Tofael Nuruddin – Cognitive Colonization and the Palestinian Condition
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of understanding the natural world and the political philosophy of the people. They also discuss cultural differences between the western and Islamic stages of Islam, including de symbolization of religion and dehumanization of the Prophet's vision of the sun. The speakers stress the importance of educators and settling conflict in India for peace, while also reminding listeners to stay out of current situations and focus on peace.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem.
Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, wassalatu wassalamu ala Sayyidina wa
Habibina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa ashabihi ajma
'in.
Welcome everybody to another project, the Hiyaa podcast.
Alhamdulillah we have with us here today an
important guest who's going to be discussing with
us an important topic and really it's a
topic that underlies much of what has been
bearing heavy on the minds of a lot
of people because of the events of the
last week.
We know the turmoil that's happening in the
Middle East between the Palestinians and the occupying
state of Israel.
So inshallah, we want to get into what
is one of the core issues, what is
driving all of the violence and the bloodshed
there.
And really it's settler colonialism and a lot
of the policies and the mentality that comes
with it and the fruits of that.
So inshallah, today we have with us Mufti
Tufail Nooruddin, who's an instructor at Baitul Hamd
Institute.
Mufti Sahib, he holds an Aalim degree from
Darul Uloom Azadvil as well as an Iftar
degree from Jamia Qasimul Uloom.
Mufti Tufail is also currently pursuing an MA
in Philosophy from Columbia University.
So without further ado, inshallah, we're going to
get into this topic.
This is a pertinent topic.
I think everybody's been thinking about what's going
on.
We know the situation that is going on.
It didn't start a week ago.
It has begun, it began you know, 75,
you know, close to a hundred years ago
almost and it's something that's a remnant of
a different age of actual settler colonialism where
much of the Muslim world was colonized.
Inshallah, we'll go into the details of that
and Mufti Sahib, inshallah, we'll talk about it.
What were the effects of colonization?
How many Muslims actually brought themselves out of
colonization or didn't bring themselves out of colonization?
What parts of colonization have left their mark
and how have different societies, Muslim societies, managed
or attempted to erase the effects of colonization?
So inshallah, without further ado, I'm not going
to take much time.
He's going to do a presentation and we'll
interject, inshallah, wherever we have questions or maybe
clarification that we need.
Before I hand it over to Mufti Sahib
to give us his presentation, if Hafiz Musa
'ib, you want to say something before we
start?
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
Likewise, welcome to Murana Tufail and just want
to say that this podcast was already pre
-scheduled.
Before this whole conflict, we had already scheduled
this podcast on colonialism, but it's much more
relevant now given the prevailing situation.
Before I hand it over to Mufti Tufail,
I'd like to request all the viewers, please
subscribe to the channel and give the video
a thumbs up.
It'll just take a second and it'll give
the video a lot more reach.
So without any further ado, please, inshallah, Murana
Tufail, you can go ahead and go ahead
with your intro.
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.
Alhamdulillah, wa salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu,
jazakumullahu khair for inviting me on the show.
I think this is a great and also
very pertinent and relevant topic given the time.
Before we get started, I just want to
kind of highlight the fact that the approach
that I'll be taking to colonization, it's not
a typical understanding of colonization that we usually
have.
Generally, when we talk about colonization, we're talking
about a geographic annexation, right?
We're talking about a kind of external force
that came into certain lands and decided to
take over those lands to exploit the people
economically and kind of govern those lands.
That's the usual understanding of colonization that we
understand.
However, what I really want to focus on
is the cognitive aspect of colonization.
Number one, what does it take for the
colonizer to be the colonizer?
What does it take for the colonizer to
psychologically permit themselves to commit the kind of
actions that they do undertake?
And also, what does it mean for a
people to be colonized?
And what does it take?
What is really the kind of intrinsic cognitive
relationship between the colonizer and the colonized?
So that's kind of what I want to
focus on.
And the reason for that is because a
lot of people will say that colonization is
over, the days of colonialism are over.
However, that's a misunderstanding because if we see
the common ingredient that's found in colonization, what
we'll see is that not only is it
still very much alive, but there are new
ways that are used to perpetuate this vicious
cycle of colonization.
And we'll see that there's neo-colonial forces
and neo-imperial forces.
And this will all make sense, inshallah, once
we start to understand what exactly it is.
So if we follow the slides, inshallah, I
think it'll make sense a little more for
us to understand exactly what we're talking about.
The way we can understand colonialism is first,
we have to understand what exactly is a
worldview, right?
A worldview is that which an individual or
a society really just views the world with,
right?
So their epistemology, basically what they consider true
and what they consider false.
How do they know that things are true
and not?
Their ontology, like what is real, what is
not real?
Their ethics, right?
What is considered good?
What is considered bad?
Their aesthetics, right?
What is considered beautiful?
What is considered ugly?
And really, I think these are kind of
the meta questions that we all process the
world through, right?
And what the colonizer you know, essentially what
the place that they stem from, and you'll
find this commonality in all colonizing forces is
that there is this sense of superiority, right?
And there's this sense of dehumanization that happens
towards the colonized.
That's the only way that, you know, cognitively
and psychologically they can kind of permit themselves
to commit the atrocities, right?
And if you look, you know, in the
in the writings of political philosophers in the
British empire from the 1700s and the 1800s,
you'll see people, you know, like John Locke,
you'll see before him, you know, Thomas Hobbes,
you'll see after him, you know, John Stuart
Mill.
In their writings they have an entire, you
know, political rationalization.
For example, Thomas Hobbes will explain why we
need the state, right?
And he has his, you know, theoretical state
of nature in which basically it's a free
-for-all, there's no rights, you know, people
are living without any kind of rule, without
any kind of leviathan over them.
And so it's a kind of free-for
-all over there and so that we can
have rights and we can have a right
to property and we can basically focus on
other things than, you know, defending ourselves.
Thomas Hobbes, his idea is that we come
to this kind of tacit, this silent, you
know, social contract, what he calls the social
contract, right?
And, you know, from there he has this
whole like rationalization, why we must have governments
and why people must obey the government.
And then, you know, he goes on to
kind of conveniently say that but all of
these rules they don't apply to, and actually
the example that he gives of a state
of nature is the natives here in America,
which is very interesting because natives did have,
you know, political governance, not in the way
that, you know, the British were used to.
They had their own, you know, leaders, they
had their own elders, they had their own
hierarchies, right?
It's not that they're some kind of, you
know, backwards or some kind of uncivilized or
barbaric people that needed to be, you know,
introduced with this idea of government, but that
is how the British, the colonizer, needed to
frame for themselves what the natives are so
that they could colonize them.
So you'll see this aspect of, you know,
dehumanization or subhumanization, right?
Kind of seeing them as subhuman or a
different class of human beings so that they
can go on with this kind of you
know, othering and this kind of dehumanization and,
you know, genocides and killing all become justified
because, you know, this is the other, right?
Very interestingly, you'll see this is kind of
a side point, you'll see that Islamically we
are always encouraged to consider every human being,
every animal, and every part of the ecosystem
as part of our own.
And really there are many, many ahadith.
For example, there's an ahadith in Sahih al
-Bukhari where the Prophet ﷺ you know, talks
about he tells actually his maternal uncle, Sa'd
ibn Abi Waqas, that, you know, do not
waste water while performing ablutions.
And Sa'd ibn Abi Waqas he happened to
be, you know, making wudu from the river,
flowing river.
So Sa'd ibn Abi Waqas, he was a
bit surprised, right?
Like me and you would also be like
this is all kind of going, if you're
taking water from the river going back to
the water, what are you really wasting?
So then he asks, you know, The Prophet
ﷺ says, the idea behind that is not
that there's some kind of Yeah, like even
if it is a, you know, a flowing
river, right?
And the idea from that is not that,
you know, he was kind of performing some
kind of wastage, but it's the idea of
sympathizing and connecting with this natural resource, that
we don't start taking advantage because if we
have this idea that, oh, it's just flowing
water, so, you know, I can just use
as much of it, you can imagine that
this this ideology will translate into other aspects
of our life, right?
And you'll see many, many examples You know,
the Prophet ﷺ, one time he comes to
the masjid and he hears the sounds that
a camel is making, he goes inside the
masjid and he asks, you know, whose camel
is this?
And somebody, one of the sahabah said, you
know, Ya Rasulullah, this is my camel and
the Prophet ﷺ got very angry at him
He said, you know, do not overburden your
camel, right?
So we see that there's this constant kind
of reminder to connect with others and consider
everyone our own.
Now, colonialism is the exact opposite of that
So one point here, so what you're mentioning
is that like the number one thing for
a precursor for colonialism is superiority and dehumanization
but Islam within its very constructs, it kind
of cuts that off right from the beginning
because it doesn't even allow you to view
other humans as inferior, right?
The only way that superiority exists in Islam
is by your deeds, right?
You're not allowed to really view any other
person as inherently inferior other than just by
deeds and because none of us know what
our deeds are, you know, that humility would
always remain.
I think this point is important for the
viewers because here a distinction has been drawn
between Islamic sort of conquests that happen at
the time of sahabah or, you know, right
from the time of Rasulullah ﷺ and after
him and colonialism that happened later on.
There's a difference in principle here.
I mean, there's a massive difference.
I think difference is really understating it.
There's a huge difference, right?
In the way the colonizers treated, you know,
the colonized people, the way the kind of
atrocities that are you know done to the
colonized people versus the way Muslims treated.
And I think that's borne out by the
fact that most of the Muslim empires didn't
really for example, if we look at just
historically and just in general view of history,
I'm sure there I can't, we can't deny
specific cases, but generally the people that came
under Islamic rule through conquest, they never really
had a war for independence from Muslims or
felt that the Muslims were, you know, subduing
them.
Whereas we see the settler, the colonialism of
later times, almost all those lands people fought
eventually against their colonizer.
So we see this difference.
The people that were living under those systems,
they felt completely different about who it was
that was in charge.
A hundred percent.
Yeah, there was this aspect of subjugation, you
know, this aspect of like, you know, humiliation.
You have to understand that even though the
the colonizer is very interested in assimilating and
turning the colonized people into them, but there
also must be this aspect of also, you
know, inferiority complex.
This is something that is completely ensured to
be passed on to the colonized, that you
are definitely inferior, you know, to the colonizer.
The colonizer is basically your savior, right?
And there's many other differences also.
I think it's a good point that you
brought up the aspect of conquest.
Just because if you see Muslims when they
conquered lands, they did let people live, you
know, along with their lifestyle, right?
Although there was definitely encouragement and incentives for
people to accept Islam, but the overall mentality
is that they did not have, they were
not forced to convert They did not have
to change aspects of their lifestyle.
Things that they were used to, like, you
know, their churches, going to their churches, having
their festivals, whatever they were selling, you know,
and buying, they had their own security.
As a matter of fact, even no Muslim
could come and infringe on those rights.
If a Muslim did infringe on those rights,
they would be punished, right?
So there was definitely, you know, this aspect
of respecting their, or at least, you know,
tolerating and coexisting with you know, other lifestyles.
So this is a definite, you can't, for
example, let's say under a colonial rule, you
can't practice polygyny because inherently it's seen as
a, you know, subhuman and kind of barbaric
way of life, right?
And that's exactly, you know, Richard Pratt, the
Henry Richard Pratt, the captain in the U
.S. Army, you know, he would say this
very, very well-known statement of his, he
would say that, you know, kill the Indian,
save the man, like save the human being,
but any Indian-ness, any kind of Indian
ethics, any kind of Indian norms, any kind
of Indian culture, you gotta erase all of
that, right?
Because why?
It's subhuman.
And that's exactly how Muslims did not see,
as a matter of fact, Islam also left
aspects of language, aspects of culture to their
people, right?
Like if people were used to a certain
type of food or used to certain types
of, you know, table manners, where they were
used to, you know, certain things that were
not against the Sharia, against Islamic ethics, Islam
had absolutely no problem.
On the other hand, what you see in
the colonizers, they're very interested in, you know,
linguistic imperialism, they're very interested in sartorial imperialism
in terms of, you know, acculturation, like they
want to force people to adopt the culture
of the colonizer and so on and so
forth.
So there are many, many, you know, differences
that you'll see between Islam and the West.
There's one that comes to mind that's a
testament to what we're speaking about.
Like Allah says, فَإِن تَابُوا وَأَقَامُوا صَلَاتَ وَآتَوا
زَكَاتَ فَإِخْوَانُكُمْ فِي الدِّينِ Right?
So if they repent, they establish salah and
pay zakat, then they're, you know, they're your
brothers in religion.
So Islam, it doesn't relegate people to, you
know, to a second-class type of citizenship.
Yeah, 100%, yeah.
One thing, I think one thing that I'll
also probably just mention it for people who
are watching is that a lot of times
people make the case of jizya, that, oh,
what about jizya?
Isn't that a unfair tax that's put on
the people that have, you know, basically come
into the Islamic empire that are not Muslim.
So what is just the simple understanding of
that for the people?
Yeah, I mean, you know, jizya is not,
sometimes, you know, you'll find especially Islamophobes or
people that are speaking, you know, in anti
-Muslim rhetoric, you'll see them as like displaying
jizya as some kind of, you know, like
humiliation, a tax for subjugation and so on
and so forth, which is actually wrong.
Muslims also have to pay zakah, right?
Muslims have to pay the ushara and so
on and so forth.
So we don't really see that jizya is
obviously, like, think about it as a kind
of payment that you're paying for the securities
and today also, nowadays, we pay taxes.
Why?
Because the government offers us certain services.
It offers us certain benefits and so on
and so forth, right?
It offers us security and so on and
so forth.
So jizya is really just that.
It's a kind of treaty that you have
with the government that they will, you know,
let you live with your rights, right?
And like they don't have to, they don't
necessarily have to be fighting in the military.
The Muslims will do the protection and they'll
take care of all of their things.
So that's something that people usually leave out
when talking about jizya.
Another point is like when colonialism is based
on race, right?
There's a race that's superior.
You can never change your race.
Yes, actually, I was just going to point
that out while I was talking.
I was thinking about that, that colonization is
very, very much fundamentally based in race.
You can see this in the, you know,
Israel-Palestine situation that's going on.
You can see that in the British as
well.
What really made you superior is the fact
that you're white and you're not brown and
you're not black and you're not something else.
The fact that you're European, the fact that
you're white is really what makes you superior
and that's something that fundamentally you can't change.
If a black person accepts Islam, he's just
as equal and many times he's even superior.
Look at Bilal and he's superior to, you
know, many others.
So race has nothing to do with the
Islamic question.
And if you look at the same thing
with the Israel situation, what really fundamentally makes
you better is that, you know, ethnically you're
a Jew, right?
And these Arabs, basically, they could never be
that, right?
And there's a lot of, you know, this
kind of similarities and this kind of, you
know, dehumanization, subhumanization also that parallels you can
make.
You'll see with the Israeli media as well,
many interviews, you know, throughout YouTube of Israeli
citizens when they're asked, for example, about children
in Palestine, like how should they be dealt
with?
And, you know, many of their answers is
you should just kill them because they're Arabs
and they're going to become terrorists and you'd
rather just kill the child while it's, you
know, still not a grown adult and it's
not a terrorist yet.
I think yesterday the president of Israel, Herzog,
I think that's his name, was talking about
how all the Palestinians in Gaza should be
killed because they supported Hamas, which is like
a crazy precedent.
You know, then why do we, why do
we condemn ISIS and all these people who
also believe in sort of this, you know,
mass punishing all the civilians for their leaders
in mass?
So basically that's like the same ideology.
Yeah, 100%.
The only difference is we're condemning one and
we're not allowed to condemn the other.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, that's really the kind of
perspective that I wanted to focus on when
it comes to colonialism, the cognitive aspect of
colonialism.
So that's what allows assimilation, right?
This is what drives assimilation.
The fact that the colonizer acknowledges itself as
superior, it acknowledges the colonized as barbaric, as,
you know, backwards, as subhuman.
So it feels this need to assimilate and
to make it, to make the colonized become
like the colonizer, right?
And once this assimilation takes place, then there's
a shift in worldview.
Whatever was considered culture, whatever was considered, you
know, beautiful, whatever was considered good, the ethics,
the norms, the morals, the aesthetics, all of
these things start to change and they become,
you know, similar to the perspective of the
colonizer.
And once that happens...
It's about values, right?
When we say worldview, it's like a shift
in what was valuable, what were considered values
according to them before is now no longer
values.
Now the values are shifted over to the
colonizer.
The colonizer's values are the paradigm.
Well, part of it is values.
I think also part of it is like
truth, you know, what is considered truth, what
is considered, you know, false and so on
and so forth.
I think there's those aspects as well, right?
Once those things are lost, then you have
a loss of identity, right?
Then we can say that, you know, colonization
is successful.
Some of the ways this is done is
there are different methods that are used for
assimilation.
And this is also something that you can
see, that you can draw parallels between different
types of colonizers.
There's a cultural conversion that occurs, right?
Basically, table manners.
We can take examples from North America.
In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, there was this very famous,
you know, boarding school in which basically native
kids used to be not abducted, but really
kind of forcefully taken from their parents.
And for a couple of years, they would
have to come and stay at these.
And really interesting, you can actually google online
pictures before and after, right?
Before, you would see this kind of like
native kid with like native clothes, you know,
with his native culture.
They're able to speak their native language and
so on and so forth.
But then once they're brought to the boarding
school, it's basically like this brainwashing tactic where
their culture is removed, their clothes are removed.
Now, you see all of a sudden this
kind of clean-shaven, you know, a person
wearing a shirt and a pant and, you
know, a suit and a tie, you know,
sitting at a table, eating on a plate
with forks and, you know, 30 other cutleries,
right?
And so that's basically what is considered a
culture person.
Now, this person has been civilized, right?
This is an aspect of cultural conversion.
All of these things that made the kid
native was considered barbaric.
They were also not allowed to communicate on
their own language.
They would actually be beaten if they would
even communicate with their siblings or cousins or
their tribe members in their own language.
That was something that was impermissible, right?
So you had this imposition of language.
You had religious conversion.
There were actually a lot of the teachers
in those boarding schools were missionaries.
So those missionaries would, you know, perform this
kind of culture, this kind of religious conversion.
So there's a lot of proselytization also that
would happen.
Could I ask you to move on?
The imposition of language, why was that so
important?
I think really, you know, I think the
connection between one's cognition and one's language, I
think these are really deeply intertwined aspects.
As a person, you know, who speaks multiple
languages, and I'm sure yourself as well, you
know, both of you, I speak fluently five
languages.
And really, you can see the way you
start thinking once you learn a language.
For example, in Arabic, Arabic is very elaborate,
right?
Arabic is very well mapped out.
Like, for example, when we perform syntactical analyses
in a turkey, right?
And actually, there's entire books on the Arabic
Quran.
There's an entire science that goes, like, you
know, nine, ten volumes just dedicated to the
turkey of the Quran, right?
The grammatical breakdown of the Quran.
And you will see that in Arabic, things
are very, very well mapped out.
So the way you're really forming language in
your brain is in a very mathematical, in
a very connected way, right?
And I think once you possess language, it
helps you think in ways, like knowing certain
languages or different languages helps you think in
ways that you wouldn't have thought without this
language.
That's one aspect, I think.
Yeah, I think the reason I was saying
that is because some people may think, well,
it's probably just practical for everybody to speak
one language.
But here we have a case where they're
actually banning the usage of the other language,
where they're not allowing them.
As a matter of fact, in one of
my papers, I do consider this counter-argument,
like someone could say that actually the British
probably did a favor to many of the
colonized countries because they brought English and that
kind of globalized English as a language and
facilitated communication.
However, you know, there are many counter-arguments
to that.
I don't think, by the way, that's a
very good argument.
It's different, I think, if a person opts
to learn a language of their own versus
if they're forced to lose their language and
learn a different language.
There's actually a specific kind of, what I
was going to say, the second aspect of
imposition of language is actually humiliation.
It's subjugation.
Think of a person who's very fluent in
like Urdu or like Persian, right?
And this person, they're forced to now learn
English because all documents are now in English.
If you want to get a job or
any kind of serious position, then you need
to learn English.
And obviously, as a grown person, you're not
going to be fluent in that language.
But you're talking to people that are fluent
in that language.
What do you think is going to be
the natural feeling between you as the communicator
and the communicator?
Obviously, you're going to see them as superior.
Why?
Because, and that's actually a tactic in conversation.
If you're not winning a debate or a
conversation with somebody, switch to a language you're
comfortable with because that person, your interlocutor, naturally
is going to feel inferior in that aspect,
right?
So there's a cognitive subjugation that happens naturally
in the imposition of language.
So I think that's a couple of different
reasons why imposition of language was actually so
important.
Another thing also is that, very interestingly, Thomas
Macaulay, who was one of the governors in
India, he has a minute.
They had like minutes, you know, kind of
summaries of meetings that they had.
And in there, he actually outlines a kind
of subhumanization of languages as well.
So he says that, you know, languages like
Sanskrit and Arabic, they have nothing to offer.
They're barbaric languages and teaching and educating Indian
people in English is really the imperative.
So does that actually see that play out?
Because people who didn't speak English were seen
as like uneducated or uncivilized.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's still the case today.
Still very much the case today.
And I think there's a need for like
people to kind of take pride in their
language, you know, connect with their languages, teach
their children their languages.
And you know, my heart really goes out
most to I think native people, many of
whom actually have completely lost their language.
So moving on, I think basically we can
think about now that we kind of have
a good idea about like the structural and
the mechanism of colonialism.
And that was really my goal.
Like that, that's really what I want to
convey because it's not really something that's talked
about a lot.
You know, we talk a lot about the
the geographic aspect of it, the military aspect
of it.
We're talking about the political aspect of it.
You know, we talk about the economic aspect
of it, but very little do we ever
talk about, you know, the cognitive aspect of
it, right?
So once we've understood this kind of mechanism
behind, you know, colonization, I think it's also
important for us to talk about decolonization, right?
And we can think about, you know, some
some ways forward, right?
Could you say something about the education systems?
Like what what is a way we can
think about that?
So, you know, in terms of education system,
I think we don't really think about this.
But actually, you know, there's a French thinker,
Alphusser, who writes about a really, really interesting
concept.
He has an entire paper on this.
And I really recommend that, you know, we
kind of go and take a read.
It's a short article.
And basically, he talks about these state apparatus,
right?
Like you can think about repressive state apparatus,
like RSAs.
So we think about the army, we think
about the police, and they kind of tell
you what to do and what not to
do.
And they punish you and they reward you
based on, you know, different things that you're
doing according to the state.
But however, they're ideological, ISAs, right?
Ideological state apparatuses.
And that's more like media, culture, schooling, education,
and so on and so forth.
And those are more kind of subtle ways
to impose on people the things that they
think or they believe are norms, right?
And we don't really think much about this,
but education systems, really, if you want to
change a people, what you want to do
is work on their education system.
And I think the colonizer understood that really
well.
And this is why you see, like, in
the Indian subcontinent, in, you know, in North
America, one of the fundamental things that they
established is alternative schooling systems, alternative learning systems
that were funded by the British, that were
funded by the colonizers, that people had incentives
to join those schools.
And because, basically, you can shape a child's
mind from the very get-go.
You can really form their identity from that
time.
Even today, in, like, all over India, you
have these schools.
And in a lot of places, those are
considered the best schools, right?
So people are proud to send their children
there.
And it's viewed as, like, a badge of
honor.
Yeah, yeah.
As a matter of fact, like, think about,
forget about India, like, think about, you know,
first world countries today.
Who do you think are going to be,
you know, the politicians of tomorrow?
Who do you think are going to be,
you know, the influencers of tomorrow?
It's all people that go through the schooling
system.
It's all people that go through college.
It's all going to be, you know, somebody
with a political theory degree or you know,
a policy degree or a law degree.
You know, people that have studied government, whatever
it is, but they've gone through the schooling
system.
So really, you know, if you can attack
the schooling system, the education system, then you
can attack the mind.
You can literally, quite literally, shape the future
by getting into, you know, academia and by
getting into education.
So, just to make a clarification for people,
some people may think that, you know what,
I should just not get educated or something.
Like, I hope that's not a conclusion that
somebody draws.
Like, if you would, what would you say?
Definitely not.
Like, I would say just be...
We're all college graduates, you know, sitting here.
So, like...
Exactly, all of us, you know, have gone
through the college system.
Some of us through Ivy League schools and
some of us not, but...
Some younger than the other, huh?
You're more calling age than us, man.
Yeah, but the point here is that, you
know, looking from a top-down perspective, right?
What would be this, you know, a channel
through which every mind or every child would
go through, right?
So, naturally, like, even...
We're not against education, right?
But, you know, of course, schooling.
You know, schooling is something every child goes
through.
So, this is an easy area to target
and use as a channel for liberalization and
colonization.
So, it does mean we have to be
careful and it does mean that if there
are other alternatives that don't have this problem,
then those alternatives can be adopted, right?
And if it means, you know...
Still, we should make it clear that if
it means...
If there's a choice between being so-called
educated and losing your, like, total Islamic and
Muslim identity and versus being a good Muslim
and not being educated, like, secularly, then, of
course, you know, we prefer maintaining our Islam.
Yeah, I mean, I have a slightly, you
know, different approach, like, when it comes to
this.
And what I really recommend to everybody is
equipping oneself with, you know, critical tools, right?
And what I mean by that is, you
know, this is a longer topic, but equipping
oneself with Islamic education.
Islamic education truly, you know, in the real
sense of it, if a person studies, for
example, ilm al-kalaam, a person studies, you
know, mantiq, they're really equipped with tools to
question things, right?
And this was really the way of the
scholars of kalaam in the past.
Like, Imam al-Ghazali, his problem with ibn
Sina was not that he was rationalizing things,
right?
His problem with, you know, the mu'tazila were
not that they're rationalists.
That's not his problem.
I mean, of course, he accepts the use
of reason, right?
He himself, actually, as a matter of fact,
he's applying reasoning himself.
What was his problem with them?
His problem with them is that they took
Aristotelian, you know, metaphysical paradigms and metaphysical norms,
ontological norms, as given truths, right?
Prima facie, without any kind of critical thinking,
without any kind of, for example, you know,
Aristotle believes that the world is made of
hyaline form, you know, which we now know
as hylomorphism, right?
In Arabic, we call this maddan surah, right?
Aristotle believes in qidam al-'alameen, he believes that
the universe is pre-eternal.
Now, al-Ghazali's problem with ibn Sina or
with the mu'tazila is, why are you taking
these as granted truths?
Like, you should question these things, right?
And if we read, you know, al-Ghazali's
you will see, actually, a proto-Cartesian right
there, right?
As a matter of fact, I really think
that Descartes had access to al-Ghazali, but
his al-munqid min al-dalal is, if
you go through the first two meditations of
Descartes, you'll kind of see a copy-paste
of al-munqid min al-dalal there, but
what he does there is fundamental skepticism.
So that's kind of what I encourage, because
look, at the end of the day, whether
you send your kid through, you know, any
kind of schooling system, the media still exists,
right?
Media still exists, friends still exist.
They're going to be educated about some things
or the other at some point or the
other, right?
It's going to happen.
Now, again, that doesn't mean, you know, throw
them in the ocean in the lion's den.
I'm not saying, you know, that's ideal.
Of course, if you can send them to
a proper Islamic school and get a proper
Islamic education, that's better.
But nonetheless, I think everyone needs to be
equipped with, you know, critical thinking.
Educate themselves Islamically.
What I mean by educate them Islamically is
not, you know, your typical maqtab and like
alif-ba-ta-tha and read the Qur
'an.
That's not what I mean.
I mean a real Islamic education where a
person is learning surah al-fiqh, you know,
how our entire legal system works, understanding not
only the micro, but also the macro, how
the entire machine, the entire Islamic structure works,
basically.
So the point is that Muslims, it's not
that we're saying you should study less.
We're saying you should actually do double the
work.
You have to study, you have to know
what they know, and then you have to
keep in mind your own Islamic education as
well as a sort of a counterbalance to
it.
Yeah, and I would say you have to
process really, I think the way you're putting
it, you know, it's really good.
You have to process what you are being
taught by others through your own system.
So one question like just at a practical
level, right?
Like I understand ideally where you're coming from,
but even like basic maqtab is practically non
-existent in many places, right?
So this kind of thing like on ground
people, they may not have the ability to
themselves teach their kids at this level.
So what should, you know, how should parents
approach this?
You know, in America, I don't think we
have any excuses.
And look, one person has to have the
thought and it happens, right?
Like I've come across, you know, doctors that
don't have, you know, a masjid nearby.
They don't have a local imam.
You know what they're willing to do?
They're willing to pay an imam's salary personally,
right?
Two doctors, husband and wife, they're willing to
pay an imam's entire salary to bring somebody
over to their community so that they can
start something, right?
So alhamdulillah, you know, in the American community,
you know, more or less everyone has money,
community can come together.
And really all we got to do, I
think this is the biggest problem.
We don't have an awareness.
We don't even know what's going on up
there, right?
We're really slow at reacting with these things.
I don't think the problem is not having
maqdab.
Anyone wants to start a maqdab, they can
start a maqdab.
Anyone wants to find people that, there's an
oversaturation of scholars like in the east coast,
in the west coast, right?
In many different parts, they're just looking to
get out in a kind of, you know,
community that they can work with.
And so I don't, I really don't think
that there's an excuse.
If you don't have maqdabs, then start one,
you know.
And we've seen many, many people, early communities
in South Africa, early communities in Canada, early
communities in America.
They didn't have people, what did they do?
They sponsored scholars from back home, got them
to come here, educate their children.
So I don't think it's not doable.
It's just that we have to be proud
of where we come from.
And really, first step, step number one is,
you know, cognitive decolonization, right?
And I wanted to go over actually some
aspects of decolonization.
Yeah, we can move ahead.
I mean, I fear, for fear of making
this overly long, Inshallah, I think we move
along to the...
Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
This is a good point.
I think we can make that.
Yeah, I think quickly, basically, what we can
do is take a look at some examples
of educational imposition.
So, Griffith, you know, she's a native Indian,
an indigenous scholar.
She writes about Canada and the residential schools.
Basically, residential schools is just another word for
boarding schools.
There were many, there were one of Canada's
many colonial strategies, which aimed to inculcate British
students in a British worldview, inculcate students.
So I want to highlight this.
It aimed to inculcate students in a British
worldview.
So again, remember the aspect of worldview, and
assimilate them by denigrating their spiritualities.
Number one, denigration, right?
Dehumanization, denigration, basically kind of inculcating this idea
that whatever culture you come from is a
lower kind of culture.
It lacks culture.
It lacks civilization.
And so they denigrate their spiritualities, their epistemologies,
and their relationships to land, right?
Indian residential schools also attacked indigenous languages and
insisted on English only.
So again, this kind of common pattern that
you'll find in colonization.
You'll see examples of this in India as
well.
I'm not going to go into the details
of it, but the Mohammedan College of Calcutta,
this was actually foundationally laid down by the
British themselves.
We talked about Thomas Macaulay's Minute.
I think this is a really interesting passage
from it.
Education would create a class of Indians who
are Indian in blood and color, but English
in taste, in opinions, in morals, and intellect.
So if somebody thinks, and I'm just making
up this, you know, conspiracy theory about what
the British were trying to do, this is
their own words.
Not something that I pulled up.
It's their own words.
Similarly also, you can find the Mohammedan, you
know, Anglo-Oriental College.
This later on came to be known as
Aligarh University.
This was actually started by Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan, who, you know, he tried to be
a reformer.
He actually had efforts in decolonizing Muslims.
I don't know if he was working in,
I mean, he was definitely highly revered by
the British.
He was given many titles and medals by
the British.
So if possible, he was working with them.
If possible, he wasn't working with them.
But definitely he was doing things that was,
you know, in their bidding, right?
So he actually promoted, you know, learning English,
and that's basically, basically for Muslims in India
to become like the colonizer and working within
the system is their way to be colonized.
That was basically his idea.
You'll find similar kind of parallel ideas in
Egypt at the time, in Mohammed Abdo, you
know, Mohammed Rashid Rida, and others, Jamaluddin and
Afghani.
Yeah, so these are different examples of, you
know, educational imposition.
You'll find also examples of sartorial imposition.
So Sir Syed Ahmed Khan actually advocated for
the modernization of Muslims by adopting the colonizer's
culture.
He had a book called Tahzib ul-Akhlaq.
You also find other examples, Western clothing, like,
for example, shirts and coats were actually imposed
on Indians who served in any kind of
colonial administration.
Turbans were also prohibited.
So slowly, slowly, you saw this kind of
gradual leaving of cultural clothing and adopting the
way of the colonizer.
Now, the cognitive effect of clothing, I think
this actually can be researched more.
There's a very, very, very famous saying in
fashion studies, the clothes make the man.
The clothes make the man.
And I think we can see that, right?
Psychologists like Dubler and Girl, they actually write
that there's a correlation between an individual's sartorial
choices, their clothing choices, and their mood.
So we can definitely see that clothing has
an effect on a person's psyche.
As a matter of fact, think about it
like this, right?
I want you to picture somebody who their
whole life wore certain things, right?
Let's say you, Man Asadullah, you grew up
in the land of Afghanistan, let's say, right?
And your whole life, basically, you're a person,
you know, who grew up in the mountains.
You're used to wearing like a kurta, a
pajama.
You're wearing a turban.
This is what you saw your forefathers wearing.
You saw your cousins and your uncles wearing
that.
You're used to that.
All of a sudden, a foreign force comes
and tells you that, no, no, no, these
clothing, they're actually backwards.
Look at this.
Who the heck wears this, right?
And they tell you, no, the civilized way
is you must wear a shirt.
You must wear, you know, a suit and
a tie.
And now, poor guy, you're actually convinced, right?
So what do you do next day is
you, you know, shave your beard, you wear
this nice fancy, you know, suit and tie
and shirt and so on and so forth.
What are you feeling inside?
You've never worn this before.
You go out for the first time looking
like this.
What do you feel?
You feel completely subjugated, right?
You feel like you're not even yourself.
You've become now, through your own kind of
will, you've become this person that someone else
wants you to be, right?
So there's a deep connection between clothing and
the cognitive effect it has and why the
colonizer might be interested in your clothes.
We might think of clothes like, you know,
why care about clothes, right?
It's just such a mundane thing.
But I think it has a deeper effect.
So, I want to go into a case
study in the Indian subcontinent.
We had basically this group of scholars, theological,
you know, scholars and legal scholars in the
Indian subcontinent that kind of realized, and I
think this is a unique aspect of decolonization.
And again, remember, like you had anti-colonial
movements in India, right?
You had, you know, like Gandhi, for example,
you had Dabai Naroji, right?
He wrote an entire thing on the drain
theory, basically how much the British were actually
draining out in terms of economic resources from
India.
And you had many other of these types
of, you know, anti-colonial forces, right?
These kind of movements for independence.
But again, like I mentioned, the cognitive effect,
look, if the British come and they assimilate
people and they kind of convert people into
British culture, and then they can move away.
In essence, they've won.
In essence, they've won.
Why?
Because if their understanding of Indian people or
native people was that they were backwards, at
least what they feel is that, well, at
least we've civilized them, right?
So they're not too sad about the fact
that in perpetuity, anyone that grows up in
India will see English as, you know, the
better kind of language, will see British clothing
and European clothing as the better kind of,
so, you know, in other words, the British
will be their gods anyway.
Right, so so and subhanAllah, I think it's
very interesting that the scholars in the Indian
subcontinent, the ulama of Durban, they really kind
of picked up on this, right?
So what we see is you kind of
see these kind of moves that they're making,
right?
You find different fatawa that are coming out
from, you know, Maharishi Ahmed Gangohi, as early
as Maharishi Ahmed Gangohi, and then you have
Maharishi Ali Tanvi, and then Qari Tayyab, who
was actually one of the principals of the
seminary of Durban, right?
So through fatawa, they kind of say that,
you know, it's impermissible to learn the English
language, to wear shirts, and again, like, they
offered the rationale as well.
Maharishi Ali Tanvi, in his fatwa, he explains
that learning English in and of itself, intrinsically,
there's no harm to it, right?
It depends what a person is trying to
do with it, right?
And their legal rationale for the fatawa is
basically that if you want to remain who
you are, then you have to look back
at the past, and you have to look
back at the Prophet ﷺ, and how was
he, right?
And the sahaba, and how they were, right?
So let me just interject here.
I think it's interesting.
You pull up this example of the ulama
of Durban, and I don't know if there's
any parallels in the other colonized but a
lot of times people look at these fatawa
and say, look, they were just being backward
and, you know, like, useless fatwas, talking about,
you know, things that are, but actually there
was, they actually had a much deeper reasoning,
and they had a much better, broader understanding
of the worldview.
It wasn't as simplistic as I think people
think of it now.
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's kind of
the case with, like, any deep thinkers, right?
Regardless of what the fatwa is nowadays, like,
nobody's saying that you can't learn English now,
or things like that.
Exactly, exactly.
As a matter of fact, we're talking in
English right now.
We're speaking in English right now.
So that's not, I think, you know, people,
that's kind of the case with all deep
thinkers, I think, that they're thinking hundreds of
years ahead.
They're strategizing, they're planning, and not everyone is
able to read into that and kind of
process that, right?
But looking back, like, subhanAllah, if you look,
if you read decolonial literature from, you know,
globally, really, like, in Native Americas, if you
look in Africa, any decolonial literature, and you
see what they're promoting, you will see that
the ulama of Durban have done that in
the 1800s and the 1900s.
They've already, you know, strategized that, already planned
that, right?
So they're making these subtle moves, right?
They're writing this fatwa, and the legal rationale
basically stems from there.
The Prophet ﷺ already teaches us that من
تشبه بقوم فهو منهم Whoever emulates a people
becomes one of them, and that's literally what
assimilation is, right?
And then there are descriptions, you know, anyone
that has studied Ash-Shamayil al-Muhammadiyya, will
see that there are descriptions about, you know,
Prophet ﷺ's clothing, his eating, his walking, basically
his entire lifestyle.
And therefore, we can actually turn back to
these and see what exactly our culture should
be, right?
مُفْتِكِ فَعَتُ اللَّه This is his fatwa, and
he clearly says everything from British hair, hat,
coat, pants, is enough for تشبه, right?
And تشبه is referring to the principle taken
from the hadith من تشبه بقوم فهو منهم
That in Islam تشبه, emulating non-believers or,
you know, sinners or genders that are opposing
each other, emulation of any of these types
is impermissible, right?
And he says that wearing these would be
enough to fall under تشبه But the ruling
of imitation is only if the viewer seeing
it falls into the confusion that this person
is a member of that people So, you
know, imagine you come to like Mughal India
or, you know, pre-colonial India All you
saw is people wearing a type of clothing
They weren't used to seeing, you know, people
in these like British haircuts or hats or
coat and pants So if they saw that
person that was definitely an outsider, right?
That's kind of his point that Are you
wearing certain things that are part of your
own culture, part of your own tradition, or
something that comes from elsewhere?
And again, you know, we're not saying that,
you know, it's haram, like, you know, wearing
a shirt and a pant is haram, definitely
not What we are saying is that Obviously,
you can wear these things But you should
also consider what the Prophet ﷺ wore and
should be proud of that You shouldn't feel
backwards And that's, I think, the entire idea
that if you're wearing a thawb, if you're
wearing an imam, if you're wearing a hat
or if you see someone else wearing it,
unfortunately, it is very, very sad that you
find more comments from Muslims towards other Muslims.
You'll find, you know, a Muslim looking weird
at a Muslim, right?
That, oh, why do you have to practice
like that?
Well, you know, if that person is proud
of their tradition, who are you to, like,
say anything, right?
This is a free country, unless you don't
believe that this is a free country So
even non-Muslims won't have this kind of
discrimination to the point.
And this, I think, is the perfect colonized
mind, really, right?
And Stockholm syndrome, where the colonized falls in
love with the captor, with the colonizer So
we see also Umar ibn al-Khattab, we
all know the filasa that he had, right?
SubhanAllah In the time of the Prophet ﷺ,
as a matter of fact, in the footnotes
of Sahih al-Bukhari there are 22 muwafaqat
that are listed Muwafaqat are basically instances where
Umar felt that the sharia should lean a
certain way And revelation, wahy from Allah came
and was in accordance with the opinion of
Umar So really, he was known for his
filasa, his far-sightedness, and kind of seeing
where the direction of the Muslims was going
and intercepting that and kind of dealing with
that.
So this is what he tells, you know,
in Azerbaijan, Muslims are a minority and he
kind of perceived that, you know, people might,
as a minority, might kind of adopt the
culture of the majority, right, the dominant culture,
and he instructs in a letter to the
people of Azerbaijan, he says, you know Amma
ba'd fattaziru, right, wear the izar, wanta'ilu,
wear shoes warmu bil khifaf, right, put on
khufs, khufs are basically these leather socks that
the Arabs used to wear and wa alqus
sarawilat, like let go of pants because, I
mean, some Arabs did wear pants but what
was more common amongst them is what we
know today as lungi, I mean, it's not
exactly the lungi that we see today, the
ones that are fully closed, actually they had
those open lungi, right, like the the one
where it's one piece of cloth and you
tie it like that and, you know, he
uses language like that, he says wa alaykum
bish shams and so on and so forth
So this is directive to, you know, the
people of Azerbaijan basically hold on to, and
he literally says wa ta ma'dadu, right, adopt
the ways of ma'd which is basically one
of the Arab forefathers, he basically says, you
know, like do not let go of your
own cultural ways and don't adopt basically the
ways of others and again, like, you know,
we don't have to, this kind of raises
other questions, like some people might say that
what if, you know, there's no such thing
as Islamic clothing and it's, you know, only
Arab culture, actually that's wrong There are some
things that are Arab culture, but I think
some things are clearly Islamic culture and the
reason for that is because you see the
Prophet ﷺ in many aspects of clothing and
many aspects of culture, he creates this divide,
like this is our way and this is
other people's way, so for example, in Sunan
Abi Dawud, there's a hadith where the Prophet
ﷺ talks about the imamah, he talks about
wearing turbans and he said wear a turban
with a hat under it because the polytheists
wear it without a hat under it, right,
so he makes a clear difference, same thing
with Ismail al-Izzat, right, lowering the pants
or a person's lungi till below the ankle,
so he makes clear differentiations, different types of
haircuts that the Prophet ﷺ allowed certain things
that he didn't allow, different kinds of colors
that the Prophet ﷺ permitted wearing, some that
he prohibited wearing, so very much, I think
these aspects that we would call, you know,
cultural Arab culture, I don't think that they're
very much part of, you know, in the
fabric of Islamic culture, the other proof for
it is that you do find chapters of
fiqh that are dedicated, so it shows that
the ulema of the past and the fuqaha
and the scholars of hadith very much saw
these as part of Islamic culture as well
So anyway, I mean, I think this letter
from Omar r.a is very enlightening for,
you know, colonized people and people that are
minorities in different places And then the last
thing that I'll focus on is the seminary
that they started, again, remember we talked about
education and how colonizers in different parts of
the world, they focused on education so that
they can shape the minds of the future,
so what did the scholars of Durban do?
They created their own seminary, in which, actually,
if we can focus on this picture, what
you'll see is, look at all these students
and teachers, they're all wearing white, why the
focus for white?
Again, because the Prophet ﷺ, and really one
thing that you see that's common amongst the
scholars of Durban is their focus on the
revival of the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ,
right?
The revival of prophetic tradition, this is really,
I think, what makes them unique, that they
saw that this is really what's being attacked,
tradition and the culture of the Prophet ﷺ,
the culture of the Sahaba, and so this
is basically what they started.
In essence, it was a very, very small
movement, right?
One teacher, one student, right, both named Mahmood,
you know, they started with very, very meager
salary, there was no kind of foundation, nothing,
I mean, this structure that we see, it
came about much later, but in 1866, when
it was started, it was actually just in
the courtyard under a pomegranate tree, right, that's
as simple as it was, and subhanAllah, today,
if you go there, you will see, you
know, tens of thousands of students studying, and
not only that, you'll find, you know, hundreds,
if not thousands of sister institutes all over
the world, in South Africa, Panama, you know,
really anywhere you go, you'll find some kind
of Darul Uloom or some kind of, you
know, institution that has been established to raise
the same kind of values.
So, I think, basically, you know, if we
think about decolonization in our days, right, what
we can really focus on is the fact
that, number one, we need to educate ourselves,
because we have to understand that if we
want to work on first principles, if we
want to first lay down our cognitive foundations,
right, and if we can free ourselves in
this sense, then, you know, everything else will
follow, the aspect of geographic annexation, the aspect
of, you know, military and economic exploitation, those,
I think, will just, will follow, as long
as we're not mentally enslaved, as long as
we don't kind of have this inferiority complex
in front of the colonizer, and, you know,
I referred to, you know, neo-imperial forces,
and you can find those examples today as
well, right, you have this kind of, you
know, hegemony out there in the world that
will demonize and dehumanize any kind of culture
that is not them, right, anyone that does
not abide by their ethics, by their aesthetics,
is looked down upon, is portrayed as some
kind of barbaric culture, and they're given these
kind of denigrating names, and labeled in such
ways, and through the use of media, through
education, through, you know, even political and military
means, they're basically subjugated in that sense, right,
any kind of ideology that really goes against
this hegemony, so if we want to understand
colonization, we have to understand it as an
ideological warfare, it's a battle between ideas, between
competing ideologies, and that's really, I think, what
we need to liberate ourselves, number one, cognitive
decolonization, to educate ourselves, to understand, again, why
I'm focusing on education so much, and subhanAllah,
you see, in the hadith of the Prophet
ﷺ, education and learning, is actually given a
higher order, and a higher virtue, in comparison
to ibadah, in comparison to, you know, worshiping,
right, we might think of, like, you know,
someone who wakes up for tahajjud, and, you
know, stays up all night, as such a
pious person, but the Prophet ﷺ tells us
that, you know, learning an ayat of the
Qur'an, learning hadith is worth so much
more, right, so the reason why there's so
much virtue attached to knowledge is because that's
really the foundation of who you are, if
you don't have knowledge, then you don't know
who you are, most Muslims today are not
acquainted with the entire, you know, intellectual heritage
that our forefathers left us with, right, how
many, like, books of hadith can people name,
how many books of grammar can, Arabic grammar
can people name, how many books of poetry,
you know, how many books of, even, unfortunately,
you know, many scholars, if you ask a
scholar, how many books of Nahwa can you
list, how many can you list, how many
of us are acquainted with our libraries, right,
so I think, you know, these are fundamental
questions to ask ourselves, and every, alhamdulillah, nowadays,
you know, you have many, many programs that
are, you know, if not online, then they're
in person, part-time, you know, you have
halaqas going on in every single masjid, it
is our duty to educate ourselves, that's step
number one, once we understand how usul al
-fiqh works, once we understand how kalam works,
once we understand, you know, really the philosophy
behind this entire machine, like, why do we
pray salah, right, we're so used to doing
these ritualistically, just like every other religion, that
we really think that these are rituals, but
we don't understand the deeper kind of philosophy,
and so many people, like Shah Waliullah al
-Dahlawi, you know, Imam al-Sha'rani, you
know, Imam al-Ghazali, rahimahullah, al-Shaltibi, they've
all written on, you know, the higher philosophy
behind, you know, all of the actions that,
all the ibadahs that we perform, right, so
to be acquainted with the rich nature of,
you know, the intellectual heritage that the Prophet
ﷺ left us with, I think, is going
to be our first liberatory move, inshaAllah.
Jazakumullah khair for that beautiful presentation, and I
don't know if Hafiz Musab wants to add
anything before, inshaAllah, I say we make a
final dua, at least for the Muslims in
general, and specifically in Gaza and the situation
that's going on there, and then inshaAllah we'll
close.
I was thinking maybe just like within a
couple minutes, we can just mention some parallels
that are taking place, like, on the Palestinians,
based on what we mentioned, and then we
can make dua.
Yeah, I think throughout the talk, like, you
know, we have drawn some parallels here and
there, but you see this kind of, you
know, dehumanization that's happening of the Palestinians, right,
the Israeli Minister of Defense had this whole
tweet calling them human animals, so dehumanization is
taking place, and he even says we'll treat
them like animals, right, so this kind of
othering, this kind of dehumanization that's happening, and
also something that you will see, the British,
for example, in India, when there were any
kind of anti-colonial forces, what did they
label them with?
Terrorists, right, anyone that tries to fight for
their freedom is basically seen as a terrorist,
and that's also what we see in the
Israelis, so they're kind of playing from a
pretty, you know, old handbook, right, it's nothing
new, so you'll see this parallel as well,
right, labeling all Arabs, all, you know, Palestinians
as terrorists, kind of dehumanizing them, and so
on and so forth, right, you also see,
you know, the aspect of settler colonialism and
treating them like second-class citizens, right, that
if you're an Israeli citizen, then you have
certain rights, if you're a Jewish person anywhere
in the world, you have certain rights already
for you in Israel, but then the people
that were inhabiting those lands themselves, they have
absolutely no rights, right, not even the right
to life, not the right to education, there
are many, you know, testimonies, actually, if you
go on YouTube, now, you know, media has
really become something public, but you'll see, you
know, ex-IDF soldiers that talk about their
experiences and how violence has just become normalized,
you know, for the people in Palestine, so
you'll see many of those parallels, I think,
that are found.
JazakAllah khairan.
Okay, inshaAllah, jazakAllah khairan, yeah, we're dealing with
a very difficult situation, our du'as and
our prayers go out to Allah ﷻ on
behalf of those people, we ask Muslims, inshaAllah,
to do whatever it is that you can,
at minimum make du'a, and do whatever
you can within the law to try to
change the situation, or at least create some
sort of awareness, right now, unfortunately, the case
is that, you know, it seems like the
world is falling over each other to try
to aid and continue to ignite this fire
that's blazing there, everyone would put wood into
it, you know.
Yeah, just one thing to point out there,
like, we shouldn't kid ourselves that the entire
world is on the side of Israel, you'll
find some like higher-ups, you'll find some,
especially first world countries that are siding with
the colonizers, because obviously, you know, they were
colonizers once upon a time themselves, or still
are, but it's interesting, you'll find most third
world countries are siding with Palestine, right, you'll
see the president of South Africa, his testimony,
and many other countries that have been subjected
to colonization, that really sympathize with the people
of Palestine, and then when it comes to
the public, like literally every single country in
the world has, you know, crazy rallies and
protests that are taking place, so, you know,
I think, alhamdulillah, like more than ever before,
you know, people are not being fooled anymore,
right, even though obviously, you know, those in
positions of power, you'll see them, you know,
kind of blindly, you're right, like, you know,
they're kind of seeing, they're basically competing to
see who can support Israel more, but it's
not the same case with people, and I'm
not talking about just Muslims, I'm talking about
non-Muslims, I'm talking even about Jewish people.
Definitely, there's that awareness, and I think that
that has been overcome, especially with sort of
the, you know, before everyone got their source
of information, was very, like, you know, conventional
and controlled, and I guess with the social
media, there's a lot more voices, and people
are able to see a lot more, and
there's a lot more awareness, and this is
actually a testament to what you said, that
education creates a sort of awareness, and we
can see the effects of that, where people
are becoming aware, and people are moving, the
general, I think the general public, everyone knows
what's going on, what's happening, the higher ups
still seem to be in their fantasy land,
and edging on the sort of genocide that's
taking place.
We want peace in the whole region, we
want everyone to live in peace, we don't
want to see innocent people, regardless of their
race, or religion, or whatever it is, you
know, to be killed for absolutely no reason.
May Allah ﷻ bring peace, may Allah ﷻ
protect the innocent, may Allah ﷻ protect the
Muslims, may Allah ﷻ protect the Muslims in
Gaza, may Allah ﷻ give them istiqamah, may
Allah ﷻ give them nusrah, may Allah ﷻ
withhold the hand of the zalim, may Allah
ﷻ accept the shuhada, the martyrs, may Allah
ﷻ not let any sacrifices for the sake
of peace and their basically freedom and the
right to live, may Allah ﷻ not allow
any of that to go to waste, and
we pray for better days ahead, inshaAllah.
We say jazakallah khair to Mufti Tufail for
joining us for this program, inshaAllah we hope
to see everybody in our next podcast as
well, and just a reminder to like and
subscribe to the Project Ihyaa channel on YouTube
as well, and all other platforms that we
have, I'm not even sure how many we
have right now, but inshaAllah if you can
like, subscribe, it'll be beneficial, helpful, not only
for us inshaAllah, but the message will get
out, jazakallah khair, wasalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.