Tom Facchine – America Unraveling Political Violence
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Assalamu alaikum, everybody. Welcome back to Yakin Institute's
livestream.
I'm your host, imam, Tom. And boy, we
have a jam packed
session for you today. A lot of stuff
been going on. We're gonna be talking about
current events. The attempt of assassination
on Donald Trump, We'll be talking about what
that means for the US
and the world. We're gonna be talking about
project 2025.
We'll be going through,
also
some really interesting sort of analyzing how political
institutions are circumvented by sort of what they
call lawfare and and sort of dirty tricks
that that people play, And, also, how do
societies
and civilizations fall apart? And what lessons can
be gleaned from that? I know there's some
people who are rooting for that to happen,
but is that always a good idea? We're
gonna talk about that.
We have a special segment of Test Year
in this week where we're not only gonna
be doing our normal,
hadith or chapter of hadith from Sahih Muslim
about Kitabasir.
We're also gonna be talking a bit about
Ashura, which was yesterday.
May Allah accept everybody's fasting and their worship.
And then finally, we get back into atomic
habits, where we're going to start to learn
how to make it obvious. That's rule number
1. How to make our habits obvious and
benefit,
from that as much as possible. But first,
let's go to the chat, and let's see
who we have with us tonight. We got
brother
Razzik
Vaid.
Sammy, Abby, thank you very much for the
kind words. We do our best. May Allah
forgive our shortcomings.
Rick Rashid.
Welcome back to the program. A lot of
familiar faces. Missus s as well from Virginia.
Saliha Ahmed from Atlanta.
Haven't been to Atlanta in a bit, but
hopefully,
before too long, I'll be able to make
it back. Had a positive experience
there. Rick Rashid from Canada. Yes.
Who else we got? Ryan Ross.
Peace be upon you.
Sala.
Coming
up
coming up with the questions right away. Do
you have any suggestions on readings about the
Arab Spring? As I've heard, some say it
was a disaster and some say it wasn't.
I'm glad you asked that question the way
that you asked it because
one thing I observe
from a lot of the thinking within Muslim
circles is that sometimes it can be very
absolutist. And what I mean by absolutist is
that very very black and white thinking. You
have some people that,
well, let's just put it this way, that
the people who tend to make these issues
seem so black and white are usually not
trying to have exploratory conversations
about what we can learn and what we
can sort of improve for the future, but
rather they're trying to Right?
So
Right? So that requires a simplification, and that
requires sort of absolutist black and white thinking.
So,
I mean, it's a mixed bag. Anything that
that happens in history, very few things are
not a mixed bag, and we're gonna talk
about that as well,
with some of the things that have been
going on, in the US, specifically,
on the institutional front.
So I don't have any readings off the
top of my head.
I'm more of a little bit more into
political theory than I am into current events
analysis, though I do do that, but that's
not necessarily,
most of the things that I've read are
articles from news sites and things like that.
So I wouldn't necessarily have any book recommendations
for you, but it's a good question.
Rick Rasheed had to take a break to
get a snack. Let us know what you
what what you're snacking on. Aminabi Islam Khan.
Welcome to the program. Thanks for piping in
with some recommendations.
Tasneem Idris, walaikum Assalamu raftallahu alaikum Assalamu raftallahu
alaikum
from Tunisia. Welcome. Always a pleasure to have
people from Tunisia with us.
Pacify from the Maldives. Another
friendly face.
Trinka or Umtahir, Walaikum Salam, Walaikum Salam, Walaikum,
from Philly.
The city of brotherly love. That's right.
Right down the road. Right. Khurshid asked us
to keep the people of Sudan and our
duas as well, always. And, the entire ummah
and its suffering, but specifically Sudan,
not just because its merits as a place
of Islamic knowledge and people of amazing character,
and I personally have benefited tremendously from the
people of Sudan in my own life. But
also because what's going on in Palestine is
structurally related to what is going on in
Sudan. That means both Israel has a hand
in what is going on in Sudan. And
the sellouts
from within the own our own Ummah also
have a hand in what is going on
in Sudan, unfortunately. But that's another topic.
Who else do we have here?
Rifa Gulay. Wa Alaikum Salam, Raftullah.
Habira El Mohi. Wa Alaikum Salam, Raftullah. From
Peace Circle Ranch,
Colorado. That is an amazing name. Peace Circle
Ranch. Welcome to the program. Juju S from
California.
Southern California no less. Inshallah, it should be
in SoCal
October, November.
Let's see who else do we have.
Fairfax, Virginia.
A'hil Biryani with samosa and not Biryani with
samosa diplomacy. Welcome back from Maryland.
Secret Samira, alaikum salaam from Kenya. Well, where
you're at is not a secret anymore,
Samira. But welcome to the program. Kenya, a
lovely place with lovely people.
Sheima, Budadi.
Wa Alaykum As Salaam. Alhamdulillah from Almagrib, Kedir
Al Abasareikh.
Rahma Baroque from Durham, North Carolina. One place
I have yet to visit though I would
really like to visit inshallah. Azlina a from
KL Malaysia. I'll see you in a week
inshallah. I'll be in actually we're gonna be
taking a week off next week from this
program because I'll be in Kuala Lumpur for
the entirety of next week, Insha'Allah Ta'ala.
From Mohammed Habibi from Durban, Wa Alaikum Assalamu
Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi. Welcome.
We have
Rufai Saeed from
Lagos Nigeria. Walaikum Salamu rafter Allah.
Fatima Walaikum Salamu rafter Allah.
Masha'Allah.
It's always again, and I'll never stop saying
this. It's a blessing. I'm very very excited,
Insha'Allah. I hope Allah allows me to complete
my travels to Malaysia. It's always beautiful to
connect with the Ummah and to go travel
throughout the Ummah and to
come together, bring our minds together, bring our
hearts together. And I feel like during this
program, we do a little bit about,
a little bit of that here as well.
So here, Yunus,
alaykum salam,
in light of the increasing political violence and
social unrest in the United States, how does
Islamic teaching address the issue of political violence
civil strife? Well, I'm glad you turned in,
sir. You tuned in tonight, because that's exactly
what we'll be talking about in just a
moment.
Welcome back to the program, Nancy Yahia.
Another return viewer from Al Tahira.
Muhammad Jahid from
California.
Zahir continues. What guidance can the Islamic tradition
offer to to individuals and communities in navigating
such challenging times?
From Atlanta. Another Atlanta folk in the house.
Oh,
so here's from, London. Very good.
Fatima says, sadly it's becoming more and more
obvious that countries are behaving like corporations.
Oh, I like that point. Alaykum Assalamu wa
Salafara. Jahangir
from Islamabad. I have heard that Islamabad is
a very beautiful
place.
Thanks for tuning in. Shebnam from Germany.
Inshallah, I hope to.
Amin Abu Salman. May Allah preserve you and
all of us and all the Ummah.
Rick Rasheed's, eating chips and dip. I hope
you brought enough to share.
Murad Ali.
Murad. Naughty, naughty Murad.
How to
then Murad Ali says, how does it feel
to be a white NeoKani imam? I I
wouldn't know. But Murad, and don't tempt me
because I don't like to get involved in
drama, believe it or not. But I will
say that
some people that
speak down about white imams, their politics are
based off of dead white Europeans like Marx
and Lenin. So square that circle for me.
Kashif Ahmad, walaikum salaam wa raftalah from Manchester.
Manchester was so lovely. I was very very
blessed to spend a day or 2 in
Manchester and it really really impressed me a
lot.
Harris from Brisbane, Australia down under. Walaikum Assalamu
alaikum Assalamu alaikum
Assalamu
alaikum.
Can you send a shout out to Yousaf,
Sumayya, Asma and Ayub, I just did.
Masha'Allah. Yousaf, Sumayya, Asma and Ayub.
Assalamu alaykum to you all. May Allah bless
you and keep you and preserve you. Watermelon
786. Waraikum Assalam. Raf to love from Detroit.
Very good.
Detroit's
a special place. I was blessed to to
visit Detroit in the last year.
Abu Salman says, please do a video on
a suffering Sudan, the UAE involvement. Well, you
said it. A 100%. UAE has its hands
in in Sudan. What's going on in Sudan?
Also, Israel has its hands in what's going
on in Sudan.
That's why, you know, there there are structural
issues. And, we'll talk about it. But you're
right. It does deserve its own special treatment.
Alina Simon
from Malaysia. Salamat Datang. Amina Kasupovich.
Loving the coffee. Always welcome. Usama Anjum from
Huntington, New York. Walaikum Salam.
Sharon, Puerto Rico.
Oh, Puerto Rico. You're not you're not you're
not alone in Puerto Rico. In fact, you
should check out the 3 Puerto Rican imams,
Abu Sumayya Wesley Lebron, and Daniel Hernandez,
and,
and Yusuf Rios have a, a non profit
organization called the 3 Puerto Rican Imams. They
do extensive Dawah work in Puerto Rico.
To the program.
And I hope that you find what you
need. Hopefully, you're able to link up with
some people Insha'Allah Ta'ala. Puerto Rico, beautiful people,
beautiful culture. Welcome to the program.
Raif from Liverpool.
Didn't get a chance to go to Liverpool,
unfortunately. Laura from Morocco.
Welcome back to the program. Good to see,
return viewers. Shaha from Karachi. Wa Alaikum Salam
Alaikum Salam Alaikum.
Alina.
Yes. Alhamdulillah. I'm I'm happy to be there.
There are plenty of
things to enjoy. 1st stop, I think, is
to get some KopiSoussu.
Melbourne, Australia, Zaid Carlos, walaikum salam, rasoolah.
Fish biscotti. Wait a second. Wait a second.
Wait a second.
Hold on now. I don't know if you're
allowed to have that username, fish biscotti.
Because, you know, biscotti is very, you know,
it it's it's close to my heart. And
fish biscotti
sounds like some sort of reprehensive
bida.
Anyway,
we all make mistakes. Mohammed is a man
from Memphis.
Ashraf Katumba from Saudi.
Where from Saudi?
Elias from the studio. My man Elias holding
it down, and we got the other guys
back here holding it down behind the scenes.
May Allah bless you all. Everybody who makes
this possible.
Art Forge
from Atlanta.
Quebec.
Raza family from Quebec. Raza
from Montreal in particular. But wow, it's been
a minute since I I visited Laval way
back in the day before I went to
Medina, and I have not been back to
Montreal since, unfortunately.
Fatima, what is a neocon? Don't worry about
it. You're better off not knowing. Yes. Minami
Islam Khan. Thank you so much for sending
that. Please keep the people of Bangladesh in
your duas. We are going through challenging times.
Yes. That happened so late. We couldn't even
add it to the program formally, but the
unrest is going on in the universities and
the crackdown, the brutal crackdown on the students
there. May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala aid,
the people of Bangladesh.
Wonderful people. Wonderful place. Wonderful culture.
May Allah protect them and let justice prevail.
Blue x.
My man.
Studio,
Good to have you with us.
Abdullah asked a question. Our our our own,
Abdullah, Abu Mahfud, Allah Adik. What are your
thoughts on decaf?
Decaf is like, I can't say it. I
can't say it on air. Let's just say
it's not,
it's not recommended.
Okay?
Ask me ask me in person, Abdullah. There's
something that I told Sheikh Talhir White about
decaf way back in the day in Medina.
That
it's just if you're gonna go to the
trouble of drinking coffee,
why would you take all the fun out
of it? Right? It's like that meme, I
think someone what it was making the rounds,
someone said,
did you know that switching your morning routine
from coffee to green tea can eliminate 80%
of the joy from your life or something
like that? Like, why would you do that
to yourself?
Though I understand some people can't tolerate the
caffeine, so that's I'm not in that situation.
M y, from
NY, from New York.
From
KL.
Glad to have you with us. Inshallah be
in your area soon.
Mohammed Ahmed from Allen,
Quaker Boats, that's a funny name.
From Glendale Heights, Illinois.
Cinclon from Nigeria.
H f, Alaykum Salam. Amin.
Go for it, h f. Shoot your shot.
Alina. Yes.
Yes. Except for I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I
need help everybody. All my Malaysian,
friends and brothers and sisters.
One thing that I can't do. Yes. A
100% take tare all day long. No problem.
My favorite.
My favorite.
Durian.
I do not I do not love durian.
Durian is is hard for me,
and I know that that is controversial,
But that's controversy is kinda what we do
here. So
apologies to the lovely people of Malaysia, but
I have a really hard time with durian.
I'll stick to the mangoes. I'll stick to
the and the kopisusu and, you know, the
other things.
From Uzbekistan.
Very welcome to the program. Uzbekistan.
Lovely, lovely people. Lovely culture. I had a
good friend, studying with me, a classmate of
mine.
Uthman Mohammedoff, who was, who was from Uzbekistan.
Shout out to him. Very, very dear friend.
Peshtifi says, just saw president Biden tweet about
being sick with COVID. Yes. He's got COVID.
And sending me, Elon Musk of buying the
election. No mess yeah.
That is funny.
But we'll talk about it. We'll talk about
the,
the role of money in politics or, let's
say, the infiltration
of money into politics, especially
especially the United States. And how basically this
is something that has been a workaround to
circumvent democratic institutions or other, you know, the
way that things were supposed to work, if
we don't wanna use the d word.
Big salaams from Utica, 1st pillar. Yes. Uh-huh,
1st pillar.
Big love to Utica, shout to Utica.
My landing spot coming back from Medina. I
appreciate the wonderful community in Utica a lot.
May Allah bless you all.
Fatima, I agree. Decaf is a little bit
of blasphemy.
Who else do we have?
Yep. The beast. You're right. Hadda says, my
crew. Some people saying, bidah. Very good. And
we got now we got the fuqaha weighing
in.
Asked a question, has normative North American Islamic
Institutions and leadership failed the activist class? In
a in short, yes, In short, yes. And
I hope to be a small part of
the solution to that failure. Such that they
feel so comf comfortable operating in kufri
ideologies. Yes. Honestly, you hit the nail on
the head.
There's more to it than that, but that
definitely is a large ingredient to what's going
on.
So one of the things I'm working on
right now, I work on it every single
day. I'm up to 59 pages of written
material
on trying to
lay out a framework for Islamic activism. And
I know I'm not the first person. This
is going to be a contribution to this
field that others such as Sheikh Omar Suleiman
and Imam Dawood Walid and and others have
contributed to. Many others have contributed too. We
need to push it forward and start to
provide very concrete solutions and provide a framework
and speak to the issues in practical ways
that are going to put things in these
young people's hands. There's a reason why young
people are ready to change the world. They're
idealistic. That's what Allah gifted them. And if
we as a scholarly class and the institutional
class does not
channel that, then they will go elsewhere. They
will go elsewhere. So we do share,
responsibility in that.
What are we doing? We're shooting the breeze.
We're grounding with our brothers. There's a old
there's a book by Walter Rodney about grounding
with with your brothers. That's what we're doing
right here. We're getting on the same page.
We're becoming one mind and one heart, Insha'Allah,
before we get into it. Nazeesh Khan, Wa
Alaikum Salamu wa rakattu. Fabulous. 45.
The beast.
Did I skip your question? I didn't I
didn't see I didn't see that question. I
apologize. Not every not every question that, I
don't say is a question that I intentionally
skip. Sometimes the chat's moving up really fast,
and I take my eyes off to make
eye contact with you, and then I and
then I lose it. You had a question
about Sunni Shia alliance against Zionists, Allahu Akbar.
There's gotta be a in that. Alright? Anytime
where we use loaded terms,
we have to really know exactly the specificities
cities. The specificity is what we're talking about.
What type of alliance? Alright. What type of
Shia? Alright. What type of this? And we'll
talk about little bit about this with, Ashura.
When we talk about Ashura,
but it's not categorically
it's not categorically off the table.
Just as it's not categorically off the table
to have an alliance with with non Muslims,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam. When he came
to Medina, the first thing he did was
make a pact with the with the Jews
that were living there. And that was something
they had a pact to defend the city
together.
So that was their common goal.
Didn't require anybody sort of come over to
the other side or, you know, they didn't
have to hold hands and sing Kumbaya or
anything like that. Right? So there's a precedence
for this sort of thing. So,
but the devil's in the details as they
say.
Glasgow.
Haven't been that far North, but I hear
it's lovely.
Leila Yassine from Virginia.
My husband doesn't like durian too.
I I didn't wanna be the only one.
From
Indonesia.
Welcome.
So Mira, the program begins. Walaikum Assalamu rafter
Allah. Once we, once we run through everybody,
I am gonna get through all the comments.
So if the comments keep coming, then we're
just gonna keep on waiting.
No problem. But that's okay because we're getting
to know each other and this is actually
something that I believe enhances the quality of
the program.
Maya Rahib, Waraikum Salam, Waraikum Salam, Waraikum Salam,
Waraikum Salam, Waraikum Salam, Waraikum Salam, Waraikum
Very good morning. Chai and coffee is very
important. Yes. Agree.
Maya Rehav, will you ever come to Massachusetts?
I might be coming to Massachusetts in the
fall, Maya. And absolutely, I would love to.
From Alabama.
You wanna know about this?
You you haven't seen anyone wearing it. This
is from Tuniq, so it comes from North
Africa.
You can check out Tuniq online, t u
n I q. I always plug their stuff.
I love their stuff. They're a very ethics
based company,
sort of artisanal
clothes. Sometimes it can be a bit pricey,
but I believe in their ethics. I believe
that they,
adhere very closely to what we would imagine
as Sharia guidelines
for, what is sort of clothing and things
like that.
Shaita, why on earth everything goes wrong in
the Islamic countries?
We are ready to tolerate each other. Follow
the rules in America, etcetera. Laws are implemented,
but Islamic countries, no laws implemented. Well, there's
a long answer to that. We'll get into
some
of
it. Zahir, thank
you very much. My plans, what I've been
working on recently, yes, you will see soon,
inshallah.
Let's see. Maghrib
Tain in New York. Yes. Just about.
Here we go. What else we have? Sauda,
regarding revolts like Syria, and I wonder if
we can add
pal to that. I think you mean Palestine.
Some have said, was it worth it when
so many have been unalived,
when there wasn't even a chance of victory
or no leader? It's easy to be a
Monday morning quarterback, Sato. That's what we say
in the United States. We mean that,
hindsight's always 2020. Right? And again, this is
what I would call a more absolutist or
ideological sort of
interpretation of history, where you go to it
and and say, see, I told you so.
It didn't work for this reason or that
reason. And I don't really find that very
helpful. I advocate a more exploratory sort of
approach saying, okay, it failed, but does the
fact that it failed
mean that there's nothing to learn? Maybe this
was a necessary step in providing for something
that comes later and that requires serious study
and, you know, usually not black and white
thinking.
And I do not have any Muslim friends.
Do the best you can and always strive
to do better.
Simple, but really, I'm serious.
Do the best that you can with the
opportunities that are available to you, and then
always plan to continue to do better.
Fatima has a good point.
Alright. We're almost at the end here from
Indonesia. Farah, welcome.
Maria Hamdani from Chicago.
Nafisa Tubande. Do you have any advice on
how to keep one's sanity amidst what is
happening to our brothers and sisters around the
world? I am losing some I feel you,
a 100%.
100%. I I also feel you. And, you
know, I have taken refuge
in certain
certain formulas of dhikr. Right? Certain things of
dhikr both in the Quran that the prophet
used to say that maybe I wasn't using
so much in the past, the ones that
more have to do with relying on
Allah is is is one that I really
lean on heavily.
These sorts of things that that rely on
Allah's
transcendence and control over even these issues. Because,
yes, it's dark, but Insha'Allah, we hope that
things will continue to get better.
Yes. Atika, thank you for that clarification. Topia
is an Urdu word for cap.
I believe it's also the word they use
in Malay for the general cap, though not,
the word for the specifically sort of Malaysian
hat.
I am Samiha. Samiha
Welcome from Dallas, Texas. I should be in
Dallas next month in August, Insha'Allah
briefly,
and then back again
in October, I believe.
Okay.
And from Malaysia. May Allah bless you.
It was on Far Ali, of course, I
can pray for you. May Allah protect you,
give you the best of this life in
the next army. Alright. That's great. I mean,
I think it's a good problem to have
if you've got so many friendly faces and
and friendly people from around the Ummah to
give salams to and to, check-in on. I
think that's part of why we do this,
so that we can sort of have,
even a little bit of hope and take
solace
in one another in these dark times. But
there is a lot to talk about, and
let's start with the assassination attempt on Donald
Trump,
which happened this week that has been
featured very very heavily in the news.
A lot to say about this particular issue,
about,
political violence. I know one of the first
things that when something like this happens
is that for the Muslims in Western countries,
all of us in our group chats are
always saying, please don't be a Muslim.
Please let the shooter not be a Muslim
because we know that if the shooter is
a Muslim, then we as an entire community
are going to be blamed for it. And
it will provide an easy pretext and justification
for,
you know, for sort of cracking down on
us and spying on us and jailing us
and doing all these sorts of things.
So unfortunately,
we are
we are held accountable for things that we
don't do and things that we don't support.
Thankfully, it was not a Muslim who did
it, and there were lots of and I'm
glad you mentioned that, SADA. SADA said, I'm
gonna say it looks kinda sus.
A lot of people are saying that there's
a lot of conspiracies coming out
as to who did it? What's the motive?
Was it set up? Was it fake? All
these sorts of things. Fatima, great point. We're
gonna touch on that in a second. Right?
It does seem
it does seem like this is a genuine
thing. It doesn't seem like a fake. It
doesn't seem like there are necessarily
any ulterior motives. Right?
If it were something that were an inside
job or some something done from,
from the left,
they would have picked somebody different. It's a
very high risk sort of thing. So most
of the conspiracy theories that I've seen out
there, some people saying that it was Israeli
intelligence, some people saying that it was the
a radical leftist, some people saying that it's
an inside job from the right. I don't
really see a lot of veracity or logic
to those claims. I think that this mat
seems to match from what we know the
profile of a lone wolf disgruntled person. He's
very young, only 20 years old.
And, you know, it was a registered Republican
and and somebody who was,
yeah, like, somebody who doesn't seem to have
many ulterior motives. I know some of his
classmates said that he was bullied, like, every
day relentlessly.
So the conspiracy theories, you know, we have
to pump the brakes on those as we
say. We have to, take it easy with
those. Now what we do know is that
this was a spectacular
security failure that it's shocking to a lot
of people that there could have been such
an easy attempt on the former president's life
and that if,
you know, the person was a better shooter,
honestly, it would have been, it would have
been a tragedy,
at least according to some, and we'll get
into that as well in a second.
So we've seen a a lot of blame
going around. They're trying to say that Secret
Service is underfunded or not doing their job
or the local police. Some of the details,
and that's what makes it sus as,
as as, I think Sara was saying
that there were local police officers that actually
saw the shooter and actually confronted the shooter
and had the gun turned on them.
And then they basically just walked away,
which is very positive. There's all these videos
going around where people who are there, who
are trying to alert police officers. Hey. There's
a guy on the roof with a gun.
Right?
That's wild. That's very, very odd to see
this sort of thing happened.
And so
it is a little bit strange, but it
seems to be in Alain Knows Best more
an issue of incompetence
than it is about some sort of,
some sort of conspiracy. Adelon knows best. We
will we will see how things go. I
know there's going to be a lot of
commentary about that.
Let's check it real quick. We've got
yeah. We're definitely going to talk about about
what this means about violence. Let's see. Matt,
sauce, what I can say now, mister da.
Victoria's Drusilla, Welcome to the program.
Fatima. They care more about his ear than
thousands of Palestinians. Put
that up there on the screen, guys. That
comment is extremely,
extremely important and one that we're going to
roll with in just a second. We've got
a a video we're gonna show in just
a few seconds that makes that exact point.
Now
everybody's concerned about violence. Now everybody's talking about,
oh, this is such a tragedy. This is,
and we're we're saying, yes, it's a tragedy.
No problem. But what about the 186,000
Palestinians
that have been killed in brutal
in brutal fashion over the last 9 months
and for the entire duration of the occupation.
Clearly, this is a very hypocritical thing for
the United States and all the media class
and all the pundit class to get together
and fold their hands and nod solemnly and
say, oh, you know, this is
so horrible where they don't even blink an
eye at the slaughter that they are funding
and committing in other parts of the world.
We have that clip. Can we roll it?
Violence has never been the answer.
Whether it's with members of congress in both
parties being targeted and shot
or a violent mob attacking the capitol on
January 6th
or brutal attack on the spouse of former
speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi.
For more information
and intimidation
on election officials,
or the kidnapping plot against the city government,
or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump.
There's no place in America for this kind
of violence
for any violence ever.
Period.
No exceptions.
We can't allow this vile.
Yeah. That's that's wild.
It's wild and it's hypocritical for two reasons,
and we'll get into it a little bit
more. One of them,
the first most immediate one as sister Fatima
pointed out, that
this is
really rich, as that video very very succinctly
and beautifully illustrates.
All of the examples
of violence and political violence that he's giving
are ones where,
quote unquote, American lives are jeopardized, especially the
political
class. Whereas the political class is responsible for
way worse violence across the world, even just
in the last 9 months. But, hey, let's
go back decades. Let's go back to the
invasion of Iraq. Let's go back to the
toppling of governments that were democratically elected in
Central and South America. Let's go to, like,
the United States foreign policy and intelligence agencies
has hands in a lot of dirty stuff
over the past decades,
and we're our only examples that we bring
to mind with political violence are
this. Right?
It's very, very tone deaf. It's very, very
hypocritical. It also is problematic
because we've seen rhetoric from president Biden in
the last week try to shift the blame
for this climate of political violence
to the pro Palestinian
Encampment Movement and not, let's say, the violent
response
of the police
and the, sometimes, the national guard
being called in on
your own people.
Right?
Which side is construed as violent? Who gets
to be defined as violent here? Somehow the
students
are considered violent,
for demanding an end to violence, for demanding
an end to United States participation,
active participation
in violence in Palestine.
Yet, the police and the SWAT teams that
go in with live ammunition and, you know,
military grade equipment
are not considered violent
somehow.
Tell me how that makes sense. Right? Where
individual
congresspeople,
when they're confronted
in congress, can say things like, we should
kill all of them and flatten Gaza, and
all these things that they have been recorded
as saying,
and yet
what happened to Hind isn't violence. What happened
to Hind's family
isn't violence or all of the other little
girls such as Sidra and the other girls
like Hind and Sidra, that that's not violence.
It's extremely hypocritical and extremely infuriating, especially as
a Muslim,
to to see this type of rhetoric which
is just completely base it's just completely
it's like dust. It has no weight. It
has no value. It's it's empty words or,
as we say,
Now we'll get also to, you know, I
know there's a lot of conversation. Let's run
through that, and then we'll get to I
think we have another clip
to demonstrate this type of hypocrisy from none
other than, Sheytan Yahoo.
But we'll see that in just a second.
Let's see what we got.
Samira, I like your point, Samira, and I
agree someone died. That's too risky to be
a stunt. I agree with that.
Somebody was shot in the background,
a father.
That is a very, very, a very sad
thing.
Trump testifies as Trump posing for a photo
op is what makes it sus. Not at
all. If you know Trump, Trump has his
background in reality television. He he's been on
pro wrestling wrestling programs.
Like, he is made for that sort of
moment. Like, he's very calculated when he does
that sort of thing.
So he definitely has a stage presence, as
we say, or he has,
a a 6th sense for sort of the
theater of something. So that doesn't surprise me
at all. And Minami Islam Khan brings up
the idea about the crowd. The crowd, the
events seem to remain in their seats.
Well, it all happened very fast. And, honestly,
like, if you were in that situation, like,
it's not
apparent that it's gunfire. Right? Even police, they
can't always differentiate between gunfire and fireworks or
other things like that. So that also, again,
is not necessarily a red flag to me.
Neither is the idea that the beast is
saying here that Secret Service was involved and
that that no way that they were that
incompetent. And I saw some videos broken down
by former Secret Service members that broke this
down, that actually those buildings are the responsibility
of the local police and that the Secret
Service
has to usually work with local police forces,
which makes it a make a lot more
sense. You're right. If you would you would
expect people of Secret Service caliber to not
make those types of mistakes. My understanding is
that that particular zone was supposed to be
local police, and they sort of dropped the
ball.
Exactly, Sameera. 100%.
Not surprising from Trump.
Yep. A 100%. Saw a good point.
Yes. That's true. Abhinasa politics is unfortunately full
of bunch of hypocrites, which is why the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
told us to not seek leadership. This is
a hadith from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
where he discouraged people from seeking leadership.
He said, alaihi salatu wasallam, that if you
seek leadership, you will be left alone with
it. Like Allah will not help you. It'll
be just you. You won't have any blessing
or barakkah or tawfiq.
But if you don't seek out leadership, and
it's thrust upon you, the people thrust it
upon you, then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will
aid you and give you talfikh in it
anyway.
The beast wants to know why were the
female bodyguard why were there female bodyguards anyway?
This has actually become a talking point on
the right where they're criticized the head of
secret service,
I think made a 30% quota, that 30%
of the secret service has to be female.
And so now this has become another thing
in the culture war where the right is
saying, oh, there are these diversity hires or
these quotas
have made the Secret Service less effective. And
I don't know about that. I don't necessarily
think
that that's
what's the point. I think that it was
probably more an issue of of local police
dropping the ball.
Yes. And I agree with Zahir here.
We we do need to be careful about
about spreading,
conspiracy theories. It doesn't make us look good.
It makes us look we're supposed to be
more intelligent than that. Right? It it it
kind of is fun to think about things
and think through things, but especially in public.
Right? We hit that
forward button on WhatsApp, and then it comes
across forwarded many times. Right? And it's this,
you know, crazy conspiracy.
It's it's undermining of our credibility, unfortunately.
Yes. And Sara brings up a good point.
A lot of people, one of their main
reflections from this is that this might be
the nail in the coffin
for,
for Biden's
campaign.
That being surviving
an assassination attempt and that dramatic photo and
how he sort of shaped it is is
very, very strong,
for his campaign in favor of his campaign.
Violence is the language of the oppressor. Sameer,
that's true.
What else we have?
Yeah. Nadine is a 100% right. Total dehumanization
of a group, and we have seen we
have seen that this rhetoric is out of
control. We're gonna be talking about that. Fouthima
is right. Palestine is exposing the world
a 100%.
Yep. Laura brings up a good point because
the people controlling the politics in the West
need to control the narrative. Muslims cannot be
seen as the good guys. They need an
enemy. They need a common enemy. If they
want to fund, You know, the FBI has
a a an $11,000,000,000
budget. Right? The CIA,
the other sort of institutions that wreak havoc
either at home or across the world or
that spy on us domestically,
stop us at the airports, or the ones
that destabil other nations across the
world and make other people angry at the
United States,
which is not a good idea,
that
exactly. That
they need a common enemy. They need to
be able to tell people that the bad
guy We're doing this to keep you safe.
That is the ultimate excuse which is why
And I'll say this and I'll say this
again. For all the people who have been
sort of the who have had their feathers
ruffled by me sort of challenging the left
and the left's claim to the issue of
Palestine and Palestinian Liberation,
that when
what am I supposed to say with Meta?
I'm not supposed to use the word Zionist
with Meta anymore. What what are we supposed
to say? People who believe in Zionism,
when they justify their project, when they ask
for money from the United States, when they
ask for weapons,
what do they say that they're fighting? Do
they say that they're fighting Arab nationalism?
Do they say that they're fighting,
human rights? They say that they're fighting Islamic
fundamentalism.
They say that they're fighting Islamic terrorism. That's
what they say that they're fighting.
And then we see people even from the
left when they get challenged, they call us
Islamic fundamentalists. They say that we're Wahabis.
They use the language of the war on
terror. They use the language of criminalizing Muslims.
You square that circle for me and tell
me how that makes sense.
Anyway, we need to move on. Let's see.
What else we got? Is in the house.
You've got it. Good point, Shahla.
Hi there. It says, which modern day political
structure most closely describes how leaders can be
elected in the sharia? Well,
short answer to a long question. If you
look at the ways in which the 4
Khalifa and Rashidin
were elected or
elected is not the right word, there were
a variety of methods. Okay. So Abu Bakr
was nominated and then accepted by a small
sort of vanguard.
Though there's difference of opinion about that, some
of the scholars of Ahlus Sunnah, they also
say that he was actually directly appointed from
the prophet
Anyway,
Umar was directly appointed
with no
conversation,
by Abu Bakr.
Right?
Then
earth man, we know that there was a
council, and even that council, sort of the
shura, was expanded to the entire city of
Medina. And then Ali, it was sort of
thrust upon Ali. So there's a variety of
methods by which
the,
rightly guided
caliphs came to power,
which demonstrates
that the manner in which someone can assume
authority is something that is not
fixed in stone. It is not
It is not something that is extremely limited,
that it is something that
as long as it does not explicitly contradict
Islam, that there is room for a variety
of methods of that.
So that's,
my
quick response to that. Amina says, these days
my teacher introduces us the Alqida through the
study of history of Islamic civilization
and the position of Palestine throughout the centuries.
History repeats itself a 100%.
And as one of the Palestinian uncles in
Dublin, Ireland,
told me, he said that
your feelings towards Palestine is indicative of how
you feel towards the whole Ummah, and I
thought that was amazingly
amazingly
relevant and true.
DK Larousa
here in Louisiana.
Welcome to the program.
Bills. Oh, yeah. You asked me about Malaysia.
No. I am still in the United States.
I'm traveling to Malaysia Insha Allah Ta'ala Sunday,
and I'll be there from Sunday to Monday.
Okay? So
come find me.
The beast says, did you see that they
are now trying to blame Iran? Yes. There's
a there's another thing that's pivoting to Iran.
Israel stepping in saying that Iran is the
greatest threat to world peace.
That's really rich coming from Israel. We see
this thing.
Okay. Let's see.
Yes. That's true, m y. It'll be interesting.
M y brings up a point. They're gonna
calm a gunman because he was not a
Muslim. We know that if it was a
Muslim, we would see this as an it
would be under terrorism legislation.
And so this is actually in a really
important point when it comes to,
what is called lawfare. So lawfare is basically
the creation of law and legal devices
by which you can punish people in certain
ways. Right? So the entire post,
post 911 framework of
terrorist law, Patriot Act, all these sorts of
things was specifically made to incriminate Muslims
in a very
specific way, in a way that's different categorically
from the rest how an, a a non
Muslim person would be tried. Right?
Raza will get back to that in a
second. Here we go. So we've got another
clip. Let's bring up, Shaitanya himself.
My wife, Sarah, and I were shocked by
the horrific assassination attempt on the life of
president Donald Trump.
This wasn't just an attack on Donald Trump.
This was an attack on a candidate for
the presidency of the United States.
This was an attack on America. It was
an attack on democracy.
It was an attack on all the democracies.
On behalf of myself, my family, the government,
and people of Israel,
we wish president Trump
a speedy recovery,
continued good
I can't believe I had to listen to
that.
First of all, it's clear that Netanyahu and
there's an article that dropped today about this,
is trying to patch up his relationship with
Trump.
But I'm I'm betting that he's betting that
Trump will win the election.
Obviously, we don't know what's gonna happen. And
so, actually, Netanyahu's relationship with Trump was not
all that good,
despite Trump you know, Trump's funny because you
can if you go back into his statements,
he says anything. He says anything and everything.
So you can always,
see him contradicting himself. He says whatever he
feels he needs to say depending on the
audience
and the moment.
But he has
also criticized Netanyahu,
for not being willing to make a deal,
not being a good faith negotiator, of being
someone who basically is an obstacle
to to peace.
Take that for what it's worth.
Now Netanyahu
probably sees the writing on the wall and
wants to shore up
a sort of relationship and try to develop
relationships with with what he thinks is going
to be the next president of the United
States,
because he's probably very concerned
that let's say, Trump sort of goes rogue,
like he has gone in the past and
says, you know what? No more military aid
for Israel. Not saying it's going to happen,
but we can pray. Right? Then he would
he knows that he's in a very tough
situation.
So that's the first thing. The second thing,
obviously, is the utter hypocrisy,
of Netanyahu
trying to have his Charlie headbow moment, where
I remember back with the Charlie headbow
incident.
And he and the the rest of the
Western leaders are marching arm and arm through
the street as if they're the leaders of
the free world and democracy, etcetera,
hiding, of
course, the way in which that they are
directly responsible with blood on their hands for
a lot of violence and a lot of
oppression and a lot of horrible things across
the world.
This is,
hypocrisy and narrative and spinning. But the good
thing, and I think the silver lining for
all of us, is that most people or
let's say more and more and more people
are seeing through it.
More and more and more people are seeing
the hypocrisy of this sort of thing. That's
why they make videos like the one that
we showed earlier with Biden juxtaposed against what's
going on in Palestine, that more and more
people are seeing through this.
And so we can hope that
we're approaching a critical mass that will turn
things around.
Raza asks, Sheikh,
Assalamu Alaikum Wa Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum
Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum
Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum
Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum
Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Ala. I think
we're supposed to choose lesser of lesser evil,
so vote for Trump. Sorry. I'm putting you
on the spot. Yaqeena suits a 501c3. I
cannot tell you who to vote for, who
not to vote for. But obviously, the devil's
in the details. Who you think is a
lesser evil? Do you vote at all? Do
you vote for a third party?
That's up to you. I can't comment on
that here. But if you are interested in
what I think, then you'd have to go
to another platform and see.
Morad Ali,
another good question. I know you're speaking about
US domestic politics not to get you in
trouble,
but that's a great intro.
But should we view how should we view
the re axis of resistance?
Yeah. I mean, this is something that has
come up in a lot of spheres. I
think that,
when it comes to people within the United
States, I think that the main focus to
not lose our eyes on what's important is
changing the foreign policy of the United States.
I think that
there is a very, very
easily,
he is Polish the beast, by the way.
That there is a a an easy thing
for
an easy what what's what's the word I'm
looking for? An entry point to the average
American that the United States of America, for
decades
at this point,
has been using its power for evil, that
it has been intervening and destabilizing
and toppling,
perfectly fine societies
for quite a while.
And that if people knew what was going
on, you know, then they would probably try
to rein back. And the fact that our
tax dollars are going to this as opposed
to the crumbling infrastructure, as opposed to health
care that people can afford. Life in the
United States is not easy right now. Right?
If people were able to organize around this,
I think that we could achieve a lot
of good. And that it it makes it
less relevant about the axis of resistance or
whatever because, again, for me, and I am
speaking to the US audience when I'm saying
this, I think the main goal has to
be to change US foreign policy. I think
that once that happens, then breathing room is
created for other possibilities to happen.
Bills,
thank you very much.
Yep. Look forward to to being there.
Who else we have?
I mean, Sabagul while I
I mean, yes. I mean, I agree with
that 100%.
Rick Rashid. Yes. He did say Trump did
say that he will end the war in
Gaza. But, again, Trump says everything. If you
look through all the things that Trump has
said, you will find him saying pro and
against on almost every single issue. And he
he changes like a chameleon. He's a chameleon.
He's a showman.
We know this, that he doesn't really believe
in much except for himself and his own
personal interest, as opposed to,
Biden who is actually a committed Zionist. He's
actually somebody who believes in the Zionist project.
Sharon, I'm new Muslim, so I need to
ask why they're behind Muslims. I'm not exactly
sure what you mean by that question, Sarah.
Maybe you can clarify.
We might not, Sarah. We might not have
a better of 2 evils in this particular
situation.
Ilya says Trump also said let them keep
going. Yes. Exactly. And he was saying that
about the Zionist
and letting them continue their genocide within Gaza.
Yes.
No. Exactly. Like, so these people listen. You
can't we know that you can't trust politicians.
Right? So you have to take,
with a grain of salt anything that you
hear them say.
Even people with the slickest, most up most
appealing rhetoric like Obama, who was a skilled,
rhetoricist.
What happened when he was actually in office?
You know, their actions speak louder than their
words. But anyway,
we have to
we have to turn the page here. We'll
talk about okay. So the other thing that
dropped this week is project 2020, 2025.
Right? This is something that was leaked. It
was a project by the Heritage Foundation. This
is something that is 900 pages long.
It's got the left media, the Democratic friendly
media in a tailspin,
you know, saying that this is sort of,
you know, a conspiracy, that it's going to
overthrow the government, that we're just, you know,
a step away from
fascism, all these very similar familiar
alarmist bells that have been ringing for quite
some time. And there's truth to that. But
but I think that we need to realize
a couple things. One of them is that
if you go through the actual,
you actually go through it.
Like anything, it's a mixed bag. There are
some things that many Americans would actually welcome,
such as the disbanding of FBI. I I
thought that was funny that that was in
there. It actually said to, you know, that
one of its goals was to disband the
FBI.
And there were other things that some parts
of the population
would maybe appreciate, such as rolling back certain
things,
when it comes to,
gender ideology in school and things like that.
But of course, there are other things that
are very very worrisome for Muslims and for
other people.
What's gotten people most in a fix is
the potential for
trying to increase executive power
to work around, basically,
anybody within
the government that could oppose
Trump. Now there's a lot to talk about
when it comes to this. First of all,
that I think that it's hypocritical
of people on the left and people who
are Democratic friendly
to act so shocked to the point where
they think that this is something that they
don't also
do and participate in. In the reality, you
have groups like the Heritage Foundation.
You have them on both sides of the
political aisle. You have left and right think
tanks that make documents like this, that make
their sort of scenario sheets like this, that
make their grand plans. If you want to
go back to the LGBTQ
movement, they've done the same thing. Right? You
could imagine in another sort of mirrored reality,
the right wringing its hands and clutching its
pearls about the left doing the same thing.
The reality is that both sides participate in
this exact same thing where they make their
demands, they make their plans, and they see
what they can get away with,
which is interesting
when it comes to the way that politics
are supposed to work. Right? A lot of
times, Muslims are very unfortunately naive about the
politics, and they think that it's just about
electing people without realizing that, no, both sides
or whatever interest group you're a part of
does a lot of work to not just
figure out who to elect, that's part of
it, but also how to get around the
system.
And it's unfortunate.
Politics are dominated and infiltrated by money, that's
part of it. But it's also about sort
of developing policies and thought in order to
convince
other people to get your project put in
place. So sometimes as Muslims, we actually play,
you know, and then there's reasons for this
where we act as if this is just
like, you know, we try to keep our
hands clean. But this is something that everybody
does. Everybody plots like this whether they announce
it to the world or not.
So this doesn't come as a surprise, honestly.
Anybody who follows politics very closely,
this type of thing happens all the time.
What the left, the right, the center, any
group, every group does this type of thinking,
and you're going to agree to it or
not. Now the thing that's most alarming
is that
each group, both the left and the right,
are no longer looking to be accountable to
the people
and implement policies
based off of their merit,
or even win elections, though that is something
that they're still concerned about. They are
very, very much engaged
in trying to find a workaround,
trying to manipulate the rules, to manipulate the
regulations, to work around the regulations, the rules,
laws, the systems in place, in order for
them to get their way.
That's alarming. And that is actually something that
brings us to our next
sort of topic, which is the unraveling of
America. It is something that is very, very
dangerous, and it plays into the assassination attempt
on,
former,
former president Donald Trump. Now you saw we
saw a video of president Biden
condemning violence,
but it's also true, and I read no
less than 3 articles just today about this,
That Biden has contributed to political rhetoric
that we could say,
perhaps,
contributed to this climate of political violence, that
calling your opponents Hitler, calling your opponents
Nazis,
These types of things are very inflammatory,
and so some people and these are not
my words. These are the words of, like,
even The Hill had an article, like, today
saying,
if you really think that somebody is Hitler,
why are you apologizing
that they got
an assassination attempt on them? Doesn't that seem
2 faced? Either you didn't really ever think
that they were Hitler and you were just
using that language
or you're being hypocritical. Right? So
we see that both and this is again
the one of the lessons from Prada 20
2025 is that
both left and right, both Democrats and Republicans
engage in this inflammatory rhetoric.
Both of them try to work around outside
of Democratic
and against the rules in order to get
their way.
If project 2025
was successful
and they were able to replace
sort of the legacy employees with their own
sort of at will presidential appointments.
Don't the people at the Heritage Foundation say,
wait a second.
If we put this into place,
what if the next president is Democratic and
then they take advantage of the powers that
we just gave the president? They don't they're
not thinking like this.
That every sort of workaround, whether it's gerrymandering,
right, where they change the shape of the
districts to play with who gets
every dirty trick that you come up with
is now eligible for the other side to
use it as well against you.
Right? And so this is something very very
alarming, as we see the United States
descend and become more and more polarized,
and people using very irresponsible rhetoric that
creates a plausibility structure where somebody would unfortunately
attempt something like an assassination.
We see that this is how things fall
apart. There's a useful distinction
that, one thinker,
mentioned that I think is tremendously helpful for
these sorts of things. They said that
people need to
differentiate between
enemies
and adversaries.
An
adversary is somebody who agrees to play by
the same rules that you agree to play
by, and now you're in competition to win.
But you both agree to play to the
same rules.
Whereas an enemy is somebody who doesn't agree
to play by the same rules. They're willing
to break all the rules just to win.
That type of person or group is very,
very dangerous because it doesn't just mean that
you might lose.
It might mean that entire game, the entire
competition is ruined.
Right? And we need to learn this lesson
as Muslims. There are people who within the
Muslim community are adversaries.
Right? You might have an adversary
whether it's Sunni,
Shia or Salafi Sufi or, you know, I'm
just thinking these are things off the top
of my head. Dayoban versus Berlvi or or
Berlvi or whatever it is, there might be
an adversary out there. But at the end
of the day, if you can agree to
sort of rules of engagement, how to engage
with each other,
at least you're not enemies to the point
where you're going to break the rules just
to triumph over the other one. We wouldn't
want anybody, for example,
going to,
to call the police or to call the
FBI
and saying it's like, oh, yeah. These people
that I disagree with over here are terrorists.
You should go throw them in jail.
That would be that would be something where
your deen is really,
shaky, that you should really fear Allah for
that sort of thing. So there has to
be an inner circle and an outer circle
with everything, whether it's politics and political parties
within a government,
or whether it's in whether it's within Islam
that you have to differentiate, and
Muslims historically have fallen into trouble
when we have treated our adversaries like enemies
and gone outside of the community
to non Muslims to enlist their help to
fight our adversaries and to win over them.
And so if, you know, that can happen
with non Muslim politics as well in the
United States is that
once people stop playing by the rules,
that's a dangerous situation.
So this is all the more reason you
know, some people there's a couple loose thoughts
here, and then we'll get to your comments
and your questions.
Some Some people welcome this. There are some
people in the Muslim world that say that
are sort of accelerationists. They say, oh, the
United States is finally crumbling. This is good.
We want a multipolar world.
And people like Sami Hamdi has pointed out
that
this isn't necessarily a good thing. Right? It's
not necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely
not necessarily a good thing that it just
introduces
more variables and unknowns into the situation. A
situation like Syria, for example,
was a situation that was multipolar. The United
States could not get its own way. Russia
intervened, and that was not necessarily a beneficial
situation to the Muslims.
Right? So it's doesn't
logically follow it's not logically
necessary
that a weaker,
United States or a more multipolar world is
going to
net benefit the Muslims. It might. It might.
But then again, depending on exactly what happens,
it might not. And so when it comes
to Muslim participation
in US politics, this is one thing that
actually we have the ability to
remind people of that you actually have to
agree to play by the same rules. Money
should be out of politics. We need campaign
finance. We need tax money to not go
to foreign wars and not go to,
meddling in other people's countries and societies
and invest it at home, invest it in
good things. Right? These are things that
I think that Western Muslims have the ability
to contribute to. However, they will not realistically
be able to contribute
to them, if they uncritically hitch their wagon
to either the left or the right.
Unfortunately, that's something that we have. People that
just become
assumed or assimilated through these entire,
movements,
and then you don't really have any
leverage or ability to move or ability to
do anything else. So can we survive this?
Muslims in America, some people say, when do
we stay? When do we leave? I don't
know about you, but I was born in
the United States of America. I'm a citizen.
This is my homeland.
I don't plan on going anywhere. If I
absolutely must, then I will, but
I want this thing to work. I'd I'm
invested in an improved
United States, one that does not meddle in
the United States. 1 excuse me. One that
does not meddle in the affairs of the
Muslim world, one that does not intervene and
destabilize other places of the world. And so
this is something that I believe we have
a duty to stay and try to accomplish.
Can we survive another 4 years of Trump?
Allah knows best. But can we also survive
another 4 years of Biden? Yeah.
Allah knows best.
Let's go to the comments. There's a lot
going on.
Kashy said tuning in from Houston. Lovely city.
Enjoyed Houston my last time there. Sorry if
you said this already, but as Muslims having
a united front, who exactly do you suggest
that we vote for and who and should
we vote at all? I can't say that
on the Yaqeen program. Yaqeen is a 501c3.
However, I will say that the first issue
is uniting our message and articulating what our
issues are in the first place. We are
all over the place, and our messaging is
all over the place. Right? If we want
to be a block,
we don't have the ability right now to
act
in a coordinated fashion as a block.
We need to have the conversations and go
through the work of sitting down and figuring
out what our platform is and what our
priorities are, and then move on from there.
Let's see.
E k. Trump only said he'd stop the
war because Khabib was in front of him.
Yeah. Khabib was intimidating. Now we need to
bring Khabib to the US.
Very good.
Lisa says, Trump also wants to make Palestine
into a resort for tourists, but nothing about
what to do with refugees. I believe that
was his son-in-law.
But yeah. I mean,
again, you people say anything. I mean, but
the
the way the power works is that you
have to make something so costly to somebody
that they do what you want.
I know that sounds Machiavellian,
but that's that's how politics works. Right? If
it becomes costly to Trump
to support
Israel, then he'll turn back just like most
politicians will.
Our process is thinking about how to make
that rea that a reality.
Farah, decent point.
Okay.
Zahir asked a question about civil unrest. Yeah.
I mean, it's very concerning. I mean, we're
navigating them right now. I think my general
thing, and this is something that I've been
going on for the last few weeks, is
that I think Muslims are naive to hitch
ourselves
entirely to the left or entirely to the
right,
That if we allow ourselves to be cornered
or shoehorned
into the polarized debate,
then it's probably not gonna lead to good
results for us. That we need to be
a little bit more principled,
and realize that
like other groups that are minorities that are
attempting to influence things,
Usually, it works better to have some influence
on both sides. If you look at even
how APAC runs. Right? And we've how many
people have said, oh, we need a Muslim
APAC. We need a Muslim APAC.
Okay. Well, the APAC APAC works not just
about throwing money at politics.
They're very strategic as to where they apply
their money. They know that they have the
most automatic support from Republicans, and so they
put most of their money actually into the
Democrats, into primaries and primary Democrats.
If Muslims were serious about doing something like
AIPAC, we have the most natural sympathy from
the left. We have the most natural sympathy
from Democrats.
So if we truly wanted to imitate,
excuse me, if we truly wanted to imitate
APAC, then we would be putting resources into
primarying people on the right.
But if you try to have that conversation,
people will accuse you of being Neo cons.
So we're not there yet. We don't have
the maturity yet for that conversation.
Very good. Let's see what else we got.
A lot of comments.
Boom. I appreciate Gary. Gary Bennett has a
nice comment. Muslims need to introduce the principles
and values of Islam into western democracy as
democracy was set up by Christian values originally.
I don't disagree with you. I think that
Muslims are uniquely placed to introduce back virtue
and principle into politics,
And the decoupling and delinking of politics from
virtue and, and values and principles
has been a a travesty a travesty across
the board, both domestically and abroad.
Yep. Very good.
That's very kind of you.
May I accept
may I accept, and forgive me my shortcomings.
Old miss Nhan from Malaysia.
Glad to have you with us.
Osama brings up a good point. I agree.
Left wing right right wing of the same
vulture.
That's a nice one. I like that Osama.
Left 3 left wing and right wing of
the same vulture. Very good. We don't wanna
be a vulture, do we? No. No. No.
No bueno.
Yes. Biden does have COVID.
Rick Rashid
advocating for me for president. No. Thank you.
Minami Islam Khan. Is it true
is it the project that Ruffalo compared with
Sharia law? Yes. Yes. And we did talk
about that previously,
which is his ignorance, and we talked about
that last
time. Abdullah
bring up UFC trash talk is better than
politics. Honestly, there's not a whole lot of
difference between the 2.
That's true, Laura, as or unless if Trump
changes the whole system as Putin did in
Russia, and he just becomes a virtual king.
But here's here's the counterpoint, Laura, and I
appreciate that point that you brought up.
It distracts I think it distracts away from
the ways in which both parties have been
circumventing,
the substance of
democracy for a very long time, that
if Trump were to formalize
some sort of dramatic move away,
then he would only be a little bit
more honest.
Now I'm not saying that that's good or
welcome. That would be a it would be
its own type of tragedy,
but it would be a little bit more
naked and honest and obvious
than all of the sneaky things that they've
been doing for decades to basically
take decision making power away from ordinary people
and keep it with a small group of
elites.
Look at how the parties operate. The parties
are not Democratic at all. Look at what
they did to Bernie Sanders in 2016.
The delegates are the ones that hold the
power. The electoral college is the one that
chooses the president. You've got the deep state.
You've got the 3 letter agencies. You've got
all these sorts of things that have
circumvented.
Right?
And they've done it while maintaining
a facade
of
republicanism
and democratic governance.
So,
really, it would just be ripping off the
mask from that facade. Now we're again, we're
not saying that that's welcome,
but but there is a the reality of
the thing and the content of the thing
that is very, very alarming
as it is, even before something like that
is going to happen. Look at how the
president of the United States can kill an
American citizen, like Obama ordered an airstrike, drone
attack on American citizens in Yemen under his
his watch. Look at how the presidents have
been spying on Muslims for years years years
with there's no fly lists, all these sorts
of things.
These are,
yeah. It's dark days. Right? So,
we hope for we hope for better days,
and we hope that we're part of the
solution. That's what I always try to to
bring it back to.
Very good.
Malia Moore, while they give us anamroftallah.
Yes. I agree. I am also tired in
the in the fluctuations. May Allah grant us
relief. Twix.
Says I find it problematic everyone who wholesale
throws the Muslim brotherhood and any of its
offshoots under the bus. Most of the critics
are, directly or indirectly supporting the perpetuation of
a
LWO.
And then he continues, the choice is not
simply between the oppressive status quo regimes and
the fear of * revolutions. There's a more
nuanced and healthy discussion to be had. I
always try to bring it back to, Murad.
Again, exploratory thinking as opposed to everything or
nothing. Yes or no. Black or white. Agree
with me or you don't understand politics. I
don't find that very helpful. I think that,
seriously studying issues and the factors involved and
things like that,
is is important.
RC says, I agree that the left right
premise does not work for Muslim Americans. Can
you talk more about the maturity you mentioned,
like for being honest and having commas about
planting seeds in the right? I'll give you
a very concrete example. Thomas Massie is a
principled person
compared to most politicians.
He is somebody that has been targeted by
APAC,
in his primary,
and the Muslim community in the United States,
as far as I'm aware, did nothing,
did not lift a finger to help him
whatsoever.
I think that that
illustrates an immaturity from our side. I think
that we're of we have most Muslims in
the United States have hitched their wagon to
the left, that they're afraid of crossing
the left or
angering them or alienating them, while the left
continues to just give us symbolic victories. They
haven't really given us any tangential or sorry,
tangible victories.
Even the progressive left. The Patriot Act is
still on the books. We're still criminalized as
Muslims. Like, the Iraq still happened. Right? The
the destabilization
still the genocide is still going on. Right?
So the left can
throw a demonstration and a protest and bring
a 1000000 people, and we can vent, and
we can say this. And
after 6 months, people will start to call
for a ceasefire.
Right? And there's rhetoric. Right? And we we
can appreciate that because there's there is value
to rhetoric,
but hard wins hard wins. How many hard
wins do we actually have? How how many
that the left have delivered? I don't think
very many, to be frank. I think we
over exaggerate what the left has done for
us,
the Muslim American community. And so I do
think that we need to play both sides
a little bit,
a little bit more. That we have an
interest, and this is will be taken out
of context. But, you know, may Allah, cause
us to be,
charitable and understand things as they're meant to
be said that we have an interest
in developing
people on both sides that are amenable to
our interests and willing to listen and are
principled actors. I think that's I don't think
that that's very radical or controversial.
I'm not Reagan says I feel like we're
dealing with unknown variables as American Muslims, whether
US crumbles or stays afloat. What's happening now
with Gaza and the severity is unprecedented. I
agree with that.
Flaca.
Flaca?
Like, Spanish flaca.
As a Muslim, if you're move if you're
moving United States for your education, is it
going
to strike you?
I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what
you're asking.
Anything can happen anywhere, anytime.
Flippy Flippy says is the deep deep state
real?
Yes.
Yes. It is. To what extent? I mean,
I'm not like a conspiracy theorist. I don't
think that they're like, you know, super super
in control of everything. But, yeah, there is
something like the deep state. If you look
at
look at the history of intelligence agencies, intelligence
agencies up until World War 2 in the
United States were not were only supposed to
be wartime agencies.
Right? The Cold War changed that where the
formation of the CIA became a permanent agency
with permanent powers to spy on people,
on American citizens. And they actually you know,
they took part in the criminalization and the
busting up of the anti war left. They
tried so hard to and and I mentioned
this because we see it today. They tried
so hard to find if communists were behind
the anti war left in the sixties. And
they kept on finding that actually, no. It
wasn't. These are actually opinions held by American
people. Just like they're gonna try so hard
to find that the pro Palestinian
movement in the United States is funded by
this group or funded by that group or
funded by foreign interests. And at the end
of the day, it's like, no. These are
actually American people that feel this way. Right?
And so that entire history, I sort of
got gone off on a tangent,
but,
that entire
history demonstrates that there is something there is
something like a deep state. No fly list.
You can't even find if you're on it,
you can't even find out why you're on
it or have any sort of ability to
get off of it. Tell me that that
is a democratic process. Right? This is something
that, has been thrust upon us and and
we ask a lot to to help us.
Okay. Let's see what we got.
Why not promote 3rd party? Green party still
needs signatures on the ballot. Well, we're not
promoting anybody, nor are we discouraging anyone from
anything. We can't do that with the YOKIN
Institute.
However,
everybody's dirty. Everybody's got dirt under their nails.
Some people think that these are,
you know,
very clean candidates, but many people they they
shape shift.
Abdullah, 100% right. America is in a spiritual
crisis. Muslims have a lot of healing and
good to offer to our neighbors even if
just by living. As an example, there are
many many good people here. Yes. And personal
relationships will always do more work than media.
I know it's easy to think, you know,
social media, and social media does have a
real effect. Don't get me wrong. We learned
from Wadia. Right? And Chicago, the 6 year
old boy that got stabbed, that what people
watch on TV and what people, you know,
in,
ingest on social media does have an effect
on what they think.
However, I believe that we can counterbalance that
with positive personal,
interactions.
There are many people in the United
States that don't trust the media. In fact,
I'd say the majority of people in the
United States don't trust the media and don't
trust politicians.
That provides an opportunity, something that you can
work with when it comes to developing an
individual personal report. But you can't just hide
behind your doors and shut the curtains and
not say hi to your neighbors that it
takes actually getting out there.
Juju,
answer is yes. I've heard that a strategy
to send a message to Democrats is to
leave the Democratic Party registers an independent.
I mean, I'm not advising anything since I'm
not in the position to do that with
you, Athene. But, yes, that is a strategy
people have talked about, and it seems to
it seems to be,
something that would make sense if that was
your goal.
D says if the Muslim countries are watching
this genocide and not doing anything, do you
think they would stand up to defend
Al Aqsa if it was being attacked? Again,
I've said this before in other programs, we
have to differentiate between the governments and the
people. Yes. The people are 100%. The people
are with Al Aqsa. The people are with
Gaza. However, the garrison states that were set
up to keep them under control are not,
and we have seen that exposed in, a
very dramatic way in the last 9 months.
Yes. Sada, good point. Snowden exposed the surveillance
on Americans. It's been going on for some
time.
Zahir I mean, the answer is yes, Zahir.
Zahir says, how does the media's focus on
US political events and debates divert global attention
from the ongoing humanitarian
crisis in Gaza and the political crisis in
Gaza? I mean, the answer is yes. It
does.
As Muslims, how can we take responsibility to
ensure that Gaza remains in our thoughts and
actions even as the spotlight shifts elsewhere? Yeah.
I mean, it it does take a certain
maturity and discipline to be able to keep
your eyes on the prize and have a
sense of priorities.
Right?
Yeah. I mean, that that's all I'll say,
is that you need to have strategic thinking.
You need to say, okay. What's my 3
months, 6 months, 1 year, 3 year plan
for this thing? That that's what sustained action
looks like, which is not just about showing
up to one place and one sort of,
you know, thing.
Old Miss Nan says, it's scary as Muslims
from a majority Muslim country looking into the
choices of presidents Americans have. Thank you for
saying that. It's scary for us as well.
We appreciate your sympathy.
Filippa Filippi, in the EU, we have something
like that Operation Gladio. Yep. Very well known.
Abu Salman, is the deep state in the
private sectors have the same function with regards
to giving to power and not individuals? Yeah.
It has to do with removing accountability. Right?
So if somebody is elected and there's no
money involved, then that person is accountable just
to their votes. If someone steps out of
line, then you can vote them out. However,
if someone is put into power by moneyed
interest, then that person is now more accountable
to the moneyed interest that put them in
power than the people that voted for them.
Right? And the same thing with somebody who
gets an appointment, a life appointment.
You're right, human. I agree. Sayed Muhammad.
Good question. How do we separate pro Palestine
protests from any other social rights movements when
people make it seem like we're indebted to
them?
A 100%. I think you should read my
blog post on intersectionality
and taking a lead on the advocacy for
Gaza in Palestine. I think that's exactly what
we're talking about. We're not indebted to anybody
because we're still bleeding. Okay?
And there's a lot to say about that,
but I'll suffice it with that. That if
people really wanna support Palestine, then they will
support it because it's the right thing to
do, not in exchange or transactionally
for favors or for support for LGBTQ
or for support for whatever else they're pushing.
That's not actually what
allyship looks like.
Shazia Rafat says it seems Bernie Sanders has
changed sides too. He's gone mute on Palestine
genocide, so unfortunate. Yep. We've seen how he's
really changed his tune. All of the progressive
left, for those who think that are best
friends of the progressive left, AOC,
Jamaal Bowman,
they're they're not only very very weak on
Palestine
and very very weak on protecting pro Palestinian
voices and pro Palestinian activism at home.
But they also have been the driving force
behind trying to keep Biden in the race.
It's actually the moderate Democrats that are
calling him to step aside, which is very,
very, very strange.
Yes. Good point. Old miss none. 100% agree
with you. Okay. Very good. So we finished
that. Let's keep rolling. We've got now test
your end,
And this is a special segment of test
your
end, where
we're going to touch on Ashura just a
bit, because Ashura was yesterday, if you were
fasting.
May Allah accept your fast, and we know
that
Ashura
derives its initial significance
from part of the Sharia that was given
to Musa alaihis salam. That this is something
that the Jews were practicing
even up until the time when the prophet
sallallahu alaihi sallam
brought the Muslims to Medina. This is something
that they fasted on this day
in gratitude
for Allah saving them from Thirao. And this
is a whole usuri discussion. It's a little
bit beyond our pay grade here. However, there
is,
a discussion about
is the,
Sharia of previous faith communities
a proof if you're making a legal argument
or a fiqhih argument, and this is something
that the scholars have disagreed about. If you
go to the poem of Amir Behjat,
Hafidullah,
in
Usul, he says,
which is a lot, but basically what that
means is that there are pieces of evidence
or types of evidence in the Sharia that
are agreed upon. Right? And the 4 are
the kitab, the Quran, the sunnah,
and ijma.
Okay? And then there are other types of
evidence that are disagreed upon. Some of the
madhab said, yes, you can use that in
a fiqh argument. Others say, no, you can't.
One of those is called shara'un menladdah or
shara'un menladdah. That's the the sharia of the
people or the faith communities that preceded us.
Within the Hambly school in particular,
it is actually a valid proof with conditions.
And, sheikh Ahmer, he says later in the
poem,
said that the Sharia of the previous faith
communities is a proof as long as it
doesn't contradict our own Sharia.
With this particular issue, we don't even have
to go into that because the prophet
specifically and explicitly commanded
the Muslims to fast this day. In fact,
he said that we are more deserving
of this day
than the Jews because we follow Musa alaihis
salam more closely than the Jews actually do.
And so and before he passed away,
he
said if I were to fast this again,
meaning if you were to live long enough
to fast Ashura again, then he would pair
it with a second day, that he would
pair it either with the day before
or the day after. And so many of
you maybe are actually also
fasting,
today as well. We ask Allah to accept
your worship.
Now Ashura takes on a secondary meaning
within Muslim history and that is because somebody
don't cut to the to the media yet,
guys. Hold off. We're gonna ask this as
a question to the audience.
Because some very important person, a Sahabi,
was murdered on this day after the death
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Who was it? Who was murdered on the
day of Ashura?
And while we get answers, I'll scan back
the comments a bit.
We did talk about project 2025 a bit
earlier.
We'll we'll we'll pass on that question for
now, though it is interesting. I I kind
of outlined a little bit of a strategy,
not specific to 2025, but in general.
Yes. I'm not Reagan a 100%. You're a
nightmare.
Human, Hussein.
Yes. The companion, the city Nuriati studio as
well.
Minami Islam. All the answers are on now.
Hussain,
the son of Ali,
the son of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
was murdered on the day of Ashura,
and that this was a tremendous tragedy
in Islamic history and a very, very interesting
and rich
event when it comes to talking about issues
of political loyalty, when it comes to talking
about the right to revolt, or when is
it justified to revolt against a ruler, when
it comes to,
talking about
the monarchy
that sort of
started
to unfold during the time of Muawiyah that
kind of resulted in Yazid being appointed his
son,
and then
being,
slaughtered with him and and his family
on that day. And, obviously,
what happened at Karbala, that's the name of
the place where Imam,
where,
Hussein was,
was martyred,
that this has become
a point of controversy
because of the Sunni Shia divide. Now we
can't get into this too much.
However,
there are many, many dynamics
back and forth between the Sunni and Shia
that
are worth mentioning. We're only gonna touch on
a few right now that there's sort of
a mythology. There we go. We've got some
assets here from our social media channels. You
can go check out if you wanna see
more about that in particular. It's a gruesome
story. It's a horrifying story, and it runs
the heart.
However, you know, we see that we can
both agree that what happened to,
what happened to Hussein on the day of
Karbala on the or at Karbala on the
day of Ashura
was a tragedy and was wrong. Was it
a big long conspiracy
by the,
not just the Umayyads, but sort of a
string of conspiracy
that goes back to other companions of the
prophet
this is something that was sort of more
of a historical invention,
of the Shia, that if you go into
sort of when their beliefs developed,
that Shiism did not begin
with the idea
that, let's say, that Ali radhiallahu anhu should
have been the Khalifa after the prophet salallahu
alayhi wasalam. That was something that was a
later justification
for a whole sort of litany or a
whole constellation of beliefs.
However, it was more of a political
debate or a political disagreement,
at first that then took on theological
dimensions.
And there's a lot to say about that,
but for the sake of time, we're gonna
have to move on. Human * is dividing
into schools in Sunni and Shia of,
deviating from Allah's command of not dividing in
the Ummah.
It depends.
It depends on what we mean by that.
There are many different types of Shia, and
we it's more fruitful to talk about the
specificity of the beliefs.
There is something that the scholars classically called
tushayur.
Right? Which is the belief that,
the belief that Ali should have been the
the Khalifa
instead of Uthman, that he should have been
the 3rd. This is something that you even
find within text such as Ibn Abi Dawood's
poem Alhaia
when he says,
what does he say?
He says in in the poem when he's
talking about,
the best
of the, of the companions.
He says that the opinion that earthman deserves
the khilafa after Umar is the is
the most correct opinion, which indicates
that there was a difference of opinion, even
if it's a minority position with the Afaf
Sunnah and it's pretty much nonexistent anymore that
on the books, yeah, you can go back
and you can find that opinion.
Is it deviating? Is it dividing? What is
the nature of the command of Allah Subhanu
wa Ta'ala to not divide?
That has to do on the essentials that
bring one into Islam or bring one out
of Islam.
That when it comes to there is, an
acceptance and toleration of a certain amount of
diversity that is built into Islam.
And so we cannot eliminate,
and erase all types of diversity from within
Islam
by using the text that talk about remaining
a cohesive body in general.
Sara is right. The people of Kufa betrayed
Hussain, r adialahuhan.
There's a long story to it,
But for the sake of time, we do
need to move
on. So the second part of our test
year end is going to be the book
of Siyaf. Right? This is Sahih Muslim.
And the next
chapter so remember the previous chapter was about
the impermissibility
of deception and betrayal.
Betrayal maybe was a better translation.
The present
chapter
seems initially to contradict that. It is the
permissibility
of deception.
Okay.
Talking about what the prophet says that I'm
referred to and the scholars refer to as.
Okay?
Now
how do these two things go together? The
scholars, they
they say this. Right? The last hadith that
we had dealt with was that the person
who,
Ghadir Ghadir, somebody who,
betrays
or breaks a promise or breaks a trust,
they will have a liwa.
They will have a banner on the day
of judgment with their name announcing that they
were a traitor.
Whereas today, we have the hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, alharb
khuda. The
the war or the nature of warfare is
deception.
So how do these two things go together?
The scholars talk extensively about the difference between
the 2. All of them say that choda
or deception does not imply violating a promise
or violating a treaty or violating an agreement.
That is something that you can never do.
That is something that is haram,
even in warfare.
However, when it comes to warfare in general,
that there are certain acts that we would
call deception
or even,
playing with perception,
that is permissible. And I'll give you some
examples of this. We see 1, that the
prophet that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam exhibited
at the battle of Badr. Very very interesting
part of the story of Badr, where the
Muslims arrive at the scene first. We know
the whole story about the wells and setting
up their camps. And the prophet
he goes out away from the army, and
he takes one of the companions with him.
I can't remember which one right now. And
they find a Bedouin.
Okay?
Now the prophet was trying to gather intelligence.
Listen to what he says to the Bedouin.
He asks him
if he has seen the Muslim army and
if he knows their whereabouts now they're far
away enough so that they can't see them
Okay.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam gives
the appearance or their perception
to the Bedouin that he's not one of
the Muslims, or he's not with the army.
Of course, he is. But he knows the
Bedouin
doesn't know who he is. So he's he's
leveraging that asymmetry of information
in order to test, first of all, this
person's reliability,
and then to get information out of him.
So the first thing he asks him is,
you know, we heard something about a Muslim
army. Where's the location of the Muslim army?
Where are they at? And sure enough, the
Bedouin tells him, truthfully, where is the location
of the Muslim army? It's such and such
a distance from here to this direction. It's
over there. You can find them. They're quite
close by.
And then because the prophet
had learned that this person is reliable,
then he asks him the location of the
Quraysh army
And the Bedouin also, because he's a traveler,
he's traveling the desert, he hears things, he
hears bits of news and information,
so he tells the prophet
where the army was. And so the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam gathered military information and intelligence
from this man
by relying on a little bit of deception,
by playing with this perception
in order to extract this information.
That's not breaking an agreement. It's not breaking
a promise. It's not something that is considered
a ghadr or he's not a ghadr for
doing this.
We also see this happen at the Battle
of the Trench,
where one of the companions had accepted Islam
and his tribe did not know it. And
so he asked the prophet
for permission
to go
across the trench to the other side and
to sow discord
between the enemy camp, and the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam permitted him. He gave him permission
to do that. He went by night. He
snuck into the camp. He said, oh, watch
out. This other tribe is going to betray
you. And he went to that tribe, and
he said, watch out. This other tribe is
going to to to betray you. And so
they started to dissent amongst themselves and argue
amongst themselves, and this was something that was
very beneficial
to the Muslim cause. So we see that
this is the fine nuance differentiation
between the 2
that when
that in
instances of war and struggle, you are allowed
to create a perception that is not true
in order to give an impression that is
not true to achieve your goals. However, we
should never ever betray the trust and the
agreements and the contracts
that we hold with other people, whether they're
Muslim or non Muslim.
Okay. Let's see what else we got here.
Halla
JDM.
From Queens. Welcome to the program.
I don't understand Farah Jahangir. Imam, is it
Tori? I'm not sure what you mean by
that.
Okay. And our last part for today to
our book, Atomic Habits, we've reached the meat
of the book, the most important parts. We're
going to start getting into the laws. Remember
that we had 4 laws to this book.
Make it obvious,
make it easy,
make it rewarding and what was the other
one? I can't remember off top of my
head here. What do we have?
Let's check the table of contents.
Make it obvious, make it attractive was number
2. Make it easy and make it satisfying.
So today, we're talking about make it obvious.
What does the author mean by make it
obvious? He gives an example here,
right,
of
the railway system in Japan. I've never been
in Japan, but apparently, they have a very
efficient and effective
railway system. Right? The train system is very,
very good and efficient.
He points to the fact that one of
the things that makes this railway
system so efficient and safe is a practice
that all of the conductors
and the workers do when a train is
coming in or about to come in or
about to leave. That they
basically point at things
and say out loud. So they'll point at
the platform number.
They'll make a signal for the time. They'll
do lots of different things
that almost seem ridiculous to do. Like why
would you even do them?
But they found that simply the act of
pointing at things publicly in front of people,
drawing their attention to it, and saying them
out loud has reduced mistakes by 85%
and cut accidents by 30%.
This is something that you and I do
without knowing it. If you leave the house
and you say to yourself, okay. Do I
have everything,
keys, wallet, phone, bus pass. Right? This is
exactly that same thing. What are we doing
when we engage in this activity?
We are trying to make it obvious. We're
trying to make that habit
obvious, the habit of making sure that you
take your wallet with you and your keys
with you wherever you go. In this case,
trying to make the process of boarding a
train safely or not,
you know, when it comes to
trying to do these things in a safer
way. Naming
naming is something
that is very very important to bringing it
to our attention.
That's the idea behind making it obvious that
you are bringing something to your attention.
So the author has an exercise,
and
this is something that I think all of
us should do. Maybe maybe we can do
it right now or you can do it
in the week and we'll check-in
next time. Okay. Which is to start by
making
a scorecard for yourself. A habit scorecard.
Okay. Now what you're gonna do just like
this in a notebook or a piece of
paper, all you're supposed to do for step
1 is just notice the things that you
do.
Literally, write them down. Don't comment on them.
Don't do anything. Just say, okay. First thing,
woke up, then,
use the washroom, then make wudu, then pray
fejr, then
sit make ethkar, then Quran, then made breakfast,
then,
I don't know. Looked on my phone for
30 minutes, then read the news, then right.
Just go through a day or part of
a day and write down everything that you
do.
Making it obvious to yourself
will show you
already without even commenting on that right column
there. It will already show you
there are some things
when
some things that you like that you're doing,
and some things when you do them, you're
going to be like, oh, man. I wish
I'd, like, bit bite my nails. Right? I
don't bite my nails, but if that was
you or smoked a cigarette or listen to,
gossip or, you know, watched something that wasn't
really beneficial or whatever. If that's part of
your habit list, you're now drawing attention to
it. You can look at it on a
piece of paper and and say, okay. Well,
there's some things on this list that I'm
happy with and I'm proud of, and there's
other things on this list that I you
know, and I'm not that proud of. Right?
So this is
the idea behind making it obvious, taking those
habits that we're already doing, bringing them out
of the darkness and putting them into the
light. So then we can look at them
and decide.
Do we want to continue doing this or
not? Now is a very, very important
point of,
intervention
right now. Sometimes we judge ourselves so harshly
at this point that it actually discourages us
and stops us from becoming better. We don't
want that. We don't want you to go
through this negative talk of being like, oh,
my gosh. I'm such a bad person. I
can't believe I spent 30 minutes doing that.
I can't believe I did that. I'm so
bad. Forget about that right now. Forget about
that. All we want to do is notice.
Just bring it to your attention that this
is what you're doing.
Once you've done that,
then go back later maybe the next day
maybe the day after
and
rate your habits
with a plus or a minus or an
equal. Is this something that I would like
and this is not what you think is
the habit good or not. It's simply the
question is,
is this something you want to continue doing
or something you want to stop or something
in between. If it's something that you want
to continue doing,
put a plus next to it. If it's
something that you do not
want to continue doing, then you put a
minus sign next to it. If it's something
where you're ambivalent about it, then you can
just put an equal sign next to it.
So this is phase 2. Phase 2 is
to go through with this evaluation.
Okay.
And the author makes a good point. He
says that there are no bad habits.
Habits are either just effective or not.
You see the cue, you have the craving,
you do your action, your response, and then
you get that reward. Maybe the reward's bad,
maybe it's something bad for you, but really
that's an effective habit.
What we want to do is get out
of thinking about habits as good and bad
and into thinking about
how do I make
the habits I want more effective
and how do I make the habits that
I don't want less effective.
Okay.
So
phase 2 is to go through positive and
negative
phase 3 is to read them aloud during
the day while you're doing it
All of us saw that. All of us.
And you're right. I will be in Malaysia
next week, so no live stream next week,
but all of us saw that 100%. All
of our,
we're all gonna be filled with negatives. We
all do things that we don't like. Especially,
I think we've established that many of us
have negative talk and and and things like
that. Many of us are very harsh critics
of ourselves. So we'll have minuses, but we
can laugh together. Hey. Why don't we make
this as a challenge?
Next session,
bring one
minus sign and and one plus sign
from your list. Okay? One minus sign and
one plus sign.
So the last the last thing is to
read them aloud or say them aloud while
you're doing it. Institute that point and name
or point and call thing that the Japanese
railway system does in your own life. Right?
I am drinking a cup of water.
I am reading
a book.
Right?
If you're the things that you're saying are,
I'm going to,
eat another piece of chocolate, my third one
today, or I'm going to,
binge eat ice or I'm gonna binge on
Netflix.
Right? Or I'm going to doom scroll social
media. I am doom scrolling social media. You
will actually start to develop an aversion to
those habits that you want to stop,
which is going to make changing them so
so so so so much easier.
So that's the homework assignment for everybody, and
let's see. Next session, we'll have 2 weeks
to sort of try this out, and then
we'll sort of come back together
and regroup and do, you know, exchange and
have a few laughs hopefully, next time we
get together.
Final questions and comments for the night before
we before we tune out. I'm glad that
we did not have any technical difficulties tonight.
Thunderstorms rolling through this area. We haven't lost
power, thankfully.
Any final comments and questions?
Let's see what we have.
D k Larosa
multiple
the slight deception
of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in our
year of 20 24. There's no nuance. It's
just pure deception. Does this apply to non
Muslim wars like we've had Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine?
Not a 100% sure what you're saying there.
But, yeah, I mean, this is,
I I think the main point is differentiating
between perception because power is all about perception,
honestly, more about perception than reality. Look at
how APAC has very, very
even though APAC has had a really rough
year, honestly, APAC has taken a lot of
hits and their,
their capacity has been shrunk.
They have
championed
their
victories to try to create a perception that
they're undefeatable.
Right? Because they know that if people think
that they're undefeatable,
that they will be more powerful than if
people realize that actually they're quite weak.
Wa Alaikum Assalamu aloftallahu Fatima Ali from New
Jersey. Which part of New Jersey Fatima? I'm
a Jersey guy. I'm from New Jersey.
Yep. Doomscrolling.
We'll talk about Asada.
Atika.
If I had espresso in this cup of
Atika, it's a panola. I would never sleep.
This cup is very large. Right? Espresso
is usually in a very, very small cup.
Not much. Doesn't take much.
I mean, we're asking, Ibrahim.
Abdullah says, what are your thoughts on healthy
escapism
as in finding rest or healthy distraction?
Do you have any activities that you recommend?
Yeah. I mean, like most things like most
things, it's on a spectrum. Right? So there
are really destructive habits like drug use, like
really destructive.
Then there's
normal destructive, like doom scrolling and social media.
Then there's less destructive, like,
I don't know,
reorganizing
your closet. I'm I'm not really sure. And
then there's things that are, you know, more
positive and more beneficial than that. So I
think that again, it's like
one thing that he brings up, Abdullah, is
that
many times when we're engaging in escapism,
we're trying to change the way that we
feel.
We feel uncomfortable,
We feel judged. We feel stressed.
We feel sad.
And so
we just
do something because we're trying to change.
Now we might have fallen to a habit
that provides
5% relief. Right? Doomscrolling maybe provides 5% relief,
But there are other things that we could
be doing that maybe have 50% relief and
are much healthier for us. Right? So I
think that that's sort of the terrain that
we're in when we're talking about that.
Out I'm a really big advocate for the
outdoors and outside listening to the birds, you
know, going for a walk. Like these sorts
of things are really, really important. And they're
they're they're healing, honestly.
I think that that type of distraction is,
is welcome.
Your nightmare says, when is the next session?
Do you have a schedule? We're we go
live every Wednesday night, 8 PM New York
time. We're taking a break from next week
because I'll be traveling, but that and that
answers Rick Rashid. So we're skipping a week,
1st week of August. We'll be,
we'll be back at
it.
Sada asked about white Muslim sub communities. Your
thoughts.
Yeah. Some people have put this together, but
I'll be frank that, you know, first of
all, race is a social construct, and I
don't mean that in the color blind way
of, like, you know, like, it hasn't had
effects. Obviously,
the racial
hierarchy that the European colonial powers have introduced
to the world,
has had
lasting damage in a lot of ways.
However, it is a social construct in the
sense that it doesn't
it's not real in the sense that it
doesn't have a tangible reality. Like, whiteness is
a construction. Right? Like, I'm Italian American.
I get along really well with lots of
other Mediterranean people because we have a similar
sort of culture.
But someone who's a German American,
you know, I might actually feel more culturally,
awkward with such a person
than with someone who's not within my same
racial category. Right? Like,
so so I don't think that whiteness has
enough of a real thing
to have subcommunities
make sense.
And I'm not for the balkanization of masjids.
I don't believe that that's the way forward.
I believe that we need to find out
how to navigate our differences in healthier ways
than just
starting up subcommunities.
Testify says have a safe trip. Thank you
very much.
Yeah. I wish I could combine to them
all dives. InshaAllah one day. I hope I
hope so. Thank you, Humana.
Atika, have you ever thought about LASIK eye
surgery? So if you get rid of the
okieli forever.
I have thought about it. It makes me
a little squeamish.
But I also take it as sort of,
like all the flaws
that I have, I try to take it
as a humbling experience. I have to wear
glasses. I, you know, I I can't see
you without them. I'm
not blind as a bat, but I'm nearsighted.
Right? So,
that's just one of the things where Allah
created me that way, and
I'm I'm fine with it. Yeah.
Sought a 3 cups of, 3 cups of
espresso a day. 100%.
Yes.
Zahir says, I'd like to thank you for
an amazing session today. May Allah reward you
for the work you do and to educate
us all. Do you plan to visit London
as I'd love to attend any lectures, Inshallah?
I was in London actually in April. Had
a lovely time. London impressed me much more
than I I'm not having any expectations either
way.
But I
didn't expect to like London as much as
I did. So I don't know when the
next UK trip will be, but stay tuned
Insha'Allah.
Is age then a social construct, mister of
the beast? Yes and no. I mean, if
we are using age as in a sense
of trying to indicate maturity, then I think
that you would agree that there are fully
grown adults that are very immature, and there
are some people who are teenagers that are
extremely mature. So in that sense,
yeah. But it has more of a reality
to it.
Perhaps
more of an objective reality to it than
race and maybe Alana's best. Maybe that's not
right.
As Lina says, win in KL, try the
one and only halal Italian food by Italian
chef at Publica.
Woah.
Alright.
Didn't expect that. I will. Insha Allah. Publica.
I'll remember that.
Mad sauce 1. Alhamdulillah. I'm thankful to have
been able to attend. We're that that you
that you were able to attend too. May
Allah bless you as well in the whole
Ummah. Umta here. Thank you very much. I
hope it was beneficial.
Healing relaxing forest bathing Allahu Akbar hanging out
nature. That's what I'm all about. James Castro,
in order to complete the great reset,
come on, man.
Don't go full conspiracy on me.
Yeah. I embrace the glass of soda. I
embrace in fact, these are quite old. I
need a new pair of glasses. I'm gonna
try to get a new pair of glasses
soon because I've had these for years years
years.
Salihah,
May Allah reward you. Amin Wa Yaquam.
Hibba asks, Imam Tom, do you have du'a
or lectures to get your du'a answered for
risk end job?
We should be careful not to treat Allah
like a genie. Right? We make a stikhara,
we rely on Allah, and we trust that
he gives us the best of what we
need.
So
the most most important thing to
to have Allah accept your du'a, that doesn't
mean giving you what you want, but to
have it accepted is to remove the obstacles
of it being accepted, which are the muharramah
that you do, the haram things that you
do. That's the most important thing that you
could, change.
GCC human, a lot of his best. I
don't have any plans at the moment.
I mean,
Abdullah talking about decaf coffee.
Masha'Allah.
Is that what's, chat gpt gave you?
Kevin.
Okay. Hey, Kalduray. Welcome to the program. Good
to see you again. Catch up, Insha Allah.
God bless you. And Amir Khan, Walaikum Assalamu
ras Allah.
Where do you often conduct the sessions in
US? I'd love to attend. Which sessions, Namira?
These sessions?
This is this is a this is private
audience only. Right, Elias?
Just me and the guys. This is a
no. We don't have a live audience yet.
We're not that we're not going, late night,
but maybe one day we'll go there. I
don't even know. It's a funny question.
But I do get around into the US,
sometimes. So,
like, I'll be going to what is it?
July? In August,
you're going to Dallas.
I'll also be going to let's see when
September rolls around, I believe Oh, boy.
Anyway, we can talk about it. I'll update
you my travel schedule. There's places. Where are
you based, Amira? That's probably the better question.
CT No Realty Studio. Try to visit Malacca.
Oh, I would love to. I would love
to. I don't know if that's gonna be
in the cards, because we have a pretty
packed schedule in KL,
but I would love to.
Ekaldea, glad you think so.
Namira, which lecture?
Which lecture Namira are you talking about?
Not sure which one you're talking about. D.
K. Larosa, Afuan, thank you
for,
tuning in and I'm glad that you found
it informative and interesting.
I try my best. It's late night. I'm
a nor no. I'm a morning person. I'm
not a late night person, so I'm actually
not very articulate at this hour.
Sometimes I lose my train of thoughts,
my train of thought,
and, mush my words. But we do the
best we can, and we ask that Allah
figure this for our shortcomings.
I'm getting in the mirror one more chance
to clarify yourself before signing off. Because I'm
not sure what you're talking about. Which lecture?
Just tell me where you're at in the
mirror. I'll tell you when I'm coming to
your area.
Radio silence.
Well, that's fine. Insha Allah. Hopefully,
some of those who are viewing in the
US can catch me at some of the
events that we're doing, though I'm not really
up and running again until September.
All the kinds of lectures for taw and
Islamic education purposes.
All over the place, Namira. It depends on
where you're at. So, I go to Dallas
often. I go to other places.
InshaAllah, I think for the rest of the
year, my schedule's almost set for the rest
of the year.
I'll make it to LA and I will
be in Chicago Insha'Allah and I will be
in,
I think I'm going to Boston. I'm not
a 100% sure. I just checked back on
that,
And I'll be going to, I mentioned Dallas,
Arizona. I'll be in Arizona.
So stay tuned. I'll try to
mention that as the weeks
unfold. So thank you everybody for your wonderful
attention, participation,
and your ihsan. And may Allah accept our
efforts and heal the ummah and grant victory
to the righteous. Barakawfeekum. Until next time. Assalamu
alaykum waftullah.