Tom Facchine – Do Influencers Owe Their Followers Advocacy
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of the Block Party movement and empowerment for individuals to find a way out of being influenced by algorithm. They stress the need for practice and personal development to tailor messages to reflect one's audience and values, protecting health and sleep. The speakers also emphasize the importance of being patient with mistakes and following the law of the picture, as well as reading the words and picking up the book for better understanding. The conversation ends with a brief discussion of the speaker's experience with working in restaurants and cooking.AI: Transcript ©
Everybody. Welcome back to Yefkines weekly livestream program.
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talking tonight about what to do when it's
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a shot. So hang around for that. We've
got who we have here in the chat,
who's with us tonight.
We've got Niha.
Thank you very much for the shout out.
May Allah accept all the work that all
of us are doing.
Trick or Trading LLC.
From New Jersey. New Jersey native.
Welcome to the program.
Hornet Odyssey,
from Australia.
Alright,
Fatima's already getting to the heart of the
matter. We will be talking about that, Fatima.
Fatima said they don't owe us, but we
owe it to ourselves to carefully choose who
we acknowledge on social media.
That's gonna be a really important theme when
we get into sort of the social media
influencer economy and how it's set up and
how,
and how things are kind of inverted, how
sometimes
we feel like they're the ones with the
power when in reality, we're the ones with
the power. That's a very interesting reflection.
From Malaysia.
Welcome.
Mehmet
from Germany. Hauge Gelden is.
I'm not Reagan.
Hope you're not Reagan.
Welcome everybody to the program.
Drop your thoughts. We're gonna be talking about
one of the things we're gonna be talking
about tonight is the the block party. Other
people calling it the celebrity guillotine.
Right? Basically, this phenomenon, there's been a trend
on social media to,
to block and to ignore the social media
influencers who have decided basically to not use
their platform to raise awareness around them. Because,
it's kicked off a huge conversation
about what is the duty and responsibility
for social media influencers.
Are they just celebrities that don't have anything
to do with politics? Is there such a
thing
as a nonpolitical space or
do they have a duty?
We'll get into that shortly.
I must say from Portland, Marissa from Portland.
Welcome to the program. Was able to visit
Portland once at a very, very nice time
there.
Mom of 5.
Illinois. Very good. Welcome.
Atiya from Pakistan.
Very good. So let's get right into it.
Other people will join as we as we
pick up speed.
What is this phenomenon? Initially, it was called
the celebrity guillotine,
then it's being called block out 2024.
Later it's being called block party.
Basically that there are social media influencers that
have, you know, this is something even that
some people have quit their jobs. Now this
is kind of a a a strange,
phenomenon if you think about it. The traditional
9 to 5, right, where you are an
employee of some place and you sort of
work for your paycheck. Some people have left
that type of life to become social media
influencers, or some people do it on the
side
where they develop
a
a following,
and now they monetize it. So this is
actually how they make a living. Walaikum Salamis,
Amira
from Malaysia. Welcome to the program. Now
the tricky thing is is now that we
have a very, very political situation going on,
we've got a genocide that is, you know,
75 years 8 months old,
going on,
there come some sort of expectation. And a
lot of people are wondering,
okay, well, you've got this platform, you've developed
this following.
What are you gonna do with it? And
do you have a duty to use it
in a certain way?
Now
this is interesting because we've got
some people who they've made their
livelihood
on a type of content creation
And that content creation takes on a whole
new meaning if you're doing it during a
genocide. For example,
we have seen people who are like foodies
or food vloggers or things like that. Their
whole shtick, their whole gimmick,
the whole concept
behind their channel is to go out and
to try different foods, etcetera.
Well, what does that mean if people are
starving and if people in Gaza are,
forced to eat animal feed or if people
in Gaza are forced to eat expired,
aid, right, that has worms in it and
things like that. It's kind of taken on
a very, very dark hue,
and people are very suspicious of it. And
this is something that now
when we're talking about non Muslim sort of
influencers, we expect we we expect this from
them. When we talk about the Muslim influencers,
we have higher standards and we have higher
expectations of them. Now there has been some
pushback, some people saying, well, these are our
own and we need to be sort of
uplifting them and this is sort of fit
now. Why are you all sort of criticizing,
etcetera, etcetera? So it's kicked off an entire
conversation. We're gonna show, a video clip from
someone from Palestine just 1 minute in just
1 minute before we,
get to, just run through whoever else has
joined here. We have Ruba from USA,
another from Malaysia.
Hopefully, I'll be I'll be in Malaysia this
this summer for the Maddox conference.
Amir Shukpi.
And, yes, of course, if there's any questions
that you have along the way, please drop
them in the chat. We'll be highlighting,
comments. We'll be highlighting,
questions especially and trying to get around to
them in a timely way. Missus s, salaam
waftallahu.
I love this comment from Ruba.
Everyone who has a platform has a responsibility
to you to use it to amplify the
oppressed voices, especially
the Muslims.
Excellent.
EK, you're dropping great ideas. MB Waleedem Sadaam
from PA. We'll get to those ideas in
a second, EK. First, I want the studio.
I want let's show this Instagram video from
the channel translating Philistine.
SubhanAllah.
When I first saw that video, I don't
know, the brother, but, extremely eloquent and well
put. And, I completely agree that it it's
a basic issue of respect
that we do have the right to expect
better from other Muslims.
Now what this has highlighted as I sort
of hinted at a second ago
is that it has,
shown that the entire
economy
of quote unquote influencers
is something that is, it's precarious and it's
created some
some, we could say, some,
incentives
for
creators that are not wholesome, that actually make
them choose between doing what's right and doing
what lines their pockets.
So but as we said, I mean, some
people, they push back. They say, hey, wait
a second. You know, this is not how
you should be talking about,
other Muslims. This is a fitnah. We don't
call out our own, etcetera, etcetera. This is
a distraction.
And I would say I would say contrary
to that, that we see that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala in the Quran often talks about
the need to shore up our ranks.
Okay? And that unity is never an inherent
good. Right? That we don't necessarily just throw
everybody together and just say, well, we want
numbers, we want numbers, and we're going to
look the other way. There has to be
accountability
that comes along with unity. And so many,
many situations, if you look at the first
page of Surah Al Ankaboos, for example, it's
a very, very famous verse. Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala says, do you think that you'd be
left alone to say that we believe and
not test it? Now, this is very, very
well known, but later on in the verse,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says that
the wisdom behind allowing these sorts of things
to happen, these trials, these tests, is to
expose the people who mean it when they
say that we're believers and the people who
are lying
or the people, maybe they have a conflict
of interest. And so a lot of these
things,
a lot of these things come down to
conflict of interest, which we'll talk about in
a second. Yeah. I completely agree, Ekadry. It
was, it was heartbreaking,
to watch that particular
that particular video.
Nooraz Ahmed
sorry. From, Brunei.
Welcome.
Aisha from Aisha Ahmed from Malaysia. She says
many Muslim influencers promote luxury brands while also
supporting Palestine creating a conundrum.
1 celebrity addressed criticism by publicly sharing their
donations. So this is really interesting sort of
solutioning,
some ideas for, and we'll get to the
end ideas for
how can Muslim influencers sort of maintain their
principles and maintain their ethics,
despite maybe being in sort of a compromised
position. We don't wanna just
throw people under the bus just to throw
people under bus. We want people to find
a solution. We want people to have a
way out so that they can actually
be comfortable that what they're doing is halal,
and they're not selling out their brothers and
sisters in Palestine.
From Massachusetts.
May Allah bless you.
Yes. I am a teacher at Legacy. The
students are great. May Allah bless you and
accept from us. Queen Jaz, from New Jersey.
New Jersey natives,
unite. I'm also from New Jersey.
MSA, we have let's see. I've been reading
the last speeches of brother Malcolm x. One
thing he reinforces is the oneness of this
Ummah. I think this example calls on us
to call on Muslims to reinforce the plight
of all Muslims. That's a beautiful point. Completely
agree.
Yes. Fatima also brings up a great point.
We can call them out, but I don't
have high expectations of them. And that's, that's
another point in and of itself, and I
I'm, I'm inclined to agree with you.
Very good. Okay. So the thing is when
we talk about what has this shown, okay,
that
it's shown that the influencer economy
is not what it seems to be. And
many of us already knew this. Many of
us already were aware of this, that in
fact, to call someone
an influencer
is really sort of, it's a half truth.
Yes. These people have a certain amount of
influence,
but we hide the way in which they
themselves are influenced.
And they're influenced in at least two ways.
First of all, they're almost become a slave
to the algorithm. Right? That whatever is,
is trending, then they have to sort of
jump on what's trending in order to stay
relevant. And the other aspect of it is
that they are,
maybe slave is a strong word, but they're
somewhat tied to their audience. Right? That they
have created this income stream or this thing
where they are going to be
expected. There are expectations upon that they're going
to be delivering a certain type of content
at a certain type of interval, that this
is what people come to see, whether it's
your food blog, whether it's this or whether
it's that. And they might be afraid. They
might be afraid that if they start
talking about something that is,
darker or something that is about justice or
injustice or oppression,
that people are gonna say, oh, that's not
my vibe. I don't wanna sort of be
reminded about that. I want to just sort
of, you know,
I wanna just come here to feel something
positive and to sort of take my mind
off of it. That's how a lot of
people relate to these influencers in these social
media channels. And so we see how the
person who is supposedly just in this,
position of influence, it's actually bidirectional.
It's actually a two way street that yes,
what they do is influencing the people that
are viewing, but they are actually influenced
in and of themselves
and they are less free to move about
in the way perhaps that they thought. Now,
do they have a responsibility?
That's the question that we wanted to tackle
here. Do they have a responsibility?
Is there something unethical about having an enormous
platform
and not using it?
Let us know what you think.
Let us know what you think in the
in the chat. I'm predisposed to say that,
yes. And I know that Fatima and others
already agreed with me, though Anita has a
good point here. I see she says I
have a slightly different view. We need to
focus on ourselves first and foremost. Yes. Accountability
is important and can be done in a
respectful manner. And I don't disagree with that.
I think that it's a false dilemma. Some
people
want to make us choose between,
one or the other. Unfortunately, unfortunately, some people
use the whole we have to focus on
ourselves
as a deflection tactic.
Not saying you're doing that, but I know
that there are other people who have done
that in order to stop others from holding
them accountable. When if you look at the
way that the Sahaba work, you look at
the way that the companions of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam were, they held each other
accountable. Recall when Umar ibn Khattab heard another
companion
reciting the Quran in a way that he
wasn't familiar with. What did he do?
He threatened him. He grabbed him by the
scrub of his neck. He drove him to
the prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam and basically
said, hey, this guy is reciting the Quran
in a way that we don't recognize.
Now, of course, he was corrected.
The prophet, salallahu alayhi wasalam, told him, let
me listen. And he heard it, and he
said, yes, that's acceptable. And, yes, that the
other way is acceptable as well. But what
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam didn't do is
he didn't chastise Umar
for his attitude and his reaction. He didn't
say, Umar, you should think about yourself. You
should only worry about changing yourself. No, he
did not do that. That he actually
approved of tacitly. Right? Silently, he approved of
Omar's action, that holding each other accountable as
long as it's done with sincerity. And as
Nida said, Right? In, with a certain adab,
there's always an adab to it. Then this
is something that is perfectly fine and we
shouldn't, we shouldn't shy away from. But if
somebody has a platform
that they do have a responsibility
to say something, in fact, many people justify
the whole reason that they have the platform
because they want to make a difference. Is
that not true? Especially as Muslim influencers, they
have, you know, 1,000 or 100 of 1000
or sometimes millions of followers, and they justify
saying that, well, I want to make a
difference. I want to make the world a
better place. But then here comes the moment
where the rubber meets the road, as we
say, or the proof, comes out in the
pudding. What are you going to do? Right?
When it's even against your monetary interests. So
we want to give our brothers and sisters
who are in this sphere a way out.
We want you to have your,
your following be halal and your platform be
halal. And we're not talking here about the
actual content that you're putting out, but we're
talking about with your duty to your brothers
and sisters in Palestine.
And one way to ensure that it is
halal
is by making sure that you use it,
you use your platform
to stand up for what's right.
To stand up for what's right and to
not be bullied or to not worry about,
well, how is this going to affect my
bottom line? Am I going to lose,
followers? Am I going to lose this or
lose that? This influence or that influence, what
will people say? This is the test that
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gave you, that if
you wanted the following, this is what comes
with it, that you're going to have to
bear the reactions of other people and potentially
a monetary loss occasionally for standing up for
what is right. As Umar ibn Khattab used
to say, he said, telling the truth has
left me with no friends. So imagine imagine,
that compared to the idea of sort of
the influencer. Let's roll through the comments real
quick, and then we'll move on to, to
a related a related topic.
Nida goes on to say we are we
as Muslims
are consumers, and someone needs to continue to
be creative so that we can reach the
top and start ruling the world. Yeah. Again,
I don't disagree. We definitely have to contribute.
I think that's even better than creators. I
think that Muslims need to
be contributing, and we need to ask ourselves,
how can I contribute? How can I make
things better? What can I do? As opposed
to just being consumers like Nida is warning
us about and saying, well, this person has
to fix it and that person has to
fix it. Yeah. Or osi. Like, what are
you doing? Like, what can you you we're
all influencers in our household. We're all influencers
in our communities.
So we also, as Nida rightly reminds us,
we also have to use the influence
that we have and we can't be hypocritical
in the sense where we cannot be,
criticizing
the big social media influencers, and we're not
using our influence
in the place that we have
it. MSA says, I wonder too.
Can we get into all oppression? The Gaza
conflict is more attractive than Rohingya or Yemeni
or Sudanese,
starvation. I get it, but I but hate
it. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a
very good point, MSA, and you're a 100%
right about that.
Unfortunately, we do have selective outrage.
However, I do like to think that because
Palestine is the one issue that all of
us can unite around
that
this is something where it will create the
capacity to
continue to use this influence and unite around
other issues. Basically to put it the other
way, if
we can't do it for Palestine and we
can't do it for anybody. So we basically
definitely have to do it for Palestine. And
then after we get ourselves together and organize
ourselves, then we have to be able to
wield this power and wield this influence
for other causes as well.
Queen Jazzy says Allah is my only influencer,
Allahu Akbar.
And Fatima rightly points out, they would be
nobody without their followers. So who has the
real power? That's a great
point.
MSA points out, to add to what Fatima
said, these can be held up by outsiders
who can then say these Muslims aren't for
Al Ghazah. Why are you? That's true. And
these divide and conquer tactics happen to us,
unfortunately,
a lot, and we'll actually talk about that
in a little bit.
Yes. That's a good point. I like the
point that Sadouma Duma makes. I've heard influencers
use the excuse of, well, there will always
be something awful going on in the world
to try to validate their behavior, which should
always be reprehensible. Curious on your thoughts about
that. No. That's a good point, but I
mean the inability
I the the inability to speak about everything
does not
translate to the inability to speak about anything.
Right? So if you look through and, you
know,
going over the Quran is always sort
of amazing because you see it in new
context as you continue to live and history
continues to unfold.
And one of the thing,
one of the things is the excuses that
people make, right? That, Oh, well look at
the excuses. I mean, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
when he talks about sort of the warfare
and the battle campaigns that happened during the
time of the prophet Muhammad SAWSAW,
This is really the example when people would
always bring up their excuses.
Right? It's like, oh, well, we don't really
know what we're doing. We don't know how
to fight. Oh, we gotta go back to
our homes. Oh, well, we can't do this
or we can't do that.
And this was a fit in there. Right?
It was something that tested people to show
where their hearts were really at. Right? So
this is an important,
this is an important thing. I think that
Palestine is unique, right? Yes. There are other
horrible, horrible things going on.
Palestine has some unique dimensions both religiously for
us, for its religious significance,
and also the contours of the the,
of the genocide and the colonialism going on
there as well have some unique dimensions to
them.
So,
hopefully, hopefully,
that
not being able to speak about everything
doesn't excuse people from speaking out about anything.
I I don't think most people would accept
that type of logic.
Yes. Farah Khan, Block Party. Yep. Thank you.
Very, very well done. We you have to
appreciate the the the people behind the scenes
for that excellent,
the excellent title and and assets, etcetera.
Let's see. What else do we have?
Okay. Yes. Very good point by Nora.
Uphold Islamic integrity, ensure that the content of
what you're saying is truthful, and worry not
about losing followers.
And that's it's amazing how many of us
have been able to connect back to this
dhikr. Right? That has been allawah netma wakir.
That Allah is the one that we can
only rely upon. Look at how many people,
how many institutions, how many social media followers,
etcetera, have let us down,
in the last 8 months. That really we
found that the only one that we can
rely upon is Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. As
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says himself. Right? And
Surat
Al
Maida.
The only people that you can really rely
on are the only entities that you can
rely on, Allah
and his messenger, and the people who believe,
the people who have faith. Those are the
people that when push comes to shove and
when times are tough, that that's who you
can rely on.
A so so panel that's why I'm trying
to really leave my job because they hold
investment with weapons contractors. May Allah make it
easy for you. Inshallah, writing a letter to
ask them to divest just to do my
part for now. Good for you. May Allah
bless you and make it easy for you.
That's an amazing example for all of us
that,
we do whatever we can. We're not responsible
for that which we can't do. So again,
we can use the same logic. Okay?
Some people would say, well, I can't ever
make a difference. So why would I even
write the letter at all? You're saying no,
though, what I can do, I don't have
the authority in my job to change the
evil with my hand. So now I'm going
to try to change it with my speech.
I'm going to try to write a letter
and at least petition them or ask them
to do it.
And if they don't, then at least you've
taken care of your wajib. At least you've
taken care of what was expected of you.
That's a beautiful thing. And at the same
time planning for an exit. That's a very,
very important and mature step to take that
if you can't change things and you feel
like you are,
complicit in some sort of way, then making
an exit strategy
being like, yes, well, I don't have the
luxury of being able to just quit my
job right now, but I'm going to start
looking. I'm going to get my resume together.
I'm going to get my recommendations together. I'm
going to start,
preparing the way, taking the means. That's what
shows Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala that you mean
business, that you're not just all talk, that
it's not just lip service and you're making
excuses like other people, that you really are
serious about it.
What else do we have?
Yep. The banks are definitely Farah Khan. That's
definitely true. The banks are also of a
concern.
Thank you for your question pulling it out
of me.
Yeah. Palestine has exposed everybody.
Definitely true.
It's a good point.
I'm not Reagan. I agree with that. Influencers
also depend on these movements being a trend
and not something long lasting. Yes. So everybody
can ride the wave when it's hot. Right?
But who's gonna really stick around?
Celebs go on the back burner. I like
that.
Mohammed Jahid from California.
Well, Sky asked, so should I block all
the Muslim influencers who don't talk about Gaza
right now?
Oh, sorry.
Because a few of them, I feel like,
are just ignoring what's happening in Gaza. Yeah.
I mean, here's that's an open ended question.
Right? What do you what are we going
to do, Or what can we do,
that can turn the screws on them and
that can influence them? If there's a positive,
if there's a possible way to be able
to influence them,
then yes. But people are calling for a
block out and they're saying that this is
a tactic that is going to really show
them, you know, it's almost like a boycott,
right? You're, you're blocking them.
They're registering that they're losing followers. Some of
the the influencers have lost 100 of 1,000
or millions of followers in in hours.
Right? That this is something that's supposed to
get their attention and shift their politics. So
that sounds like what that sounds like something
that people are are working on.
Yep. I agree. Queen Jazzy.
Alright. So related to this related to this
idea about using your platform, we need to
also talk about Islamic institutions. We do.
That there are unfortunately
some Islamic institutions, whether they're institutions of learning
or other types of institutions
that also have been eerily silent
on Palestine.
And this is a big shame. Now, the
reason that we bring this up again, we're
not trying to praise ourselves or act like
we're, you know, holy or we've done a
ton right now except from all of us.
But
whoever has influence and whoever has a platform,
this is the time to lead. Right? Leaders
are supposed to lead. There are no
excuses
in
this type of situation to not take a
leadership role and to not stand into the
spotlight. Because if you don't stand up into
the spotlight,
somebody else is going to stand up into
it for you. And you're probably not going
to be very happy with who that person
is or who that group is. So unfortunately
there are some Islamic institutions that have not
pulled their weight and who have been a
source of a lot of frustration,
especially among the youth
that are bearing the brunt of a lot
of this activity. They're the ones getting arrested.
They're the ones getting pummeled by the police.
They're the ones that are sort of really
sticking their neck out there.
And some of our institutions
have not even issued a statement
or have not even made
a divestment. And these we have our own
Muslim students calling for non Muslim institutions to
divest,
And even maybe some of our own Islamic
institutions or Muslim institutions
have are implicated in their investments.
So
we also have to realize that there's a
similar thing going on here, just like with
the influence
influencer economy,
that if your funding
or your branding or your audience is acting
like
a piece of tape over your mouth,
this is the time to cut the string.
That Palestine has
exposed you and that you need to turn
back to Allah and
do what's right in front of Allah
and
do the right thing
no matter the consequence, no matter the consequences.
That
we don't care, as Allah says, who is
going to blame us. We're not afraid
of the blamers.
That the least we can do, as the
prophet said, if you see evil, change it
with your hand. And if you can't, then
you at least speak about it. And if
you can't, then hate it in your heart.
Many of us, we act as if Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala had instructed us to do
the opposite. We start with our heart, and
then only if we have to do we
say anything, and then we try to avoid
doing anything at all.
Atia Amir asked a question. Although my heart
completely goes out for the people of Palestine,
and I do pray for them in my
salah, but I never, I had never shed
a tear after seeing all those atrocities. That
mean I have weak iman? No, not necessarily,
not necessarily that people emotionally, they react differently
to different things. And, sometimes it can be
numbing. Sometimes, honestly,
the things that you see, they don't evoke
tears, but they evoke a numbness in you.
And that is a different type of thing.
And we'll leave that to the psychologist to
break down exactly how that works. But,
things are not so simple. Now
taking this a step further. So we've talked
about influencers.
We've talked about,
Islamic institutions or Muslim institutions.
We also have to talk about
the celebrities that the Muslim community has allowed
to sort of come in to our own
spaces
that have abandoned us. Now, last week, we
talked about Doctor. Craig Considine, who was something
of a darling of the interfaith, quote unquote,
and maybe some people would say faith washing
scene before,
October 7th and before everything that's been happening
in Gaza, but has since been exposed to
somebody who has very, very anti Muslim and
anti, Palestinian
opinions.
Well, we turn our attention this week to,
a similar
situation with none other than Trevor Noah. Trevor
Noah is a very, very famous individual,
actor, comedian, author. At this point, he has
a podcast.
Trevor Noah is somebody who used to be
in invited to speak at Muslim events and
Muslim conferences,
and from what I heard, was was paid
well for that. Now Trevor Noah, I think
we have some media here showing him with
Seinfeld.
Right? And we know that we have seen
recently that Seinfeld has been,
an unapologetic
and
avid Zionist,
him and his wife. He was
walked out of when he gave his, his
speech at, I believe it was Duke University
the other week, that
somebody of this stature who purports or pretends
to have the politics that he has,
unfortunately,
has been very, very silent on Palestine.
That if you go back to some of
his videos from a few years ago, he
portrays this as something that's a complicated issue,
that it's difficult, that both sides, this sort
of thing.
He was challenged recently, just this month when
he was, he was at a United States
University, I believe Wake Forest, and he was
giving a
talk. And,
somebody challenged him in the crowd. They basically
called him out. Why are you so silent
on Palestine? His new podcast that he's done,
he hasn't talked about Palestine at all. And
it started, I think, in November or in
October, right around when everything was unfolding.
And his response was a, deflection. He said,
oh, celebrities won't solve it.
But we've said the same here. Like, okay,
nobody's asking celebrities to solve it. That's, that's,
a misconstruing
what people are asking you to do. That
people expect
celebrities and people with a platform to bring
awareness
so that other people can solve it.
Nobody's asking us though. No, please, Trevor Noah,
do not solve this issue. You will not
solve this issue correctly.
But, yes, we do expect you to use
your platform in order to raise awareness, especially
somebody again, we don't have high expectations necessarily
for for non Muslims on these issues, but
someone like Trevor Noah who built his career
off of
speaking against apartheid, who was born in apartheid
South Africa, who wrote his biography
and his entire,
I don't wanna say his entire credibility, but
much of his credibility comes from somebody who
was born and raised and lived in an
apartheid society.
And now to see who other South Africans
have identified as much worse
than South Africa ever was, Palestine being
much worse than Palestine ever was. And now
he's sitting in a car laughing with the
Zionists, such as Seinfeld and others, and not
saying very much of anything. His,
autobiography is, is actually titled Born A Crime
Stories from a South African Childhood.
You would think, and you would expect that
someone like this,
would have an immediate
connection with the Palestinian people. And he has
indicated in some forums that he supports the
protests and he supports, but he has been
very, very silent
on all of the platforms that matter.
And so we have to ask this truth
telling sort of persona,
is it a gimmick?
Right? Is this sort of thing now that
you've made it now that you've reached a
certain sort of,
level or a certain sort of stratosphere,
are there strings attached to you that have
made you silent?
We would expect people
to use their platform for good. And that's
the, the, the lesson here that,
number 1, that if you have a platform
and if you're going to make your career
based off of your identity as a truth
teller,
then be consistent.
You can
make your career off of anything. You can
go be an engineer, be a comedian, or
be something else. But if you're going to
really put yourself forward as this truth teller
who bases the story based on your experience
on apartheid, then you better be ready to
talk about apartheid in Palestine. I'm sorry. And
the second thing, and this relates to our
ongoing discussion of biryani diplomacy when it comes
to the Muslim community, Muslim community in the
West, please stop inviting people like this.
Please, please, for the love of Allah,
stop inviting people like this to our conferences.
We know that you want to attract the
youth. We know that you want to attract
attendees. We know that you want to draw
a crowd. But the beyond diplomacy
of trying to invite people in who don't
care about us,
who are ready to abandon us
at the drop of a hat. As soon
as it provides
a little as soon as it proves a
little bit uncomfortable to support the Muslims, they're
gone.
However many tens of 1,000 of dollars he
was paid to speak at one of the
major Muslim conferences,
what has that gotten us?
Where could that money have gone instead? What
institution
could that have
built? Or what imam salary could that have
paid? Or what sort of initiative or scholarship,
or endowment could that have done?
We, as Muslims, need to do better. We
have to do better. That we have to
express our priorities
better and we have to be smarter and
we have to realize that these people do
not like us. These people do not love
us. That we have to do what is
right. And even if it's not
popular, even if we're not going to get
the big crowds, we're going to do what
is right, and we're going to hang our
hat on that and trust in Allah.
Let's roll through some comments and then we'll
get move on to our next section. I
know we spent quite a lot of time
on, Mufti Morena Abu Hamza. Welcome. Welcome
to the program. I was so sorry to
have missed you in my travels. Inshallah, I
hope we are able to connect soon.
We have Sky says another question. So some
of the companies that we're with is
that we're with is not real. I mean,
Israel are now switching to Palestine size. So
should I still boycott them or should I
now start buying again? I would say talk
to the people who are running the boycott
campaigns, ask them. They are sort of spearheading
it and they know more about it. Obviously
it stands to reason that you would want
to reward companies for good behavior.
Right? That you wouldn't want to now some
of the companies, they try to play both
sides and they try to give sort of
a meaningless symbolic concession,
hoping that that will get you back on
to purchasing their goods. So we're not talking
about that. We're talking about a company that
actually goes a full 180
and is able to sort of
redeem themselves and prove that they're going to
do the right thing, then we would hope
that we could reward them with, loyalty once
they sort of,
demonstrate their morality.
Nida asked, what about Muslims who just talk
about Palestine to be relevant to their Muslim
following and to gain fame? Yes. Yes. No.
That's that's a problem, Nida. But otherwise, we
can't even tell they are Muslims. I guess
we can't truly know the intentions. Yes. That's
true.
I would say that the more peep in
general, the more people talking about Palestine, the
better. However
however,
there needs to be important,
safeguards to stop grifters from coming in and
just,
capitalizing on this type of thing. Whether they're
non Muslims or whether there are other people
that are basically just like going from from
cause to cause
that we should always be centering Palestinian voices
and Muslim voices, people who are bearing the
brunt
of the genocidal violence, and we are trying
to act in concert
with,
with them in a in a sense. We're
trying to end the apartheid. We're trying to
end the genocide. And so we listen. Right?
Just like when Bisan from from Gaza,
got on the screen and asked us to
to to boycott, that we boycotted. Right? That's
sort of how this thing works, that we
shouldn't necessarily put it be putting ourselves up
as, oh, you're going to listen to me
as opposed to other people, that sort of
thing. We need to be careful to pay
attention to clout
chasers and people like
that. Yep. Good point. I'm not Reagan. That's
true.
From the Maldives, specify welcome from the Maldives.
This is s is going to block river
Noah. Good for you.
And scope asks, is Palestine unique because of
Aqsa? Yes. What about the sanctity of the
believer? Yes. That's also true. Being more sanctified
than Mecca. So influences,
should they talk, should talk about all atrocities.
Oh, I'm not saying that people should not
talk about all atrocities. They definitely should, But
the believers are also in Palestine. Right? So
you have both the land that is sacred
and Al Aqsa that is sacred and the
believers that are sacred. You also have and
Iftin Institute, we have,
we have a nice little write up on
the sanctity of Palestine. This is the land
of Taifa and Surah that the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam talked about. This is the
land of of prophets. There's many things that
specifically sort of are mumayuzat. There are specific
to Palestine in and of itself. That's not
an excuse to not talk about other things
going on, but it does make sense that
Palestine is able to galvanize
Muslim support
and being a rallying point for Muslims,
in ways that other places aren't.
Fannie Garvey says brother Malcolm x once said
that if you scratch the surface of a
liberal you will find a fascist. Yep. Scratch
a liberal and a fascist bleeds. We must
scratch the surface of their gimmicks and be
wise about what we discover.
Truth tellers included. I completely agree. That's well
said.
Drizzy month,
Montana, truth promoters are not truth tellers. Yeah.
That's that's often the often the truth.
Yep. Very good. MB, a nice,
nice point out there.
Joseph Hans asked, I need soccer shoes, but
Adidas doesn't support Palestine. So what should I
do? You need to consult the BDS campaign
in these sorts of things and, you know,
who they're recommending because it's not that
it's they're trying to
avoid
supporting
companies who are supporting Israel. Like, not necessarily
just,
not necessarily. Sometimes there are situations where there
isn't a particular company that actively promotes Palestine,
but sometimes there is. This is something I
don't know a ton about that you should
look at the people who follow this stuff
more carefully.
Sonic k asked, should we be calling out
some of the Muslim influencers who have not
been doing enough in the last couple of
weeks, seen a lot of attacking going on,
and I want to know is the right
way to do it.
Well, you know, yes and no. Right? So,
you know, we don't attack just to attack.
We have to have strategy. And this is
one thing, unfortunately, that Muslim community needs to
work on a bit where we need to
make sure that our actions
are achieving discernible goals, which is why the
block party is a really, really smart campaign
because it's a, it's a very simple ask.
You're asked to block a celebrity, a certain
celebrity there's images going around as to who
are like the big targets, just like BDS.
And then if enough people block them,
they lose out monetarily and it sends a
very, very clear message.
So, you know, there might be some people
where you leave a comment. Right?
Unfortunately, there have been Muslim influencers that have
deleted comments that have been asking them to
step up more for for Palestine.
So it's a case by case basis. There
are some people who are amenable, who are
just ignorant and don't know. Maybe you're able
to reach out to that person and sort
of let them know. If they receive a
certain number of direct messages or comments that
are asking them to do more, maybe they'll
change. And there's others that won't, and so
that's sort of a a separate sin situation.
Radwan asks, what can we do to push
Muslim influencers who don't want to speak up
because of fear of losing followers or partnerships?
Well, that's exactly what we're here to talk
about is that, you know, we care about
what Allah thinks first and foremost, and that
we're not you know, if you're
if you're
holding back from doing the right thing because
you're afraid of your followers,
you're you're fearing your followers more than you
fear Allah, to be frank.
And you need to fear Allah more than
you feel your followers. Allah gives us examples
in the Quran where he says, like, it's
as if they fear them more than they
fear Allah. This is not appropriate. So this
has become sort of like a a test
of faith and people need to
worry about what is going to happen in
the afterlife, not just in this life.
We talk a good game and we say
that we believe that Allah is the provider,
Allah is Arrazaq, etcetera, that all of your
risk, all your money, and all your livelihood
is already written. We talk about these things.
We learn them as little
children. But then when our following is threatened,
what do we do? How do we act?
I like to say if, an alien race
came down
to earth and watched us, you know, would
they say these people believe in Allah? Would
they say that these people actually trust in
Allah's risk? They actually trust that Allah will
provide for them or do their actions actually
belie,
what they say? Do their actions
contradict what they're saying and what they're professing?
Okay. Excellent. We need to transition. This is
a very, very nice discussion. I really appreciate
that.
We should we're gonna flip, or pivot a
little bit to talking about and we've got
our book that we're covering here. We're going
through the actions of the night and day.
What are the prophets of allahu alayhi wasalam
do during the day so that we can
pattern our habits,
off of these patterns.
We've talked, we've gotten almost to the end
of this book actually. We're talking now tonight
about the things to do around and after
the time of Eishat. So Eishat is the
last prayer of the day after the disc
of the sun has sort of passed the
horizon and all of the light that is
visible there from has sort of gone away,
then what do we do?
The first thing is that the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam encouraged us to minimize
activity
after Isha. That Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala talks
in the Quran
about the night being made for rest. Right?
Now this is excusing all the people that
have night shifts or or on call at
night, etcetera. But if you're a person who
works during daylight hours, that this is the
way that Allah created the world, that he
created the the daytime, the way it is,
where your body does not produce melatonin so
that you feel alive, you feel awake, that
you're able to do your the things that
you need to do. And he has created
the night for rest, right?
Once, if you don't have too much artificial
light in your life, then your body produces
melatonin. You feel sleepy and you're supposed to
go to sleep. So there's
a discouragement
when it comes to doing too much after
Isha. That's not the time. And unfortunately a
lot of Muslim lands, if you go travel
through the Muslim world, we see that it's
almost backwards. Like the life begins at night,
like, like the, the stores open up again
and we go out and now places are
open till the middle of the night. Many
people, they stay up until Federer or they
stay up until 1 or 2 or 3
in the morning, get a couple hours of
sleep, and then they wake up for the
1st morning prayer. And then they go back
to bed and they sleep,
Unfortunately, most of the morning away, this is
not how the prophet said I'm dealt with
life. And that's not how he structured his
day.
He did. And he encouraged others to do
minimizing your activities after the last prayer. When
the day winds down, you wind down and
you go to bed
as early as possible so that you're able
to wake up for night prayer, so that
you're able to wake up for the morning
prayer, so that you're able to be fully,
alert and awake
when the daylight hours come and you have
things to do.
There's so when it comes to sleep, there's
several sort of sunnah that we have to
be aware of. There are things that,
the prophet
did and encouraged us to do. Okay? So
we have, for example, the prophet
told us to lock our doors. Right? Now
there's places in the United States, especially the
rural areas where people pride themselves
on not locking their doors at night. And
this is sort of like,
an indication of how much
sort of safety and security there is. And
that's kind of a beautiful thing. However, the
prophet told us to lock our doors because,
we don't like to tempt fate, quote unquote.
We don't like to tempt
a bad thing from possibly happening. Lock your
doors. It's better for you. Extinguish the lights,
turn out the lights. This is better for
your sleep and it's also safer. Right? You
don't know at their time they had candles.
You know, you didn't want a candle falling
over and something catching fire. At our time
there can be electrical fires. There can be
things like that.
Unplug your lights, unplug your appliances, or, you
know, as as much as you can.
Make wudu.
Going to sleep in a in a state
of ritual purity
is something that Allah loves and you'll be
rewarded for.
Shake out your blankets. Right? Nobody is safe
from having a creepy crawly come into your
bed when you're not paying attention when you're
out during the day, whether it's a scorpion,
if you live in the desert or something
like a a cockroach or something like an
ant or something like that, All of these
things can happen. So the prophet would shake
out his blankets.
This is, this is something that's a good
thing to do. And finally, when you lay
down to bed asleep on your right
side, on your right side,
that's what the prophet recommended.
Now as you're falling to sleep or right
before you fall asleep, there's certain things that
are recommended that you say, such as recite
ayatul Kursi. Alright? This is very, very famous
and everybody pretty much knows it.
The last two verses of Surat Al Baqarah.
This is also something that is praiseworthy and
recommended to recite before you fall asleep.
Doing your rupiah on yourself. Right? So this
is, you know, you're reciting the
3 times and wiping over yourself. This is
protection for yourself,
from any sort of harmful, unseen forces. The
prophet would do this to himself.
And to say,
Basically, in your name, Allah, I die and
I live this sort of it's almost like
intention setting.
Just as we started the very, very, very
first,
part of this book with you wake up
in the day,
setting your intention,
right? That you thank Allah for resurrecting you
in the morning. You also
make your intention before you fall asleep. You
don't know if you're going to wake up.
Maybe you don't wake up, but you're dedicating
your sleep and potentially you're dying even. You
are dedicating it to, your creator.
Let's roll through some comments, then we'll get
to our last section for today.
Yes. Sana points out that maybe it's a
good thing in the west that Asia is
so late. Not much time to do anything
else. Yeah. Especially. That's
true. Hey, Cladavy says when you're mid 40,
you need your rest. Yes. That's true. But
while he
have to get off the phone and keep
it away, yes, so I can drift off.
That's a great point. And you know what?
When we started this book, we talked about
trying to make the
phone usage
minimal to non existent when we first wake
up. Unfortunately,
many of us, the first thing we do
when we wake up is check the phone.
And this ruins a whole bunch of things.
Right? It ruins our opportunity for liquor. It
distracts our attention.
Let's all
try to do
let's all try to do what you're saying
to do. Let's all try to make sure
that
when our nighttime process happens, we're doing these
things, that the phone is far away, that
we're not sort of doing this thing. That
way we're not disturbing our sleep. We're not
ruining our peace, and we're focusing on these,
types of things that
recommended. Hey, Kavri mentioned Surat al Mulk. Yes.
Surat al Mulk is also there's other things.
This is not an exhaustive list of the
sunnun of going to bed. We just mentioned
some of the the highlights, but, yeah, Suraj
al Mu'kul is also recommended to do.
Very good. Let's move on to our final,
our final segment for tonight, our personal development
series. We've been covering this book by John
c Maxwell,
the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Of course,
that's a bold statement, but he is recognized
as an industry leader in leadership and leadership
workshops.
And we've decided that
we've decided that this is going to be,
we're gonna move through a little bit quicker
than we were before. So we're grouping the
laws 5 at a time. We're doing laws
10 through 14
today. So law number 10 is called the
law of
connection.
Okay. This is an extremely important one that
we find all over the sunnah of the
prophet
that what he means by this is that
you have to, and there's a nice phrase,
get ready for it, touch a heart before
asking for a hand.
Touch a heart before you ask for a
hand.
That means that you have to relate and
connect to people on a human level before
you ask for their assistance. This is very,
very important. Now he goes through 8 different
steps
for
why or how you can better connect to
other people. And they're, I think they're worth
mentioning.
One, he says connect with yourself. Okay. And
what he means by that is that you're
sort of,
you're not being a hypocrite, that you are
connected to your sense of purpose. Like the
prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he knew exactly what
mission he was on. And so that gave
him the ability to connect. He wasn't running
a grift. He wasn't running a gimmick. He
wasn't sort of trying to, to fool people.
Right? If you're trying to fool people, if
you're not, you're not connected with yourself when
you try to connect with other people,
you're going to come across as very disingenuous.
You're gonna come across as fake, as phony.
People are going to see through you and
you're not going to be able to lead
them. Right? So make sure that you're connected
with yourself and your mission.
Communicate with openness and sincerity.
Know your audience. The prophet
said, speak to people at their levels or
where they're at. And then he asked the
rhetorical question after that. He said, do you
want people to deny Allah and his messenger?
Basically that you have to know your audience.
If there's, if you're speaking to an educated
group of PhDs and academics, that's totally different
than if you're on the street corner,
talking to people who have just a basic
education and are sort of blue collar workers.
That's not condescending. It's not condescending to treat
people differently when it comes to not in
their value or their worth, but in how
you package a message. That when you talk
to somebody, you have to tailor it to
what they're going to understand. This is part
of connecting and it's part
of leading. Live your message is another tip.
So you have to actually practice what you
preach. Go to where people are. If people
are at a certain place, unfortunately, the kids
today are at TikTok. So you've got the
need for some people, some shriuk and ulema
to be on TikTok. Now that doesn't necessarily
mean that they need their own accounts. Maybe
they have a young guy managing the account
for them.
But part of leadership is going to where
people are.
Focus on other people when you're tailoring your
message, not yourself. Sometimes we just get in
the,
in the mode of just expressing ourselves. And
sometimes we don't even look at the people
we're talking to. We're just trying to work
out our thoughts that you really wanna pay
attention to human cues. You wanted to pay
attention to making a human connection, how the
person is reacting to what you're saying. I
actually, you know, this is actually this happened,
recently when I was in San Diego, when
we were giving some sort of talks to
some of the students there at the encampment,
that some of the talks that were given,
some of the people noticed that there were,
you know, some negative reactions to some of
the things that were said, and they were
able to sort of reflect and adjust based
off of that.
Believe in other people. We're going to have
another law that talks about that. That is
a key part that
when you, you can't connect with people if
you don't believe in them. You can't think
that people are stupid or dopes. Right? You
basically have to believe that
they have a great potential and you're just
trying to help them tap into that potential.
That's an essential part of connecting and leading
and finally offer them direction and hope as
the prophet did.
Right? When he, for example, we brought up
the example of the battle of the trench
when he struck the rock or the boulder
that was in their way, and he connected
them with their mission.
He connected them with their mission. He said
basically that, oh, like, we've got Shem has
been given to us, and Persia has been
given to us, and Yemen has been given
to us, that he was able to offer
them direction and also offer them hope.
Law number 11
is what's called the law of the inner
circle. That means that your potential is determined
by those closest to you. And we take
this with a grain of salt because we
know that Ibrahim alayhi salam was an ummah
of 1 person.
Your potential is really determined by Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and your sincerity.
However, we do see that the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam
had a very, very important inner circle that
was a support for him.
Whether in the early days it was Ahlulbayt.
Right? Khadija. Remember Khadija's support for him, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, when he first got his
first revelations
and the belief of Ali and the belief
of Fatima and the belief of other people
in his household.
We also see his best friend, Abu Bakr,
his belief and the faith of Abu Bakr
on the day of El Israt when he
came with a story that a lot of
people weren't believing, but Abu Bakr as his
inner circle,
right, was really able to
do something very, very important for the movement.
That your inner circle is extremely important. And
so you have to be very, very careful
about who is in your inner circle.
What are they adding? What are they contributing?
What's the value that they bring and what's
your relationship to them?
The next law we have, law number 12,
is the law of empowerment.
This is a really key one that a
lot of nonprofits struggle with. A lot of
Muslim nonprofits, and I'm going to say masjids,
I'm going to call you out masjids, you
struggle with that. We do not like to
empower others.
We do not like to empower others. We
are gatekeepers.
Right? When the youth come to us with
an idea, we are very hesitant to let
them run with it and to empower them
and to say, here's the here's the credit
card and here's the keys. Go.
Very, very seldom does that happen. Usually it's
micromanage.
Usually it's like, well, that's not what we
were thinking, etcetera, etcetera.
And that unfortunately
is a, it demonstrates
insecurity from the leadership. You are not a
secure leader
if you are not ready to empower others.
And the prophet
was amazing at empowering others. He would send
people out. He would send,
Mu'alil bin Jabal to Yemen. He would send
other people up to Shem, you know,
thousands of miles away
in order to do work. And he trusted
them. He trusted them. Did that mean that
they didn't make mistakes? No, absolutely not. They
made mistakes. In fact, there was a time
when the prophet
sent Khalid,
ibn al Walid
to the eastern,
part of Arabia to collect zakah. Now, one
thing that people don't appreciate these days is
that back then the dialects and sort of
the, the, the slang and things were very,
very different from different parts of Arabia. So
Khadid
misunderstood
what they were saying and basically thought that
they were hostile. And so he actually killed
a bunch of them. He actually
waged war on them by mistake.
And he came back to the prophet salallahu
alayhi wasalam and it was a whole misunderstanding.
And the prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam, he made
it clear that this is a huge mistake.
He tried to make things right with the
tribe.
He, you know, said that he had nothing
to do with it. He didn't agree with
his action.
But did was that the end of Khaled?
Was that the end of the prophet
trust in Khaled ibn Nawili?
No, it wasn't. This was a mistake. And
when you empower other people to do work,
mistakes happen.
And so you're patient
with those mistakes. And this is one thing
that I told the older generation. We're talking
about these sort of, youth encampments at all
these universities.
If you show up to these encampments, you
will see things you don't like.
You will see things that are against Islam.
That's guaranteed.
But how patient are you willing to be
with the youth of the Ummah of Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? How much are you
loyal to them that you are not going
to abandon them? That you will try to
support them and guide them as best as
you're able to? That is a separate question.
Law number 13, we've got the law of
the picture.
And that basically means setting an example that
people do what they see. They do only
very little of what they hear. You can
and if you have children or if you
teach even more so, you understand this. You
can tell them and tell them and tell
them and tell them whatever you want.
They're going to follow your actions at the
end of the day,
which is why the most important thing for
all you parents out there, if you want
your children to be strong Muslims, it's not
to just talk to them and lecture them
and lecture them about Islam. It's to make
decisions that demonstrate that you prioritize Islam.
You can tell your children till you are
blue in the face that Islam is the
most important thing to you. But if you're
always taking your children out of Quran class
to put them in sports or karate, and
you never do the opposite, take them out
of sports or karate for Quran class, What
are you teaching them?
If you are teaching them, you're not taking
them out of school to bring them to
Jummah, to bring them to the Friday prayer,
or to make them get to the masjid
once in a while. What are you teaching
them? They will follow your example
much, much, much more than they follow your
words. So the law of the picture means
that people do what they see, that you
have to lead by example, and that people
are going to watch and follow your example.
And the final one,
the final law for today, and we'll then
we'll get to some comments and questions. So
if you have any comments or questions, make
sure that you drop them in the chat
before we end. The law of buy in.
The law of buy in. Buy in means
that people buy into the leader first,
then they buy into the vision. And this
is borne out by Allah
in the Quran when he
one of the things that he says, I
believe it's in Surat Al An'am,
about how
one of the proofs
upon
the Quraysh was that they knew the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
That they knew him and they trusted him.
That the 40 years of the life of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam before he became
a prophet, before his official prophethood began,
it was establishing
this
trust. He was al Amin. That was literally
his nickname, the trustworthy one.
That there were so many examples of him
being a trustworthy
person
that if the message itself had been given
to anybody else,
it would have been not only rejected,
but there would have been
reasons to reject it
because every message
is automatically
filtered through its messenger. Period. That's facts.
Every message is filtered through the messenger that
delivers it. You can't avoid it. You can
you can want to live in an idealist
world. You can want to say, well, people
should just take it, you know, the substance.
People should just, you know, accept or deny
based off of the arguments. No, no, no,
no, no. That's not how people work. That's
not how Allah made us.
They're going to look at you.
You're going to tell them about this great
religion, this great faith, Islam, and this and
that to the other. But what are you
doing? If it doesn't benefit you, why would
they want to follow you? So when it
comes to leadership in general, people need to
buy in and they buy into the leader
before they buy into the leader's vision. So
make sure that you are straight before you
try to communicate,
any particular
message.
Very good. Excellent. Let's roll through some comments,
get to some questions,
and then we'll wrap it up for this
evening.
My other half says it has been recommended.
We're talking about, you know, phone usage towards
night.
Gives us the tip, turn off notifications.
I tried it and Allahu Akbar.
It's like weird. It removes the kind of
fear of missing out one gets when hearing
the ding on that occasion a 100%. You
know what, Maya? I have all notifications turned
off on my phone all day long,
except for calls. Except for calls.
And at night I actually put it on
airplane mode, like just complete airplane mode so
that nobody can reach me whatsoever.
And it is, as you said, Allahu Akbar.
Taqbir for that. Like, this is something that
it was a game changer for me, that
it really, really,
changes the way that you relate to your
phone.
Let's see what else we have here.
Gotta pick up the book. Yeah. I do
recommend it. It's a it's a good book.
It has to be Islam
Islamized a little bit. There are some things
in there. Like any book, you know, that's
not written, like, from our sort of worldview,
there are some things that are,
not quite a 100% overlapping, but definitely the
good outweighs the evil and many of the
things in the book can be easily adapted
when you keep in mind the lessons from
the Quran and the,
examples from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Touch their heart, a Qadr before asking for
their hand that was not a statement of
the prophet
that was a statement of what was in
the book. Sona K said my masjid got
rid of one of our popular imams just
because he was so popular other mosques were
calling him. I was flabbergasted.
That's exactly what I'm talking about, Sana, that
we have unfortunately many insecure leaders
where they are not comfortable or they are
uneasy
at anybody becoming bigger than them.
And then you said they didn't like that
he was representing anyone other than them.
That's very small minded, and that's very narrow
minded. And, unfortunately, the entire community suffers when
leadership is not secure and leadership is not
empowering.
Points out, I feel like that's how marriage
works too.
Laugh out loud. I will I will follow
a man that I respect a 100%. Yeah.
That's true. I mean, like, leadership, as we
said in the very, very beginning of this
book,
that leadership is not like, we don't have
to be like at the head of fortune
500 companies. Right? We're talking about
everybody's a leader. And the prophet said this,
That every single one of you is a
shepherd is what he,
is is the the language that he used
that
and every single one of you is responsible
for his or her flock. And then the
examples he gives, they include women as well.
Right? So everybody
is a leader
or they have some sort of leadership capacity,
especially within,
within their,
their family.
And so, yes, when it comes to husband
wife relationship, definitely. There's definitely an aspect of
leadership there and it is subject to all
these rules, right? That you, you need to
be a believable person before, you know, you,
you wanna talk about vision or, or respect.
And unfortunately we've reached a time
where many men, they just want to be
respected
by virtue of their being a man
without realizing that respect is something that is
earned and respect is a function of trust
and trust must be earned as well. And
that this is something that,
is
it's a very,
very sort of long term thing that you
develop just as the
prophet developed it over the course of 40
plus years.
May Allah accept it from you in your
prayers.
Samira says it's surprising to see that these
these days discouraging women's education. I understand you
have reservations about women in the workplace. Would
you agree with discouraging women's education
too?
It depends on what we mean by education.
I mean, the short answer is no. I
would not discourage women's education, but I would
say that,
we need to think collectively
and not just individualistically.
That's that's one of my concerns when these
types of questions are always asked is that
the framing is usually very individualistic.
This is not a criticism of you, Samira.
It's just that we think,
we think of
basically
my choice. Am I going to be able
to get an education or not? And we
need to think, as an Ummah, right? Are
we covering our bases? What are our collective
responsibilities?
Certainly, you know, women need to be educated,
but what type of education? Like what is
being missed here?
Are we like if, if, for example, if
somebody else were to ask that question, Samira,
and they meant by women's education all
becoming, you know, STEM majors and all, you
know, I would say no. I, I, I
don't necessarily incur I don't think that that's
very smart communal planning
that all of us are going to make
all of our women become stem majors and
have jobs in tech and stuff like that.
I think that we need to have some
segmentation and some specialization and some coordination and
collective thinking on those sorts of fronts.
So there is an aspect of it that's
individual
individual choice, of course, but there's also things
that are collective that need to be taken
into account. But writ large no. Of course.
I mean, education
is something that is
important for everybody.
Fanny Garvey, we say, how do we determine
the time for the for the 1 third
night prayer, please? Can we pray it just
before Fajr? Yes. You can pray it just
before Fajr. Mhmm. You can also pray it
much earlier than that. Mhmm. Essentially, you're
look at the time of Maghrib and look
at the time of Fajr, and then how
many hours is that and split it in
thirds. That's the easiest way. And there's other
ways, but that's an easy way.
Insha Allah. Insha Allah. Insha Allah. Yeah. I
I I hope to.
Abdullah asked me what is my favorite dessert.
Oh, tiramisu
or baklava?
Hard choice. Depends on the day.
Yeah. Depends on the day. Tiramisu is definitely
up there.
Baklava is also definitely up there as well.
Rains.
Godfrey Palestine, a 100%.
Says, as a Malaysian, we are living in
a comfort zone.
Nevertheless, we still need to create awareness
not only to the non Muslim in our
country, but also amongst Muslims. That's that's true.
Malaysia, I I expect big things from Malaysia.
I think Malaysia is a wonderful place, and
it's a wonderful center of potential.
And everybody in the Ummah needs to be
thinking about how are we going to develop
that potential
and how are we going to be furthering
it. What can we do for the Ummah?
What can Malaysia offer to the Ummah? What
can the Muslims of Malaysia offer the Ummah?
What can the Muslims of the United States
of America offer to the Ummah? I think
that's the question of the hour.
Testify, I asked you, mom, Tom, do you
face difficulties for being an American, visibly Muslim
in America?
Yeah. I have. I used to be part
of the 4 s club.
Somehow no longer part of the 4 s
club if you know what it is. If
you know, you know, 4 s's means you
get sort of the
4 s's on your boarding passes so that
you get taken into second questioning whenever you,
cross a border.
But, you know,
I can't complain. I've never been,
I've never been
beaten up or anything like that. I've had
some cold stares and some, you know,
bigoted comments and things like that, But I've
never
had
to
I've never
faced anything of what some of our brothers
and sisters in other parts of the world
have faced. So, definitely
definitely won't complain.
Do you make tiramisu? Unfortunately, I do not.
I am out of practice. I used to
actually work in restaurants
and, and cook quite a bit.
However,
the vocation and the the path my life
has taken me down means I cook a
lot less often than I used to. Mhmm.
And I never actually did make tiramisu myself.
I don't know about mixing tiramisu with baklava.
That sounds like a a.
But, maybe in my stomach, I'll mix it
up.
Okay. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate always
your wonderful participation, your
and companionship through this hour. I hope that,
we all benefited a bit from it. If
there's anything correct and beneficial from Allah, if
there's any incorrect ones from myself Nishaitan.
And we hope to see you next week.
So take care, and we'll circle back next
week with what's going on.
Until then,
Everybody have a great week.
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