Shadee Elmasry – The Key Difference Between Islam and Other Religions
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the benefits of Islam, including physical exercises and tactile activities, and uses tools like toothbrushes and brushes to brush one's teeth. They also discuss the physical transformation that occurs during a prayer, where children learn to mimic the movement of Islam, and the Deen of Islam, which is the fruit of Islam's "has been met," which will embrace and grow roots wherever it goes. The Deen will never stop and will eventually embrace, grow roots wherever they go, set aside all other things about Islam, and make all the laws they want. Islam is going to change people's behavior, their lifestyle, and their way of doing things.
AI: Summary ©
Islam is a religion that is extremely sticky.
As soon as it lands somewhere, it will,
the seeds will fall into the earth very
easily.
And when you embrace it and you start
living by it, it gives you firstly a
breakdown of what you have to do and
what you can do.
So I pressure to do what I have
to do and then I can at my
own pace do a lot of other things.
But here's the beauty of it.
It gives you a lot of physical, little
physical things to do.
You know in education, in childhood education, they
say you need tangible activities, tactile activities, right?
Tactile activity is how children learn or is
how children learn.
I need to relearn English.
It's how children learn, right?
Tactile activities.
That's what they say in childhood education theory
and concept and it's proven.
I would venture to say even for more
than children, even adults, some of them, you
talk theory, it's gone way over his head.
But you put like an engine in front
of him or a motor, he could take
it apart and fix it for you.
Islam is extremely tactile and physical.
The little things that eventually you realize your
whole life, every day you're thinking about God
and his prophet without trying.
I remember seeing the first time I see
a toothbrush, the miswak in an Islamic conference
on a table.
I must have been like 12 years old,
13 years old and my parents just started
to really get involved in religious meetings and
stuff.
Before that we were just hanging out with
Lebanese doctors and doing that, listening to their
music and all that stuff.
Lebanese doctors, I don't even know, I think
they're mostly where they were Christian anyway.
But the Arab nationalism was what we were
into.
I remember that for the first part of
childhood.
And then we started to have to get
into Deen after a while.
And when I went to the first conference
and I saw a table that had sticks
on it and all of this was new
to me, the whole thing.
And I think that was an important experience
because you got to be able to see
how other people view the Deen.
I said, nobody understands Iman like the one
who was in Kufr.
So we weren't in Kufr, but we were
in non-practice.
Certain ideas were like really big sacrifices.
Having a beard, I was like, oh my
goodness, if I saw someone with a beard,
I thought, man, this guy is all in.
At the time, no one had beards.
It wasn't even fashionable in America.
But when we saw Muslims, we were like,
oh my gosh, that guy has grown a
beard.
He's like, right, this guy's all in.
Hijab was like, that will never happen in
our house, right?
And I start seeing the tooth stick and
I'm like, what's this?
What is this?
What is this stick?
And someone says, we brush our teeth with
it.
And I'm like, a miswak?
It was my first time seeing a miswak.
And they said, it's called a miswak.
You brush your teeth with it.
I'm like, why would you do that?
Right?
And they're like, oh, the Prophet brushes his
teeth with this stick.
Immediately, what do you do as an 11
-year-old, 12-year-old?
You picture.
Put some in the imagination.
And I'm like, okay, if I hold this
stick, this is how the Prophet brushed his
teeth.
That's extremely tactile, right?
Tactile means it's something you touch.
It's something you feel.
Right?
So I'm like, no, I'm not doing that.
I got around to getting one, right?
When did I get one?
When I saw the older guys getting one,
right?
When I do these conferences, I would go
outside, find the older guys, and we play
two-hand touch football.
Then I see one of these guys pull
out a miswak.
And I'm like, all right, that's cool.
I'll get a miswak too.
I go ask my mom $5 to get
this toothbrush.
Get them a miswak.
So it's extremely tactile.
And it has things in it that maybe
you think are so superficial.
But for other people, that's really what they
need.
So then now you got koofies.
Now you got, well, your beard in the
first day, that's the most, it's like right
there, right in your face.
It's literally in your face.
So these little things become really sticky.
Then somebody says to you, when you eat,
you only eat with your right hand.
Oh shoot, I didn't know that.
Okay, so now every time I eat, oh
shoot, I got to eat with my right
hand.
That's a remembrance of Allah.
That's a remembrance of Islam.
When you walk into the bathroom, enter with
your left foot and use your left hand
to wash yourself.
All right.
Let's do that then.
Okay, so now in a mundane day, I
walk into the bathroom.
Oh, let me walk in with my left
foot.
Okay, dude, I did it, right?
I did it.
You see these little physical things make an
impression on you.
Guarantee you that Christianity doesn't have anything close
to this.
And that's why it's so easy to forget
it.
It's so easy to forget about it.
On top of that, let's look at the
prayer.
The prayer in Islam requires you washing, getting
wet.
You're also then physically moving.
There's physical movements in the prayer.
So children recognize prayer when it's happening.
A two-year-old, a one-year-old
will start mimicking the movements.
That's the salah of a child, right?
That's their version of prayer.
You see this tactile stuff?
This constantly around your life in a way
that it's so minor, you don't think about
it, but you do think about it.
That's the Deen of Allah, and that's why
it will embrace, it will grow roots wherever
it goes.
It will grow roots.
Set aside all the other things about Islam.
Just the fact that the common regular person,
once Islam sets foot in his heart, these
little tiny things will start growing in his
heart.
One little thing here, one little thing there.
Multiply it by a year.
One little thing here, one little thing there.
And it starts to grow in his heart.
And it will never leave his heart.
And as long as it's in the hearts
of the people of Europe, it's in Europe.
Eliminate all the mosques.
Try it.
Islam doesn't care for the buildings, it cares
for the hearts.
Make all the laws you want.
It's entering people's hearts whether you like it
or not.
That's the thing, so just don't hit your
head on the wall.
You're wasting your time.
Wasting your time.
And secularism and atheism, I believe, it's like
a tank that Allah sent throughout the world
to destroy literally the competition of Islam.
It's destroying every faith tradition that it hits.
None of them can stand up to it.
None of them, whether lifestyle or intellectually.
Intellectually, it slaughters them all.
And lifestyle, it slaughters them all.
So what is the point of calling yourself
Christian, for example, when you're just living like
every other atheist?
Your economics is no different.
Your sexual lifestyle is no different.
What is the difference between you guys then?
How are you affecting the world then?
Gospel rap.
Yeah, there's gospel rap, there's gospel rock, there's,
what do they call it, this church, Christian
rock.
What is the difference between how you live
and how everyone else lives?
When I go to New York, Manhattan, and
the biggest church there has got a gay
pride, then what's the difference then?
You have no impact except you just change
the label.
That's it.
You just put a cross up.
The same thing.
Islam is going to come and change the
way you interact with money, the way you
interact with sexuality, the way you interact with
drugs and alcohol, the way you interact with
a lot of other things.
And that's where it is, a significant and
consequential difference in a person's life.