Shadee Elmasry – Sports, Leisure, & Recreation

Shadee Elmasry
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of social media and the need for unification of tastes and cultures to achieve a wholesome entertainment experience. Baseball is like cricket, but it's kind of a Loser game. The use of virtual reality and the importance of valuing relationships and unity in life are emphasized. The speakers stress the need to minimize the use of technology for children, as it is the only option for children to watch TV, and emphasize the importance of building a reward circuitry for children to receive the benefits of technology. The speakers emphasize the importance of rewarding people for their profit and rewarding them for their work, as it is the only option for children to watch TV, and emphasize the importance of building a reward circuitry for children to receive the benefits of technology.
AI: Transcript ©
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Straight on a newsman note on anyone on the CSE that he was

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going to send him. I said Mr. alikhan

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Welcome to the Safina society podcast. I'm your host moine. And

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we are once again joined by Dr. Shetty, abs and Nazmul. On this

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particular episode, we are going to be talking about leisure and

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what it means. And the concept in Arabic is called low, or pastime.

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So I was reading an article in 1492, there was a scholar named

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ignoble, who had the end, he had this urge to finish this library,

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so he had tons and tons of books. And he started a social reading

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event. So he would read his books out loud, aloud with his family

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members. So that included his sons, his daughters, wives, and

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also anybody else that wanted to join. So they would actually take

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meticulous notes about when they started, when they finished, what

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books they read, who was actually reading the last time and then

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they would continue it. And what actually happened is they wanted

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to own to such a degree that they were actually finished, like two

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or three books per day. So one of the interesting things I found

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about this piece was that the people attending the reading

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somehow found this fun, they found this enjoyable, and it was a type

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of leisure. And so if we talked about this today, most people

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would find this boring, and clearly our conception of

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entertainment, or Lahu has evolved over time. So my question to

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everyone here is, you know, what do we make of today's globalist

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stick mono cultural, entertainment sort of machine. For example,

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every kid in the world is hip to most American pop culture, right?

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Most people know who Spider Man is who Superman is. Whereas a kid in

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the past and you know, rural India, for example, may have grown

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up listening to the legends of Amir Hamza, and Volador. Whereas

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today, the same kid knows about Peter Parker and his uncle. So,

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you know, what should Muslims make of this globalized sort of low

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machine? And you know, no doubt we as human beings require leisure

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time to unwind. There's a hadith about the Prophet salallahu Alaihe

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Salam, he said, recreate your hearts hour after hour for the

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tired hearts go blind. So if we are to oppose the DIS

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entertainment engine, as I spoke about, what should be our level,

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you know, what are the parameters in our Sherea to have wholesome

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entertainment and a pastime? some level of mine that I hate? Well,

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first thing is that it's going to be really hard to pass any

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judgment on such a massive enterprise such as you know, the

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world, the global worldwide entertainment, or global, global

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and worldwide that are synonyms. But global, uni culture, mono

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culture should say, entertainment, and that's really what it is. But

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as a side point, there is a wisdom behind monoculture. Because if we

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are inaccurate as a man, we actually believe that there's

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going to be one leadership and activism and one villain and

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activism and, and one religion and activism. And so it would do would

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require a unification of tastes, of entertainment, even of humor,

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even a unification of everything is what's going on. So I thought

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it would be hard to just just pass a commentary here and there, but I

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do think the bulk of the monocultures entertainment is is

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negative, and not fitting into our shittier. While at the same time

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you want we are living in this world, you can't avoid certain

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things. And when we do go for entertainment, we're going to be

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choosing from something within this monoculture, right, and we

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can't just say it's all with throw the whole thing out, you're going

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to end up with an extreme because as you cited in the Hadith, people

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do need a type of entertainment, it's sort of necessary to have

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something to unwind with. So you're gonna have to just be

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selective, right? Okay. The ideal is why don't the Muslims make

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their own thing? Right? Well, they'll try, but you could take

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something that's completely secular, right? And you could

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couch it in an environment that becomes an environment that's

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actually good, right? Like, I've never actually been a football

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fan, for example. But some of my friends were, and they're, you

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know, the families or friends etc. We get invited some of these

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football games, but these football games, you're sitting there

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watching the game, but the samba around you is actually still

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positive, your plant your plant, you're praying salah, you're the

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you know, the children there are getting together, you know,

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positive reinforcement of certain things the families are getting

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together. So you're going to have to borrow and take you know, from

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this model culture of entertainment, what you can and

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couch it in an environment that removes any of the negativity. And

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I think I found in general that sports, you know, not just

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watching them but even being involved in sports has

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always been a wholesome activity. Something I was talking about with

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a friend is when I was younger I was on a baseball I was on

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baseball team, right. So I found playing baseball was a great

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activity not just for entertainment, but I also found it

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as a great team building exercise versus other sports. For example,

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I'll give you an I was involved in in baseball, soccer, tennis, I

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played a number of different sports, baseball was very

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different in how it kind of built you up versus how something like

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soccer would soccer I found was a was a, you know, at least were on

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my team was very glory hungry sport, right? You hand the ball to

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the Brazilian kid with scored, right or you handed it to the

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Turkish kid, you know, who was the who was the striker, and he kinda

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did his thing. Whereas in baseball, that was a very communal

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type sport. If you're the guy at bat, you had to the whole team had

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to make sure that you succeeded. Otherwise, you want to know if the

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whole team was going to fail? Actually, yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

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Yeah. And I noticed even at practice, you know, even the kids

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that were bullied outside on on the team in baseball, at least it

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was a very communal, wholesome sort of activity where everybody

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was involved. Yeah, it's a semi individual team sport. That's what

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baseball is. It's a semi individual team sport. Soccer? Not

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necessarily. It's it is it's a team sport, but

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not everyone does get a chance to talk to them. Right. That's the

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reason. And some people you don't want them to touch the ball. It's

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actually a negative. Think about it.

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Well, I mean, Baseball, baseball is like that, too. That's why you

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have things like pinch hitters. Yeah. Pinch runners. It's, I hate

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to say it, but it's kind of a loser's game in.

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Baseball, it's like cricket. Like, come on, man, American cricket. I

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mean, you could be the thing about.

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Forget that. Actually, to be honest, I think all these team

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sports are.

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They're fine. But I don't support any of it. Why is that? I don't

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think that any of these. I don't think that any of these team

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sports aren't necessarily.

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I don't think that they actually build any long term benefits for

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someone who is looking to be successful individual. I mean, if

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you're the quarterback on a football team, maybe, but even

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then, no, but every team sport, though, anything you do, if

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there's a challenge to it, you're gonna have to dig deep. And you're

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gonna have to develop something. And once you develop it, you just

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happen to develop it there. It was forced to come out there. But now

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that it's out, it's out for everything. So let's look at let's

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look at what people who are influential in the world actually

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do for sports are almost all individual.

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And none of it involves a team. None of it involves chasing a ball

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around. It's all about your individual skills that you've

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developed. And this is this, like, I'm talking about people that are

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very influential in the world. So like, royalty, you know, captains

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of industry, truly great, successful people. They fence they

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swim. They ride horses. I mean, they do they do the things that we

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were already told in the Sunnah are the things to do. But with

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that stuff, it's boring in comparison to team sports. And if

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you're good at it, yeah, but even still, okay, you're you have no

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group feeling. There's no sense of camaraderie. There's no even need

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for deep strategies, right? Where you're relying upon multiple

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people to do this to do one thing, right? That to me is funner. And

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more impressive. And it builds it builds bonds. Now, this is where

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the point of live and low are different. So low is defined as

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Ahmed only sallahu Gaya Fein fc will have already, which is an act

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that has no value, neither in itself, nor to something else.

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Like we all got together and rolled dice and see who got more,

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right. So there's no value in itself nor in anything else. Or a

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secondary, but alive is something that in itself is nothing. But it

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does lead to something else. Right. And if you look at most of

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these sports, they're just excuses for people to do things together.

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Like your exercise together, you might learn a couple things about

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adversity, winning, losing, and it's a reason for people to get

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together. So what these people that I was talking about these

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type of people know what they do together. They roll rolling, but

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that's that's totally team sport. Yeah. But they wrote it brings a

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lot of unity. There's, you got the coxswain, what how's this?

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How's that fun? So Rich? We will do it, I don't know. But rich,

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rich, like they're enjoying themselves. The rich people, they

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are mostly inherited their wealth, right? If you you know, this is

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the inherited traditions, because they live on base and, and lakes

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and stuff like that. Right. Whereas it's a posh sport, right

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like Harvard Harvard grad. It's not it's not even a sport. It's

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ROIC. Let me tell you about. Let me tell you about some serious

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camaraderie. Right. Yeah. So me and

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Dr. Mahmoud. Yeah.

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We go shooting together. We're in separate lanes. We can

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Have on headphones plus, sometimes earplugs are for indoor. There, we

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can't hear each other. We're blocked off by the by the shooting

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lanes, we can't see each other. We go, we arrive in separate cars. We

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get our, our booths next door to each other. We shoot, we compare

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targets and we leave. And it's it's a lot of camaraderie and a

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lot of bonding going on there. Why don't you talk at all? There's a

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lot of ways of bonding. But isn't that sort of subjective, though?

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Like what you would consider bonding and what? Yeah, like women

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would consider bonding?

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Yeah, I guess it's a very direct question.

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No, but if you want to gossip and talk a lot, yeah, sure. No, but I

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think I'm personally I find sports is to be, what else is had that

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for you out there. Right. So you know, it's another good thing

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along these lines of hunting, hunting is great. And again, you

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barely talk to you. In fact, you need to be quiet. Yeah. I mean, if

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you want to be like gathering, you can gather berries or whatever.

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And then you can have a long conversation.

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But if you if you want to do something that's mainly like going

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out into the woods and stalking animals, you don't talk at all.

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But it's also very, there's a strong bond that gets formed.

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So Alex has a point actually, because

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when Ivy League's actually admit students, one of the criteria that

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they look for is, is the student engaged in some sort of

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individualistic sport, okay. And I'm going to tell you the

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reasoning before you, before you refute me, okay, that.

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So, their reasoning is that if you're in an individual sport,

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like horse riding, like,

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what fencing right, or something else, you have nobody else to rely

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on except for your own skill. Okay, so the buck stops with you,

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basically. Yeah. So this is an indication of your ability to like

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basically like to lead and to be independent. So they're looking

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for those types of students, by the way, one of the things that

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they probably don't look at his track track. Interesting. Why that

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is, because it's not in their tradition. And this this was the

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point that I was making is that these things, you look at fencing,

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swimming, horseback riding, right? These are also the things that are

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named in the Hadith, about the things that you should teach your

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children archery shooting, right? These are these are things that

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were named in the Hadith and not coincidentally, it's the sports of

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royalty. Shahab Rahim off CFO has a whole talk about this, about

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four to one sports. And he makes the point that the games where

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you're wandering around chasing a ball, he said, This is lower class

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stuff. And he doesn't mean it in like, Oh, poor people stuff. He

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means like, it's, it's not it's that class A it's not something

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that more advanced people should be doing. Really, this is like for

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little kids. That's his argument. Yeah. What are the what's the

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advanced civilization of the world today doing?

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I mean, they're not the people, the leaders, they're still doing

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the same things like he was talking about the heads of states,

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the people who go to Ivy League, the people that run the banks that

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run the corporations that run the government, they're all still

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engaging in these individual sports and excelling. I mean, even

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even Golf is a very individual, that's not even golfing. That's

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just like for talking a game. But like the sports that they engage

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in, it's still it's fencing. It's horseback riding. Okay? That might

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all be true. But when I go for entertainment, I don't want to

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theorize and be philosophical. I'm going to do what I enjoy. If it's

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Hello, I'm going to join right now. I'm not denying that there

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could be thought behind it. That fence. Now the prophets I sent him

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one he said archery, swimming, wrestling.

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There was a there was always those with three, right? Archery,

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swimming, horseback riding horseback, right? That's the one I

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missed horseback riding. Now what the province I sent him said these

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because these have real life implications as well. Right. Now,

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when we say bolted, okay, and everything else is button, what

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bots are just means that in itself, it has no value. There's

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no value in itself to put a ball in a hoop. Right? That doesn't

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mean that it's haram doesn't mean that there is no benefit. There is

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no secondary benefit. Sure, you could have a secondary but and so

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the main secondary benefit is that this is a time when I want to shut

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my brain off, right? So I want to shut my brain off. Like sometimes

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you're sitting with someone, and they're watching the game. And

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they're saying, you know, this is a complete artificial reality. And

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I'm like,

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that's actually sometimes the point though, because I want to

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get away from anything real, quote unquote, real, right? I want to

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get away from something like that. And the i Honestly, the only way

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that actually relate to the greater culture, in how do we

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relate to the greater quote, if there is such a thing as a greater

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American culture, right? To me, the only thing I relate is the

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stuff that the sports that I did when I was young, like that, what

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are the where's the point of contact? I don't have a

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grandparent that was from here, for example, to have memories or

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whatever, right? Cuisine Not really. We still eat our own cook

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our own food, right? What else is there maybe some cuisine, what

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else is there? Right To me, this is the My main connection.

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So if I need to strike up a conversation with a random person,

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what am I going to talk about? I don't want to talk about politics.

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Oh, yeah.

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I'm going to jump ahead and yeah, really quickly. I do engage in, in

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forms of, I engage with entertainment, like popular

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culture, entertainment, mostly like movies and television shows.

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And almost without exception, they are for one purpose. I watch stuff

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with my wife that she wants to watch, I watch stuff that my

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brother recommends to me, because then we'll have a good

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conversation about that. And I watch stuff that some people, some

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of the people I work with watch, so that I can also engage with

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them. So it's all it's all for a purpose, though. Yeah, I entered,

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I enjoy it. Like if one of these people recommend something that's

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completely outside of my wheelhouse, I'm not going to watch

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it, I'm not going to enjoy it. But if if it's moderately or less

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haram, and then really haram, and one of these groups of people was

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into it, then I watch it for that purpose is what I used to, I used

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to watch sports too, but I enjoyed it too much. I'm telling you, all

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this stuff is for that purpose, if you're alone, in a stage where

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you're alone in your life, right, you really don't need pretty much

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any of these things, right? Unless you've developed into a type of

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balanced person as you are, you know, just as is. But if you're

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all alone, let's say you're in the last decade of life, and you have

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no connections to anyone, then none of this stuff has any value.

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If you think about it, or if you're a chef, and you're

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studying, you're overseas studying, right, you don't need to

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do any of these things, you're wasting your time. But once you're

00:16:25 --> 00:16:28

actually living, connected, like if and I thought says some people

00:16:28 --> 00:16:31

are in the ASVAB, some people are out of this, but meaning you're in

00:16:31 --> 00:16:33

the world of causes and effects, and you're connected to all these

00:16:33 --> 00:16:37

things, then this thing could have multiple functions. The problem

00:16:37 --> 00:16:41

too, though, is that we're living less. So there was a period when I

00:16:41 --> 00:16:43

went to college, and it's also the first year that I became Muslim.

00:16:44 --> 00:16:48

There was a gap. When When, when the guys from Chicago were here

00:16:48 --> 00:16:50

from the madman, Luke's they were talking about

00:16:51 --> 00:16:55

those like CIA pitch movies with Harrison Ford, and I had no idea

00:16:55 --> 00:16:57

what any of them were. But I was like the deck come out, like

00:16:57 --> 00:17:00

around between 92 and 96. And they were like, oh, yeah, I won't get

00:17:00 --> 00:17:03

my 93 195. I said, Yeah, that makes sense. That's why I don't

00:17:03 --> 00:17:06

know them. Yeah. During that four year period, when I first became

00:17:06 --> 00:17:10

Muslim, and I was first in college, I had, I went to zero

00:17:10 --> 00:17:13

television, I listened to the radio, almost not at all, I didn't

00:17:13 --> 00:17:16

go to a single movie in that whole period. And I didn't miss any of

00:17:16 --> 00:17:18

it. Because you're living communally with a bunch of people

00:17:18 --> 00:17:21

your age, you're hanging out, you're studying, and I had just

00:17:21 --> 00:17:24

converted to Islam. So I had a lot to read. So I had zero, I have

00:17:24 --> 00:17:29

zero memory of that four year period. And I think one thing that

00:17:29 --> 00:17:31

I'd like to go back to that I talked about, in the beginning,

00:17:31 --> 00:17:33

the first story that I told about the guy

00:17:35 --> 00:17:38

who's reading, you know, a number of books to finish his library.

00:17:38 --> 00:17:43

But you know, it has just said about communal living, is the

00:17:43 --> 00:17:48

entertainment of the past was very communal, right? It was not so

00:17:48 --> 00:17:52

individualistic as it is today. And, you know, one of the things

00:17:52 --> 00:17:58

that I find really interesting is, especially this idea of the the

00:17:58 --> 00:18:02

current anxiety that people have, and depression that people have, I

00:18:02 --> 00:18:06

find it interesting, because, you know, somebody noted to me that it

00:18:06 --> 00:18:10

may be that it's not that people don't have entertainment, but

00:18:10 --> 00:18:13

rather perhaps they're being entertained in the wrong ways,

00:18:13 --> 00:18:16

right? They're, they're not being fulfilled by what they should be

00:18:16 --> 00:18:19

fulfilled. And I totally agree with that. That was recently with

00:18:19 --> 00:18:23

a group of people, and they meet regularly. And one person said,

00:18:23 --> 00:18:26

you know, some people dropped out. And the reason they dropped out

00:18:26 --> 00:18:29

was they felt that there weren't producing anything in this

00:18:29 --> 00:18:32

gathering, right? But then someone brought up a great point that

00:18:32 --> 00:18:35

said, does everything have to be production? Like, why don't we

00:18:35 --> 00:18:39

just why don't we value relationships anymore. And there

00:18:39 --> 00:18:43

was this thing where the, one of the Native American groups they

00:18:43 --> 00:18:47

used to, you know, I don't know, do some kind of harvesting using

00:18:47 --> 00:18:51

some tools, and it would take them all day to do it. Right. And then

00:18:51 --> 00:18:55

the Spanish came in, and they gave him another tool, like a tool that

00:18:55 --> 00:18:58

they could do the work and half the time. So then they do the

00:18:58 --> 00:19:01

work, and half the time they go home. And they found them like

00:19:01 --> 00:19:04

storytelling, building fires, playing with their kids singing

00:19:04 --> 00:19:08

songs, doing all these things. And the Spanish wrote about them that

00:19:08 --> 00:19:12

these people are so lazy, we gave them the tools to do double the

00:19:12 --> 00:19:15

work. Instead of doing double the work. They just did the same work

00:19:15 --> 00:19:18

and half the time and went home. But the question then becomes,

00:19:18 --> 00:19:22

what do you value? Do you value some output? Some material output

00:19:22 --> 00:19:25

that you can touch and think about, or contemplate? Or do you

00:19:25 --> 00:19:30

value relationships and relationships is something where a

00:19:30 --> 00:19:34

real sad happiness of human beings comes in, and I remember reading a

00:19:34 --> 00:19:38

casita that actually have you almost wrote and he said, All of

00:19:38 --> 00:19:41

happiness is in your uncles and your all of your happiness is in

00:19:41 --> 00:19:44

your friends, right? That's the height of Happiness is when you're

00:19:44 --> 00:19:48

with those relationships. And me having been more of a sort of only

00:19:48 --> 00:19:51

child, not really only child, that old way older sister, though, but

00:19:51 --> 00:19:56

most of my youth was spent all alone, right. I didn't understand

00:19:56 --> 00:19:59

this line at all right? We had no family in America.

00:20:00 --> 00:20:04

Right. Nope. No family in America, no siblings, no kids down the

00:20:04 --> 00:20:08

road, no big community like me three families maximum. It's a

00:20:08 --> 00:20:10

really isolated

00:20:11 --> 00:20:15

experience, right? So I never even understood that until actually

00:20:15 --> 00:20:17

developing later. Now you have connections, you have family and

00:20:17 --> 00:20:22

stuff. But but to Alex's point, I was in the same situation, I had

00:20:22 --> 00:20:26

no need for any of these things, very few connections in terms of

00:20:26 --> 00:20:27

friends and family.

00:20:28 --> 00:20:31

And it was all Steady, steady, steady. When I came back, it was

00:20:31 --> 00:20:37

around 2006 2007. And I had no clue about any of the side

00:20:37 --> 00:20:41

conversations that people were having. But we're here to do

00:20:41 --> 00:20:44

doubt, right. So I'm going giving talks here and there. And I'm

00:20:44 --> 00:20:47

thinking, I have no clue what these people are saying, right?

00:20:47 --> 00:20:51

There's not even any glue in the relationship. So I viewed it as

00:20:51 --> 00:20:54

there's no glue in this relation. There's nothing connecting me with

00:20:54 --> 00:20:58

these individuals. So then I had to sort of artificially get to

00:20:58 --> 00:21:03

know stuff. And that's why I said this lab is something that has no

00:21:04 --> 00:21:07

point in itself, but has a secondary purpose. Right. So

00:21:08 --> 00:21:10

that's really what you have to think about when you're engaging

00:21:10 --> 00:21:13

in these things, you got to think about the secondary purpose. And

00:21:14 --> 00:21:18

what I'm hearing is that life itself doesn't contain any value.

00:21:18 --> 00:21:23

And unless it's leading to something else, right? So is this,

00:21:23 --> 00:21:26

can you say that, at a certain point in your life, it's ideal

00:21:26 --> 00:21:29

that there's no live and you're just spending all your time, you

00:21:29 --> 00:21:33

know, worshipping Allah and doing all that, because I'll actually

00:21:33 --> 00:21:36

use the word Allah who in a negative sense, in the Quran, let

00:21:36 --> 00:21:40

me tell you what the ideal is, the ideal is where Allah put you.

00:21:41 --> 00:21:44

If Allah, Allah puts a person in jail for the last 10 years of his

00:21:44 --> 00:21:47

life, then that's what's best for him. Right? If he puts them in

00:21:47 --> 00:21:51

isolation, and in solitary, or a solitary life in general, then

00:21:51 --> 00:21:54

that's what's best for him. If he put him in the middle of

00:21:54 --> 00:21:58

everything, until the last moment of his life. He's living like a

00:21:58 --> 00:22:01

regular Muslim, and he's engaging in all these

00:22:02 --> 00:22:05

secondary things just to glue together the family and the

00:22:05 --> 00:22:09

community, then that's what's best for him. So there is our ideal is

00:22:09 --> 00:22:12

individualized, it's what Allah chose for that person at that

00:22:12 --> 00:22:18

time. Right? So you have that you have people who grow old, and they

00:22:18 --> 00:22:21

stay in their family or in their community. And until the end of

00:22:21 --> 00:22:25

their lives, they're in what even I thought said, the world of s

00:22:25 --> 00:22:30

bap, the world of interactions, causes and effects. Right? If

00:22:30 --> 00:22:33

that's what Allah chose for them, then that's what's best. If Allah

00:22:33 --> 00:22:36

pulls them out of that, and causes them to be alone, then that's

00:22:36 --> 00:22:38

what's best for them. And they could, and if, if they're all

00:22:38 --> 00:22:42

alone, and they don't take advantage of that to do they're

00:22:42 --> 00:22:45

advanced spiritually, then they're wasting their time. And you know,

00:22:45 --> 00:22:50

one of the crazy things is that, we mentioned that depression is on

00:22:50 --> 00:22:55

the rise. Today's level, people are engaging in it more and more

00:22:55 --> 00:22:58

to an unhealthy degree because of their depression. It's like, it's

00:22:58 --> 00:23:01

almost like a cyclical, it's almost like a cyclical pattern.

00:23:01 --> 00:23:06

Right? So in that sense, can we say that? Is there too much laahu

00:23:06 --> 00:23:11

being engaged in? Because I think it's become the vicar of is the

00:23:11 --> 00:23:15

vicar of Satan, by the way level, right? Is all they do? It's like,

00:23:16 --> 00:23:20

I can get into something for like, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe like

00:23:20 --> 00:23:24

an evening, right? But I can't imagine that people whose careers

00:23:24 --> 00:23:29

it is, like, like I'm a bit I consider myself someone who loves

00:23:29 --> 00:23:33

sports. But I can't do this more than like an hour for like, in a

00:23:33 --> 00:23:36

week or something like I can't. It's a massive waste of time. I

00:23:36 --> 00:23:41

can't imagine someone whose career whose earnings is in this field.

00:23:41 --> 00:23:44

You never crossed your mind how meaningless This is. Yeah, well,

00:23:44 --> 00:23:46

exactly. I remember. And

00:23:47 --> 00:23:50

there was a time there where I used to listen to sports radio.

00:23:50 --> 00:23:52

That's why you see on my commute, sometimes I have like an hour and

00:23:52 --> 00:23:57

a half commute. That's three hours a day. Five days a week is 15

00:23:57 --> 00:24:01

hours a week of listening to some idiots who know every statistic

00:24:01 --> 00:24:04

ever, about every sport that's ever

00:24:05 --> 00:24:08

I find it interesting and there was an essay by hildenborough

00:24:08 --> 00:24:11

Haman, in which he talked about leisure and Islam. So one quote

00:24:11 --> 00:24:15

that I found interesting is that she defined leisure as you know,

00:24:15 --> 00:24:19

she looked upon leisure in the following tri faceted fashion in a

00:24:19 --> 00:24:22

state of mind which allows one to participate in certain forms of

00:24:22 --> 00:24:26

human activities. These include contemplation, relaxation,

00:24:26 --> 00:24:29

diversion, and socialization, which usually take place in that

00:24:29 --> 00:24:32

block of time remaining beyond that which is needed for existence

00:24:32 --> 00:24:36

and subsistence. I find this really interesting because even

00:24:36 --> 00:24:38

the definition of leisure,

00:24:39 --> 00:24:45

classically, is not watching Netflix, no for, you know, hours

00:24:45 --> 00:24:48

and hours on all the time. You know, sitting sitting in a dark

00:24:48 --> 00:24:52

room by yourself watching a movie for five hours is not leisure.

00:24:52 --> 00:24:56

It's not normal. That's not that's not even normal. And this is

00:24:56 --> 00:24:59

actually the reason I feel that people are

00:25:00 --> 00:25:04

For us, and then people do have this, this constant addiction to

00:25:04 --> 00:25:10

these stimuli like streaming Netflix or you know, watching cat

00:25:10 --> 00:25:12

videos and prank videos

00:25:13 --> 00:25:13

at least.

00:25:16 --> 00:25:20

But, you know, my wife will testify that is the thing that I

00:25:20 --> 00:25:24

do the most in terms of what something that's productive, but

00:25:24 --> 00:25:27

outside of like work necessary stuff is worked, do something with

00:25:27 --> 00:25:31

my hands, even if it's something menial, like cleaning something

00:25:31 --> 00:25:35

or, you know, fixing something, but even better, if it's something

00:25:35 --> 00:25:37

that where I'm like putting something together or whatever it

00:25:37 --> 00:25:39

is that I'm doing, like I'm working on my tools or whatever,

00:25:40 --> 00:25:43

I'll put on something that's intellectually stimulating.

00:25:44 --> 00:25:47

Oftentimes, it'll be like a legal podcast or you know, oral

00:25:47 --> 00:25:50

arguments or something like that. I'll listen to that while I do

00:25:50 --> 00:25:53

something where I can just don't really have to think about the

00:25:53 --> 00:25:55

task that I'm engaging in. But it's active, it's physically

00:25:55 --> 00:25:57

active, like I'm moving around and I'm using my hands and I'm

00:25:58 --> 00:26:01

building something where I'm fixing something. This is the most

00:26:01 --> 00:26:05

relaxing thing that you can do for me, it's it's not zoning out in

00:26:05 --> 00:26:09

front of a video game, since we're on the topic of definitions. So

00:26:09 --> 00:26:13

let's look at this chronic definitions and chronic usage of

00:26:13 --> 00:26:18

of these words now leisure diff is something different, but we do

00:26:18 --> 00:26:23

have a low well I was summer was Samarra, okay. So these are three

00:26:23 --> 00:26:27

different terms. Two are tend to be are you one is used and always

00:26:27 --> 00:26:32

negatively. One is used with permissibility and negative and

00:26:32 --> 00:26:35

the third is used in pots in a positive light. So you have a

00:26:36 --> 00:26:39

gradation there. So Allahu Allah, I've always come together in the

00:26:39 --> 00:26:44

Quran. And mostly except for two sodas lab comes first i Boone wala

00:26:44 --> 00:26:48

Hoon right. Now Allah who we already said, it's that which has

00:26:48 --> 00:26:52

no value in itself, nor a secondary value. But there's

00:26:52 --> 00:26:56

another definition for it. And the reason that they had to separate

00:26:56 --> 00:26:58

the definitions is whenever you have something repeated in the

00:26:58 --> 00:27:02

Quran, it's in the Quran specifically, there has to be a

00:27:02 --> 00:27:05

difference in the meaning because from Bulava or eloquence is that

00:27:05 --> 00:27:09

you don't repeat something. So therefore the repetition in

00:27:09 --> 00:27:13

Arabic, you can have repetition for toe keyed, just a synonym to

00:27:13 --> 00:27:16

emphasize it. Or you can have repetition for CS, which is to

00:27:16 --> 00:27:19

give you a different meaning. So let one lab have to have two

00:27:19 --> 00:27:23

different meanings. Now the reason that level is always connected in

00:27:23 --> 00:27:25

the negative is it's that which has no value statement or

00:27:25 --> 00:27:30

otherwise. And secondly, it's considered that which the

00:27:30 --> 00:27:35

intelligent person is distracted by it from what benefits him

00:27:35 --> 00:27:39

right. So let who was always given the connotation that the adults

00:27:39 --> 00:27:44

intelligent person engaging in this, right? It's now taking him

00:27:44 --> 00:27:47

away from what he's supposed to be doing or what benefits him now

00:27:47 --> 00:27:51

alive is used in a permissible sense, because the brothers of use

00:27:51 --> 00:27:56

have said let us take him out to to chat way up. Right. He so yeah,

00:27:56 --> 00:27:59

I was there. And Prophet Jaco permitted it right. He said, Okay,

00:27:59 --> 00:28:04

go with them. Right. So therefore, live can be permissible. So they

00:28:04 --> 00:28:09

say that it's live below or could be the same thing. But level is

00:28:09 --> 00:28:12

bad because it's an adult and live is for children. And children

00:28:12 --> 00:28:15

aren't McAuliffe anyway, so they could engage in it and there's no

00:28:15 --> 00:28:20

harm. The other definition is that law does possess a live like

00:28:21 --> 00:28:26

playing a sport. It has nothing in itself, but in a secondary cause

00:28:26 --> 00:28:29

can have a benefit. Yeah, yeah, I saw it. It just occurred to me.

00:28:29 --> 00:28:32

And one other thing about those in those types of sports returning to

00:28:32 --> 00:28:36

team sports, like basketball, and football and soccer, those are

00:28:36 --> 00:28:38

actually not good for your body. Like people think that they're

00:28:38 --> 00:28:41

getting a good workout, you're not and you're actually more than

00:28:41 --> 00:28:44

likely causing yourself long term damage, like on the knees, like on

00:28:44 --> 00:28:47

the knees on the joints, there's contact that's, that's pointless,

00:28:48 --> 00:28:50

and you're harming your body in a way for something that has

00:28:51 --> 00:28:55

virtually no benefit, and may even be a waste of time and you're

00:28:55 --> 00:28:58

causing yourself harm. Most people that play organized team sports

00:28:58 --> 00:29:01

end up with injuries that affect them lifelong, even in their

00:29:01 --> 00:29:05

ability to like pray standing up. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's right

00:29:05 --> 00:29:09

about that. I mean, a lot of youth professional sports as well, with

00:29:09 --> 00:29:13

with team sports, they tend to have a lot of injuries even for

00:29:13 --> 00:29:16

regular like standard just you know, street basketball players.

00:29:16 --> 00:29:19

You know, that's it's very common to be injurious. Right knee,

00:29:20 --> 00:29:22

knees, people can I mean properly? Yeah, it happens all the time. We

00:29:22 --> 00:29:27

have friends in our community who played like intramural sports, all

00:29:27 --> 00:29:30

of them have injuries. Wow. Like all of them. And the people we

00:29:30 --> 00:29:33

know from the Masjid. All those guys that play basketball that are

00:29:33 --> 00:29:37

older than 30, they're always getting hurt. But that's maybe one

00:29:37 --> 00:29:41

of the secondary benefits then, because the doctor industry in the

00:29:41 --> 00:29:42

medical industry needs

00:29:43 --> 00:29:46

I don't want to be a contrarian here. But when you're riding a

00:29:46 --> 00:29:50

horse, you could die. Right? You can fall off or to fall horse and

00:29:50 --> 00:29:53

break your neck. So interestingly, one of the things that Ivy

00:29:53 --> 00:29:57

League's look for if persons doing Horseback riding is they're

00:29:57 --> 00:29:59

willing to risk their life to learn this right now.

00:30:00 --> 00:30:03

So what's the what's the prevalence? I mean, but still

00:30:03 --> 00:30:05

there's a risk though, right? Sure. There's a risk of

00:30:05 --> 00:30:07

everything. But it's not very prevalent as opposed to the

00:30:07 --> 00:30:12

prevalence of of like, chronic injury and chronic pain suffered

00:30:12 --> 00:30:15

by everyone that plays the sport. But there's still benefit and

00:30:16 --> 00:30:20

playing Team sports without doing it professionally. No, you don't

00:30:20 --> 00:30:23

have to. Yeah, there is. I don't know if it outweighs the, the 100

00:30:23 --> 00:30:27

minutes. So it's a judgment call. Who am I to judge? I mean, I mean,

00:30:28 --> 00:30:31

99% of people who play professional play sports are not

00:30:31 --> 00:30:35

professionals. And the bulk of them, the injuries are going to be

00:30:35 --> 00:30:37

minor in comparison to the benefits and the fun that they had

00:30:37 --> 00:30:41

or the exercise. But secondly, like the Ivy League, entrance

00:30:41 --> 00:30:44

exams, or whatever entrance standards, I could care less

00:30:44 --> 00:30:47

about. These people are a bunch of snobs. I hate them. Anyone

00:30:48 --> 00:30:50

was just not picked on.

00:30:51 --> 00:30:55

I played soccer, I played soccer, as a kid growing up. I played

00:30:55 --> 00:30:57

soccer on like a club team

00:30:58 --> 00:31:02

did not pick a team or something. No, I played a lot of sports as a

00:31:02 --> 00:31:06

kid. But I actually preferred stuff like boxing in martial arts,

00:31:06 --> 00:31:11

that was what I would have preferred to do. In fact, I joined

00:31:11 --> 00:31:15

the boxing club, and didn't tell my mom, her signature on it,

00:31:15 --> 00:31:18

because she would have never signed off on it. Until I came

00:31:18 --> 00:31:20

home once with some marks on my face. She was like why?

00:31:22 --> 00:31:25

I'm telling you, there is nothing. In my from my perspective, there's

00:31:25 --> 00:31:28

nothing better than building camaraderie. Look, when you go out

00:31:28 --> 00:31:31

to battle, you're not doing an individual sport here. This is a

00:31:31 --> 00:31:35

team, you're operating as a team. I'm telling you one of the things

00:31:35 --> 00:31:36

if I didn't have,

00:31:37 --> 00:31:41

you know if it was in another life or something that anything

00:31:41 --> 00:31:45

involved in team sports, the camaraderie you build up, to go

00:31:45 --> 00:31:49

together as a team, and each one of you has a different quality.

00:31:49 --> 00:31:52

But there was someone who was able to pull this all together and

00:31:52 --> 00:31:57

amplify it to defeat an opponent, one of my other, you know, there's

00:31:57 --> 00:32:00

no feeling like that when you actually succeed at doing it. And

00:32:00 --> 00:32:03

when one of my favorite things about these sports in general, is

00:32:03 --> 00:32:08

that they're little judgments of your your effort, because there's

00:32:08 --> 00:32:10

a scoreboard whereas life doesn't have a scoreboard all the time,

00:32:11 --> 00:32:14

which is sort of annoying, because you don't really know Am I

00:32:14 --> 00:32:17

successful? Am I not? Am I doing it? Right? You know, so you always

00:32:17 --> 00:32:21

need some kind of a scoreboard some kind of objective number. And

00:32:21 --> 00:32:25

right, that's how so that's where little lessons are. I think what

00:32:25 --> 00:32:30

you're saying, I 100% agree with. My only argument is that that is

00:32:30 --> 00:32:36

how you train foot soldiers. That is good practice for the private

00:32:36 --> 00:32:37

the you know,

00:32:38 --> 00:32:42

if you're talking about generals and field marshals, yeah, those

00:32:42 --> 00:32:44

guys need to know how to. That's what I said, initially, I said,

00:32:44 --> 00:32:47

like, if you're a quarterback, cool, because you're leading

00:32:47 --> 00:32:49

everyone else, and everybody's looking to you, you're making a

00:32:49 --> 00:32:52

decision for yourself and for the team. And your decision is what

00:32:52 --> 00:32:56

counts. And you're also the one executing it. Right? So it's it's

00:32:56 --> 00:32:58

a good leadership. But if you're not the quarterback, if you're

00:32:58 --> 00:33:02

like the kicker, or if you're like, if you're like a lineman, I

00:33:02 --> 00:33:04

mean, well fodder for your cannon fodder. But here's something else,

00:33:04 --> 00:33:08

though. A lot of times in life, people are willful, they're,

00:33:08 --> 00:33:12

they're independent agents, but need to come together willfully.

00:33:13 --> 00:33:16

Right. And they could ruin it by everyone going their own way.

00:33:16 --> 00:33:20

Right. Like our Alma today is very much in that state. Any community

00:33:20 --> 00:33:23

member can just say, you know, check with this, I'm out of here,

00:33:23 --> 00:33:25

right? But if everyone has that attitude, you don't have a

00:33:25 --> 00:33:29

community anymore. If you have an attitude of having putting your

00:33:29 --> 00:33:33

group first and the olden days, and maybe the tribe first, right,

00:33:33 --> 00:33:36

today, what's the analogy that we recognize, right? You put your

00:33:36 --> 00:33:41

your team first, you take a take a group first attitude? Where do you

00:33:41 --> 00:33:45

learn that stuff? Right, you're going to learn that in maybe in

00:33:45 --> 00:33:48

school activities, you're going to learn that in sports, right? It'll

00:33:48 --> 00:33:51

get amplified there for you in life and you realize, wait a

00:33:51 --> 00:33:55

second, this is a great ethic. I should take this to this situation

00:33:55 --> 00:33:59

where I can go my own way if I want to, alright, but there's

00:33:59 --> 00:34:02

going to be more benefit and more gain. When people come together

00:34:02 --> 00:34:05

with different skills and recognize that every skill is

00:34:05 --> 00:34:06

needed, every

00:34:08 --> 00:34:12

type of nature, whatever, you know, personalities needed. Yep,

00:34:12 --> 00:34:14

I'll make one point and then we can go back to the definitions.

00:34:16 --> 00:34:19

That on this one, I'm gonna have to disagree with Alex at least on

00:34:19 --> 00:34:25

the point of team sports. I think there is massive benefit in in

00:34:25 --> 00:34:30

team sports because of how there are many life skills that you can

00:34:30 --> 00:34:34

gain, especially for younger children. in team sports, whether

00:34:34 --> 00:34:38

it's courage, whether it's, you know, even things like bravery,

00:34:38 --> 00:34:42

right, rushing down a lane or rushing down something when you

00:34:42 --> 00:34:46

know when there's when there's 10 You know, big dudes or you know,

00:34:46 --> 00:34:50

people in front of you. It's tough, right? Learning to conquer

00:34:50 --> 00:34:55

your fears, things like that. I mean, there's a lot of life skills

00:34:55 --> 00:34:58

that can be it's not, it's not that you can't gain them from

00:34:58 --> 00:34:59

other individual types.

00:35:00 --> 00:35:02

words but I'm not going to downplay you know the value that

00:35:02 --> 00:35:06

you can get out of team sports but I don't want to detract from the

00:35:06 --> 00:35:09

topic of you know, entertainment throughout throughout the ages as

00:35:09 --> 00:35:12

well. Okay, so let's get to these definitions we said level and we

00:35:12 --> 00:35:16

said live right. Now the third one which always comes in a positive

00:35:16 --> 00:35:21

note is a summit or animal Samarra which is basically that a person

00:35:21 --> 00:35:26

spend time usually preferably with his family after Salah Tonatiuh

00:35:26 --> 00:35:30

before sleeping for about an hour or some period of time the Arabs

00:35:30 --> 00:35:34

have the word salah, which is just amount of time expensive time a

00:35:34 --> 00:35:35

decent expensive time

00:35:37 --> 00:35:41

they are with them and they engage in something that is you know, not

00:35:41 --> 00:35:47

necessarily of hawk or or or of seriousness, right or even Dean,

00:35:47 --> 00:35:50

right it's just something light. So the prophets I seldom used to

00:35:50 --> 00:35:54

recline, eat honey, and listen to stories that say die show would

00:35:54 --> 00:35:58

tell. Like that's one example we have from Hadith. Other Sahaba

00:35:58 --> 00:36:01

used to do different things. So this Musa Mara was the son of the

00:36:01 --> 00:36:04

Prophet peace be upon him that he never stayed up after a shot,

00:36:04 --> 00:36:09

except for three purposes, which was either matters of knowledge

00:36:09 --> 00:36:13

that people were seeking where he was giving, or matters of the

00:36:13 --> 00:36:17

state that say no Mata and Abu Bakar. And Offerman an idea that

00:36:17 --> 00:36:21

the Prophet was engaging with them and discussing with them. And with

00:36:21 --> 00:36:24

some of you, Sam it can you Seminole Allah. All right, and he

00:36:24 --> 00:36:28

used to just sit with his family, right and do something. Now today,

00:36:28 --> 00:36:31

what is the person going to sit with his family to do? It's good.

00:36:31 --> 00:36:34

It's nice when people say, look, I let's all get together and read

00:36:34 --> 00:36:38

books. This is nice, fine, if that's your thing. But most people

00:36:38 --> 00:36:41

that's not their thing, right? This is this sounds like a

00:36:41 --> 00:36:45

teaching that is very specific and very unique. It's nice to get

00:36:45 --> 00:36:48

together, make a fire and read books, because it's so much

00:36:48 --> 00:36:51

better. It is far better. But let's be honest, what is most,

00:36:51 --> 00:36:54

what are most people going to do? They're going to do something that

00:36:54 --> 00:36:57

the rest of the world is doing. Okay, so when that if that's the

00:36:57 --> 00:37:00

case, then there needs to be a discussion on how that's supposed

00:37:00 --> 00:37:03

to be done. All right, what are the limits and we know the limits,

00:37:03 --> 00:37:05

their limits is going to be wherever there's a Muharram

00:37:06 --> 00:37:08

there's something forbidden, then you're going to avoid it. It's

00:37:08 --> 00:37:13

very simple limits right? Now, you cannot believe you can even that

00:37:14 --> 00:37:18

even that there's no right there's dice so the magic is we're had

00:37:18 --> 00:37:22

some issues with dice, right? And neither been nurtured so many of

00:37:22 --> 00:37:25

these things with pieces and randomness, but I think other

00:37:25 --> 00:37:28

methods may have some more leniency to that probably wrong.

00:37:30 --> 00:37:35

It's interesting. This is a little side point of history related to

00:37:35 --> 00:37:40

this. In Southeast Asia, and also just the East in general.

00:37:41 --> 00:37:45

People get together and they're forming entertainments watching

00:37:45 --> 00:37:49

like series, and usually a TV series and usually most of these

00:37:49 --> 00:37:52

TV series are like super long, over like two hours and episode.

00:37:53 --> 00:37:56

telenovelas. Yeah telenovelas like.

00:37:57 --> 00:37:57

Yeah,

00:37:58 --> 00:38:02

that's exactly, yeah. And they have tons of and this this is

00:38:02 --> 00:38:04

what's interesting. They have tons of family drama. So it's like

00:38:04 --> 00:38:08

always like, relationship issues and family dramas and people are

00:38:08 --> 00:38:09

just transfixed by it right.

00:38:11 --> 00:38:14

And while in the United States when people families get together,

00:38:14 --> 00:38:17

they're watching like, you know, Game of Thrones where somebody

00:38:17 --> 00:38:20

slitting somebody else's throat. Right? I think I think that's an

00:38:20 --> 00:38:23

interesting point of contrast. I think those telenovelas are

00:38:23 --> 00:38:29

Mossad, solet and Arabic, I think they're big time. Drain there.

00:38:29 --> 00:38:32

It's excessive, right? And they and the shayateen, put them in

00:38:32 --> 00:38:36

Ramadan on purpose, right? To pass the time. And I even remember my

00:38:36 --> 00:38:39

aunts, they weren't they were nice. They were they were, you

00:38:39 --> 00:38:42

know, they would, they were nice people and everything. I loved

00:38:42 --> 00:38:45

them so much. But it's not like saying something negative, right?

00:38:45 --> 00:38:48

They they're bad or anything. But after Tada, we,

00:38:49 --> 00:38:53

okay, the food would come out a second time. And those shows would

00:38:53 --> 00:38:57

come on, right. And I'm like, There's no way I'm watching one of

00:38:57 --> 00:39:00

these these shows. Right, guys? So I'm sitting there because they're

00:39:00 --> 00:39:03

all sitting in the room. So, right. And actually one of my

00:39:03 --> 00:39:07

niece's, she had leukemia. So we would all I mean, not my niece, my

00:39:07 --> 00:39:10

cousins, so everyone would sit around, right, I tried to keep her

00:39:10 --> 00:39:14

spirits up, and they will put on one of these shows. And we'd eat

00:39:14 --> 00:39:16

food. Okay, and that's and I was there on vacation anyway, so

00:39:16 --> 00:39:19

whatever. And they would stay all the way up to Soho.

00:39:21 --> 00:39:23

And I'm thinking myself, but there's no way I'm getting into

00:39:23 --> 00:39:27

this, this ridiculous show. Right? It was called the man and the

00:39:27 --> 00:39:27

other men.

00:39:29 --> 00:39:34

Okay, so obviously, they're Arabic. It was an Arabic show. I'm

00:39:34 --> 00:39:38

sitting there and TV shows, making sure you know that I'm not

00:39:38 --> 00:39:41

watching this stuff. Okay, I got my SIP in my hand, trying to do

00:39:41 --> 00:39:44

something useful myself and my Ramadan. And then give it I'm

00:39:44 --> 00:39:48

telling you 20 minutes in how like once the next episode

00:39:50 --> 00:39:54

these things became things this thing became something everyone in

00:39:54 --> 00:39:58

the house and are in the way that old families live and probably, I

00:39:58 --> 00:39:59

hope, unfortunately, is probably dying out.

00:40:00 --> 00:40:03

but their families that all are in the same neighborhood, and you

00:40:03 --> 00:40:05

don't know who's coming in and out the door is like, basically

00:40:05 --> 00:40:08

public, right? Everyone's coming in from the cousins and aunts and

00:40:08 --> 00:40:11

the nieces. And everyone's coming in and out, which is amazing,

00:40:11 --> 00:40:15

because we don't have this in America. But ultimately, I got

00:40:15 --> 00:40:18

hooked into it. And I realized these things, it's really

00:40:18 --> 00:40:23

excessive, honestly. And the only value that it has to it is, even

00:40:23 --> 00:40:26

if you say that, we'll do it together as a family, but you're

00:40:26 --> 00:40:30

sort of not even together, right? You're in the same room. Right?

00:40:30 --> 00:40:33

That's maximum pretty much it right? You're in the same room.

00:40:33 --> 00:40:36

It's not like you're, you're not even looking at each other, like

00:40:36 --> 00:40:40

around the fire. And it's not like it's 45 minutes once a week, and

00:40:40 --> 00:40:44

you discuss it and you, you know, talk about the themes. It's two

00:40:44 --> 00:40:47

hours every single night. There's no time to talk about oh, my gosh,

00:40:48 --> 00:40:52

and you can't talk about it these days, too. Because now before you

00:40:52 --> 00:40:55

used to talk about TV shows or books or whatever, right now, when

00:40:55 --> 00:40:57

you want to talk about it, oh, I haven't watched it. Please don't

00:40:57 --> 00:41:00

spoil it. Better than I mentioned a spoiler, so you can't even talk

00:41:00 --> 00:41:05

about it. I thought it wasn't even that long ago where, you know, TV

00:41:05 --> 00:41:10

shows came on once a week. And that was sort of the watercooler

00:41:10 --> 00:41:13

talk. Right? Right. Do you watch that you watched a TV show, and

00:41:13 --> 00:41:17

then the next week, you talked about it at work and or wherever

00:41:17 --> 00:41:21

you were at school or work or whatever. And, and that was the

00:41:21 --> 00:41:26

type of activity people had. Yeah, it would be unfathomable. 20 years

00:41:26 --> 00:41:29

ago to say that you watched an entire season in one night?

00:41:31 --> 00:41:35

Well, now let's take this to another direction. It's the

00:41:35 --> 00:41:38

easiest, the easy way out in this episode is to just throw

00:41:38 --> 00:41:41

everything out in the trash, let's say in the back in the old days,

00:41:41 --> 00:41:43

back in the old days, what does that gonna do for us in the

00:41:43 --> 00:41:47

listeners? He's not gonna go back in time. So let's talk about,

00:41:47 --> 00:41:51

like, what do we do now? Like, what is what's going on? So we're

00:41:51 --> 00:41:55

gonna give our people an episode of just trashing everything that

00:41:55 --> 00:41:59

they know in the world. How have we benefited anything? Right? So

00:41:59 --> 00:42:02

how do people get entertainment? Right? How do people relax and

00:42:02 --> 00:42:06

unwind themselves? Yeah, I have a great answer. So still, to this

00:42:06 --> 00:42:07

day, learn,

00:42:08 --> 00:42:11

especially if you have children teach them some kind of combat

00:42:11 --> 00:42:15

sport was wrestling in this one. It's updated. MMA is probably more

00:42:15 --> 00:42:17

useful today. Right? It's an advancement.

00:42:18 --> 00:42:19

swimming and swimming,

00:42:20 --> 00:42:26

swimming, horseback riding. That means getting around, right? So

00:42:26 --> 00:42:29

you should learn how to drive you should be a good driver. Like

00:42:29 --> 00:42:32

that's a useful skill. Like and you go out everybody drives, most

00:42:32 --> 00:42:36

people don't drive. Most people get around in a car and they're a

00:42:36 --> 00:42:39

menace. But being a good useful driver is actually a good an

00:42:39 --> 00:42:42

important skill. And learning to shoot. Archery is great. Our

00:42:42 --> 00:42:46

trees, traditional, but it's not very useful. Learn to shoot guns.

00:42:46 --> 00:42:48

All right, give me some in the living room.

00:42:49 --> 00:42:53

Something you can do in the living room. It's Tuesday. Okay, or let's

00:42:53 --> 00:42:56

put it this way. It's Sunday. Monday's off from school.

00:42:57 --> 00:43:00

Everyone's home. How many kids do you have? Let's hypothetically to

00:43:00 --> 00:43:04

put on a half 2.5 wrestle? You got rugs. wrestle? wrestle? Yeah, play

00:43:04 --> 00:43:08

around with each other. Okay, not TV wrestle. Okay, no, and the mom,

00:43:09 --> 00:43:09

she'd be cooking.

00:43:14 --> 00:43:19

So, I'll, I guess, give a little history just kidding. How I used

00:43:19 --> 00:43:21

to how I used to entertain myself. So

00:43:23 --> 00:43:26

in Bangladesh, I lived there for five years. And so I went to

00:43:26 --> 00:43:30

kindergarten in the United States. So I was basically American kid

00:43:30 --> 00:43:34

right. Now go back to Bangladesh for five years. Don't connect with

00:43:34 --> 00:43:38

anybody there. I have this Gameboy, right? That I can only

00:43:38 --> 00:43:42

play with batteries. And I only have two games, only two games.

00:43:42 --> 00:43:46

And one was Final Fantasy Tactics advanced. And the other one was,

00:43:46 --> 00:43:50

whatever their RPG is tons of stories right there like RPGs the

00:43:50 --> 00:43:54

role playing game, story driven games. I for the next five years,

00:43:54 --> 00:43:59

I played those two games, right. And I always used to watch anime

00:43:59 --> 00:44:02

every single Saturday. I used to watch anime, right. And these

00:44:02 --> 00:44:05

animes that they'd had like these fantastic worlds, like amazing

00:44:05 --> 00:44:11

stories, all that stuff. So there was, so that sort of kept me very

00:44:11 --> 00:44:14

entertained. All my friends did it. Right. There's something

00:44:14 --> 00:44:18

useful in having like entertainment, that's like event

00:44:18 --> 00:44:21

based, right? Like, for example, next Saturday, the next episode of

00:44:21 --> 00:44:24

Full Metal Alchemist is coming out. And everybody in the school

00:44:24 --> 00:44:27

is talking about it. Right? And then you watch it. And then now

00:44:27 --> 00:44:30

you have to you have to wait another week for the other

00:44:30 --> 00:44:33

episodes to come out. If you didn't watch it, well, everybody's

00:44:33 --> 00:44:36

talking about it. And that was still a communal activity.

00:44:36 --> 00:44:41

Exactly. So I think it comes back to what we were saying earlier. I

00:44:41 --> 00:44:45

think we have to come up with ways of entertainment, like for

00:44:45 --> 00:44:50

example, on that Sunday evening that are communal activities. I

00:44:50 --> 00:44:53

think one thing that I found that that I tried to do with my family

00:44:53 --> 00:44:57

is things like cooking together, right making a meal together.

00:44:58 --> 00:44:59

Painting you know, things that you could

00:45:00 --> 00:45:03

would do together and I think unfortunately, people don't do

00:45:03 --> 00:45:06

these things as much as for example, build something, right.

00:45:07 --> 00:45:08

Learn woodworking.

00:45:09 --> 00:45:13

Even things like you know fixing a car. That's an activity.

00:45:14 --> 00:45:16

Don't take your car to the mechanic. Learn how to fix your

00:45:16 --> 00:45:21

car. Dr. Shetty is laughing, right? Well, Allah, he's one of

00:45:21 --> 00:45:24

the best things I learned as a kid how to fix cars, how to work on a

00:45:24 --> 00:45:26

car, how to use tools, just generally how to use tools.

00:45:26 --> 00:45:29

Because even if you don't know, even if you haven't done a certain

00:45:29 --> 00:45:32

thing, if you know what you're doing, you will be able to pick up

00:45:32 --> 00:45:35

how to do anything that's in, I can fix almost anything in my

00:45:35 --> 00:45:39

house. That's good. That's a great school. And that's that was like,

00:45:39 --> 00:45:41

just hanging out with my dad while he was working on the corner.

00:45:43 --> 00:45:45

When you were talking about the shows and everything, yeah, I'm

00:45:45 --> 00:45:49

actually very suspicious about entertainment in general, my

00:45:49 --> 00:45:51

attitude towards in my house.

00:45:52 --> 00:45:55

The types of homes I'm not saying like that, that's what you did.

00:45:55 --> 00:45:58

I'm just saying in general, the types of homes where the TV is

00:45:58 --> 00:46:01

going on all the time. I think that's just a big disaster. Right?

00:46:01 --> 00:46:04

Yeah. And I think the idea that the computer can be accessed for

00:46:04 --> 00:46:06

entertainment at all times by everyone in the house, that's

00:46:06 --> 00:46:11

another one. So I try to really limit it to maybe like,

00:46:12 --> 00:46:17

you know, for an adult, maybe like, a little bit in the evening,

00:46:17 --> 00:46:21

right? If you do it every evening, that's fine, right? But a little

00:46:21 --> 00:46:24

bit, two and three hour episodes, you can't do these things. It's

00:46:24 --> 00:46:28

like it's too much an hour, hour maximum two hours, right?

00:46:30 --> 00:46:31

For Kids,

00:46:32 --> 00:46:37

Saturdays, maybe right for to watch something, but for them to

00:46:37 --> 00:46:40

see to be entertained themselves constantly. at this young age.

00:46:40 --> 00:46:44

It's best what books, books during the week, and sports, get your

00:46:44 --> 00:46:47

body moving books and sports, right? I love to books as a kid.

00:46:47 --> 00:46:51

Yeah, books and sports and bikes and neighbors and all that stuff

00:46:51 --> 00:46:56

during the week. And just because there's the reason I love here.

00:46:57 --> 00:47:01

Reason behind it is that just because the whole society is

00:47:01 --> 00:47:05

watching stuff, and you would be a little bit of a weirdo, and unable

00:47:05 --> 00:47:10

to relate in a, you know, a little bit if you had no clue about

00:47:10 --> 00:47:13

stuff. And just because all the other kids are doing it. So then

00:47:13 --> 00:47:17

we, you know, maybe can allow some of that stuff to go on on a

00:47:17 --> 00:47:20

Saturday if it's okay. If it's like how that right, then they

00:47:20 --> 00:47:23

could know. I don't know, whatever the some of these cartoons are.

00:47:23 --> 00:47:26

Right, whatever. We still have cartoons on Saturdays. It's no,

00:47:26 --> 00:47:31

it's all on. It's all on streamed, right? It's series is that are

00:47:31 --> 00:47:34

streamed, but at least like if they're friends, if they're five

00:47:34 --> 00:47:37

friends and they say it, at least they have a clue what's going on.

00:47:37 --> 00:47:39

They don't feel so weird. So this is sort of the demystify

00:47:39 --> 00:47:43

demystifies. What is it misinformation, demystification

00:47:44 --> 00:47:48

philosophy regarding that, so I would rather have none of it at

00:47:48 --> 00:47:51

all, to be honest with you. Right, but just to demystify it and to be

00:47:51 --> 00:47:56

able to relate. Yeah, one thing I'm thinking about is, how did

00:47:56 --> 00:48:01

Muslims in the past, whether or not I'm not even talking about,

00:48:01 --> 00:48:03

you know, longtime in the past, even things like,

00:48:05 --> 00:48:08

you know, 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, spend their time,

00:48:08 --> 00:48:12

whether it be in the Muslim world or even, you know, in non Muslim

00:48:12 --> 00:48:15

worlds where Muslim may where Muslims live in non Muslim lands?

00:48:16 --> 00:48:21

Because one thing I find interesting is, Entertainment has

00:48:21 --> 00:48:26

generally been a societal pop culture type phenomenon, right?

00:48:26 --> 00:48:28

Where if you were living in,

00:48:29 --> 00:48:32

during during the Renaissance, you were probably watching the same

00:48:32 --> 00:48:35

plays that everybody else was watching, you were probably doing

00:48:35 --> 00:48:38

the same thing that everybody else was doing, whether you were

00:48:38 --> 00:48:41

generally Muslim or non Muslim. And I'm not talking about very

00:48:41 --> 00:48:45

religious Muslims. I'm just talking about just everyday

00:48:45 --> 00:48:50

layperson. Now, when it comes to today, I know we talk about, you

00:48:50 --> 00:48:54

know, don't watch the don't watch movies, don't watch this, don't

00:48:54 --> 00:48:54

watch that.

00:48:56 --> 00:48:59

At least for me, I feel like there has to be a balance and

00:48:59 --> 00:49:02

understanding that, are we saying, don't just use technology? Because

00:49:02 --> 00:49:05

I don't think technology is the problem here. Right? It's what

00:49:05 --> 00:49:08

we're talking about is the entertainment is not wholesome,

00:49:08 --> 00:49:12

right? Is there a way to bridge this gap? Between like, you know,

00:49:12 --> 00:49:14

you can still have the technology, you can still use it to your

00:49:14 --> 00:49:18

benefit, in some way or another, you know, because it's what occurs

00:49:18 --> 00:49:22

in today's time? Or is that just, you know, Nick's technology? I

00:49:22 --> 00:49:25

have a question first, what is the value of discussing or thinking or

00:49:25 --> 00:49:28

knowing what people in the past it? How's that gonna benefit us?

00:49:31 --> 00:49:33

I mean, I have an answer. What's the value to it? I have an answer

00:49:33 --> 00:49:38

to that. Because if we if we see how people that didn't have the

00:49:38 --> 00:49:41

sort of addiction machines that we call entertainment today, because

00:49:41 --> 00:49:45

what they what they use for leisure, then we could say, you

00:49:45 --> 00:49:49

know, maybe that activity has some benefit to it, write the ad, it's

00:49:50 --> 00:49:53

entertaining one. Number two, it is also has some benefit to it. So

00:49:53 --> 00:49:57

one of them. Sorry for interrupting. One of the

00:49:57 --> 00:49:59

interesting things that I've noticed

00:50:00 --> 00:50:05

Um, with some of this research is that in the non Muslim world,

00:50:05 --> 00:50:11

public entertainment, you know, the masses, serfs, right? public

00:50:11 --> 00:50:15

entertainment tended to be pretty crude. So if you read Chaucer, for

00:50:15 --> 00:50:19

example, right, the Chaucer is a very public poet. He's not a poet

00:50:19 --> 00:50:23

of the elite, very vulgar, very vulgar. If you read Dante he uses

00:50:23 --> 00:50:27

he's not vulgar, but he uses vulgar Italian. And his poem is

00:50:27 --> 00:50:32

like, you know, very popular with the masses, so on and so forth. If

00:50:32 --> 00:50:36

you look at some of the like, experience, very body, there's a

00:50:36 --> 00:50:39

lot of like sexual situations, there's a lot of bubble and tongs.

00:50:39 --> 00:50:42

Yeah. And the boards, right the boards that would sing in the in

00:50:42 --> 00:50:46

the pubs and things like doors. So regular people engaged in the sort

00:50:46 --> 00:50:51

of amoral sort of, you know, letting their desires all out in

00:50:51 --> 00:50:54

this sort of feast of, you know, haram, right? So like, Greeks had

00:50:54 --> 00:50:58

Dionysian orgies and things like that. Whatever, right? I mean,

00:50:58 --> 00:51:01

there's no example of anything. There are no examples of anything.

00:51:02 --> 00:51:05

If you look in the Muslim world, what's crazy is that public

00:51:05 --> 00:51:08

entertainment tended to always center around some type of

00:51:08 --> 00:51:12

religious thing. Now you're now you're talking some sense? Yeah,

00:51:12 --> 00:51:16

you're giving me some something to go by. All before that. was like,

00:51:17 --> 00:51:19

Okay, I don't care what what they did. I'm not overthinking this.

00:51:19 --> 00:51:21

I'm telling you my honest attitude. I'm very blue collar

00:51:21 --> 00:51:24

about these things. I'm not overthinking this stuff. Exactly.

00:51:24 --> 00:51:27

I spent all my time thinking about avoiding a couple haram things,

00:51:27 --> 00:51:30

and drawing near to Allah to audit the best way I can. Right. I don't

00:51:30 --> 00:51:34

like to overthink things. Okay. So but now this point that you're

00:51:34 --> 00:51:37

making, this makes a lot of sense because the Muslims used to

00:51:37 --> 00:51:40

entertain themselves with matter with types of entertainment that

00:51:40 --> 00:51:43

were actually they could Allah exactly right. And that benefits

00:51:43 --> 00:51:47

and it relaxes. And, for example, huge mallards, huge mountains, not

00:51:47 --> 00:51:51

one and the Ottoman Empire when the moulded would happen. It was

00:51:51 --> 00:51:55

like a national event, a trucks of sweets, would you know, fireworks,

00:51:55 --> 00:51:58

I mean, it's crazy. It's like the Super Bowl, they brought together

00:51:58 --> 00:52:02

relaxation, right? And they made it not only that, but you get

00:52:02 --> 00:52:05

rewarded for it because you come away from it, loving the profit

00:52:05 --> 00:52:10

loving the sahaba. Right, doing, bringing up you know, virtues,

00:52:10 --> 00:52:13

that people should have a clock that these people should have

00:52:13 --> 00:52:17

reminding yourself of Alcoa in the middle of this entertainment. So

00:52:17 --> 00:52:20

they sort of merged the two together. Exactly, yeah, the

00:52:20 --> 00:52:22

popular entertainment also especially in like the in the

00:52:22 --> 00:52:26

medieval period was also very sacrilegious. Some of it was

00:52:27 --> 00:52:31

religiously oriented, like in non Muslim, non Muslim, non Muslim

00:52:31 --> 00:52:34

lands, but a lot of it was like religion was sacrilegious and

00:52:34 --> 00:52:38

making fun of if not Allah, their conception of God, at least the

00:52:38 --> 00:52:42

church. Now, I want to word this carefully. So we wouldn't say

00:52:42 --> 00:52:46

merging entertainment with Victrola, right, but merging

00:52:46 --> 00:52:50

something relaxing and enjoyable with Victrola, like a nice

00:52:50 --> 00:52:54

conceder or song or poem that's recited in a song like fashion,

00:52:54 --> 00:52:57

shows up that I've met a show hoody in his biography written

00:52:57 --> 00:53:02

about him, Okay, what was said that he was to take these poems,

00:53:02 --> 00:53:05

and he would take the melodies that people listen to now and he

00:53:05 --> 00:53:09

would put the casita to the melody to that popular melody, that

00:53:09 --> 00:53:11

melodies already in people's head anyway, right, and the melodies

00:53:11 --> 00:53:15

like neutral, right, there's nothing about the so he would do

00:53:15 --> 00:53:19

that. So he would merge what people already enjoy with a good

00:53:19 --> 00:53:24

meaning and even reward, because if the casita has in it, you know,

00:53:24 --> 00:53:27

the Crow law, maybe even a DA mentioned in it, right? You're

00:53:27 --> 00:53:31

getting rewarded. If it's a virtue of the profit, or it's a hobby or

00:53:31 --> 00:53:34

shift even, right, you're cementing a virtue on people's

00:53:34 --> 00:53:38

hearts, I would just argue one thing to that the Arabic melodies

00:53:38 --> 00:53:43

are, we're different than what you get in the West. Right? So there's

00:53:43 --> 00:53:45

actually a science to this. There's, there's a science of

00:53:45 --> 00:53:49

mahkumat in Arabic, right. But there's also people study, like,

00:53:50 --> 00:53:55

I took a few classes when I was in college about musicology. And

00:53:55 --> 00:53:58

different cultures have different music, different intonations, and

00:53:58 --> 00:53:59

it actually inspires different feelings.

00:54:00 --> 00:54:04

You I would not recommend people to do this with Western music,

00:54:04 --> 00:54:07

because western music is based on a completely different pattern,

00:54:08 --> 00:54:12

very different time signature, and it may not be good for your soul

00:54:12 --> 00:54:16

in the way that some of the Eastern patterns are. Well,

00:54:16 --> 00:54:19

interestingly, though, the Eastern patterns, they were established by

00:54:19 --> 00:54:20

a man named

00:54:22 --> 00:54:29

What was his name? With Zane Zinnia Zinnia Zinnia was a he's a

00:54:29 --> 00:54:33

Persian, or he's living in that had to be a Persian

00:54:34 --> 00:54:38

live in Baghdad. And he was the first person amongst the Muslims

00:54:38 --> 00:54:42

to do things like well, in the fall, were this color, right in

00:54:42 --> 00:54:46

the winter, where whites in the fall stop wearing whites, right

00:54:46 --> 00:54:49

because the leaves are changing. And you want your your clothes to

00:54:49 --> 00:54:53

be like off whites and browns and all those things. He was the first

00:54:53 --> 00:54:58

now and he also was Establisher of McCombs, he thought about singing

00:54:58 --> 00:54:59

songs like this and that is

00:55:00 --> 00:55:04

So what did the shoe have that the elders did? They expelled him out

00:55:04 --> 00:55:06

of the city, the egg, they kicked him out of the cities, the

00:55:06 --> 00:55:09

corruption of the youth. Right? So he ended up going where and the

00:55:09 --> 00:55:12

Lucia. Of course, he was welcomed there with open arms. Right. And

00:55:12 --> 00:55:16

that's where it ended. Asiya actually got their famous McCombs

00:55:16 --> 00:55:19

started. Of course not. There's not like a direct lineage, but

00:55:19 --> 00:55:21

he's the one who came up with the idea.

00:55:22 --> 00:55:25

If you listen to flamenco music today, which is the music of

00:55:25 --> 00:55:29

anorexia, like the non Muslims, it's 100%. Arabic.

00:55:31 --> 00:55:34

Yeah. And so but the concept being that

00:55:35 --> 00:55:41

I believe that when we do or gatherings, right, and we sing

00:55:41 --> 00:55:46

these Crusaders, it just, it infuses community life with

00:55:46 --> 00:55:51

something soft, but also connected to the deen at the same time, and

00:55:51 --> 00:55:54

oftentimes it gets in people's heads, right? It's something that

00:55:54 --> 00:55:57

stays with them. And if it's missing from a religious life, you

00:55:57 --> 00:56:01

cannot have a religious life without festivities. And not just

00:56:01 --> 00:56:03

like a party once a year, but it has to be something linked with

00:56:03 --> 00:56:06

the sacred. And that's what these gatherings are all it brings

00:56:06 --> 00:56:09

religion to the public square, rather than being just a set of

00:56:09 --> 00:56:09

rules you follow.

00:56:10 --> 00:56:15

Seen this? Before we go off on this road that we're going I just

00:56:15 --> 00:56:18

wanted to walk back a little bit and just say that technology is

00:56:18 --> 00:56:22

not just the content, it's also the technology itself. Now, as

00:56:22 --> 00:56:24

mentioned, it's addictive, he called the addiction machines, the

00:56:24 --> 00:56:28

TV screen, the computer screen, the phone screen, they have

00:56:28 --> 00:56:31

addictive properties, totally the content. Also, even if the content

00:56:31 --> 00:56:34

seems neutral, like Oh, it's just like animals being friendly to

00:56:34 --> 00:56:37

each other, the way that the colors move, the quick cuts

00:56:37 --> 00:56:39

between the scenes, all of that also creates an addictive quality

00:56:39 --> 00:56:43

for children's brains especially, and also can alter the way that

00:56:43 --> 00:56:45

their brains develop. So all of that, just because you go oh, it's

00:56:45 --> 00:56:47

just a giraffe talking to an elephant and they're just being

00:56:47 --> 00:56:52

friends. That's not true at all. by the, by the way, for folks that

00:56:52 --> 00:56:55

don't know, since we were talking about, you know, binge shows, you

00:56:55 --> 00:56:58

know, that's actually why they're called black mirrors, right. And

00:56:58 --> 00:57:02

the show Black Mirror is based off of that, because the the screen

00:57:02 --> 00:57:04

that you're looking at, right, like, for example, the TV screen

00:57:04 --> 00:57:08

there or a phone screen, when it's when it's off, it's actually a

00:57:08 --> 00:57:12

mirror, right? It's a black mirror, right. And it's almost as

00:57:12 --> 00:57:15

if you're looking at nothing, who calls him black mirrors. So there

00:57:15 --> 00:57:20

is a very popular show called Black meets dystopian technology

00:57:20 --> 00:57:24

in the very near future, its effects on society. So the show

00:57:24 --> 00:57:26

was called Black Mirror, a lot of people don't know where the name

00:57:26 --> 00:57:30

comes from, that's what the question is about. So it's telling

00:57:30 --> 00:57:34

that that's actually what the name is about. And it's super, showing

00:57:34 --> 00:57:37

a very dark representation of what this technology, it's very

00:57:37 --> 00:57:41

accurate, like, just two years after the first episodes, that

00:57:41 --> 00:57:45

stuff is already being, you know, brought about in implemented. So

00:57:45 --> 00:57:49

the reason I bought up, you know, me watching anime way back when

00:57:49 --> 00:57:52

and playing these two games for five years. Right, on the same

00:57:52 --> 00:57:56

Gameboy is because my options were so limited. And you know, I

00:57:56 --> 00:57:58

finished all the Harry Potter books, right?

00:58:00 --> 00:58:04

Because, because my options are so limited. I was forced in my free

00:58:04 --> 00:58:08

time when I didn't have anything to do to sort of build out the

00:58:08 --> 00:58:11

world that I was engaging in, in my head, this fantasy world. And I

00:58:11 --> 00:58:16

feel like that was a big reason why, you know, I developed an

00:58:16 --> 00:58:21

imagination, right? Because, look, you had, I watched, let's say,

00:58:21 --> 00:58:23

episode of Full Metal Alchemist. And then that said, you had to

00:58:23 --> 00:58:27

wait there for an entire week, right? You couldn't just binge

00:58:27 --> 00:58:32

watch the 50 episodes. In a night, you know, there was no time for

00:58:32 --> 00:58:35

thought there's no time for reflection, nothing. That brings

00:58:35 --> 00:58:38

up the topic of, you know, when something is lost than something

00:58:38 --> 00:58:42

else is gained. But back to the issue of technology, there are

00:58:42 --> 00:58:45

certain mediums that a Muslim cannot compete in, you can't

00:58:45 --> 00:58:49

compete it and you shouldn't try to compete it. The screen, right?

00:58:50 --> 00:58:55

It's really hard to compete, you know, and keep all of your 100%

00:58:55 --> 00:59:00

Sure. You know, for example, we watch you, let's say interval,

00:59:00 --> 00:59:03

right? You're watching it, you're like rooting on your Muslim hero,

00:59:03 --> 00:59:07

etc. But at the same time, right? If you think about it, like you

00:59:07 --> 00:59:11

wouldn't be having your you wouldn't want your Muslim your

00:59:11 --> 00:59:14

daughter acting in a movie like that, or in the shuttling Yeah,

00:59:15 --> 00:59:19

it's so there is some issues there. Right? So even the best of

00:59:19 --> 00:59:22

the things that the possibilities are still going to, you're not

00:59:22 --> 00:59:22

going to have

00:59:24 --> 00:59:28

a show with them with no music, no women, there's no such thing,

00:59:28 --> 00:59:32

right? It's like baseball without a bat, and ball. And I'm gonna say

00:59:32 --> 00:59:36

like, no women, like, in a sense, like they're good should be

00:59:36 --> 00:59:39

eliminated. But in our religion, you should not be put up in a

00:59:39 --> 00:59:43

situation where everyone's staring at you, unless you're doing

00:59:43 --> 00:59:47

something for need, right? Like a doctor or a teacher or something

00:59:47 --> 00:59:52

to just to go up there and sing a song or just run around or do

00:59:52 --> 00:59:55

something, you know, like that is not something from the club. Go

00:59:55 --> 00:59:59

ask any pious Muslim in the masajid the moms would you want

00:59:59 --> 00:59:59

your daughter doing

01:00:00 --> 01:00:02

out, they're gonna say no. So, so no one should take that as, Oh,

01:00:02 --> 01:00:05

you want to isolate women? I wouldn't be the same thing for men

01:00:05 --> 01:00:08

a man, you seriously you got to play make believe as a career. All

01:00:08 --> 01:00:12

right, so certain things the screen the big screen is not a

01:00:12 --> 01:00:17

medium in which we're going to compete. The literature. Yeah, we

01:00:17 --> 01:00:21

can compete in that. Right. Yeah. But unfortunately, nobody reads

01:00:21 --> 01:00:27

these days. Right. But two things I want to say. One is, I've always

01:00:27 --> 01:00:31

found it interesting that even in, in the past when there used to be

01:00:31 --> 01:00:34

so like you mentioned as more certain forms of entertainment,

01:00:35 --> 01:00:42

such as the big mo lids, Joomla. Joomla is a festival, right? Just

01:00:42 --> 01:00:46

Just to clarify that point. That Joomla. Oftentimes, was this all

01:00:46 --> 01:00:49

the things that would happen after Joomla? So, for example, in Egypt,

01:00:49 --> 01:00:53

it's a big thing to go and have a large family, extended family

01:00:53 --> 01:00:58

meal, for example. Yeah, so Jamaah read, and even things like, you

01:00:58 --> 01:01:01

know, stories that were orally told stories, for example, that

01:01:01 --> 01:01:04

were told around a campfire, or you know, just people sitting

01:01:04 --> 01:01:07

around I know, even in my village, you know, when I was younger, I

01:01:07 --> 01:01:10

still remember this, people would sit around and there was a guy who

01:01:11 --> 01:01:15

just literally told stories, that was the guy, right, and you went

01:01:15 --> 01:01:18

to him, and he just happened to know, long narrations I would go

01:01:18 --> 01:01:21

on for two hours. And you can tell you this story. And every night

01:01:21 --> 01:01:23

people would sit and this guy would tell you, this wasn't even

01:01:23 --> 01:01:27

that long ago, right? This is when I was a kid. So I find it very

01:01:27 --> 01:01:28

interesting that

01:01:30 --> 01:01:33

one want that. And the second point I wanted to make is on top

01:01:33 --> 01:01:35

of all of these things that existed in the Muslim tradition.

01:01:36 --> 01:01:40

One thing I've always found very interesting about music is even

01:01:40 --> 01:01:43

though that musicians were considered like, five, six, and

01:01:43 --> 01:01:46

they weren't permitted to leave prayer or permitted to do

01:01:46 --> 01:01:49

anything, even even though they were considered classics of the

01:01:49 --> 01:01:53

dean, because they were outrightly doing you know, music, they still

01:01:53 --> 01:01:55

were still singing about Allah, His messenger.

01:01:57 --> 01:02:00

Like they weren't singing about, like, you know, like, getting it

01:02:00 --> 01:02:04

down or whatever. Well, it's funny, because in the past, you

01:02:04 --> 01:02:08

had singers, and you had storytellers. Then Islam came in,

01:02:09 --> 01:02:12

okay. Now, these singers and storytellers now had to adapt

01:02:12 --> 01:02:15

their trade, right? They had to adapt her lyrics, they had to

01:02:15 --> 01:02:19

adapt their stories, because the whole population is now entering

01:02:19 --> 01:02:23

Islam. So early as early on as the time of say, not even me taught

01:02:23 --> 01:02:28

him. The Casa de cosas. They're called the stories plus us Turo,

01:02:28 --> 01:02:32

were a problem. They were a problem because they need to keep

01:02:32 --> 01:02:36

an audience who knows what their previous, you know, stories were.

01:02:36 --> 01:02:40

So imagine now you have a movie makers, and now they need to, you

01:02:40 --> 01:02:43

know, cater to a Muslim audience. So you're getting the scholars

01:02:43 --> 01:02:46

always looked at them with suspicion, and they actually load

01:02:46 --> 01:02:50

them. And even Josie has a whole book on how the setup load the

01:02:50 --> 01:02:53

storytellers they fabricated stuff, because yeah, they, their,

01:02:53 --> 01:02:57

their job is to get an audience not to transmit the dean, right?

01:02:57 --> 01:03:01

So they would take now they got to tell stories of MBA Sahaba. So but

01:03:01 --> 01:03:04

now, because they're stuck with that now, right? But now they're,

01:03:04 --> 01:03:08

they're adding to it, they're giving details that don't exist,

01:03:08 --> 01:03:10

blah, blah, blah. So they're all about we're at war with them. This

01:03:10 --> 01:03:14

is great. Because that's exactly how I feel about people who do

01:03:14 --> 01:03:18

like modern Islamic music. Like they try to make pop music into

01:03:18 --> 01:03:20

Islamic music. And they are

01:03:21 --> 01:03:25

the people that make like Islamic base like movies, like, like

01:03:25 --> 01:03:27

they'll make a show and show the sahaba. And they'll be like in the

01:03:27 --> 01:03:28

super popular.

01:03:30 --> 01:03:33

That's it. That's the good stuff. Yeah, some of it is a lot worse.

01:03:34 --> 01:03:38

So I can't stand when you stepped out. I was saying certain mediums

01:03:38 --> 01:03:42

we can't compete in at all. Yeah, like the big screen. You're not

01:03:42 --> 01:03:44

competing in that. I still regret watching the message.

01:03:46 --> 01:03:49

That was a good movie. Yeah, all right, but forever. For the rest

01:03:49 --> 01:03:52

of my life. I can't get Anthony Quinn out of my head whenever,

01:03:52 --> 01:03:57

whenever somebody comes over. You know, he's terrible. Yeah, you

01:03:57 --> 01:04:01

know, what's a drunk in a cafe? When I took an art history class,

01:04:01 --> 01:04:04

I could never watch any movie that portrays Muslims again, because

01:04:04 --> 01:04:08

the art history is always all wrong, right, for example, but

01:04:08 --> 01:04:12

that's not our history. But it's also when in the message the way

01:04:12 --> 01:04:16

that bill gives the event is like straight out of us out of 1960.

01:04:16 --> 01:04:18

Right? There's guarantee was not the way that they were given

01:04:18 --> 01:04:23

events, right? At that time. Also, you watch any of these movies,

01:04:23 --> 01:04:25

they fill them all in Morocco, let's say kingdom of heaven, for

01:04:25 --> 01:04:28

example, right? They film all these movies in Morocco. I'm

01:04:28 --> 01:04:31

looking, I can't help but notice it's all Moroccans kids running

01:04:31 --> 01:04:36

around with the hoods on their, on their clothes. And all the palaces

01:04:36 --> 01:04:39

that they're sitting in are all Moroccan Andalusi and style that

01:04:39 --> 01:04:41

didn't even exist yet. By the way, that style of Andalusi and

01:04:41 --> 01:04:46

geometrics hadn't existed in the time of the Crusades. Right. So

01:04:46 --> 01:04:48

when you're when you study art history, you have a hard time

01:04:48 --> 01:04:52

following Hollywood because they they just take anything Islamic

01:04:52 --> 01:04:54

and throw it in. Right.

01:04:55 --> 01:04:59

I'm but there is. This is a question about what was hard

01:04:59 --> 01:05:00

right?

01:05:00 --> 01:05:03

Like, for example, I have seen the woman series and I do regret

01:05:03 --> 01:05:06

watching it because certain images that probably will not ever leave

01:05:06 --> 01:05:13

my mind. However, there is certain benefit in you know, indulging in

01:05:13 --> 01:05:18

that versus indulging in something haram. Right? So for example, of

01:05:18 --> 01:05:22

course, that kind of you know, I would say remove Sahaba Why don't

01:05:22 --> 01:05:26

you make a movie on use of pinto screen right like this not haram

01:05:26 --> 01:05:28

to do that there's not even a halogen doing that right. And not

01:05:28 --> 01:05:33

only that, you can take some poetic license and add characters

01:05:33 --> 01:05:35

and stuff you could do that you just have been touched Fein is

01:05:35 --> 01:05:40

though he was the, from the, from one of the tribes of the Sahara

01:05:41 --> 01:05:46

that came up and ended up by fatwah from A to Z and Rosati to

01:05:46 --> 01:05:51

conquer and de Lucia is that our Alma had a number of it's right so

01:05:51 --> 01:05:55

by Phaedra, from Isaiah to see that you must conquer and de Lucia

01:05:55 --> 01:05:58

and any one who comes in your way most of them are not his buddies,

01:05:58 --> 01:06:02

Khaled because the party kings what they were called the, the

01:06:03 --> 01:06:06

thigh for period. Yeah, for period or everyone Muslims on his own.

01:06:07 --> 01:06:10

Right. They every Muslim little city was on their own. It's a it's

01:06:10 --> 01:06:14

a risk to lose the land completely and to lose Islam in the end area.

01:06:14 --> 01:06:18

So they issued that federal for him. And he went up there. And he

01:06:18 --> 01:06:22

did conquer, right all of en de Lucia. So you can make like a long

01:06:22 --> 01:06:27

series on use of Ben Tashfeen. Right. And there's no knowledge in

01:06:27 --> 01:06:31

that stuff. But But I was gonna say Does it even have to be let

01:06:31 --> 01:06:36

ignore the Omar series or the or the Muslim thing? But is there

01:06:36 --> 01:06:41

some good in certain types of entertainment? Like, that's,

01:06:41 --> 01:06:45

that's what a lot of these Muslim, quote unquote, you know, directors

01:06:45 --> 01:06:48

and, you know, filmmakers and artists are all about nowadays,

01:06:48 --> 01:06:52

right, which is, let us sort of infuse this halal,

01:06:54 --> 01:06:57

you know, Islamic music or whatever it might be, so that, you

01:06:57 --> 01:07:01

know, we can drive people somewhat towards the deen rather than have

01:07:01 --> 01:07:06

them listening to whatever pop music people listen to today, I'm

01:07:06 --> 01:07:10

gonna take an unpopular position, I think you should admit that all

01:07:10 --> 01:07:15

of it is at the very best macro at the very best. And admit that to

01:07:15 --> 01:07:19

yourself, so that you have some hope of reducing it and maybe even

01:07:19 --> 01:07:22

eliminating it from your life, rather than finding for yourself

01:07:22 --> 01:07:25

ways that, oh, it's not that bad. It's actually probably halal. And

01:07:25 --> 01:07:27

it's better. And then because then you're just gonna engage in more

01:07:27 --> 01:07:30

of it. You're not gonna you're not gonna have any incentive to reduce

01:07:30 --> 01:07:34

it. I haven't even more popular in I have an even more unpopular

01:07:34 --> 01:07:35

opinion.

01:07:36 --> 01:07:41

My thing is, if you're gonna do something, right, why do it like

01:07:41 --> 01:07:45

halfway? You have listened to it properly, or don't listen to it at

01:07:45 --> 01:07:49

all right? Wireless? This is back to the was that.

01:07:50 --> 01:07:52

Oh, yeah, we never finished them. We will never finish.

01:07:54 --> 01:07:55

We'll finish it off there.

01:07:57 --> 01:08:01

Because it's like, why it's like those people who have those like

01:08:01 --> 01:08:04

Halloween parties. What does that group? Oh, yeah, those those

01:08:04 --> 01:08:08

idiots in Chicago? What does that call I don't know. It's like, say

01:08:08 --> 01:08:11

hello dance club or something. I don't know what they're call

01:08:11 --> 01:08:15

themselves. So basically, they have like this Halal sort of like,

01:08:15 --> 01:08:20

club. So you come in, it's guys and girls. They don't, there is

01:08:20 --> 01:08:24

intermixing. But there's no touching. There's fake or like to

01:08:24 --> 01:08:27

lose or whatever. There's, there's like, it's like Virgin alcohol. I

01:08:27 --> 01:08:28

was like, you know, if you're gonna go

01:08:30 --> 01:08:31

black version of a party.

01:08:33 --> 01:08:37

This one, let's just go to a real exactly what I'm talking about,

01:08:37 --> 01:08:41

right? Like, these people are people who found excuses for this,

01:08:41 --> 01:08:43

this, this and they go well, it's not as bad as doing the real

01:08:43 --> 01:08:46

thing. And now they have no incentive to walk away from it.

01:08:46 --> 01:08:48

Whereas if you admit that you're listening to music, you're hanging

01:08:48 --> 01:08:53

out with the opposite gender, you're engaging in all this kind

01:08:53 --> 01:08:56

of activity, that you admit to yourself that you're doing it, but

01:08:56 --> 01:08:58

you probably shouldn't be you know, that you shouldn't be you're

01:08:58 --> 01:09:00

eventually going to walk away from it. Instead, you have these

01:09:00 --> 01:09:05

adults, the grown people acting like idiots, like, like, like 17

01:09:05 --> 01:09:07

year olds that don't know any better, because they've given

01:09:07 --> 01:09:08

themselves such words. It's

01:09:10 --> 01:09:13

by the way, there's a principle that the roster that you allow for

01:09:13 --> 01:09:17

today becomes the ruling for tomorrow, of course, right now,

01:09:17 --> 01:09:20

imagine if it's not even rasa Majan if it was like sort of

01:09:20 --> 01:09:23

haram, but we allowed it because there's a word haram. Right? Yeah.

01:09:23 --> 01:09:26

Then it becomes a halal in the future, right? Just admit that

01:09:26 --> 01:09:29

it's that it's not good. It's probably haram and walk away from

01:09:29 --> 01:09:32

it as much as you can. I totally agree. And my philosophy on these

01:09:32 --> 01:09:36

things is that I'm focusing let's say if our goal is to survive our

01:09:36 --> 01:09:40

keep our deen alive and pass it on. I'm going to isolate the two

01:09:40 --> 01:09:45

biggest issues, okay. And, and focus on them, and that is

01:09:45 --> 01:09:50

atheism. And anything that touches a family like sexual, anything

01:09:50 --> 01:09:54

sexual LGBT, any destruction of the family, right because if you

01:09:54 --> 01:09:56

look at the Quran, Allah always says, You believe in Allah and

01:09:56 --> 01:09:58

you'll be good to your parents, right? Because that's and if you

01:09:58 --> 01:09:59

look at all

01:10:00 --> 01:10:02

Throughout the Quran is based on families early Emraan. Right?

01:10:02 --> 01:10:04

moves our own animals.

01:10:05 --> 01:10:09

Right? Yeah. So all families, right? So that's the root of

01:10:09 --> 01:10:12

humanity. All right. So I'm going to look at these two things, I'm

01:10:12 --> 01:10:15

actually going to capitulate, and I'm going to, I'm going to admit

01:10:15 --> 01:10:18

that there's going to be hits on those unless your things but don't

01:10:18 --> 01:10:21

have time to look at them, right? You can't get distracted by 30

01:10:21 --> 01:10:24

things. You can't fight 10 battles at one time. So fight only the

01:10:24 --> 01:10:28

fight the biggest two things, okay, focus on those two things.

01:10:28 --> 01:10:31

If you can really, truly isolate these things, you'll survive this

01:10:31 --> 01:10:35

fitna that we're in. And I'm capitulate that Yeah, I can't look

01:10:35 --> 01:10:38

at I can't be bothered on a truckload of other issues, which I

01:10:38 --> 01:10:41

know you probably correct on. But I just can't be bothered. I mean,

01:10:41 --> 01:10:44

just for list just to illustrate, and this is an extreme example,

01:10:44 --> 01:10:47

and I know that it's not what we're talking about. But suppose

01:10:47 --> 01:10:50

that you're in a situation where you absolutely will not be praying

01:10:50 --> 01:10:53

for her during the day, you're just not going to do it. Because

01:10:53 --> 01:10:57

your job because whatever your situation is, you know, you. You

01:10:57 --> 01:11:00

don't give yourself a fat when I say it's still the only time I

01:11:00 --> 01:11:03

pray before us, it goes out. And it's permissible for me to do

01:11:03 --> 01:11:05

that. Because eventually, someday you're going to have the

01:11:05 --> 01:11:07

opportunity to pray that will hurt you're not going to do it, as

01:11:07 --> 01:11:11

opposed to knowing that you can't miss a lot, but you're missing it,

01:11:11 --> 01:11:16

and praying it and making Toba if you're gonna if the Haram is

01:11:16 --> 01:11:19

happening in your life, it's happening around you. No, no,

01:11:19 --> 01:11:23

identify what it is and make Toba because if you don't, if you find

01:11:23 --> 01:11:26

you find some crazy fat or somewhere that allows it, you're

01:11:26 --> 01:11:28

not even going to ask Allah for forgiveness. Let me say something

01:11:28 --> 01:11:31

else too. But you brought up an important point. When it comes to

01:11:31 --> 01:11:33

leisure and entertainment. Everyone becomes a Mufti.

01:11:34 --> 01:11:38

And all of a sudden the rules of jihad go out the window. So oh,

01:11:38 --> 01:11:41

what does he say about this? What does he say about this? There's no

01:11:41 --> 01:11:44

he there's four sayings on anything, right? Okay, there's

01:11:44 --> 01:11:49

four muda hit. And unless you're in which to hit, don't go outside

01:11:49 --> 01:11:52

these the dominant opinion of the former methods because that is

01:11:52 --> 01:11:55

something we know is valid in the sight of Allah, Allah is not going

01:11:55 --> 01:11:58

to be sinful for you. But I read an article somewhere where

01:11:58 --> 01:12:00

Abdullah glenlyon of Lucia allowed the listening to the gramophone.

01:12:00 --> 01:12:01

Yeah.

01:12:02 --> 01:12:07

So so everyone becomes a Mufti on these matters, right? The safest

01:12:07 --> 01:12:10

way to live period is to go by the dominant. What do we mean by

01:12:10 --> 01:12:16

dominant means that 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of folk are over

01:12:16 --> 01:12:20

time have come to this conclusion. And many in which the heads

01:12:21 --> 01:12:23

outside the mother but inside the mother have come to these

01:12:23 --> 01:12:26

conclusions. And this is what's safe. If you're going to do

01:12:26 --> 01:12:30

something outside of it. Okay? Just say my neffs is just saying

01:12:30 --> 01:12:34

it told me to do it. Blah, blah, blah. Don't go and dress it up

01:12:34 --> 01:12:37

with a fatwa. Right? I'm telling you, we ended up in the early

01:12:37 --> 01:12:42

2000s, where the things like molded was looked down on all of a

01:12:42 --> 01:12:46

sudden, you had full blown orchestras in the early 2000s. In

01:12:46 --> 01:12:49

the name of like, every one of these awakening concerts.

01:12:51 --> 01:12:55

I'm looking, he started off with with a voice CD. Yeah. Which was

01:12:55 --> 01:12:58

good. I listened to it right. My my people, my family would listen

01:12:58 --> 01:12:59

to it. Okay.

01:13:00 --> 01:13:04

Next thing next day, two years later, it's a full blown

01:13:04 --> 01:13:07

orchestra. I remember Osama cannon was like he's seen uncle's right.

01:13:07 --> 01:13:10

I was like, hold on a second. I was singing considered important.

01:13:10 --> 01:13:13

And you guys were yelling at me. And you're sitting in the audience

01:13:13 --> 01:13:18

with full blown instruments orchestra. How did that happen?

01:13:18 --> 01:13:21

When the border of the EU you wanted to cancel voted on a border

01:13:21 --> 01:13:25

tonight, right? Yep. How did that happen? So just as a quick

01:13:25 --> 01:13:28

reminder, stick to what's known don't change these things. But

01:13:28 --> 01:13:31

you're going to know that alright, either you're weak on something

01:13:31 --> 01:13:34

just admit weakness, right rather than dressing it up with a fatwa.

01:13:34 --> 01:13:36

When in doubt, ask him Deobandi.

01:13:37 --> 01:13:40

More Mauritania. It's over. It's over.

01:13:41 --> 01:13:44

See one of the things and this might be pretty controversial

01:13:44 --> 01:13:46

point so dark, shadowy, please don't punch me.

01:13:48 --> 01:13:53

One of the things I've noticed is that sometimes fic gives a ruling

01:13:53 --> 01:13:57

that might not reflect the reality of how much

01:13:58 --> 01:14:03

for example, video games, right? There's, there are certain videos

01:14:03 --> 01:14:06

for example, FIFA, right? Is it halal or haram? It's obviously

01:14:06 --> 01:14:10

halal. There's nothing obviously Halal meaning from the from the

01:14:10 --> 01:14:14

external. From the outside apparent. You know, okay, you have

01:14:14 --> 01:14:17

it. It's holiday. It's just a game about you know, playing soccer,

01:14:17 --> 01:14:22

okay. Okay. Now, let's say a kid is sitting in his bed, you know,

01:14:22 --> 01:14:26

sitting in his bedroom playing eight hours of FIFA. Right a day.

01:14:26 --> 01:14:31

Right. And this game is addictive. Now, can you say that this is

01:14:31 --> 01:14:35

haram? What? What filthy argument can you use to justify that It's

01:14:35 --> 01:14:38

haram? It's case specific, and we're stuck. It is very sick and

01:14:38 --> 01:14:42

he's in remission. He's recovering and that he has to be in the bed

01:14:42 --> 01:14:45

anyway. Well, the thing is, you have what you have to understand

01:14:45 --> 01:14:48

is not the breakdown of life is not all and how that and haram

01:14:48 --> 01:14:52

there's benefit at home. Yeah, there's liked and disliked there's

01:14:52 --> 01:14:56

been there's, there's benefit and harm, right? I mean, waste of time

01:14:56 --> 01:15:00

is my crew, at the bare minimum. Right there.

01:15:00 --> 01:15:03

becomes unlike we said the breakdown here a level is that

01:15:03 --> 01:15:06

which is done is playing done by an adult that when he should be

01:15:06 --> 01:15:10

doing something better for himself and it's minimal. Like is it

01:15:11 --> 01:15:15

a kid the word haram, it's sufficient that Allah used it with

01:15:15 --> 01:15:19

them, right then being blamed, allows us so many times in the

01:15:19 --> 01:15:23

Quran, right? And it's always blamed, right? So yeah, you look

01:15:23 --> 01:15:26

at in life there is not always everything is going to be put in

01:15:26 --> 01:15:29

halal and haram, but it is going to be put in, you know, there's

01:15:29 --> 01:15:33

benefit and harm. I think we need to get away from this mindset that

01:15:33 --> 01:15:36

just because something isn't haram, that I should do it. Yeah,

01:15:36 --> 01:15:39

you know, I think that's a very and I've seen this a lot. You

01:15:39 --> 01:15:42

know, people watching shows people watching this and that, but is it

01:15:42 --> 01:15:45

haram? Is it clear cut Hana? No, but you know, look, look at how

01:15:45 --> 01:15:49

it's affecting your life, you know, oh, let's say somebody who

01:15:49 --> 01:15:53

can't even manage one wife wants to get married to four. Oh, but is

01:15:53 --> 01:15:55

it haram? You know, it might be for you.

01:15:56 --> 01:15:59

But it doesn't have to be by the way a thing does not have to be

01:15:59 --> 01:16:04

haram but its side effects can be blameworthy for you and maybe

01:16:04 --> 01:16:07

count against you in Africa, for example, someone who was playing

01:16:07 --> 01:16:12

FIFA for eight hours a day in his bed. Is that is his moving his

01:16:12 --> 01:16:16

thumbs. In haram. No, but he's not fulfilling certain other duties in

01:16:16 --> 01:16:22

life will cost him right. And the the dislike things are not always

01:16:23 --> 01:16:25

the harm of them. The consequences don't always show up in the ACA,

01:16:25 --> 01:16:29

sometimes it shows up here. So yeah, you won't get punished in

01:16:29 --> 01:16:31

the afterlife. But you're gonna get punished here. By being a

01:16:31 --> 01:16:33

failure by being miserable. The all your friends are going to

01:16:33 --> 01:16:37

medical school and graduate school and law school and blah, blah,

01:16:37 --> 01:16:40

blah, and having jobs and getting married. And what are you doing?

01:16:40 --> 01:16:44

You're not right. Well, so on chess. Hmm. What's the ruling on

01:16:44 --> 01:16:48

chess, chess, thematic ease or Chevy's are everyone generally,

01:16:48 --> 01:16:53

generally disliked to prepare it right. The general is a negative,

01:16:53 --> 01:16:58

especially if it distracts from the prayer and thematic Yeah,

01:16:58 --> 01:17:01

we're very strict on it. The chef a we're a bit only limited that it

01:17:01 --> 01:17:04

doesn't distract you from the prayer. If I remember if my memory

01:17:04 --> 01:17:07

serves, so that applies to every let's you can analogize Are you

01:17:07 --> 01:17:11

making an analogy? Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, that analogy,

01:17:11 --> 01:17:16

everything will be less because chess, it works the brain. Okay.

01:17:17 --> 01:17:20

One of the reasons the chef, hey, I think even 100 Last Kalani wrote

01:17:20 --> 01:17:24

about it that it exercises muscles maximize the brain. Whereas those

01:17:24 --> 01:17:28

things, I don't know if you can say they have anything near not

01:17:28 --> 01:17:31

most of them. I mean, if you if I bring you a chess graph, and

01:17:31 --> 01:17:36

Grandmaster of chess, and I bring you the latest 2018 FIFA champion

01:17:36 --> 01:17:40

video gamer, right? Who are you more impressed with? Right? So

01:17:41 --> 01:17:44

that's a good point. Yeah. So now I'm going to take it into a

01:17:44 --> 01:17:48

slightly different direction. There is some positive I found in

01:17:48 --> 01:17:52

certain types of entertainment, especially modern entertainment.

01:17:52 --> 01:17:56

One thing because I feel like often there is no you know, other

01:17:58 --> 01:18:01

at least for people who are weak like myself. One thing I found is,

01:18:01 --> 01:18:06

for example, children's videos, right? I you know, my daughter

01:18:06 --> 01:18:11

watches the I think Ali Ali Baba, he created like the zaqy for kids,

01:18:11 --> 01:18:15

right? It's like this like Blue Bear. And he recites like, Yeah,

01:18:15 --> 01:18:18

he does all types of I live by and Quran. And so it's Adams world.

01:18:18 --> 01:18:22

Basically, it's sort of like Adams world. And I think it's created by

01:18:22 --> 01:18:22

Alibaba.

01:18:24 --> 01:18:25

Baba, Ali Baba,

01:18:27 --> 01:18:32

baba Ali. So they do like, you know, all types of different

01:18:32 --> 01:18:34

cartoons where they teach like children, like, you know, that you

01:18:34 --> 01:18:38

said salaam when you enter and, you know, you should, you know,

01:18:38 --> 01:18:40

say Bismillah before you eat. So it's like, it's like a children's

01:18:40 --> 01:18:43

cartoon where they teach like, you know, good manners and things like

01:18:43 --> 01:18:48

that. There, I found that there can be good in certain types of

01:18:48 --> 01:18:52

entertainment. And I think that's the intention. Were some of these

01:18:52 --> 01:18:57

like musicians, and I don't know about comedians, but musicians go

01:18:57 --> 01:19:03

out in search of like, creating like, halal entertainment that is

01:19:03 --> 01:19:05

sort of similar to like, what I'm describing with these children's

01:19:05 --> 01:19:08

cartoons, where it's like, okay, it's providing good benefit. It's

01:19:08 --> 01:19:11

like, the kids are gonna watch TV anyway, you know, a lot of them

01:19:11 --> 01:19:14

right? You might as well give them something good to watch rather

01:19:14 --> 01:19:18

than, you know, something. If they're watching, I don't know,

01:19:19 --> 01:19:20

like, Paw Patrol.

01:19:22 --> 01:19:24

I would just really quick two seconds, I would highly recommend

01:19:24 --> 01:19:29

anyone who's got little kids up to the age of 12. What I advice that

01:19:29 --> 01:19:34

I got from our friend, Dr. Arshad, he said, minimize it as much as

01:19:34 --> 01:19:37

you can. And if they're gonna watch anything, enlarge the screen

01:19:37 --> 01:19:42

and put a distance like on the TV better than a laptop laptop better

01:19:42 --> 01:19:44

than an iPhone, because it's just better for their eyes and their

01:19:44 --> 01:19:48

brain. And I would limit it to such a degree. And this limitation

01:19:48 --> 01:19:53

has done so it fills the void is filled. For example, kids could

01:19:53 --> 01:19:55

love they start love reading because that's the only option

01:19:55 --> 01:19:57

they're given. Or they love each other talking to each other

01:19:57 --> 01:19:59

because that's the only option they're given and

01:20:00 --> 01:20:03

Kids can't be trusted to judge themselves or discipline

01:20:03 --> 01:20:06

themselves. So it should be kept to a little a little bit. I know,

01:20:06 --> 01:20:08

I'm sure people gonna watch though, but it should be minimized

01:20:08 --> 01:20:12

to a certain hour of a day, like one day a week or something like

01:20:12 --> 01:20:16

that. I will personally attest to this just because, you know,

01:20:17 --> 01:20:19

my, my daughter is, you know, she's a rough, she's like a

01:20:19 --> 01:20:22

toddler. Now, as we've tried from the very beginning, I think maybe

01:20:22 --> 01:20:26

one time she's ever watched anything on a laptop, phone is an

01:20:26 --> 01:20:30

absolute no tablet is an absolute no laptop is like, pretty much

01:20:30 --> 01:20:32

know, the only time she's ever seen it as if we're on doing

01:20:32 --> 01:20:33

something, right.

01:20:34 --> 01:20:36

And it's like, even if you watch the TV, it's at a distance. And

01:20:36 --> 01:20:42

I've noticed her and around other toddlers, right? It's, it's crazy,

01:20:42 --> 01:20:46

the amount of one I feel like, you know, parents just hand phones to

01:20:46 --> 01:20:49

their kids, and they're just like, kinda like, you know, going off

01:20:49 --> 01:20:52

for like two hours on their own in the corner. It's very bad. It's

01:20:52 --> 01:20:55

it's extreme, I'll tell you, the scary thing is that no matter what

01:20:55 --> 01:20:57

you do, as a parent,

01:20:58 --> 01:21:01

and you do a great job, here's the problem, your kid's gonna have to

01:21:01 --> 01:21:03

marry some of those other kids. That's the problem, right? Yeah.

01:21:03 --> 01:21:07

And so all your work is gonna go down the toilet. That's why the

01:21:07 --> 01:21:11

idea of Safina society, right is that this thing has to be done as

01:21:11 --> 01:21:13

a group. And when it has to be done as a group, you have to go to

01:21:13 --> 01:21:16

lower comp, lowest common denominators. And you have to

01:21:16 --> 01:21:19

isolate the only the most important things because when you

01:21:19 --> 01:21:23

do something in maths, you can only focus on certain important

01:21:23 --> 01:21:27

things. And this is one of them, right? The idea, the screen time

01:21:27 --> 01:21:30

is definitely one of them huge. The other thing I was gonna say,

01:21:31 --> 01:21:34

to Maureen's point earlier is just as important for us to be precise

01:21:34 --> 01:21:38

with our language. When you say musicians, if they're playing

01:21:38 --> 01:21:40

musical instruments, and they have a band or whatever they're there,

01:21:40 --> 01:21:43

that's out. Like, I don't care what your intention was, it's out,

01:21:43 --> 01:21:46

we have to admit that I'm not saying nobody, nobody's gonna

01:21:46 --> 01:21:49

listen to it. Muslims are 100% gonna listen to it. They're

01:21:49 --> 01:21:52

listening to trap music, too. That's not the point. The point is

01:21:52 --> 01:21:55

you don't make excuses for it, no matter what the intention. If

01:21:55 --> 01:22:01

you're talking about use of Islam, old stuff, as for Allah, perfectly

01:22:01 --> 01:22:03

fine. That's what it should be like. You want to add

01:22:03 --> 01:22:05

instrumentation, you think that it's going to sell better? Who

01:22:05 --> 01:22:09

sold and better than then then those old use of Islam tapes, like

01:22:09 --> 01:22:13

nobody, like this stuff was huge. And kids aren't different today,

01:22:13 --> 01:22:16

people are not different today, we're the same human beings. And

01:22:16 --> 01:22:18

it would work just as well. If those were the only options

01:22:18 --> 01:22:21

presented, you should only give your own neffs that option, that

01:22:21 --> 01:22:23

option and don't give your neffs what it's really asking you for

01:22:23 --> 01:22:26

discipline it before the disciplines Yeah. And we should be

01:22:26 --> 01:22:30

suspicious of the give up attitude of people are going to do stuff

01:22:30 --> 01:22:34

anyway. If that implies, well, let's just cut corners in the

01:22:34 --> 01:22:37

deep, right? Because people are going to do stuff anyway. Because

01:22:37 --> 01:22:38

the next thing you know, your kids are dating.

01:22:39 --> 01:22:44

Your daughter has five boyfriends. Like it's not good. It's something

01:22:44 --> 01:22:47

to note here. And I know, you mentioned doctrine as you want,

01:22:48 --> 01:22:51

you don't want to know about the past. However, you know, I'm gonna

01:22:51 --> 01:22:53

bring it up as a point because

01:22:54 --> 01:22:58

even recently, within you know, the non Muslim world, I think the

01:22:58 --> 01:23:05

way that we consume Entertainment has drastically changed. Right? In

01:23:05 --> 01:23:08

I'm not old enough to remember this. But you know, people talk

01:23:08 --> 01:23:11

about, you know, listening to boxing matches on the radio, you

01:23:11 --> 01:23:15

know, 30 years ago, and people you know, someone could sit down in

01:23:15 --> 01:23:19

their, in their house by themselves, listen to a boxing

01:23:19 --> 01:23:22

match on the radio and fully enjoy it.

01:23:23 --> 01:23:27

You can now you know, your baseball, you can watch an MMA

01:23:27 --> 01:23:29

fight an AK and it still ain't, you know, vivid, and it's all

01:23:29 --> 01:23:32

subjective. All this stuff is subjective, right? It's all

01:23:32 --> 01:23:36

subjective of what you have. Right? If you listen to a boxing

01:23:36 --> 01:23:39

match on the radio, because you've never had anything like a radio

01:23:39 --> 01:23:41

before, it's a big deal. It's all subjective. I've listened to

01:23:41 --> 01:23:45

basketball games in the car. Like driving into playoff game, I've

01:23:45 --> 01:23:48

listened to a game in the car. But there's actually science behind

01:23:48 --> 01:23:52

this and like I'm, I'm super against I read this recent article

01:23:52 --> 01:23:56

that there should be legislation passed to ban technology for

01:23:56 --> 01:24:00

certain ages. Right? 100%. Super, super against this absolute sorry,

01:24:00 --> 01:24:04

and I'm not against it. I'm for it. For Absolutely, there should

01:24:04 --> 01:24:07

not be any legislation passed to ban anything? Well,

01:24:08 --> 01:24:11

100% No, let's, let's go away from the legal stuff. But I'm just

01:24:11 --> 01:24:15

making this is an important point. Because we're asking the

01:24:15 --> 01:24:18

government to intervene, which is what we're actually doing is we're

01:24:18 --> 01:24:20

turning over our parenting skills to that we're turning over our

01:24:20 --> 01:24:23

community responsibility in in a way that's only going to be

01:24:23 --> 01:24:26

harmful because once they get in, they're going to ask for more,

01:24:26 --> 01:24:29

they're going to impose more, and you're trusting them to enforce

01:24:29 --> 01:24:31

things on your children. Right? It's a huge mistake. Sorry, I

01:24:31 --> 01:24:34

couldn't I couldn't get this. No, no, I'm trying. The I'm gonna get

01:24:34 --> 01:24:38

to that point, which is that products actually change via

01:24:38 --> 01:24:41

demand, right? Not by laws from the government, more market

01:24:41 --> 01:24:44

forces. But anyway, there's actually science behind this. And

01:24:44 --> 01:24:47

that is today's entertainment. The way that it's different from

01:24:47 --> 01:24:53

previous eras. Is that top experts of human behavior, like people

01:24:53 --> 01:24:55

that study human behavior and psychology and how to basically

01:24:55 --> 01:24:59

hack the brain. These people are the people that are producing

01:24:59 --> 01:24:59

these things.

01:25:00 --> 01:25:03

Right. And they're doing it precisely to hack the brain so

01:25:03 --> 01:25:07

that they keep your attention. And what that does is it absolutely

01:25:07 --> 01:25:10

messes up your reward circuitry in your brain. So you can't, you

01:25:10 --> 01:25:13

can't even like I've seen kids, I teach Sunday school, I'm always

01:25:13 --> 01:25:17

around these little kids, the kids that play fortnight like I know,

01:25:17 --> 01:25:21

from their parents, right, because the dads out at work like, for the

01:25:21 --> 01:25:24

whole day, and there's no control in the house, the kids that play

01:25:24 --> 01:25:27

fortnight all day, I mean, they look as if like, their souls are

01:25:27 --> 01:25:31

dead, I can see it in their eyes stay up late, because of staying

01:25:31 --> 01:25:34

up late, not because of staying up late because of the extended

01:25:35 --> 01:25:39

entertainment, like looking at a computer screen. Looking at this

01:25:39 --> 01:25:42

thing that's meant to get you addicted, it destroys your reward

01:25:42 --> 01:25:45

circuitry. And this is especially dangerous and kids, it will

01:25:45 --> 01:25:50

destroy them forever. I totally agree. The game pub G on mobile

01:25:50 --> 01:25:55

was banned actually the state of Gujarat and India because some

01:25:55 --> 01:25:59

number of kids one kid like killed his dad, because he wouldn't learn

01:25:59 --> 01:26:04

why. Right? It's there's kids, there's a kid just killed his dad,

01:26:04 --> 01:26:07

your shoe stores all the time, kids stay up for hours and hours

01:26:07 --> 01:26:09

and hours pee on themselves, rather than suffering. It makes

01:26:09 --> 01:26:12

sense. It makes perfect sense. I'll tell you why. If you're an

01:26:12 --> 01:26:16

adult you have so when you're growing up, right, the brain is

01:26:16 --> 01:26:19

actually small, it's not fully developed. And your experience

01:26:19 --> 01:26:24

around the world is what builds your brain up. So the reason why

01:26:24 --> 01:26:26

you should exclude kids from digital technologies is they're

01:26:26 --> 01:26:29

actually interacting with the real world. And when they're

01:26:29 --> 01:26:32

interacting with the real world, they can't get the reward as

01:26:32 --> 01:26:36

immediately. So they need to actually build that willpower. So

01:26:36 --> 01:26:39

the the, their frontal lobe gets stronger and stronger, right? And

01:26:39 --> 01:26:41

then they're interacting with things. They're falling, they're

01:26:41 --> 01:26:45

experimenting, so they're becoming more self aware of their

01:26:45 --> 01:26:47

existence, right? In a sense,

01:26:48 --> 01:26:52

when you just hand your iPad to the kid.

01:26:53 --> 01:26:56

The only thing that's developing is the reward circuitry. And that

01:26:56 --> 01:27:00

reward circuitry is saying, Go for this thing. It makes you feel good

01:27:00 --> 01:27:03

and keep going for it at all costs, like last like Lambretta.

01:27:04 --> 01:27:07

Exactly. That's exactly what happens with addicts. Now, if you

01:27:07 --> 01:27:09

take your drug away from an addict, what is he going to do?

01:27:10 --> 01:27:12

He's going to kill for it. So it makes perfect sense that these

01:27:12 --> 01:27:16

kids are like, you know, ready to kill their parents because they

01:27:16 --> 01:27:18

have no their developmental

01:27:19 --> 01:27:23

process has been ruined. It's poison. It's poison. Absolutely.

01:27:23 --> 01:27:25

The other thing that this does is, so kids need to when they're

01:27:25 --> 01:27:29

developing, they need to interact with normal colors, not bright,

01:27:29 --> 01:27:33

ultra bright colors, they need to interact with normal movement, not

01:27:33 --> 01:27:38

super fast cuts, stuff that bright, bright, loud noises. And

01:27:38 --> 01:27:41

they also need to interrupt interact with the 3d world, not a

01:27:41 --> 01:27:44

flat to the world. If we're on the topic of kids, we should talk

01:27:44 --> 01:27:48

about fitness. How important and good for kids is to get sweaty.

01:27:48 --> 01:27:53

That's the other thing gamers are. They're all bad. Yeah, let me give

01:27:53 --> 01:27:57

one one note here. The this is really crazy. So there's a guy

01:27:57 --> 01:28:02

named near near El right, it looks kind of like Voldemort. But he he

01:28:02 --> 01:28:06

wrote this book called Hooked, right? It's a very famous book

01:28:07 --> 01:28:11

used by product designers and a bunch of folks to build like habit

01:28:11 --> 01:28:15

forming products. This same guy now has a book called

01:28:15 --> 01:28:17

indestructible how to keep your attention

01:28:19 --> 01:28:23

in the habit forming economy, so he literally built the products to

01:28:24 --> 01:28:27

you know, keep you addicted. And then he he's now writing a book,

01:28:27 --> 01:28:29

so he probably knows better than anybody. But that's what he

01:28:29 --> 01:28:31

claims, right? He's like, I built this stuff. I know how to get you

01:28:31 --> 01:28:35

on hold. Right? But it's all a money making scheme like so don't

01:28:35 --> 01:28:39

sell anything like you know, this is all in good fun like this. It's

01:28:39 --> 01:28:41

not good what these people are doing. Oh, you're talking about

01:28:42 --> 01:28:44

getting people addicted? Absolutely. It's a way to make

01:28:44 --> 01:28:48

money doing Oh, of course for profit. I think it's an important

01:28:48 --> 01:28:52

time to interject with the Hamza use of 1990s Reading List. Oh,

01:28:52 --> 01:28:56

subject. Totally sure Hamza was saying this in like 92, which is

01:28:56 --> 01:29:00

Neil Postman, gerrymander four arguments for the elimination of

01:29:00 --> 01:29:03

television and entertaining ourselves to death. Yeah. Those

01:29:03 --> 01:29:06

two books should be mandatory reading for any parent. Yeah. And

01:29:06 --> 01:29:08

then if you want to run your child's health and well being

01:29:08 --> 01:29:11

after you, after you know what you're doing good, you're asked

01:29:11 --> 01:29:13

for one day of judgment, but at least inform yourself if you're

01:29:13 --> 01:29:18

going to be raising a one of one of our last creation. Part of it

01:29:18 --> 01:29:21

is physical fitness. There's also social fitness. How many times

01:29:21 --> 01:29:25

have you had like a nine year old kid who, like you'd meet their

01:29:25 --> 01:29:27

dad, and then you look at them. He says, Son, I'm gonna come and they

01:29:27 --> 01:29:31

look at you like you're like, some kind of a monster, or he's like 11

01:29:31 --> 01:29:34

years old. So he's past the age of being scared and shy that a

01:29:34 --> 01:29:37

stranger is talking to him. He doesn't even know how to talk.

01:29:37 --> 01:29:38

Those are the kids.

01:29:39 --> 01:29:41

He doesn't even know how to say a synonym anymore. Like you asked

01:29:41 --> 01:29:45

him, Hey, what's your name? Right? And he's like, there's no

01:29:45 --> 01:29:49

response. It's like someone dead. So this is socially unfit. Right?

01:29:49 --> 01:29:54

Doesn't he needs to interact more right? Or, if ever you had some an

01:29:54 --> 01:29:59

adult talking to a kid and the kid looks away, like basic manners,

01:29:59 --> 01:29:59

and

01:30:00 --> 01:30:03

even just looking away, I mean, I'm talking your same example can

01:30:03 --> 01:30:06

be applied to like 17 year olds, 18 year olds who can't hold

01:30:06 --> 01:30:10

conversations with adults. And you're not you know exactly what

01:30:10 --> 01:30:12

I'm talking about, right? Like, you'll be in a family gathering.

01:30:13 --> 01:30:18

18 year old like dudes, and I used to be one of those people. But

01:30:18 --> 01:30:21

it's sad, right? Meanwhile, last week, I was at your house and I

01:30:21 --> 01:30:23

didn't know if you were upstairs or downstairs. Yeah. So I saw your

01:30:23 --> 01:30:26

youngest walking by again, and I said Is your dad here is the

01:30:26 --> 01:30:29

upstairs or downstairs and she was like, I don't know. So then I

01:30:29 --> 01:30:32

said, What kind of spy Are you? And she was like, I'm not a

01:30:32 --> 01:30:35

spider. And I was like, no, what kind of spy Are you? She was like,

01:30:35 --> 01:30:36

I don't know. I'm going upstairs.

01:30:39 --> 01:30:43

How old is she? She is seven. Mashallah, did she look at you and

01:30:43 --> 01:30:46

talk? Yeah, she looked at me. She was like, I'm not aspire. What

01:30:46 --> 01:30:50

kind of spy Are you? I know that. She was like, I don't know. I'm

01:30:50 --> 01:30:52

going upstairs. Like that's a normal kid reaction.

01:30:53 --> 01:30:56

You know, you don't want to just stare at me and go, Yeah, that's

01:30:56 --> 01:30:57

what they do. But

01:30:59 --> 01:31:03

they don't talk to grandparents, neighbors, uncles, aunts,

01:31:03 --> 01:31:06

strangers in the masjid. Right now, I'm not saying strangers.

01:31:06 --> 01:31:09

Like, if you're in the masjid. And someone says salaam to you. That's

01:31:09 --> 01:31:12

sort of a space where you're standing with your dad. Correct.

01:31:12 --> 01:31:15

And your dad's here on the other side of the room. This is a great

01:31:15 --> 01:31:17

place to learn how to talk to strangers.

01:31:18 --> 01:31:21

Exactly, because you know that their manners. There are

01:31:21 --> 01:31:25

strangers, but it's also a place that is safe because your parents

01:31:25 --> 01:31:29

are here or something like that. And what I meant to say was that

01:31:29 --> 01:31:32

there's actually a reason why this is happening. Right. And it's I

01:31:32 --> 01:31:36

don't know the solution to it. I mean, I've grown around grown up

01:31:36 --> 01:31:41

around sort of these problems myself, which is that you have

01:31:41 --> 01:31:45

communities of people that are like cut off from like, extended

01:31:45 --> 01:31:47

communities, right? There are certain Muslim communities where

01:31:48 --> 01:31:51

the parents are working, you know, both of the parents are working

01:31:51 --> 01:31:56

till McCully or till late at night, the kids I mean, they're at

01:31:56 --> 01:32:01

home, and they got nothing else to do. They have TV. Now, they can't

01:32:01 --> 01:32:03

even go outside and play with anybody because there's nobody

01:32:03 --> 01:32:07

else. There's nobody around. And you go to the machine, the machine

01:32:07 --> 01:32:11

is just filled with like, sort of very old uncles and nobody comes,

01:32:11 --> 01:32:14

right. So the kid goes one time he gets scared. He just never comes

01:32:14 --> 01:32:19

back. So in that situation, what you end up happening is most of

01:32:19 --> 01:32:22

these kids, the boys, at least they turn towards gaming. Right?

01:32:22 --> 01:32:24

So that's what I did. When I was a kid. I turned towards gaming,

01:32:24 --> 01:32:25

right?

01:32:27 --> 01:32:30

And what happened is, they get like addicted to this stuff,

01:32:30 --> 01:32:33

right? They'll they'll play like eight hours a day, 10 hours a day,

01:32:33 --> 01:32:37

whatever. The girls, they'll be addicted to like Korean dramas and

01:32:37 --> 01:32:41

things like that. Watch that all day. Right. And to Korean dramas.

01:32:41 --> 01:32:44

Yeah, that's the big thing that was very popular. Oh, really? This

01:32:44 --> 01:32:49

is a very accurate. Yeah, really reinjuring dramas. So and they're

01:32:49 --> 01:32:54

sitting so that these kids are isolated? Because I can't blame

01:32:54 --> 01:32:57

the parents, right? How are you going to live if you don't work

01:32:57 --> 01:33:00

with some of these immigrant communities? So this is why I

01:33:00 --> 01:33:03

don't know what the solution is. Right? It really don't know. It's

01:33:03 --> 01:33:06

a struggle that the city created industrialization create. And this

01:33:06 --> 01:33:09

is the first time we've been having human beings raised up by

01:33:09 --> 01:33:14

two other human beings. Yeah. As opposed to seven, such as your

01:33:14 --> 01:33:18

grandma, grandpa that's for right to Grandma's to grandpa's,

01:33:18 --> 01:33:22

probably a half a dozen aunts and uncles. Right. older cousins,

01:33:22 --> 01:33:26

older siblings. So that's why they said it takes tribe or whatever,

01:33:26 --> 01:33:29

it takes a city to raise a man right? Because everyone would you

01:33:29 --> 01:33:34

would live and morals and manners were upheld by everyone around

01:33:34 --> 01:33:39

you. Now it's resting on to people. Right? And usually that's

01:33:39 --> 01:33:42

not enough. It doesn't work. I mean, I don't I to be honest, I

01:33:42 --> 01:33:45

think you should just not buy your kids those video games. Like don't

01:33:45 --> 01:33:48

buy them this expensive. If the kid has enough money to buy a

01:33:48 --> 01:33:51

house, he probably has a job and he's responsible. But if you can't

01:33:51 --> 01:33:54

afford it by himself going by for him, that's good. I'm just don't

01:33:54 --> 01:33:57

to get better for his friends playing and he doesn't know to get

01:33:57 --> 01:34:01

the to get this point across to my kids. One of the videos I showed

01:34:01 --> 01:34:05

them, like regularly every once in awhile, right is the videos of

01:34:05 --> 01:34:09

parents breaking their kids is phones and stuff like that.

01:34:10 --> 01:34:14

Because when there you have it in life, but I think that's going to

01:34:14 --> 01:34:16

happen eventually. But I want them to know what real life is like

01:34:16 --> 01:34:19

first. Yeah, like there's no point of reference anymore for these

01:34:19 --> 01:34:23

kids. Like I have a point of reference. If I ever go off on an

01:34:23 --> 01:34:27

access in something. I know it's an access, because I have a point

01:34:27 --> 01:34:30

of reference. And I know that this doesn't feel good at all. Yeah,

01:34:30 --> 01:34:34

right. But how to a kid who's born with this stuff raised with this

01:34:34 --> 01:34:37

stuff. Yeah, has no point of reference. They don't. That's the

01:34:37 --> 01:34:40

thing. They haven't experienced real life. So what they do is they

01:34:40 --> 01:34:45

turn to these fake lives, so to speak, to get some type of value,

01:34:45 --> 01:34:48

right? And it's really sad. And I don't know what the solution is,

01:34:48 --> 01:34:51

but I do know where it comes from, which is this, you know, well, one

01:34:51 --> 01:34:54

of the things in addition, one of the things is that people do live

01:34:54 --> 01:34:57

where they live and people live where they work, but it is

01:34:57 --> 01:34:59

incumbent upon Muslims to take on the

01:35:00 --> 01:35:04

A little bit of an extra burden, and make sure that you can live in

01:35:04 --> 01:35:07

a community, you know, like an area that has a lot of muscles

01:35:07 --> 01:35:10

where you can make friends, you can go somewhere and see other

01:35:10 --> 01:35:12

regular Muslims that hopefully there's a puppy there, there's a

01:35:12 --> 01:35:16

scholar there that that can give good lessons, right? For the

01:35:16 --> 01:35:20

community. And, and you can ask them when they have something, and

01:35:20 --> 01:35:24

the scholar leads to try to create activities. So yeah, that might

01:35:24 --> 01:35:27

mean that you put that extra effort in, why would you live out

01:35:27 --> 01:35:30

in the middle of nowhere? What's the value, and probably someone

01:35:30 --> 01:35:33

will tell you, Well, my mom lives here and she's sick. So he's

01:35:33 --> 01:35:38

stuck. It's true, that is a good valid reason. But the real reality

01:35:38 --> 01:35:41

is that you should take her with you, right? Because Allah says in

01:35:41 --> 01:35:45

the Quran for Emma hablo, Hana indica, el Kebir, if they grow old

01:35:45 --> 01:35:49

with you, in other words, at yours, it really indica is not

01:35:49 --> 01:35:54

with you, it's at you, or, you know, at you meaning like at your

01:35:54 --> 01:35:59

house. So take them with you. But you really, it's, I can't imagine

01:35:59 --> 01:36:02

how you're going to go up. You're you're going against your culture,

01:36:03 --> 01:36:06

the culture, you're going against the probably the things taught in

01:36:06 --> 01:36:10

school, you're going against so many things, and you're all alone,

01:36:10 --> 01:36:14

like you almost have no chance. You could also just a strategy, if

01:36:14 --> 01:36:18

your kid is alone, at home for two to three hours before you get

01:36:18 --> 01:36:21

home. And they're old enough or responsible enough to be alone.

01:36:21 --> 01:36:23

And it's not a crime, to leave them alone. Like it's not child

01:36:23 --> 01:36:26

endangerment, assign them tasks that are going to keep them busy

01:36:26 --> 01:36:30

for most of that time, not homework, don't make them do math,

01:36:30 --> 01:36:32

but just something that they can do around the house that's you

01:36:32 --> 01:36:36

know, is going to keep them busy. And even if it's just busy work,

01:36:36 --> 01:36:40

like go outside and you know, rake all the leaves before I get home,

01:36:41 --> 01:36:43

you're gonna have less of an opportunity and punish them if

01:36:43 --> 01:36:44

they don't do chores are very important.

01:36:45 --> 01:36:52

So the next topic that not topic, but way I want to go is one thing

01:36:52 --> 01:36:54

I've noticed is

01:36:56 --> 01:37:03

media today has sort of gone into, not that it hasn't always been,

01:37:03 --> 01:37:08

but it's sort of going towards displaying like moral depravity on

01:37:08 --> 01:37:14

screen. Right. And I find that because I mean, we live in today's

01:37:14 --> 01:37:18

day and time, Muslims also become attached to the sort of media and

01:37:18 --> 01:37:22

then a few examples that I can that I can come up with, you know,

01:37:22 --> 01:37:25

for example, the Joker movie that just recently released Game of

01:37:25 --> 01:37:28

Thrones Breaking Bad. I mean, I can just sit here and come up with

01:37:28 --> 01:37:32

a bunch of examples where but these are, really, they're

01:37:32 --> 01:37:36

considered art, right masterpieces of media, and they really depict

01:37:36 --> 01:37:38

moral depravity on screen. Right?

01:37:39 --> 01:37:45

And it's, it's scary to think about because, you know, what,

01:37:45 --> 01:37:49

what would you say about Muslims that, you know, are engaging in

01:37:49 --> 01:37:53

these things? And a lot of people do, right? It's not like, people

01:37:53 --> 01:37:59

don't. So how do you understand these types of things? And where

01:37:59 --> 01:38:01

would you where do you guys thoughts on it from a Muslim

01:38:01 --> 01:38:06

perspective, about the Shani? If I'm correct, if something is haram

01:38:06 --> 01:38:08

to do is haram to watch? Right? It's true.

01:38:09 --> 01:38:12

That's it? That's the answer. It's haram, they shouldn't do it. And

01:38:12 --> 01:38:14

if they do do it, they should do it, recognizing that it's haram to

01:38:14 --> 01:38:19

do and so that they can inshallah make Toba when they do it and know

01:38:19 --> 01:38:23

that they should stop and make a plan and maybe stop. And you know,

01:38:23 --> 01:38:27

one of the things that I've noticed is certainly moms and even

01:38:27 --> 01:38:28

certain, like people that are detached from this type of

01:38:28 --> 01:38:32

culture, they want to just do it just so they can relate with

01:38:32 --> 01:38:33

people, like you said, Dr. Shetty.

01:38:34 --> 01:38:39

What I've seen is, actually, so I haven't watched a TV show in like,

01:38:39 --> 01:38:42

you know, almost a year or something like that. Right. And

01:38:43 --> 01:38:46

what I've noticed is, I'm actually relating better with people,

01:38:46 --> 01:38:50

right? Whereas before, I would watch TV series, whatever. And,

01:38:50 --> 01:38:53

you know, it doesn't actually help you relate better with people, I

01:38:53 --> 01:38:55

don't think because in regular conversation, that's not what

01:38:55 --> 01:38:59

people usually talking about. It's usually a conversation starter,

01:38:59 --> 01:39:03

but it's not necessarily, you know, but yes, I do work at it.

01:39:05 --> 01:39:08

Unfortunately, and that's why, you know, I'm depressed at my job.

01:39:08 --> 01:39:12

Well, the thing is that my philosophy on these things is

01:39:12 --> 01:39:16

that, as I said before, their list of priorities, right, and you

01:39:16 --> 01:39:19

cannot be distracted from these priorities. There are certain

01:39:19 --> 01:39:23

things that would be excellent to eliminate, but it's just not it's

01:39:23 --> 01:39:28

definitely not my priority. In terms of what I deal with people.

01:39:28 --> 01:39:33

Right. So yeah, the these types of things. Some are more fat hedged

01:39:33 --> 01:39:36

than others, like Game of Thrones has, like, basically like complete

01:39:36 --> 01:39:39

*. Right? That's more fat than others. There is no

01:39:39 --> 01:39:41

discussion on that there shouldn't even be

01:39:42 --> 01:39:45

anyone go in there. Unless they're going to make a Christian version

01:39:45 --> 01:39:49

or something where they, you know, clip it out. But I've always

01:39:49 --> 01:39:51

thought about the guy who's doing the clipping right.

01:39:54 --> 01:39:56

You know, what's crazy doing it for the sake of the community, you

01:39:56 --> 01:39:59

know, what's crazy and NBC right, and that'd be what I used to wear

01:40:00 --> 01:40:03

They're the there's this one girl who was tasked with coming up with

01:40:03 --> 01:40:09

an algorithm to detect *. Right? So. So her job is literally

01:40:09 --> 01:40:13

to tune this algorithm to detect *. So she would run like an R

01:40:13 --> 01:40:17

rated film through this algorithm, and then she would check the *

01:40:17 --> 01:40:21

scenes to see that, oh, it actually did detect it. And I'm

01:40:21 --> 01:40:23

sitting there in a presentation where she's presenting this

01:40:25 --> 01:40:29

is like, as you can see, it works. She goes through, like a *

01:40:29 --> 01:40:33

scene. And you know, they're like adults in the room, everybody, and

01:40:33 --> 01:40:37

we're just like, staring at the screen, right? And then nobody

01:40:37 --> 01:40:41

utters a word. I'm just like, what kind of, you know what I mean?

01:40:41 --> 01:40:43

Like, how can you justify you spending eight hours a day doing

01:40:43 --> 01:40:48

that in in 10 years, in 10 years, there's not even going to be a

01:40:48 --> 01:40:51

feeling of awkwardness in the room. Because all the kids in

01:40:51 --> 01:40:54

those room, all the people in those rooms have been raised

01:40:54 --> 01:40:58

basically on *. And the people who are making our local

01:40:58 --> 01:41:02

laws are going to be those types of people. So we should expect all

01:41:02 --> 01:41:05

that stuff to become completely normal, it's going to be normal on

01:41:05 --> 01:41:07

broadcast television, there's never going to be broadcast

01:41:07 --> 01:41:10

television or your why that's true. Because, you know, last

01:41:10 --> 01:41:13

mile, I work in a similar industry, I know the same thing.

01:41:14 --> 01:41:16

You know, I've experienced things like this, especially when it

01:41:16 --> 01:41:21

comes to adult content within, you know, Comcast or Verizon or your

01:41:21 --> 01:41:25

your broadcast network, is no one people will talk about, like, oh,

01:41:25 --> 01:41:27

you know, we need to take this out. I don't want people to see my

01:41:27 --> 01:41:28

auto content. And it's like,

01:41:31 --> 01:41:32

you know, what, you know, what else is like that?

01:41:34 --> 01:41:37

What do you what do you mean? Like, it's, it's like, openly

01:41:37 --> 01:41:39

admitting, you know, it's like, yeah, you know, I have no content,

01:41:39 --> 01:41:41

other people have adult content in there. And we don't want people to

01:41:41 --> 01:41:43

see it. And I'm like, You mean, the company does or the

01:41:43 --> 01:41:46

individual? These are individual, we're just talking on teams,

01:41:46 --> 01:41:48

right? And people were talking about their personal accounts or

01:41:48 --> 01:41:52

whatever they have. And so like, they have adult content, like on

01:41:52 --> 01:41:55

their Instagram or something personal, you know, the, your

01:41:55 --> 01:41:59

their TV streaming, or pay per view channels or things they?

01:42:01 --> 01:42:01

What the *?

01:42:03 --> 01:42:08

We will, I'll tell you off air stories, no. Good. You know, what

01:42:08 --> 01:42:10

else? You know, what else has become a complete norm? Is people

01:42:10 --> 01:42:13

talking openly about their therapist seeing their therapists?

01:42:13 --> 01:42:16

Yeah, right. Whereas I remember growing up that idea was like, How

01:42:16 --> 01:42:16

dare you?

01:42:18 --> 01:42:24

How dare you stigmatize? Oh, my gosh. But yeah, so I mean, I think

01:42:24 --> 01:42:28

we're getting to a close here. So yeah, so just to give a quick

01:42:28 --> 01:42:29

summary of the whole thing.

01:42:30 --> 01:42:33

I'm just gonna give my quick summary, Musa is something that

01:42:33 --> 01:42:38

should happen. Physical activity is really one of the best things,

01:42:39 --> 01:42:43

screen activities and pop culture. I have my two main positions on it

01:42:43 --> 01:42:48

is that on one hand, I don't overthink it. On the other hand, I

01:42:48 --> 01:42:52

minimize minimize, minimize it as much as possible. Right. So those

01:42:52 --> 01:42:57

are my two things. You heard some more ideas from Alex and Moy, Nas,

01:42:57 --> 01:43:00

about the you know, a little bit more thought into the actual

01:43:00 --> 01:43:03

nature of different entertainments. Right? And I think

01:43:03 --> 01:43:06

it ends up being a wash anyway, because I don't necessarily look

01:43:06 --> 01:43:09

at the, as long as it turns out, I don't really look at the go deep

01:43:09 --> 01:43:12

into the thing, but I do think it should all be minimized, right.

01:43:14 --> 01:43:16

If you're going to get into something, get into physical

01:43:16 --> 01:43:19

fitness, at least it's something that's, you know, really good for

01:43:19 --> 01:43:24

your body, you get sweated out right and get physically fit. Alex

01:43:24 --> 01:43:27

mentioned some things that are more handy. Right, and then

01:43:27 --> 01:43:33

archery and, and having a gun. And you said something else. shooting,

01:43:33 --> 01:43:37

shooting, shooting, not knowing how to get around so for kids on

01:43:37 --> 01:43:41

bikes for adults, for grown for like teenagers learning how to

01:43:41 --> 01:43:46

drive well, hunting. So all those types of things are all things out

01:43:46 --> 01:43:49

there that are opposite for people to take. But the further family

01:43:49 --> 01:43:53

there should be massamba for the family. You Maureen brought up

01:43:53 --> 01:43:56

what about the the in the past? What did they do or not do? I'll

01:43:56 --> 01:43:58

tell you one thing they do, there was no such thing as take a

01:43:58 --> 01:43:59

vacation.

01:44:01 --> 01:44:04

I say this all the time people get mad at me. Yeah, like if people

01:44:04 --> 01:44:07

didn't take vacations. Yeah, sure. I was talking with someone, one of

01:44:07 --> 01:44:10

my colleagues and he said, our teachers, we have to didn't take

01:44:10 --> 01:44:13

vacation. We took vacations, right? Like we actually take a

01:44:13 --> 01:44:17

vacation, but they have no such thing as vacation. So does that

01:44:17 --> 01:44:21

mean that they it was a different world though at the same time, we

01:44:21 --> 01:44:24

have to realize that right? It was different worlds you couldn't use

01:44:24 --> 01:44:27

or you take your family and go to another city. Maybe 200 years ago,

01:44:27 --> 01:44:30

there weren't hotels, you can only go to a city where you knew people

01:44:30 --> 01:44:33

there were hotels, but you know what the hotel was, it was on the

01:44:33 --> 01:44:37

highway for the merchants to stop right? That's the fun in the past

01:44:37 --> 01:44:40

was for the merchants to stop or whoever there's no such thing as

01:44:40 --> 01:44:43

taking a vacation. Let's go take a family vacation to Damascus

01:44:44 --> 01:44:47

to get killed on the way if you know if you knew

01:44:48 --> 01:44:51

if you knew what things were if

01:44:53 --> 01:44:55

you show up you show up so you show up in Damascus and what do

01:44:55 --> 01:44:58

you do? Yeah, you don't know anyone? No one knows you. They're

01:44:58 --> 01:45:00

gonna look at you like Google Maps.

01:45:00 --> 01:45:04

Do you have nowhere to stay Airbnb eat first of all, you only went

01:45:04 --> 01:45:07

there if you knew someone Secondly, the homes were not so

01:45:07 --> 01:45:10

big to host everyone in the homes. So there there could You could

01:45:10 --> 01:45:13

read that someone was sent to go visit his uncle and stay for the

01:45:13 --> 01:45:16

summer. They're from Damascus for a reason. But now okay, the world

01:45:16 --> 01:45:20

has changed, etc. And there are vacations now, right? But all of

01:45:20 --> 01:45:25

the stuff if you couch it in a life of habits, good habits, such

01:45:25 --> 01:45:31

as reading Quran together, okay? Reciting out odd together so in

01:45:31 --> 01:45:36

the car would have the evening, right? That part of life. When

01:45:36 --> 01:45:39

there's a break, review your recitation, so you have a child,

01:45:39 --> 01:45:42

okay, recite for me such and such, you have two children recite it

01:45:42 --> 01:45:45

together, because it's easier to, to conserve cipher memory

01:45:45 --> 01:45:49

together, that's when you want it. You want them to review, but not

01:45:49 --> 01:45:53

be really hard on them, recite it together, so one will pick up the

01:45:53 --> 01:45:53

other.

01:45:55 --> 01:45:57

In other words, in the same voice, as you see many of the Quran

01:45:57 --> 01:45:59

schools, they recite in the same one voice, right? Everyone with

01:45:59 --> 01:46:04

the surah. So you do those things where you can couch, your

01:46:04 --> 01:46:07

entertainment and whatever it is, as long as it's held up in a way

01:46:07 --> 01:46:10

that neutralizes itself. Right? Just the fact that you're together

01:46:10 --> 01:46:14

as a family neutralizes itself, right? it neutralizes a lot of

01:46:14 --> 01:46:18

things during your DNA, and you Oda is going to neutralize things.

01:46:18 --> 01:46:22

So that's how I look at it. And I think it is a very important

01:46:22 --> 01:46:24

thing, because the type of things that people consume, it could

01:46:24 --> 01:46:28

really, you know, put a hole in your heart, man at the same time,

01:46:28 --> 01:46:31

the opposite extreme, and I'm not really worried about people going

01:46:31 --> 01:46:34

to the opposite extreme of having no entertainment.

01:46:36 --> 01:46:37

Who's going to that extreme?

01:46:38 --> 01:46:42

If only Yeah, if that was our problem, that would be good. Yeah.

01:46:43 --> 01:46:46

And one of the things I want to say about taking things into the

01:46:46 --> 01:46:52

heart, the realization for me, was when I realized that human beings

01:46:52 --> 01:46:56

are malleable, right, they're subject to change. So I think most

01:46:56 --> 01:46:59

people don't realize that, because then we now have a better

01:46:59 --> 01:47:03

definition of what we can consider beneficial entertainment or

01:47:03 --> 01:47:08

beneficial art. Anything that encourages those aspects of me

01:47:08 --> 01:47:14

that are negative, right? Or gives me reason for self pity. Why would

01:47:14 --> 01:47:18

I engage in that? Right? So for example, the Joker, one of the

01:47:18 --> 01:47:21

things that's absent from that movie is redemption. There's no

01:47:21 --> 01:47:26

redemption, right? Just complete, like going down a spiral. And

01:47:26 --> 01:47:29

that's it. Like it's, it's a plane going down and just crashing.

01:47:29 --> 01:47:32

That's it. That's the end of the movie. Now, why would you spend,

01:47:33 --> 01:47:36

like, is that the type of life that you want to live? I don't

01:47:36 --> 01:47:39

think anybody wants to live that type of life, right? Nobody wants

01:47:39 --> 01:47:43

to wallow in their own self pity. So art, beneficial art or

01:47:43 --> 01:47:47

beneficial entertainment, to me are those things that encourage

01:47:47 --> 01:47:50

the best in us. Right? And for a long time, that was the

01:47:50 --> 01:47:54

entertainment. Right? For a long time, the poems that people used

01:47:54 --> 01:47:57

to recite the plays Shakespeare's plays, right? Always there's

01:47:57 --> 01:48:00

redemption. There's a type of redemption or type of lesson,

01:48:00 --> 01:48:02

right? I know what you're gonna say.

01:48:03 --> 01:48:05

Except for the tragedy, except for the No, no, even in the tragedy.

01:48:05 --> 01:48:08

There's a lesson, right? You know, there's no lesson but there's no

01:48:08 --> 01:48:10

redemptive. Sure. Like there's a lesson and

01:48:11 --> 01:48:15

don't mistreat mentally ill people that are on the margins, right?

01:48:15 --> 01:48:19

But you don't, for example, someone watching Hamlet is not

01:48:19 --> 01:48:21

going to say, Oh, I really resonate with that guy. Now, let

01:48:21 --> 01:48:23

me go kill myself. Right.

01:48:24 --> 01:48:29

Nobody wants to other people, right. But the point is that art

01:48:29 --> 01:48:32

that encourages those things that are good in me, right, and

01:48:32 --> 01:48:36

encourages me to better myself. I think that's, that's how we should

01:48:36 --> 01:48:39

you know, view art, and we should promote those things at the

01:48:39 --> 01:48:43

expense of other stuff. I think this, that's really good comment

01:48:43 --> 01:48:47

for our producers. Like if there's a Muslim producer of something,

01:48:47 --> 01:48:49

right? That's something that he could think about. But I'll tell

01:48:49 --> 01:48:54

you why change is because art is all about change. It's all about

01:48:54 --> 01:48:57

something new. Right? The old is not something you know, that's

01:48:57 --> 01:49:01

gonna make a draw. Right? Or move the needle. It's also about

01:49:01 --> 01:49:04

challenging norms. Right? Yeah. It's about challenging norms. So

01:49:04 --> 01:49:07

Western conception of art. No, but if you think about it, it's always

01:49:07 --> 01:49:11

about change and pushing the envelope. Even, like, let's say in

01:49:11 --> 01:49:14

the Islamic tradition, you want to take a basic look at the Islamic

01:49:14 --> 01:49:16

tradition. What did they start with? They went into these

01:49:16 --> 01:49:19

Byzantine churches, and those were the artists at the time. And they

01:49:19 --> 01:49:22

said, Okay, well, we're gonna make this semester but we can't have

01:49:23 --> 01:49:25

any of those human beings that they would have like in the

01:49:25 --> 01:49:30

church, Adam and Eve, right. Yeah. And but keep the foliage. That's

01:49:30 --> 01:49:31

how it started. You know that that's how it started and in

01:49:31 --> 01:49:35

domestic in Damascus, they literally started that. They went

01:49:35 --> 01:49:37

in, they said, This is really beautiful. But that's haram.

01:49:37 --> 01:49:41

That's haram keep the leaves Yeah, right. Well, the leaves the

01:49:41 --> 01:49:45

foliage became more and more abstract. until it became like in

01:49:45 --> 01:49:50

the Ottoman foliage. It's clearly like leaves and tulips but it's

01:49:50 --> 01:49:54

not meant to be a garden, right? Then went back to become

01:49:54 --> 01:49:58

completely geometric lines and stuff, right. So in the Western

01:49:58 --> 01:50:00

tradition, you have the good

01:50:00 --> 01:50:02

Guy story, good guy and bad guy. Well, how long are you going to

01:50:02 --> 01:50:05

have good guy and bad guy? Right? So someone finally said, Alright,

01:50:05 --> 01:50:08

let's just make a movie about bad guys, right? And origin stories of

01:50:08 --> 01:50:12

bad guys, right? So, or a good guy who you don't really know if he's

01:50:12 --> 01:50:16

really that good. Right? The great, the good, the great. So

01:50:16 --> 01:50:19

here, and it's not that the gray or the antihero or the bad guy

01:50:19 --> 01:50:23

origin story is anything other than it's new. And in 20 years,

01:50:23 --> 01:50:27

someone will make an origin story of like, some other bad guy. And

01:50:27 --> 01:50:29

I'll be like, Oh, are you serious? Come on, this is just an

01:50:29 --> 01:50:32

iteration, right? And that's how they talk because they want

01:50:32 --> 01:50:34

something new, there's always going to be something new. So

01:50:34 --> 01:50:38

that's really what it is. You know, but if it's newness, you

01:50:38 --> 01:50:40

know, pursuing the good. I mean, you know, you're gonna feel high,

01:50:40 --> 01:50:44

right? No problem with that, you know, yeah, but but you're we're

01:50:44 --> 01:50:46

dealing with a tradition and a people who don't have any

01:50:46 --> 01:50:50

framework like this. So newness becomes become the sacred cow.

01:50:50 --> 01:50:53

Right? Right. Whereas for us, that's why I said certain things

01:50:53 --> 01:50:57

like the big screen and muscle can never compete. Right? And will

01:50:57 --> 01:51:00

never compete, because we do have idea of redemption and good and,

01:51:00 --> 01:51:03

and the idea that everything we do, if you're going to produce

01:51:03 --> 01:51:05

something, it should bring the best out of someone like Reggie

01:51:05 --> 01:51:09

just said, Right? Right. So certain mediums are impossible for

01:51:09 --> 01:51:14

us to compete in. So I think that pretty much wraps it up in terms

01:51:14 --> 01:51:18

of this episode. But last time, I kind of left it open. If you guys

01:51:18 --> 01:51:22

want to go on any tangents or any other topics, you're welcome to do

01:51:22 --> 01:51:23

that at the end of the episode.

01:51:25 --> 01:51:28

Final word is, you know, on days off weekends, or whatever, take

01:51:28 --> 01:51:32

your take your family out to someplace in nature, like hiking

01:51:32 --> 01:51:35

in the woods or some hiking is a great, it's one of the absolute

01:51:35 --> 01:51:38

best. It's one of the best things, and it's one of the things that

01:51:38 --> 01:51:42

we're lucky to have in America. an ample amount of snow not in New

01:51:42 --> 01:51:46

Jersey, it's probably not. We have we have great places, man, what

01:51:46 --> 01:51:50

are you talking we have Lyme disease, Lyme disease, by the way,

01:51:50 --> 01:51:52

I didn't know that. Just Oh, yeah.

01:51:54 --> 01:51:57

My sister had Lyme disease. Yeah, exactly.

01:51:59 --> 01:51:59

Listen,

01:52:00 --> 01:52:04

but never crossed my mind, it will be a reason not to leave the

01:52:04 --> 01:52:08

house. Except that you just have to tuck your tuck your your pants

01:52:08 --> 01:52:11

into your socks, wear boots, spray yourself with the and you're fine.

01:52:11 --> 01:52:15

Yeah, just don't walk around with your legs exposed. What's the best

01:52:15 --> 01:52:21

thing go out with either some some some patties or whatever food and

01:52:21 --> 01:52:23

go to those parks that have a grill in it, right, you go, you

01:52:23 --> 01:52:28

walk, then you go back to the car, get the cooler, and grill and you

01:52:28 --> 01:52:30

only have a couple weeks to do it anyway, it's going to be winter

01:52:30 --> 01:52:33

soon. But this is really one of the best things that we have. And

01:52:33 --> 01:52:35

the funny thing is when you're in New Jersey, when you go to these

01:52:35 --> 01:52:38

places, you're in the mountain but you can hear the highway.

01:52:41 --> 01:52:45

Massachusetts had some beautiful places New England, which I New

01:52:45 --> 01:52:47

England, to me is a really lonely place. It's like so that

01:52:47 --> 01:52:51

population density is so low, right? You feel like almost

01:52:51 --> 01:52:55

depressed, just being in New England. But the fall walks there.

01:52:55 --> 01:52:59

And the hikes there are amazing. So get out into nature and go down

01:52:59 --> 01:53:05

to the beach, but not like during peak season, you know, spelled

01:53:05 --> 01:53:05

both ways.

01:53:07 --> 01:53:11

Go, go go go to the beach, when it's the off hours like me and my

01:53:11 --> 01:53:14

wife like to go like right before sundown. Yeah. And you know,

01:53:14 --> 01:53:17

everybody's gone. And it's nice and nice to sit on the beach at

01:53:17 --> 01:53:21

night. It's very, it's very relaxing and beautiful. And

01:53:21 --> 01:53:23

totally off topic point. But

01:53:24 --> 01:53:29

so I was reading the history of prostitution, before I came.

01:53:34 --> 01:53:36

It has been another episode.

01:53:37 --> 01:53:41

There's one quote one quote that I would have mentioned, I don't know

01:53:41 --> 01:53:43

how I got into it. I think maybe it's your colleague with it.

01:53:45 --> 01:53:49

But one of the things in Rome, one of the things that happened is

01:53:50 --> 01:53:52

when they started out they were actually very conservative. Right?

01:53:53 --> 01:53:57

Prostitute No, no, the Romans, the Romans, very celibate. It was

01:53:57 --> 01:54:01

actually illegal. Like, you would actually have your rights taken

01:54:01 --> 01:54:04

away if you weren't married by 25. Wow. Right. So a bank should enact

01:54:04 --> 01:54:08

that. Right. So they were very disciplined culture very, you

01:54:08 --> 01:54:11

know, they conquered the world. What ended up happening is when

01:54:11 --> 01:54:15

they conquered Asian countries, then their culture of luxury

01:54:15 --> 01:54:19

started invading Rome, and Roman famous Roman senators, people like

01:54:19 --> 01:54:22

Cato the elder, they were decrying. They were like, so sad

01:54:22 --> 01:54:25

that, you know, Roman society is going to the dogs, you know,

01:54:25 --> 01:54:29

prostitutes are becoming rampant, people are indecent. And what's

01:54:29 --> 01:54:34

interesting is that when Rome starts conquering Asian places,

01:54:34 --> 01:54:36

that's when the decline starts happening, like when they start

01:54:36 --> 01:54:39

indulging in that luxury in terms of Persians or Persians,

01:54:39 --> 01:54:43

Assyrians, whatever. So it's like, it's almost like it's almost like

01:54:43 --> 01:54:47

a common theme in history when an entire society just sort of like

01:54:47 --> 01:54:52

loses its mind into too much well, similar. Similar thing happened in

01:54:52 --> 01:54:56

the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Empire to society declines. So both pre

01:54:57 --> 01:54:59

this downturn to this day

01:55:00 --> 01:55:03

don't have like, open homosexuality. What are they

01:55:03 --> 01:55:06

still? Probably for? Yes, they were they were so whatever.

01:55:08 --> 01:55:11

Like this is like they added one aspect to their already decadent,

01:55:11 --> 01:55:15

horrible society where they worship like fake gods and they

01:55:15 --> 01:55:17

engage in * with young boys. But it wasn't. I mean, now they hire

01:55:18 --> 01:55:20

all have them not all of them worship fake gods. I mean the

01:55:20 --> 01:55:23

Romans were famous for Stoics, right? If you actually look at

01:55:23 --> 01:55:27

stoic philosophy, it's like a different type of Kumar. Yes,

01:55:27 --> 01:55:30

well, they didn't have prophets so given them. What do you mean? They

01:55:30 --> 01:55:31

didn't have prophets

01:55:34 --> 01:55:37

every comb had a prophet every single one, meaning like the

01:55:38 --> 01:55:41

recorded ones that didn't like murder, okay, maybe maybe their

01:55:41 --> 01:55:45

profit. They distorted Islam and made it into stoicism. We don't

01:55:45 --> 01:55:48

know Well, I'm sure that they did distort whatever if if they had a

01:55:48 --> 01:55:51

profit at that time, surely they did destroy it, or they rejected

01:55:51 --> 01:55:55

it. Justify Hinduism? I didn't have a profit that way. No, no,

01:55:55 --> 01:55:59

no, no, I'm not defending Romans. I'm not. But I am impressed in

01:55:59 --> 01:56:02

certain aspects of them, right? Sure. If I'm gonna be impressed

01:56:02 --> 01:56:05

with any people I like the Spartans, Spartans. I like their

01:56:05 --> 01:56:12

the toughness, their, you know, no indulgences. simplicity of life.

01:56:12 --> 01:56:16

I'm telling you, that's the right way to live. Is to indulgence,

01:56:16 --> 01:56:18

keep it to a minimum, you can have indulgences, everyone's going to

01:56:18 --> 01:56:20

have indulgence. What is an indulgence? To me, it's like a

01:56:20 --> 01:56:23

steak dinner. That, to me is an indulgence, right. But keep your

01:56:23 --> 01:56:28

indulgence is slowly decreased them down to the, to the you know,

01:56:28 --> 01:56:31

to where it's so minimal, that you're healthy at all times, not

01:56:31 --> 01:56:35

just physically healthy, for your spirit, your character, right?

01:56:35 --> 01:56:39

Keep things disciplined is the best way to live. But I'm not for

01:56:39 --> 01:56:42

doing it in a manner that's miserable. Like I'm not into being

01:56:42 --> 01:56:45

miserable. I'm not a fan of being miserable. It is going to be slow,

01:56:45 --> 01:56:48

right? Slowly. But that's the direction that we should go.

01:56:48 --> 01:56:52

There's two ways to approach Allah. There's self Abnegation,

01:56:52 --> 01:56:56

where you just continue to deprive the neffs until it becomes

01:56:56 --> 01:57:01

obedient. And the other one is indulging in the halal until you

01:57:01 --> 01:57:05

become full of shock. And they both work. They both work. And

01:57:05 --> 01:57:07

just everyone's going to have a little bit of a balance of both,

01:57:07 --> 01:57:12

right? Yeah. And for the long term discipline. Right? Empty the

01:57:12 --> 01:57:15

stomach as much as possible. In other words, like eating habits

01:57:15 --> 01:57:20

should be, you know, curtailed. These it's important.

01:57:21 --> 01:57:25

All that stuff. Jumbo Hakima translated that portion of hair

01:57:25 --> 01:57:29

limonene. disciplining the two the two designers. Yeah, it's really

01:57:29 --> 01:57:32

good. It's really important, really important. Maybe we should

01:57:32 --> 01:57:34

have an episode of discipline, right? Because some people today

01:57:34 --> 01:57:39

think that CEOs that work like 600 hours a week that No, yeah, they

01:57:39 --> 01:57:43

think that's discipline like that sort of abnormal sort of drive,

01:57:43 --> 01:57:47

drive, right? Hustle culture, right? That's what my guys are

01:57:47 --> 01:57:52

taking tons of drugs. Yeah, my view of it is that many people are

01:57:52 --> 01:57:55

afraid of discipline, because we all have habits. And we don't want

01:57:55 --> 01:57:59

to change our habits, right. But the right way to view it is that

01:57:59 --> 01:58:03

you literally just make a very subtle changes. That's it, that

01:58:03 --> 01:58:08

you're you're you don't really react to write really slowly, and

01:58:08 --> 01:58:10

then you regress a little bit, then you take three steps forward

01:58:10 --> 01:58:13

again, they then you regress half a step back, then you take four

01:58:13 --> 01:58:18

steps forward. But it happens so slowly, right? That you're not

01:58:18 --> 01:58:22

miserable by doing it. And if you ever achieve it, it doesn't lead

01:58:22 --> 01:58:24

you to Cuba, because you didn't even notice that you made a

01:58:24 --> 01:58:27

change. The big change when it happens you don't even notice

01:58:27 --> 01:58:31

these fast changes in the good or really bad, the really bad for

01:58:31 --> 01:58:33

people because they lead to kibble.

01:58:34 --> 01:58:37

I think that we can do that episode right now in 10 seconds,

01:58:37 --> 01:58:40

which is fine. Roger solid, in your area that you can

01:58:41 --> 01:58:45

study with, learn from emulate. And if not, then connect with

01:58:45 --> 01:58:49

someone at a distance, but find a righteous chef. And that's the

01:58:49 --> 01:58:52

only way that it works. You can't do it any other way. That's what

01:58:52 --> 01:58:56

worked for me, can you not do it online, you cannot do it from a

01:58:56 --> 01:58:59

podcast, you have to find someone that you can actually speak to

01:58:59 --> 01:59:02

that you can write letters to if you need to, if they're far away,

01:59:02 --> 01:59:05

but it has to be like an actual real relationship. Yeah, that's

01:59:05 --> 01:59:08

where you're talking to spiritual discipline. Yeah, spiritual

01:59:08 --> 01:59:12

advancement. spiritual advancement also bleeds into like real life.

01:59:12 --> 01:59:15

Now of course, obviously. So I think we'll we'll wrap up since

01:59:15 --> 01:59:19

it's getting late. So we'll go ahead and I'll make one small

01:59:19 --> 01:59:20

point.

01:59:21 --> 01:59:24

If you ever I don't think we've mentioned this in in almost a

01:59:24 --> 01:59:27

season but if anybody ever has a question, concern you know, feel

01:59:27 --> 01:59:31

it please feel free to email us at podcast at Safina society dot o

01:59:31 --> 01:59:36

RG. We also have a Patreon account. It's patreon.com/ss

01:59:36 --> 01:59:40

podcast, if you'd like to support our efforts, we you know do have a

01:59:40 --> 01:59:43

research team. We've provided some books, we've recently gotten some

01:59:43 --> 01:59:46

new equipment and we continue to you know further along some of our

01:59:46 --> 01:59:48

efforts so inshallah if you would like to support us it's

01:59:48 --> 01:59:51

patreon.com/ss podcast, so

01:59:53 --> 01:59:56

that's it just Aquila parents of Chanukah Lahoma We have Nick Nisha

01:59:57 --> 01:59:59

ilaha illa and Mr. Foote are going to relate

02:00:00 --> 02:00:04

What else in Santa Fe lol Edina m&r Minnesota how to also get help

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with also suburbs

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