Shadee Elmasry – Zukos Crucible & Free Will – NBF 390
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Welcome everybody to the Safina Sa'idi Nothing
But Facts livestream on a Wednesday, brought to
you by GRT and it's getting, GRT of
course is the Global Relief Trust, let's stick
their little logo maybe in the bottom corner
would be better, Global Relief Trust, we've helped
them raise over $100,000 for Gaza, British
pounds which is, what is it, $130,000
or something?
So it's getting nippy, that means Gaza, it's
going to be winter soon and Allah knows
best how they're going to survive it.
We actually still don't have contact from our
man, do we at GRT?
We're at $104,900 right now, £104,000
and 900 some, so we could be at
105 soon.
Maybe today probably we'll be there, Omar will
pin the link there.
So it's GRT and Yemeni threads, look at
these beautiful shawls, all from Yemeni threads, you
get a pinstriped one, this is one of
my favourites recently, the pinstriped one, Yankee colours
of course, the Mets fans are involved this
year and I never knew this as a
little New York, I guess meaningless trivia, ilmun
la yanfa wa jahlun la yadur, is essentially
that the Mets colours were based on the
Brooklyn Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants, the
Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants or
Brooklyn Giants, I don't know, but the Giants
and the Dodgers were both New York teams,
right?
And they left.
So the Mets inherited those fan bases when
they were founded, so they coloured their logo
based on the colours of the Dodgers and
the Giants and that's how they ended up
with the orange and blue.
That's how they ended up with that.
Let's go to Zucco's Crucible.
What exactly does our author, Naz Hassan, and
Omar you can stick this up any time
you get a chance, what does he mean
by, are we condemned to be free?
Was it worth the cost to be free?
And again, here's a question, all the questions
that surround purpose of life, that surround why
we exist, all of these spiritual questions, let
alone the morality of how do we behave,
these questions cannot be answered by reason nor
by science.
We only have knowledge that comes to us
in three sources, reason, demonstration, observation, sensory perception,
or third one is transmission.
Reason cannot give us these answers.
Thinking on a mountain cannot give you these
answers.
Experimenting in the physical creation of the world
cannot give you these answers.
So human beings are in dire need of
transmission and once you see how amazing the
creation is, literally how amazing is the dunya,
the physical aspect of the world, how amazing
is it?
And how complex, how complex it is, and
how brilliant the physical creation is.
I mean, you look these days, we get
to see something that the ancients never were
able to see.
The ancients, which is pretty much anyone who
lived 200 years ago, were able to see
a night sky that we cannot even fathom,
like the night sky that they used to
look at every single day was so amazing.
We don't see any of that with our
light pollution.
You'd have to go out to Arizona or
something to see that.
You'd literally have to do tourism to see
that.
But what we do get is these telescope
images of what outer space would look like.
This stuff is amazing.
And yet we all agree that the physical
body is far less important and less superior
and less critical in life than purpose, which
is spirituality.
Your spiritual life, your emotional life, your moral
life, like what's right and what's wrong, your
social life, how do we govern society, your
family life, what do I do when I
procreate?
Does it just procreate however I want?
Is that what we're supposed to do?
So all of those issues are far more
important than the physical body.
Those are some beautiful pictures.
I'm going to save one of those and
post it.
Whichever one you want.
So why do we have free will is
a question that cannot be answered just by
thinking a lot.
It just can't.
Never will be.
It only is answered by revelation.
Revelation tells us, oh human being, you're the
one who chose it.
Oh human being, we actually offer free will
to the heavens and to the earth, known
as al-amanah.
And what is the tafsir of that amanah?
Your free will.
That's what the amanah is.
That's what the ulama say, the will to
choose right from wrong.
Not only did they not accept it, they
recoiled from it.
They recoiled from it.
And the human being accepted it.
The generality of, like, what does that mean?
Like, is it a human being?
Did all the souls come and vote?
Allah knows best about that.
That is a example of a quliya in
the Quran.
We'll see what the tafsir say about that.
Now I have a lot of books, but
they're more like textbooks for classes.
But we will be, I will be publishing
one soon.
Let's take a while though.
In the classic Nickelodeon show, Avatar, The Last
Airbender, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation is
introduced as a disturbed teenager struggling to figure
out the right path to take in this
fragmented life.
So there are four nations in this world,
each representing the four elements, air, earth, water,
and fire.
People heard about this?
You know about Zuko?
This is your generation?
Why don't you put a picture up for
everybody?
Okay.
I never even heard of it until now.
No, I've read this before.
So that's the only reason I know about
it.
So what happens is that he ends up,
all right, a cosmic cycle chooses a human
being known as the Avatar to keep this
balance of peace.
But then the Avatar vanishes from the world,
leaving a void.
Seizing this misfortune, the Fire Nation starts a
hundred-year war to conquer the other nations.
People search far and wide for the next
Avatar to save them and punish them and
punish the Fire Nation's aggression.
But he is nowhere to be found.
Prince Zuko was born to the Fire Lord,
the tyrant of the Fire Nation.
Abused and neglected as a child, he grows
up with rage.
One event from his childhood continues to scar
him when his father burned his face and
then exiled him because of a minor mistake.
And you can only regain your honor if
you capture the Avatar.
Wait a second.
Why would the leader of the Fire Nation
want the Avatar?
Oh, capture him to kill him.
Oh, okay.
Not capture him to make use of him.
Okay, I see.
So Zuko then wanders the world as an
outcast, relentlessly looking for the Avatar.
When the Avatar reappears in the form of
a 12-year-old boy, the last survival
of an ancient nation, Zuko pursues him with
the intent of capturing him and possibly killing
him because that's what would win over his
dad again and regain his standing amongst his
people.
But Zuko, fundamentally he's good.
He has a good heart and that makes
him pause and it confuses him because he's
asked to do these two opposite things here.
Throughout the entire series, his buried conscience screams
to be heard and he wonders what it
means to do the right thing.
He believes that capturing the Avatar will allow
him to regain the trust and love of
his father.
But he also knows that the mission of
the Avatar is to restore balance to the
world and stop the evil that his father
and his family have unleashed.
He wishes for peace, yet he is in
constant anguish about what to do.
So his personal status would end up, if
he saves his personal status, he destroys the
world.
If he destroys the world, he loses his
dad or if he saves the world, he
loses his dad for good.
Well, if he had a faqih, it's a
no-brainer, right?
This is some situation that is obligatory to
go against your dad.
You know that going against the parents is
forbidden, right?
But there are certain circumstances where it's recommended
or permitted and circumstances where it's obligatory.
Sometimes it is obligatory to go against your
parents, such as in a case like this.
They want you to kill someone.
They want you to hurt someone.
All right, now he says, he also knows
that the mission of the Avatar is to
restore balance to the world and stop the
evil that his father and his family have
unleashed.
He wishes for peace, but he's in constant
anguish.
Should he keep hunting the Avatar and regain
his honor and regain the love of his
dad?
By the way, I mean, his dad is
some evil guy, right?
So why would he believe him?
He shouldn't even believe him.
Again, if he took an epistemology class, if
someone lied in the past and if someone
is an openly corrupt person, you don't believe
their promises.
Their promises and their testimony are null and
void.
Or should he give up what he was
seeking and serve the good by joining the
Avatar so that he could create a better
world?
This dilemma torments Zuko.
He almost goes insane.
In one instance, he climbs to the peak
of a mountain in the middle of a
storm and he screams in anger at God.
Astaghfirullah.
I never understood people who do this.
I just never understood that.
Pouring out his heart into the wind and
the rain.
Much like Dostoyevsky's Ivan, by the way, Dostoyevsky
was considered the greatest writer of all time
in Western literature.
In Western literature.
Yalla, what's taking so long with these pictures?
Here, get that picture right there.
Get him there, right there.
Yeah, that's it.
There are the picture of him standing on
the mountain talking in the rain.
See, Omar knows all this stuff.
That's why he's at a loss.
He wants to see the whole thing.
Yeah, let's put a picture up.
See, Omar knows all this stuff.
I wasn't in this generation, sorry.
I don't have a clue about this whole
thing.
So, Ivan, in Dostoyevsky's book, is completely fed
up with the world.
Lightning flashes.
Hit me, he says, says Zuko.
I'm right here.
He screams at heaven in a suicidal challenge.
It's not like you're ever held back before.
These shows are terrible.
Teaching kids to do this, you know that?
Even if a character later on condemns it,
or even if the kid later on changes
his mind, psychologically, it's still embedded in your
head.
That's why exposure is all that's needed.
You know when a guy makes a movie
and he pushes a really touchy agenda or
controversial agenda, but then he pulls it back
within the movie, and then the rational viewers
are like, oh, well, at least they pulled
it back.
Hey, it's in your head.
You put the seed in everyone's head.
They don't know how persuasion works.
Persuasion is not rational.
Just the fact that it's in your head
is enough, because they're going to put it
in your head again, and pull it back,
and put it again, and pull it back
until you become totally accepting of it.
Nothing happens despite him wanting God to just
destroy him.
The wind and rain keep howling as the
lightning flickers away for the first time Zuko
breaks into tears.
Unlike his father, Zuko has a moral conscience,
and this conscience causes his internal conflict.
What is the right thing to do?
You see, this is as bad as physical
pain.
In the same way God created disease in
the world, he creates a cure.
This is far worse in many cases than
physical pain.
Physical pain, no one's really at fault for
it usually, just sickness in general.
So, what people need to realize is the
rational need for revelation.
A world without revelation, it would almost be
like a world without one of its elements.
You can't have a world without water.
You can't have a world without fire, a
world without these essential elements.
So, he wants to know what is the
right thing to do?
What's my destiny?
Am I on the right path?
How do I negotiate my loyalty to my
family?
And how do I do what's right at
the same time?
What is the true source of my honor
and self-respect?
Navigating such questions puts immense strain on a
person.
Certain parts of life cannot be gray.
You need an answer black or white.
Certain parts, it's too dangerous for it to
be gray.
All of this inner conflict takes hold of
Zuko because of his free will.
We're reading from Pearls in the Deep, which
is a book that we recently published at
Safina Society.
You'll see the little Safina Society logo right
here, where you can purchase it at meccabooks
.com slash pearls.
And Omar has already pinned it.
Thank you very much, Omar, for pinning that.
He desperately wants to be good, to make
his life amount to something, but he is
tormented with all the trauma of his past,
especially his public humiliation and exile.
He constantly blames himself.
My father told me I was lucky to
be born, he says.
It's all my fault.
Having consciousness means remembering our past moments.
We're painfully aware of who we are and
what we have gone through.
Animals don't have this.
Zebras don't get ulcers, which is caused by
stress.
If a zebra narrowly escapes the clutches of
a lion, it just goes back to grazing
nonchalantly.
From the mercy of Allah on these animals
is they have very short memories.
Otherwise, you'd be traumatized your whole life.
You wouldn't feel like you want to be
in the savannah ever again.
You wouldn't go out and graze.
So Allah gave these creatures a short memory.
The dark picture of human life I've painted
at the beginning seems to suggest that our
free will is a curse.
Yeah, it is a curse without revelation.
And it's not a curse, but we could
say it causes pain, which is why revelation
is a necessity.
When people talk about revelation, they ask and
they say, why wouldn't God just send a
prophet to everybody to speak in their language?
All right, let's say he did.
What happens when 100 years pass and you
can't relate to that prophet?
For example, if there was somebody from the
1920s, someone in 2020 doesn't relate, right?
So, okay, send a prophet to every nation
in their language and renew the prophethood every
100 years.
Oh, you know that already happens?
Those people are called Bani Isra'il.
That was tried.
And what ends up happening?
You have no value for prophets.
Supply goes up, respect goes down.
And what did you end up doing?
Trying to kill prophet Isa.
At least enough rejecting prophet Isa was sufficient,
but they tried to get him killed too.
So, what you're asking for is something that
happened, right?
Poor Jamie Adams here is saying, blimey, $12
shipping to the UK.
Oh, okay, I thought blimey was one of
those.
See, I can't remember my UK words.
Last time I heard blimey was in Jungle
Book.
Yeah, you know those birds at the end
of the movie?
When you all become dads, you'll know.
You know those stuff, you don't know this
stuff.
So, point being is that what you're suggesting
you think is a brilliant idea, Allah Ta
'ala has brought it in the world already.
The sons of Israel used to receive a
prophet constantly, non-stop.
They had so many prophets.
So much so you have in one town,
you can have two prophets.
In one lifetime, you may meet 20 prophets
in your lifetime.
But what did that do?
It actually caused them to not value such
a prophet.
Prophethood has lost its value.
Now, let's say that happens in the world.
Someone's going to come up with an idea.
How about I have an idea?
One prophet for the whole world, right?
So, here we go.
He says here now, what happens with Zuko
next?
Where do we go?
All right, free will.
He screamed at God in the storm.
Having to make sense of our lives and
figure out how to act properly in the
world seems like a burden that none of
us ask for.
In fact, God compares the journey of living
a moral life to a steep, arduous climb
along a highland slope.
In verses from Surah Al-Balad, had we
not guided him to the two towering highland
slopes representing good and evil, yet he does
not spring into action with determination and effort
to climb the steep ascent.
Who do we have here?
Maurice, how are you?
You're friends with Fahd?
Yes.
Good, good.
Maurice, are you French or Canadian or what?
Canadian.
Okay.
All right.
So, why would God give us free will?
What is the good in it?
We seem to be missing something from this
picture.
The great heroes of history, including prophets, awliya,
sages, scholars, transformed souls, all embrace moral responsibility
despite the suffering that comes their way.
Any situation, any test in life where we
have choice is far harder than when we
don't have choice.
That's why recently I was just telling him
that poverty is harder than wealth.
As poverty, you've been given a situation that
you have to deal with.
You don't have a choice.
You have a mental choice.
That's it.
The choice, it's easier of a tribulation.
Yeah, it's easier because I'm literally just being
told what to do.
Be patient.
You have no choice.
But the moment you give a guy 100
,000 a month salary, 40,000 a month
even salary, now what opens up for him?
Like 10 doors open up.
Now my salary, I choose, right?
My salary doubles to 80,000 a month.
How many doors open up now?
100 doors open up.
There's literally 100 things I could do at
this moment in time.
So the more choices that you have, the
bigger a test it is.
Anytime that choice is involved, it's a bigger
test.
You know that people get stressed out going
to supermarkets these days.
It's actually a micro stress.
Go get toothpaste, right?
How many toothpastes are there?
There's so many different kinds and each one,
like, how would I choose?
That's why the smartest people in the world,
they literally have uniforms.
They made themselves uniforms, right?
So that I wake up in the morning,
I don't have to ask.
I don't have to think.
I don't have to mix and match stuff.
So all of the greats, they embrace this
because choice is the source of all goodness
for us.
Because the ability to choose, when you do
choose right, you have a greater reward.
You have a much greater reward.
Did someone say, did Sheikh mean wealth is
harder than poverty?
Wealth is harder than poverty.
Yeah, you said the opposite.
I said the opposite, sorry.
Wealth is harder than poverty.
Poverty is an easier test.
So when we look from the aspect of
the afterlife, that's what Allah wants for people.
He wants for people to make it to
paradise.
He's not going to do the work for
you.
You're going to do it.
We're going to do it.
But when we, that is the answer for
why most people in the world are poor.
He's given you an easier test.
Because remember that the lens that you have
to view the creator from is his concern
for you, is your next life.
This is life is like a footnote.
Yes, he loves for you to have ease
in this life and comfort in this life,
but not at the expense of the next
life.
It's not worth it.
That means let's rewind in time.
And you're sitting in a room with a
guy named Bill Gates, it's 1979.
And you got $5,000 in your pocket.
I know the future, you don't.
And I'm telling you, trust me, take only
what you need.
Give him every penny you can take that
you can give.
And you're like, yeah, but I wanted to
buy this car.
Yeah, but I wanted to get this jacket.
You fool, right?
You're going to be able to buy a
jacket factory if you just give him the
money and wait 10 years.
Less than that.
You'll buy it, the whole company, the whole
brand will be yours in 10 years.
So I'm going to be like, okay, I
know this person, their mentality, they're not going
to accept for me to say, just give
him the whole 5,000 and just go
hungry, eat sardines for the next year.
Yeah, if I know that I can do
it, but you don't know.
You're just operating on trust.
I can't tell you the future, that's the
rule.
I can't tell you the future, but I'm
just suggesting to you.
So we're going to cut out for you
a limit.
All right.
Take 750 for yourself.
Give the rest 4,250 to Bill Gates
and you'll be like a 1% owner,
right?
But 1% in the future is going
to be millions upon millions upon millions.
And then once you have those millions, those
millions become half of that becomes an investment
for another company.
So that's how it grows like that.
But you see, that's what it feels like
to live in life.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is
telling us here, enjoy yourself in this box
right here.
Don't look at anything else.
Don't waste your time with those other things.
Not only waste your time, you could lose
your money too.
There's like multiple investors.
Give your money to this guy.
If you give the money to the guy
next to you, Sun Systems or whatever, Cisco.
Okay, fine.
I'm not jumping up and down, but fine.
All right.
That's Coca-Cola.
Money's not going to go up or down.
It's just going to go so slow you
don't even realize it.
But give your money to this guy.
And definitely don't give your money to that
guy, that guy, that guy's Netscape.
It's going to go up and come down.
That's Firefox.
It's going to go up, then disappear.
That's who knows what.
Remember that guy who opened up the Braid,
Tom Brady and has lost millions of dollars
with this guy.
What's his name?
SFX.
That's SFX over there.
Don't give him your money.
You're not going to see it again.
That's what life feels like, right?
Allah gave us a set of rules and
he said, the future is going to look
so good.
You just have to wait.
It's hard to wait a whole lifetime.
It's really hard.
So Allah gives us some more, more hors
d'oeuvres, more appetizers, more appetizers.
But the smart one, he trusts.
He truly trusts.
And he knows that this is the right
way to act.
Just trust the creator, trust the maker.
That's why Allah says, who trusts the maker?
The people who know, the people who always
are thinking, reading about theology, about God, about
the afterlife.
They have absolute certainty.
God knows we don't know.
We're not going to worry about the particulars.
Just worry about who is talking.
That's the creator talking to us.
So here he says here that human free
will, it's something that they all embraced.
Because if I were to now pierce the
curtain of the unseen and you were able
to see what 1995 looks like for Bill
Gates, because you know that was the year.
There went from like this to like this.
When Windows 95 came out, blew the hole.
You guys were young, but I remember that
summer.
When Windows 95 came out, it blew the
world apart.
Everyone was like, there can't be a possible
company in the world who didn't purchase the
hole for their whole office, Windows 95.
And that was a huge year.
They totally revamped everything.
At that point, anyone who was there, it's
not even 1000x.
Your investment went more than who knows what,
100,000x.
Now if I showed you, that's what the
future is.
Then you invest, you know what?
I'll just take $100 to survive on sardines
and I'm going to give all the rest
of my money to Bill Gates.
I can't reward you for trusting me.
I can't reward you as a believer because
you saw the future already.
Right?
So that's why having moral choice and not
knowing the future, just trusting Allah, that's why
you get rewarded for the trust.
Versus, let's take another example.
I say, I know what's best for you.
I put a gun to your head, give
him all the money and keep $100 for
yourself.
That person also doesn't deserve reward, right?
He doesn't deserve any reward.
No choice.
So that's why choice, you can maximize everything
with choice.
All right, so he says here, did some
of the Awliya of Allah, the people of
Allah, do they face the inner conflicts to
the way Zuko did?
Are you familiar with this avatar, the show?
Okay, that's good.
So you're making use of your time.
If they were human beings, then they must
have, but at what point, right?
When we have a moral dilemma, a Muslim
has a moral dilemma, he has a source
to go to.
We're not sitting there thinking.
We go to the Quran, we go to
the prophet's sayings, we go to the scholars,
we go to the jurists and they debate
a ruling.
But here's the thing, the moment you went
to the right source and your methodology of
deriving the ruling of the source is sound,
in both cases you're rewarded, even if you're
wrong.
Because you went to the right source and
you followed the right method.
You just got a wrong outcome.
You're rewarded.
But you're rewarded double if you get that
right outcome.
And that double reward is like in this
life, you'll see the good result.
You'll see that it works in this life.
That's one of the interpretations of the two
rewards.
The other one, he'll actually fail in this
life, but he'll get his reward in the
next life for trying.
So he says here, all of the people
of Allah were transformed into truly good people
that we love because they embraced the responsibility.
They did not look at free will and
their own conscience as a curse.
What secret did they know that Zuko did
not?
Perhaps God was up to something good by
creating free creatures after all.
You see, that's the whole point of the
creation.
By being put here, feeling like you're far
from the world, then having so many choices,
and some people have more than others, then
at that point, when they do choose the
right path, that is a sign of actual
true love of God.
Even angels can never attain this.
The angels are in the heavens.
Firstly, they have no evil in the first
place.
No evil propensities.
No illness can ever affect them.
No spiritual illness.
They have no desires.
They have no needs.
The angels never have a need for food,
so they never steal.
They never have sexual desires, so they never
fornicate.
Because they don't have needs, they don't have
anger.
They don't have sadness.
They don't have any of these things.
They fly around to the heavens, look at
the wonder of God, and be in perfection
at all times.
As a result of that, they're praised, but
they're never rewarded.
What would they be rewarded for?
A reward implies an action that you took
that was hard, that could have gone wrong.
You could have done the wrong path.
You chose the right path.
During the initial revelation of the Quran, the
Prophet Muhammad ran from the cave of Hira,
weighed down by the might of the divine
words being revealed to him.
Even after that first revelation, the immense responsibility
put on his shoulders awed and humbled him.
No prophet wants or seeks prophethood.
As honorable as the status of prophet is,
a tradition says the prophets, they suffer the
most hardships.
The hardships that they face are the hardest.
So some people say they're afraid to be
pious because hardships come with piety.
But you know what else comes with piety?
Roofs and umbrellas and protection from these hardships.
So a massive hardship can fall on us.
For example, if we lived in a tent
right now, this pot right here, I could
throw it and it would actually maybe damage
the tent.
It would damage the tent if it was
a teepee like the Native Americans on one
pole.
If it's a camping tent, it will go
right through it or bend everything.
Now if it's like one of the modern
tents, a bit stronger, it'll probably bounce off.
Now if it's a mud hut, then this
will break.
If it was our roof, we wouldn't even
realize it.
Someone dropped it, you break a shingle, break
a tile, that's it.
If it was on a factory grade building,
nothing.
This thing won't even stand a chance.
Right?
So the prophets, not only do they suffer
greater tribulations, but they also have greater protection.
The protection is the light of Allah.
Divine light that descends down with their prayers.
When they say a lot of prayers, then
they're shielded with a barrier of light.
Trials and tribulations may come, they may bounce
right off.
So they still get affected by it.
And prophets will have painful things will happen
to them.
Think about the prophet, peace be upon him.
He has six children, seven children.
I mean some said the boys were three,
some said the boys were two.
But let's say six children.
Huh?
Seven children, seven children.
How many outlived him?
One.
He had to experience the death of all
of his children minus one.
How about the news that the prophets are
giving news of the future, right?
You think that's a good thing?
The prophet, peace be upon him, was told
that his beloved grandson, who was like three,
four years old, playing with him, will be
killed by your own people.
Imagine now somebody tells you, your friends are
going to kill your grandson.
Like what?
How am I going to live?
Who do I trust?
Who do I not trust?
Shayaji, you don't want to know the future.
So they suffered a lot of pain, but
their pain never went to the core that
caused what they call an existential crisis.
That never happened for prophets.
Like they're never bewildered.
Why is this happening?
What's the purpose of life?
That is on lockdown for the prophets and
for the pious, those who have knowledge.
He says here, who would want to suffer
the most?
The prophet's wife's cousin informed him of the
trials he would face, including that he would
be persecuted, fought and expelled from his city.
He would be stoned and beaten until even
his feet would flow with blood, and he
would witness his closest companions being tortured.
His wife would die.
He perhaps, he would lose all of his
daughters and sons except for one.
But what was perhaps the most difficult?
That he could not guide all the people
that he wished, including his uncle, died as
a disbeliever.
So seeing hellfire and then knowing that people
are marching towards it, that knowledge.
For us, hellfire, yeah, it exists.
I can sort of visualize something of it,
but I have not seen it.
Prophets are shown what this is with their
eyes.
They look at it.
As a prophet went on the night journey,
looked with his eyes into paradise, looked with
his eyes into the fire.
It's very different than if I'm just telling
you this is what it's like.
And that's what our experience of heaven and
* is.
Some people said that if we normal people
had seen heaven, no amount of money would
make us happy in this life.
We would just, you'd be miserable.
If you saw heaven, you would be miserable
with anything less than that.
And that's one of the great wisdoms why
heaven, we're just, we're sort of given a
visual that you can imagine.
But your specific paradise that is written for
you, if you do good, it's there already
created.
Now, if you don't do good, it's going
to be given to somebody else.
But if you had seen it, then nothing
in this life would satisfy you.
You'd be miserable your whole life.
And if you've seen *, you won't be
able to sleep the rest of your life.
So that's a heavy burden that prophets carry.
That's why their entire existence, because of these
things, is completely different from ours.
Not that they're not humans, they're human beings,
but because they're shown these things, how do
you live normally after that?
So their heart must completely transcend all of
the struggles that we would go through because
of what they've seen, what their knowledge is.
It's not knowledge.
It's direct.
It's knowledge, of course, but it's a direct
eyewitness.
Transmitted knowledge doesn't have the same effect.
Jamie Adams is asking here if there are
other people.
Yeah, there are three brothers, four brothers in
the room, in the studio.
So let's continue here.
Despite all this, the prophet accepts the responsibility
of saving his people and all of humanity
with humility and even gratitude.
His heart showed no bitterness towards the almost
impossible task he had been assigned, only submission.
Who could bear such a weight?
But he knew it was for a greater
good, for reforming his people and for guiding
the world.
He takes the world onto his shoulders in
response to God, which is one reason why
God describes him as a mercy to all
that exists.
Such expansive breadth of soul and such human
excellence would not be possible if the prophet
was not a free creature.
If he were merely programmed to be how
he was, then his role as a prophet
and steward of all mankind would not have
the same force of authenticity.
Yes, his humans commit the worst instances of
evil and summon up the worst perversions of
suffering.
With his free will, man can turn the
world into *.
In the case of Prince Zuko, how could
a father permanently scar his 14-year-old
son's face because he spoke out of turn?
In the case of Hitler's officers, how could
they gas innocent human beings in the morning,
then go listen to Beethoven in the evening?
You need to add something about the IDF.
Human beings can take the downward slope and
descend to a depravity that knows no bounds.
But human beings can also make the ascent
and rise, like the prophets, the saints, and
other transformed souls.
The greatest acts of good which distinguish between
humans also comes from that free will.
This is the reason why free will is
good.
It gives us significant choices with significant consequences,
not just choices like choosing organic pancakes over
turkey sausage for breakfast.
The world is not a foam bubble.
We must truly follow through with our choices
and act on our moral conviction.
Having this significant choice is good because by
putting skin in the game, it makes our
choices sincere and thereby making our lives meaningful.
The bind of having to choose is what
allows for the highest kind of moral good
in the first place.
You know, there's thinking without free will, without
struggle, without loss, there'll be nothing to celebrate.
If you think about people who celebrate anything,
like a victory, getting a deal, getting a
contract, getting into school.
Every student that got into a university took
another student's spot.
For every 500 people who get into an
Ivy League, there are 500 people crying that
they did it.
That's loss.
Because there's a scarcity.
Without scarcity, there's no value in this world.
Now to see the next world, heaven is
different.
Heaven is different.
Heaven has a whole other set of laws.
There's no scarcity and everything has value.
There is no limit to your stomach and
your throat.
Every bite that you take of food feels
like the first bite.
Unlike us today, you start a steak, your
happiness is here.
By the end of the steak, you don't
even want it anymore.
In fact, I can torture you with it,
make you eat another one.
It becomes a form of torture, right?
Then you'll vomit it out.
And you may actually, if we continue this,
develop a mental tick when you see steak
again.
I had a relative one time who did
something so extreme, I couldn't believe he did
it.
He had a son who would always eat
chocolate.
Any candy in the house, he would just
always eat the candy.
So the solution probably should be don't buy
so much candy in the house.
How can you blame the kid?
Or put it high up where he can't
reach.
One day, the kid was only 7 or
8 years old, maybe 9 years old, at
a point where now you're not listening.
You're just literally not listening.
So he sat him down one day and
he put a bag of candy on the
table and he said, you can have some.
And then as soon as the kid stopped,
he said, where are you going?
You get back here.
And he forced him to eat one after
another, after another, after another, until the kid
was crying.
He was trying to create a tick in
the kid's mind against candy.
Like to me, that's torture.
Back in 1994, there was a Russian player
who came to the United States to play
hockey.
And the Russians had just started coming over,
1991, 1992, 1993.
They were so good.
But they didn't have the certain discipline.
I don't know why.
This one player didn't have the discipline that
the previous Russians had.
And the Russians were really disciplined because they
were in the military.
They weren't doing this out of their choice,
right?
They were playing hockey in the military.
They would play from 5 in the morning
until 5 at night, no choice in the
matter, 7 days a week.
But a new generation of Russians came up
with the skill, but not the same discipline.
So the New York Rangers got a guy
named Alexei Kovalev.
He was so good, so talented.
But he wasn't disciplined.
He'd never listened to the coach.
He'd do it all himself.
He'd try to skate through the whole opposition
himself without passing.
Well, one day, in one game, he overstayed
his shift.
And the shifts in hockey are about 80
seconds.
A minute to two minutes is the shift
you got to come off.
Another group comes up on the floor while
the game is going on.
Well, he didn't come off.
So the coach, to teach him a lesson,
he was an Iron Mike Keenan, they used
to call him.
This guy, he's my kind of coach, right?
He was a no-nonsense coach.
And he was abrasive when you did something
wrong.
Nobody liked him except the day you win
the championship.
Then you like him, right?
He was one of those coaches.
So finally, after overstaying his shift by like
a minute, Kovalev comes off.
Keenan says, no, go back, right?
Go back.
And he kept him on the ice for
10 minutes.
That's an eternity in hockey.
The whole period is 20 minutes, right?
The guys, legs were shaking at the end
because he was so tired.
And the whole, everyone was cracking up.
The broadcasters were laughing.
The team was laughing.
Everyone was laughing.
Every time he came off, stay on, right?
And he kept him on for 10 minutes
straight, a 10-minute shift.
He made the news, right?
All the hockey news was talking about it.
It was the funniest thing.
But that's how he taught him, right?
You want to come off, don't come off.
Stay on.
So that's what some people do.
So he says here that, how did we
get to talking about that?
The world is not a bubble.
We have to have skin in the game.
There are consequences to our choices.
The more significant the choice, the greater the
good if we choose wisely.
This human capacity for sincerity is what gives
humanity a status even greater than the angels.
While the angels worship God perfectly, without error,
they cannot possibly disobey the God.
There is no way for them to disobey
God.
So the idea of Satan being a fallen
angel, we have no such thing.
The only reason some people lumped Satan with
angels is two reasons.
Number one, he lived amongst them.
Number two, his creation is more similar.
So fire and light are similar.
Mud is something completely different.
So hence, they sort of lump the species
next to each other.
There are some species that are not from
the same, but they're very close.
Keep in mind, the species is that they
can procreate together.
That's the difference.
I wonder about all the felines.
They could possibly procreate together, right?
They can procreate together, right?
Ligers, and they look terrible, right?
Do you ever see what a liger looks
like?
Oh, they look bad.
They shouldn't experiment with these animals like this,
right?
No, is that a liger?
No.
Is that a liger?
Okay, so maybe they're not that bad.
No, maybe it's the white lion I think
I'm talking about that looks bad.
Yeah, see the liger is not a handsome
animal.
It's confused.
It's a confused creature, right?
And the only ones that are nice here
are probably AI.
But horses and donkeys, when they mate, they
make a mule, but the mule can't reproduce.
So in any event, that's one of the
reasons why people lump in Satan with the
angels.
Maybe something in the Bible got altered or
changed or something that makes them think that
Satan is a fallen angel, but there's no
such thing as a fallen angel.
There's no such thing as an angel who
disobeys God.
Physically, it's essentially impossible.
A human being though, who chooses to surrender
their will to God in the face of
choice, the ability to use it selfishly or
for evil or for his own pleasures or
at the expense of others, becomes greater than
an angel by virtue of that noble free
will choice.
So angels are absolutely perfect.
They have no desires, no anger, no needs,
and physically, they have no blemishes.
Yet we are here on this earth with
blemishes.
We're here with desires.
We get feisty.
We can get annoyed, and yet we could
be at a level higher than angels.
And so I remember one of the awliyat
talking, and he said people, they don't understand
what the saints or the awliyat actually are.
And they visualize a human that's almost looking
like an angel and acting like an angel,
but that's not what it is.
And he said you can have a wali
of Allah, he gets annoyed at minor things,
he's agitated because his body is uncomfortable.
Like if you're really hot and it's really
humid, you're easily agitated.
If it's hot and dry, you're easily agitated.
And he could be easily agitated.
He could be somebody who is doing things
in the world, trying to increase himself in
the world, competing, doing all these things, desiring,
marrying and eating, enjoying food, and sleeping, doing
all these normally human things, yet in the
sight of Allah, he's greater than an angel.
Why?
Because the choices he made in life.
He had so many abilities where in the
big things, forget these little tiny things that
are, don't really have any consequence, right?
They have no consequence at all.
The stuff that people may judge on outwardly,
but this inwardly, when he has choices, he
makes the best choices, and Allah keeps elevating
him, his rank.
Although all we see is a man coughing
and sneezing and eating and talking and answering
phones and answering some people, not answering other
people, living a life that you wouldn't expect
because people's perception of the Awliya is not
always right.
And it may almost be a Christian perception
of saints.
And of course, none of the Christian priests
and popes, that's how they should behave.
You don't have kids, you don't have bills,
you know, the church takes care of everything.
You don't have to work with people, you
don't have to compete.
You are fed day and night by just
show up, give the sermon and come back.
You don't have to make choices because they
don't even have money.
They don't actually have possessions.
Everything is the possession of the church.
What is this?
How are you my guide?
You don't know a thing about how we
live, right?
So all that you may be good at
is showing up at opening the door of
the church, giving some speeches and lectures because
you could study all day.
But when the rubber hits the road, you
can never tell us what to do.
You can't advise me with any good advice.
So your reading is inside out of the
books because what else are you doing?
So we expect that.
You can give me a great lecture.
That's wonderful.
But when I got issues, I'm not coming
to you.
And that's the difference.
So like they don't marry and any of
these things, like that's such a huge part
of life, right?
You don't marry.
Like when you, the moment a person marries,
his whole life changes.
That's why the prophet Isaiah said, it's half
your deen.
Like half of your life will be altered.
Imagine half of your life.
Yeah, half of your life will be altered
because now everything's got to change.
50% of what you do when you're
not married, as soon as you marry, cut
it in half.
Some of it you can't do.
Some of it you won't have to do.
Some of it you'll never think about it
again.
It's a luxury that only exists for single
people.
And also you have half the pleasures of
life also come with that.
How are you going to be thankful?
So what do you know about gratitude when
you haven't tasted the greatest pleasure of life?
You don't have that.
So what gratitude do you have?
Really, it must be a satanic trick to
make them not marry, right?
That must be part of it.
Because we know rahbaniyah, the monasticism, what is
meant by that term, according to what I
was told by my teachers on this in
tafsir, is that they were worshipful, just generally
worshipful.
That's what it meant.
It didn't mean that they couldn't marry.
Then they innovated that part and they failed
to uphold it.
So it may have been a permitted innovation
at that time.
Our Prophet forbade it as a belief.
You can happen not to get married, that's
not a problem.
I happen not to be married, but I
don't believe it's superior.
So maybe that in their time, because Surah
Al-Hadeed says, an innovation which they added,
we did not obligate upon them, but they
didn't preserve it, they didn't give it its
due.
So the fact that God says, Allah says,
given its due, indicates that it was lawful.
Just like you commit to memorize the Quran,
you're not obligated to, but now you do
it, but you're sloppy.
You make a lot of mistakes.
So I can say, you weren't obligated to
do this, you took it on yourself and
you didn't give it its due.
You stand up for taraweeh, you don't have
to do it.
You choose to be the imam in taraweeh
and open your mosque, but now you show
up late, you keep messing up.
I can tell you, you're not giving it
its due.
Same thing with the monks.
Allah says in the Quran, it was a
monasticism, they innovated it onto it and they
didn't give it its due.
Clearly, they fornicated, they went with boys.
Of course, when the Shariah of Muhammad comes,
that's no longer acceptable.
Our Shariah abrogates the whole thing.
They stall in their monasticism.
We know this from Salman al-Farisi.
The great Salman al-Farisi was a Persian
who left the pagans and the fire worshippers
and then traveled from monastery to monastery for
decades and he said some of them were
really good and some of them were really
bad.
Every time one would die or some crisis
would come, he'd go from one monastery to
the next until he came searching for the
Prophet, peace be upon him.
Even in his search for the Prophet, amazingly,
he was taken as a slave and then
sold to a master in Yathrib.
That's exactly where the Prophet was sent, to
a Jewish man.
Then Salman al-Farisi became one of the
greatest companions.
If you notice, he didn't spend as much
time with the Prophet, peace be upon him,
as those in Mecca.
But he very quickly was an advisor because
the concept of the monotheistic religions, he was
already in it.
He just needed to fix certain details, that's
it.
He was already in that worshipful life.
So he's the advisor of many Sahaba.
He's the one who said, your body has
rights over you, your eyes have rights over
you, your wife has rights over you.
And I think it was, who was it?
Which was Abu Darda, I believe it was
Abu Darda's wife complained to Salman, said that
he just fasts all day and then at
night he prays all night.
And then what about me, right?
What about our house here?
So Abu Darda said, would you like to
Salman said to Abu Darda, would you like
to spend the night?
He said, yes, spend the night, see how
does the great Salman al-Fadl, does he
worship Allah?
Like what does he do?
So after a third of the night, he
woke up, all right, let's go.
We slept a little bit, now let's pray.
And they used to find so much, so
much spirituality in those night prayers, so much
Iman and and sweetness of faith in those
times.
He said, not yet, sleep.
Then half the night came, so sleep.
Then a sixth of the night came, they
said, okay, now we'll wake up, just a
little bit left.
So now we'll wake up and then they'll
pray.
Then the next day, then right before, all
right, let's have suhoor, no, we won't fast
today.
So he, if he had told him, he
may not have believed him.
But when you see the man of Allah
behaving this way, you start to realize, okay,
that's how we can do things.
So that's why, so when we get to
see a man of Allah in his family
life, and I've heard of some teachers of
mine, they had crisis in their families.
It doesn't, so now it doesn't shake me
up to know that.
Awliya of Allah can have crisis.
It's not going to be like some kind
of imagination, some kind of fantasy, where every,
all of life is perfect.
Their Awliya Allah is, is their counterparts.
Subhanallah, they disagreed with them.
It doesn't change anything, they could disagree.
So we have a much more practical perception
of what a man of God is like,
right?
And likewise, are there not women of Allah,
subhanahu wa ta'ala?
There's Aisha bint Abi Bakr, Aisha, the mother
of the believers, Sayyid Aisha.
We know the most about her.
We know more about her than anybody else.
A, she lived longer.
She lived at a time everyone was recording
everything.
And we know from her that she would
have anger.
She had anger, but she had it in
the right, in the right cause, right?
She had jealousy.
When one of the other mothers of the
believers bought food for the Prophet on her
day, that was her day, she flipped the
plate, and wasted the food, and broke the
plate.
The Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, said, then we
owe her a plate now, right?
So he did establish justice.
But he smiled, and he said, your mother
got jealous.
What was she jealous for, though?
That is my day for the Prophet.
Just like when Moses came, and I'm teaching
you guys to worship one God.
I'm going to go get the law from
God, and be back in a month.
He'd been slaves for decades now.
We just came over, saw the Pharaoh drowned.
Are you serious?
After 40 days, and you're worshiping an idol?
I don't even have a thought of the
way he put it.
His, your clothes were still wet, right?
Right?
Like exaggerating that.
Your clothes were still wet, right?
And you worshipped another God.
Like you didn't even like skip prayer.
I get that.
Sit back, listen to music, and skip prayer.
All right, that's something bad people, people could
fall into this.
Yeah, like a slow progression, right?
No, in one month, and 10 days, 40
days total, you're worshiping a false God.
So that would drive anyone insane.
It drives anybody insane, right?
So he took God's tablet, and threw it
against the mountain.
Like he can't fathom it.
And Allah never blamed him for that.
Because his anger was for the right reason.
Likewise, Sayyidah Aisha's anger was for the love
of the Prophet.
Her jealousy was for the love of the
Prophet.
That is something to be rewarded.
So the Prophet never blamed her.
He never said, Astaghfirullah, you broke another woman's
bowl.
You spilled, wasted the food.
You behave like this in front of the
guests, because there were guests there.
He didn't say a word of that.
Why?
Because the base, the root of her feelings
were good.
He says here, human beings often craft a
narrative.
Of self, around inspiring figures, and inspiring actions.
So we need heroes.
That's the beauty of it.
In the Islamic world, in a world where
you had belief, and you had Iman, and
this stuff was a norm, you didn't have
to have superheroes.
The Catholics and the Christians did not even
need to have superheroes.
The Catholics and the Christians, when they were
religious, they had saints.
I'm not saying this is good, but I'm
saying it was real to them.
In their mind, this is real life telling
us how to live real life.
These are the paragons of how to make
real choices in real life.
All right, atheism comes and they lose all
of that.
Now what do you have?
Spider-Man.
Right?
People still need heroes.
Their heroes are athletes who overcame great odds.
What odd?
The odds of putting a ball in a
hoop, or carrying a ball across 100 yards,
that becomes the hero of the day.
Those are the heroes of today.
And then complete imagination.
Batman and Superman and Spider-Man, they've replaced
what used to be our heroes, which is
the Awliya of Allah, Salihin, all these things.
Now without evil people, we have no heroes.
You cannot have a hero without an antagonist.
You cannot have a hero without an enemy.
Let's have a Batman movie, but no Joker,
no Scarecrow, no Catwoman, no Penguin.
You don't have a movie.
Let's have Superman.
He goes around saving people with no one
stopping him.
No Lex Luthor and no Kryptonite.
It doesn't work.
So how do we get those bad people?
They have free will.
So free will is what actually produces heroes
and villains.
It's interesting because they do have those movies
about the heroes, but it's just about their
personal development before they were a hero.
And it's always about their personal journey.
And the way that people see them in
that movie is not like a superhero.
It's more like them becoming a hero.
And then the next movie is where the
villain is.
And then that's when they're an actual hero.
But they're never actually classified as a hero
in that movie.
It's more like their development.
Because there's no villain in the movie.
So once the storytelling has increased and you
get bored with the old stories, but you
got the same franchise, what are you going
to do?
So you're going to make the right.
So if you think about it, they start
off with the superhero and the villain, cut
to the chase right away.
But now that you've been attached to it
now, but I think, all right, what are
we going to do us?
How many villains is he going to defeat?
Let's actually go back to how each person
became the superhero and became the villain.
It's not essential because if it was, they
would call him a hero then.
That's true.
That's how he became a hero.
That's true.
If you had to go through the whole
thing, you might bore the audience.
So they bring him out as a hero
right away.
And then later on, they'll tell you about
him.
So that's the idea of society and life
requiring and needing, having complete need of heroes.
I only have time for two questions, three
questions.
Unfortunately, I got to run.
A lot of comments here.
Let's see what the questions are.
Am I reading from Pearls in the Deep?
Yes, this is a really, really important book
because why bad things happen?
It's one of the most crucial things that
you need to know.
It's one of the ways Shaitan gets to
you by bad things happening.
When, listen to this, if you can learn
this quick, early in life, you will save
yourself so much.
When a bad thing happens, and it squeezes
your heart, accept it.
Accept the squeezing of your heart.
This is from Allah.
Now go and do, realize that Allah Ta
'ala at this point, He's pulling you back
to Him.
He's pulling you back to Him.
And we should have a recognition that He
wants us to search for the reason and
to increase in our knowledge and our toolbox
of knowledge of why is it that my
heart is constricted?
Did I make a mistake?
Go fix it.
Did I mess up somehow?
Go fix that.
Learn.
So when your heart gets squeezed, most people,
they live their life trying to flee from
that.
And they want to live a life where
that will never happen again.
No, the best life to live is to
live a life knowing that qabt, my heart
being constrained, will always happen at some point
or other.
Don't run away from it.
Rather, recognize why is it happening?
Know the wisdom behind it.
The wisdom behind it, Allah is calling me
back to Him to think about why did
this happen?
What's the reason for that?
That's going to increase you in knowledge.
And you can help prevent other people from
suffering.
What does Zuko's Crucible mean?
I mean, your guess is as good as
mine, but it's the name of the show
that Nas uses in this book.
He uses as teaching mechanism, like stories in
pop culture.
This is not a textbook.
This is an easily flowing book that tries
to find people that we all relate to.
Are card games without gambling haram like Uno?
No, we can't say it's haram.
We can't say that.
In general, the scholars dislike games of chance.
They dislike games of chance.
It's not a good habit to love chance
because chance is something people love it after
a while.
And it's completely busted.
You're not learning anything.
You're not benefiting anything.
Other games you could learn and benefit from,
but games of chance tend to look down
upon.
What's the ruling on the duff?
It's permitted, but not in Masajid.
Can you give advice on what someone should
aim to study in college?
Well, I think that you should aim to
study something that's going to benefit you more
than something that interests you.
The stuff that interests you, you could study
it somewhere else.
You can study it later on.
But the stuff that will really benefit you
in your life is something that you can
implement right away right out of college.
You can earn a salary.
You can marry from that.
And I think that that's a function of
college.
If you're interested in something, you don't need
to go to college for that.
Or you can take it as a minor
or a double major if you're ambitious.
Like English Lit.
That's not going to be your only major.
It's haram to play in the NBA?
Well, sports in general is differed upon.
The Hanafis say if it's halal to do,
it's halal to earn from.
The Marikis say we're not allowed to earn
money from games.
Mrs. S, I'm having too many tests and
I'm so tired.
Do I stop being pious?
Well, no.
That's not the only reason for tests, by
the way.
Being pious is not the only reason for
tests.
Our own actions otherwise could be cause of
tribulations.
If anything, that's going to make things worse.
You would need a lot more.
Can you give advice on what someone should
do, should aim to study?
We answered that one.
Any thoughts on astrology to determine one's temperament?
All knowledge related to temperament, keep in mind,
it's nice and cute.
Like your temperament is fire, yours is air,
yours is water.
But keep in mind, it's a speculative knowledge
and it should not dictate how you act.
What should dictate how you act is the
Sunnah, the way of the Prophet, peace be
upon him.
By the way, you know why these websites
all succeed?
These temperament websites?
Whatever answer you come upon isn't flattering.
That's why these websites are very successful.
There's also the ECNJ, whatever, ETNJ, ITNJ, whatever.
Every single whatever you put, that's going to
give you one of four boxes.
They've combined four different things.
Introvert, outrovert, whatever, introvert, extrovert, whatever it gives
you, ETNJ, whatever, it's flattering.
It's nice.
It's good.
That's good personality and there are some drawbacks.
But you have to take those as nothing
other than neat, interesting, and nice.
That's it.
It can't now be the source of my
behavior.
It can't also be my filter for friendship
and marriage because some people do that.
Some people do that.
They won't marry someone because of their astrological
sign, their zodiac.
This person is a Taurus, this person is
a Capricorn, this person is in cancer.
You don't know the future and those things
aren't absolutes.
I could say, fine, I'll accept the concept
that it's a general observation that covers maybe
seven out of 10 people.
I can accept that.
It's just a pattern.
That's all it is.
But you cannot say that that person, because
he's born into it, he'll have this characteristic.
I can probably, if I searched hard enough,
get you a nice long list of people
who don't fit these qualities that the zodiac
says that they should fit.
So just take them as no different than
reading the back of the cereal box.
See, I don't know if that exists anymore.
Does it exist anymore?
When I was young, the cereal boxes had
like five puzzles in it.
And one part would say really interesting facts
about the bumblebee, if it's cereals, for example.
And then I'll have a crossword puzzle with
honey-related words.
Then it would have like a maze for
people who don't know how to read.
Kids who don't know how to read yet,
they can't do the puzzle.
So they'll do the maze.
All sorts of neat things.
And then they always had like little knick
-knacky things like you save five covers of
the cereal box and then you could redeem
it for some toy.
Or there'll be a toy, hidden toy.
In one out of five boxes, there may
be like a hidden toy under the bag.
But the kids, I don't think they do
that anymore.
They're too busy with TikTok and Instagram Reels
and all this.
Back of the cereal box is dead.
It's hilarious.
Yeah.
Now they have to list all the ingredients
and there's no room anymore.
So when you read those things, I don't
deny that there are patterns in the world.
I don't deny that.
But you can't really take it 100%.
Well, you definitely cannot take it as fact.
You can't take it as something that's going
to dictate your behavior in the future.
I think that's a bad idea.
Can you pray Istikharah in English?
Well, the prayer will be in Arabic, of
course, but the du'a after salah, yes,
you can say it in English if you
don't know Arabic.
Stepmom says, I memorized the cereal's nutrition already
from reading there.
No cereal in Egypt when I used to
go to Egypt when I was young is
really expensive.
Right.
And I'll be having bowl after bowl after
bowl thinking it's just cereal.
But for them, it's a delicacy.
It was a really expensive to get.
It was easier to get eggs than cereal
because all the farms that they had.
People come from the farms every morning into
Cairo with all fresh produce, fresh milk, fresh
groceries, everything or green stuff, everything, eggs.
So and I would like to do an
experiment on somebody.
I'd like to take someone who's never done
this stuff before and tell him something that's
not true about him, like tell the opposite
side completely and let's see if he starts
to change.
You've seen someone do this?
Yeah.
This happens to people, right?
If you give them fake information, they're going
to act upon it.
And there's been some really serious cases where
you'll tell them they're bound to be an
sociopath.
And people start behaving like, I'm telling you,
there's models of these behaviors.
If you turn on a TV, you'll see
what you're supposed to look like based on
these models.
I wonder if you took somebody who, a
kid who has a temper, right?
And you, in a non-official way, like
where he doesn't realize it's happening, say, oh,
hey, when were you born?
Oh, you were Capricorn.
You're really calm, right?
And see if the kid's behavior changes, right?
Someone needs to do that experiment because that
would just debunk the whole thing.
We should sell this as a service, add
this onto the website.
I know, I know.
We will fix your kid.
We're going to have a spy who's going
to befriend you in the masjid without you
even realizing it.
And then he's going to incept it into
your mind, right?
He's going to do an inception on you
by telling you, man, Subhanallah, I was just
reading about people that look like you.
You know, there's nephrology too.
Nephrology.
No, it's not nephrology.
No, it's facial.
Nephrology is kidney.
There's that other study, the face.
Oh, look, Subhanallah, I was just studying someone.
People of your face, they're very generous to
their families.
They're very calm with their kids, right?
People with your facial features.
And let's see how his behavior changes after
a month.
Perisexual will have the whole community in on
it.
You dress like someone who's nice, you know,
who doesn't get angry.
Just say this to everyone.
Fix everyone.
Just start taking allowances, okay?
Maybe I...
Physonomy, I think it's called.
A person saying, an HD mu'min is saying
that.
Ladies and gentlemen, I got to run, unfortunately.
I have to pray dhuhr and hit the
road quick.
Subhanakallahumma bihamdik.
Nashadu an la ilaha illa antah.
Nastaghfiruk wa natubu ilayk wa al-asr.
Inna al-insana la fee khusr.
Illa allatheena amroo aamilus salihat wa tawassu bil
-haq wa tawassu bil-sabr.
Wassalamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.