Tom Facchine – Does Family Equal Virtue

			There's such an emphasis on family within Islam because we believe that relationships are the
primary location for both accruing, developing and proving virtue. Okay? When we talk about being
generous, being patient, having goodwill to other people, it's very easy to show goodwill in a very,
very sort of contrived situation, right? very controlled environment, it's maybe somebody you've
only seen once before, you're never gonna see them again in your life. Okay? It's like The Facebook
Effect, right? Everybody puts their best self forward, what about the people who know your
shortcomings, the people who you are around more regularly, the people who see you not in your best
		

			moments, the people who you share intimate space with, right, it's much more difficult to be
generous with those people and patient with those people, you know, and there's all sorts of types
of spiritual sort of diseases that you have to guard yourself against when it comes to developing
narratives and spying on other people and sort of constructing these sorts of theories and
assumptions, you know, oh, this person, they're like this, and oh, they're really trying to do this,
you know, we assume people's motives and things like that, okay, you won't do that for someone that
you've never seen before. And someone you're never going to see again. But you'll do that with
		

			people that are in your life regularly. And so when we're situated in family unit units, and we're
situated in neighborhoods and situated in these sorts of social units, it's all for a reason, right?
This is the this is the arena, this is the arena of virtue, okay? So every sort of situation that
you have, your spouse gets upset and starts yelling at you, or you know, your kid gets injured or
god forbid, killed or something like that, or dies. You know, what, what do YOU MADE OF WHAT DO YOU
MADE OF first of all, it's gonna, it's gonna come out, and then in that less dramatic like day to
day sort of thing when you're constantly interacting with people? How can you sort of interact with
		

			them in a way that's actually developing those virtues? Right? How do you go out of your way to
develop generosity and develop patience and develop goodwill and forbearance and these sorts of
things. That's the one of the most important things that the family is for. And the last thing
perhaps we should say is that responsibility, responsibility, you're more responsible within a
family situation, whether you're responsible for your sisters or your brothers or your spouse, or
your children, your parents when they age, and that is the same thing we've been talking about the
accrual of virtue, how you develop virtue, how you prove yourself and demonstrate virtue, right. You
		

			need the arena of the family relationships in order to develop those virtues.