna like something else? Yeah, that's one of the most
practical pieces of advice. So like, if you don't like something
about her,
you will like something else. So focus on what you like. And then
there's an obligation there look for something you like, yeah, look
for what you like. And only look at that, because that thing that
you don't like, it's not going anywhere, right? Whether it's
physical or character. So, likewise, when we deal with the
community, okay, the sects and the cults, they don't understand this
point, the sect in the cult only wants the perfect person who is
exactly what I believe in exactly the way I believe in it. Right.
Whereas, if you look at successful community members, they have a
great tolerance. Right, I noticed two things about successful
community members in Chicago, I'm sure that you've seen people
who've, they're in their 70s. Now, like, they succeeded. They're
giants. They're giant, regardless of where you go, that'll be like,
That's what their title is. Their giant mountains. They're the
foundation, which everything was built on there. They're the people
who are like the backdrop of so many. Now in Chicago, hundreds of
1000s of people there the backdrop right there, like the blue sky. So
those people, I noticed two qualities in that, number one,
they do have a set of principles that they live by that make it
predictable, like, this person is predictable. I know exactly what
this person is going to do. And because he's got these sets of
principles, and they're the right principles, they work for decades,
yeah. Right. They they're able to work for decades, they're able to
marinate and develop and the institution builds on it. At the
same time, they have a tolerance in the sense of there, there's
probably red lines, of course, everyone's got some red lines,
right? But at the same time, there's there are levels of those
red lines. It's not like my way, Big Red Line. No, it's like my
way. There's gonna be a gradation
of light red lines that may be crossed in certain circumstances,
or accepted or we won't say anything. And then finally there's
a big red line. Yeah, they're it's a sophisticated to me. It's a very
sophisticated gradation of what I don't accept. I don't accept it in
this place. Yeah. I don't accept it for myself. makes up
for somebody else, I might not accept it for my family, but I
accept it for someone else. There's a gradation of that. And
because they sometimes I don't think that they make it
themselves, like they may not have even thought about it. Yeah, I
think there was willingness of understanding that even if someone
doesn't have all of those same labels as you do, yeah, for the
task at hand, and for example, if like, if one I remember a doctor
or finance, Mohan was a scholar in Chicago, who passed away a few
years ago, he was like a grandfather to me. And he just
loved talking about Quran. That was, that was his thing. He wrote
a seed of the Quran, like His thing was on. And he worked with
everyone. And everyone had great things to say about him. And he,
I've never heard him criticize an organization, which is odd, even
though like Chicago, my city I love and of course, I grew up
there, I call it Chicago setif. But there's a lot of like, weird
laser beams that are also exist there in terms of like, one
community versus another. But some of the figures that have withstood
the test of time, it's because they don't actually say negative
things. They're just like, just this is gonna help with this on
programs, it's gonna help you this is gonna help here, there seems to
be this understanding that someone doesn't have to be completely like
you in every single thing for you to work on what we're doing a
program, the Quran, we're trying to educate people on the Quran,
like as if we can still get that accomplished. Does that other
element of you matter all that much? No, versus some of the
negative trends is unless they have the same political
affiliation as you the same view on this and this and this is this,
we don't associate with you. Yeah. And I mean, how do you associate
with your family to guarantee like half your uncle's but that's part
of the result, right? Yeah, that cut everyone off, who doesn't
associate exactly cut everyone off. And if I guarantee you those
types of people that you're talking about, they must have big
families, because they've navigated that stuff. In his
family life, when it comes to the communities easy to navigate. It's
easy to navigate this stuff. with strangers, we already navigated it
in the more intimate and sensitive family level. Yeah. So that's the
key word, the the cancel culture is gotta come must be rooted in
very immature people immature when I say mature, I mean, they haven't
really lived with family, or community or whatever. This is a
conversation I have often with college students is they ask the
question of like, our deen says so much about kind of family, but I
have a quote unquote, toxic family, right. And there are some
people who have extreme scenarios, and we should definitely
appreciate what's going on. But I oftentimes have to have this
conversation of like, Allah gave you conditional relationships and
unconditional relationships. And, of course, all of us understand
that conditionals are the ones you choose unconditional. You'd have
you ever chose who your father was, virtually all your brother
was. These are unconditional. But ironically, the unconditional
relationships are the ones that you're going to be judged on more
like, Wait, how? It's like, well, think of us that are there, you're
mandated to have good relationships with these people
like, and then the next conversation is, well, that's not
fair and like, but that's what says who you truly are. Because if
you it's easy to be nice to people who are nice to you you chose. So
like, that isn't of your choices that is gone from that doesn't say
anything about because they were just you chose them and they chose
you. But the people who aren't, do you never get to choose that shows
what your true character so there's the true test of it. And
on the other side, if we had a hypothetical society where you
only had conditional relationships, which
unfortunately, it sounds like we're moving towards it. What then
tends to think about it this way of what would happen, there'd be
one, completely vilified society where no one knows how to treat
each other well, and there'd be another of hypothetically good
people who know how to treat each other. Well, the problem is, first
and foremost, this is going to be a smaller society each time
because people are just going to keep getting kicked out, which we
actually see happening. And on the other side, almost anyone in your
life and in my life, I noticed someone who was admirable, like we
they have really amazing qualities. It's almost always
because someone treated them badly.
Right? Like that was the mechanism for us true that produces
goodness, it produces or allows goodness to shine through and on
the other side. Maybe they used to be bad, but someone treated them
well. And then now they know how to like, you have to have forced
relationships. Our system our whole deen is built on this idea
that there are conditional and unconditional relationships, and
both are valuable and both are necessary for society to succeed.
You cannot run away from your unconditional relationships. If
you do, you might have been the lifeline to get them back. Or they
might be your lifeline to get you back when you need it. Because
it's like one of our ideas of who Allah loves the most is alimony.
Right? So don't who constantly returns back because you look at
someone you're like, I might need you later. So like I can't be rude
to you. Even if you're harmful for me right now, what if you're, you
have guidance for me later on. So it's this idea of like, we
tolerate both or we appreciate both and I would say this is
connected as well like one can
common trend that I see is if people aren't quote unquote good
for you, or they're toxic, get rid of them.
That's, that's gonna lead to a very high risk situation. And that
eventually ends up being people's mindset that I used to be of the
approach of like, oh, that's allowed in certain circumstances
and not in others, and I still kind of am. But unfortunately,
oftentimes how you treat your friends and parts of yourself, you
start treating your family the same way. And that's another major
issue of like, you cut off people. Why? Because in the moment, in the
short term, they're bad for you. Yeah. But that's not to say what
they have in the long term. And that's amazing. Because if you
have, if you end up with a generation that has never been
through the university program of the unconditional relationships,
which you might say, like the obligatory relationships, that you
have to keep, whether you like it or not, they've never been to that
school, those people are not going to be very good. You know, and a
lot of realms, they're going to be hampered.
And what you're saying that this idea of the unconditional
relationship, in a sense, it's more important.
It's almost like saying, What have you achieved? He said, I achieved
a goal, I got a gold medal in this was, oh, well, what was said,
Well, I created for myself a bar. And I achieved it. Yeah, that's
true.
I created a sport, I created all the rules I created, who can play
and who doesn't. And I'm the one who judges and gives out the
award, and I want to write.
So human achievement is when something outside of us is forced
upon us. And we still achieve it. That's the real achievement. So
the the the parents, mother and father, siblings, all those that
test. To me, that's the only one that really matters. Yeah, of
course, everyone's gonna have friends. Friendship is not a test.
It's a joy. Friendship is the reward, right? But this is the
school and the university and the factory and the warzone ethic,
it's a spiritual warzone. You have to put down your anger have to put
down your envy, sibling envies, right, you have to fight. There's
a lot of that. You're going to come out of that. If you succeed.
That's your university. Yeah, that in a sense, it's your to Sophie,
your spiritual University, your parents are also the door to say
the prophets, I said them because your parents are your source. You
know, the first piece of Rama that you feel in the physical world is
through your mom and dad. And if you feel as if this unconditional,
there's something that you can see very apparently, that the mercy
that they have, and if you're blind to that mercy, then what
about the mercy of someone that you've never seen? And by the way,
we keep talking about somebody with parents, parents have to have
someone with kids? How do you know that you they like you, right?
That's very true. And yeah, they may never tell you, but you really
don't know. And sometimes there's maybe it's not parents, maybe it's
uncles and aunts and grandparents. And they're really nice to you and
everything and you hate them. You don't know they may hate you, too.
You're not exactly a basket of fruit yourself. They're having
somebody with you. And how many times have you seen a parent? For
example, maybe his parents were really easy going? That's
terrible, in my opinion, because where's your sub? Yeah, right? The
parent that's so easy going, and this new generation of maybe the
80s 90s, those parents were like, our parents, we're too strict, too
difficult. We're going to be so easy. We're going to be like best
friends with our kids. Your kids have no sub. Right? They have no
patience. Subhanallah whereas other parents, their kids there
are so tough on their kids. That kid if as long as he doesn't
rebel, this will be from odia Allah because Allah says,
in LA, you hit the subsidy. Allah loves the patient. Right? So these
so difficult on his kids, as long as this kid is not a rebel, that's
easily because he's born so much hardship, but that kid is going to
come out. Everything in life is easy in comparison. Yeah, like
every boss, no boss can be difficult in comparison to that no
person can be a pain in comparison to that. And that's why to be a
bit demanding on kids within a certain time, that's reasonable,
and a certain amount that's reasonable. And you push that
limit a little bit. You're doing them a favor, right? And
oftentimes, I see this where how you treat your unconditional
relationships becomes the archetype with which you treat all
of your conditional relationships are Saundra back, I can't make
friends. Yeah. And you ask them, sometimes there's probably a
question. How about your siblings? How are you with their siblings?
Like, I can't stand them like, that might be related. You can cut
off your blood. Yeah. How easily can you cut off everybody else?
Yeah. And if you have no somebody with your mom that gave you birth,
why would you have suffered with anybody else? That's why Guinness
Khan, you know, when he became Jingis Khan, like Genghis Khan was
just he was just he was a slave. He was taken as a slave because
him and his mom and dad were
Traveling, and old enemy came upon them killed the dad kidnapped the
mom as a slave and him as a slave. sticking a slave, he breaks away
at 29. He breaks away and gets his mom.
He goes, finds his older brother. And the three of them now we're
trying to survive. At some point, he makes a little gang for
himself, he gets other people. And there, he's got some charisma. And
he's he's there trying to scrap out a living as a gank, stealing
whatever. At some point, the mom says, Well, this is your older
brother, you have to honor him, right? And you have to follow what
he says. And he has to wait now. I got this like good business going,
I got a gang going. Now my mom's telling me to follow him. This
count this crossroad happens, right? And he's devastated that
his mom says Follow your older brother obey your older brother.
He can't do this. He can't have this. He knows to survive. It's
the gank. Right? So he kills his older brother.
His mom is just absolutely in utter devastation. But she has
nowhere to go, right? Because remember, this is the old days
ancient times where you're surviving day by day. So tell me,
someone who kills his older brother? Is he going to worry
about killing anybody else? Someone who breaks the heart of
his mom and looks at it and watches it and says Tough luck?
This is the way it has to be? Is this guy going to worry about you?
Who's a stranger? Right?
Is this guy gonna worry about his wife's tears? His wife, he marries
a woman. She's crying. Please don't do this. I just saw my mom's
tears. Right. And I I induced that you think I'm going to worry about
you? Right? So once you did that one, did you do anything after
that? So people who who mess up with their moms? How do people
imagine that? They're not going to cut off their wives? Right? I
think the opposite example of that is presented, of course, in the
Quran, in which Ibrahim alayhi salam if we want to talk about
someone who had an abusive father, right? If I even I saw him like
his father. This conversation with him is Oh, my father, I think
you're doing something wrong. His father responds, I'm going to
stone you. Yeah. And then. Anyway, Sam says, yeah, yeah. Brunette.
Yeah. My father who I love so much. Oh, no. Yeah, buddy. My
apologies. Yeah, but the my father who I love so much the ideas of
like, of closeness. And he goes, I will leave because you have asked
me to, but I will never stop thinking do that for you. Right,
that's like, you're going to be nice to that you're going to be
nice to everybody else with a point that right afterward, Alaska
says well, but she doesn't know who people and I'm in Haiti. And
we gave him the glad tidings of of a awesome child like a forbearing
child. And the next idea is when he got to the age when he was
running with his child, the reason I think that's the opposite
example to this is one of the terms that's typically found
within psychology is that trauma is hereditary. This idea that like
someone who's been traumatized from, they typically pass it on to
someone else. And there's even genetic, there's even actual
evidence of like, it actually ends up in your jeans in terms of like
epigenetically, it can turn on certain things that pass on, but
that's not what they're referring to. They're talking about the more
sociological element. Yeah. But when you look at it, it might some
story. You're like, he has an amazing relationship with his
child to the point where this is the example of when he says to us,
I'm like, fun. They're mad at that. What do you think about it?
What do you think I should do after he has a dream? But it does.
I mean, this is a beautiful relationship to him and his son.
How does that happen? Well, it happens because if he makes time
didn't reciprocate, yeah, he didn't reciprocate the negative
thing that his father did. What does he do instead? I will never
stop asking for a lot of forgive you. And because of that, what
happens? The chain of this trauma gets cut its cut. Because of his
good treatment, he wasn't willing to let it go. Let it affect him.
He didn't internalize. Yeah, so that's why he it seems to be that
he has an amazing relationship, of course, with this Ashton Ismaila
is to the point where he's not he doesn't pass trauma on to them.
Yeah, that's how you cut it off is by not responding. I think it's
also you cut it off by saying, your treatment of me will not be
how I treat you, I'm going to become a monster, it'll I will
treat you because Allah wants me to treat you a certain way. You
know, you've given the power back to Allah shikigami. He said that
from his years of teaching the inmates, what he realized is that
for the vast majority of them, the best thing that he could
completely transform these people on is teach studying digital
validate, Subhan Allah so if you can go back and rectify that
relationship, everything else will follow. By necessity, because
that's the hardest one, right? Weirdly enough.
With students, this is going to be like a major thing that I see over
and over again is those that have outsourced their respective
parents to someone else. Amongst the most corrective things that
can be done is reintroduce it. We introduced respect this idea of
like what I should be doing and disconnecting it from its be
because of what they did for you, yeah. Because I think that's, we
have this reciprocity mindset of like you only do things for people
who do good things for you. No, you don't. Because fundamentally
when we even think about like, why do you worship Allah spelled out?
Yes. And because Allah has done so much because because Allah is
Allah subhanaw taala That's it. That's it, that's at the end of
it, that will also take you to who Allah has placed in your life. Why
do you treat them the way you do? Because Allah placed them for you
in that way. Once you take that away, it's like your primary
relationship is your relationship with Allah dictates how you treat
the people around you. That starts at home. Oftentimes, once that
gets corrected, it actually corrects a lot of the other even
like, my ideas that I have, what why my life should be headed, how
I should prioritize friendships, how should do they all start kind
of falling into place? I actually really like when Hamza Yusuf
always says this. Sheikh Hamza always says that what he doesn't
see in the Islamic world, and its people usually don't take it from
him because he lives in a very comfortable life. And he's talking
about oppressed people. But that doesn't mean he might not be
saying something. Right. Right.
Which is that when we deal with an oppressor, we're not dealing with
Allah.
Like, when you deal with your oppressor, you should be dealing
with Allah in the sense that how does Allah want me to handle this?
All right, yes, I might have to fight back. Should he says fight.
But should he also says so? Judea also says this oppressor is not
doing anything outside of Allah's will. This is happening because
Allah is allowing it to happen now. And why would Allah allow
this to happen to teach me a lesson? So the mom and that's why
you're never going to actually succeed against an oppressor. If
you think that you're dealing with the oppressor. You've given him
way more attention than he deserves. This oppressor is merely
a tool of Allah to a force of nature. Why did Allah allow this
oppressor is no different than hurricane? Right? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, except that he has a moral thing. And he may be hated. You
don't hate a hurricane, right? Because that's something we know
that has no will have its own. Yes, he has a will of its own, but
it doesn't make a difference. How is that going to improve your
situation? Interact with a lot through this and what you said
about saying it, but uh, he he cut it? Yeah. The trauma by
interacting with Allah not interacting with his father.
That's exact same point. SubhanAllah? I think two things on
that. And one is,
I think one of the confusions that we oftentimes have is that that
same thing of like, something gets set up at a collective level
versus the individual level, I think what's being spoken to is
like, where's your heart attached to and you're presenting this as
too much of a defining quality, because I think that's what Jay
Hamza does really, really well, he hits you at your core. And that's
like, your, the core problem isn't that we're not organized in
overthrowing the presses. The core problem is like we've led to
getting here at the individual level. So that's one. But the
other side of that is
it makes me think of the story of Villa data and who and when, of
course, all of us have heard this but he when he gets dragged into
into desert chest, the rock is placed on his chest. The one thing
that an oppressor wants, it's a presser wants two things, they
either want you to submit to them, because that's exactly what they
asked for. Or they want you to challenge them. Because when you
challenge them what happens? You've admitted their power. Yes,
Patil. But what does he do in the middle? Yeah, what does he do? He
says, I heard that he gives power to something else, to to Allah.
that infuriates me because I have no idea what to do at that point.
Because there's nothing that can be done. You can't do anything
with it. And that's why he just sold them.
I can't achieve my goal here. So we accepted money for him. Because
if you want to fight back, yeah, look, that's sure if you would
have submitted, of course, like put me at the center of your
energy and your attention. That's what I love about. There's a line
that the Christians say about Jesus, that what do you say now
that we've
got you on the cross? And he said, I say simply that God has given
you power over me, right?
So it's almost like, not denying reality, but introducing a new
reality. Yeah, right. And of course, we probably don't have
that thing. But it still makes sense. God has given you the power
over me. And that's beautiful. Because at the end of the day,
what is it Allah?
That Allah is no greater? Because it wasn't you? It was a lot at the
end of the day. Let's take some comments and questions here. The
city font choice is a two way street. Women as well are getting
more attention from men than they would have ever gotten before,
which is true.
Muslim said You once said that Allah's Anger is not like human a
human reaction. Yes, we are reacted by shock because we're
ignorant. So if you poke me, I'm shocked because I didn't know it
was coming and I could be injured. It defies your expectations defies
expectations. Allah has he's Haleem nothing you do is shocking
to him. He already knows what you're going to do, and you cannot
harm him. Whereas we can be harmed, right.
My question is this then
Why is it set in the Hadith? The charity cools down the anger of
Allah, it means the punishment that you are earning cools down.
Yeah. Right. The punishment that love of Allah is his punishment.
Right? So that punishment that you're earning by sins, charity
will cool that punishment. Your I believe that were the United
States is right now and it has a number of punishments raining on
it. Why do I say punishments not social problems, when there's no
solution to a problem, that's a punishment. There is no solution
to the shootings that are happening in terms of making a
law, right? There's no secular solution to this. There's only a
spiritual solution to this right. The people shooting now you're
gonna have one side saying take away guns? Would you want to be
any less practical? How many guns are there? The 300 million 400
million, something like that there are more guns than people. Right?
For sure. Right? There's probably more guns in the country of
people. So you're not taking them away from people? All right,
you're gonna start issuing them less. So do don't do think that
there's like a black market where people will acquire them legally.
And then it's just a solution. It's a complete nut. It's a
BandAid on a huge, massive gash. So I'm going to work. So when I
see that there's no actual solution, right that they can
have. Because we would say the real solution is spirituality,
even from community even outside of Islam. Just their spiritual
healing of sit with your family.
Go to church make friends. Go to church make friends have pets, you
one of the you know, the wisdom of pets is
definitely your drama with it with with a bird with a rabbit with a
cat. If you have ramen with that, why don't you definitely have a
lot more with a boy, child? And that's also why on the opposite
end, someone who's cruel in those situations, it's directly linked.
I always say that the cruelty to animals, right? If you're cruel to
that little vulnerable creature, something's really terribly wrong
inside. Yeah. And why do you think that becomes important? That
doesn't mean they shouldn't have it? It's actually that becomes a
safety net? You you actually are able to opine that someone has
something developmentally wrong that that might happen. Because
they were able to do lesser harm. Of course, we value the lives of
these little creatures we do but I'd much rather have someone do
something terrible to I love cats dunno and but like to that then do
something terrible to a person. What it also when you when you're
interacting with animals, and you see that it's the warning sign in
advance. Like, the only thing that you have to experiment with is
humans know you have animals are there. So that if you behaving
like that, the teacher says, Oh, like this couldn't eat up. That's
exactly what it even was like, people shouldn't have this is
where it even goes out to the social media side of things.
Because
people sometimes need to say dumb things without it having massive
consequences so that we can see the problem is Yeah, so like, say
it in like a family gathering a group of friends and people like,
dude,
how many times every kid has gone through this? If you have enough
dinners with your dad, right? Your dad will tell you listen, I'm
gonna tell you this so that no one outside tells you that.
Now these Besakih don't have that. Yeah.
And then it has a massive social consequence. And they will put out
something or, but that's the value and the benefit of these of having
a family. Yeah, is that somebody could tell you that, right? And
the other end it continues, right? Because you're really close
friends who are a little bit older than you. And I love the idea of
having a gradation of age groups, right? So one of the things we
always try to do here is we always try to have a gradation like when
we go out to lunch, it's not a youth lunch at 10 to 60. That's
sometimes it's set to 60. It is a lot a lot like there are some guys
who are looking at retirement, other guys are looking at high
school, right? So but the benefit of that small gathering is that
somebody say you can really care about each other, and bring a
different perspective to the person in a way that is not
damaging, where he can say, Listen, by the way, don't say
this, right? Again, you're actually not right about this is
really gonna upset a lot of people. So it may have that may
upset you, in front of five people for five minutes. But he saved you
so much more. It's something that if your dad couldn't get
everything because sometimes people are muted in front of the
dads well in your social friend group. If
you get roasted sometimes right, what are you gonna roast and you
need to
get your take that criticism you appreciate it wrote? The idea of
roasting each other is something that is very important, I think
for males, because what you're doing is you're hardening his
skill is getting a little bit, right. As long as it's healthy,
right? If it's healthy, and there's a lot of love in it, but
it's in a joking way, right? It's hardening the person's metals. I'm
gonna have to
until the brother social group that said Rutgers but
let's see if I can get your approval on this you know how like
Zach got that to grow one of the forms of growth is to burn
something right like you burn crops or the edges of plants in
order to make them grow more. So the brothers roast should be
called this Kia
you know that Forest fires are the best thing for forests. It takes
out all the weak and the old plants. And it makes and those
ashes are really good for new plants. I wish I could stay
longer. But today's pick up day for me I gotta pick up but let's
look at some real quick
things if anyone has anything to say, we have a brother from Uganda
Subhan Allah, Dr. Ed. Not Idi Amin, Dr. Ed from Uganda is saying
As salam o alaikum. So everybody can go and get
L Tiger did cheat to take us to Texas and the Texas Tiger I guess
his name is he says Quran says he was never crucified. Yes, we're
saying that that's just a story. Right? That they say about him the
line is true. it not true that he said it. But it's an excellent
meaning then I'm only in this position because God gave you
power over me. And that's what you're lucky folk. ADM is also
part of oppressors. The Hand of Allah is over their hands. It's
not theirs. It's Sufi bear. Right?
We can go for oppressors, right? That yes, he's punishing you yet
to life. Okay, do and don't think for a moment Allah is not in
charge of this. So start examining the wisdoms right of it. So that's
on
YouTube, let's quick Instagram that we moved to our Da. And then
I really wish we could. But now that you're local and the
summertime, you can come regularly. Because you really
bring a great perspective on what's happening on the campuses
and how you've dealt with it over
years is going to be far better than a textbook, trying to read a
summer program and
part time program, because you don't like them. It's not like
separate from Dawa 100%. Yeah, that's our goal, inshallah to make
everything integrated. Yeah, weeknights, we have here started
our pre pilot program of our mad, right, like a column Institute's
everything. Yeah. And the differentiator is that, like, I
had the message I teach, usually using English text preparatory, we
actually do get pretty deep into things. But it's always from a
preparatory angle here.
They use where you're using all Arabic texts, so that students can
learn, you know, the Arabic stuff, these texts and learn these texts,
if they ever continue on, they actually know the Arabic tenor.
It's the lens with which you can look through things. So
oftentimes, that becomes the most important takeaway from studying a
text of what it's done to your language. So the language and S
says, What do you do when you feel like it's painful to just make dua
when you've made dua and nothing changes?
I would say that we cannot forget that do not require something
that matters requires sub and anything that you want that has
value in life, it requires patience. So I would just say, you
know, just continue to be patient. Okay. JJ says alpha males versus
Simps.
That's, that's only used on certain Twitter and people who
like to, you know, talk about that a lot. And we in Islam have a
whole nother concept of masculinity, then, you know, this,
that worlds model is so much more complicated. And it's about
dignity at the end of the day, and dignity falls under both
categories. Yeah. What What if the thing that you don't like in your
spouse is their addiction to *? Well, that's a that's
a unique that requires counseling at that point. I think that is an
individual answer. That's why it's sometimes the one who suffers it
as Abu Hanifa is the best judge of it. That's what I'm behind the
facade about certain things. But they provide for you and they
provide for your children. It's mostly but it's really, really
difficult and tough situation. So I can't I don't have an answer to
that. One. It's something that you have to judge. Yeah. The one thing
I would put on there is it the cards are stacked against people.
And I think that needs to be appreciated that this is a vise
that everything in society is forcing it to happen. The norm is
for people to be affected by it, rather than to not be affected by
it. So there is the degree of kind of understanding that happens and
then trying to be part of the solution, rather than just saying,
Just meet me when it's over. Being involved some way but I would say
reach out to a counselor of some sort of both parties can go that
would probably be the best approach. And you're also talking
about how when we talk about everyone being different, I mean,
we're talking about some people may have grown up on a facade.
Sins is in the peripheral vision of you have grown up and wholesome
parents are in the peripheral vision. So the shock element is
going to be different. That's why one of the wisdoms when Allah says
was Zuni
Lengow Eliza and it is that the adulterous marriage adultery? What
does that mean? It means that the one of that lifestyle will have a
successful marriage with someone who understands that lifestyle. If
you both had that bad lifestyle in the past, you will get along. It
doesn't necessarily mean as many people think if you ever committed
sin and you can only marry a woman who ever committed Zina, no, it
means a woman have that way of living. She should marry a man
have that way of living. Right? Because when you fall or falter,
or the habits that you have, you're you know this right?
Whereas a woman he could bring her out of a monastery, right? And
marry her to a gun came out of the club. Right? Her an error for her.
The bars here Yeah, and for him, it's here. They're not gonna get
along. So that's why in that question is you have to look at
your youth, or is this something that you're accustomed to? I know
probably some women who they grew up in such a clean and sheltered
in a good way environment.
One witnessing not addiction one time he's she sees that she's
packing her bags and leaving, right? This is not something she's
accustomed to. But likewise, same thing you some people when it
comes to weapons and guns, right? A gun in the house, big deal other
people's like on the kitchen drawer under the table.
So it depends where you what you came out of right. So let's now
shift to our job. Now before we wrap up, we'll take a break.
We'll just do it straight because I have to unfortunately, I started
laying came late, but if you want to set up you can set up though.
Yeah, so inshallah we'll just read from his bed, Nasir. And then
we'll do a two minute silent door afterwards. And we do this because
every Wednesday between Dora and acid is a moment of each other
according to Jeb and Abdullah because the prophets I sent him
had made dua at the conquest of Mecca. Sorry for conduct and Allah
Tala answered him on Wednesday. So jabber said he always looked for
Wednesday for the time of dua.
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thank you for coming in Sharla