Shadee Elmasry – S4 E1 A Life Worth Living
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So my mom texted me a few minutes ago
about a bill that I usually cover for her that I forgot to pay this
month, right? So I, I said I'll pay right away. It's like 30
bucks. It's nothing but it's something that I was like, I'll
sign you up for that. I'll pay for it. So I was like, Oh, I'll pay
for it right away. Now there's something that I've promised to
do. She just reminded me because she got the like the late notice
or whatever and she goes, thanks. I hope God returns it to you
multiplied and a lot more than that, and with a lot of good
health and well in goodness in your life, what kind of
like I owe her anyway.
Isn't that that's what deeds are too Right? Yeah. Like he got all
this life Allah gave this is massive this this life with a man
with a million factors in it that had to come together at once and
we have all this stuff and all we're giving back is 2.5% and
sadaqa is right five prayers a day we're basically doing nothing just
acknowledging that he gave it to us and then enjoying it and what
we get back for it and we get rewarded for that.
So I would have been administrate Donna Jameson line monitor him and
while he was a Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.
To the Safina society podcast. How're you guys doing? I'm doing
been a long time.
How was your guys eat? It was good. And yeah, we will actually
we have got a couple of stories about the quarterback and he's
that we actually went out. And the last minute someone said, Let's go
have breakfast with so and so right before right after Salah. So
we went we had breakfast that breakfast took a long time, right
before the food got served. For the listeners who might not know
sunnah to not eat anything or drink anything before? Correct. So
so the Sunnah is that you go to Asia, on an empty stomach not
having eaten or drank, and then you eat after the Salah. So after
eight, we went out and this took so long, and we were supposed to
meet at like 12 noon at the masjid to go do the slaughtering. And so
they I'm like, I realized it's like 1150 and the food hasn't even
arrived yet. So I'm going to be like an hour late, and I was an
hour late. Okay, now I didn't know that Sammy told you told Alex to
wait. He didn't. He said, Are you going to come with us and said
I'll wait for Doug show. They will roll. Okay. See ya. So he so Alex
waited for me. And I'm sitting there. I'm rushing. I'm moving so
quick. I'm an hour plus late. Right? I'm an hour plus late. So I
get to the masjid and he's there. And then lo and behold what
happens when you meet at the masjid as soon as you're about to
leave? And then
so that's another half an hour. Sure phrase Sooners. Because once
that then goes It's haram to leave right? To the one that then goes
off. So we pray so nuts and we pray our foot by this time. It's
almost two o'clock, right? It's almost two hours. And now Alex has
to leave 11 to two is two o'clock hours. We were meeting at 1212.
Yeah. And Alex has to leave go visit is says going to visit his
model up north. Right in the end. The old Hale was up north. So I
said slaughter and go. He's like no, I gotta pick up Xena which is
down south. Right? So I was like I forget this. So he's like, come
out. I can't do this. I was honestly I was making so good. I
felt so bad that I made him miss his slot. This is like that one
time you made me come up for like four hours. I stayed at the masjid
and he drove in the wrong direction for two hours.
Oh, I remember that. Yes, that was a party that we wanted to have a
dinner party we wanted to have. And I went to pick up a kid for 15
minutes. I ended up getting lost.
All of this always works out though. Yeah. So I'm sitting
there. And I'm saying to myself, This is my fault. I'm causing a
Mrs. Old here. Right? It's all my fault. Sorry. We also already sent
to Africa. So I was gonna say, Oh, good. So then
we turn around we go and he's like, I gotta go. So I was like, I
felt really bad. He went misses hold here. We all went drove up,
me and a couple other car falls of people. We get there. And Sammy
comes us to come come so straight away is like no one slaughtering.
There's a water main break. Nobody's slaughtering today. And
we all just stood around doing nothing. And then I was like, Wait
a second. Let me talk to Alex at least he didn't miss anything.
Right. So we had driven an hour up. Right, got there, no
slaughter. And then we drove an hour back down two hours of our
time. So Alex was like, well, Subhan Allah waiting for you for
an hour saved me the rest of the day. Subhan Allah.
That's the first story about those days. That's actually, Dini one
because he replied back and he said Subhanallah waiting for your
Muslim brother and then obeying your mother. Right? That's what
saved me. Right? Because he waited for me and then he went to visit
his mom. So and he chose his mom then did slaughter, which is the
right thing to do. Right. So the other story which is more on the
comical side
If I can do in a wedding yesterday, it's an Egyptian
wedding.
That could be just the joke, right?
So you weren't going to Egyptian weddings? No, I was conducting it
in the masjid. Okay. So I'm conducting this wedding and
there's an older white men and white woman there. And they're the
only non Egyptians. So afterwards they wanted to talk to me, the
husband comes and he says, a nice talk and everything and, and you
will benefit from it, etc. And the wife comes and we're talking and
I'm trying to talk to them because their guests, and she gets into
the fact that she has animals. She loves animals, right? So she,
she's carrying on about her different animals. And I'm like, I
sort of like it. You know, animals are like comfortable, close to
nature and all that stuff. So she goes, she started our eyes started
welling up. She said, accept this. And I said, what happened? She
said, Well, we have a farm. The township shut us down. Okay, so do
you not big enough. So
the guy that we knew from the wedding, he said, I know an
Egyptian lady with a farm. You can go use her land, so Hoda, right?
So go use holders lead. So she's like, we backyard.
So we're using Hoda and host Sam's land for the art. I was like,
okay, and she's like,
and I had a pet lamb for the last 12 years that I raised myself.
And I didn't know it was eat.
And lo and behold, a couple days after Eid hos Sam comes to my
house,
puts his head down. He says you know me, you know how much I care
for your animals. There was a mixup.
At your pet lamb was accidentally slaughtered. I mean, at this
point, it's mutton. It's an old sheep. Right? So she is just eyes
just bawling, right? And I'm like, and she's like lambs, right? They
are like babies, they know you, they talk they come to you. Right,
you have to feed them twice a day when their baby or two every two
hours when they're the first month of birth, and then twice a day for
the next six months. And they are very attached to you. And they
will eat out of your hands out of your pocket. And she said this
lamb, and her husband was like, yep, this lamb was in the kitchen
all the time in our house all the time, right? And well accidentally
got slaughtered.
But the amazing thing was, he took it in great stride. She didn't
say, This is why we hate Islam and Muslims, right? She took it in
stride. It's like she's actually a sign of a person who has met so
many Muslims, right? And Egyptians that she can't generalize anymore.
There's a threshold. Yeah, right. Like we can't generalize certain
people when you meet so many of them won't even click in your mind
to generalize, right. That's why no one generalizes on whites,
because you're just you see so many of them that you can't
generalize, whereas you can easily generalize Mexicans or someone
else until you start mingling, right? I live amongst a lot of
people with like a certain and I can generalize them
all day, every day and the generalization I can generalize
90% of days.
Now, I just want to do a quick housekeeping thing before we turn
it over to Moines. Some people were asking where's all the
recording and all the podcasts it the reason was we shut down for a
good two months, because I was basically in the cave finishing,
redoing all Maliki textbook, right. And inshallah we're going
to, we're actually finished now with the curriculum series,
there's one more book of two. So if I can do it later, though, but
in the data going forward, the next and this year coming forward,
you will see all these books published, and inshallah bundled
in a curriculum series with exams for Muslim high schools, right. So
it's going to be a year out, it's going to take a year to edit it
all, put it all in a format, blah, blah, blah, and do a write up
exams, all that stuff, but that's the reason we were out. We're a
multifaceted. Safina site is multifaceted. We have live
classes, right? At any given week. We have four classes going on live
in the masjid. We got the podcast, the books and ArcView I haven't
done anything for RP for a while. Main reason right in the book. So
we have a multifaceted operation. And I think that's a good thing. I
don't want to be just a blog, just a podcast. Sure, right. Islam is
about balance and you you get a balanced perspective, especially
when you have an on site center that you go to all the time. So
that's a little housekeeping now we can turn it over to Mike. So I
think because you brought up the old hair.
I find it really interesting that most people in the West elite
Muslims in the West don't get the opportunity to do you know their
own slaughter. I mean, I have never done it in the US. The only
I mean I've never actually done over here properly on eBay ever in
my life. You've never slaughtered no
I'm not not on eat. I've have slaughtered animals, but just not
on eat. But
why are you whispering?
Demon? I'm just saying, if it wasn't for you guys, right? Yeah.
Which means it's sinful to leave it off without a purpose for every
adult in the household. So I just pay for it. It's not that I don't
do that it was here that I'm just saying I haven't physically
slaughtered.
But I find it interesting that, you know, many folks in the
western world don't get this opportunity because hamdulillah
I've had the opportunity, at least to slaughter when I've gone, you
know, overseas. But I think having like this connection to the
natural world and having such a big deal, who nature is and
animals and life as you take it, I think is extremely important. And
the the sourced origin of how I got talking to this woman about
lambs is that I said, I wanted to bring my lamb for my kids, right?
I want I want them to see different animals I want to have
like, I bought them chicks before, right. And the chicks were around
for a few days. And then we sent them off to him, I have these
little farm and across this house next to the masjid.
I want to bring them a lamb. And she said that she raised his lamb.
And that's where she got into her story. She raised the lamb and,
and feed it two times a day, blah, blah, blah. And that was
excellently slaughtered on eighth. But
closeness to nature, I think, is one of the sources of purification
of fitrah. And if I can say this, just from my own common sense, not
as a scientific thing, mental disorders, right? Would a lot of
times grow in environments far from nature, right? Just just to
think about this. When you think of someone who is neurotic? Do you
think of him being out in nature? No, just anecdotally, right. Being
close to nature is very healthy for the human being now, Moines
topic today had to do with this, right? Like why people are
shooters, etc, blah, blah, blah, why people are losing so much
connection to life itself. We're losing connection to earth, right.
And that's one of the reasons that it's also, it's also this idea of
being able to see suffering, right, and sort of accept a
certain level of pain into your life. I mean, I went to, I went
with my dad to get the meat. And it was the first time that I saw a
cow being slaughtered. And like, I don't know, 12 years, right? 13
years. And I was just I was texting boy, and I'm like, Am I
just weak, right? I was like, traumatized.
And cuz, but then I was thinking, here we are giving the animal the
honor of actually taking it by the hand and actually giving a proper
slaughter. There's so many animals that are just sort of just killed.
Right and mercilessly. And I'm thinking to myself, there's so
much pain that this animal is suffering. And so that I can eat
the meat. Right? And I feel like because so many people are
disconnected from the food that the like how the things that
they're using come to them. They don't have the sense of like
integration with the world, they feel so alone, right? You said
something really important. By being close to nature, you witness
a certain degree of pain and suffering, right? When you're
close to nature, you're going to make analogies in life to what you
see in the world. Right? Now, when you live in a city, far from that
where food comes to you, you know, disconnected from its source, or
you're always an abstraction, right? You're living everything is
abstract, then nothing is actually connected to what its physical
origin. So when something bad happens, you actually can easily
make an analogy, right? The analogy to animals, you see animal
suffering all the time, you see animals dying, you see animals
hunting, right, and hunting each other. So the analogy to nature,
okay, allows or adapts for people to
handle suffering a lot more. Right? As opposed to living in a
completely, you know, pain free abstract environment of human
beings alone. Right, then you wouldn't realize why would have to
tolerate any pain at all. Right? You know, like, it's actually
scientifically proven that like neuroticism happens in like
neurotic qualities go up in a more stable environment, because people
are less likely to take risks, right? And you actually have,
like, very extroverted people tend to be in tribes. So like, you
know, tribal people like Turks and things like that. They're very
extroverted. Why? Because they're always hunting, they're always
doing stuff. They're taking risks, but because we live in a society
that's like, completely cut off from suffering, anything that you
want, it's there. Yeah. And you're just sitting on your butt all day,
watching, you know, playing video games like me. Yeah. You know,
it's,
you know, it's like your degree of like, the threshold of your pain
just goes up. Like sometimes the littlest pinch can, like, throw
you off. Your atrophied. You actually
If
just as a as an aside to this, there was a Turkish chef, and he
passed away now who you say that slaughtering cures depression,
Savonarola, if somebody's really depressed and they're like, you
know, feeling anxious and they're like, they should go and do a
slaughter. So it's it'll bring up their spirits.
I never asked him for his delay, because I gave those ways up a
long time ago. But I also have no reason to doubt it because the
work that he did on his wounds was so worked. I saw it so well, we
saw a slaughter, we actually saw man.
There was a Nigerian group that went for for the slaughtering, and
this guy had literally a kitchen knife, right.
It was a good sized kitchen knife. But he actually took the animal
from slaughter, to bagged it. He bagged it. Everything in 3540
minutes, right? I was like, Are you like a pro is like this your
job? He's like, No, I just did a couple times in the home and home
country, right. But he literally with a kitchen knife, cut it up in
a certain way and took the skin off. But when it came time to for
the actual slaughter, and my kids were there, someone was like, Are
you gonna let them see it? I was like, I'm gonna let them see it.
Right? I want them to have one. I'm just have a full childhood.
Right? And who knows when they're gonna get next chance. And why
should we shelter them? Right? So they looked, I said kids up. Do
you want to look look, I said they wanted to look, they
the man came and he did it wrong. Right. He did it really badly. He
hung the angle animal upside down. And he took a knife that was not
sharp yet. And he's hacking away hacking away hacking away. And it
failed. Everyone said, Hey, you're doing it wrong. So this Nigerian
came in, took it. He'd put it laid it down, took a sharp knife, and
boom, boom, in two strikes. It was done right. Now look at the
reaction. This is a great Namur and hikma because my kids are
Hamdulillah he did it. Right. So had them done by seeing it done
wrong, right? They're like, Well, we know that's wrong. But this
method is much better. So you're seeing actually the right way to
do it. And the we say that the slaughter of an animal by a Muslim
for food is the martyrdom of the animal. Right? And to be
slaughtered on April Allah is the highest martyrdom, right? So I
tried to bring like they love animals, right. So we spent time
feeding the chicken and the goose and, and the goats. And they were
so upset at the wrong way of slaughtering. I was like all
that's fine. As long as we recognize there's balance in the
world, we have to eat the animals, right? But just have to be
slaughtered in the right way. And they're like, Yeah, we have to eat
the animals, otherwise the world would be overrun by animals,
right? And also, the cycle of life, right? They've their circle
of life, I've seen Lion King. And he says, we eat the animals, and
then the animals become us, then we die, then we go into the grass,
then the animals eat the grass. Right? So that's actually great
wisdom right there. So the vegan extremism is has been vaccinated,
there will be no vegans inshallah and your family, I think I and
most people have less of a problem with
you know, the vegan attitude of, you know, not eating so much meat.
Because I can agree like, you know, you should not consume, you
know, ridiculous amounts of meat, not treat animals wrong, not, you
know, have
you know, like, unethical ways of, you know, slaughter, et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera, that has nothing to do with, you know,
eating meat. Right. Those are excessive eating meat. Yeah, that
has nothing to do with that. We believe in all of those things,
right. But I think we're just sort of speaking out against the, you
know, what is the point of the, you know, not, not eating meat,
that's not going to solve all the other problems, right, like not
eating meat is not going to solve animals not being slaughtered, is
not going to solve unethical treatment of humans and animals,
right? All across the world, that's not going to do anything.
It's not actually you're totally right. It's an extreme, that's not
going to solve anything, right? Like, back in the day, when you
had people discovering yourself in a selfie community. Right? So what
did they do cancel the whole thing. You didn't solve anything?
Because they're still going to want it right. So the right way to
do it is see what is accepted in the Sunnah and the Shediac by the
scholars, and allow that and disallow anything else, like go to
the middle somehow, like the same people. We talked about this all
the time, right? These people are, you know, they have MacBook Pros
and iPhones and you know, they're
like, what's like do things are made by child labor in other
countries and by extracting rare earth minerals from Africa, right?
Yeah. So let's ignore all of the other things, but we're gonna
concentrate on one little tiny issue but anyways, yeah, Alex
wanted to I just want to be the the actual guy. So
actually, to Nasus point you
When done correctly, as Dr. Shetty was pointing out the animals, the
animal suffers almost not at all. As soon as you cut those two
veins, they pack their animal passes out from lack of blood. So
the rest of it, it doesn't actually feel. And then he
twitching and stuff is just muscle reaction, actually, also
excessive Meat, meat eating is just an amorphous term that's
undefined and undefinable excessive, for whom, in what
condition and what situation. Also, that's a separate issue from
animal suffering. You can eat meat three times a day, seven days a
week and still not contribute to animal suffering or anything like
that. I quote The author of Abubaker Siddiq when he was seen
during his falafel carrying the firewood. And somebody said to
him, What are you Omar radula Han said what are you doing? And he
said to Satan, I'm gonna have to work to feed my family. He said
you're ready for what he taught us. It's not enough. She said we
give you a sheep and X amount of dinars. He said I need a sheep and
a half daily sofa. I need a sheep and a half and I need a couple
more dinners. So it's a big family, wives and children and
stuff like that in hosts people, but it was meat every day. Well, a
couple things. Firstly, the prophets I seldom pointed to the
cow as eating that meat was what he cautioned to, and the lamb is
not considered the dangerous meat to eat in excess of Sedna. Imam
Malik ate meat regularly, lamb regularly like daily, right? And
he was someone who sought us with allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
every night. This is a very well known statement about him. So he
was that's one thing. Second thing is
when we slaughtered the man took out the organs, right, the guts
and put them in a bag. And then my kids ran to look at this. And they
said what is that? And it was like what's like the stomach and the
intestines and the organs? And subhanAllah it was like bliss.
It's it's clean. It's not a filthy thing. Right? The organs on the
inside of an animal. They're nice looking. It's like white. It's not
something gruesome and nasty. Yeah, but Oh, goat doesn't know
what they give you a butcher to give you all the other all
everything. Yeah. And so the women there there was some women there.
They were vying for it. They said to them, and we'll buy this bag
from you. And they're like, whoa, what are they gonna do? I said do
they empty it and fill it with rice right? And then cook it right
do you fry it? Right we call it Mamba. Right so but that's but the
organs were really beautiful on the inside. It's not something
like some nasty thing like guts and gore and stuff. If I may, just
quickly from this is imminent. I am in Timpano we talking about
eating meat. And he says cow meat is cold dry heavy on the stomach
and produces black Belize blood, which is a reference to pre modern
type of medicine that people understood that it causes like
melancholy and depression and stuff
that is only suitable for hard workers. Eating cow me excessively
for those who are not used to it.
Causes usually causes back beliefs illness, the harm that meat causes
will be neutralized when one eats it with spices garlic, ginger and
cinnamon. The meat of fat calves is one of the best mildest and
tastiest types of food. It is warm and wet and fully digested
provides good nutrition. So they were eating like grass fed very
lean hard. It was tough meat, the meat that we get today that's full
of fat, it's actually good for you. Okay, question two, if you're
in the desert, or the mountains like the Arabs or the Turks, okay,
and you're traveling across the desert in the heat, and you need
to stop to eat what are you eating?
Meat, you're eating dates and meat, right? It's dried raisins,
dates, there's only gonna have right and meat. Because you can't
have vegetables. There's no carbs, what carbs you're gonna have, what
are you going to have? Right? I mean, also, I mean, it's a point
to note here. Most like vegans aren't just like anti meat just
for the sake of being anti me, I would say animal suffering, animal
suffering and like climate change and like a lot of other things,
right? I'm sure if they were in like the past like most vegans
probably wouldn't be vegans. There were no vegans in the past it's
possible I mean, and I you know, many points of there's I agree
with, right there's, like, you know, core, you know, corporate
greed, things like that. You shouldn't buy industrial, you
shouldn't buy industrial and this stuff has ruined the world, right?
Yeah, that stuff. That's all fine. But there's another problem that
we're gonna come up on is that very soon, the bulk of meat in the
market will be factory produce meat from a drop of blood. Well,
yeah, well, that's a whole other thing. But we hoped we buy we buy
meat either from you know, farmers, or we, or we buy that
stuff that comes from Australia, which is like free range, organic
nor hormones, you know, processed by Muslims. Like we're not buying
like anybody by the way, the best. The best argument for eating only
halal meat is you can't eat this this brutalized for
factory produced, hormone filled. And by the way, you shouldn't also
just go to your local like, corny, local butcher shop where they're
buying meat at auction that's been treated this way raised on
hormones and drugs and antibiotics, mistreated, harmed,
and then they just say Bismillah Allahu Akbar before the slaughter.
Yeah, tell, but it's not, it's not time.
I had one thing more that I wrote down, I wanted to get to, you said
stability produces neurosis, it produces atrophy of certain
nerves, right? And people are unable to handle situations. And I
actually find that if you look at all over the Quran, if you look at
all over the seat of the messengers, if you look at all
over human nature, or in human history, you're going to find the
great value in conflict as a great value in conflict. Conflict is
very important. Right? And I never shy away from a valid conflict.
Okay, we will all get stronger from a valid conflict. I'm not
saying like stupid like Steve important, David Portnoy,
stupidity conflict, right? I'm talking about a valid conflict.
Right, right. Where there's a point to be made, and it will
ruffle feathers and get everyone upset. I'm telling you over the
long term, you will find that number one, if you find solutions
to the conflict. That's the one thing Secondly, everyone involved
will get stronger, right? People will get stronger and with
conflict, and conflict causes people to look into matters they
would never would have looked at before. Right? So you always got
to think about that the existence of that type of rough and tumble
is good for people, right? As long as it has a purpose, not just for
the sake of the benefit of being uncompromising. Right, yeah,
uncompromised, because if you start if you start to get into
nuance, and oh, well, I see your point. And I hear what you're
saying. And maybe, like, the problem with that, is that it
gives an opening for, for for innovative ideas for innovation,
it really does give an opening for innovation, there should be no
nuance and clear cut things. Yeah, cause it's this is what it is. And
that's what is, like the example we were given with a chef in
Georgia who walks into a house sees the picture on the wall of
the grandfather turns around and walks out. So I don't want to talk
about it. There's nothing to compromise. There's no okay, I
understand or, Hey, let me talk to you about now it's you should just
know that is wrong. And that's it, we're gonna get to Nazarene I just
want to throw in one. One thing is that I believe most people use the
East Coast, West Coast people, maybe London, they want to nuance
because they're very afraid of conflict. Right? They're really
afraid of your view, if you hang out with these people. Right? And
you talk to them, they are very conflict averse. They're very
cowardly, very conflict averse, okay. And they have no enemies,
right? But they have no principles either, right? So they have
nothing to stand for. And they have no one stand against. But
they're very
conflict averse. Just recently, somebody, some famous actress was
complaining about how the left, like all this call out culture and
cancel coaches, the left is doing it to themselves more than they're
doing it to like their opponents. So like, it's because of this,
right? If you're always trying to be agreeable, yeah. You start
picking each other apart on the little things, and you're no
longer dealing with major issues, because you're graded on that
because you you conceded and you compromise and you Oh, well agree
we'll agree with agree. Now you have to argue about the little
thing. And now you're you're throwing each other to the wolves
over like a misstatement. I mispronounce that word. I didn't
mean to say that too late, you're done. You're canceled, you're out.
And they're only it only happens to the people that are overly
agreeable. Yeah. You know, what's funny is that we were discussing
personality types. So I recently did a presentation on personality
types, you know, suffer? Are we done? Well, we had temperaments.
Right, we did the episode. Yeah, you did that persona. And the
sufferer we temperament is both of you guys sitting over here.
They absolutely love conflict, they actually get turned on by
Well, I mean, get energy by conflict, sorry, I didn't mean to.
They get energy from conflict. And they also their greatest strength
is their willpower, like if they focus their will on something, I
mean, they can stay out three months in a row to do whatever
right destroy their enemy or conquer the world. Right? So
that has a very good that personality type is a very good
skill. So to the other personality types. So there is actually a time
when we should be introspective and reflective, right, which the
melancholic personality type does very well, right. And you'll see
like a lot of people that also have, you know, the people that
wrote books, they tend, like, remember was a perfect example of
a melancholic personality, very introspective, very logical, he
can come up with all these arguments. So it's really about
what when should we create conflict and stick to our
principles? Or and when should we we be understanding shall should
unis Yeah, in
and check no smoke. Oh, yeah, yes. So anyway, what the reason I
wanted to interject was to summarize, what I've been hearing
so far is that there's a threat of humanity within some of the rules
of Islam, that some of the rules of Islam forces us to interact
with the real world. Even if you're a person, like I'm a
person, I don't want to interact with the real world, right? I've
never want to see the My dad or people go and slaughter the
animals, right? This this year, I was reading footage of Hutch and I
feel guilty that I didn't know anything about hutch, and I didn't
know anything about Kobani. And I make enough money now I have to
give more money. I was reading and I'm like, I should go and see it.
Right? Because Why be a loser. So not going do it? Shallow and I'll
do it. So this, like if you, Islam actually demands of you,
regardless of your personality, it demands some type of interaction
with the world. And even interaction with some of those
unpleasant things, too. Like you're killing an animal, right?
Some people would find that unpleasant. But it forces you to
have these values while you're doing those things. And this is
why, you know, I want to turn it over to Maureen and just a bit.
This is why we chose this topic is what what kind of sawn off for the
modern world. It's giving us values. If you look at all these
movements, like the LGBT movement, the women's rights movement, the
vegan movement, all of them have some type of true principle that
they're arguing for. Right? For example, the vegans, they don't
want to cause animal suffering, that's a good thing. We start with
the first one, you said, LGBT.
Okay.
They don't like being bullied. Right? You know, people bullying
people, right? So, I mean, it's okay, just ignore me.
I have a defense for them.
But I'm not gonna give it
now, but I was gonna I just, I didn't mean to cut you off. But
what I was going to, you know, continue to continue with this. So
what I was saying is, all these people, they're creating these
movements, because they actually want the good, right, they
actually want the good. But the thing is, they don't know what the
good is. They don't know what the right amount of balance is. They
don't know what values to aspire to. And we have today in the
world, there's humanity's like, they don't know what values to
aspire to. And I, you know, the the purpose of this podcast, I
think the purpose of the topic, is that Islam has something to offer
us with giving us those values to aspire to in the right, right way.
You're what you said. So a couple of things that were really, when
we when you did the research for the problem of evil stuff, which
was amazing, right? And you owe us the summary in sha Allah, which I
think you actually probably it's in my inbox, in any event,
it probably, but one of the things you said was saying, notice, he
said every action of a person is rooted in some adoration of a
virtue. So you said for example, the Zanni, the men who commit
Zina, he does adore the beauty of the Christian, right? He's just
doing it in the wrong way. Right. And that Islam comes to say, what
you have in you, we can also offer in a in the right way, connected
to people, family community and connected to all other virtues.
Yeah, you said that, right? So, for example, even a violent
person, someone who loves violence? Well, in Islam, we do
have a place for violence, like there are righteous wars, there
are wars that can be done fought, right, for good value for good
reason. Right. So those types of people, they have a place, but
you're going to be put into a system, which gives it a value,
but also will give you value on everything else. Because once you
come into Islam, you're going to find yourself whether you like it
or not, you're going to live a balanced life, right? And you're
going to be connected to the earth and to people and to spirituality,
and to past and future paths and meeting our lineages and our
prophets of the past and the future being Africa. So that's a
huge point. And it's also leads into what Maureen was bringing on
what are the values that Islam brings? Yeah, so I think the the
next topic that I wanted to get into is it connects with this,
this last topic of connecting with the natural world. Because I think
a lot of that angst, you know, that we feel today has one to do
with this natural disconnection from the natural world. But I want
to talk in general about the
amount of violence that's taking place around the world, especially
let's talk you know, more localized in you know, America
because almost every week or two weeks now we hear of you know, and
a mass shooting or a violent act that takes place and now I mean,
it almost feels you know, it's scary that you walk into a you
know what the mall and you know, something could happen. So then
that's how generally people feel nowadays, right? Yeah. Now,
something that we
that I've been thinking about is, you know, what leads people to
this? And what what does Islam have to have to offer? When it
comes to understanding this worldview?
I think I want to talk about this idea of this general angst that
people have about the world, which I think eventually the problems
that exist, that's what leads to people, you know, becoming these
mass shooters, right? It's the modern world that we live in. And
I want to touch on those topics. But I think there is this general
like, feeling that most people have in society today that there's
something wrong with the world, that there's something going on,
how do we deal with this, and you know, what is truly a life worth
living? So no offer a
an alternative than maybe most people have on this, which is,
number one, crime and violent crime is way down. It's way down
over the last 20 years, it's down over the last 40 years, it's down
over the last 100 years, and it's continually re shrinking. It's
actually less violent. There's less violence. Yeah, there's the
rate of violence is is lower, and it's lower every year.
What we do have is an increase in these random, you know, incidents
of people going off and killing a bunch of people. And it's not just
mass shootings, you know, you look at China, where there's firearms
are virtually banned. You have mass stabbings and slashings. Like
there is something going on in the world where if it's the Hadith
about who's the man, right, which is one of the signs is that there
will be killing, it will be widespread, and the person doing
the killing and the person being killed, neither of them will know
why.
This is what we're talking about right now. So that's a real thing
that's happening. But I think that overall, you know, the media focus
on mass on so called mass shootings, and you know, the the
random nature of it, because there used to be a lot more violence,
but there used to be some rhyme and reason to it. People used to
kill people that they knew, yeah, or fight with people that they
knew were injured, or they used to have a purpose for it, robbing
people, or taking something or whatever it was right revenge.
Now, it's just random. And it's that kind of stuff is crazy. I
think I think we also I think we just wanted I think we also,
there's an under when we talk about mass shootings, especially
in America, men, there's a real underlying and an undercurrent of
just like total elitist, racist garbage. This is wrong. This is
the epitome of I don't care about other people getting killed poor
people, black people, Hispanic people, immigrants, I don't care
about those people dying in America, from gun violence, what I
care about is the infinitesimally small percentage chance that
somebody might shoot up my kids school, you know, I live in the
suburbs, and I make good money, and I send my kids to the school
and I want them to be safe, and protected from all that. I don't
care about these people in Chicago, and in New York and in
LA, and in the ghettos of America, I don't care about those people at
all. Let him keep shooting each other. What the reason I want gun
control is because I want to protect Little Billy, and the
media supports as they go, Oh my gosh, it's so random. And it could
be a movie theater, or a church or a school. It's every single
weekend in Chicago, nobody talks about it. And if they were
serious, they will be talking about handguns, not about rifles
with, you know, ar 15, or so called assault rifles, which
killed less people than hammers in clubs every year, right? handguns
are the majority of it, there's something on average, every year,
around 11 to 12,000, murders with firearms.
Close to 8500 of those every year are gang related or drug related.
So you take those off the table, then there you haven't been, you
know, this three to 4000, the vast majority of which are still
committed among people who are in bar fights or you know, some kind
of domestic thing or whatever the reason is, so it's not random. And
then you have this really small number of random ones. And this is
all that we care about. It was always terrible, because it's the
special people. So people that are doing well. And it's the people
that you know, the media goes, Look how beautiful these children
are, and they're being killed. I can't Yeah, I have no patience for
that. Sorry. It's, it's not that I want to disagree with you on that,
please. No, the only point. The only point is that I think these
killings are special in their horrific nature, right? I think
it's unprecedented that you would ever find the only place you would
find people like this and history is like mercenaries like roving
bands of mercenary mercenaries when states are falling apart and,
you know, people are killing each other and there's famine, right?
And they still probably were doing it to eat. Exactly, that's what I
mean. There's some external cause. Now here's this guy sitting in his
mom's basement radicalized by Fortune. Now, what can push you to
that depth of like darkness to like, kill children, and like
videotape it and put it on YouTube? Like one of the things we
were discussing, and that puzzled me is that you would never find
the worst mobster that will think
It's okay to go into a school and shoot up children. That's which is
amazing. So Subhanallah like, this is something that I'm confused
about. And I'm asking not as a sort of pejorative insult towards
whites, I'm actually curious, I have no idea what's going on in
America, except for the first guy in Connecticut that started this
craze off in 2012. I think it was
shooting up schools and children being killed, it's being done by
their by their peers, almost exclusively. So there's, there's
not like adults that are going to schools to shoot children
specifically, except for that one case, that guy was, you know, that
guy was probably the among the worst of them. For the most part.
When you see that a school shirt, it's somebody that was a student,
or was just recently a student at that school. So he has beef with
those people specifically, as far as the rest of these random
killings, when people go to movie theaters, or, you know, a bar or
whatever it is, right.
I mean, you answer your own question when you said they're
radicalized by 4chan and the crazy stuff that they're seeing and you
know, this is pure evil. Yeah, this is a bliss like people don't
believe in the devil anymore. Yeah. shaytani exists. I mean, one
of the one of the guys in one of the not too long ago ones. The one
in I think it was Ohio or something. Guy was literally a
Satanist. Yeah, like, there's not it's not even like we're
exaggerating. He literally worship saying, so there's no question
that, that there's satanic influences in this, that and that
IBLEES has an opening, because we have no spirituality and no
religion and no regard for Allah.
In any place in the world, and people don't even believe in him.
So they're not watching out for him. I mean, if you want to
guarding against him, just look at what just look at what the just
look at what the Hindus are doing. To the Muslims. I mean, if you
want to talk about Satanism, did you see what they worship? Like?
I'm not it's not even an exaggeration. It's beyond the idol
worship. This is bliss worship. I bet the surgeon will carry
Aboriginal gin. Yeah, this is their worship Shayateen I don't
want to hear any noise. Oh, well, this this is a manifestation of
the Brahma please those are those are shared those and if these
things are monstrous and no no healthy human heart can worship
something a monstrosity like that. Unless there's something Wait a
second dark and evil in you are you condemning Hinduism? Well
lying but you haven't studied it? What do you know about Hinduism?
what's your what's her name of eight arms? You don't even know
her name, but you're condemning Hinduism, Shiva. I actually
actually did study Hinduism
in the, at the college level. And I will tell you that it's it's
it's idol worship and chanting. I mean, this is my point was on an
ancillary point, related to register, but that when you negate
an idea, all you need to know is where it crosses on your theology.
Right? Where's the cross a line on my theology? Like, if my neighbor
comes in and his dog poops on my grass? Right? I could go on attack
that dog right get to get off my grass. I don't need to know you. I
don't need to know what you're going through. Right? I don't need
to know your circumstances. And Saturday night live out a great
thing about
it had is this episode is called
Black Jeopardy.
And in this episode, there's two black people and a white. Tom
Hanks. There's no There's two with one or the woman, a white woman.
Right? And the category is, I don't know you for 500. Right.
So it's like something like someone walks right up to you and
says, Can I use your cell phone? I don't know you. Right?
Use your own phone. Next one. And then the next one. Finally they
get to the white lady. And she says
she's like, I don't know you. And I don't know all that you've been
suffering. So I can't judge you.
Right, which technically, actually, by hosted on standards
does actually have a stent, but it's obviously taken to ridiculous
ends. But anyway, how did we get there? Yeah, heartache. Yeah.
Extending
Kitab or demo status? Yeah. To devil worshippers. Yeah. It's one
of the greatest blunders in the expense during the period of
expansion. And we're paying the cost right now. Yeah, I think we
got there because we were talking about
the idea of
you can't constantly have like nuance about other things. And I
think one thing I wanted to link back to this idea, because we
talked about earlier is I think that's actually what's led the
world kind of in the direction that it has. Yeah, right. Because
of the lack of values, the lack of true understand certainty, and
certainty in anything at all. Absolutely. Anything at all.
Right. Now, let's say like
You have a random, you know bout with somebody about a topic, let's
say
toothbrushes. Keep it like, civil as possible. Okay, right. There's
no kidding or vibrating, right? There's gonna be some guy who's
gonna be like, Oh, you don't really have to brush your teeth
because of X, Y and Z. Right? All you have to do is floss. Like, you
know, and then there's going to be Oh, but you don't know the nuance
of like, you know how enamel decay or something.
There's gonna be another person and then third person to be like,
You know what? I don't really care. This is nonsense. I'm just
trying to watch Netflix.
Right? This is, this is actually the state of almost like the
majority of the Western like world now, which is, I don't want to
learn anything. I don't want to do anything. Just leave me alone. I'm
burnt out by my nine to five. Yeah, I'm just trying to go home.
I'm just trying to chill.
Good. So that's absolutely true. Listen, listen. I know, all the
the movies are fighting. All you guys can leave your hockey
debates. I'm just trying to check.
Which is actually like most of my friends, by the way, but listen
to his friends do
I know people? I know people. Okay, I know people who, when
they're posed between two opposing opinions, their immediate instinct
is how do I bring these two opinions together? Right? Their
immediate instinct is not. Alright, what is the foundation of
the question? Right? And then what are the facts that we know? And
what must be eliminated? And what must necessarily be true? And what
is speculative? That's, that's how thinking should work. But rather,
people go by emotion, not just other people's emotions, their
emotion, their fear of ever having to say, This is what's right. And
that's what's wrong. Right. They're also gonna add that now,
they don't want to hurt Wayne's feelings. They don't want to hurt
Knauss feelings, right? But I'm saying wait a second, to give you
an impression of falsehood, that would be the worst injustice.
Right? To tell you that actually, you're actually making a mistake
on this. Right?
And this is what's right, is a far less discomfort than to let you go
on and a wrong position. Right on a wrong belief like you want to
take which way you're gonna go home. I'm gonna take route one
south. Well, no, maybe taking one North is better to the turnpike
south. Right. So yeah, you'll be we'll be going north for a little
bit. But you'll go south after that straight shot, rather than
one south and then one South is not actually south, it's south
west. And it takes forever and flights takes forever and it's
life. So just because it says oneself in New Jersey doesn't mean
it's one south, it's actually one southwest. Okay. So if I was to
argue with that, rather than say, okay, mine was take one south, let
him take one south, because that's what makes him comfortable. He
identifies with one south, right? And but
he goes, Well, you know, both the right Yeah, exactly. I can stand
this, then a nuance exists. The, the, the prerequisite of the
existence of nuance is ambiguity.
there is ambiguity, when you have certainty, we say, in Lefortovo
madness, when you have certainty, there's no ambiguity. And that's
why legal terms, they try to remove ambiguity completely right
from it. Okay. And when they want nuance, they might as they want
some Senator wants to put some corruption and he makes the terms
ambiguous to the bill. Right? My favorite joke, from when I was a
kid is one of my friend's mother.
Had his sister was like dating non Muslims I grew up with his sister
was like dating, and the mother was like, I don't want to see you
with those boys, you're gonna end up really pregnant, or very
pregnant, something like that. And we were all like, how are you?
Sort of, like me the pregnancy or not? It's black and white, black
and white? You can't be very pregnant. Yeah, you're either
pregnant or you're not. And they're what would you say the
bulk of things in the worlds are mutually exclusive is gonna be one
or the other. Like, are you at work or not? Right? Are you did
you wake up or not? Right? If you if you work in Waitsfield,
you may or may not be at work, at the same time, is shorting that
shorting your job. You may be at work but not working. He has a
quantum job.
So this this concept and this idea, okay, you know what's funny,
be nuanced, but the fact that you're accusing someone of not
being nuanced, you're very black and white about that. Like you
guys are nuanced, but this is not nuanced. That's a black and white,
right? That's very black and white, whereas so in the thing
itself, yeah. The reason I brought this up, right is this idea of
nuance is because there are still people out there who was who are
going to take nuanced approaches to like school shootings, who will
take nuanced approach. Trust me, maybe not now in five years and
six years. I just did. What are you getting all upset about?
Like, the world is better than it was five years ago, right? But
that's the but here's the problem, right? When you don't have
concrete lines of, okay, this is what it is. And I'm just gonna
stick to it. And I can ignore everything else. You don't have
that anymore right back, like, you know, 50 years ago, that's what it
was things were very plain, very black and white, at least about
like the majority of issues. And your your life wasn't nuanced, you
know. So how do you actually live a life properly as a Muslim? You
know, while all of this like, postmodern, like nuances out
there, I'll tell you, I'll tell you one thing. Now is that you
have you had to be honest, so yeah, all right. Let me say some
first okay
I was gonna, okay, I was just
reading a mimetic some of his statements, and one of his
statements is, and men hedge, Hua ma Allah, He covered unis, right,
or Alberto Ness. So he says that what the bulk of people are upon
this is the way right, he says even if there is something
stronger or better, why? Because you need the unity of people, you
need the majority of people to do to do anything. There's no point
in having a greater idea when you're one against a million.
Right? That's one thing. Secondly, what you said about Islam is not
what you said about slam it forces you to be close to nature forces
you to be close to regular people. This is what I love about Islam.
Right? It forces a person to go pray in the masjid. And in the
masjid, you're gonna see people who are very normal people. So you
know what normalcy is, we really know have a clue what normalcy is
what the bulk of the people in the masjid hold to be the norm is the
norm for us Muslims, right? That's the norm, whether it's close, what
makes what's men's clothes, what's women's clothes, etc, blah, blah,
blah. So when I get that I'm rooted in a lot of those things
that could go either way. All right, I have a majority opinion
right off the bat, whatever the common focus. Yeah, if you don't
have a masjid around, as is the case for where I live, very big
problem.
Nobody, if you don't have a budget with people where you live in a
remote location in the United States, or anywhere else in the
world, at least in the Western world, try to go to public places
where there's just normal people, I think the public fortunately,
might get shot. Unfortunately, the American public, the American
public is so diverse, right? It's so diverse. Like, we have
diversity in the midst of this normal diversity. We have like
ethnic diversity, right? racial diversity, but we don't have
diversity of beliefs. Everyone believes in Allah. Right.
Everyone's gonna pray. People don't lie. People won't be staring
at your right, we will coming naked. Right? So that's even that
might be that might be the problem, because we're too
cosmopolitan. No one can take a position because any one position
will offend a significant percentage of the population.
Right. I think two minds for his right. One of the things that are
people think that I'm crazy, especially down here in South
Jersey, where we live, but I actually like New York City has a
lot of fun. Which part? Blue collar or white collar? Manhattan,
or like both actually, like I like Manhattan has good things to
offer. And also like going out to Brooklyn. Yeah. Like, especially
especially like Atlantic Avenue is like a really nice area. There's a
lot of Muslims. They're just like a Salafi Masjid. There's Muslim
shops. There's the best Yemeni restaurant I've ever been to. But
even like, even like ghetto, Brooklyn is good. It's just, it's
just a different. It's a different vibe that you get out here in the
country.
And one of the good things is that there's, like human beings. Yeah,
like it's a city. And it's made out. It's all made out of concrete
and metal and glass, right. But there's human beings, and there's
human activity, and there's life there. And I think that that's a
good thing, too. I think that what's really bad is the in
between, right? Like, if you have if you live out like a natural,
rural country life where you know your neighbors well, and you're
farming and you have like, don't you can look at stars at night,
because it's not like polluted. That's beautiful. It's fantastic.
Or if you live in a cosmopolitan area, like Istanbul is great.
There's great energy London, London is amazing, right? There's
a lot of good energy. They're living in these in these suburban
subdivisions, where, like, they're not even real neighborhoods.
There's no store. Where's the neighborhood store? Like there's
nothing there's no pizza shop, you got to order Domino's.
This is not that I think that that's actually very bad. And this
by the way, that's the seed of malaise in American society. So
his suburban Yeah, it's the place it's when you've left the city to
go to by the way. In other countries, the suburbs are the
ghettos. Like the people that are poor people with money live in the
cities, and the poor people have to live on the outskirts that's
why one of my habits is to keep the same vendors for example, a
dry cleaner same dry cleaner right so now we know each other by name
for years. Yeah, right buying food. We go the same two places to
buy the food, buy the meat, same place. So you know the names right
now
You want to save some? Yeah. So I was gonna disagree with everything
you guys were talking about. But
so I think one of the reasons that shooters become shooters, is
everything you guys have said so far, that they're sort of detached
from society, right. And they get into the spot where humanity sort
of sucked out of them. Because I know you were saying that violence
has decreased, right. But I think we should be concerned about the
psychology of these people, because I think this is a hidden
psychology that we have in modern people. Right, which is, which is
these people have completely lost the meaning of life? Yeah. Right.
They've entered a so there's been, there's been a 50 year study on
school shooters, and that was published in New York Times
recently. And they found out that one of those common things was
that right before they did their shooting, they reached a crisis
point, something in their life, maybe they lost their job, maybe
they got called fat, but people in school or whatever, right?
Something that tipped them over the edge. Now, if you have contact
with people in your community, like if you have human contact,
you get a certain sympathy for other human beings. And you also
get this idea that you know, what, not every human being is like this
person who was mean to me. Yeah, right. And you also have the
support system, that at the last resort, you can at least go to
somebody, right? You can at least go to somebody. But these school
shooters, they were abused as children. They read some crisis
point in their life. And there was nothing stopping them from getting
a weapon. And I feel like this is one of those things that American
individualism has led to Yeah. Because loneliness, loneliness,
because this is why you don't see like, let's say, black people
commit, you know, school shootings, because they have a
collectivist culture, right? This is why you don't see minorities
committing, you know, school shootings, they act out in other
ways, but not in this way. This is something one article described it
as like the violent suicide. School shooting is like a violent
suicide. Right. And I'm gonna come back to this point later on about
this fatalism, right, this complete loss of hope about
everything about life, right. I think that's, a lot of people are
experiencing that today. And we should be concerned about how many
people are experiencing that. Good point. And those are excellent
points. And that's exactly what when it comes to those points,
there's a number of different ideas and topics which actually I
feel the modern person is affected by, right. And it's not just okay,
the internet, it's not just social media. It's, it's those plus
things like, the economy, right. It's things like corporate greed,
it's things like, you know,
broken families, it's things like, you know, even even things such
as, you know, secular liberalism and not believing in,
for example, the proliferation of the belief of evolution, when
you're no longer believing that, you know, you were created from an
entity outside and you came directly from this earth. Right?
And you know, you weren't fashioned
when you're just a piece of flesh when you're just nothing then what
then you have this growth of people actually believing in what
speciesism No, this is a thing. Yeah, there's a sign in
Philadelphia drive into work. It's like and speciesism which is that
we think that the human being
okay, so why did he kill himself and get it over?
Yes, he's too busy fighting for animal rights. Right. So but but
it was, it's a thing now, right? How is that a thing? But it's a
thing? Because there's a plethora of different attacks that are upon
the modern man. Yeah, right. Man, I mean, woman man. Can't even
talk. You can't even talk but don't even don't even don't even
engage in that. No, but my I only said it out of out of, you know,
showcasing this is how ridiculous when you can't speak anymore. When
you can't think anymore.
Then you turn into this fatalistic person that Okay, listen,
everything's in this death spiral. The economy's in a death spiral.
My religion is in a death spiral. My family's in a death spiral My
health isn't a death death spiral the my job isn't a death spiral
like everything's going down. Whatever let me just you know, and
99% of people aren't going to go and become shooters but instead
what depression let's go on pink on phones let's go on painkillers
let's I mean, what is what is social media addiction except for
a painkiller? It's just another drug right? Let's let's binge you
know, hours of Game of Thrones and Netflix and Game of Thrones is
haram. Let me just throw that out there. But hours of you know, just
content and content and content, why to numb the human being of all
The the death spiral that's around them. Right? So I didn't want that
one core I'd like core question I'd like to answer before we end
eventually, is, what does Islam have to offer to get us out of
this death spiral? You know, how do we live our lives? To get
through that? So I'm going to make two points. The first is,
by all indicators, things are better in the world and they've
ever been. So the death spiral is overall, I think it's people being
like, it's not as good as I would like it to be. Right. But I don't
think that it's actually bad. I think that we can sit there and we
can go look this this is happening in that the world used to be way
worse way tougher. People died all over the place of curable
diseases, of famine, of wars, wars were widespread.
Life The world was dangerous. And life was rough. But why didn't it
feel? I'll tell you, it's bad. Let me tell you have TV. Now I have a
theory for this to number one you weren't exposed to as bad as much
bad news. That's the first thing. Number two, there were not that
many people in the world, like this world seems like it's teeming
with people like you get lost, right? Second, thirdly, friction.
Back in the day, you had a lot of friction with people, like always
friction by meaning interactions, like interactions with the Earth,
right? Why like things weren't as smooth, you can fall, right? You
had interactions with bullies in the streets, right? A school bully
school bully is very beneficial. If it's limited. If it's
controlled, right. If the school bully is controlled, there isn't
get to a point of driving person to suicide. But a little bit of
bullying in a school makes everyone a little bit a lot
stronger. Right. Whereas what did they do? They did anti bullying in
the schools. Finally, when the nation in 2016, a bully came on
the block, no one knew what to do. Right? When Trump came, he bullied
the whole nation. No one know what to do. Right? Whereas I'm like,
all these people, all you need is have you never faced a bully.
Right? Look, Jeb Bush and all these people, there came a point
where the only thing I'm telling you that would have stopped Trump
was Jeb Bush was muskie, he was out. You had the Miami guy. What
was that guy's name? There was a couple,
Rubio, Rubio, these are all
just risky. He's probably seeing a therapist. Right? Okay. The only
thing that would have stopped the Trump right machine is if Rubio
went would have went and grabbed him by the neck and punched him on
live TV and embarrassed him. That was that was the only thing but
no, but no, no sense of thinking out of the box. No sense of taking
a risk. Well, what a Trump win by everything is out of the box and
taking risks, right? So you have everyone want to toe the line. And
it's gonna happen again, might as just can't cancel the election,
it's going to be trumping for a sweep, right? So it's friction, we
have not enough friction, so a touch of our immune system, we get
sick, a touch in our emotions, oh, we're gonna sit on the couch.
Right? So the world is really not as bad as we seem to think that it
is. But the perception is reality for a lot of people. So I'm gonna
disagree with that. Because, yes, you're right. From a materialistic
point of view, the world is not bad. It's abundant luxury, but
this is what people are complaining about. I understand.
But one of the things we have to understand as human beings have
two parts body and soul. We've created a world where it's a
paradise for bodies, but there's nothing for the soul. Totally
true. And one of the things one of the reasons why people are
suffering so much today is this phenomenon of the nuclear man. And
I'm going to define what that means. Before the nuclear age
before.
Before, before before World War Two.
You know, this is why I want to say I disagreed earlier, there was
a lot of certainty. In fact, what got us into situation is a lot of
certainty. The British Empire so modernism is a philosophical
movement that incorporated the British Empire. The British were
very certain of their superiority. Yeah. White people are superior.
Intellect a superior technology, superior materialism superior,
everything else is done. Good point, right. And what this led to
is something so satanic, so horrible, it affected all of
Europe, all of Asia, right? Is that the fault of certainty or the
fault of what they were certain about what they were certain
about? I'm coming to that point.
A World War Two so much suffering. The people that you saw as your
role models were dropping bombs in other countries killing 1000s and
millions of people. Yeah, post nuclear man just gave up. Right?
Because look, what there's what were their certainty got them?
Yeah, but my grandfather's they're supposed to be my role models. Oh,
this is the guy that you know, own slaves and dry
up the bomb on Hiroshima. Right. So this is a person, this is a
person in the modern age, he cannot trust tradition. Right? He
has no trust of tradition, he has no idea of where he came from.
Right? He doesn't have any beliefs, how can you have beliefs?
Look where your beliefs got him. But but you know that what we
believe is that Cofer eats itself and exposes itself to be
something that destroys itself. Exactly. And the thing is, I think
the reason is not that people were too nuanced is that people were
certain about the wrong thing. Yeah. So much so that when the
right thing needs to be certain about people start doubting it.
Yeah. And I think the thing that we need to be certain about is
Islam. That's really the only thing today in the world, maybe
Catholics, I don't know,
the only thing in the world today, a worldview that sort of offers
you this type of certainty towards human values, right? Human Values,
not, not the sort of anti human values that intellect is the best
that the white man is supreme. Right? But these are human values
that are babies. Yeah, tissue in the body. Exactly. So if we can,
and the reason people are suffering today is because they
don't have those things to be certain about. And one of the most
amazing things about us about Islam as when I was, as I'm
writing this book of FIP, I had to consult
lawyer marriage lawyers, because when you're in the chapter of
marriage and divorce, you have to know what's the relevant such
situations in your area, right? I had to consult certain businessmen
on the nature of contracts, what are the certain terms? Because we
have babbled we were I had to contact certain people about the
nature of the throats of animals when we had to do slaughter,
right? Like, what's going on here. I had to contact
people on inheritance because we have inheritance law. I had to
delve into books on dreams and dream interpretation. And I'm
like, Subhan, Allah, when you study FIP, you will study every
facet of life. I had to delve into governance, right? Because there's
a chapter on what makes the Khalifa legitimate. Right? What is
a sound rebellion? What is an unsound rebellion? When can you
ever rebel? Right? What? So that's there's some politics there,
right? Governance and philosophy of politics are, in a sense. So
one of the beauties of it is when you talk about what is the value
that Islam offers. And I'm sitting here like, it's all this is in
100 200 pages, right? So you're getting a touching the base. So
nobody's fully ignorant. You're not totally ignorant on one field,
you do have a sense, right? You're integrated with life. Yeah, you're
integral. Everything is one that was beautiful about that, too, is
that it's just giving you the facts. This is the ruling. Yeah,
there's no nuance no discussion, no philosophy, no theory. Let me
explain to you why No, this is we've done the homework.
I've done the homework. And this is, this is this is the fifth This
is the ruling. And this is the fifth one. I actually find it very
interesting that across the world, there are now large, right wing
movements, right, I find it very interesting, right? Because there
is clearly as just as people feel this general angst around the
world. Yeah, right. Especially in the Western world. When I when I'm
when I say the around the world, I do literally mean around the
world, because it's just Western culture propagated all over the
world.
Yeah, even in Muslim countries. And what because, you know, I find
it very interesting that there are these like, right wing, extremist
movements all across the world, right.
And the reason why I find it interesting is because there is
this understanding of people that people have that something is
weird about the world, and we need to fix these definitions, maybe
going all the way to the right is wrong, or is the wrong philosophy.
However, however, that doesn't mean that you know, you know,
swaying to the left is the wrong, right philosophy ratio, it's
coming to this understanding of what is the definition? What are
true values? And, and I think going to just the basic principles
of Islam can give you that. And one of the things is that when you
said that people look at so much nuance, so much blah, blah, blah,
no one knows what's what, everything's weird. Let me just go
and watch TV and sit on my couch and don't bother me. Right? That
is one LM, I was going to tell you that there's another avenue people
can go. And that is to say, no, there are things that are true.
And there are things that are certain. Right, that's other and
so what you described is probably the bulk of people, but also what
I'm describing is the origins of this right wing thing, then the
right wing being that they're going to grab on to what they know
is certain because i Whenever Whenever there's turmoil, the
right thing to say, Sir, what are the facts? What is absolutely
certain, right? And let's stick to that and build upon that. Right.
And stick to that if all we have now if if you're in America, and
what basically the right wing is when they say what are the facts
they're going to give
do a whole ridiculous list of things we don't agree with. Right?
But the idea the concept of let's go back to what we know is, is is
history is tradition. Right? Let's go on, let's go. Let's stick to
what what we know. And what our fathers when we would say, let's
stick to our what our Dean says, right? Well, our books us. So
that's why when I when I react and when we react to this stuff, we
say what certain this is certain. Right? This nonsense cannot
continue. That's why they call us the liberal types of Muslims they
call us the alt the alt right.
Bros. Oh yeah.
Right the alt right instead of the alt right or the Alt bros. We're
not. We're not. Yeah, we're not that we're not that. But what the
reason they see similarities because the right wing people are
saying this is this isn't how life is. And we're also saying, This is
what truth is right. Now, we were basing it on Bukit Sona and
majority scholarship, right dominant opinions, but they're
obviously just basing it upon their forefathers. That's a
difference. But the similarity is, the reaction to this, right? Crazy
world is to say, There's got to be something true. And we got to
build on that. So continuing on my earlier point.
It's true that things are objectively in the material sense
much better. And in the spiritual sense, they're disastrous.
And those two things go hand in hand. In fact, I was just passing
around that picture. And I posted on Twitter recently, of it was a
Pew survey of people who claim that who say that religion plays a
very big role in their life. And it's like, it's literally a mirror
image of where there's material wealth. So those who have more
have less religion in their life, right? So while it's objectively
true, that materially things are better. It's also true that people
feel their perception is that oh, man, things are getting worse. And
all that is, is anxiety. That's a fear of loss. This is why the
Yeah, the alt right, or the the right wing movements, the
nationalist movements, you know, the separatist movements, the anti
immigrant movements that are on the rise in Europe, are a result
of a fear of loss. And people are fearing loss, because they have no
confidence that what they that what they have, and what they care
about the material that it's going to go, it's going to last at all.
And this is 100%, the result of losing losing faith losing a man.
Right, so what Islam has to offer the world more than anything, is a
sense of security. And it's a sense of understanding what is
valuable and what isn't. Now, I'm not saying Muslims, understanding
what's valuable, what's not, it's clear that a lot of Muslims don't,
but Islam gives you that, I'm just gonna just just end that. I just
recently watched a documentary on people choosing alternative ways
of meeting their end, right. So some of it was like, I want to be
have like a natural burial. I don't want to have like, you know,
like casket
on HBO, it was a documentary about alternative ways that people
choose to die. I mean, we're gonna, we're all gonna die. It's
it's actually a good topic. And there was like one story about
these people whose kid had like a, like a childhood disease, and he
died. And one of the things that he said, he was like, four, he was
like, you know, just please throw a party for my friends, like a
comic book, hero, party, whatever, I would love to see that right. Or
I would have loved that. So instead of having a big funeral,
where everybody was miserable, they did a small funeral just for
family. And then they threw his big party for all his like
classmates or whatever, you know, stuff like that. But the bulk of
it, for some reason focused on this one guy. He was a Silicon
Valley software engineer. He was
he had
he terminal cancer. And he chose to get some medicine from a doctor
right assisted suicide stuff, and he was going to kill himself.
So I'm watching this right, and the guy
gets his family together. It goes, it's gonna be tomorrow is our last
dinner together, etc, right? But he's driving himself to and from
this, this this like gathering with his family. And I'm like,
I'm outraged now because he wants to kill himself, do Chihuahua, but
like, where's your understanding? Like, if you have one more second?
That's one more. It's like foreign that you can do. Like you can make
Toba. You can benefit people. You could do a good thing. Like you
were healthy. I know you're dying. But you might have had months,
even if you had days, like how could you just quit? How could you
quit early? No reasons at any second, it could be the one phrase
that changes you from from Jahannam to Gen. And this is
something that Islam brings you right, it gives you a hope that
even in the last moment, things could turn for the better and that
you have something to live for and that you don't want to commit
atrocities while you're living. There's a beautiful, saying from
medic, he said that. New questions came to say normally when hooked
up and all that
Without didn't like to answer them, he left them blank if he
didn't have to.
And this was actually very important on the issue of nuances
that automatic said that I saw the the elders of Medina were
tabulating and tablets and tablets, and very old attempting
to, he said that none of them liked to go into the deep the
depth of issues and sparse up Messiah. Right. We had the tombak.
All right, in this in this detail that you are all in, right? They
didn't like this, right? They, if it was in the book of Allah haram,
they said haram if they if it was not in the book of Allah, and they
felt it was haram, they said we didn't like they didn't even use
the word Hana. I wouldn't like it. Right? We don't do it. So they
kept things simple. And he talks about that. But then to the point
that you said, he said that all might have been hooked up. Never
once asked for death. Okay, except once when the he was afraid that
he would lose his way. Right that he would not be on the straight
path. Other than that, all my love to stay in the world. Can you
hibel Bucha for dunya. Right? It's an amazing statement. That is not
what you would expect from someone of Jana. Right? Let's all leave
and be dreamy, and oh, I'm not good. And let's just go to Africa.
No, he wanted to stay in this world and act and the province I
sent him when two brothers died. The good brother died first. Right
there two Muslims. One was very righteous. The other was regular
common Muslim, right. So the they said the good brother died. And
then six months later, the other brother died. So they when in
passing conversation, one man said, the there's a very virtuous
brother, right. And then his other brother died six months later, in
the province, I said and said, Well, don't say that. How do you
know that his salah, and the one Ramadan that he had, that his
brother did not have for six months, he had Salah and one
Ramadan? How do you know that that didn't surpass him? How much six
months was six months of Salah.
Last thing I wanted to say was that
you were saying?
Actually Go ahead. I just skipped skipped my mind. It's so you're
right. And so the the thing about saying the homologue Ilan, it
points out that
when you have deeds, good deeds, then that gives you a different
perspective on life. Right. So one of the other common factors and I
know this is going to be less nuanced than the the way the
studies are done. But the common factor with these mass shooters
with people who join terrorist groups, people who do suicide
bombings, people who join * groups, people who join the
coolest across the board, they're losers, right? These are people
who have nothing. They're often the these guys according to the
study, nice quote, there. There's like an inciting incident that
pushes them over the edge, but they suck the before that Yeah,
right. Everything they did, they were losers. Similarly, these guys
that join these groups, they're losers, they got nothing. It's
off. Often you find these guys, they get talked into becoming like
suicide bombers or whatever. They lost their job. They flunked out
of school because they didn't want to study because they were lazy
because they were playing, you know, Call of Duty instead of
going to class. And then they go, Oh, I have nothing. Or they're
people who never practice Dean, who were never religious who had,
you know, petty criminal offenses. You find this a lot in the
European ones, petty criminal offenses, drugs, theft, right?
He's got a girlfriend who left him just standing some some some
European girl, and she leaves him and he's like, Ah, I gotta get I
got nothing in these guys go Oh, praise Allah. And then we'll get
you the gender like we have. We have to shortcut the agenda. Well,
some people love a book club. Yeah. Was that the four wives?
Yeah. No.
So many to whom? I'm sure I'm a rookie.
But yeah, they're losers. Yeah. And that's why when you talk about
death, you had brought up death. One of the things about Islam like
NAS made that point very early on, he said that Islam brings you
close to nature, part of nature's death, right. And I'm in the year
end speech, that little year end speech I gave at the eighth party,
because he is also the year end to write because the next month is
beginning the new Hijiri year. So I said in assessing our year, I
said any year where you're memorizing the Quran, or you have
in the masjid kids memorizing the Quran, right? And your body is in
the masjid, making salah. And you're engaged in some knowledge,
right? That was a good year. And I said this year, we had some good
births, marriages and deaths. And I made it a point to mention
deaths because when you see a good funeral,
a funeral where the family is there. You see the last few days
of the man's life or the woman's life and the surrounded by his
family. C'est la ilaha illAllah Muhammad Rasool Allah, the
messenger is packed for the funeral. People walk to the
funeral or go to the graveyard and bury the person. Long do it at the
end of the person. Don't you cannot underestimate the kind of
impact this has on young person's life. And are you anyone, right?
It looks okay. That's how we go. All right now I know where the end
is. When I know what the end of something is. All of a sudden the
middle becomes very stable. I know my big
I think, right and I know my end. And when I say my beginning,
meaning the beginning of humanity, that Allah created us, right? And
I know our end, each one of us is going to go, then we're going to
have a resurrection. But my concern is my own resurrection,
which is my own descent into the grave. I see what the end of life
is like, for the middle aged person. He needs to look it's not
just for you, middle aged person needs to look at seven year olds
dying, eight year olds dying, how they go out, and they realize
that's the right way to do it. I have a community, I have people
who pray next to me, they're gonna bury me, right? And I know where I
want my heart to be. I know what matters.
My career is not gonna matter. My fame and fortune is not gonna
matter. There's nothing going to matter in that last few weeks when
you know, you're dying. Okay, except your spiritual statement.
And you better hope you were at least decent enough that four or
five people will take care of you. And maybe half a dozen people pray
over you, right? I mean, that's a lot for many people. Subhanallah
Have you ever been to non Muslim funeral?
Once? Okay, was it like a celebrity or like a regular
person? It was just just hold the casket. Okay, so, um, but I went
one time to like a number that were all the people. No, there's
no way with that. This is it. You're you go out, you've been in
the state for like 50 years. Think about this. A Muslim who's been in
the state of New Jersey for 50 years, or 30 years or in Chicago
for 30 years lived his whole life, or whether there's a population of
Muslims. And he was just a regular mosque going men. That's all he
did just show up to the message. Right? You're gonna have at least
300 people at your funeral. I've hardly ever gone to Janessa had
less than 100. Yeah, I mean, how? But Sivan, Allah when I've when
you think about end of life?
Last phase of life and burial? You realize that's really what's
important. And what do you guys have? Right? What what do atheists
have at that moment of life?
That's if if you don't know what to die for, then what do you have
to live for? Hey, can I interject something? We started on the topic
of wealth here and how people don't do it, and they should do
it. You know what else people should do watch bodies, you should
watch but you should be involved in funerals. Oh, he every time
some guy or woman goes on social media or something and complains
that the chutzpah was about how to properly prepare a body and
Janessa you need that? Because you don't know how and you're all
afraid of it. Like you should be done. Yeah. And, you know, when I
before I started, you know, learning karate and stuff. I was
like, you know, what's up with these legal verses in the Quran?
You know, I'm reading books by you know, Foucault Actually, I didn't
read Foucault. But you know, the original French Yeah, I don't know
French, all these all these fancy people, you know, talking about
the, the luscious grass.
Whilst also the Christian mentality is spiritual audio only.
Spirituality only. And now I'm telling you, those verses are so
my favorite. Yeah. Right. Because the older you get, you realize
Holy crap, especially if you've been sheltered. Yeah. Oh, man, you
bro.
Got when he was like, he's like, you know, the older you get into
your mid 20s. I'm telling you, like, if you're a sheltered
person, and you don't have that big of an experience with the real
world, it can be so horrifying, that you sort of just shut down.
And I know so many people like this that soon as they get a job,
they just shut down because they just don't know how to deal with
real life. Yeah. And you know, I'm reciting these verses are hella
come later.
I was like, subhanAllah, you thought of everything? Yeah.
Right. Like you haven't left. Allah subhanaw taala has not left
a place for me to like, say, Oh, I have no idea what to do. Right. So
this is I think you were talking about how these shooters are
losers, right? Islam has a place for losers. And the promise to the
losers is that it could change you. Yeah, yeah. And subhanAllah
This is why I mean, my favorite thing about Islam. And one of the
things with these shooters is that they're fadeless I've been I've
been kicked in my butt by the gene pool. Yep. Right. I'm a beta. I'm
like, never gonna go. Seriously. I know. I know. Never gonna get
girls. I'm done with my life. Yeah. And there's no chance of
hope. genes. I'm over write. It is a fatalistic attitude. What Islam
says is no, the world is controlled by a personal God that
created you for a purpose. And if he stopped sustaining you for an
instant, you would be gone. So he cares enough about you to keep
sustaining you from moment to moment. And he has some great
purpose for you. Right? I mean, this is that's great for your self
esteem. This is some cared for it's it's it's an idea that's so
radical, that that's what that's the only idea that can make heroes
it's that's it, super, super heartache. Down by the way, those
people, these people that I'm talking about, I'm calling them
losers because of what they've done.
Well, if they were in a good Islamic community and they had
good Islamic family around them, they would be they would do well.
because they wouldn't be oppressors. Yeah, they're not that
kind of person. Yeah, right. They're kind of shy. They're kind
of, you know, they actually would benefit from a community where
they could find their place where there were the Auntie's would find
them someone to get married to who would be a good personality match.
And they would have children who would be like, you know, yeah, the
kids that are like, you know, McAdams of the messages, like it
would be good. Yeah, they do, they do hit the mind. And the promise
of a lot of the messages that I send them is that there are
categories of people there is the scholar, there's a student, there
is the servant of the scholars, someone who arranges for their
programs, etc. And then there is the, the one who just loves,
right. So he said, Be one of the four Don't be one of the five,
there'll be the fifth one, there's no fifth be one of the four. But
the automat. In the commentary, they said, We've never seen one
become one being one except that his, his child occupies the higher
station. All right. So Subhan Allah and you will cannot be a
loser in a religion that tells you you have to work. You have to earn
your livelihood, there's no socialism. There's no communism,
that's going to give you a paycheck. You're going to work
number two, you're going to get up for Fajr. Number three, you're
going to you're going to you know, do all these things. So by going
to the masjid, you become social, you know how to talk. I'm telling
you will lie, there was a convert. Gotta know how to talk. Weird is
dude.
Salah in the masjid has made the guy the most normal dude I ever
know. Right? Because he can talk to people. Now he knows how to
talk before that. He's like, if you said hello, he jerks, he
jumps. He doesn't know what to do. Right? He doesn't know how to He's
nervous. All of a sudden, 567 years later in Islam, completely
normal dude. And his job and he prays in the masjid guess what's
gonna happen? He's gonna get married from the masjid soon
because everyone seen him now. On it's been years, years, years
years where work in print domestic, this is a great guy.
Right? And one of the beautiful things we can have in cells in
Islam. Very impossible. I'll tell you why.
When you live in a local community of people who follow this idea,
right? The girls are also falling shittier the girls are not going
on in clubs and all that stuff. And the guys aren't doing that.
And you're living locally. Okay. So when you live in locally, the
choices are not that high in the first place. Right? So in a sense
of brings everything down like in beautiful minds, right? When you
eliminate all the you've, you've limited the whole issue issue now
to like, 10 people. And you have the clock is ticking on everyone.
Right? Like the chess clock. You got to make a move. You got to
make a move, the clock is ticking. Right? So that's how people get
married. Right? And for them to imagine, okay, it's gonna be like
this most amazing human person. This is not firstly, that's not
reality. That's number one. But number two, like, get something
first before you try to shoot for the sky. Right? For some ideal
that's not even doesn't exist. At least people are getting married.
Right? Just briefly, you know, that thing you said about the four
types of categories? And how if you're one your your offspring
will be at a higher level. Mathematics grandfather, student
Sivan of the Sahaba is a Tammy Yeah. Right. And student a big
Sahaba? Yeah, even Alma, Aisha,
his daughter, he had a daughter, she married his student, somebody
who is a student of her father. Yeah, he was a student wasn't a
scholar, but he was a student of knowledge. And then that produced
informatics.
I just want to say one more thing that what? Everything that we've
been talking about about values, right? Somebody could say, okay,
just make up a list of values and just follow them. Right? These are
very nice things are talking about make a list and follow good point.
But the thing is that we follow.
We follow things with personality. Yes. Personal Relationships
motivate us the most. Like if you love somebody, you're willing to
you know, climb a fence, you know, kill a pig, whatever. Yeah, you're
willing to do crazy things. Right? When you're in a group? No, no,
no, no, When you love somebody, okay, when you love for their
safety, whatever it is. But that's not the same if you believe in
some type of abstract thing, right? If you believe in some type
of abstract Oh, you're right. Yes. So the amazing thing about Islam
is that not only do you have this personal relationship with God,
yeah, you have a, a personal relationship with the prophet of
Salah Asana, and you have this example of look, I'm not the first
one doing this. somebody's done it before. Right? And I'm telling you
like, to me, when I reflect on the Sierra, the biggest miracle that
he's a prophet is that somebody could endure that much trauma, and
still have that magnanimous heart. And yeah, it's impossible. Like if
you read histories, if you read histories of generals, these big
people, there's always skeletons in the closet. There's always this
coping mechanism that they have. They're crazy. Yeah, right. The
process, the more you study him Subhanallah, right. So it's, it's
This love that keeps you motivated. And not only that
value, not only that, because someone might say, well, the
prophets I saw them was so far away. And yes, it is a person, but
it's so far off. We what we have is living examples to buy no more
about us will last a little longer than I do about my grandfather.
Yeah.
And you have the Prophet peace be upon him. And you have a living
chain. And that's what we are. That's what we have. We have a
living chain. So if you are an inspiration, how many times we sit
around gathering and talk about the shoe of our century, right?
Then tell the stories of and this is very important. Many people
say, Oh, why would you talk about the yoke of today, when you have
this job? Well, because, yes, they were pure in the past and the
greater example, but this is more moving. To talk about a living
person is more effective. Like what a friend, a living source is
more effective to move you than anything else. You wouldn't say
that if you've ever met a scholar, that's true. And you wouldn't say
actual scholar. Yeah, the greatest defense I have against that now is
like, dude, even the money speaks. Why does Disney do remakes of
modern of older films? Yeah. Does anybody have an older film or an
over shoulder show? Yeah. Because people want to see the modern
modern interpretation. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you when you
when you want to hear the stories of the Olia, right, yeah, of
course, you want to hear the stories of the sahaba. But you're
not going to connect, you know, at the same level as you are with
someone, you know, from somebody, if your neighbor is the sort of is
a Wali? Yeah, obviously, you're gonna connect that person a lot
more than hearing from hearing about somebody from the, you know,
1500s it moves you more, right.
So I think the second thing I was gonna say, I forgot, but since I
was waiting, but the first thing I wanted to say is,
for a long time, I used to think and wonder, is
the love that many people have for Islam, you know, rooted in
nostalgia, right? Is it just like, you know, rooted in this, like,
love of the past? Good question, things that have happened. Or, you
know, and as I grow older, and as I learn more about the deen,
right.
It's, it's not the love of the past. It's the love of what Islam
brings into your life in the present. Right, which connects you
to the past is what makes it great, right? So it's not really a
sense of nostalgia, because you can remove all. But because of
what Islam brings into your life, I think that creates these
memories. I mean, we can, just being part of a Muslim circle. And
I know there's listeners who have said this, they feel that as they
listen to our podcasts, it feels like they they haven't sat with
Muslim brothers in a circle of this type before. And it feels
like they're sitting together. Because that's what Islam brings.
Right? It brings a sense of community, it brings a sense of
purpose. And it brings a sense of value that Bond's people together.
That's the most beautiful part. Right?
And I think the the second thing I was going to say now, no, I
remember is there might be people and there are people out there who
are going to say, you know why Islam then Right? Why? Why this
religion? You know, what, why couldn't I just, you know, make a
general set of values. And why do I have to believe in the set of
values that like, you know, you're, like, Hanafi school is
defined or the Maliki school is defined? Or this school is
defined? Or why do I have to believe in this like, complex set
of like, you know, Archaia principles? Why can't I just get
the TLDR version of Islam which is right, I you can write it's make
your prayer. I missed that. What is to do? Oh, too long didn't read
TLDR is too long. Didn't Read. Short, shortened to to. That's the
new one. That's the newest thing. i It's very little it is yeah, I
never knew that. So the TLDR version of it is
pray your five prayers. fasted Ramadan, make Hajj if you can do
shahada
simple? Well, here's the thing. And good luck doing all of those
things. Ya know, good luck. Good luck, just just doing it the TLDR
ya know, what happens when the TLDR way of anything? Yeah, you
don't get most. That's why it's called the TLDR. So you don't do
the TLDR of your AP Bio. Like, you go to class. You don't do the TLDR
of things that matter in life, like you go through it. And it's
like, sure, if you want to live in this spiral of death around you,
then go for it. Now, my NOSM boys, you both made this point of why
can I just make my own set of values? Well, here's the thing is
that to practice values, you need a couple things to really practice
them through thick and thin over the centuries, which is unique or
unique company, other people who share them. Yeah, 100 People
should not not only other let's say we had a million people on the
earth today who shared our values, right? That we all agreed, but we
have no history. We need a history so we have a history and we have
the best history right? There's no OMA that has a history like OMA of
Islam. That's guaranteed right now neither note national national
out in what the city because they share the same morals as we do
people talk about American values. First of all, they've changed a
lot since the beginning of America and it's still only been 200
years. 200 years they have like five history professors per
University on to study 200 years of American history. But you need
a history. You need rootedness in something sacred. Because what
happens if half the group says let's change them? We can change
certain things. Goodbye, right? It's what I said. Someone asked me
what is cut day with 220s?
God, which means explicit, cannot be changed. And by the way, what
makes something part of our data that is in the Quran that is
cutely? It doesn't have to be anything else than that. Right? Am
Allah rasuluh we met on Zillow, LA, when we know Allah will, the
prophets I send them believed in what Allah revealed to him and the
believers, anything that's in the Quran, that is an explicit verse,
it becomes an article of faith. And if it's not listed in the
books of articles of faith, that's because nobody opposed it. Right?
So they didn't need to list it, or motto it or something that is
what's
what's your water? Yeah. And if, for example, one of the things
that puts someone else outside of Islam, which is what is the
definition of Islam, is that if the whole Ummah has accepted
something by Toto, even if it has zero textual evidence, like what
the location of the Kaaba,
where's the textual evidence for that? If someone says, you
actually know, I have discovered by Jewish scientific evidence that
the Cabo was actually 500 feet to the left with here and the
alternate burial?
Exactly.
So these people, there's lots of right there's to answer and say,
Man, certain things that are not necessarily in the text, so So but
what makes it matter of belief, right, is that it's in the Quran,
that's all I need. Okay. And we didn't have this differentiation
of,
of separation of PETA. And if you know the Quran, it's in the Quran.
That's it, you have to believe in it, period if it's explicit. So
that's how simple it is. Are we going to get to the point now and
the American Muslim conversations that something could be in the
Quran, but we don't have to believe in it? Of course, we'll
get there. What world are we living in? We're already there.
Right? What world are we living in? Right? Now? I guarantee you
the same people in the church of Satan gets popular, they're gonna
have an interfaith with them. No, they won't. They won't go that
will that won't happen. Why? Because it's a you selective
bliss, right. It's not a guarantee what's gonna happen. I see people
have interfaced with people who worship all kinds of crazy things.
Listen, listen, there are people at this church of Satan doesn't
actually worship Satan. That's what they're gonna say. They
don't, but that's what they're gonna say. They're gonna say you
people. Yeah, you say you're gonna say you people. You don't
understand the Church of Satan.
And they don't truly worship Satan. They're hedonist. So
they're materialist. They're people who they're hedonist.
They're materialists, and you don't know what's in their heart.
So the last thing I want to end on, right, and maybe we can give a
couple minutes on this, and then we'll close is, I think, something
that we often forget, right? Especially as we try to go for
this, like TLDR version of the deen is also this TLDR version of
change, and to so Wolf, and, you know, becoming better as a person,
right? People think that they can, you know, quickly, you know,
change, it doesn't happen long Trump changes is a lifelong
process, and it's a lifelong commitment. Right? And it happens
slowly, and it requires work and effort, right? And that is what
actually makes this whole process worth it, right. Because in the
end, you will see change, it's gonna take a while, right? It
might take a lifetime to get there. But that's the key, right?
It's not, it's not this, like two week effort, you're gonna have to
work on and you're gonna have to be in this system, and you're
gonna have to play by the rules, you're gonna have to do all of
these things. But if you do all of those things, then you will get
there. Right? That's the key. Yeah. And there's even Yanni no
one, say naughty said, No one gives Allah to Allah in action
today, and Allah pays him in credit. In other words, you will
get your reward now and later. And then now, that the least if
someone feels that they're not advancing spiritually, I'm doing
all this stuff not advancing spiritually. Image because it
says, but you don't feel anything from your thicker, man said, No,
he said, but you weren't backbiting. The vicar kept you
busy from backbiting. They could have kept you busy from saying
stupid stuff, right? Something dumb that got you in trouble with
your wife or your brother in law or your mother or something that
things you shouldn't be looking at. You're reciting Quran and
you're your weak student of heaven, then you stink and
everything who's better than you? At least you were your eyes were
doing something better. There was once a mountain in India. Once a
year, there's a share who gathered all his moods in the house on the
on the weekend that his shake had passed away, right, which they
call them audits, right? So they have this gathering you
You know, the root of that word is wedding. Yeah, yeah, it's a
wedding. And there's a beautiful dream I'll tell you about in a
second that and they would sit and do they could all day and there
was a brother from Texas there who's from Texas, this brother.
And they will literally do Quran, vicar. Crusaders, eat, rest and
talk, repeat. And they would do this all day for two, three days
in a row right? Now, the sheer one day he said he gave this course
and he said all of you tonight will see a beautiful dream.
Inshallah, right. And the next day, it was true that the bulk of
people woke up. And they said, we saw this and I saw this, and I saw
that no one would he came to him and said, Sure, I never saw
anything. He said, I'm not worried about these dreams. And I don't
bring you here for these dreams. I'm worried about not what you saw
what you didn't see. Because this weekend, I know what you didn't
see, right? In other words, what this gathering protected you from
seeing, right from the sense, right? So you didn't see certain
sinful things that you would have seen seeing if you were doing you
know, sitting on the couch and doing nonsense. Now about this
other dream. There was a woman had a dream during the time of kidney
CD, and there was a man in Mecca named Abdul Aziz even Evija would
have a Abdulazeez episode. He was very pious man who's considered
one of the Tolkien of Mecca. And a woman sat by the kava one day,
reciting the Quran long into the night. And then she went home he
fell asleep. And uh, you know, when you do they could have long
they could at night, you're gonna most likely you see a beautiful
dream, right? She saw a beautiful dream. And she saw that the kava
had in it beautiful maidens, carrying trays full of flowers,
and walking around the cup. And she said, Who are these beautiful
maidens? And a voice said, You don't know that today? Is the
wedding of Abdulaziz even evident.
Right. And she woke up when she woke up she heard this tumult in
the street when she looked she saw was the janazah of Abdulazeez
everyday would walk Sivan Allah. So she had seen that earlier.
So Paula, this is how we die. This is the OMA that we did how we die.
So I think that's a that's a wrap. So it just didn't want to lie but
I gotta sit down some hammock Allahu mobihealthnews Edwin La
ilaha illa and iStockphoto going into an equal acid in in Santa Fe,
De La La Nina am NY Minnesota hat, whatever. So we'll hop over to our
soba sub was salam aleikum wa rahmatullah great job Moines.
Great job NAS, and great job as usual. Alex, what do we need more
than sort of the last class like that's, that's it? My mom had
said, that's all you need, if you understand or maybe it was Chevy.