Shadee Elmasry – Sports, Leisure, & Recreation
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Straight on a newsman note on anyone on the CSE that he was
going to send him. I said Mr. alikhan
Welcome to the Safina society podcast. I'm your host moine. And
we are once again joined by Dr. Shetty, abs and Nazmul. On this
particular episode, we are going to be talking about leisure and
what it means. And the concept in Arabic is called low, or pastime.
So I was reading an article in 1492, there was a scholar named
ignoble, who had the end, he had this urge to finish this library,
so he had tons and tons of books. And he started a social reading
event. So he would read his books out loud, aloud with his family
members. So that included his sons, his daughters, wives, and
also anybody else that wanted to join. So they would actually take
meticulous notes about when they started, when they finished, what
books they read, who was actually reading the last time and then
they would continue it. And what actually happened is they wanted
to own to such a degree that they were actually finished, like two
or three books per day. So one of the interesting things I found
about this piece was that the people attending the reading
somehow found this fun, they found this enjoyable, and it was a type
of leisure. And so if we talked about this today, most people
would find this boring, and clearly our conception of
entertainment, or Lahu has evolved over time. So my question to
everyone here is, you know, what do we make of today's globalist
stick mono cultural, entertainment sort of machine. For example,
every kid in the world is hip to most American pop culture, right?
Most people know who Spider Man is who Superman is. Whereas a kid in
the past and you know, rural India, for example, may have grown
up listening to the legends of Amir Hamza, and Volador. Whereas
today, the same kid knows about Peter Parker and his uncle. So,
you know, what should Muslims make of this globalized sort of low
machine? And you know, no doubt we as human beings require leisure
time to unwind. There's a hadith about the Prophet salallahu Alaihe
Salam, he said, recreate your hearts hour after hour for the
tired hearts go blind. So if we are to oppose the DIS
entertainment engine, as I spoke about, what should be our level,
you know, what are the parameters in our Sherea to have wholesome
entertainment and a pastime? some level of mine that I hate? Well,
first thing is that it's going to be really hard to pass any
judgment on such a massive enterprise such as you know, the
world, the global worldwide entertainment, or global, global
and worldwide that are synonyms. But global, uni culture, mono
culture should say, entertainment, and that's really what it is. But
as a side point, there is a wisdom behind monoculture. Because if we
are inaccurate as a man, we actually believe that there's
going to be one leadership and activism and one villain and
activism and, and one religion and activism. And so it would do would
require a unification of tastes, of entertainment, even of humor,
even a unification of everything is what's going on. So I thought
it would be hard to just just pass a commentary here and there, but I
do think the bulk of the monocultures entertainment is is
negative, and not fitting into our shittier. While at the same time
you want we are living in this world, you can't avoid certain
things. And when we do go for entertainment, we're going to be
choosing from something within this monoculture, right, and we
can't just say it's all with throw the whole thing out, you're going
to end up with an extreme because as you cited in the Hadith, people
do need a type of entertainment, it's sort of necessary to have
something to unwind with. So you're gonna have to just be
selective, right? Okay. The ideal is why don't the Muslims make
their own thing? Right? Well, they'll try, but you could take
something that's completely secular, right? And you could
couch it in an environment that becomes an environment that's
actually good, right? Like, I've never actually been a football
fan, for example. But some of my friends were, and they're, you
know, the families or friends etc. We get invited some of these
football games, but these football games, you're sitting there
watching the game, but the samba around you is actually still
positive, your plant your plant, you're praying salah, you're the
you know, the children there are getting together, you know,
positive reinforcement of certain things the families are getting
together. So you're going to have to borrow and take you know, from
this model culture of entertainment, what you can and
couch it in an environment that removes any of the negativity. And
I think I found in general that sports, you know, not just
watching them but even being involved in sports has
always been a wholesome activity. Something I was talking about with
a friend is when I was younger I was on a baseball I was on
baseball team, right. So I found playing baseball was a great
activity not just for entertainment, but I also found it
as a great team building exercise versus other sports. For example,
I'll give you an I was involved in in baseball, soccer, tennis, I
played a number of different sports, baseball was very
different in how it kind of built you up versus how something like
soccer would soccer I found was a was a, you know, at least were on
my team was very glory hungry sport, right? You hand the ball to
the Brazilian kid with scored, right or you handed it to the
Turkish kid, you know, who was the who was the striker, and he kinda
did his thing. Whereas in baseball, that was a very communal
type sport. If you're the guy at bat, you had to the whole team had
to make sure that you succeeded. Otherwise, you want to know if the
whole team was going to fail? Actually, yeah, sorry. Go ahead.
Yeah. And I noticed even at practice, you know, even the kids
that were bullied outside on on the team in baseball, at least it
was a very communal, wholesome sort of activity where everybody
was involved. Yeah, it's a semi individual team sport. That's what
baseball is. It's a semi individual team sport. Soccer? Not
necessarily. It's it is it's a team sport, but
not everyone does get a chance to talk to them. Right. That's the
reason. And some people you don't want them to touch the ball. It's
actually a negative. Think about it.
Well, I mean, Baseball, baseball is like that, too. That's why you
have things like pinch hitters. Yeah. Pinch runners. It's, I hate
to say it, but it's kind of a loser's game in.
Baseball, it's like cricket. Like, come on, man, American cricket. I
mean, you could be the thing about.
Forget that. Actually, to be honest, I think all these team
sports are.
They're fine. But I don't support any of it. Why is that? I don't
think that any of these. I don't think that any of these team
sports aren't necessarily.
I don't think that they actually build any long term benefits for
someone who is looking to be successful individual. I mean, if
you're the quarterback on a football team, maybe, but even
then, no, but every team sport, though, anything you do, if
there's a challenge to it, you're gonna have to dig deep. And you're
gonna have to develop something. And once you develop it, you just
happen to develop it there. It was forced to come out there. But now
that it's out, it's out for everything. So let's look at let's
look at what people who are influential in the world actually
do for sports are almost all individual.
And none of it involves a team. None of it involves chasing a ball
around. It's all about your individual skills that you've
developed. And this is this, like, I'm talking about people that are
very influential in the world. So like, royalty, you know, captains
of industry, truly great, successful people. They fence they
swim. They ride horses. I mean, they do they do the things that we
were already told in the Sunnah are the things to do. But with
that stuff, it's boring in comparison to team sports. And if
you're good at it, yeah, but even still, okay, you're you have no
group feeling. There's no sense of camaraderie. There's no even need
for deep strategies, right? Where you're relying upon multiple
people to do this to do one thing, right? That to me is funner. And
more impressive. And it builds it builds bonds. Now, this is where
the point of live and low are different. So low is defined as
Ahmed only sallahu Gaya Fein fc will have already, which is an act
that has no value, neither in itself, nor to something else.
Like we all got together and rolled dice and see who got more,
right. So there's no value in itself nor in anything else. Or a
secondary, but alive is something that in itself is nothing. But it
does lead to something else. Right. And if you look at most of
these sports, they're just excuses for people to do things together.
Like your exercise together, you might learn a couple things about
adversity, winning, losing, and it's a reason for people to get
together. So what these people that I was talking about these
type of people know what they do together. They roll rolling, but
that's that's totally team sport. Yeah. But they wrote it brings a
lot of unity. There's, you got the coxswain, what how's this?
How's that fun? So Rich? We will do it, I don't know. But rich,
rich, like they're enjoying themselves. The rich people, they
are mostly inherited their wealth, right? If you you know, this is
the inherited traditions, because they live on base and, and lakes
and stuff like that. Right. Whereas it's a posh sport, right
like Harvard Harvard grad. It's not it's not even a sport. It's
ROIC. Let me tell you about. Let me tell you about some serious
camaraderie. Right. Yeah. So me and
Dr. Mahmoud. Yeah.
We go shooting together. We're in separate lanes. We can
Have on headphones plus, sometimes earplugs are for indoor. There, we
can't hear each other. We're blocked off by the by the shooting
lanes, we can't see each other. We go, we arrive in separate cars. We
get our, our booths next door to each other. We shoot, we compare
targets and we leave. And it's it's a lot of camaraderie and a
lot of bonding going on there. Why don't you talk at all? There's a
lot of ways of bonding. But isn't that sort of subjective, though?
Like what you would consider bonding and what? Yeah, like women
would consider bonding?
Yeah, I guess it's a very direct question.
No, but if you want to gossip and talk a lot, yeah, sure. No, but I
think I'm personally I find sports is to be, what else is had that
for you out there. Right. So you know, it's another good thing
along these lines of hunting, hunting is great. And again, you
barely talk to you. In fact, you need to be quiet. Yeah. I mean, if
you want to be like gathering, you can gather berries or whatever.
And then you can have a long conversation.
But if you if you want to do something that's mainly like going
out into the woods and stalking animals, you don't talk at all.
But it's also very, there's a strong bond that gets formed.
So Alex has a point actually, because
when Ivy League's actually admit students, one of the criteria that
they look for is, is the student engaged in some sort of
individualistic sport, okay. And I'm going to tell you the
reasoning before you, before you refute me, okay, that.
So, their reasoning is that if you're in an individual sport,
like horse riding, like,
what fencing right, or something else, you have nobody else to rely
on except for your own skill. Okay, so the buck stops with you,
basically. Yeah. So this is an indication of your ability to like
basically like to lead and to be independent. So they're looking
for those types of students, by the way, one of the things that
they probably don't look at his track track. Interesting. Why that
is, because it's not in their tradition. And this this was the
point that I was making is that these things, you look at fencing,
swimming, horseback riding, right? These are also the things that are
named in the Hadith, about the things that you should teach your
children archery shooting, right? These are these are things that
were named in the Hadith and not coincidentally, it's the sports of
royalty. Shahab Rahim off CFO has a whole talk about this, about
four to one sports. And he makes the point that the games where
you're wandering around chasing a ball, he said, This is lower class
stuff. And he doesn't mean it in like, Oh, poor people stuff. He
means like, it's, it's not it's that class A it's not something
that more advanced people should be doing. Really, this is like for
little kids. That's his argument. Yeah. What are the what's the
advanced civilization of the world today doing?
I mean, they're not the people, the leaders, they're still doing
the same things like he was talking about the heads of states,
the people who go to Ivy League, the people that run the banks that
run the corporations that run the government, they're all still
engaging in these individual sports and excelling. I mean, even
even Golf is a very individual, that's not even golfing. That's
just like for talking a game. But like the sports that they engage
in, it's still it's fencing. It's horseback riding. Okay? That might
all be true. But when I go for entertainment, I don't want to
theorize and be philosophical. I'm going to do what I enjoy. If it's
Hello, I'm going to join right now. I'm not denying that there
could be thought behind it. That fence. Now the prophets I sent him
one he said archery, swimming, wrestling.
There was a there was always those with three, right? Archery,
swimming, horseback riding horseback, right? That's the one I
missed horseback riding. Now what the province I sent him said these
because these have real life implications as well. Right. Now,
when we say bolted, okay, and everything else is button, what
bots are just means that in itself, it has no value. There's
no value in itself to put a ball in a hoop. Right? That doesn't
mean that it's haram doesn't mean that there is no benefit. There is
no secondary benefit. Sure, you could have a secondary but and so
the main secondary benefit is that this is a time when I want to shut
my brain off, right? So I want to shut my brain off. Like sometimes
you're sitting with someone, and they're watching the game. And
they're saying, you know, this is a complete artificial reality. And
I'm like,
that's actually sometimes the point though, because I want to
get away from anything real, quote unquote, real, right? I want to
get away from something like that. And the i Honestly, the only way
that actually relate to the greater culture, in how do we
relate to the greater quote, if there is such a thing as a greater
American culture, right? To me, the only thing I relate is the
stuff that the sports that I did when I was young, like that, what
are the where's the point of contact? I don't have a
grandparent that was from here, for example, to have memories or
whatever, right? Cuisine Not really. We still eat our own cook
our own food, right? What else is there maybe some cuisine, what
else is there? Right To me, this is the My main connection.
So if I need to strike up a conversation with a random person,
what am I going to talk about? I don't want to talk about politics.
Oh, yeah.
I'm going to jump ahead and yeah, really quickly. I do engage in, in
forms of, I engage with entertainment, like popular
culture, entertainment, mostly like movies and television shows.
And almost without exception, they are for one purpose. I watch stuff
with my wife that she wants to watch, I watch stuff that my
brother recommends to me, because then we'll have a good
conversation about that. And I watch stuff that some people, some
of the people I work with watch, so that I can also engage with
them. So it's all it's all for a purpose, though. Yeah, I entered,
I enjoy it. Like if one of these people recommend something that's
completely outside of my wheelhouse, I'm not going to watch
it, I'm not going to enjoy it. But if if it's moderately or less
haram, and then really haram, and one of these groups of people was
into it, then I watch it for that purpose is what I used to, I used
to watch sports too, but I enjoyed it too much. I'm telling you, all
this stuff is for that purpose, if you're alone, in a stage where
you're alone in your life, right, you really don't need pretty much
any of these things, right? Unless you've developed into a type of
balanced person as you are, you know, just as is. But if you're
all alone, let's say you're in the last decade of life, and you have
no connections to anyone, then none of this stuff has any value.
If you think about it, or if you're a chef, and you're
studying, you're overseas studying, right, you don't need to
do any of these things, you're wasting your time. But once you're
actually living, connected, like if and I thought says some people
are in the ASVAB, some people are out of this, but meaning you're in
the world of causes and effects, and you're connected to all these
things, then this thing could have multiple functions. The problem
too, though, is that we're living less. So there was a period when I
went to college, and it's also the first year that I became Muslim.
There was a gap. When When, when the guys from Chicago were here
from the madman, Luke's they were talking about
those like CIA pitch movies with Harrison Ford, and I had no idea
what any of them were. But I was like the deck come out, like
around between 92 and 96. And they were like, oh, yeah, I won't get
my 93 195. I said, Yeah, that makes sense. That's why I don't
know them. Yeah. During that four year period, when I first became
Muslim, and I was first in college, I had, I went to zero
television, I listened to the radio, almost not at all, I didn't
go to a single movie in that whole period. And I didn't miss any of
it. Because you're living communally with a bunch of people
your age, you're hanging out, you're studying, and I had just
converted to Islam. So I had a lot to read. So I had zero, I have
zero memory of that four year period. And I think one thing that
I'd like to go back to that I talked about, in the beginning,
the first story that I told about the guy
who's reading, you know, a number of books to finish his library.
But you know, it has just said about communal living, is the
entertainment of the past was very communal, right? It was not so
individualistic as it is today. And, you know, one of the things
that I find really interesting is, especially this idea of the the
current anxiety that people have, and depression that people have, I
find it interesting, because, you know, somebody noted to me that it
may be that it's not that people don't have entertainment, but
rather perhaps they're being entertained in the wrong ways,
right? They're, they're not being fulfilled by what they should be
fulfilled. And I totally agree with that. That was recently with
a group of people, and they meet regularly. And one person said,
you know, some people dropped out. And the reason they dropped out
was they felt that there weren't producing anything in this
gathering, right? But then someone brought up a great point that
said, does everything have to be production? Like, why don't we
just why don't we value relationships anymore. And there
was this thing where the, one of the Native American groups they
used to, you know, I don't know, do some kind of harvesting using
some tools, and it would take them all day to do it. Right. And then
the Spanish came in, and they gave him another tool, like a tool that
they could do the work and half the time. So then they do the
work, and half the time they go home. And they found them like
storytelling, building fires, playing with their kids singing
songs, doing all these things. And the Spanish wrote about them that
these people are so lazy, we gave them the tools to do double the
work. Instead of doing double the work. They just did the same work
and half the time and went home. But the question then becomes,
what do you value? Do you value some output? Some material output
that you can touch and think about, or contemplate? Or do you
value relationships and relationships is something where a
real sad happiness of human beings comes in, and I remember reading a
casita that actually have you almost wrote and he said, All of
happiness is in your uncles and your all of your happiness is in
your friends, right? That's the height of Happiness is when you're
with those relationships. And me having been more of a sort of only
child, not really only child, that old way older sister, though, but
most of my youth was spent all alone, right. I didn't understand
this line at all right? We had no family in America.
Right. Nope. No family in America, no siblings, no kids down the
road, no big community like me three families maximum. It's a
really isolated
experience, right? So I never even understood that until actually
developing later. Now you have connections, you have family and
stuff. But but to Alex's point, I was in the same situation, I had
no need for any of these things, very few connections in terms of
friends and family.
And it was all Steady, steady, steady. When I came back, it was
around 2006 2007. And I had no clue about any of the side
conversations that people were having. But we're here to do
doubt, right. So I'm going giving talks here and there. And I'm
thinking, I have no clue what these people are saying, right?
There's not even any glue in the relationship. So I viewed it as
there's no glue in this relation. There's nothing connecting me with
these individuals. So then I had to sort of artificially get to
know stuff. And that's why I said this lab is something that has no
point in itself, but has a secondary purpose. Right. So
that's really what you have to think about when you're engaging
in these things, you got to think about the secondary purpose. And
what I'm hearing is that life itself doesn't contain any value.
And unless it's leading to something else, right? So is this,
can you say that, at a certain point in your life, it's ideal
that there's no live and you're just spending all your time, you
know, worshipping Allah and doing all that, because I'll actually
use the word Allah who in a negative sense, in the Quran, let
me tell you what the ideal is, the ideal is where Allah put you.
If Allah, Allah puts a person in jail for the last 10 years of his
life, then that's what's best for him. Right? If he puts them in
isolation, and in solitary, or a solitary life in general, then
that's what's best for him. If he put him in the middle of
everything, until the last moment of his life. He's living like a
regular Muslim, and he's engaging in all these
secondary things just to glue together the family and the
community, then that's what's best for him. So there is our ideal is
individualized, it's what Allah chose for that person at that
time. Right? So you have that you have people who grow old, and they
stay in their family or in their community. And until the end of
their lives, they're in what even I thought said, the world of s
bap, the world of interactions, causes and effects. Right? If
that's what Allah chose for them, then that's what's best. If Allah
pulls them out of that, and causes them to be alone, then that's
what's best for them. And they could, and if, if they're all
alone, and they don't take advantage of that to do they're
advanced spiritually, then they're wasting their time. And you know,
one of the crazy things is that, we mentioned that depression is on
the rise. Today's level, people are engaging in it more and more
to an unhealthy degree because of their depression. It's like, it's
almost like a cyclical, it's almost like a cyclical pattern.
Right? So in that sense, can we say that? Is there too much laahu
being engaged in? Because I think it's become the vicar of is the
vicar of Satan, by the way level, right? Is all they do? It's like,
I can get into something for like, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe like
an evening, right? But I can't imagine that people whose careers
it is, like, like I'm a bit I consider myself someone who loves
sports. But I can't do this more than like an hour for like, in a
week or something like I can't. It's a massive waste of time. I
can't imagine someone whose career whose earnings is in this field.
You never crossed your mind how meaningless This is. Yeah, well,
exactly. I remember. And
there was a time there where I used to listen to sports radio.
That's why you see on my commute, sometimes I have like an hour and
a half commute. That's three hours a day. Five days a week is 15
hours a week of listening to some idiots who know every statistic
ever, about every sport that's ever
I find it interesting and there was an essay by hildenborough
Haman, in which he talked about leisure and Islam. So one quote
that I found interesting is that she defined leisure as you know,
she looked upon leisure in the following tri faceted fashion in a
state of mind which allows one to participate in certain forms of
human activities. These include contemplation, relaxation,
diversion, and socialization, which usually take place in that
block of time remaining beyond that which is needed for existence
and subsistence. I find this really interesting because even
the definition of leisure,
classically, is not watching Netflix, no for, you know, hours
and hours on all the time. You know, sitting sitting in a dark
room by yourself watching a movie for five hours is not leisure.
It's not normal. That's not that's not even normal. And this is
actually the reason I feel that people are
For us, and then people do have this, this constant addiction to
these stimuli like streaming Netflix or you know, watching cat
videos and prank videos
at least.
But, you know, my wife will testify that is the thing that I
do the most in terms of what something that's productive, but
outside of like work necessary stuff is worked, do something with
my hands, even if it's something menial, like cleaning something
or, you know, fixing something, but even better, if it's something
that where I'm like putting something together or whatever it
is that I'm doing, like I'm working on my tools or whatever,
I'll put on something that's intellectually stimulating.
Oftentimes, it'll be like a legal podcast or you know, oral
arguments or something like that. I'll listen to that while I do
something where I can just don't really have to think about the
task that I'm engaging in. But it's active, it's physically
active, like I'm moving around and I'm using my hands and I'm
building something where I'm fixing something. This is the most
relaxing thing that you can do for me, it's it's not zoning out in
front of a video game, since we're on the topic of definitions. So
let's look at this chronic definitions and chronic usage of
of these words now leisure diff is something different, but we do
have a low well I was summer was Samarra, okay. So these are three
different terms. Two are tend to be are you one is used and always
negatively. One is used with permissibility and negative and
the third is used in pots in a positive light. So you have a
gradation there. So Allahu Allah, I've always come together in the
Quran. And mostly except for two sodas lab comes first i Boone wala
Hoon right. Now Allah who we already said, it's that which has
no value in itself, nor a secondary value. But there's
another definition for it. And the reason that they had to separate
the definitions is whenever you have something repeated in the
Quran, it's in the Quran specifically, there has to be a
difference in the meaning because from Bulava or eloquence is that
you don't repeat something. So therefore the repetition in
Arabic, you can have repetition for toe keyed, just a synonym to
emphasize it. Or you can have repetition for CS, which is to
give you a different meaning. So let one lab have to have two
different meanings. Now the reason that level is always connected in
the negative is it's that which has no value statement or
otherwise. And secondly, it's considered that which the
intelligent person is distracted by it from what benefits him
right. So let who was always given the connotation that the adults
intelligent person engaging in this, right? It's now taking him
away from what he's supposed to be doing or what benefits him now
alive is used in a permissible sense, because the brothers of use
have said let us take him out to to chat way up. Right. He so yeah,
I was there. And Prophet Jaco permitted it right. He said, Okay,
go with them. Right. So therefore, live can be permissible. So they
say that it's live below or could be the same thing. But level is
bad because it's an adult and live is for children. And children
aren't McAuliffe anyway, so they could engage in it and there's no
harm. The other definition is that law does possess a live like
playing a sport. It has nothing in itself, but in a secondary cause
can have a benefit. Yeah, yeah, I saw it. It just occurred to me.
And one other thing about those in those types of sports returning to
team sports, like basketball, and football and soccer, those are
actually not good for your body. Like people think that they're
getting a good workout, you're not and you're actually more than
likely causing yourself long term damage, like on the knees, like on
the knees on the joints, there's contact that's, that's pointless,
and you're harming your body in a way for something that has
virtually no benefit, and may even be a waste of time and you're
causing yourself harm. Most people that play organized team sports
end up with injuries that affect them lifelong, even in their
ability to like pray standing up. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's right
about that. I mean, a lot of youth professional sports as well, with
with team sports, they tend to have a lot of injuries even for
regular like standard just you know, street basketball players.
You know, that's it's very common to be injurious. Right knee,
knees, people can I mean properly? Yeah, it happens all the time. We
have friends in our community who played like intramural sports, all
of them have injuries. Wow. Like all of them. And the people we
know from the Masjid. All those guys that play basketball that are
older than 30, they're always getting hurt. But that's maybe one
of the secondary benefits then, because the doctor industry in the
medical industry needs
I don't want to be a contrarian here. But when you're riding a
horse, you could die. Right? You can fall off or to fall horse and
break your neck. So interestingly, one of the things that Ivy
League's look for if persons doing Horseback riding is they're
willing to risk their life to learn this right now.
So what's the what's the prevalence? I mean, but still
there's a risk though, right? Sure. There's a risk of
everything. But it's not very prevalent as opposed to the
prevalence of of like, chronic injury and chronic pain suffered
by everyone that plays the sport. But there's still benefit and
playing Team sports without doing it professionally. No, you don't
have to. Yeah, there is. I don't know if it outweighs the, the 100
minutes. So it's a judgment call. Who am I to judge? I mean, I mean,
99% of people who play professional play sports are not
professionals. And the bulk of them, the injuries are going to be
minor in comparison to the benefits and the fun that they had
or the exercise. But secondly, like the Ivy League, entrance
exams, or whatever entrance standards, I could care less
about. These people are a bunch of snobs. I hate them. Anyone
was just not picked on.
I played soccer, I played soccer, as a kid growing up. I played
soccer on like a club team
did not pick a team or something. No, I played a lot of sports as a
kid. But I actually preferred stuff like boxing in martial arts,
that was what I would have preferred to do. In fact, I joined
the boxing club, and didn't tell my mom, her signature on it,
because she would have never signed off on it. Until I came
home once with some marks on my face. She was like why?
I'm telling you, there is nothing. In my from my perspective, there's
nothing better than building camaraderie. Look, when you go out
to battle, you're not doing an individual sport here. This is a
team, you're operating as a team. I'm telling you one of the things
if I didn't have,
you know if it was in another life or something that anything
involved in team sports, the camaraderie you build up, to go
together as a team, and each one of you has a different quality.
But there was someone who was able to pull this all together and
amplify it to defeat an opponent, one of my other, you know, there's
no feeling like that when you actually succeed at doing it. And
when one of my favorite things about these sports in general, is
that they're little judgments of your your effort, because there's
a scoreboard whereas life doesn't have a scoreboard all the time,
which is sort of annoying, because you don't really know Am I
successful? Am I not? Am I doing it? Right? You know, so you always
need some kind of a scoreboard some kind of objective number. And
right, that's how so that's where little lessons are. I think what
you're saying, I 100% agree with. My only argument is that that is
how you train foot soldiers. That is good practice for the private
the you know,
if you're talking about generals and field marshals, yeah, those
guys need to know how to. That's what I said, initially, I said,
like, if you're a quarterback, cool, because you're leading
everyone else, and everybody's looking to you, you're making a
decision for yourself and for the team. And your decision is what
counts. And you're also the one executing it. Right? So it's it's
a good leadership. But if you're not the quarterback, if you're
like the kicker, or if you're like, if you're like a lineman, I
mean, well fodder for your cannon fodder. But here's something else,
though. A lot of times in life, people are willful, they're,
they're independent agents, but need to come together willfully.
Right. And they could ruin it by everyone going their own way.
Right. Like our Alma today is very much in that state. Any community
member can just say, you know, check with this, I'm out of here,
right? But if everyone has that attitude, you don't have a
community anymore. If you have an attitude of having putting your
group first and the olden days, and maybe the tribe first, right,
today, what's the analogy that we recognize, right? You put your
your team first, you take a take a group first attitude? Where do you
learn that stuff? Right, you're going to learn that in maybe in
school activities, you're going to learn that in sports, right? It'll
get amplified there for you in life and you realize, wait a
second, this is a great ethic. I should take this to this situation
where I can go my own way if I want to, alright, but there's
going to be more benefit and more gain. When people come together
with different skills and recognize that every skill is
needed, every
type of nature, whatever, you know, personalities needed. Yep,
I'll make one point and then we can go back to the definitions.
That on this one, I'm gonna have to disagree with Alex at least on
the point of team sports. I think there is massive benefit in in
team sports because of how there are many life skills that you can
gain, especially for younger children. in team sports, whether
it's courage, whether it's, you know, even things like bravery,
right, rushing down a lane or rushing down something when you
know when there's when there's 10 You know, big dudes or you know,
people in front of you. It's tough, right? Learning to conquer
your fears, things like that. I mean, there's a lot of life skills
that can be it's not, it's not that you can't gain them from
other individual types.
words but I'm not going to downplay you know the value that
you can get out of team sports but I don't want to detract from the
topic of you know, entertainment throughout throughout the ages as
well. Okay, so let's get to these definitions we said level and we
said live right. Now the third one which always comes in a positive
note is a summit or animal Samarra which is basically that a person
spend time usually preferably with his family after Salah Tonatiuh
before sleeping for about an hour or some period of time the Arabs
have the word salah, which is just amount of time expensive time a
decent expensive time
they are with them and they engage in something that is you know, not
necessarily of hawk or or or of seriousness, right or even Dean,
right it's just something light. So the prophets I seldom used to
recline, eat honey, and listen to stories that say die show would
tell. Like that's one example we have from Hadith. Other Sahaba
used to do different things. So this Musa Mara was the son of the
Prophet peace be upon him that he never stayed up after a shot,
except for three purposes, which was either matters of knowledge
that people were seeking where he was giving, or matters of the
state that say no Mata and Abu Bakar. And Offerman an idea that
the Prophet was engaging with them and discussing with them. And with
some of you, Sam it can you Seminole Allah. All right, and he
used to just sit with his family, right and do something. Now today,
what is the person going to sit with his family to do? It's good.
It's nice when people say, look, I let's all get together and read
books. This is nice, fine, if that's your thing. But most people
that's not their thing, right? This is this sounds like a
teaching that is very specific and very unique. It's nice to get
together, make a fire and read books, because it's so much
better. It is far better. But let's be honest, what is most,
what are most people going to do? They're going to do something that
the rest of the world is doing. Okay, so when that if that's the
case, then there needs to be a discussion on how that's supposed
to be done. All right, what are the limits and we know the limits,
their limits is going to be wherever there's a Muharram
there's something forbidden, then you're going to avoid it. It's
very simple limits right? Now, you cannot believe you can even that
even that there's no right there's dice so the magic is we're had
some issues with dice, right? And neither been nurtured so many of
these things with pieces and randomness, but I think other
methods may have some more leniency to that probably wrong.
It's interesting. This is a little side point of history related to
this. In Southeast Asia, and also just the East in general.
People get together and they're forming entertainments watching
like series, and usually a TV series and usually most of these
TV series are like super long, over like two hours and episode.
telenovelas. Yeah telenovelas like.
Yeah,
that's exactly, yeah. And they have tons of and this this is
what's interesting. They have tons of family drama. So it's like
always like, relationship issues and family dramas and people are
just transfixed by it right.
And while in the United States when people families get together,
they're watching like, you know, Game of Thrones where somebody
slitting somebody else's throat. Right? I think I think that's an
interesting point of contrast. I think those telenovelas are
Mossad, solet and Arabic, I think they're big time. Drain there.
It's excessive, right? And they and the shayateen, put them in
Ramadan on purpose, right? To pass the time. And I even remember my
aunts, they weren't they were nice. They were they were, you
know, they would, they were nice people and everything. I loved
them so much. But it's not like saying something negative, right?
They they're bad or anything. But after Tada, we,
okay, the food would come out a second time. And those shows would
come on, right. And I'm like, There's no way I'm watching one of
these these shows. Right, guys? So I'm sitting there because they're
all sitting in the room. So, right. And actually one of my
niece's, she had leukemia. So we would all I mean, not my niece, my
cousins, so everyone would sit around, right, I tried to keep her
spirits up, and they will put on one of these shows. And we'd eat
food. Okay, and that's and I was there on vacation anyway, so
whatever. And they would stay all the way up to Soho.
And I'm thinking myself, but there's no way I'm getting into
this, this ridiculous show. Right? It was called the man and the
other men.
Okay, so obviously, they're Arabic. It was an Arabic show. I'm
sitting there and TV shows, making sure you know that I'm not
watching this stuff. Okay, I got my SIP in my hand, trying to do
something useful myself and my Ramadan. And then give it I'm
telling you 20 minutes in how like once the next episode
these things became things this thing became something everyone in
the house and are in the way that old families live and probably, I
hope, unfortunately, is probably dying out.
but their families that all are in the same neighborhood, and you
don't know who's coming in and out the door is like, basically
public, right? Everyone's coming in from the cousins and aunts and
the nieces. And everyone's coming in and out, which is amazing,
because we don't have this in America. But ultimately, I got
hooked into it. And I realized these things, it's really
excessive, honestly. And the only value that it has to it is, even
if you say that, we'll do it together as a family, but you're
sort of not even together, right? You're in the same room. Right?
That's maximum pretty much it right? You're in the same room.
It's not like you're, you're not even looking at each other, like
around the fire. And it's not like it's 45 minutes once a week, and
you discuss it and you, you know, talk about the themes. It's two
hours every single night. There's no time to talk about oh, my gosh,
and you can't talk about it these days, too. Because now before you
used to talk about TV shows or books or whatever, right now, when
you want to talk about it, oh, I haven't watched it. Please don't
spoil it. Better than I mentioned a spoiler, so you can't even talk
about it. I thought it wasn't even that long ago where, you know, TV
shows came on once a week. And that was sort of the watercooler
talk. Right? Right. Do you watch that you watched a TV show, and
then the next week, you talked about it at work and or wherever
you were at school or work or whatever. And, and that was the
type of activity people had. Yeah, it would be unfathomable. 20 years
ago to say that you watched an entire season in one night?
Well, now let's take this to another direction. It's the
easiest, the easy way out in this episode is to just throw
everything out in the trash, let's say in the back in the old days,
back in the old days, what does that gonna do for us in the
listeners? He's not gonna go back in time. So let's talk about,
like, what do we do now? Like, what is what's going on? So we're
gonna give our people an episode of just trashing everything that
they know in the world. How have we benefited anything? Right? So
how do people get entertainment? Right? How do people relax and
unwind themselves? Yeah, I have a great answer. So still, to this
day, learn,
especially if you have children teach them some kind of combat
sport was wrestling in this one. It's updated. MMA is probably more
useful today. Right? It's an advancement.
swimming and swimming,
swimming, horseback riding. That means getting around, right? So
you should learn how to drive you should be a good driver. Like
that's a useful skill. Like and you go out everybody drives, most
people don't drive. Most people get around in a car and they're a
menace. But being a good useful driver is actually a good an
important skill. And learning to shoot. Archery is great. Our
trees, traditional, but it's not very useful. Learn to shoot guns.
All right, give me some in the living room.
Something you can do in the living room. It's Tuesday. Okay, or let's
put it this way. It's Sunday. Monday's off from school.
Everyone's home. How many kids do you have? Let's hypothetically to
put on a half 2.5 wrestle? You got rugs. wrestle? wrestle? Yeah, play
around with each other. Okay, not TV wrestle. Okay, no, and the mom,
she'd be cooking.
So, I'll, I guess, give a little history just kidding. How I used
to how I used to entertain myself. So
in Bangladesh, I lived there for five years. And so I went to
kindergarten in the United States. So I was basically American kid
right. Now go back to Bangladesh for five years. Don't connect with
anybody there. I have this Gameboy, right? That I can only
play with batteries. And I only have two games, only two games.
And one was Final Fantasy Tactics advanced. And the other one was,
whatever their RPG is tons of stories right there like RPGs the
role playing game, story driven games. I for the next five years,
I played those two games, right. And I always used to watch anime
every single Saturday. I used to watch anime, right. And these
animes that they'd had like these fantastic worlds, like amazing
stories, all that stuff. So there was, so that sort of kept me very
entertained. All my friends did it. Right. There's something
useful in having like entertainment, that's like event
based, right? Like, for example, next Saturday, the next episode of
Full Metal Alchemist is coming out. And everybody in the school
is talking about it. Right? And then you watch it. And then now
you have to you have to wait another week for the other
episodes to come out. If you didn't watch it, well, everybody's
talking about it. And that was still a communal activity.
Exactly. So I think it comes back to what we were saying earlier. I
think we have to come up with ways of entertainment, like for
example, on that Sunday evening that are communal activities. I
think one thing that I found that that I tried to do with my family
is things like cooking together, right making a meal together.
Painting you know, things that you could
would do together and I think unfortunately, people don't do
these things as much as for example, build something, right.
Learn woodworking.
Even things like you know fixing a car. That's an activity.
Don't take your car to the mechanic. Learn how to fix your
car. Dr. Shetty is laughing, right? Well, Allah, he's one of
the best things I learned as a kid how to fix cars, how to work on a
car, how to use tools, just generally how to use tools.
Because even if you don't know, even if you haven't done a certain
thing, if you know what you're doing, you will be able to pick up
how to do anything that's in, I can fix almost anything in my
house. That's good. That's a great school. And that's that was like,
just hanging out with my dad while he was working on the corner.
When you were talking about the shows and everything, yeah, I'm
actually very suspicious about entertainment in general, my
attitude towards in my house.
The types of homes I'm not saying like that, that's what you did.
I'm just saying in general, the types of homes where the TV is
going on all the time. I think that's just a big disaster. Right?
Yeah. And I think the idea that the computer can be accessed for
entertainment at all times by everyone in the house, that's
another one. So I try to really limit it to maybe like,
you know, for an adult, maybe like, a little bit in the evening,
right? If you do it every evening, that's fine, right? But a little
bit, two and three hour episodes, you can't do these things. It's
like it's too much an hour, hour maximum two hours, right?
For Kids,
Saturdays, maybe right for to watch something, but for them to
see to be entertained themselves constantly. at this young age.
It's best what books, books during the week, and sports, get your
body moving books and sports, right? I love to books as a kid.
Yeah, books and sports and bikes and neighbors and all that stuff
during the week. And just because there's the reason I love here.
Reason behind it is that just because the whole society is
watching stuff, and you would be a little bit of a weirdo, and unable
to relate in a, you know, a little bit if you had no clue about
stuff. And just because all the other kids are doing it. So then
we, you know, maybe can allow some of that stuff to go on on a
Saturday if it's okay. If it's like how that right, then they
could know. I don't know, whatever the some of these cartoons are.
Right, whatever. We still have cartoons on Saturdays. It's no,
it's all on. It's all on streamed, right? It's series is that are
streamed, but at least like if they're friends, if they're five
friends and they say it, at least they have a clue what's going on.
They don't feel so weird. So this is sort of the demystify
demystifies. What is it misinformation, demystification
philosophy regarding that, so I would rather have none of it at
all, to be honest with you. Right, but just to demystify it and to be
able to relate. Yeah, one thing I'm thinking about is, how did
Muslims in the past, whether or not I'm not even talking about,
you know, longtime in the past, even things like,
you know, 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, spend their time,
whether it be in the Muslim world or even, you know, in non Muslim
worlds where Muslim may where Muslims live in non Muslim lands?
Because one thing I find interesting is, Entertainment has
generally been a societal pop culture type phenomenon, right?
Where if you were living in,
during during the Renaissance, you were probably watching the same
plays that everybody else was watching, you were probably doing
the same thing that everybody else was doing, whether you were
generally Muslim or non Muslim. And I'm not talking about very
religious Muslims. I'm just talking about just everyday
layperson. Now, when it comes to today, I know we talk about, you
know, don't watch the don't watch movies, don't watch this, don't
watch that.
At least for me, I feel like there has to be a balance and
understanding that, are we saying, don't just use technology? Because
I don't think technology is the problem here. Right? It's what
we're talking about is the entertainment is not wholesome,
right? Is there a way to bridge this gap? Between like, you know,
you can still have the technology, you can still use it to your
benefit, in some way or another, you know, because it's what occurs
in today's time? Or is that just, you know, Nick's technology? I
have a question first, what is the value of discussing or thinking or
knowing what people in the past it? How's that gonna benefit us?
I mean, I have an answer. What's the value to it? I have an answer
to that. Because if we if we see how people that didn't have the
sort of addiction machines that we call entertainment today, because
what they what they use for leisure, then we could say, you
know, maybe that activity has some benefit to it, write the ad, it's
entertaining one. Number two, it is also has some benefit to it. So
one of them. Sorry for interrupting. One of the
interesting things that I've noticed
Um, with some of this research is that in the non Muslim world,
public entertainment, you know, the masses, serfs, right? public
entertainment tended to be pretty crude. So if you read Chaucer, for
example, right, the Chaucer is a very public poet. He's not a poet
of the elite, very vulgar, very vulgar. If you read Dante he uses
he's not vulgar, but he uses vulgar Italian. And his poem is
like, you know, very popular with the masses, so on and so forth. If
you look at some of the like, experience, very body, there's a
lot of like sexual situations, there's a lot of bubble and tongs.
Yeah. And the boards, right the boards that would sing in the in
the pubs and things like doors. So regular people engaged in the sort
of amoral sort of, you know, letting their desires all out in
this sort of feast of, you know, haram, right? So like, Greeks had
Dionysian orgies and things like that. Whatever, right? I mean,
there's no example of anything. There are no examples of anything.
If you look in the Muslim world, what's crazy is that public
entertainment tended to always center around some type of
religious thing. Now you're now you're talking some sense? Yeah,
you're giving me some something to go by. All before that. was like,
Okay, I don't care what what they did. I'm not overthinking this.
I'm telling you my honest attitude. I'm very blue collar
about these things. I'm not overthinking this stuff. Exactly.
I spent all my time thinking about avoiding a couple haram things,
and drawing near to Allah to audit the best way I can. Right. I don't
like to overthink things. Okay. So but now this point that you're
making, this makes a lot of sense because the Muslims used to
entertain themselves with matter with types of entertainment that
were actually they could Allah exactly right. And that benefits
and it relaxes. And, for example, huge mallards, huge mountains, not
one and the Ottoman Empire when the moulded would happen. It was
like a national event, a trucks of sweets, would you know, fireworks,
I mean, it's crazy. It's like the Super Bowl, they brought together
relaxation, right? And they made it not only that, but you get
rewarded for it because you come away from it, loving the profit
loving the sahaba. Right, doing, bringing up you know, virtues,
that people should have a clock that these people should have
reminding yourself of Alcoa in the middle of this entertainment. So
they sort of merged the two together. Exactly, yeah, the
popular entertainment also especially in like the in the
medieval period was also very sacrilegious. Some of it was
religiously oriented, like in non Muslim, non Muslim, non Muslim
lands, but a lot of it was like religion was sacrilegious and
making fun of if not Allah, their conception of God, at least the
church. Now, I want to word this carefully. So we wouldn't say
merging entertainment with Victrola, right, but merging
something relaxing and enjoyable with Victrola, like a nice
conceder or song or poem that's recited in a song like fashion,
shows up that I've met a show hoody in his biography written
about him, Okay, what was said that he was to take these poems,
and he would take the melodies that people listen to now and he
would put the casita to the melody to that popular melody, that
melodies already in people's head anyway, right, and the melodies
like neutral, right, there's nothing about the so he would do
that. So he would merge what people already enjoy with a good
meaning and even reward, because if the casita has in it, you know,
the Crow law, maybe even a DA mentioned in it, right? You're
getting rewarded. If it's a virtue of the profit, or it's a hobby or
shift even, right, you're cementing a virtue on people's
hearts, I would just argue one thing to that the Arabic melodies
are, we're different than what you get in the West. Right? So there's
actually a science to this. There's, there's a science of
mahkumat in Arabic, right. But there's also people study, like,
I took a few classes when I was in college about musicology. And
different cultures have different music, different intonations, and
it actually inspires different feelings.
You I would not recommend people to do this with Western music,
because western music is based on a completely different pattern,
very different time signature, and it may not be good for your soul
in the way that some of the Eastern patterns are. Well,
interestingly, though, the Eastern patterns, they were established by
a man named
What was his name? With Zane Zinnia Zinnia Zinnia was a he's a
Persian, or he's living in that had to be a Persian
live in Baghdad. And he was the first person amongst the Muslims
to do things like well, in the fall, were this color, right in
the winter, where whites in the fall stop wearing whites, right
because the leaves are changing. And you want your your clothes to
be like off whites and browns and all those things. He was the first
now and he also was Establisher of McCombs, he thought about singing
songs like this and that is
So what did the shoe have that the elders did? They expelled him out
of the city, the egg, they kicked him out of the cities, the
corruption of the youth. Right? So he ended up going where and the
Lucia. Of course, he was welcomed there with open arms. Right. And
that's where it ended. Asiya actually got their famous McCombs
started. Of course not. There's not like a direct lineage, but
he's the one who came up with the idea.
If you listen to flamenco music today, which is the music of
anorexia, like the non Muslims, it's 100%. Arabic.
Yeah. And so but the concept being that
I believe that when we do or gatherings, right, and we sing
these Crusaders, it just, it infuses community life with
something soft, but also connected to the deen at the same time, and
oftentimes it gets in people's heads, right? It's something that
stays with them. And if it's missing from a religious life, you
cannot have a religious life without festivities. And not just
like a party once a year, but it has to be something linked with
the sacred. And that's what these gatherings are all it brings
religion to the public square, rather than being just a set of
rules you follow.
Seen this? Before we go off on this road that we're going I just
wanted to walk back a little bit and just say that technology is
not just the content, it's also the technology itself. Now, as
mentioned, it's addictive, he called the addiction machines, the
TV screen, the computer screen, the phone screen, they have
addictive properties, totally the content. Also, even if the content
seems neutral, like Oh, it's just like animals being friendly to
each other, the way that the colors move, the quick cuts
between the scenes, all of that also creates an addictive quality
for children's brains especially, and also can alter the way that
their brains develop. So all of that, just because you go oh, it's
just a giraffe talking to an elephant and they're just being
friends. That's not true at all. by the, by the way, for folks that
don't know, since we were talking about, you know, binge shows, you
know, that's actually why they're called black mirrors, right. And
the show Black Mirror is based off of that, because the the screen
that you're looking at, right, like, for example, the TV screen
there or a phone screen, when it's when it's off, it's actually a
mirror, right? It's a black mirror, right. And it's almost as
if you're looking at nothing, who calls him black mirrors. So there
is a very popular show called Black meets dystopian technology
in the very near future, its effects on society. So the show
was called Black Mirror, a lot of people don't know where the name
comes from, that's what the question is about. So it's telling
that that's actually what the name is about. And it's super, showing
a very dark representation of what this technology, it's very
accurate, like, just two years after the first episodes, that
stuff is already being, you know, brought about in implemented. So
the reason I bought up, you know, me watching anime way back when
and playing these two games for five years. Right, on the same
Gameboy is because my options were so limited. And you know, I
finished all the Harry Potter books, right?
Because, because my options are so limited. I was forced in my free
time when I didn't have anything to do to sort of build out the
world that I was engaging in, in my head, this fantasy world. And I
feel like that was a big reason why, you know, I developed an
imagination, right? Because, look, you had, I watched, let's say,
episode of Full Metal Alchemist. And then that said, you had to
wait there for an entire week, right? You couldn't just binge
watch the 50 episodes. In a night, you know, there was no time for
thought there's no time for reflection, nothing. That brings
up the topic of, you know, when something is lost than something
else is gained. But back to the issue of technology, there are
certain mediums that a Muslim cannot compete in, you can't
compete it and you shouldn't try to compete it. The screen, right?
It's really hard to compete, you know, and keep all of your 100%
Sure. You know, for example, we watch you, let's say interval,
right? You're watching it, you're like rooting on your Muslim hero,
etc. But at the same time, right? If you think about it, like you
wouldn't be having your you wouldn't want your Muslim your
daughter acting in a movie like that, or in the shuttling Yeah,
it's so there is some issues there. Right? So even the best of
the things that the possibilities are still going to, you're not
going to have
a show with them with no music, no women, there's no such thing,
right? It's like baseball without a bat, and ball. And I'm gonna say
like, no women, like, in a sense, like they're good should be
eliminated. But in our religion, you should not be put up in a
situation where everyone's staring at you, unless you're doing
something for need, right? Like a doctor or a teacher or something
to just to go up there and sing a song or just run around or do
something, you know, like that is not something from the club. Go
ask any pious Muslim in the masajid the moms would you want
your daughter doing
out, they're gonna say no. So, so no one should take that as, Oh,
you want to isolate women? I wouldn't be the same thing for men
a man, you seriously you got to play make believe as a career. All
right, so certain things the screen the big screen is not a
medium in which we're going to compete. The literature. Yeah, we
can compete in that. Right. Yeah. But unfortunately, nobody reads
these days. Right. But two things I want to say. One is, I've always
found it interesting that even in, in the past when there used to be
so like you mentioned as more certain forms of entertainment,
such as the big mo lids, Joomla. Joomla is a festival, right? Just
Just to clarify that point. That Joomla. Oftentimes, was this all
the things that would happen after Joomla? So, for example, in Egypt,
it's a big thing to go and have a large family, extended family
meal, for example. Yeah, so Jamaah read, and even things like, you
know, stories that were orally told stories, for example, that
were told around a campfire, or you know, just people sitting
around I know, even in my village, you know, when I was younger, I
still remember this, people would sit around and there was a guy who
just literally told stories, that was the guy, right, and you went
to him, and he just happened to know, long narrations I would go
on for two hours. And you can tell you this story. And every night
people would sit and this guy would tell you, this wasn't even
that long ago, right? This is when I was a kid. So I find it very
interesting that
one want that. And the second point I wanted to make is on top
of all of these things that existed in the Muslim tradition.
One thing I've always found very interesting about music is even
though that musicians were considered like, five, six, and
they weren't permitted to leave prayer or permitted to do
anything, even even though they were considered classics of the
dean, because they were outrightly doing you know, music, they still
were still singing about Allah, His messenger.
Like they weren't singing about, like, you know, like, getting it
down or whatever. Well, it's funny, because in the past, you
had singers, and you had storytellers. Then Islam came in,
okay. Now, these singers and storytellers now had to adapt
their trade, right? They had to adapt her lyrics, they had to
adapt their stories, because the whole population is now entering
Islam. So early as early on as the time of say, not even me taught
him. The Casa de cosas. They're called the stories plus us Turo,
were a problem. They were a problem because they need to keep
an audience who knows what their previous, you know, stories were.
So imagine now you have a movie makers, and now they need to, you
know, cater to a Muslim audience. So you're getting the scholars
always looked at them with suspicion, and they actually load
them. And even Josie has a whole book on how the setup load the
storytellers they fabricated stuff, because yeah, they, their,
their job is to get an audience not to transmit the dean, right?
So they would take now they got to tell stories of MBA Sahaba. So but
now, because they're stuck with that now, right? But now they're,
they're adding to it, they're giving details that don't exist,
blah, blah, blah. So they're all about we're at war with them. This
is great. Because that's exactly how I feel about people who do
like modern Islamic music. Like they try to make pop music into
Islamic music. And they are
the people that make like Islamic base like movies, like, like
they'll make a show and show the sahaba. And they'll be like in the
super popular.
That's it. That's the good stuff. Yeah, some of it is a lot worse.
So I can't stand when you stepped out. I was saying certain mediums
we can't compete in at all. Yeah, like the big screen. You're not
competing in that. I still regret watching the message.
That was a good movie. Yeah, all right, but forever. For the rest
of my life. I can't get Anthony Quinn out of my head whenever,
whenever somebody comes over. You know, he's terrible. Yeah, you
know, what's a drunk in a cafe? When I took an art history class,
I could never watch any movie that portrays Muslims again, because
the art history is always all wrong, right, for example, but
that's not our history. But it's also when in the message the way
that bill gives the event is like straight out of us out of 1960.
Right? There's guarantee was not the way that they were given
events, right? At that time. Also, you watch any of these movies,
they fill them all in Morocco, let's say kingdom of heaven, for
example, right? They film all these movies in Morocco. I'm
looking, I can't help but notice it's all Moroccans kids running
around with the hoods on their, on their clothes. And all the palaces
that they're sitting in are all Moroccan Andalusi and style that
didn't even exist yet. By the way, that style of Andalusi and
geometrics hadn't existed in the time of the Crusades. Right. So
when you're when you study art history, you have a hard time
following Hollywood because they they just take anything Islamic
and throw it in. Right.
I'm but there is. This is a question about what was hard
right?
Like, for example, I have seen the woman series and I do regret
watching it because certain images that probably will not ever leave
my mind. However, there is certain benefit in you know, indulging in
that versus indulging in something haram. Right? So for example, of
course, that kind of you know, I would say remove Sahaba Why don't
you make a movie on use of pinto screen right like this not haram
to do that there's not even a halogen doing that right. And not
only that, you can take some poetic license and add characters
and stuff you could do that you just have been touched Fein is
though he was the, from the, from one of the tribes of the Sahara
that came up and ended up by fatwah from A to Z and Rosati to
conquer and de Lucia is that our Alma had a number of it's right so
by Phaedra, from Isaiah to see that you must conquer and de Lucia
and any one who comes in your way most of them are not his buddies,
Khaled because the party kings what they were called the, the
thigh for period. Yeah, for period or everyone Muslims on his own.
Right. They every Muslim little city was on their own. It's a it's
a risk to lose the land completely and to lose Islam in the end area.
So they issued that federal for him. And he went up there. And he
did conquer, right all of en de Lucia. So you can make like a long
series on use of Ben Tashfeen. Right. And there's no knowledge in
that stuff. But But I was gonna say Does it even have to be let
ignore the Omar series or the or the Muslim thing? But is there
some good in certain types of entertainment? Like, that's,
that's what a lot of these Muslim, quote unquote, you know, directors
and, you know, filmmakers and artists are all about nowadays,
right, which is, let us sort of infuse this halal,
you know, Islamic music or whatever it might be, so that, you
know, we can drive people somewhat towards the deen rather than have
them listening to whatever pop music people listen to today, I'm
gonna take an unpopular position, I think you should admit that all
of it is at the very best macro at the very best. And admit that to
yourself, so that you have some hope of reducing it and maybe even
eliminating it from your life, rather than finding for yourself
ways that, oh, it's not that bad. It's actually probably halal. And
it's better. And then because then you're just gonna engage in more
of it. You're not gonna you're not gonna have any incentive to reduce
it. I haven't even more popular in I have an even more unpopular
opinion.
My thing is, if you're gonna do something, right, why do it like
halfway? You have listened to it properly, or don't listen to it at
all right? Wireless? This is back to the was that.
Oh, yeah, we never finished them. We will never finish.
We'll finish it off there.
Because it's like, why it's like those people who have those like
Halloween parties. What does that group? Oh, yeah, those those
idiots in Chicago? What does that call I don't know. It's like, say
hello dance club or something. I don't know what they're call
themselves. So basically, they have like this Halal sort of like,
club. So you come in, it's guys and girls. They don't, there is
intermixing. But there's no touching. There's fake or like to
lose or whatever. There's, there's like, it's like Virgin alcohol. I
was like, you know, if you're gonna go
black version of a party.
This one, let's just go to a real exactly what I'm talking about,
right? Like, these people are people who found excuses for this,
this, this and they go well, it's not as bad as doing the real
thing. And now they have no incentive to walk away from it.
Whereas if you admit that you're listening to music, you're hanging
out with the opposite gender, you're engaging in all this kind
of activity, that you admit to yourself that you're doing it, but
you probably shouldn't be you know, that you shouldn't be you're
eventually going to walk away from it. Instead, you have these
adults, the grown people acting like idiots, like, like, like 17
year olds that don't know any better, because they've given
themselves such words. It's
by the way, there's a principle that the roster that you allow for
today becomes the ruling for tomorrow, of course, right now,
imagine if it's not even rasa Majan if it was like sort of
haram, but we allowed it because there's a word haram. Right? Yeah.
Then it becomes a halal in the future, right? Just admit that
it's that it's not good. It's probably haram and walk away from
it as much as you can. I totally agree. And my philosophy on these
things is that I'm focusing let's say if our goal is to survive our
keep our deen alive and pass it on. I'm going to isolate the two
biggest issues, okay. And, and focus on them, and that is
atheism. And anything that touches a family like sexual, anything
sexual LGBT, any destruction of the family, right because if you
look at the Quran, Allah always says, You believe in Allah and
you'll be good to your parents, right? Because that's and if you
look at all
Throughout the Quran is based on families early Emraan. Right?
moves our own animals.
Right? Yeah. So all families, right? So that's the root of
humanity. All right. So I'm going to look at these two things, I'm
actually going to capitulate, and I'm going to, I'm going to admit
that there's going to be hits on those unless your things but don't
have time to look at them, right? You can't get distracted by 30
things. You can't fight 10 battles at one time. So fight only the
fight the biggest two things, okay, focus on those two things.
If you can really, truly isolate these things, you'll survive this
fitna that we're in. And I'm capitulate that Yeah, I can't look
at I can't be bothered on a truckload of other issues, which I
know you probably correct on. But I just can't be bothered. I mean,
just for list just to illustrate, and this is an extreme example,
and I know that it's not what we're talking about. But suppose
that you're in a situation where you absolutely will not be praying
for her during the day, you're just not going to do it. Because
your job because whatever your situation is, you know, you. You
don't give yourself a fat when I say it's still the only time I
pray before us, it goes out. And it's permissible for me to do
that. Because eventually, someday you're going to have the
opportunity to pray that will hurt you're not going to do it, as
opposed to knowing that you can't miss a lot, but you're missing it,
and praying it and making Toba if you're gonna if the Haram is
happening in your life, it's happening around you. No, no,
identify what it is and make Toba because if you don't, if you find
you find some crazy fat or somewhere that allows it, you're
not even going to ask Allah for forgiveness. Let me say something
else too. But you brought up an important point. When it comes to
leisure and entertainment. Everyone becomes a Mufti.
And all of a sudden the rules of jihad go out the window. So oh,
what does he say about this? What does he say about this? There's no
he there's four sayings on anything, right? Okay, there's
four muda hit. And unless you're in which to hit, don't go outside
these the dominant opinion of the former methods because that is
something we know is valid in the sight of Allah, Allah is not going
to be sinful for you. But I read an article somewhere where
Abdullah glenlyon of Lucia allowed the listening to the gramophone.
Yeah.
So so everyone becomes a Mufti on these matters, right? The safest
way to live period is to go by the dominant. What do we mean by
dominant means that 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of folk are over
time have come to this conclusion. And many in which the heads
outside the mother but inside the mother have come to these
conclusions. And this is what's safe. If you're going to do
something outside of it. Okay? Just say my neffs is just saying
it told me to do it. Blah, blah, blah. Don't go and dress it up
with a fatwa. Right? I'm telling you, we ended up in the early
2000s, where the things like molded was looked down on all of a
sudden, you had full blown orchestras in the early 2000s. In
the name of like, every one of these awakening concerts.
I'm looking, he started off with with a voice CD. Yeah. Which was
good. I listened to it right. My my people, my family would listen
to it. Okay.
Next thing next day, two years later, it's a full blown
orchestra. I remember Osama cannon was like he's seen uncle's right.
I was like, hold on a second. I was singing considered important.
And you guys were yelling at me. And you're sitting in the audience
with full blown instruments orchestra. How did that happen?
When the border of the EU you wanted to cancel voted on a border
tonight, right? Yep. How did that happen? So just as a quick
reminder, stick to what's known don't change these things. But
you're going to know that alright, either you're weak on something
just admit weakness, right rather than dressing it up with a fatwa.
When in doubt, ask him Deobandi.
More Mauritania. It's over. It's over.
See one of the things and this might be pretty controversial
point so dark, shadowy, please don't punch me.
One of the things I've noticed is that sometimes fic gives a ruling
that might not reflect the reality of how much
for example, video games, right? There's, there are certain videos
for example, FIFA, right? Is it halal or haram? It's obviously
halal. There's nothing obviously Halal meaning from the from the
external. From the outside apparent. You know, okay, you have
it. It's holiday. It's just a game about you know, playing soccer,
okay. Okay. Now, let's say a kid is sitting in his bed, you know,
sitting in his bedroom playing eight hours of FIFA. Right a day.
Right. And this game is addictive. Now, can you say that this is
haram? What? What filthy argument can you use to justify that It's
haram? It's case specific, and we're stuck. It is very sick and
he's in remission. He's recovering and that he has to be in the bed
anyway. Well, the thing is, you have what you have to understand
is not the breakdown of life is not all and how that and haram
there's benefit at home. Yeah, there's liked and disliked there's
been there's, there's benefit and harm, right? I mean, waste of time
is my crew, at the bare minimum. Right there.
becomes unlike we said the breakdown here a level is that
which is done is playing done by an adult that when he should be
doing something better for himself and it's minimal. Like is it
a kid the word haram, it's sufficient that Allah used it with
them, right then being blamed, allows us so many times in the
Quran, right? And it's always blamed, right? So yeah, you look
at in life there is not always everything is going to be put in
halal and haram, but it is going to be put in, you know, there's
benefit and harm. I think we need to get away from this mindset that
just because something isn't haram, that I should do it. Yeah,
you know, I think that's a very and I've seen this a lot. You
know, people watching shows people watching this and that, but is it
haram? Is it clear cut Hana? No, but you know, look, look at how
it's affecting your life, you know, oh, let's say somebody who
can't even manage one wife wants to get married to four. Oh, but is
it haram? You know, it might be for you.
But it doesn't have to be by the way a thing does not have to be
haram but its side effects can be blameworthy for you and maybe
count against you in Africa, for example, someone who was playing
FIFA for eight hours a day in his bed. Is that is his moving his
thumbs. In haram. No, but he's not fulfilling certain other duties in
life will cost him right. And the the dislike things are not always
the harm of them. The consequences don't always show up in the ACA,
sometimes it shows up here. So yeah, you won't get punished in
the afterlife. But you're gonna get punished here. By being a
failure by being miserable. The all your friends are going to
medical school and graduate school and law school and blah, blah,
blah, and having jobs and getting married. And what are you doing?
You're not right. Well, so on chess. Hmm. What's the ruling on
chess, chess, thematic ease or Chevy's are everyone generally,
generally disliked to prepare it right. The general is a negative,
especially if it distracts from the prayer and thematic Yeah,
we're very strict on it. The chef a we're a bit only limited that it
doesn't distract you from the prayer. If I remember if my memory
serves, so that applies to every let's you can analogize Are you
making an analogy? Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, that analogy,
everything will be less because chess, it works the brain. Okay.
One of the reasons the chef, hey, I think even 100 Last Kalani wrote
about it that it exercises muscles maximize the brain. Whereas those
things, I don't know if you can say they have anything near not
most of them. I mean, if you if I bring you a chess graph, and
Grandmaster of chess, and I bring you the latest 2018 FIFA champion
video gamer, right? Who are you more impressed with? Right? So
that's a good point. Yeah. So now I'm going to take it into a
slightly different direction. There is some positive I found in
certain types of entertainment, especially modern entertainment.
One thing because I feel like often there is no you know, other
at least for people who are weak like myself. One thing I found is,
for example, children's videos, right? I you know, my daughter
watches the I think Ali Ali Baba, he created like the zaqy for kids,
right? It's like this like Blue Bear. And he recites like, Yeah,
he does all types of I live by and Quran. And so it's Adams world.
Basically, it's sort of like Adams world. And I think it's created by
Alibaba.
Baba, Ali Baba,
baba Ali. So they do like, you know, all types of different
cartoons where they teach like children, like, you know, that you
said salaam when you enter and, you know, you should, you know,
say Bismillah before you eat. So it's like, it's like a children's
cartoon where they teach like, you know, good manners and things like
that. There, I found that there can be good in certain types of
entertainment. And I think that's the intention. Were some of these
like musicians, and I don't know about comedians, but musicians go
out in search of like, creating like, halal entertainment that is
sort of similar to like, what I'm describing with these children's
cartoons, where it's like, okay, it's providing good benefit. It's
like, the kids are gonna watch TV anyway, you know, a lot of them
right? You might as well give them something good to watch rather
than, you know, something. If they're watching, I don't know,
like, Paw Patrol.
I would just really quick two seconds, I would highly recommend
anyone who's got little kids up to the age of 12. What I advice that
I got from our friend, Dr. Arshad, he said, minimize it as much as
you can. And if they're gonna watch anything, enlarge the screen
and put a distance like on the TV better than a laptop laptop better
than an iPhone, because it's just better for their eyes and their
brain. And I would limit it to such a degree. And this limitation
has done so it fills the void is filled. For example, kids could
love they start love reading because that's the only option
they're given. Or they love each other talking to each other
because that's the only option they're given and
Kids can't be trusted to judge themselves or discipline
themselves. So it should be kept to a little a little bit. I know,
I'm sure people gonna watch though, but it should be minimized
to a certain hour of a day, like one day a week or something like
that. I will personally attest to this just because, you know,
my, my daughter is, you know, she's a rough, she's like a
toddler. Now, as we've tried from the very beginning, I think maybe
one time she's ever watched anything on a laptop, phone is an
absolute no tablet is an absolute no laptop is like, pretty much
know, the only time she's ever seen it as if we're on doing
something, right.
And it's like, even if you watch the TV, it's at a distance. And
I've noticed her and around other toddlers, right? It's, it's crazy,
the amount of one I feel like, you know, parents just hand phones to
their kids, and they're just like, kinda like, you know, going off
for like two hours on their own in the corner. It's very bad. It's
it's extreme, I'll tell you, the scary thing is that no matter what
you do, as a parent,
and you do a great job, here's the problem, your kid's gonna have to
marry some of those other kids. That's the problem, right? Yeah.
And so all your work is gonna go down the toilet. That's why the
idea of Safina society, right is that this thing has to be done as
a group. And when it has to be done as a group, you have to go to
lower comp, lowest common denominators. And you have to
isolate the only the most important things because when you
do something in maths, you can only focus on certain important
things. And this is one of them, right? The idea, the screen time
is definitely one of them huge. The other thing I was gonna say,
to Maureen's point earlier is just as important for us to be precise
with our language. When you say musicians, if they're playing
musical instruments, and they have a band or whatever they're there,
that's out. Like, I don't care what your intention was, it's out,
we have to admit that I'm not saying nobody, nobody's gonna
listen to it. Muslims are 100% gonna listen to it. They're
listening to trap music, too. That's not the point. The point is
you don't make excuses for it, no matter what the intention. If
you're talking about use of Islam, old stuff, as for Allah, perfectly
fine. That's what it should be like. You want to add
instrumentation, you think that it's going to sell better? Who
sold and better than then then those old use of Islam tapes, like
nobody, like this stuff was huge. And kids aren't different today,
people are not different today, we're the same human beings. And
it would work just as well. If those were the only options
presented, you should only give your own neffs that option, that
option and don't give your neffs what it's really asking you for
discipline it before the disciplines Yeah. And we should be
suspicious of the give up attitude of people are going to do stuff
anyway. If that implies, well, let's just cut corners in the
deep, right? Because people are going to do stuff anyway. Because
the next thing you know, your kids are dating.
Your daughter has five boyfriends. Like it's not good. It's something
to note here. And I know, you mentioned doctrine as you want,
you don't want to know about the past. However, you know, I'm gonna
bring it up as a point because
even recently, within you know, the non Muslim world, I think the
way that we consume Entertainment has drastically changed. Right? In
I'm not old enough to remember this. But you know, people talk
about, you know, listening to boxing matches on the radio, you
know, 30 years ago, and people you know, someone could sit down in
their, in their house by themselves, listen to a boxing
match on the radio and fully enjoy it.
You can now you know, your baseball, you can watch an MMA
fight an AK and it still ain't, you know, vivid, and it's all
subjective. All this stuff is subjective, right? It's all
subjective of what you have. Right? If you listen to a boxing
match on the radio, because you've never had anything like a radio
before, it's a big deal. It's all subjective. I've listened to
basketball games in the car. Like driving into playoff game, I've
listened to a game in the car. But there's actually science behind
this and like I'm, I'm super against I read this recent article
that there should be legislation passed to ban technology for
certain ages. Right? 100%. Super, super against this absolute sorry,
and I'm not against it. I'm for it. For Absolutely, there should
not be any legislation passed to ban anything? Well,
100% No, let's, let's go away from the legal stuff. But I'm just
making this is an important point. Because we're asking the
government to intervene, which is what we're actually doing is we're
turning over our parenting skills to that we're turning over our
community responsibility in in a way that's only going to be
harmful because once they get in, they're going to ask for more,
they're going to impose more, and you're trusting them to enforce
things on your children. Right? It's a huge mistake. Sorry, I
couldn't I couldn't get this. No, no, I'm trying. The I'm gonna get
to that point, which is that products actually change via
demand, right? Not by laws from the government, more market
forces. But anyway, there's actually science behind this. And
that is today's entertainment. The way that it's different from
previous eras. Is that top experts of human behavior, like people
that study human behavior and psychology and how to basically
hack the brain. These people are the people that are producing
these things.
Right. And they're doing it precisely to hack the brain so
that they keep your attention. And what that does is it absolutely
messes up your reward circuitry in your brain. So you can't, you
can't even like I've seen kids, I teach Sunday school, I'm always
around these little kids, the kids that play fortnight like I know,
from their parents, right, because the dads out at work like, for the
whole day, and there's no control in the house, the kids that play
fortnight all day, I mean, they look as if like, their souls are
dead, I can see it in their eyes stay up late, because of staying
up late, not because of staying up late because of the extended
entertainment, like looking at a computer screen. Looking at this
thing that's meant to get you addicted, it destroys your reward
circuitry. And this is especially dangerous and kids, it will
destroy them forever. I totally agree. The game pub G on mobile
was banned actually the state of Gujarat and India because some
number of kids one kid like killed his dad, because he wouldn't learn
why. Right? It's there's kids, there's a kid just killed his dad,
your shoe stores all the time, kids stay up for hours and hours
and hours pee on themselves, rather than suffering. It makes
sense. It makes perfect sense. I'll tell you why. If you're an
adult you have so when you're growing up, right, the brain is
actually small, it's not fully developed. And your experience
around the world is what builds your brain up. So the reason why
you should exclude kids from digital technologies is they're
actually interacting with the real world. And when they're
interacting with the real world, they can't get the reward as
immediately. So they need to actually build that willpower. So
the the, their frontal lobe gets stronger and stronger, right? And
then they're interacting with things. They're falling, they're
experimenting, so they're becoming more self aware of their
existence, right? In a sense,
when you just hand your iPad to the kid.
The only thing that's developing is the reward circuitry. And that
reward circuitry is saying, Go for this thing. It makes you feel good
and keep going for it at all costs, like last like Lambretta.
Exactly. That's exactly what happens with addicts. Now, if you
take your drug away from an addict, what is he going to do?
He's going to kill for it. So it makes perfect sense that these
kids are like, you know, ready to kill their parents because they
have no their developmental
process has been ruined. It's poison. It's poison. Absolutely.
The other thing that this does is, so kids need to when they're
developing, they need to interact with normal colors, not bright,
ultra bright colors, they need to interact with normal movement, not
super fast cuts, stuff that bright, bright, loud noises. And
they also need to interrupt interact with the 3d world, not a
flat to the world. If we're on the topic of kids, we should talk
about fitness. How important and good for kids is to get sweaty.
That's the other thing gamers are. They're all bad. Yeah, let me give
one one note here. The this is really crazy. So there's a guy
named near near El right, it looks kind of like Voldemort. But he he
wrote this book called Hooked, right? It's a very famous book
used by product designers and a bunch of folks to build like habit
forming products. This same guy now has a book called
indestructible how to keep your attention
in the habit forming economy, so he literally built the products to
you know, keep you addicted. And then he he's now writing a book,
so he probably knows better than anybody. But that's what he
claims, right? He's like, I built this stuff. I know how to get you
on hold. Right? But it's all a money making scheme like so don't
sell anything like you know, this is all in good fun like this. It's
not good what these people are doing. Oh, you're talking about
getting people addicted? Absolutely. It's a way to make
money doing Oh, of course for profit. I think it's an important
time to interject with the Hamza use of 1990s Reading List. Oh,
subject. Totally sure Hamza was saying this in like 92, which is
Neil Postman, gerrymander four arguments for the elimination of
television and entertaining ourselves to death. Yeah. Those
two books should be mandatory reading for any parent. Yeah. And
then if you want to run your child's health and well being
after you, after you know what you're doing good, you're asked
for one day of judgment, but at least inform yourself if you're
going to be raising a one of one of our last creation. Part of it
is physical fitness. There's also social fitness. How many times
have you had like a nine year old kid who, like you'd meet their
dad, and then you look at them. He says, Son, I'm gonna come and they
look at you like you're like, some kind of a monster, or he's like 11
years old. So he's past the age of being scared and shy that a
stranger is talking to him. He doesn't even know how to talk.
Those are the kids.
He doesn't even know how to say a synonym anymore. Like you asked
him, Hey, what's your name? Right? And he's like, there's no
response. It's like someone dead. So this is socially unfit. Right?
Doesn't he needs to interact more right? Or, if ever you had some an
adult talking to a kid and the kid looks away, like basic manners,
and
even just looking away, I mean, I'm talking your same example can
be applied to like 17 year olds, 18 year olds who can't hold
conversations with adults. And you're not you know exactly what
I'm talking about, right? Like, you'll be in a family gathering.
18 year old like dudes, and I used to be one of those people. But
it's sad, right? Meanwhile, last week, I was at your house and I
didn't know if you were upstairs or downstairs. Yeah. So I saw your
youngest walking by again, and I said Is your dad here is the
upstairs or downstairs and she was like, I don't know. So then I
said, What kind of spy Are you? And she was like, I'm not a
spider. And I was like, no, what kind of spy Are you? She was like,
I don't know. I'm going upstairs.
How old is she? She is seven. Mashallah, did she look at you and
talk? Yeah, she looked at me. She was like, I'm not aspire. What
kind of spy Are you? I know that. She was like, I don't know. I'm
going upstairs. Like that's a normal kid reaction.
You know, you don't want to just stare at me and go, Yeah, that's
what they do. But
they don't talk to grandparents, neighbors, uncles, aunts,
strangers in the masjid. Right now, I'm not saying strangers.
Like, if you're in the masjid. And someone says salaam to you. That's
sort of a space where you're standing with your dad. Correct.
And your dad's here on the other side of the room. This is a great
place to learn how to talk to strangers.
Exactly, because you know that their manners. There are
strangers, but it's also a place that is safe because your parents
are here or something like that. And what I meant to say was that
there's actually a reason why this is happening. Right. And it's I
don't know the solution to it. I mean, I've grown around grown up
around sort of these problems myself, which is that you have
communities of people that are like cut off from like, extended
communities, right? There are certain Muslim communities where
the parents are working, you know, both of the parents are working
till McCully or till late at night, the kids I mean, they're at
home, and they got nothing else to do. They have TV. Now, they can't
even go outside and play with anybody because there's nobody
else. There's nobody around. And you go to the machine, the machine
is just filled with like, sort of very old uncles and nobody comes,
right. So the kid goes one time he gets scared. He just never comes
back. So in that situation, what you end up happening is most of
these kids, the boys, at least they turn towards gaming. Right?
So that's what I did. When I was a kid. I turned towards gaming,
right?
And what happened is, they get like addicted to this stuff,
right? They'll they'll play like eight hours a day, 10 hours a day,
whatever. The girls, they'll be addicted to like Korean dramas and
things like that. Watch that all day. Right. And to Korean dramas.
Yeah, that's the big thing that was very popular. Oh, really? This
is a very accurate. Yeah, really reinjuring dramas. So and they're
sitting so that these kids are isolated? Because I can't blame
the parents, right? How are you going to live if you don't work
with some of these immigrant communities? So this is why I
don't know what the solution is. Right? It really don't know. It's
a struggle that the city created industrialization create. And this
is the first time we've been having human beings raised up by
two other human beings. Yeah. As opposed to seven, such as your
grandma, grandpa that's for right to Grandma's to grandpa's,
probably a half a dozen aunts and uncles. Right. older cousins,
older siblings. So that's why they said it takes tribe or whatever,
it takes a city to raise a man right? Because everyone would you
would live and morals and manners were upheld by everyone around
you. Now it's resting on to people. Right? And usually that's
not enough. It doesn't work. I mean, I don't I to be honest, I
think you should just not buy your kids those video games. Like don't
buy them this expensive. If the kid has enough money to buy a
house, he probably has a job and he's responsible. But if you can't
afford it by himself going by for him, that's good. I'm just don't
to get better for his friends playing and he doesn't know to get
the to get this point across to my kids. One of the videos I showed
them, like regularly every once in awhile, right is the videos of
parents breaking their kids is phones and stuff like that.
Because when there you have it in life, but I think that's going to
happen eventually. But I want them to know what real life is like
first. Yeah, like there's no point of reference anymore for these
kids. Like I have a point of reference. If I ever go off on an
access in something. I know it's an access, because I have a point
of reference. And I know that this doesn't feel good at all. Yeah,
right. But how to a kid who's born with this stuff raised with this
stuff. Yeah, has no point of reference. They don't. That's the
thing. They haven't experienced real life. So what they do is they
turn to these fake lives, so to speak, to get some type of value,
right? And it's really sad. And I don't know what the solution is,
but I do know where it comes from, which is this, you know, well, one
of the things in addition, one of the things is that people do live
where they live and people live where they work, but it is
incumbent upon Muslims to take on the
A little bit of an extra burden, and make sure that you can live in
a community, you know, like an area that has a lot of muscles
where you can make friends, you can go somewhere and see other
regular Muslims that hopefully there's a puppy there, there's a
scholar there that that can give good lessons, right? For the
community. And, and you can ask them when they have something, and
the scholar leads to try to create activities. So yeah, that might
mean that you put that extra effort in, why would you live out
in the middle of nowhere? What's the value, and probably someone
will tell you, Well, my mom lives here and she's sick. So he's
stuck. It's true, that is a good valid reason. But the real reality
is that you should take her with you, right? Because Allah says in
the Quran for Emma hablo, Hana indica, el Kebir, if they grow old
with you, in other words, at yours, it really indica is not
with you, it's at you, or, you know, at you meaning like at your
house. So take them with you. But you really, it's, I can't imagine
how you're going to go up. You're you're going against your culture,
the culture, you're going against the probably the things taught in
school, you're going against so many things, and you're all alone,
like you almost have no chance. You could also just a strategy, if
your kid is alone, at home for two to three hours before you get
home. And they're old enough or responsible enough to be alone.
And it's not a crime, to leave them alone. Like it's not child
endangerment, assign them tasks that are going to keep them busy
for most of that time, not homework, don't make them do math,
but just something that they can do around the house that's you
know, is going to keep them busy. And even if it's just busy work,
like go outside and you know, rake all the leaves before I get home,
you're gonna have less of an opportunity and punish them if
they don't do chores are very important.
So the next topic that not topic, but way I want to go is one thing
I've noticed is
media today has sort of gone into, not that it hasn't always been,
but it's sort of going towards displaying like moral depravity on
screen. Right. And I find that because I mean, we live in today's
day and time, Muslims also become attached to the sort of media and
then a few examples that I can that I can come up with, you know,
for example, the Joker movie that just recently released Game of
Thrones Breaking Bad. I mean, I can just sit here and come up with
a bunch of examples where but these are, really, they're
considered art, right masterpieces of media, and they really depict
moral depravity on screen. Right?
And it's, it's scary to think about because, you know, what,
what would you say about Muslims that, you know, are engaging in
these things? And a lot of people do, right? It's not like, people
don't. So how do you understand these types of things? And where
would you where do you guys thoughts on it from a Muslim
perspective, about the Shani? If I'm correct, if something is haram
to do is haram to watch? Right? It's true.
That's it? That's the answer. It's haram, they shouldn't do it. And
if they do do it, they should do it, recognizing that it's haram to
do and so that they can inshallah make Toba when they do it and know
that they should stop and make a plan and maybe stop. And you know,
one of the things that I've noticed is certainly moms and even
certain, like people that are detached from this type of
culture, they want to just do it just so they can relate with
people, like you said, Dr. Shetty.
What I've seen is, actually, so I haven't watched a TV show in like,
you know, almost a year or something like that. Right. And
what I've noticed is, I'm actually relating better with people,
right? Whereas before, I would watch TV series, whatever. And,
you know, it doesn't actually help you relate better with people, I
don't think because in regular conversation, that's not what
people usually talking about. It's usually a conversation starter,
but it's not necessarily, you know, but yes, I do work at it.
Unfortunately, and that's why, you know, I'm depressed at my job.
Well, the thing is that my philosophy on these things is
that, as I said before, their list of priorities, right, and you
cannot be distracted from these priorities. There are certain
things that would be excellent to eliminate, but it's just not it's
definitely not my priority. In terms of what I deal with people.
Right. So yeah, the these types of things. Some are more fat hedged
than others, like Game of Thrones has, like, basically like complete
*. Right? That's more fat than others. There is no
discussion on that there shouldn't even be
anyone go in there. Unless they're going to make a Christian version
or something where they, you know, clip it out. But I've always
thought about the guy who's doing the clipping right.
You know, what's crazy doing it for the sake of the community, you
know, what's crazy and NBC right, and that'd be what I used to wear
They're the there's this one girl who was tasked with coming up with
an algorithm to detect *. Right? So. So her job is literally
to tune this algorithm to detect *. So she would run like an R
rated film through this algorithm, and then she would check the *
scenes to see that, oh, it actually did detect it. And I'm
sitting there in a presentation where she's presenting this
is like, as you can see, it works. She goes through, like a *
scene. And you know, they're like adults in the room, everybody, and
we're just like, staring at the screen, right? And then nobody
utters a word. I'm just like, what kind of, you know what I mean?
Like, how can you justify you spending eight hours a day doing
that in in 10 years, in 10 years, there's not even going to be a
feeling of awkwardness in the room. Because all the kids in
those room, all the people in those rooms have been raised
basically on *. And the people who are making our local
laws are going to be those types of people. So we should expect all
that stuff to become completely normal, it's going to be normal on
broadcast television, there's never going to be broadcast
television or your why that's true. Because, you know, last
mile, I work in a similar industry, I know the same thing.
You know, I've experienced things like this, especially when it
comes to adult content within, you know, Comcast or Verizon or your
your broadcast network, is no one people will talk about, like, oh,
you know, we need to take this out. I don't want people to see my
auto content. And it's like,
you know, what, you know, what else is like that?
What do you what do you mean? Like, it's, it's like, openly
admitting, you know, it's like, yeah, you know, I have no content,
other people have adult content in there. And we don't want people to
see it. And I'm like, You mean, the company does or the
individual? These are individual, we're just talking on teams,
right? And people were talking about their personal accounts or
whatever they have. And so like, they have adult content, like on
their Instagram or something personal, you know, the, your
their TV streaming, or pay per view channels or things they?
What the *?
We will, I'll tell you off air stories, no. Good. You know, what
else? You know, what else has become a complete norm? Is people
talking openly about their therapist seeing their therapists?
Yeah, right. Whereas I remember growing up that idea was like, How
dare you?
How dare you stigmatize? Oh, my gosh. But yeah, so I mean, I think
we're getting to a close here. So yeah, so just to give a quick
summary of the whole thing.
I'm just gonna give my quick summary, Musa is something that
should happen. Physical activity is really one of the best things,
screen activities and pop culture. I have my two main positions on it
is that on one hand, I don't overthink it. On the other hand, I
minimize minimize, minimize it as much as possible. Right. So those
are my two things. You heard some more ideas from Alex and Moy, Nas,
about the you know, a little bit more thought into the actual
nature of different entertainments. Right? And I think
it ends up being a wash anyway, because I don't necessarily look
at the, as long as it turns out, I don't really look at the go deep
into the thing, but I do think it should all be minimized, right.
If you're going to get into something, get into physical
fitness, at least it's something that's, you know, really good for
your body, you get sweated out right and get physically fit. Alex
mentioned some things that are more handy. Right, and then
archery and, and having a gun. And you said something else. shooting,
shooting, shooting, not knowing how to get around so for kids on
bikes for adults, for grown for like teenagers learning how to
drive well, hunting. So all those types of things are all things out
there that are opposite for people to take. But the further family
there should be massamba for the family. You Maureen brought up
what about the the in the past? What did they do or not do? I'll
tell you one thing they do, there was no such thing as take a
vacation.
I say this all the time people get mad at me. Yeah, like if people
didn't take vacations. Yeah, sure. I was talking with someone, one of
my colleagues and he said, our teachers, we have to didn't take
vacation. We took vacations, right? Like we actually take a
vacation, but they have no such thing as vacation. So does that
mean that they it was a different world though at the same time, we
have to realize that right? It was different worlds you couldn't use
or you take your family and go to another city. Maybe 200 years ago,
there weren't hotels, you can only go to a city where you knew people
there were hotels, but you know what the hotel was, it was on the
highway for the merchants to stop right? That's the fun in the past
was for the merchants to stop or whoever there's no such thing as
taking a vacation. Let's go take a family vacation to Damascus
to get killed on the way if you know if you knew
if you knew what things were if
you show up you show up so you show up in Damascus and what do
you do? Yeah, you don't know anyone? No one knows you. They're
gonna look at you like Google Maps.
Do you have nowhere to stay Airbnb eat first of all, you only went
there if you knew someone Secondly, the homes were not so
big to host everyone in the homes. So there there could You could
read that someone was sent to go visit his uncle and stay for the
summer. They're from Damascus for a reason. But now okay, the world
has changed, etc. And there are vacations now, right? But all of
the stuff if you couch it in a life of habits, good habits, such
as reading Quran together, okay? Reciting out odd together so in
the car would have the evening, right? That part of life. When
there's a break, review your recitation, so you have a child,
okay, recite for me such and such, you have two children recite it
together, because it's easier to, to conserve cipher memory
together, that's when you want it. You want them to review, but not
be really hard on them, recite it together, so one will pick up the
other.
In other words, in the same voice, as you see many of the Quran
schools, they recite in the same one voice, right? Everyone with
the surah. So you do those things where you can couch, your
entertainment and whatever it is, as long as it's held up in a way
that neutralizes itself. Right? Just the fact that you're together
as a family neutralizes itself, right? it neutralizes a lot of
things during your DNA, and you Oda is going to neutralize things.
So that's how I look at it. And I think it is a very important
thing, because the type of things that people consume, it could
really, you know, put a hole in your heart, man at the same time,
the opposite extreme, and I'm not really worried about people going
to the opposite extreme of having no entertainment.
Who's going to that extreme?
If only Yeah, if that was our problem, that would be good. Yeah.
And one of the things I want to say about taking things into the
heart, the realization for me, was when I realized that human beings
are malleable, right, they're subject to change. So I think most
people don't realize that, because then we now have a better
definition of what we can consider beneficial entertainment or
beneficial art. Anything that encourages those aspects of me
that are negative, right? Or gives me reason for self pity. Why would
I engage in that? Right? So for example, the Joker, one of the
things that's absent from that movie is redemption. There's no
redemption, right? Just complete, like going down a spiral. And
that's it. Like it's, it's a plane going down and just crashing.
That's it. That's the end of the movie. Now, why would you spend,
like, is that the type of life that you want to live? I don't
think anybody wants to live that type of life, right? Nobody wants
to wallow in their own self pity. So art, beneficial art or
beneficial entertainment, to me are those things that encourage
the best in us. Right? And for a long time, that was the
entertainment. Right? For a long time, the poems that people used
to recite the plays Shakespeare's plays, right? Always there's
redemption. There's a type of redemption or type of lesson,
right? I know what you're gonna say.
Except for the tragedy, except for the No, no, even in the tragedy.
There's a lesson, right? You know, there's no lesson but there's no
redemptive. Sure. Like there's a lesson and
don't mistreat mentally ill people that are on the margins, right?
But you don't, for example, someone watching Hamlet is not
going to say, Oh, I really resonate with that guy. Now, let
me go kill myself. Right.
Nobody wants to other people, right. But the point is that art
that encourages those things that are good in me, right, and
encourages me to better myself. I think that's, that's how we should
you know, view art, and we should promote those things at the
expense of other stuff. I think this, that's really good comment
for our producers. Like if there's a Muslim producer of something,
right? That's something that he could think about. But I'll tell
you why change is because art is all about change. It's all about
something new. Right? The old is not something you know, that's
gonna make a draw. Right? Or move the needle. It's also about
challenging norms. Right? Yeah. It's about challenging norms. So
Western conception of art. No, but if you think about it, it's always
about change and pushing the envelope. Even, like, let's say in
the Islamic tradition, you want to take a basic look at the Islamic
tradition. What did they start with? They went into these
Byzantine churches, and those were the artists at the time. And they
said, Okay, well, we're gonna make this semester but we can't have
any of those human beings that they would have like in the
church, Adam and Eve, right. Yeah. And but keep the foliage. That's
how it started. You know that that's how it started and in
domestic in Damascus, they literally started that. They went
in, they said, This is really beautiful. But that's haram.
That's haram keep the leaves Yeah, right. Well, the leaves the
foliage became more and more abstract. until it became like in
the Ottoman foliage. It's clearly like leaves and tulips but it's
not meant to be a garden, right? Then went back to become
completely geometric lines and stuff, right. So in the Western
tradition, you have the good
Guy story, good guy and bad guy. Well, how long are you going to
have good guy and bad guy? Right? So someone finally said, Alright,
let's just make a movie about bad guys, right? And origin stories of
bad guys, right? So, or a good guy who you don't really know if he's
really that good. Right? The great, the good, the great. So
here, and it's not that the gray or the antihero or the bad guy
origin story is anything other than it's new. And in 20 years,
someone will make an origin story of like, some other bad guy. And
I'll be like, Oh, are you serious? Come on, this is just an
iteration, right? And that's how they talk because they want
something new, there's always going to be something new. So
that's really what it is. You know, but if it's newness, you
know, pursuing the good. I mean, you know, you're gonna feel high,
right? No problem with that, you know, yeah, but but you're we're
dealing with a tradition and a people who don't have any
framework like this. So newness becomes become the sacred cow.
Right? Right. Whereas for us, that's why I said certain things
like the big screen and muscle can never compete. Right? And will
never compete, because we do have idea of redemption and good and,
and the idea that everything we do, if you're going to produce
something, it should bring the best out of someone like Reggie
just said, Right? Right. So certain mediums are impossible for
us to compete in. So I think that pretty much wraps it up in terms
of this episode. But last time, I kind of left it open. If you guys
want to go on any tangents or any other topics, you're welcome to do
that at the end of the episode.
Final word is, you know, on days off weekends, or whatever, take
your take your family out to someplace in nature, like hiking
in the woods or some hiking is a great, it's one of the absolute
best. It's one of the best things, and it's one of the things that
we're lucky to have in America. an ample amount of snow not in New
Jersey, it's probably not. We have we have great places, man, what
are you talking we have Lyme disease, Lyme disease, by the way,
I didn't know that. Just Oh, yeah.
My sister had Lyme disease. Yeah, exactly.
Listen,
but never crossed my mind, it will be a reason not to leave the
house. Except that you just have to tuck your tuck your your pants
into your socks, wear boots, spray yourself with the and you're fine.
Yeah, just don't walk around with your legs exposed. What's the best
thing go out with either some some some patties or whatever food and
go to those parks that have a grill in it, right, you go, you
walk, then you go back to the car, get the cooler, and grill and you
only have a couple weeks to do it anyway, it's going to be winter
soon. But this is really one of the best things that we have. And
the funny thing is when you're in New Jersey, when you go to these
places, you're in the mountain but you can hear the highway.
Massachusetts had some beautiful places New England, which I New
England, to me is a really lonely place. It's like so that
population density is so low, right? You feel like almost
depressed, just being in New England. But the fall walks there.
And the hikes there are amazing. So get out into nature and go down
to the beach, but not like during peak season, you know, spelled
both ways.
Go, go go go to the beach, when it's the off hours like me and my
wife like to go like right before sundown. Yeah. And you know,
everybody's gone. And it's nice and nice to sit on the beach at
night. It's very, it's very relaxing and beautiful. And
totally off topic point. But
so I was reading the history of prostitution, before I came.
It has been another episode.
There's one quote one quote that I would have mentioned, I don't know
how I got into it. I think maybe it's your colleague with it.
But one of the things in Rome, one of the things that happened is
when they started out they were actually very conservative. Right?
Prostitute No, no, the Romans, the Romans, very celibate. It was
actually illegal. Like, you would actually have your rights taken
away if you weren't married by 25. Wow. Right. So a bank should enact
that. Right. So they were very disciplined culture very, you
know, they conquered the world. What ended up happening is when
they conquered Asian countries, then their culture of luxury
started invading Rome, and Roman famous Roman senators, people like
Cato the elder, they were decrying. They were like, so sad
that, you know, Roman society is going to the dogs, you know,
prostitutes are becoming rampant, people are indecent. And what's
interesting is that when Rome starts conquering Asian places,
that's when the decline starts happening, like when they start
indulging in that luxury in terms of Persians or Persians,
Assyrians, whatever. So it's like, it's almost like it's almost like
a common theme in history when an entire society just sort of like
loses its mind into too much well, similar. Similar thing happened in
the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Empire to society declines. So both pre
this downturn to this day
don't have like, open homosexuality. What are they
still? Probably for? Yes, they were they were so whatever.
Like this is like they added one aspect to their already decadent,
horrible society where they worship like fake gods and they
engage in * with young boys. But it wasn't. I mean, now they hire
all have them not all of them worship fake gods. I mean the
Romans were famous for Stoics, right? If you actually look at
stoic philosophy, it's like a different type of Kumar. Yes,
well, they didn't have prophets so given them. What do you mean? They
didn't have prophets
every comb had a prophet every single one, meaning like the
recorded ones that didn't like murder, okay, maybe maybe their
profit. They distorted Islam and made it into stoicism. We don't
know Well, I'm sure that they did distort whatever if if they had a
profit at that time, surely they did destroy it, or they rejected
it. Justify Hinduism? I didn't have a profit that way. No, no,
no, no, I'm not defending Romans. I'm not. But I am impressed in
certain aspects of them, right? Sure. If I'm gonna be impressed
with any people I like the Spartans, Spartans. I like their
the toughness, their, you know, no indulgences. simplicity of life.
I'm telling you, that's the right way to live. Is to indulgence,
keep it to a minimum, you can have indulgences, everyone's going to
have indulgence. What is an indulgence? To me, it's like a
steak dinner. That, to me is an indulgence, right. But keep your
indulgence is slowly decreased them down to the, to the you know,
to where it's so minimal, that you're healthy at all times, not
just physically healthy, for your spirit, your character, right?
Keep things disciplined is the best way to live. But I'm not for
doing it in a manner that's miserable. Like I'm not into being
miserable. I'm not a fan of being miserable. It is going to be slow,
right? Slowly. But that's the direction that we should go.
There's two ways to approach Allah. There's self Abnegation,
where you just continue to deprive the neffs until it becomes
obedient. And the other one is indulging in the halal until you
become full of shock. And they both work. They both work. And
just everyone's going to have a little bit of a balance of both,
right? Yeah. And for the long term discipline. Right? Empty the
stomach as much as possible. In other words, like eating habits
should be, you know, curtailed. These it's important.
All that stuff. Jumbo Hakima translated that portion of hair
limonene. disciplining the two the two designers. Yeah, it's really
good. It's really important, really important. Maybe we should
have an episode of discipline, right? Because some people today
think that CEOs that work like 600 hours a week that No, yeah, they
think that's discipline like that sort of abnormal sort of drive,
drive, right? Hustle culture, right? That's what my guys are
taking tons of drugs. Yeah, my view of it is that many people are
afraid of discipline, because we all have habits. And we don't want
to change our habits, right. But the right way to view it is that
you literally just make a very subtle changes. That's it, that
you're you're you don't really react to write really slowly, and
then you regress a little bit, then you take three steps forward
again, they then you regress half a step back, then you take four
steps forward. But it happens so slowly, right? That you're not
miserable by doing it. And if you ever achieve it, it doesn't lead
you to Cuba, because you didn't even notice that you made a
change. The big change when it happens you don't even notice
these fast changes in the good or really bad, the really bad for
people because they lead to kibble.
I think that we can do that episode right now in 10 seconds,
which is fine. Roger solid, in your area that you can
study with, learn from emulate. And if not, then connect with
someone at a distance, but find a righteous chef. And that's the
only way that it works. You can't do it any other way. That's what
worked for me, can you not do it online, you cannot do it from a
podcast, you have to find someone that you can actually speak to
that you can write letters to if you need to, if they're far away,
but it has to be like an actual real relationship. Yeah, that's
where you're talking to spiritual discipline. Yeah, spiritual
advancement. spiritual advancement also bleeds into like real life.
Now of course, obviously. So I think we'll we'll wrap up since
it's getting late. So we'll go ahead and I'll make one small
point.
If you ever I don't think we've mentioned this in in almost a
season but if anybody ever has a question, concern you know, feel
it please feel free to email us at podcast at Safina society dot o
RG. We also have a Patreon account. It's patreon.com/ss
podcast, if you'd like to support our efforts, we you know do have a
research team. We've provided some books, we've recently gotten some
new equipment and we continue to you know further along some of our
efforts so inshallah if you would like to support us it's
patreon.com/ss podcast, so
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