Shadee Elmasry – Spread of Islam in England w Yusuf Ponders NBF 303
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Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim Al hamdu lillah wa Salatu was Salam
ala Rasulillah. While early he was so happy woman Well welcome
everybody to the SOFIA Saudi nothing but facts live stream.
Coming to you live from the state of New Jersey and coming from the
LA Cosina. Studio. Others are Safina side studio in the LA
Cosina building, which is our soup kitchen, which we pray, but in the
Lehi, tada we'll be
having feeds, serving dinner seven days a week, by the year 2030. I
think with the way we're going to do this, and we're going to jump
to three days a week. And then we're going to jump to seven days
a week. That's probably how, how it's gonna go. So we ask a lot,
Sophia, can we need all of your support with that? And you could
do that at lock Cosina 367 dot org, what is that 3678367 is
it's our address the address, there's a lot of La casinos out
there la cuisine, a lot of dinner, a lot of restaurants are called La
Cosina. It literally just means the kitchen. And the concept is
that we want to have this kind of very cozy environment I don't want
we don't want a soup kitchen that feels like a jail.
Or like a school
cafeteria. Have you ever been to a soup kitchen, they're miserable.
It's almost like you're being punished. Eat there, you get
punished and you're miserable. A couple of things that I want to
talk about. What I want to talk about first a couple key ways
before we get to
our guest today we have a nice young man who's doing Dawa, and a
lot to say to us. Here's the first question that we're going to talk
about. Can people from the lineage of Abbas accept Zika or sadaqa?
That was a question that I received recently. Let's
backtrack. Now. The answer to it is that the first question is, who
is not allowed to get Zika? As the first question, and the answer to
that is that the Hashemites are not allowed to guess again, Ali,
Mohammed
refers to the Hashemites. Anybody, your L is anyone who shares your
paternal grandfather.
Anybody who your grandfather who relates to your grandfather,
that's your EAD. So we look at in the messenger sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam, his grandfather was Shaybah also known as optimal
Talib.
But Abdul Muttalib is the only son of Hashem Okay, so Benny che by
Benny Hashem Benny Abdulmutallab is all the same. So the summary is
that number one point is if you someone descends from Benny Hashem
they cannot accept Sikka why because Zika is the filth of
people's Well, that's number one.
Number two,
when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam forbade sadaqa for them.
Did he mean sadaqa Tilford Asada Khawaja or sadaqa totowa? And the
answer is he meant by that the sadaqa that is Weduc Zikr. We call
that as
good Quran causes sadaqa.
Prophets I said him called it sadaqa.
But Prophet also use the word Zika.
So what is min is Echo, as for subtle cosmic crew,
for them to accept sadaqa but that makes up to
Zika is what is meant here? That's number one, number two, number
three, are there preconditions to this and the answer is yes. The
precondition of edit Bates, I'm going to read it directly to here.
Nicole, my Hello this is the Sophie. How should the Sophie on
Shudehill Kibriya.
Severe mahalo are the Miata a Benny Hashem minha either all too
nice to have guna who Minh baits in Merle if they receive what they
deserve, from baits and mud, so if the Islamic Government has given
them a clump, the government forget Islamic of the government.
The Muslims are giving a halal bait what they deserve from the
clumps from the minima or from any other source. So if the government
is taking care of the poor members of edit baits, that's the
precondition of them not receiving Zika. However, the moment that the
government does not do this, like for example, Muslims here in the
West, and there's a poor person and they're from edit bait.
There's no government taking care of them. Now at this
point, like what does he say here?
For LM, your auto will Adara be Himmelfarb crew, auto minha Welter
omein of Dalu manyatta era him at this point they can accept the cat
not only can they accept sukka they go to the top of the list
is the author of dollar milk admit to him leaving me a volume. Okay.
So what he's saying here is that at that point they would take
priority to they go at the top of his account list, right? And it
wouldn't be called ACAD to be considered a gift.
It will be considered for them to be a gift. All right. So that's
the answer to that question. Let's take another question here.
Before we go to our guest today, is it forbidden to marry someone
who committed Zina? adultery fornication? Since Allah subhana
wa Zenni Lengow ilosone
The fornicating woman should not marry except another fornicator
This is a from Quran. So what is the meaning of this now?
If I know that a woman had a past, right, I know she has a past Let's
hypothetically say that.
I can't marry her. That's the question and the answer to that is
to begin with what deems somebody a fornicator that's the first
question and immediately what we eliminate is the rumor. The rumor
here in there or Yeah, you know, she used to go to clubs and she
before she was a Muslim she used to wear short dresses, or it's the
guy right? Oh, this guy used to always go to the club. We know
that guy, right? No, that's a rumor that's an assumption that's
not allowed.
What deems someone a fornicators to two things one of two things
are both one the widespread well known reputation like widespread
like no doubt about it. We know this gut. Like for example, they
say they have kids running around and they were never got married
before. So it's well known much cooler. No doubt about it. Someone
used to work as a prostitute. Okay.
What about number two? Number two, it was proven in court.
I pathetically we have a court. And they were proven to be a
person of Zina that committed Zina. Now here's another thing. We
ruled out the rumor, what else are we rolling out
to had punishment if they received the HUD punishment, it erases what
came before it, and therefore they're no longer deemed
categorized as fornicators. Okay. So that's two things are not
fornicators the one who is
we assume it, or there's a rumor. And number three is they received
the head for fornication. So what makes someone a fornicator? A well
known, like, you know, this person was oppressed. We know that we
know this guy. He's got kids everywhere. Okay, it's well known,
okay. Or two people. We all knew they live with each other.
Wouldn't a man and a woman live with each other? What are they
doing here? Not just splitting rent.
Okay, so those are the two or they were proven to be so in the court.
Now, as for the ruling of marrying one, let's say somebody was
established as a fornicator. What is the ruling for marrying them?
This is the second question now. The ruling for marrying them is
discouragement, not prohibited. Why is it discouragement number
because the reason is that the verse is deemed Some said it was
abrogated. The moment some of the automat said this is abrogated
Good. Then at that point, it downgrades to being speculative in
nature. All right. Who's saying this how she did the soup will
carry her Tez wiederum rotten Zania eaten a Matura in be
delicate
with a youth what are they had Erica? So he's saying it's it's a
prohibition in the spirit of discouragement rather than
sinfulness. Okay, spread this to your friends because many people
say oh no matter this convert, but I think maybe no, by the way,
you're not allowed to ask.
Okay.
Not ask not allowed to ask somebody. Hey, do you commit Zina?
Not to ask this question. You are allowed to ask, Do you have a
disease STD that will transmit to me once we marry that you're
allowed to ask? Now listen to this
sabotage later here, it's discouraged if it's proven, or its
fault widespread that the person is an adult or fornicator.
Okay,
What a mal may it's a Catalan mafia we mentioned this, just a
rumor about somebody is not does not render them a fornicator.
There is no discouragement on that. There's no discouragement on
marrying someone, not you this we're talking about by Sharia, you
personally may say no not coming near this person. But let's say
somebody was a boxer. Let's say somebody wasn't an athlete. Now
you can't have somebody that professional athlete you know
what, how they live? Let's say someone who's a rock star, and
then they become Muslim. They clean up their act now they're
wearing authentic goofy. Well, you know how they will still live?
Yeah, but that's just a rumor and an expectation and a speculation.
discard it. It's your choice, but you have no discouragement in the
city out to marry this person. So,
you feed do gut lie you feed you.
Okay, lie you feed, hermit Nikka home. It does not indicate the
prohibition to marry them. Leanna Nicole because we say el morado
lie and keyhole huffy, Halle Zina. Oh Anna Hubei and Elia. Okay, ban
on lil Alia.
It's a clarification of what is more appropriate, more appropriate
that US person who has a squeaky clean past marry a person with the
squeaky clean past, it's more appropriate that the rock star who
knows the world of the streets in the clubs who became awesome,
cleaned himself up and now he's worth open a cap
that he marries the woman who also used to go to clubs and she
converted she cleaned her act up. By the way, these days, we don't
even say converted. She just cleans her act up. She's Muslim
and she used to live that way. That's more they're going to
understand each other better. This is just all in recommendation. any
common sense not in religious rulings, Guy discussed this with
Mohammed bin if he does.
So from what I would have done if he doesn't I discussed the
previous question on the Zika of the Edit bait with shikigami. And
we went over this text from Hashi to disabilty. Alright, so again,
those are two questions in Maliki FIP. Right that some people have
been asking, and we're going over it now. Right? Here's another
question this time. It is a simple question in Aki, Ada. Now, here's
the thing with me, I'm not arguing anymore. I gotta tell you, this
isn't this is not going to be easy.
But I really want to follow magic and we're gonna get to our guest
right now.
But we have a very special guest because he's a young man who's in
the, in the world of Dawa and I really care about those young
people who are in the world of Dow okay.
So what we're talking about here is I'm not I love medic
statements. I'm gonna read some of these statements and get to the
last point before we go to their guests. Some of the statements
that medic talked about, and Hudson had busted he talks about
the early Muslims medic saw two people arguing and it's assumed
that he's arguing about religion, or arguing about Dean are going to
offer you to write
he stood up, he dusted off his shawl, put it back on and left and
he said anthem herb, you are war. What does he mean? You are war it
means this is the beginning of wars wars always begin with words.
Has an adversity before medic came upon people arguing he said these
are people who just are bored with a bad they're bored with worship,
they're bored with memorizing they're bored with doing the
right they're bored with Salah
and they found talking to be easier. It's easier to talk is
easier to talk
hard to joy about Okay
here's another one from a mimetic he says
where's it Where's
yesterday's Imam Malik. Here it is. What Kana Malik and Jaco Lu l
Mira well gee dal, fill me up will be Nudelman culpa labs, arguing
about religion
and debating our religion.
Essentially, that's all of the Twitter worlds 95% of Twitter's
argumentation. He says here, it removes it takes away the light of
knowledge from the heart of the slave.
Malik was asked someone said to Imam Malik. I know the Sunnah.
Or somebody knows the Sunnah. Should they argue on behalf of it?
Medic said No Say what you believe and move on. Let me say it here.
You know something that has been
discussed lately? Allah subhana which Allah says in the Quran,
Carla Koco one more time alone
He created you and what you do.
And he says, got claw lipo coalition, Allah is the Creator of
all things, okay? And what does that mean that includes our
actions bringing things out of non existence is solely in the power
of Allah. What we do is called CUSP we acquire it, how do I
acquire a created action by intending it? I intended right do
I intend or does Allah will this thing? The answer is Allah wills
that you intended it.
Allah wills that you intended where we get this from the Quran
we're meant to share guna in your shirt Allah, where do we get the
doctrine of caste? Lahoma cassava Twala Makita Sabbath ALLAH SubhanA
wa Tada says the soul gets what? Not what it creates Lahoma Calaca
No, Lucha Makassar but you get what you acquire. Right? And so we
know that no human being is a creator. You will never bring
anything out of non existence right now. In non existence right
now. Is a white mugs in front of me.
In front of me right in front of my eyes. It's a non existence
right now. Now. Boom, it exists on this plane of space now it exists,
is forbidden for anybody to believe that they're the one who
brought it into existence. Only Allah brings things into
existence. We make that now. In perception and everyday language,
yes, we do stuff and we're allowed to talk about that. We're allowed
to say you did it. He did it. You're responsible for you. I'm
gonna do this. By Allah's will. That's why Allah says say
Inshallah, okay, so yes, by everyday perception and language,
we do stuff but in reality, we don't do stuff. We are we are not
the creators of things. We are not the creators, Wallah who caught up
Hakuna Matata, we're not the creators of things. Okay, so
that's the point in Arpita. That's important to know that Allah
subhanaw taala
is
the sole doer and creator of things and what we possess is CASP
Alright, let's bring our guests on. We have a young man here
his name is Yousef ponders and I told you part of our philosophy of
getting guests. I like to bring in the young converts who are active
in the field of dow I like to know what's going on in that world. And
that's what we have today. Use of ponders let's bring him on. Smilla
Welcome to the Safina society nothing but facts live stream how
are you?
Is he muted? Oh, you're muted real quick.
Sound while while he was salam Rahmatullah
handler, how are you? So welcome to the to our live stream, why
don't we kick it off? Tell us about yourself your background,
how you came into Islam and work and then what kind of dabble work
that you do. Yes.
British mother is Polish Catholic, Father, Scottish Catholic, raised
as a Catholic, went to a Polish Sunday school and was baptized
Christian and all of that.
When I was about nine, my dad passed away, I sort of moved me
towards atheism, went to a secular school after that point, and just
sort of drifted away from the idea of God became quite hedonistic.
So I grew up like that for quite a while when traveling for a bit
around Asia. So it's got to spend a bit of time in like Buddhist
temples in Korea and in Thailand, and ended up running a bar in
Malaysia. And the island that I was running a bar on was mostly an
island. And they had the van playing in the morning, and in the
evening, and when we were like, getting ready to go to bed.
The Muslims will be waking up looking fresh. Well, you looked
quite the opposite. And, yeah, I had a few Muslim friends growing
up working as a youth and got into things like philosophy,
discussions on religion, ended up studying at a university
and just sort of like intra religious polemics.
And then eventually, like going through, like the process of
looking into all these different things, the only one that was
really ticking all the boxes, was Islam.
Especially with regards to like things like ta he'd
reading the Quran a couple of times, and sort of developing a
relationship with that, and reading about the life of the
prophet muhammad sallallahu
It's an M and the sabe. Right the law.
And yeah, and it just I sort of grew more and more and more
attached to Islam, more so than any other religion and eventually
one of the 24. So about 10 years ago now, I took my Shahada and
never looked back. So tell me something you What took you to
Malaysia of all places? It's just a vacation. No, it was an
accident, funnily enough. So I basically I decided that I wanted
to travel and go backpacking.
And I didn't really have a plan about where I wanted to go, I just
knew where I was going to begin. And I just thought, what I'll do
is because there's in 2012, in the spring, and I thought, I'll start
North only
just at the beginning of spring, when the weather's warm. And then
as I head south, when it gets towards winter time, I'll be at
the equator pretty much. And then I can sort of skip winter and just
enjoy Sunny. Yeah, so and so I began in South Korea, and then I
went from there to Taiwan. And it was just, I had no sort of
timescale, I was just like, I've got this amount of money, I'll
make it less as long as I can. And as I was going south, I was
supposed to go from Taiwan to Vietnam.
But for whatever reason, the flights wouldn't take me directly
there, I had to fly over Vietnam to Malaysia transfer and then go
back. But I messed up the visas. So when I got to Malaysia, they
wouldn't let me in Vietnam.
But then because as a British citizen, you get three months on
arrival for free in Malaysia is was I will just stay here. And so
then we just went exploring, we were in Kuala lumper, to begin
with bumped into someone that was going to so Michael Tioman Island,
and ended up going there.
It was just it was a bit of madness. It was like 18 months of
backpacking,
just sort of floating along, but about eight of them 18 months were
in Malaysia in particular. That's amazing. And that's really like
one of those ways that a lot of guys a person or and directs their
life through these little what we perceive to be as accidents. And
in fact, they're by design some Hana. Yeah, definitely. Now you
said checks the boxes, what are what were your boxes. So Tauheed,
specifically. So monotheism makes the most sense. And the emphasis
of on that, in Islam, also the character of Jesus Ali Salaam.
That played a huge role, because I was thinking about Jesus, whether
or not I believed he was alive, a real person. And specifically, I
was sort of looking at the three different approaches to him. So
the approach of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims, and
the one that the Muslim approach seemed to me to be the most
reasonable.
Specifically, especially if you're reading the Bible,
obviously, like, a lot of it is questionable about whether or not
it's authentic. But there are certain stories when you're
reading it. They don't make much sense when you're reading them
from like a Trinitarian perspective, but they start to
make a lot more sense from an Islamic one.
So that was like a huge part of it for me. And then, like I
mentioned, the psych, I come from a pretty, like rough background.
So we grew up in a council estate, which is like government funded
housing.
Most of me and my friends were like from single parent families.
So always someone in the family either addicted to drugs, or in
and out of prison or just not present.
So we had a pretty sort of
crappy or bright upbringing in this area. And then when I was
reading the Quran, a lot of the things that were quite
controversial, like the rulings, you know, halal, halal, and haram,
I was looking at my people and the people around me and I was asking,
would we be better or worse? If we were to implement Islam in our
lives? And the answer to the question would be, we'd be much
better off like my, like I said, my father died from a heroin
overdose. My uncle a year later, his brother from alcohol
poisoning.
We've had people in circles commit suicide, people that have gotten
into huge debts because of gambling, and they just have to
sort of lay low and low about and try and stay off the record.
You know, loans with interest causing huge problems.
Fifth, like stealing even among friends was quite an issue. I'd
had, like sort of parties with people that I thought were close
friends, and then valuable things would go missing out my house.
Yeah, so like, there was there was a lot of Mad sort of little
things. And I was looking at the Quran and the Sharia and I was
like, well, this, although it's controversial, I think it would
definitely make a lot of sense. If we were to believe this and
implement it as kosher, but it's controversial.
was one of the rules, maybe it would definitely motivate people
not to behave in this manner. And if they weren't even that manner,
I think we would be better off as a collective. So there's that. And
then the life of the Prophet Muhammad said, Listen, I'm
thinking about,
you know, like, is it more likely that he was telling the truth or
he was a liar, or I think I was watching a lot of videos on
YouTube at a time as well.
And these sort of arguments were being put forward, and then
looking at the life of the sahaba. And you know, the type of people
that they were, how Islam was able to spread the way that it did.
All of these things, there's quite a lot. But it was a long time of
looking into it, I started looking into it properly, when I was about
17.
And I didn't take charge at all, it was about 24. So it was about
seven years of thinking about it, looking into it, traveling,
talking to people, especially when I was running the bar.
I was talking to many people from many different backgrounds, as
someone who's like a bomb, and because it wasn't like a big
place, it was like a little shack on a beach.
And I was running it with some guy from Canada. And me and him were
just sort of sit there and, and talk to people in Malaysia, in
Malaysia.
And I had, I don't know if you know what firepower is, who is
fireboy never heard of it. So it's like,
Kevlar balls on the end of a chain that you set on fire, and you spin
them around. So I used to do that for like entertainment.
It was quite, it was an interesting exchange, but it
would, it would attract a lot of different kinds of people. And you
just end up doing that and then sitting down and people want to
come talk to you quite a lot because you just random white guy
that plays with fire. And there was part of the whole process, I
guess, in sort of talking to Jews and Christians and Hindus and
pagans and atheists and misogyny, other men studying philosophy, and
a part of that was philosophy of religion as well. All of these
sort of really developed my certainty in Islam. Mashallah,
wonderful, really interesting story. Now, if you're on
Instagram,
you should be having fun volume, this volume should be good. But to
hop over to YouTube, yet 140 viewers here on YouTube hop over.
So you could see both screens, number one, and you can ask
questions number two. All right, so here's my first question. So
you entered Islam? And what was your method of learning at that
time?
When I first take shahada, yeah.
So I was quite isolated. To be honest, I didn't really most of it
was just reading the Quran. So I read it a couple of times by
myself.
And then shot going over that reading, like, you know, this era
of the Prophet Muhammad, Salah Salem.
And then just YouTube videos, different articles, that kind of
thing. But for two years, I just sort of kept myself to myself, and
didn't really bother getting involved in the community at all.
I didn't really like it either, because I think I can.
I went to a mosque once with a friend who was a Muslim.
And I said, Whatever you do, just don't tell anyone. Like I just
want to come in. And there was something about the end of days,
that awesome talk and the chef was familiar with me as a non Muslim.
And he knew me and my friend. And I just said to my friend, they'll
say anything. And so we went to go say hello to the chef. And then my
friend said something and then he was like, oh Masha, Allah, and
you've made an announcement, and then millions of people came
running over. And I just didn't enjoy that at all. I had a pretty
much a massive anxiety attack. I don't like
huge crowds of people sort of gathering around you. Were talking
about London, right?
This Manchester, Manchester. Okay. Yeah.
So yeah, I didn't quite enjoy that. I think after that, I just
avoided going to the mosques. Yeah. And that was for maybe two,
two and a half years.
And eventually, I ended up getting married. And then when we found
out that we were going to have a daughter.
I just went sort of super practicing at that point, because
I think there was a bit of a transition to although I believed
in Islam, and I took shahada.
I was on my own, I didn't have a teacher or anything.
And so I was pretty gehele for the most part.
And I hadn't really established the prayer my life properly for
quite a while and because I was on my own, I was struggling trying to
learn the Arabic and all of that, but then when I found out that I
was going to have a daughter, I went looking for a teacher and
found a chef in Manchester.
Him and the people that he worked with took me under their wing and
they invited me to their community center. I went there every
Saturday for about two three years and
Just sort of learning the basics of EDA and
all of that. And, and then once that sort of concluded because
they had these formal classes, the chef would give me sort of private
lessons as well, like one to one. And then eventually, there was a
couple of us that will join these classes.
And yeah, slowly, slowly sort of built that up, and then reading
different books as well on my own and looking into a pay them or
broadly, that kind of thing. It's amazing how having a child
transforms a person. Yeah, person will won't care much for himself,
you bring the same thing, and you put it on their child's all of a
sudden, he doesn't like it, or he really wants it. Right. So really
having kids totally transforms a person. And that's why whenever I
see some young person doing something, like just give it time,
when they marry and have a kid, they're going to stop all this
nonsense in the grow up. And y'all start, you know, to be different.
And also, a lot of times
a person's arrogance goes down. When they have, the older their
kids get, their arrogance really should go down. Because one of the
things one of the wisdoms of children as they grow up, they
have their own views. Right. And you realize, hold on, I can't even
convince my own kids on certain things. Right. So I'm like, just
just either just my views are not universal, you know, some things
you hope that, like Islam itself, that should be able to be
transmitted, but your specific likes and dislikes, all of a
sudden you realize in your own home, someone doesn't agree with
you, right? So
having kids is really part of a person's polishing, it polishes
you off, and it it, it pushes it cuts off your edges. And it also
makes the person realize what's really what really matters and
what doesn't. So that's an amazing point. Now let's shift over to
something else. You wrote a book,
Niall ism.
Tell us about that book. Like, how did that come about? Then what's
that all about? That's how I'm going to use the word accident
again, although there are no accidents. But yeah, so it was
kind of
unintentional on my part, at least. So I could I mentioned I
studied philosophy at university.
It was a broad subjects was in Manchester. And we used to pretty
much everything. So it was studying like metaphysics and
ethics, and religion and ontology, all of this different, crazy
stuff. And one thing in particular that really interested me was
Nietzsche, because I come from an atheistic background.
And a lot of his thinking, sort of resonated with my history. I was
interested genuinely in the feelings of meaninglessness.
And I think within especially sort of cancer, state communities or
poor communities,
there can be this sort of battle with nihilism, or the feeling that
life is meaningless.
You know, and addiction and sort of poverty and all these kind of
things. And these, a lot of these things end up leading to things
like depression and suicide. And having a lot of experience with
that myself. And with people around me. It was a subject that
sort of really caught my interest as I ended up doing my
dissertation, on nihilism in particular, and the meaning of
life, and so on. So far, we weren't necessarily from an
Islamic perspective, at the time when I was doing the degree. But
then later on, once I finished university, I was still really
interested in the subject I carried on looking into it and
sort of developing my thoughts on the whole thing.
I started a YouTube channel, because I wasn't really sure what
I wanted to do.
And once you finish uni, you've got to think, Okay, now, I need a
job.
And the job Senate was like, Well, what do you want to do? And I was
like, no, no. And they said, Well, if you want to become self
employed, if you write it was like a business plan, we can review it.
And if we think it's worthwhile, or if it's feasible, we'll support
you, you don't have to look for a job and you can just develop
yourself. And so it's okay, so I wrote the craziest thing I could
think of, I was like, I'm gonna start a YouTube channel, I want to
write a book, I want to do essays, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do
that. And I thought they would just reject it. But you know, I
don't have a law they didn't. And so I started my little YouTube
channel,
and started making little videos and writing little essays. And
then eventually, like, I was sending these different days. And
no one was really responding or engaging with it apart from
randomly one night. So what I had read an article that I wrote, and
he loved it and email back and he wanted to speak to me and so we
ended up exchanging numbers.
And we just sort of hit it off really quickly, became really good
friends. And then he invited me on to his channel to talk about my
dissertation on the meaning of life.
And about the the other article that you'd read
So we were just sort of engaging in that. And
like from sort of developing a connection with him, I ended up
developing connections with other guys from like aI era and, you
know, people that are sort of connected to them through YouTube.
And
eventually what happened is, is, obviously, Hamza sources used to
be the CEO of IRA, but then they, he left and set up the Sapiens
Institute. And when that happens, what I had recommended me to Hamza
sources. And so they approached me to write an article for them. And
originally, they just said, do something on nihilism. And the
target was about 3000 words.
But I got a tendency to ramble. So 3000 words turned to 10,000, which
10 to 30,000. Wow, really done. And so I had to like, say, this
has gone a bit sort of over the top, because everything sort of
opens and opens and opens and opens. And there's, there's way
too much to say on the subject. And so I just said, I've done this
amount, how I'll give it now you pack, publish it as a part one,
and then I'll do the next bit as a part two.
And, and then that just got crazy as well. And it was like this is
getting really silly. Now it's huge. And I've sort of expanded
part one as well. And like, it's just become ridiculous. He said,
How about them, rather than doing it as two separate essays, we'll
just put them together, and we'll publish it as a book. And then I
was like, Well, if there's gonna be a book, I might as well like,
ramble a bit more. And so a lot of extra little bits and sort of
accidentally gotten caught, developed into a book on nihilism.
But from the perspective of Islam this time, what causes it? What
are the consequences? And how does Islam combat it? With regards to
the specific issues that I sort of lay out in the beginning of the
book? So that's kind of how that happened by accident. Good. So you
have a Sapiens Institute
publication on nihilism. So why don't you give us like, so that's
how the book came about? Yeah. What about
your actual concepts of
nihilism, things related to that tell us a little bit about that.
Isn't nihilism, it's quite a broad subject, which I ended up writing
a book about it. But it can be broken up into a number of
categories. But mainly its focus is the idea that life is
meaningless,
that there's no purpose or function behind anything.
And personally, I feel that atheism sort of leads to that.
This idea that, you know, if there is no Creator of everything at
bottom, if you take like a naturalistic perspective, if it is
just snooker balls hitting snooker balls,
that there is there can't be purpose to these things, because
everything sort of transpired
by accident, or randomly. And if that is the case, in the universe
doesn't have any meaning, meaning, then by greater reason, every
single part of that universe will also not have any meaning or
purpose, correct. Yeah.
And so you've got like the sort of cosmological nihilism, which is
the grand one, everything, the existential nihilism, which is the
sort of the individual one.
And then you have what was the first one you said, cosmological,
which is the unit universe, and then existential, which is the
individual job.
And then you've got moral nihilism or every theory, which has to do
with the idea that, you know,
ethics is meaningless or ethical discussions, morality is
meaningless, there is no such thing as good or evil. And then
you've got epistemological nihilism, which is no such thing
as truth, or you can't attain true knowledge or knowledge at all. And
then there's like a political nihilism, which is sort of
popularized in Russia during the Soviet era.
It was mainly about the idea that, like politics is, you know, that
especially modern politics, somewhat pointless and, and that
sort of led to other sort of ideas and, and the back and forth with
that vacuum. But it's a very, very broad subject and me being someone
who was sort of raised as an atheist, one that as an atheist,
so raised as a Catholic and then leaving and becoming atheists.
You know, it was something that really, really impacted me when I
was thinking about these things, and I was a bit of a hedonist. So
when I was younger,
I liked drinking alcohol. It was a bit of a pothead, and I engaged in
that sort of cycle.
But again, like the more you engage with these things, the less
of an impact they have on you. And the more you need to sort of have
any sort of a feeling like when you when I was because my family
is Scottish and polish, you start drinking quite early.
I think in I think
The first time I remember really, really getting drunk was the
millennium, which would have been 2007. About.
I don't know, even younger than that.
We probably yes, six, we broke into
a warehouse.
Obviously I was, at the time, we lived a different life. And we, we
found loads of alcohol, we stole it. And then we gave it to all the
kids on the estate. So we all got really drunk together. And we
would have been about 12 years old. Not even that about it nine
or 10, I was nine, and my brother was a year and a half younger than
me. So he's about a year, and there were some kids averaging
six.
And we didn't need much like we maybe had one bottle, and then we
were absolutely off our heads. But then by the time I was running
that bar, for example, I could drink a lot. And it not really
affect me. And you need more and more and more, it was the same
with the weed like you start smoking a tiny bit when you're
younger. And like it hits you really badly. But then by the time
I was like, 20, I was having to smoke a lot in order to have the
same amount of impact. And it's just, it's unsustainable, like it
just grows and grows and grows and ends up costing too much.
The thing I like to sort of use as an example is you know, Pinocchio,
do you remember the original one? Yeah. Then he goes to the end of
fun, or whatever it's called. Yeah, Pleasure Island. Island.
Yeah. On this John is selling it to them as well. I think he's got
the name honest. How you not trust them.
And we kind of like Pinocchio, we went to Pleasure Island, and we're
doing all of these things is an expression of our freedom. So we
were drinking, we were smoking weed chasing girls, we're doing
this, we're doing that. Because we were free, and why not. And if you
remember, in Pinocchio, they're doing all these things, they get
to do what they want. And they see anyone who tells them to do
anything, anyone who sets rules upon them as an oppressor. And
eventually, all of the kids turn into donkeys or they make asses
out of themselves. And when they become donkeys, they become
enslaved by the master of Pleasure Island. And I was watching that
happen to me to my friends, sort of people around me, all of the
things that we were engaging with.
In order to like, express our freedom to have fun, slowly became
things we would depend upon. So we became addicted to alcohol, we
became addicted to drugs, we became addicted to women, we
became addicted to this and to that.
And we became slaves to it, it no longer was something that was fun
to us. And like the donkey's at the end, it was something that was
a source of pain or a way of trying to deal with pain, but it
was only really a temporary fix. And so many of my friends became
alcoholics, some became addicted to drugs, some of them died as a
result of that.
It basically, you start to feel the nihilism of it of this cycle.
And people, everyone seems to just be working the same jobs going on
this sort of, I'm just earning money during the week and
sacrificing myself, in order to
spend all of that money on the weekend, on a night out, and on
this and on clothes, and on cars, and all women on this, and that
the other. And eventually, it all just starts to feel rather
meaningless.
And for me, in particular, I guess that I went traveling, the
traveling was more as an attempt to sort of run away from that
cycle. And to forget this sort of weekly routine and Living for the
Weekend kind of thing. And so I just saved up like crazy for nine
months, I packed my bag, and then just left.
And but then even that sort of was not necessarily good for me.
Because I became addicted to the chaos, I became addicted to the
lack of structure, the lack of plan. And eventually that runs
out, I run out of money, and I need to come back.
And again, like trying to get back into that meaningless cycle of the
general talk that the average person that comes from communities
like I was raising, sort of talk about,
I just couldn't deal with it anymore. And it just all seemed
rather silly. Everyone was sort of stuck in the present on the dunya
on things that turned to dust.
And I was constantly asking the question, is there not more to
life than than this? Or is life really this meaningless and this
pointless?
And so, like, that's obviously when I'm sort of engaging with
other religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, Islam, my
original religion, Christianity, Judaism, and thinking about the
claims that these things or these
these ideas were making, which ones made sense and which ones
didn't?
And the more I was sort of thinking about atheism, the more
it led me to these ideas of nihilism and meaninglessness, and
the more I could see it
sort of
seeping through everyone around me. Yeah. And yeah, it just,
there's a melancholy in that exploration, but it's sort of
sought me in. And I find it incredibly interesting, like
mapping that out and trying to figure it out. And so, you know, I
sort of, I guess what led me to be quite interested in, you know, the
existential philosopher, Nietzsche and things like that. And then as
well with religious ideas and religious propositions, we know
one of the things you said about
these, these pleasures becoming sources of enslavement, that's
actually lends a lot of meaning to the, what we find in often in
Quran and Hadith, that a person must love Allah and His messenger
and striving for their sake more than anything else. And people
oftentimes wonder, like, why would why would that be the case? Even
my own self? And the answer to that is that
in the soul of the human being, what Allah is telling us, I made
your soul, I know exactly what benefits your soul, and that at
the very core, there's a core of our hearts and our souls is not
filled by anything except Amen. Yep. And then, but once that's
filled, then you can enjoy everything without becoming a
slave to it.
Yeah, definitely. And that's the beauty of it.
The Quran sort of makes mention of this a little bit, have you seen
those who take their desires as they got. And then the the concept
of Ibadah in Islam is also quite interesting in conjunction with
this, that Ibadah is a holistic thing. It's anything that you do
for Allah subhanaw taala. So even if you smile, or give charity, if
you do this for the pleasure of Allah, for the pleasure of your
Lord, it becomes a bad day becomes an act of worship. And then when
you're reading this verse about those who make their own desires
as their gods, it raises the question, okay, so what is this
idea of God? And what is worship in relation to these things? And
because what they're doing is seen as an act of worship to something
that they see as a god, it sort of paints about as this general
thing.
And then you ask yourself, Okay, so the human being everyone has
this sort of value hierarchy, everyone has like a pyramid of
things. And you cannot not have it in the same way that Allah says,
you know, everyone has a Qibla, to which they turn, like, you can't
not face a direction, if you like, you know, if someone saying why
are you facing the car, but don't, don't face any direction is that
well, I can't I have to face east west, south, like, I can't be
directionless. Yeah, and in the same way, you can't be without
values. And Allah subhanaw taala, essentially, should be at the top
of that, why? Because Allahu Akbar, he is the greatest, He is
the Creator, the Sustainer, of everything, everything is
dependent upon him. And so he is the only thing that is worthy of
being at the top of your value hierarchy, the thing that you
should value the most. But if you don't value him, it doesn't mean
you don't have a value hierarchy. True, you still have things that
you value the most. And if it's not Allah, then essentially it has
to become something that Allah has created, as to become something
that is in the dunya. And so the atheist, whether or not they
recognize it, keeping in this, you know, this broad idea of what a
bad it is, as the the what you do, for the thing that you value the
most. If the thing you value the most is yourself, your own
desires, you know, the objects of your desires, a woman power, a
job, money, whatever it is, essentially, those things dominate
your mind and your soul and your heart. And they sit at the top of
your value hierarchy. And those are the things that you when the
second you wake up in the morning, you think about every action you
do you do it in relation to that, in order to achieve it, if it's a
woman, like you dress the job, you get the things you buy, all of it
is in in terms of, you know, what is she going to like? What will
make her happy? What will please her? Or if it's power, you know,
what is it that I can do that will give me more of that? Whatever it
is, essentially, that thing has become your God. Yeah. And that is
the thing that controls and directs you. And if it's an
anything in the dunya, eventually it's going to turn to dust, it's
not going to be something that's going to benefit you. Yeah. And it
will be lost. Whereas Allah subhanaw taala is the eternal is
the one with the perfect names and the perfect attributes. And he's
the only one that's befitting of that position of being the thing
that you value the most.
And anything other than that leaves a vacuum in the hat. It
leads this
I like make a reference to films, you know, the Pirates of the
Caribbean. Yep, there's a scene in the first one with Captain
Barbossa where
Talking about the curse of the treasure. And he's, he's
describing it and he's like, you know, whenever I eat an apple, it
turns to dust in my mouth. And I can't enjoy a drink. It just flows
through my body and just falls out.
And what was funny about that scene is that that is, that's the
predicament of the son of Adam, as that's, that's a human issue. It's
not just these pirates that have been cast because of their greed.
It is essentially what all of us have to deal with is this.
Everything, you know, the law of diminishing returns, you know, you
can engage with things in life. But you know, the pleasures wear
off, you can get a new phone, a new car, a new this and do that.
But eventually it stops having an impact. And people will give only
and the Hadith sort of makes mentioned this as well, Adam, at
least the lamb is greedy, he wants or the son of Adam is greedy, he
wants a mountain of gold. And if he achieves it, he's not
satisfied. He wants another, and another and another. And this
links to these ideas a lot. I think anybody who's thoughtful,
has to have come across this. I remember when I was young, the the
best thing you could possibly get as a pair of new sneakers, right?
And you get these pair of new sneakers, and you look at them all
night. And sometimes you even sleep with them. And then
you go to school, you monitor every make sure no one nothing
touches it and you don't even walk right. You just walk like this. So
you don't bend them you tiptoeing. Yeah. And then
weeks later, you know, you realize you look at your shoes. And you're
like, they just like the old ones, they're all beat up now. And
they're all bent and bent in the middle, and everything's all
messed up and beat up now. So. So it's you gotta you realize, like,
Well, I was so pumped about it, I was so excited about it. Now, it's
nothing. Any other pair of clothes that you get, right, you hang it
up, for the first time, after two weeks.
It's all completely like any other garment that you had. And you
continue making these observations. And a lot of young
people.
Their life was at some point was sports, like literally a life of
sports? And what are the numbers? The
observations I really remember was that, like any most young people,
my life was sports. So my, my, my sport that I used to watch,
religiously, and like new every player in the league and every
statistic.
And I realized one day that when the game is over, I'm like,
completely down. And it's not like the era of YouTube where you could
watch past stuff, and people commenting 24/7 No, if it wasn't
on TV, you're not watching anything. There's nothing. So once
the game was over on a Sunday, you know, like, two o'clock game or
three o'clock game ends at six o'clock. Now it's nighttime, now
you got school next day was so depressing, right? And
modern kids, they don't recognize this, because you can watch
YouTube all day, and commentary all day. But I thought to myself,
Why am I torturing myself?
I'm totally torturing myself with this attachment. I'm attached to
something that constantly comes to an end. Every time it comes to an
end, you're torturing yourself. So you got to get yourself attached
to something that you can have access to all the time. Yeah. And
that's exactly if you think about it, that's just a thought process.
But if you think about how Prophet Ibrahim taught his people,
about animism, worship of the sun and the moon in the stars, he
said, you don't have access to these things. 24/7 If you love the
sun, you don't have access to it all the time. If you love the
moon, if your worship is the moon, you don't have access to it all
the time. And so I think this concept is built into the human
being.
You always want to feel
you always want to feel good at every single moment, you want to
feel some kind of meaningfulness, but if you put your meaningfulness
in a sport, there's a time where you have to stop playing that
sport. And stop watching that sport. Put your thing in clothes,
your clothes gets old.
In even in in a person, that person stops being new to you.
Right their face, your mind gets your eyes get accustomed to their
face. Yeah, but the flaws become apparent. And that perfection
diminishes and yeah, the flaws become apparent or they, they they
snap at you one time and that's it. It's done. When
the the, you're being enamored with this person is Infatuation is
done with, they don't reply to you once, right? All of a sudden you
hate them. So or the infatuation is gone. So that's like a process
I think everybody people naturally go through. And that's why it's so
important to realize why what it means to love a love more than
anything else. No
Hola touch SUTA Toba,
the Prophet and striving for their sake. And the reason is that you
don't know anything about Allah without a message. Right? You
can't observe your way to the truth. You can't rationalize your
way to the truth, it has to be given to you through a message.
And then if you do love it, then you actually have to, you got to
work to preserve it. And that's where the striving for Allah sake
has to come before everything else. I like to liken this to a
building. Right? Like we're having this talk right now. The top
priority of this live stream can't actually be the question to the
guest. It's got to be electricity, right? The top priority, even
though we might not think about it too much, but in reality, the top
priority of this live stream is a electricity, be time see the tech,
otherwise we don't have a live stream, then after all, that's
taken care of only then can you enjoy the conversation with a
guest. Right? Yeah. And it's the same thing with the human being
you need to have have to, we have to build this stuff up the
spiritual
found infrastructure
where your heart is regularly filled with, with dimension and
belief in your Creator. Now, let's go to your conclusion. What is
what is the conclusion like in your in your book.
So the conclusion is, is that Islam is a valid cure to the
poison that is nihilism. And then I go through basically everything
in terms of what has been outlined in the book,
and show how Islam is an antidote to all of these things. So the
idea of, you know, the issue with knowledge, the issue with ethics,
issues with,
you know, the, the existential and cosmological meaning and
everything. When you're reading the book, the Quran,
Allah subhanaw taala makes it very clear that the he has not made
these things in jest, that the universe has been created, and you
have been created with a purpose, and how to fulfill that and what
to do and how to protect yourself from certain evils. And people
sort of, you know, they think, in this sense of meaninglessness,
that they should just go out into the world and just enjoy it YOLO,
that kind of stuff. But that in that is not the antidote that they
think they're going to find.
Whereas with Islam, because that kind of life ends up being more of
a roller coaster. People are trying to attain, like the peaks.
You know, they're trying to get the highs and they're trying to
get the rush, but there's always a drop, there's always they're
called peaks for a reason is you get to the top is the only way to
go from there is down. Yeah. And the down, the higher you go, the
further you can fall. And once you go down everything, then it's
about trying to get to that peak again. Yep. Whereas Islam is more
about learning to be content. Yeah, there are ups and downs. But
rather than trying to search for these, these high peaks, it's more
flat. And there's a joy that comes out of that there is a pleasure
there is a sense of peace and tranquility. With not constantly
chasing these things and not being attached to the highs and, and not
pushing away the downs. But being someone who submits. The root of
Muslim is the one who submits to the will of Allah. And there's the
Hadith as well, that sort of encapsulates this, that everything
is good for the believer. Yeah, everything is good for the
believer if good befalls him. He's thankful. And he says
Alhamdulillah, and so it is good for him. And if bad or hardship
hits him, he is patient. And he submits. And so it is good for
him. And this really encapsulates I think, generally, the the
antidote, which is Islam in particular, not just because it
offers these things, because people would argue, I guess that
things like worship or moving away from the dunya these kinds of
things, you can find them in other religions. The other point I tried
to make is that Islam also makes sense. In terms of Tawheed. It
doesn't suffer from the same issues as Trinitarianism, or
politics. And for example, with the conception of Isa Allissa
them, it's not a contradictory one, or it's not,
you know, an unfavorable one or an unjustified one like with the Jews
or with the Christian.
It's, it's a complete package. Not only does it offer
spiritual medicine, but it's also rational. It's also it makes
sense. It's practical. It's, you know, it offers you a shield from
things in the same way, for example, and people they talk
about these restrictions.
They see Islam sometimes just a list of do's and don'ts. And
they're like, there's so many rules, there's so many rules. It's
so restrictive. And then they think because there are rules. And
because there are these restrictions, that that somehow
means that every Muslim is going to be a copy paste of each other,
everyone's just going to be identical because we're Muslim.
And we have to follow this strict list of rules. But it doesn't
follow from that, that you become identical. So you look at the
Muslim community, and they're very different, despite all following
the rules, in the same way that you know, chess is very strict,
each piece has got a couple of things you can do with it. It
doesn't really go beyond that. But every game is completely unique,
despite the fact that a great exemplary strict ruling every
every sports like that, right. Yeah, exactly. And you have these
strict rules, but every game is different. It's not, it's not
going to be the same. And so these these rules, they're there to
protect you. And in the same way, for example, like,
we've got children. They're not, they don't, they're not big
thinkers, they don't transcend the immediate. It's like, you know,
they eat candy, they chocolate ice cream, and it's like, oh, it's
tasty. That means it's good. So I want it give me more. I'll just
live on this, please. Thank you. It's amazing. And you give them
broccoli, or sprouts, or carrots or something good for them and
Yak. This is disgusting. It doesn't feel nice. It doesn't
taste nice. Therefore, I don't want it Don't give me that ever.
And trying to explain to like a three year old, a five year old
six year old, like, No, we can't just have you live on candy, or
chocolate or sweets or ice cream. You can have a little bit every
now and then. But we've you've got to have a limited amount. And I
know you don't like your carrots and your vegetables and your peers
and your broccoli. But you have to We because there's goodness in it.
And they're like why Why can't I and it's what do you mean, it's
bad? I taste it. And it's good. It's pleasure. You know, I feel I
feel nice. And then even if you were trying to explain to them,
Well, you know, if you eat too much, you might get diabetes you
like might fall off this, that the other you could become obese. They
don't they? And they're like, Well, my legs haven't fallen off.
I don't have diabetes. And I again, oh, look, you know, I only
get goodness out of this. I only feel pleasure. Where is this
disease? Where is this badness you talk off, I don't see it. And
every time they eat it, because the effects are slow. And they're
creeping it, it takes a while for it to take its impact. So they
don't see it. And in the same way, it's like, where's the goodness? I
eat broccoli? And it just tastes bad? Where's this? Goodness? I
don't see it. No immediate goodness. Exactly. And when we get
bigger, and we become older, we're still sort of like that. Yeah,
like, we still like maybe the sphere of consideration gets a
little bit bigger. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not
all encompassing. And so in the same way, you know, people, they
get bigger and use it you hear this a lot in modern political
discourse. It's like, what's the harm? It doesn't? It's not hurting
anyone? Why can't this person just commit Zina? Why can't this person
just practice this or that or the other? It's not harming anyone.
But implicit in that claim, is that they've drawn a line around
the experience, they only think so far, and they're not thinking
about how these things have a huge impact on society. How underlying
these acts, are certain assumptions that, you know, that
do have huge impacts on a society, not just immediately, not just in
a couple of years, but over generations. And you know, what a
really good example of that, for example, is the birth rates. Yeah,
you're just like Korea being, like a massive
sort of example of where things can go wrong, that if a society is
built, and its economy is built on this idea of constant growth, and
like, you're only going to have financial growth or financial
success, if there is supply and demand, and that supply and demand
comes from people, and Korea in particular, has a birth rate, I
think 0.7 Which means in one generation, they're gonna more
than half. Wow, that's insane, which is really crazy. And what's
their immigration? They don't really have it. They've
got a little bit of an immigration, but it's not. It's
not huge. They're quite, it's what Aryan like so they only really
marry and reproduce within their own race. They don't really extend
beyond that. I think it's something like 90% or more of
Koreans will only marry another Korean.
But then as well as that they're not. They're just choosing not to
have children.
You've got the introduction of the dual income family. People keep
putting it off. They're like, Oh, I have a child much later on much
later on much later on. Or how can I bring a child into this world
and get towards this there are anti natalist, so they'll just put
it off beyond where it's reasonable. Women when they get to
the age of 30, it sounds horrible, but births are referred to as
geriatric births at that point, wow. They've used over and over
80% of their eggs, I think maybe 90% it becomes much harder to have
children
In an even if you do, there's much greater risks. And people are
just, they're so obsessed with freedom. Now they don't want
children, but then they're not seeing that the long term
consequences of this could be huge. Because the the trend, the
society itself, transforms, it goes from being bottom heavy. What
I mean by that is you have more young than you do elderly, and the
young support the elderly. And it's easy for them to do so.
Because there's so many of them. So if you've got like a child like
a family, mom and dad have seven children, it's much easier for
seven children to look after Mom, mom and dad, very easy when they
split the bed in between themselves. But if you have one
child, looking after mom and dad, is incredibly difficult, because
now this one child has got to look after two people. And not just
that if mom and dad's brothers and sisters and your aunties and
uncles didn't have any children. Now the burden on you is to look
after not just your own parents, your child was in your family.
It's an inverted pyramid. Yes. And this becomes a huge burden on the
younger. And this is why in places like Japan, now they're talking
about things like euthanasia as a solution to this. And the other
issue is, is that if your economy is based on supply and demand, and
you lose people think about house prices, why house price is so
expensive?
What is it that makes them cost so much? It's because you have more
buyers, and you have sellers, and there's more people, maybe one
house goes up for sale? And there's 10 or 20 people fighting
to buy that house? Because there's more buyers than there are
sellers? The competition is on the buyer. Yeah, yeah. And it's the
the house will cost as much as the the, you know, the highest bidder
is willing to pay. If someone's willing to pay a million pound
that cost the house costs a million pounds. But if you've got
a shrinking population, yeah, because the housing market as
well, we're saying we've not got enough houses, we've not got
enough houses, we need to build more, we need to build more. But
that's only going to work if the population continues to incorrect.
There are no buyers, eventually, everything's going to dip,
including innovation, there's no reason to innovate. Yes. And so
what happens is, is that eventually, if like, for example,
in Korea, if they're struggling for houses, that's not going to be
the case for much longer, if they keep building, it's completely
pointless, why? Because in a generation, their population will
literally have insane if it was one. For every two people, there
was one child, if you've got 100 People in in generation one,
you've only got 50 in generation two trays. And so there's a huge
decrease. It's even less than that. So four out of every, you
know, if you've got 1000 people,
what's a bit of wasting, if you've got whatever it is, it's less, you
know, if you get
the population of 10 million people, you're gonna go down not
to 5 million people, that's half, you're gonna go less, like bit
like almost 4 million people. Right? And it's excellent. Because
if it can, if that pattern continues, and it's not to say
that it will, because insha, Allah, Islam will take hold or
traditional values will take hold, and they'll move away from the
thinking that they have at the moment. So something that entices
them towards having children. The issue is, is that the values that
they have, which are like the popular Western, liberal, secular,
they don't motivate people to want to have children? Yeah. Why?
Because people are obsessed with freedom. We were talking about
Pinocchio, before this idea, to be free of tyranny, to be away from
the you know, the clutches of tradition, the rules, regulations,
we don't want that we just want to be free. And having children is a
sacrifice of your time, your energy and your effort. And if you
have children, you don't have the freedom you had before that. And
anyone who's a parent knows this. There's a saying, I remember who
said it. But the greatest tragedy is the unlived lives of the
parents.
As because once you have children, your life is no longer your own.
Your resources are no longer your own. Your time is no longer your
own. You're constantly having to take into consideration these
other human beings. Yep. And for someone who values freedom, more
than anything else, yet, sacrifices that sacrifice off that
freedom is seen as a bad. Yeah, you were talking about, you know,
the the value hierarchy. What is it that the Western are constantly
talking? Like even when they went to war with the Middle East when
they went to war with the Muslims? What did they say? What did George
Bush say? They hate our freedoms, they hear that everything for them
is framed around this notion of freedom, freedom, liberty,
liberty, you know, you live in the United States, you got you've got
the Statue of Liberty, everything's on, everyone's going
on about liberty. And that's what they've been exporting. With
secularism. They've been exporting liberty and democracy across the
world. And what we're seeing now
Is the consequences of that. What we're seeing now is that, you
know, they, no one wants children anymore. Because it takes their
liberties away. And you can't convince them of that. And when
their parents get older, they don't want to look after them.
Why? Because it takes their liberty away. So they'll throw
them away into one old people's homes, or they'll try to motivate
them, like you see in certain parts of Europe. Is it Denmark or
Holland, I can't remember, we're in Japan, where suicide is a huge
problem. You know, they, they're motivating people, they're saying,
you've become a burden, you might as well end your life. But I think
it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. And they will feel
the negative consequences of it. And so when people say, Oh, what's
the harm? It's not harming anyone. The thing is, these practices,
many of the practices that are forbidden, they lead either like,
if we're taking into consideration a certain community. That way what
is entailed in that is not procreation. Yeah. Yeah. And I
don't know to what degree you're in the US, I'm guessing you're
gonna miss reach. So
it's literally extinction is the result? Yes.
They do. They're not going to procreate. They're not going to
increase the population. So for that particular group, there's
there is no, there's a small community of them that might do
but it's not common. Yeah. Where they may engage in some sort of
scientific endeavor to have, you know, a baby implanted within them
or they may adopt, but it's not the majority. It's a tiny
percentage of them. And then when you look at Zina, what is the most
common outcome of Zina? Well, most of Zina, they will use
contraception. They're not look most of Zina most
extra marital engagement between people does not lead to children,
because they use condoms, the morning after pill, abortion.
And if for whatever reason a child manages to survive these obstacles
and come into being, there's still the option of giving them up for
adoption, or if abortion, yeah, or abortion, even in later stages.
And if for whatever reason a child manages to survive all of these
obstacles, they will maybe have one child, recognize how difficult
it is, recognize how much of a sacrifice it is, maybe try to pull
that off on grandma or granddad or babysitters, or there's certainly
other on the schooling system, so that they they can gain as much
freedom as possible back. But a lot of them will say, I'm never
having another kid. Yep. Which is why the the average is one point
something generally, yeah, because people, a lot of people will have
one kid, they'll recognize how much of a sacrifice it is. And
then they won't bother to have another, and then you'll have a
few that will have many. And if you look in places like the UK,
and the US as well, the conversation is constantly about
immigration. Like in the UK, for example, we had Brexit, the whole
thing about Brexit was centered around this idea of immigration.
And we're in a bit of a predicament, because our economy
is dependent upon growth. But our population is refusing to have
children. And I think we average about 1.6 1.7. So it's a lot
higher than it is in Korea. But I think the only reason it's that
high at all is because of immigration, because we have
immigrant families that come here and have lots of children. And the
people are not taking into consideration, but they'll
complain about it. They say all these you know the Muslims are
coming over, they're going to populate us and say, Well, yeah,
that's a two part problem in it. One part of that problem of AC is
a problem. The Muslims don't. One part of the problem is is that
yes, Muslims have lots of children. Immigrants have lots of
children, people that come from traditional family backgrounds,
have lots of children. But another part of that problem is you're not
having children. Yeah, you're rigid. Even if immigration didn't
come. And the Muslims didn't arrive in your shores, you would
still have the same problem. You would still be shrinking. Yeah,
you would still require some something. Yeah. And the other
issue is people don't want to do a lot of the jobs that immigrants
will do. Yeah, when Brexit happened, we had a huge problem.
People weren't going into the fields picking strawberries
anymore. Yeah, we ran a lorry drivers because most of them were
Polish. And like there was there's a lot of jobs that the indigenous
population are not willing to do because they see themselves as too
good for that job. Yeah, they see themselves as too good for that
job. Whereas someone from a foreign background, that with the
standard of living back home is much less they're willing to live
in lesser conditions, worse conditions. So like the polish for
example, a lot of my family would come here and they'd they wouldn't
care they they'd share a house with 10 lads. Yeah, yeah. And they
would live like five mentor room with a mattress on the floor. And
they just make do with a bottle of vodka and a couple of Polish
sausages and they send most of the money back home and the family
build a mansion and then they go back and live like kings.
if they're willing to do that, because the standard of living is
different for them,
whereas like in, in Britain, you watch some of the news posts about
poverty in the UK. And we'll likely, you'll be surprised to
see, and I don't know, if you've got the same phenomena in the US,
I don't really watch us news too much. But you'll have people
complaining about poverty, and there'll be wearing Gucci glasses,
they'll have a flat screen TV behind them, they'll have an eye
that the latest iPhone in their hand, they'll be smoking, they'll
drink alcohol. And then they're crying poverty. And it's like,
what you're, you're not poor, until you have to sell your phone
and your TV and you've got none of this, and you're destitute, and
you've got holes in your clothes. And you know, I don't even have,
I've got nothing else to sell. I've got nothing else. But they
still feel poor, despite having all of these things, despite
getting as much money as they get from the government in assistance
in order to be able to live that lifestyle, even without having
work even without having a job.
And at the same time, they're complaining about the immigrants
doing this and doing that. You're you're digging your own hole, the
only reason we have any immigration is because we need
people doing certain jobs you need or that you're not willing to do.
We need people paying taxes, we need people doing this, we need
people doing that, when the economy is based of supply and
demand. And you are so obsessed with freedom and liberty
to your own detriment. And now, like we've got this sort of
conveyor belt government, where once every four years it changes,
I'll have however long it is. I'm not that into politics, but it's
like it. We change the government every now and then. And the
government's job is just to sort of maintain themselves while
they're in power. They don't want to look like the bad ones. They
don't want to be looked. They don't want to look like the cause
of the collapse. Yeah. And they have a problem. They can't tell
people to make sacrifices, because they're not that the second you
say that you're not getting Empower, they're not gonna vote
you in. Yeah, they want it. And this is one of the issues with
democracy is that they, they, they want to hear what they want to
hear. And if you say anything other than that, what they want
you they're not going to bring you in. Yeah. And at the moment, what
people want is leisure, and liberty, leisure and liberty and
they don't want anything else. And this is a huge problem, because
you can't this can't go anywhere. Right? Exactly. And in the long
run. We're kicking in our own feet from under as a people who don't
want to do hard work, and don't want to produce kids, what is what
is their what do they bring into the earth? Naturally,
the way of the world is going to dismiss them, they're going to be
dismissed, either they're going to be replaced within their own
country. Or if they don't bring in those immigrants who want to do
those two things. Their country is going to collapse into extreme
poverty, like the way Greece was the way Romania is the way all
most
countries in South America are. So if you're not going to do hard
work, and you're not going to produce kids, then what have you
brought to the world? Right? Like you can see people who who don't
have hard work, but they have kids. There's a lot of countries
like that, right? Those countries move on. Alright, but if you don't
have both, if you if you have neither our analysis of that is
shaped on has made you love what brings about your end? Yes,
literally, you are finished. And this is one of the beauties of
Islam as well as that Islam are the keys to success. In Islam,
there is a commitment to the Sharia. And there's no curtailing
it. There's no like picking and choosing, there's no pick and mix
law, the Allah subhanaw taala and His Messenger have commanded
SallAllahu wasallam
the way we organize as a society, and if we abide by that, we will
have victory. Even if we do nothing other than just have
children yet, eventually, our numbers will grow. And we're
growing not just because of birth rates. We're also growing and Pew
Research is testament to this, because of reversion because
people are becoming Muslim. And I think the main reason is because
people are having experiences like myself. They're looking at their
world. And they're seeing this sort of obsession, this naive,
childish obsession with liberty and freedom in the same way that
we did. When we were teenagers, we might just let us do what we want.
Anyone that tries to tell us otherwise is a tyrant.
And it's continued on into adult life isn't Yes, yeah. And
eventually what you have is just a society. A very large children,
because it's not just that yeah, we're extending childhood. Yeah,
historically, men became men. The second they became men. Like this
is like once you hit puberty, it's like right. Oh,
After the minds off to the factories, like you're gonna start
earning an income, you're a man now. Yeah. And in the UK in
particular, they'd even, you'd have your first pint, they take
you to the pub, and you'd be treated like an adult. And what we
have now with the introduction of the education system that's
compulsory, is you've got a bunch of people learning a lot of stuff
that the majority of which are never going to make use of is, the
idea here isn't necessarily about the majority of people is that if
we just get everyone doing this, we'll get the cream of the crop,
the rest of them have just wasted all of their time. And they're
just going to be drones doing this and the other. But we can pick
from them the next scientists, the next this next that? And then
that's going to massively increase our technological output and so
on. And so, which will increase what our liberty and our leisure
time? Yeah, are. We get the things that we want the dunya, the dunya,
dunya. Yeah. That's their focus. But the problem with this is that
because the the world has become so complex, because the world, you
know, the technological advancements have become so crazy,
that you can't just rely on people doing this of their own will, you
have to make that education compulsory.
And you need a higher educated populace in mass in order to make
up for the more complex working environment. And if this isn't in
place, you can't keep up with all of that advancement that you want.
So they've introduced it as compulsory. But the issue with
this is this increases how long you're dependent for. Yeah, it's
not coincidental, for example, that the age of consent happens to
coincide generally, with the end of your education. Why is that
it's not got anything to do with reproduction, because they're
teaching us in the schooling system, that this is completely
normal, you're still going to want to do these things. Here's how you
use a condom, here's how you use contraception, they were teaching
me this when I was 10.
Like when they were showing these videos of this weird naked family
that walked around, and they were like, you know, * is
completely normal. This is completed, and they're teaching
you about sexual education from a very early age, because they know
you're going to start getting interested in this. And that's
even why they separate the primary school students from the high
school students. And it's when it's around the age of puberty,
that's the cutoff point between these two different because they
know these are children. And these are not children. Yes. Invention
of the teenager. Yeah. And the invention of the teenager is
essentially was treating adults as children.
And we've got this, this way of sort of keeping them dependent.
And we're not really training them to become adults. In this period.
Yeah. When they when they shouldn't be learning how to
become independent. We're beating them down with a stick and telling
them no, you're still kids. No, you're still kids? No, you're
still kids. And what happens is, is that's what they're learning to
be. They're learning to be children. Yeah. And so when they
leave that education system, we have this problem, where now we've
just trained an army of adult children. And you see this
everywhere you go. And you know, the saying,
there's the cycle, you know, a week society, not hard times,
create strong men, strong men create good times good times,
create weak men, weak men create hard times. And we're in that
stage now, where we've got good times, and we're making weak men.
And what we mean by weak men is child Dishman, your children. Soft
people that can't deal with hardship don't want anything to do
with they don't know what real problems are, so that if their
phone backs up, or if it crashes, or their internet speed slows
down, they go into a panic. How am I going to deal with this? If
there's someone like we've seen these videos, where, you know, the
women are being attacked by men, and the men in the society don't
do nothing about it? They run off? Yeah. Why is that? Because we're
raising weaklings, we're raising people that are soft, that are
accustomed to leisure, to pleasure, to a lack of sacrifice
to liberty, and they don't want to do things that like take that away
from them. And if you get injured in a fight, like your freedoms are
limited, so like, this is what people are obsessed, obsessed with
right now, but it is going to undermine itself. And if we the
Muslims can stick to the Quran and the Sunnah, if we can follow
Allah's religion, Allah will grant us success. And you could see how
that trickles and how that that will happen. And I think a lot of
people, they're becoming disenfranchised with modern
Western secular liberalism, because they're seeing this.
They're seeing that this is just nonsense. This is crap. This
doesn't lead to victory. This isn't gonna get us anywhere. And
in Islam, you have a victory in this world and in the next, if you
follow it, that you're not going to be obsessed with the highs and
you're not going to have to suffer through the lows
Everything is going to become a source of pleasure or a source of
comfort to you, whether it's good, whether it's bad, in hardship,
there's a, like a bit of sweetness to it, when you know anyone who's
sincere in their belief will feel this, that they know Allah is
testing them, and that there is goodness in it. Allah is forgiving
my sins. Allah is purifying me preparing for a greater future.
Yes, exactly. And you look at the Palestinians as a perfect example
of this beautiful brother, who lost his grandchild. And like his
face. So I couldn't imagine going through what he was going through,
and looking so in control of himself, I'd have been pathetic to
panel, I'd have broken down in tears. And he that was Orajel.
That was a man who was able to control his emotions in some of
the harshest of circumstances, and inspire millions of people around
the world who were were lucky enough to witness this man in
action in an organic, natural moment when the death of a child
in his hands and
closing your eyes and kissing her smile like this is the consequence
of Eman of belief of Islam, what it does to those who embody it and
who absorb its teachings into that.
And this is there's an amazing poem, poet who says,
Give deprivation it's do
and find intimacy with it. Because deprivation, it's like a location
that Allah put you. Right? It's like, a state that Allah puts you
in, there's a reason he puts you in there, give it its due. And
you'll see the fruit come out later on of deprivation. And I
think when I look at the things that are necessary, I don't think
that there's any motivation other than belief. Right. So getting off
of intoxicants, getting married, sacrificing all this stuff that
you could be doing, having children more sacrifice on top of
that, and then taking care of your children, because some people have
children, and they bounce, right, they can't take it anymore, and
they leave. So I don't see that anybody can get through this,
except that they have a modicum of Amen. And belief that this is
what's right. And that Allah will guarantee me that I'm not going to
regret this and that I'm actually one day going to look back and say
this was far better, far better than living the single life and
there has to be someone that Allah puts around you to compare
against, right? So we do know people who are living, let's say,
not unmarried, because Muslims can't go on like that. But let's
say married. And then they're just living like kids with not having
kids like living like teenagers or young adults, just criss crossing
the world having a blast, right? saving their money, all that. And
it seems to me like, like they're doing stuff that we can't do. But
then again, let's fast forward in a few years, when you're 40. And
you're 50. And that doesn't look right anymore. And it doesn't. And
you've you've seen everywhere in the world, like what else is there
to do when you hit 50? And 60? Right? Yes. What else is there to
do? Right, except share your experience now with the next
generation? Yeah, the kids. So who's happier the 70 year, the 65
year old who's got five grandkids, and four kids are the 65 year old,
that's just alone with his 65 year old spouse. Yeah, and there's, in
this as a couple of other things we can probably talk about as
because there is an issue in that sort of Forever Young mentality
that companies have in that, as people get older, I don't know,
it's, it's, it's a horrible thing to sort of make mention to or draw
the light too. But as people get older, men and women develop
differently in age. And I've heard this and this is something that
women specifically have said to me on numerous occasions that as men
get older, they become more attractive, or they become more
desirable. And as women get older, that's they don't necessarily
follow that same trajectory. And for these, this couple that are
sort of in this forever young mentality. eventually what happens
is women hit menopause and things and there's all these sort of
difficulties and things. And if there's not some sort of structure
there to protect them, if there's not something there for them. In
terms of children, yet, a lot. You see this a lot, especially like in
it's not in every case, there's always exceptions to the rules.
But the couples who are like I'm never gonna have children, I'm
never gonna have children. When they get old, there's not really
much joining them anymore. And so divorce rates, especially in like,
secular environments, can be quite high as a result of this because
children are like a glue between people. Yeah, like you
love someone, not just because they're beautiful, or because
they're younger, because they're fun not because of this, because
they are the mother of your children, that you have been
bonded by blood, that there is something special about these
people now, because of the fact that you have this connection
through others through a family. And when you get older, even if
things don't work out, for whatever reason, you've got
comfort. And one of my favorite, though, is to make for people at
the end of May, Allah subhanaw, taala. grant you, many children
and many grandchildren, that will be a sweetness in your old age
that, you know, even if one or two of them are crap, there's still
plenty of them that will come visit you and spend time with you
and not just pile you off into an old people's home. That's the
value of having a lot of kids because you rate the chances now
of having a good one is now much higher. Because yeah, and also,
when you have one kid, even let's say you had two kids, right? Once
you have two kids, so a lot of pressure on the kids. Secondly,
they don't
develop as good as when they have three, four siblings, right?
Reason being is that every sibling is different, you're going to
learn to deal with now your mom, your dad, and let's say two or
three or four siblings, you're going to deal with six different
personalities, right? This person is going to be far better adjusted
when he goes into the world. Yes, and I can't imagine the China
policy, one child, Chinese China policy? Of course, I think they
they stopped it. But
who is that kid gonna relate to? Has he ever shared his? Did you
ever refer to any of your friends that were only child as having
only child syndrome? Oh, they're odd, right? Yeah, there's
something different about the child. Yeah, like they find it
much more difficult to share, they generally tend to want to be the
sort of center of attention it causes, because they don't have to
share their roots growing up as an only child, you don't have to,
you're not getting Hami downs, you're not to share things with
other kids. You don't have to learn these sort of like negative
experiences that you get in a brother, sister, brother, brother,
Bob will have a relationship where you like you've got to get into
fights, and you got to learn to forgive. Like, there's a
completely different dynamic, like the only child is generally can be
quite spoiled, all of the resources just get spent on them.
The parents don't really have to think about oh, if I get this kid
that then I'll have to get them that as well. Otherwise, they'll
feel left out the parents, there's there's different there's a
different mechanism that goes on here. So the children tend to be
quite different when they come and it's not every child. Again,
there's exceptions to the rule. But especially in like secular
environments, there's something Yeah, the only child, I think
you're oppressing them. Really, it's type of oppression. Because
that kid, specifically as well, we're like, you're choosing not to
have any more children after you've had one. Now, obviously, if
it's not your choice, and for whatever reason you're trying and
you can't have it, it's a completely different kettle of
fish.
But even then, I think the the kind of characteristics that you
find in the parents that are like that the ones who want more
children, but can't have it, are probably going to be mindful of
only child syndrome, whereas those who just choose not to, that it's
not something that's necessarily going to be crossing them 100%
keep expanding on this point, Eddie, come sit in my place. I
need to get up for two seconds. I'll be right back. But keep
expanding on that point. No problem you're
welcome, salaam how are you? Handle? I'm good. How are you? I'm
good. You're Eddie.
Nice to meet you.
So are you have you had this experience with only children on
single children just walked into this conversation. So that's going
on, basically talking at the moment about the characteristics
that certain people have when they come out of an only child
environment, and the distinctions or the kinds of characteristics
that someone might learn having to grow up with siblings, brothers
and sisters that you've got to compete with?
Maybe fallout with learn to forgive, etc. So, are you
familiar? Do you have brothers and sisters or I have three brothers.
So I understand the the aspect of like competition, so I can
definitely see when's, you know, one child, when there's only one
child in the family? It's definitely like, they don't grow
up with any competition, or any sort of like, especially if it's
like a brother, like like a boy. And, you know, they don't have a
sister, you know, they don't learn to how to how to respect women.
You know, if the parents aren't there, obviously. Yeah, there's a
lot in the the sibling relationships that help with
social interactions. So when you become an adult as well and you go
out into the adult world
You got to start interacting with other people that are not mom and
dad.
Like those who just haven't had that practice, necessarily, in
their youth can find it very difficult sort of growing up. But
it's there was there was a lot of different things, this was sort of
trailing off.
And if you weren't there for it, I don't know how we can necessarily
take the conversation without confusing you.
I understand what's going on, though. So, but it was really very
important to have, you know, multiple children. Yes. Being
married. So then I guess the the major points that linking back to
where we came from in order to get to this was how Islam in
particular will give those who practice it victory. Hope he's
leaving.
What were you saying that it was just talking about, it was
bringing it back to the original point about how Islam will give
victory to the Muslim, the believers and that, essentially,
the the secular liberalism is going to undermine itself. And
this, it sort of drives the need for immigration.
Because if the indigenous population are not willing to have
children, and they're not willing to do the jobs, and the economy,
the economy is dependent upon,
like a healthy growth in population,
or at least an attempt to sustain the population. And the population
itself isn't willing to do that. And the system of power is itself
built in such a way so that it motivates only bringing people
into power that will just pat the population on its back for its
current actions for the things that it knows and the things that
it wants, that is not going to offer itself the cure through that
system. And that they will have to think of other ways. And this is
why when you're looking at like, who is it that brings in? And it's
funny, the weird thing is the immigration or the anti
immigration is generally like a right wing talking point. But it's
usually right wing capitalists that spend most of their money
hiring foreign workers. Yeah. To save money. Yeah. Because
capitalistic Lee speaking, you're gonna get more profit, you're
gonna get more bang for your buck. And so they this is weird sort of
cognitive dissonance that occurs there. And they, they are the ones
that bring in the immigration. So despite Brexit happening, despite
the whole point of Brexit being censored on immigration,
immigration never stopped. Yeah, yeah, we still have it coming in.
Why? Because there's, there's a necessity. And if we don't have
it, they they can foresee that that there will be a type of
financial collapse. And it scares the disbeliever because their
obsession is with the dunya. Now, this idea of overpopulation as
well, is another interesting topic. Because I don't think we
are overpopulated. We have this weird way of communing of like
censoring ourselves in cities. And if anyone's ever zoomed out, or
looked at Earth, on Google Maps, when you zoom out, what's mad, is
how the city is disappear? No, it kind of looks like there is no
concrete. Yeah, it's like, wow, this is really green. Like there's
so much Earth. But we've got this obsession with convenience, and
like having everything really, really close. And so we pile into
the cities. And it's unnecessary. And we have this this, this very
high standard of living, which requires a lot of resources, like
people that live in tribes in Africa. Yeah, their turnover of
resources isn't that high. And if you look, and you know, in terms
of like, the landfill, or waste that comes from these communities,
like they're very obsessed with reusing things like like an
animal, for example, there's no waste, like they owe the organs,
they everything that comes out of the animal, they utilize the bones
to make tools and to do this and to like, everything is not
recycled, and there's not much waste. So it's very sustainable.
And that's livable I there's, there is a lot of land, we could
spread out. And we could choose to live more humble lifestyles with
less. And, you know, we've we've become sort of indoctrinated from
a very early age to have a certain standard of living to the degree
now that if someone takes away your internet, it's like you feel
as if your human rights have been violated, thing necessary or
compulsory about having to be provided with
any with all these luxuries? And how about hedge hedge as a little
bit of a wake up call. When I when I went to hedge it was 1990 for
the first time. And it was the first time you see face to face
for long periods of time. Very poor people.
And it was the first time where you had to live like a very poor
person. And hedge back in the day more than today. Today. There's Wi
Fi and Mina
And there's data in Mina, right? I mean, your dad is going to work
your phone's going to work. But there were times the idea of
minute is, you're spending three days, literally cut off from
everything, but not cut off from everything in a nice, comfortable
tent in the woods. Cut off from everything with another million
people around you. Right? And if you go through that experience,
once, all of a sudden, it's like, it pulls your perspective down
your standards. Do you mind if I just knit to the toilet? Quick?
Yeah, go ahead. Because really interesting place I want to bring
up no problem. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. And I'm gonna while
while while he's taking a breather, I'm gonna say something
that why don't we in our education? They give * ed, they
never give familyid. Right? Is there a concept of that they give
* ed to these in the schools, and they show you how to do all
this stuff. But did they show you how to take care of a kid? Do they
talk about the non physical aspects of taking care of a kid?
Like how much does a kid need a mom? How much is he needed debt?
Like, what is the role of a debt? Like, why is that not organized?
Why is everything organized? In an equation? In every secular
subject, it's perfectly organized, yet we believe that the family
unit is something that has no organization, nobody could touch
it, everyone's you're telling me that there isn't a right way to
give a kid a stable life. After all these centuries of human
existence, we haven't come come come down with a formula a very
basic formula of what produces a well adjusted emotionally and
mentally state and physically stable and healthy human being.
Think about that, right?
It's because they don't want to they don't want to discuss this.
Because once you do have this, it really takes power away from the
government. Family power always takes away from governmental
power. Right. And if you have a government that if you have kids
who who don't have dads who don't who don't have moms who are don't
have tribes who don't have little clans, they become dependent on
whom that power that dependency shifts to the government.
They don't you have to convince me otherwise. They don't want small,
firm, strong families to bind to bond with other strong families,
then you have a very strong town. Right? That can resist very
easily.
EBT Yeah, they're very which is so food stamps. Okay. Yeah.
And so food stamps. Yeah. And maybe family, you know, sort of
organizations. Yeah. It's actually strengthen the family, you know,
that, you know, Inshallah, one day can? Yeah, you know, make you not
envy you end up using? I mean, how many? How many civilizations? Has
the earth seen? Okay, you look at all the successful civilizations
don't look at them at the top, look at them on the way up. On the
way up? What was the family structure of the civilization
like, that produced the human beings who took you to the top?
Maybe? Who? How does this advise you to get to the top human beings
take you there? Right?
Men take you there to the top in the history of the Roman Empire,
the Greeks, the Persians, the Egyptians, go on and on and on.
And on. J, the Ottomans. Yo, every empire that we're talking about.
There was a time when they were going up. I want to know what,
okay, you're back. Now. Did you hear what I was saying? I didn't.
Let me say it again. I was saying that you talked about * ed. But
there's no course in the schools that talk about how to raise a
kid. And how is it that after all these centuries of life, we
haven't reached a basic formula on what produces an emotionally,
mentally and physically stable child? They're not interested in
it at all? Because it takes power away from the government? What is
most likely? Tell me if it's similar in the US, but the
majority of my education in the UK was focused on the sciences? That
was it. Yeah. And it wasn't necessarily like how to be an
adult. How to be a father how to be a brother How to Be a friend
how to, like there was no focus, but when you leave, how do you do
bills? How do you adult like what when you're out there? How do you
become an independent person? Yeah. How do you stop being like
dependent upon the state and upon your family? It's there's just
this strange obsession with physics, chemistry, biology,
mathematics, ICT
history, but a very particular history generally World War One
World War Two, and that's about it.
And then, like, that's it what food Ed?
How about this optional? How about this name? 10 great civilizations.
10 people 10 nations who
I've reached the pinnacle of civilization in their time. Right.
Now, what I said when you were gone is I don't want to see how
they behaved when they reached the top. Okay? Because that's usually
when they start indulging, I want to see how, what was their family
structure, like, on the way to the top? Right, the guys who took them
to the top, how were they raised? What was their family structure
like guaranteed? They were physically and emotionally and
mentally stabilized. Otherwise they can't reach the top. Right?
How were they stabilized? That's what we want to say. And we can't
tell me that we as a society, which so advanced, haven't
discovered a simple formula, a high percentage formula on what
produces the best type of human being in a home. Right? Like the
idea of having a mom have a dad. There, there. I have memories. I
have childhood, I didn't move too much all that stuff. Yeah. What
was funny, as well as the date is very clear that like the nuclear
family does produce great results. Yeah, yeah. But it's controversial
to say that dual income families cause problems that families
become strangers to each other, because mom and dad are both
working full time jobs. And then when they both get home, there's
another full time job waiting for them to debate about who's going
to be doing what. And because they're too busy debating about
whose turn it is to do the dishes, or to watch the kids or to wash
the clothes, they become stressed, they feel overworked, over
encumbered, they're not really spending much time with the kids,
because they've offloaded that to a school with people that don't
know the kids personally are not really interested in them. So
people are being raised by strangers, according to a, you
know, a government curriculum, there's not really interested on
them as individuals, but more on economic growth towards this
particular, you know, capitalistic end. And it's just bizarre, like
you've got this very strange family unit, where people don't
really know each other, there's no one sitting at the dinner table,
we don't even know our neighbors. How many people can honestly say
they know the names of the people next door to them, let alone 510
doors down. Like that we've got these strange cases where someone
would die. And no one knows. For months, I had a friend who worked
as an industrial cleaner. And some of the jobs that used to be sent
to where these horrible cases, or an old woman would just pass away,
and no one would know, insane. And no one would know for months, and
then she would just become rotten and like they'd have to come and
clean the walls or the carpets or remove all of this stuff.
Horrible accounts. What would happen if somebody came out and
said, I'm going to be doing a study and teaching a course?
On how to have a family? Right?
And that this should be start to be taught? Let's forget public
schools, in Muslim schools in masajid, how to have a family how
controversial would that be? Very? Isn't this like the root of all
the it's the it's the foundation that we shouldn't even be thinking
about?
Yeah, well, wow, the controversy is that many Muslims have been
sucked into the secular liberal lifestyle, double income families.
You know, this obsession with liberty and freedom and leisure.
And so if you were to even do that in a Muslim setting, there's bound
to be controversy, because it's going to be too traditional. Yeah.
It's like, what do you mean, you know, having a stay at home
mother, looking after kids, and you know, the person that loves
and cares for them the most being center in their growth and
education at an early age? How bizarre Are you? And this is, this
is the thing, it's like, we've got this age of socially awkward
individuals, because everyone's communication is sort of centered
on the internet, like, face to face is difficult. And people find
people that are good at face to face interactions strange, like
it's like, wow, I've never met, you know, I've never met someone
like you that can hold a conversation and is fine with
awkward silences. How bizarre, like, what do we do? And then
it's, a lot of this is, you know, the consequence of like a,
you know, healthy upbringing. And so like, for me, in particular, so
I had
not the greatest father, but I had a brilliant mother. And I had a
great relationship with my brother and my sister. And we had a
grandmother, who she was a bit crazy. She suffered from paranoid
schizophrenia, but she was there. She helped. And like we, we were
together. We had good relationships with each other. And
we lived in a different age where like, computers was Sega and the
Super Nintendo, and you got bored of them quite quickly, and you
went out and you played with sticks and you made dens in the
mud. But like was a different age where you were forced
socialization and now we don't really have that it's been taken
away.
When people talk about how many friends you have, they mean how
many people have accepted this? Yeah, digital request for
friendship.
And it's just we're living in a very, very strange world at the
moment. And even if someone was addicted to that stuff,
I find that if they lived in a home with five other people, the
people by necessity would break up some of your, your awkwardness.
It's like, when you're when someone's online, there's a
certain
repetitive vibe that they're in. As soon as you go in the hallway,
in the kitchen, in the living room, and there's four or five
other people in by necessity breaks it up. Right? Yeah, it's
like a medicine. It's a medicine, it depends on the person as well.
Because if they this is like the where the will comes in, I guess,
century in that, how does that develop and the chaotic nature of
different people. So like,
that might work in one group setting we've set with five kinds
of individuals. But it might not work in a different setting with
other individuals, people who are not necessarily patient on the
Senate, for example, like, I'm good with strange people, because
I just, I overlook their strangeness. So sometimes, you get
a lot of them.
Like, you'll just have this odd person will come up to you, maybe
they're socially awkward, maybe they've got mental health issues,
and they'll just start talking to you. And I'll just talk to them
back like I don't, I don't make it apparent that it's awkward, or
that it's strange. And if they ask strange questions I've asked that
don't know, you know, I'll just treat it as if it's a normal
situation. And I got this off my mum quite a bit, she was a manager
in a restaurant, and I was raised in work working in restaurants and
customer service. And so like, I got good with communicating with
people. Yeah, and learning how to deal with these awkward
situations, and just keeping a straight face, even if it feels
odd. And with like, and it just, it gives you this good ability to
just be able to, like maintain a conversation or to just talk or
fill empty space, or to even if there is quiet just to be able to
sit there and like, and be okay with it and not be sure. And like
if you've got people like that in a group environment, then that
people can learn from that when they see it. Or they look at it,
and maybe they don't use it. However, if there's no one like
that, and say you've got this person who's just sort of socially
awkward, and they're a bit strange. Sometimes if they if
they're in the wrong group, if they approach a certain kind of
people that are not patient, or they're, they're quick to call
strange, strange. And to make it apparent to everyone in the room,
that it's strange. This can be can develop into a form of bullying,
and the person that's at the receiving end of this can develop
more negatively as a result of those interactions and sort of
fall back onto what safe which the computer again,
weird thing is a little bit off the subject, but you're on
Twitter. Yes. Have you seen it like it's become regular
school Fights now?
Had no yet this? Well, they were regular anyway. But now they're
just they make good social media. And I think this is tied to the
monetization. Yeah. off social media. Yeah. People might. I don't
know if it's becoming more common, or if it's just because we're,
we're more ready to record these things and post them on the
internet.
But I often wonder to what degree people are motivated to want to do
something absurd, because they know the cameras are on them. And
they know it might make them viral. The reverse. Yeah, yeah.
Like,
what is strange, but like, it's not like fights were uncommon. I
had lots of fights in high school. So I expected the new generation
raised on internet and phone to be too shy to do this stuff.
But it turned out to be wrong. Right? Yeah. Right. And I'm seeing
like, even like five on one surprised, because it's been
intensifies. Because yeah, there was this one kid in London, who
filmed himself breaking into people's homes, well, and on
social media, and he just like me was like, we're gonna prank these
people. And he will just walk into a family's home with his means.
And the whole thing is then you've got this, this awkward interaction
where like, the woman's got a kid. Yeah. And she's like, hurry,
there's people in and then they're acting like it's their home. Wow.
And they know it's not they everyone knows it's not their
home. But there's this weird, like, awkward situation where it's
like, what are you doing in my house? It's my house. We're going
about, like, No, you know, it's not your house. I know. It's not
your house. Why are we playing this?
game. And then the husband is having to try to like tell these
kids to get out. And this is a massive troll operation basically.
Yeah. And but that's it, these things are incentivized because
then they go viral. And like, there's just this weird thing
where like, yes, you'll get hate. But you'll also get this group of
people say, don't listen to the haters. You know, you do you and
they sort of like, and people inclined to hating the haters, and
loving the lovers. And what ends for me now, infamy is now a genre,
like you notice on Netflix, there are a lot of people who got famous
for how bad they were like, yes. And Adelphi.
People like that for doing terrible things. They got famous,
and now people are reversing it. They're doing terrible things to
be hated, because being hated, made famous. By, by by the outside
is my the outcast. There's like, at least you're being recognized.
Yes. And it's still something that can be monetized. Yeah. And once
it's monetized, and you're wealthy, and you have that certain
amount of recognition, and then there are always going to people
that give you attention, and because you have that. And it's a
strange phenomenon. Now, one of the things that you that you
pointed to was very interesting that you pointed to this idea that
people only vote into power those who are supporting them in what
they love. But the moment that they all they love is leisure and
freedom and liberty, you're actually perpetuating your own
demise. Yeah, which points basically, the summary of that the
conclusion of that is democracy is only useful when people are
educated on the right values, and they have the right values, right,
at that point, democracy if you flip that now, democracy is a
source of your end. Yes. And this is, this is incredibly, because of
Brexit or keeping in Brexit. Brexit was weird for me, because
it was like what? Well, you've got to make this decision. And then
I'm looking into it. And I'm like,
I don't know, what's the right answer, I've got no idea. And like
the conversation popularized was mostly about immigration. But
there was many other things related to that, like the control
of a foreign body over our nation, the EU, you know, the collective
interests of like a global economy, and there was so many
factors to this, that if you were to make a decision on it, you had
to take into consideration. And I was like, I'm too busy. I was a
university student at the time. I just had a kid, you know, I'm
married. I've got my own social relationships. I'm worried about
my own career, my own, like, educational development, spiritual
development, and all these things I'm thinking about. Yeah. And
you're asking me to go and vote for this? Yeah, I Oh, no. Like,
Why are you pushing me to make this decision? And then when I
would? In the end, I didn't vote for it. I don't, because I didn't
know what the right answer was. This would be better. You better
ask some economists, like someone with a degree that's in a position
to be able to make this kind of decision. Yeah. And but that's not
what was happening with the rest of the population. There was 50%
of us that just abstained from voting, but the other 50% were
very vocal. And you ask them and the 26% that voted Brexit are
mostly like * immigrants get America via we don't want them no.
And the other 24% were like, we're not racist. Yeah. Stay in the EU.
And it's like, Well, how was How was this decision? Yeah. down to
whether or not you hate immigrants or whether or not you're not
racist? Yeah. Why is that? The thing that decides whether or not
we stay as a part of this European Union? Yeah.
And it's like, it just became a game.
You know, this is a complex issue, to have read books, and books and
books really understand it. And now what we're going to say, is
going to lead us one way or the other is this fiery debate between
two controversial characters on daytime TV that people watch while
eating the dinners and multitasking at all getting drunk?
And like, treating it like it's some sort of game show? What? What
is this? What's, what's going on?
And I've got this theory as well. Yeah. Tell me if you think I'm
onto something. I have a theory that one of the reasons people
like Donald Trump came into power is because of acceleration ism. I
think people that hated him, voted for him, because they thought this
might be the end. The thing that brings
let's just push the button and see what happens. And you've got this,
you know, the, and I think this is also why you have this
popularization of like, End of Times media, zombie apocalypse,
end of the world alien invasions, all of this, because people are
sort of willing the end. Yeah, they want and you've seen it even
with evangelicals. Yeah, where you their interactions with the
Zionists are in this weird, like, it's not like they're in favor of
the Jews. The Jews rejected Christ as far as they're concerned, but
like their relationships should be one of animals.
Sati Yeah, Theologically speaking, but they've developed this weird
union. And they're egging the Zionists on because they think
it's going to bring about the end of time, to the point where
they're even supplying them with the things in order for them to
perform certain practices for red heifers. Yeah. Yeah. They're grown
in Texas. Yes. And gives you easy to design is by evangelicals. Yep.
And it's what's going on? everyone's willing the end. Now.
It's, it's you see the signs of the end. But waiting is very
painful. Right? Yes. And even in the Day of Judgment, a man will be
knows he's going to *. But the judgment takes so long. And so he
starts saying, just put me in *. Now. The Waiting is painful.
And people want to push the button. Yeah, they want to push
buttons. See what happens. Right? Yeah, so really interesting times.
It was great talking to you. Love to have you on again. Anyway,
listen, anytime that you have a book you have anything publication
going on?
Let us know so you can come on even for just 15 minutes. Come on,
and talk to us and and share with your new ideas. Anytime I'd love
to having this conversation, I felt feel bad for taking so much
of your time.
I can ramble for hours and hours that
were the same in that respect. So but thank you so much for coming
on. And next time we're in England inshallah we meet up in person and
hey, if you ever you ever come this state side?
Sometimes I'm hoping to Inshallah, well, look, why don't I'll send
him a message, say, send you stuff on on American tour.
Allah, we'd love to host. So I just wanted to plug one more thing
to not just written the book, we Sapiens Institute, I manage the
lighthouse project. lighthouse project. Yeah, the lighthouse
project. It's a service we offer that helps people specifically
with a number of things. So the first thing is with doubts. So if
you're a Muslim, an ex Muslim, assumed to be Muslim, or non
Muslim. And you're thinking about Islam, and you're not sure whether
it's true or not, and you've got certain issues or doubts, you want
to discuss them, you can book a free private once one meeting with
myself or one of the other mentors that I work with. And you get an
hour of our time to just discuss whatever you want related to
doubt, or you're engaged in dower and you're getting asked
questions, you're dealing with the first category, and you're not
sure how to answer them, or you want to, you know, engage in
doubt, and you're not quite sure where to begin, you're a leader in
the community and a man or die a father, with children or a mother,
you know, sometimes children with parents that are doubting, you can
book a meeting, we can talk to you and engage with answering certain
questions on that subject. And we're also in the process of now
setting up a new Muslim mentoring service as well, which runs on the
same basis, you can book free private one to one meetings with a
mentor to discuss things and discuss your development. It's
completely free. And it's private, we don't publish the recordings
online on YouTube or anything, it's just a one to one on Zoom.
And if you go to the website, sapiens institute.org, you'll see
that there along with our learning platform, which is again, another
free resource, you can get all of our books for free. My book you
can get for free on our website, sapiens, institute.org, forward
slash books, you can get the physical copy, and Amazon will
charge you something, but it's just whatever Amazon requires you
to pay. We don't make any profit on that. But yeah, just have a
look at our website sapiens. institute.org. Look at all the
resources we've got available there, the learning platform, the
books, the essays, the lighthouse projects, etc. Great. And the
lighthouse project, is someone call in or is it a by email. So
they'll meet him on there, you'll pick a time that's suitable for
you. And then we'll send you a link and to a Zoom meeting. And
you just need to make sure you turn up on time on the Zoom
meeting and the mentor will be there waiting for you. Excellent.
You can engage in a discussion with them about your doubts or
about getting involved in the dollar. Great and I met some of
your, your associates in Houston who do this work? Faster? Same
shift, yes. Yeah, Hamza is notice that there are mentors as well.
And we have another bunch of brothers that are getting involved
with us, and we're looking to expand as well. So we do want to
make this a global project. So Shaco Jerry has just recently
joined the organization, and Inshallah, we're gonna look at
having him help do the projects in Arabic. And we've got chef DC,
from Spain, Mohammed, Mohammed, the JVC and Insha Allah, he's
going to be offering the service and developing that in the Spanish
as well, but we're in the we're just because it's early days. So
we're just trying to sort of establish ourselves get our
footing and, and develop the training etc. So it's a slow
process. It's a great project. It's a great project, Allah reward
you just below head on. Thanks for coming on.
And inshallah we will be talking again in the future in the lunch
Allah it's been a pleasure talking to you and thanks for having me on
was my pleasure. Does that go okay? Well, you said I'm
gonna get
alright there you have it folks that was
very insightful, amazing topic that I love, which is just a
concept of population. And that it's something population and
family are two things. When I grew up, you never gave it a second
thought, when I was growing up, we never give this a second thought.
It's not even a thing to be discussed. It's assumed.
But you fast forward and you see all the Zina spreading, and then
the people of Zina become in charge like Bill Clinton, right,
that generation, and then the next generation becomes in charge after
them. And they're accustomed to more Zina, and soon we're going to
have people who have grown up with absolutely
complete normalization of * and, and self
pleasuring, and all that stuff being in charge. So what kind of
laws are they going to put in place? What kind of policies what
kind of
basic
policies are going to put in place, if that's how they were
raised?
These are people who are not fit to move humanity forward. And it's
something like, in the grown up, he never thought that this was,
you know, a thing that was going to be possible that this is even
going to be a subject to be discussed.
But here we are, that's where we're at. And the stuff that you
see is now getting more and more disgusting. And you start
wondering, these people, I'm sorry, they, I don't want to say
it, but they just need to,
if you're a document, if you're a image, I would just highlight,
delete. I'm not even kidding you that this is gonna sound so
disgusting. But this is this is real.
I'm watching one of these conservative talk shows. And
they're interviewing a guy who used to be in the adult business.
And how he transformed himself. He said, we reached a low that you
can imagine, and he said, Well, what was that low?
And it was just like a clip, interview, podcast interview, the
guy said that we got so bored of everything, that we started hiring
women. And after all the stuff that they do with them, we said
that part of the package when we're done,
we urinate on you.
What and and they accept it. They want to be in the business so
badly the woman accepts.
And they do it. They do all their Zinnen their garbage. So it's not
that disgusting enough. He finds it like, like we're so bored of
everything. Let's take the new level and urination on another
human being. And that other human being accepts it as part of the
job. And then they interview them like, Oh, you took it on the chin?
You're a champ, right? Nobody's like you. You deserve every buck
that you get. And she's smiling. Right? It was tough, but we did
it. Right. And here's my money, right? You don't have a Willie,
you don't have a dad? Do you have a mom? Do you have a dad? Do you
have anybody in your life to say, what the heck you doing? Forget
the first half you nobody even say anything about the first half
anymore? What about this part? Absolute stranger?
What's the difference between you and some of the what the behavior
that goes on in India that everyone makes fun of where the
untouchables actually get urinated on? Like you could do that. In
India, they have this untouchables are the worst of the worst for
them. Okay. I can understand that all where society's going, There's
no way do you shouldn't vote. You shouldn't have a say. And guess
what? The people who watch this stuff will be the president
someday, the person someone who enjoys this stuff. will one day be
president? will one day be running a tech company? What kind of
policies are they gonna put in place? Tech president of a tech
company is more powerful than a governor. Right? It's probably
more powerful than 90% of the presidents in the in the world.
What policies are they going to put in place? What are they going
to consider to be like 18? Like, what are they going to consider to
be off limits? If that's what you grew up with, from, let's say,
watching this from age 910 11? That's what you started with.
Because you can imagine if it's happening on the internet, there's
a nine year old boy somewhere an eight year old, a seven year old.
That's the first thing he sees in the first year of his exposure to
getting a phone or the internet. He sees that at age seven, at age
eight at age nine. So where is he going to go by age 12.
What is the mentality the norms the standards of this human being
Gonna be at age 30, when he takes over a company are each 35 or age
50 when he runs a nation or a city or town.
And then people say, Hey, we got what they call.
Why don't they have these laws, the local ordinances of the town,
what's allowed in public and what's not. I'm telling you where
we're going is where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said,
he said, there will be a day, near the end of time in which people
will FortiGate on the street, like animals in the road, just in the
street. And the province has said, the best of you at that time, will
say, can you do this behind a wall? That means there's going to
be a debate someday there's gonna be a national debate on public *
and public. Right. And the good people we're going to be the ones
that no, it shouldn't be in public. They're not gonna say no
Zina. Nobody will have the ability or you'll be you'll be laughed at
to say, don't do Zina, right, don't fornicate. Don't have * at
all. until you're married. Nobody will say that. Okay, the good
people will not be able to say that. You say that you're going to
be laughed at the maximum you can say is not don't think he should
do it in public. Right? And all these
these devils, these human devils, they're worse than
Iblees. He doubles the human doubles, to try to promote this in
public. Because if people see it enough, on a screen, Zina in
public on a screen, if they see it enough on a screen that day, he
sees it in public. Like, oh, they're filming? Well, they'd seen
it 1000 times since the age of seven on a screen, and that guy's
the mayor, then some mom comes to him and says, Hey, these kids are
doing fornicating in the on the on the front lawn.
Right filming it on the front lawn.
And it's okay, let's discuss it.
You bring the town panel. Hold on a second half the town panel has
been watching the stuff since age eight.
Why would they out what?
On what basis would they be disgusted? On what basis would
they be shocked? That's where we're headed. Right? Exactly what
the prophets of Allah who it was Saddam said, yeah. So an absolute
insane, insane situation that we're headed to that we're in. But
again, here's the
here's the
the point, the prophesy centum has told us well in advance where
we're headed, and that's why when it happens, we're going to be
level headed. We're going to in fact, it's going to increase our
when when that happens, we're going to say we told you so we
told you also Apollo
Ahmad says here it's project desensitization exactly what it is
complete desensitization
ladies and gentlemen it is 350 wonderful conversation with our
brother use of ponders ladies and gentlemen, Joseph Campbell. Okay,
we will see you tomorrow. And don't forget to be a supporter on
patreon.com
and that'll be it for today. Just come along later on Subhanak
Allahu Moby Dick the shadow
and the stock photo quality as well as in Santa Fe has
a lot in common why middle sila towards the wall so we'll Huck
what sub sub was set money comm Rahmatullah?
Job
know
who
God