Does Protesting Work

Live 8pm New York time. And I'm your host, Tim. I'm Tom Makini. Welcome back to our program. This week has been a busy one, as all of them have for the last little bit. We've got in developing news, we've got the International Court of Justice, the case has been filed by South Africa against the

Zionist density of Israel that has now there's a couple of developments with that case, and the court hearings are going to begin this week, you can check many of your online social media news channels for further details for how to listen to the court proceedings. Now, in the meantime, since last week, more and more nations have jumped on board with this particular case that's been filed against Israel.

But there's also some sort of concern as to how much good it's going to do. Right? We know that the international organizations have not done a very good job holding people to account especially if those nations are supported by the major world powers, particularly the United States. So it remains to be seen, and remains to be seen how effective this particular court case will be.

But even if there is no enforcement mechanism for this particular court case, one of the significant things is that there is increasing isolation when it comes to the international community, and the nations across the world when it comes to

people are finding their voice and let's say they are starting to form some resolve and even accumulate some political will to stop and to speak out against what is happening. So that in of itself is a good thing, and might lead to future developments later on.

In other news, in the West, we've got sort of more unfortunately, anti Muslim sentiment that is harkening back to the 911 or post 911 era men news.

Report on a story today MintPress news sorry, or a group of Palestinian American men were pulled off of a Delta flight in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and they were held for questioning after an unidentified woman and her daughter called Security falsely claiming that the men had made a bomb threat. The men were speaking a mixture of Arabic and English on the flight as many Arab Americans do. And the woman said that she felt unsafe around them.

She also said that she found it suspicious that they took turns using the bathroom. I find that hilarious because when you're at an airport, that's exactly what you're supposed to do so that you don't leave your baggage unattended because you've got the announcement on the loudspeaker every five minutes or so telling you do not leave your baggage unattended. Do not leave your baggage unattended. So we're darned if we do darned if we don't. If you're flying Muslim these days, you can't leave your baggage unattended. But you also can't take turns going to the bathroom because that somehow is suspicious. Now after questioning, the police said that they found no basis for her

claims, and they told everyone to go home. But the police also refused to allow the Palestinian American men to file a false police report claim against the accusers. Now it later came out that one of the accusers was actually a police officer. And so we have an airport that basically obstructed a claim from being filed holding this police officer to account or holding them accountable for a false claim, claiming that there was a bomb threat when there was no such thing in what is a clear case of profiling, anti Muslim sentiment, and, and prejudice. So we tell everybody to be careful out there. And to also now we have our phones, we can record Hamdulillah. And we can

attempt to publicize these things. Just think 10 years ago, where we were when these things would happen. And people would get taken out for questioning, which has happened to myself and many other people, and there was no means of redress. Now we have more means of recording these things of sort of collaborating stories and swapping stories and finding publicity, right. In fact, the particular individuals that were guilty of this false police report were later identified. And that in and of itself is a means for holding people accountable. So yes, yeah, we are we are very serious, Valerie and welcome everybody else while they come sit down to the live stream. This stuff happens all the

time. And what's scary, is that before social media, this stuff would happen all the time, and no one would know about it. Right? I remember distinctly the first time that I flew to Medina, when I got accepted to study at the Islamic University there. And I was flying out of JFK, and I was called up to the podium and pulled out of line in front of everybody and I had a TSA agent asking me very inappropriate questions about where I had lived, who my employer was, what their addresses numbers, which mosque I prayed out. Right. Now that was back in 2015.

And in those times, you know, there wasn't really much social media activity, there wasn't really a lot of awareness so that you could take those claims and say, Hey, like, I feel like I'm being treated unfairly. And especially if all you want to do is get on the plane, then you're afraid of missing your flight, you're afraid of all these sorts of things happening to you. The psychology that sort of overcomes you is just to do whatever you have to do to move on. And so it's important that this day and age, you know, if you're on social media, that you share these stories that you retweet them, or you repost them, or you put them in your Instagram, or your Facebook or whatever

else you use. So that publicity happens. There's enough publicity around these stories. People who have also experienced these stories start to speak out, and that we can gather and start to hold these different institutions and individuals accountable

for this profiling that goes on, and it's a mix of racial profiling and anti Muslim sentiment. But these are, yes, Laura Hasson you're 100%. Right? I know some folks within care and they are overwhelmed. There are so many of these cases. And some people are commenting and saying that the type of stuff that we're seeing is even worse than what we saw.

Post 911, which is hard to believe, but at the same time, not. So when we think about what we're up against. Right. And we've talked a lot on this program and other programs that you've seen about sort of Zionism and anti Muslim sentiment, and some people want to use the word Islamophobia to also describe some elements of that. They're all related. They're all related. And if we're trying to take down one, then in reality, we're up against them all. And this is just one front in the larger sort of struggle for our recognition and rights and injustice and truth. Why they come to sit down and after law, Elizabeth Lopez bienvenido.

Why they come to Sudan? I've got someone from Boston tuning in soon as life bang Bangladeshi Maha Rez from Somalia, mashallah welcome everybody to the program. So, if you and hey, this is a good opportunity for you, if you've ever been the victim of anti Muslim sentiment, whether in public, whether on a plane, whether going to the grocery store, whether you're flying while most of them are driving, well Muslim, then let us know, put something in the chat, send it to us, so that we can swap stories. And we can sort of take part in the fact that this is something that probably a great many of us have experienced. That wasn't my that wasn't my last rodeo, let's just say when it came

to this sort of thing while they come down off the left from Minnesota. I've gotten most stuff from Canada shamela from Illinois, who I quote has been from New York, New York in the house away, but from New Jersey. Welcome. Welcome, everybody.

You know, one of these things, and I guess I'll I'll share this just for the sake of beginning how do you react to situations Khadija asks? It's a very good question. It depends on the situation. I mean, like I said, if you are sort of,

you're waiting to get on a flight. Your mindset is I want to do whatever I have to do to get on this flight. Because it's an inconvenience, you're afraid of missing your flight, maybe you've got something very important that you're on your way to. And so it's very, very difficult to, to stand up for yourself and for your rights in those sorts of situations. And they know that which is why some individual officers, they rely on that sort of situation to get you to divulge information that is unconstitutional. You're not even supposed to divulge, in my case, everything from where I live to, you know, my employers and where I prayed and things like that. They will basically try to get

you to voluntarily divulge whatever information they can't. So if you're in a position to do so, then you should stand your ground and basically refuse to answer any questions especially that are particularly invasive. Nobody has any right to question where you pray to take down your address to know your employers, things like that. Now, we're not giving legal advice here. I'm not a lawyer, and you should really follow up with care care has been a great help when it comes to assisting Muslims obtain their rights and sort of know exactly what they can and can't do, what they say what you can say and what you shouldn't say. Like I'm sat down with Allah wali Muhammad from Dallas,

Inshallah, I will be in Dallas. This time tomorrow. Inshallah. So, look forward to seeing you I have some programs at ai i A N T over the weekend. There's a lot of acronyms in the Muslim OMA Mohamed oluwo host Gelinas. Yes, we have to stand up for our OMA Debbie from Chicago. There you go. A lot of people keep the numbers for care in your phone when you're traveling.

Yes Matic other other

He reminded us that we had Elam Hassan Sharif has was murdered in Newark, New Jersey this past week, may Allah have mercy upon him and make things easy for his family.

A great tragedy and we forget sometimes that our imams are our first responders and they're on the frontlines, that you are somebody if you are reading, you're reading salah and the masjid, you're standing in front of all these people, you're making a hook, but you're a target, you're your son or if you come and open the masjid, like in the case of the email. Now, we don't necessarily know I don't I haven't seen any information particularly about the nature of this particular incident that happen to the email.

But this is something that

this is something that can happen to any one of us. So we have to take courage we have to take

courage from

from everybody else's stories and may Allah protect our Imams and everybody else.

Khadija Mustafa is asking what is Keres? The Council of American Islamic Relations, I believe is the acronym. It's a civil rights organization based in the United States that helps Muslims when it comes to their legal rights. And you can look that up or maybe somebody else can put it in the chat for for SATA use of what is the number

not IA MC I know that's what we have a lot of alphabet soup when it comes to the Muslim community in North America, it's hard to keep track of all the all the acronyms and organizations.

But if you've never been, if you've never been in a situation where you've been the victim of anti Muslim animus or animosity, then consider yourself blessed and protected. But be ready, right, you should try to take precautions and it helps. It helps for everybody to sort of know what you're getting into before you're actually in that situation, that you know what's coming to you just like dice. Adobe is reminding us the less that you talk, the more you walk. And here we go. Mashallah, that's a really easy and easily remembered statement, the less the less you talk, the more you walk. And we ask Allah for protection. At the end of the day, no matter who tries to silence us and scare

us. It's all determined by Allah subhanaw taala.

So we have a great, we have a great session and a great episode lined up for you tonight, we've got we're going to continue with our daily habits, the book that we were going through specifically looking at the last 10 minutes of sort of add them on. And it's gonna become very, very apparent how that sort of dovetails and builds upon some of the habits that we talked about, we'll have a check in and all of us talk about sort of how that week went for us when it came to trying to not look at our phones, and what successes and struggles that we had when trying to establish new habits. We're also going to go through the next section of the book,

The Myth of religious violence, but before that, we've got a very, very special guest and I'm very, very excited that he's on our program today. His name is Abdullah aka. He is one of the organizers in the in New York City with all the protests that you've probably heard about and been seeing, I myself have been able to go to a couple of them. I wish I had been able to go to more Inshallah, hopefully in the future. But we're really, really blessed to have Abdullah with us and welcome to the program. Like I'm Tom happy to be here just like love headed for having me.

On thank you so much. Okay, so you know, there's some people who are in sort of the tri state area or the New York metro area that are very familiar with you and the organizations that you work with and what you do, but there's a lot of other people who aren't. So let's just give a brief intro. What sort of what's your role? What have you been up to? What organizations are you affiliated with? Yeah, my name is Abdullah. I am based here in Staten Island in New York City, just over the bridge from Brooklyn or Manhattan, which many know, I am a member of within our lifetime united for Palestine, also known as wo L, which has the mission, the dream, the aspiration, but also the action

to be part of and be part of the community that frees Palestine Inshallah, within our lifetime, and I'm also a member of the Muslim American Society of Staten Island, where I serve as their public advocacy director. Mashallah. So it's very inspiring. I know for me to see young people such as yourself. So involved, and especially with this new generation of activists, that ICU a part of that is not just getting things done on the political sort of front, but as also making sure that the Islamic and religious dimension of what they're doing is front and center, which, you know, I consider myself, the cheerleader of you all when it comes to these sorts of things. And definitely

here to here to assist them to help them to feel facilitate, which is part of why we wouldn't be on the program today. Give us an insight into some of what are some of the goals and what are some of the strategies and obviously when it comes to goals, there's going to be short term, mid term long term goals for the organizations that you're a part of

Um, what's basically the plan?

Yeah, so this goal really comes in so many different ways. As you mentioned, there's a long term and short term goal goal as well. But it all starts with organizing, and making sure that we're organ organizing year round, not only one of us as being bombed. And that was really one of the biggest missions that within our lifetime, made sure to take on is that we need to be educating our community protesting throughout the year. So when something happens in the desert, as we know that there will always be something happening in it, as long as the occupation is there, we need to be able to mobilize at a very fast rate. And I think that's what's really special about what we've been

seeing since October 7, to where we are right now, almost 100 days in this genocide, is that were mobilizing in unprecedented levels, where we've never seen this, many people consistently come out in the streets with this type of energy. And so what within our lifetime is doing is it's bringing this energy from the community into the streets of New York City, where communities that may have never heard about Palestine, are knowing about what's going on are learning about the genocide, and the occupation locations in Manhattan in Brooklyn, in each of the five boroughs are learning about what's happening in Palestine. And so at the root of a lot of it is education. But on the secondary

layer, there is disruption, we need people to wake up and see that what is happening in Palestine is your business is my business. For each and every single one of us that is paying a single dollar in taxes, it is our money that is funding the genocide, and we have to be active participants in stopping it.

Excellent. Yeah. Now, that's, that's super, super important. So education, visibility, I think is a big part, you know, making sure that, you know, subhanAllah, it just came to mind when you're talking about disruption, how so much of our society is built around sort of convenience, especially the consumerism, you know, you've got your, you've got your, your Starbucks and your whatever is your normal habits. And, you know, it's very, very comfortable, right. It lulls you into a sort of false sense of security. It's almost like a stupor, or almost like an opiate, maybe Marx, he should have said, instead of religion being the opiate of the masses, he should have said that consumerism

is the opiate of the masses, because that really stops people from feeling that urgency. And so we're talking about how do we achieve that urgency? Okay, you're saying that basically, you need to be visible? Okay, first of all, you need to be on people's minds. And sometimes that requires disruption in order to maintain that visibility. So people don't just don't go back into their Netflix and chill mode. Is that a fair? Sort of? Yeah, that's a sort of you would you say that's a fair

take about what you're trying to do? No, 100% people are looking for that opportunity. Meeting, as usual, organizers as activist people that are in the on the ground, is to make sure that we do not go back to business as usual, that if it's not business, as usual, in the plaza, where Palestine is free, then it must not be business as usual for us, which are funding exactly what is happening. And additionally, we have to make sure that we are visible in the places that people frequent most. And that's usually transportation hubs. That's usually places where people visit maybe on a daily basis, huge avenues, like Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, or museums, or really locations where we are going to

make sure that not only the people, but the media, the entire world will hear us. Yeah, excellent. Now, one thing that I referenced that I'd like to hear your commentary about, it's my observation, because I sort of became politically conscious in the time after 911, and leading up to the Iraq War. Now, and even at that time, you know, obviously, they're, you know, Palestine was still a huge issue, and there were escalations almost every year. But it seems like that activism for the Palestinian Liberation or the cause of Palestinian Liberation,

it seems to me like it had less of an obvious Islamic dimension than it does now. I guess my my, my first question would be, what do you think about that statement? Do you is that jive with your experience? And to how do you make sure that you bring along the Islamic dimension of what you're doing to your activism and the actions that you do?

Yeah, I really love this question. Because like from a young age, I understood that activism is not something that's optional. It's something that you must you you must do, in order to bring about justice in order to bring about peace for either yourself or for your brothers and sisters. It might not affect you in any way. But your activism is something that's mandatory. And that might be because I grew up in masajid, like the Muslim American society. We're from a very young age, the idea of activism isn't disconnected from therapy.

Hear that growing up and having that Islamic nurturing teachings of reason why sai Salam is very much interconnected with getting justice for your brothers and sisters. And so that really translates to the movement, the Palestinian movement, where we see that in the middle of a huge protests where 1000s are filling the streets, we see that everything comes to the halt by the event, followed by the comma followed by hundreds praying in the middle of a street stopping everything saying that our duty is to Allah subhanaw taala before anything, and something that we usually frequent, and we mentioned a lot in the protest is that our brothers and sisters in the Gaza

actually made this beautiful dewlap where they said Allahumma in and out of the autodoc while June the June duck will Unruh Amarok Why not mustard I feel for resume, nostril inquiry, urban dystrophy we used to do the common meaning, where our brothers and sisters in Gaza are saying, Oh Allah, this land is your land. These armies are your armies. And the fate is your fate. So grant us a victory that will heal the hearts of unbelieving people. And so we remind our brothers and sisters in these protests, and I personally do this, where I tell them that if our brothers and sisters are being bombed by the minute by the occupation, yet they take a step back and they say, Oh Allah, we

recognize that this land is yours. We recognize that even these armies all belong to you, the people belong to you. And so we resort to you, as a final person, you are our Savior. And so how can we not do that,

at these protests at these demonstrations, where we are standing for our brothers and sisters, and so so law is really at the core of everything, in addition to many of the chants that we say where we say La ilaha illallah wa Shaheed Habibollah, these chants are not only chance to bring about energy in the crowd, but they are truly reminder that our martyrs aren't gone. Our martyrs truly are in a better place than all of us. Yeah, I think that's so significant for a lot of reasons, first of all, is that it bridges the gap between I think the whatever you want to call it, the resistance or the Palestinian cause in Palestine, right, which is extremely religious, right? Anybody who, who

speaks Arabic, and who listens to the chants, right, or listens to the speeches or listens to, you know, even the morning, right like that, you know, you have people that are that are carried out of the rubble, and they're making their shahada, whether we're saying Koran, or they're doing, you know, various different things, you know, there's a palpable difference between some not all, but many of the protests that are organized by more secular organizations where, you know, Biden, Biden, you can't hide this sort of stuff, which is fine, which is fine. It's not a problem. But I think it's an education for people in the West, because what we don't want to do is we don't want to leave

intact. The anti is the anti Islamic and anti Muslim sentiment that even allies of the Palestinian cause might have in the West. So maybe some people they want to come to a Palestinian or pro Palestinian protests or demonstration, but they get nervous when they hear the tech be, right. Or they get nervous when they hear the Shahada. They're like, Oh, no, maybe they think like, is this some sort of call to violence? or is this some sort of terrorist slogan, and a lot of what you're doing and you collective I'm not, you know, obviously, we have you with with us today in the studio. But there's a lot of people with you. It's almost like a reeducation process. And it's almost

bringing the Palestinian cause and pro Palestinian movement here on the west a little bit closer to how it really does play out on the ground in Palestine itself. That's extremely significant. And then also sort of, like you said, I think that the second reason, if I'm gonna if I can take up this much time, is to, to push back against our own sort of self secularization, right, that there are forces that want Islam to just be what happened to Christianity, where we're just, it's just your private belief and you in the mosque, and you with the prayer beads in the Koran. And obviously, that's part of Islam, no doubt. But Islam is also about standing up for what's true. We are

fundamentally a truth telling people and our mission, we have a charge from Allah subhanaw taala audit to stand up and tell the truth, whether it's against us, whether it's against somebody else, right. And so it's not going to be this comfortable, you know, just prayer rug is now the yes, that's part of it will bring our prayer rugs to the street. I hope we'll use them, you know, to pray and to illustrate to other people that, you know, these things all go together. So I think that's tremendous. And I think that's, that's very, very significant. And I really appreciate that aspect of your work. Yeah, one last question. But let's see. I wonder if you have any other comments about

that before we move on? Yeah, no, Jay Sekulow had and I even remember the protest that you joined us where we had Salaah right in front of Washington Square Park.

But the reality isn't something that I really want to drive home. For really everyone is that the Islamification of the Palestinian movement is Palestinian resistance. And so you cannot separate the both Palestinian resistance is the sonification of the movement, because like you mentioned that Palestinians on the ground, feel that Islamification every single day. Not only are they in holy land, the land of goats, but also because of their martyrs, because of their daily interactions, because of what they see on a daily basis. They know that at the core of everything is Allah subhanaw taala is relying on your religion to get through everything as much as I can locate and

really driving that point home.

Okay, last question. Now, you guys caught some flak recently, when it came to in particularly the shutting down JFK and obstructing sort of people getting to their flights. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to that about what the philosophy is, when it comes to those types of actions. Now, we've already sort of hinted at it because we talked about disruption. Disruption is important because it's, you know, keeping visibility, it's keeping people engaged, it's stopping them from going back to this consumerist, you know, individualistic lifestyle, but there were some people and some of them were Imams that were saying, it's like, I don't really like this type of

action, where we're blocking people unnecessarily. And, and the fear is, I think from their side, that they don't want to hurt the cause. So humbly, everybody is on the same page in their intentions, we all want the cost to succeed. And there might be sort of a difference as to thinking about what's the most effective and impactful means or tactics to help the cause succeed. So there are some people who are thinking that this is going to hurt the cause alienate people, you know, make people sort of feel antagonized, or resentful to the Palestinian Liberation Movement. So I want to get your your thoughts on that and give you a chance to respond. Yeah, just like Mohammed for

giving me that opportunity. So the JFK protests for clarification, was announced for terminal for were one of the largest occupation airlines flies out IDF soldiers almost on a daily basis, over to occupied Palestine, so they could murder our brothers and sisters. And so our goal is to make sure to be loud and clear. In terminal four, what we noticed is just putting out that call for terminal four, resulting in almost a shutdown in the entire JFK Airport, where they then started closing other terminals. In an effort to stop protesters and organizers from reaching terminal four, I myself, made it to terminal four, and was threatened by the captain of Port Authority that told me

that if I do not get on the next air train, exiting the airport, I will personally get arrested. And so this was the largest sentiment so they clearly know that we have a target in mind. And that was terminal for what we saw after that was from JFK, we announced LaGuardia Airport further on to Wall Street. And the purpose of all of this is to fall back on that disruption is that it is our tax dollars. It is my money, your money, each of our dollars, our hard earned dollars at times that we are willing to fight for in regards to other things. But when it comes to our brothers and sisters in Palestine, we have to fight harder. And so if my tax dollars are funding this genocide, I will do

every single way. And route that I could take to really disrupt where my tax dollars are going. And the biggest thing is, and I think it's the reality of this is that people will not listen to any other form is that we've seen it that social media entities, metal, Instagram, Facebook, are censoring us. And so we have to rely on in person disruptions in order to create the largest change the largest wave. And so my request for it to be all across social media, for people that are seeing the JFK action is to do this wherever you are, whether it's in JFK, it's in Chicago, it's in Texas, or in California, or anywhere across the world, it's time for the world to hear us on a more

elevated stage is that if eight to big protests are no longer working, we need to shut down major transportation hubs in order for mayors in order for governors, and even for the presidents of these countries to say that the people stand with Palestine, the people stand with the brothers and sisters in the desert. And the people are demanding for a liberated Palestine within our lifetime. And they will not stop for anything less than that we will not stop for just a ceasefire. And that's the reality of it. We will not stop until there's a ceasefire, the genocide, a cease to the occupation, and a cease to anything that stands in front of Palestinian resistance and Palestinian

Liberation.

It's very robust response, and I really appreciate you taking the time to go into that. And I think it's very significant, but also very telling. I think it's very significant that the initial action was planned to be something very specific and very targeted because that shows a high level of strategy on your part. And I find it significant that that

messaging got lost. Now, I'm not putting blame on anybody, but I'm looking for opportunities to improve. You know, and I think that if there are people who have criticisms of certain actions, especially with the way that social media sort of trains us, it trains us to be basically like running commentators on other people's lives, right. Which is kind of weird, because, you know, sometimes you see yourself being commented about when you could have been reached out to, right. And social media certainly certainly shapes us and rewards that sort of behavior and drives us towards that behavior. So I would like to request from people who are sort of observing, and maybe they have

questions, or maybe they even have criticisms, to reach out directly right to yourself, or to other people who are sort of organizing these actions and to get the lowdown because obviously, it's a very, very different calculus. If you're saying, Well, we're just going to shut down everything, versus Well, we only targeted this one, and then they shut down everything, right, or it sort of spun out of this of it, things evolve on the ground as they're happening in real time. Right? Those are two very different things. And the last thing I'll say, and this is sort of a plug for what's the country of Kenya Institute, is that I personally, will apologize to you and to all of our

wonderful Muslim activists for not sufficiently providing you guys guidance on this stuff. I find it unfortunate that people would criticize before, there's not a booklet for what Islamic activism should look like that we distribute to mass and to a MP and to you know, with W O L and to all these sorts of things, right. So to sort of, yeah, I'll just put it like that. And one of my goals for the year in Sharla 2024, is to actually provide a primer of this sort of nature, that these are, let's put all the tactics out on the table. And let's say, we have, you know, clear Islamic rationale and justification for XYZ, ABC and D. And then these can be used in these situations, other sort of

tactics will maybe they're not the best, but maybe break glass in case of emergency sort of thing. That's the type of guidance that you all should have in your hands. And I don't feel comfortable,

at least in public criticizing anybody until that guidance is provided. So I would hope that the you know, I don't know if a scholarly class or di e class or Eman class or something like that can step in and fill this void to

come together reach across the aisle, I don't think it's much of an aisle, establish relationships, get on a first name basis with each other, you know, go have a meal, or coffee at our house or something, and, and hash this stuff out and learn from each other and benefit from each other. That's what I would hope. Well, I think that gap is what organizers have been looking for events that fail for such a long time, honestly, is we love the sight of seeing the memes at our at our protests, like when we saw you come to our protests will lie. We were truly delighted as organizers. Because the reality is there's a huge Islamic movement that looks to Imams to see how they act to

see where they are involved in where they aren't involved, where they criticize and where they applaud. And so when we see our Imams correctly, plugging into the movement, and saying here is the Islamic perspective. And here's how, here's how it celebrates you as organizers. And here's how Islam guides you as organizers. That's what we truly look for. And I'm gonna comment on the public scene. That's the reality and my line is always open as as well as within our lifetimes, that we appreciate any kind of criticism that comes to us directly before it goes to social media before it goes to the public eyes where the reality of it is. That's exactly what Zionists are hoping for.

They are waiting for that moment of division within our community where they can start cherry picking then what what Imam said versus what another Imam said and say, Look, their community isn't even united. When the reality is the majority of our community is really united. We're united on a free Palestine, we're united on ending the occupation, were united on a ceasefire as well. And so we're looking to our Imams to build this cohesive relationship with us, where we are able to build together we're able to make this movement, not only stronger, but more unified. But obviously that happens through through back channel conversations first, before we then take it social media where

if anything, social media is used as a tool to applaud our movement. It's used as a tool to show how unified on the same page our movement is. And so I truly personally, I'm looking forward to this booklet from you again, as I said earlier that your pain usually pulls out with amazing content, amazing infographics and so I'll be the first one reading it inshallah. Vertical athlete heavy. All right, let's see anybody have any questions for Abdullah? Before we let them go? I see. We love a slam. Had a question where to go? What more can we do besides all that we're currently doing? Kind of a general question if you want to take it for as yours. No, this is this is a great question.

To start continue going out to protests be very consistent in that we know that there's a national March taking place on the 13th, in national in Washington DC, followed by another one here in New York City actually endorsed by over 100 organizations happening here in New York City at Union Square. And so continue to take part, at least in these national demonstrations, but also in what's happening at home, as well in your local cities. Additionally, continue to put pressure on your local government make it very clear that if your tax dollars are not funding your health care, they're not funding your education, but they are funding an overseas genocide, you're going to make

it very clear that you will be very that that it is completely unacceptable, that that's the case. And so continue to show up to your elected officials continue to take the ceasefire demands, and to make it very clear on social media as well that you stand with the Palestinian people. Wonderful. We have a question from Korea. This is a very common one. And so I want to I want to make sure we highlight it. What do you say to Muslims who believe that protesting is haram? And people are telling them not to go? Because how long? Yeah, for for the majority of this question, I'll leave it to him. I'm Tom. But directly, you could see that the majority of Imams have said have taken part

and come out to actual protests, where we've seen them actually be on the front lines, where we've seen them actually applaud activists and take hand in hand with activists as it should be. Additionally, if there is a genocide, we're over 25,000 of your brothers and sisters, or being murdered by the occupation. The reality is, the question about halal or haram about protests might not be the right time, the right time is to go out to the streets is to put immediate pressure on the government. And as, as I am sure any of them would, would agree, is the hadith of Rasulullah sallallahu Sallam where he says that when you justice when an injustice takes place in front of us,

the first thing for us to do is to take is to take action with our heads followed by our tongue, followed by hitting it with our with our hearts, let's not jump to the third option by hitting in our hearts. Let's first use our hands and head to the streets. Let's use our tongues and chant for a free Palestine from the river to the sea. And let's also hate it with our hearts. Excellent. And I'll add an extremely radiated form, that the only arguments I've seen for protests being haram or either construing it as Cluj rebellion, which doesn't apply in the political culture of the United States of America, where we have a well established protest culture, or its has to do with

incidental things which can be easily avoided, such as free mixing between genders and things like that all of that stuff can easily be avoided, especially if Muslims are running the protests. So that's a you know, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, when you extract yourself and stay away from it. And then you see the grounds let somebody else do it for you, who doesn't do it by Islamic principles, and then you get to criticize it a second time.

Harry asked a question that I think is interesting. He said, Okay. Do you think that protesting is a form of begging to the elite knowing that okay, we've been protesting for the last three months, deaths have been rising? I understand awareness is there. But what about change? So where does protesting fit in with the larger sort of strategy of things? This is an amazing question, because 10 years ago, we would have never seen this kind of consistency in the streets for the cause of Palestinian Liberation, where we are right now, which is really unheard of where it's almost 100 days of consistent protests, of consistent shutdowns of floods, all across the country, and really

all across the world. That's truly unheard of. And if anything, the occupation is truly losing the public relations war. Because on that front, every single country, every single person across the world is looking to the occupation, where they truly look very dumb, ignorant or arrogant, in the sense that they are losing the world's perception on what what they wanted it to be as an as a world's democracy as the Middle Easterns democracy. And so they have truly lost that front. And so change in the last 75 years alone has been truly instrumental has been drastic, if anything, and we've seen so many countries and world leaders call for a ceasefire call for the rights of

Palestinian people, and for one of the first times and here is that we are seeing the South African case in the International Criminal Court, where they are trying them in front of the entire world saying that they are committing genocide, saying that they are committing apartheid, and that alone is historic. Excellent, excellent response and we would direct Harry to the inspirational videos of Sammy Hamdi to see what kind of change is also being made. That's probably I mean there's some other questions but be respectful of your time and also the time reviewers. Although thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your responses and I look forward to continuing the

conversation. Amazing Zach well credit for having me. Anyway, I can hopefully see you soon take care something

Okay, mashallah, that was very, that was a very robust conversation. I'm very, very glad we had it. And thank you to everybody who pitched in with your questions. There was one question that we didn't get around to responding to. But I wanted to just touch on briefly, Maria Achmed said that my Messi doesn't support protests and hence, the Muslims aren't coming out locally and only non Muslim allies are there. What can we do to make them masajid see that we're the messaging, see the bigger picture. And I would just echo what Abdullah was saying, when it comes to face to face relationships, right? Those people who are on the ground and trying to hold protests, who are practicing Muslims and very

Islamically minded have, they need to have face to face relationships and a rapport with Masjid leadership and religious leadership, so that they can talk and understand each other's issues and understand each other's perspectives. A lot of time, there's just people talking past each other, or not having any sort of relationship to speak to.

So that's that now we're going to change change topics a little bit here. It's a very, very important topic that we could talk about, and probably use the entire hour to talk about, but I don't want to neglect our discussion of our daily habits. Last week, we had started talking about our daily habits, and taking them from the Prophet Muhammad sites that I'm so we started going through a little book, which is part of a vast genre that you find in classical Islamic literature that has to do with sort of the actions of the prophets. I've always said, I'm from the second that you wake up to the second that you lay down your head to sleep at night. And we talked about various

things.

And such as starting habits, one of the things that we talked about was not looking at the phone as soon as we wake up, and I want to hear your commentary. Everybody, try to you know, hit us in the chat. How did it go for you, we talked about a couple of things that we were going to try to implement, and I'll share with you in a sec, how my struggle, I will say, went to try to implement some of these things. And I want to hear your struggles as well. And also your triumphs and successes so we can kind of build each other up. So one of the things was that okay, we said that the prophecy said, um, just as a recap, when he woke up that he would praise Allah, he would say the

vicar about how you know, Allah subhanaw taala has resurrected us or brought us back to life. And we give praise him for that. He talked about how the prophesy centum would look at the sky and have a connection with a lot of signs, which is going to set us up for the if that he would read it before the MLL. We talked about how he would be set up to use his sack and brush his teeth and the importance of hygiene. And we talked about how all these things were.

We also talked about the time that he would wake up before Federer to make sure that he got in his night prayers.

So how did you do you know, were you able to do any night prayers at all? Are you able to wake up before fetcher? Even once in the week since we last talked? Were you able to avoid looking at your phone first thing we talked about sort of strategies to do that.

I'll see Abdullah, I will my fools. I tried no fun in the morning. And she says well, three out of seven days. Michela. See that's progress. So Abdullah, if you're successful, three out of seven days in the first week, okay, now maybe this week coming up, go for four out of seven days, and the next five out of seven days. Right? That's progress. A lot of times the shaytaan wants to discourage us by making us feel like we're not making any progress at all. But something is better than nothing.

Okay, let's see. Hi, Tony. Set. rowsley says I reached out from my phone, but I opened up the core and the app and read some verses before I checked for important messages. I had that problem with important messages as well. I shot that I shut down and put my phone in another room. But it was so difficult because I wanted to check news for Palestine Yes. 100%. I know how you feel that part of the temptation is to always go look for the news for Palestine.

Laura Hassan says that she gets coffee before looking at her phone. That's really nice. Some people I know. And I've tried this too, is to attempt to make sure that you don't look at your phone before you actually complete your prayers. Right. I think that's also a helpful thing that some people can try.

Harry mentioned Yeah, we're, when it comes to the end of the day as well. Right? And we'll definitely get to that.

About unplugging from your phone a certain amount of time before you go to bed. Shame that you were very honest. May Allah bless you. I failed with not looking at my phone not gonna lie mashallah you encourage the rest of us to be honest, which is great. And I definitely didn't have 100% success rate either. I you know, I'm not sure how many days I didn't like keep a numerical count. But there were some days that I succeeded and some days that I failed. And I need to get an alarm clock. I did not I did not get an actual alarm clock. So I'm still using my phone to wake up. Oh, I think I'm set on rasilla Ashraf from Singapore. Sentiment the tongue. see anybody else's. Okay, that's pretty much

it. So now this week, we're going to look at some of the ayat

The Prophet Mohammed slay some would recite before starting his actual night prayers, and how they actually relate directly to what we were talking about when it can't, when it comes to relating to Allah signs, we talked about the importance of a lot of signs and having some sort of regular way to connect to those signs throughout the day. And that if we just shuffled through our days from one thing to the next, without connecting to a lot of signs that the core and will actually be less impactful on us, right. And we will spend most of our days in a state of Buffalo where we're just kind of going through the motions. So the, the the book that we're covering, so that the prophecy so

would recite the last 10 ayat of surah. Adam, Ron, right, before sort of starting his night prayers. Now I found that extremely significant, because if you look to the last 10 Yet, what does it start with? It starts exactly with talking about Allah signs. Okay, so look at how significant just the theme of a lot of signs and contemplating a lot of signs is that he on a salatu salam gets up, he does a few things, he looks at the sky, okay. he recites these eyes that he's preparing his heart, essentially, for a deep connection that everything that he encounters throughout the day, is going to bring him back to remembering Allah subhanaw taala. And that's, I think, the main takeaway for

all of us. So, starting with verse 190, Allah subhanaw taala says, and we can't go over every single word, but he says that in the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day are signs that you will el Bab for those people who have reason or those who sort of are

lube, lube lovers like you know, they have their weighty they have some sort of weight to them and weight in the metal in the metaphoric sense. Like they're not superficial. Who, Allah in the Quran, Allah have TM and will corrode, and voila, gob people who remember a law in all states,

standing, sitting, and even on their sides, where to fit could only hold it somehow it went out. And they think, right, they think and it's not just think you have to fit code, like perfect code, contemplate, right? Because it's the certain if you guys know, sort of, it's the sort of the one type of the verb that has to do with turning it over again and again. Okay, contemplating seriously, a lot of signs. Okay, the signs that he created and the heavens and the earth. Now, it's important to notice here, what, okay, we say sign, and Allah says, I sign sign sign.

What do we mean, we're talking about a sign? If you pull up your car to a stop sign, right? If you just ran through it,

and you said, Okay, here's a red octagon with some letters written on it.

And the cop pulls you over? Right? The policeman pulls you over and says, Hey, why did you why did you run by that sign? He said, it's just the red octagon with some letters on it, what are you talking about? Right, that wouldn't get you out of trouble, you'd still have to pay your fine or you still would get your ticket from the police. Because the nature of a sign is that it points to a deeper reality. Okay, the red octagon with the letters on it points to a deeper reality, which is that you have to stop here. If you don't, then there's some sort of danger involved. So when we say that the things that Allah subhanaw taala created in the universe are signs that means that a

mountain is not just a mountain, okay, a star is not just the star, the moon is not just the moon, that these things are actually placed here by allies, which have to get us to think about a deeper reality. Okay, which is why sort of the the world of fact finding over like, the encyclopedic type of knowledge is a little bit of a misdirection and a little bit misleading, because it still gets us moving in this realm of, well, we're learning things about the science, okay. Yes, the moon sort of the same faces always sort of facing us. We don't get to see the Dark Side of the Moon. And if the moon wasn't there, then the Earth orbit would be out of whack and all these sorts of facts. That's

great, humbly that we love facts. But facts don't penetrate into why is it there? It tells us how it works. It tells us some fun, interesting things. And it can even enhance our sort of appreciation for a lot of sort of dukkah his precision with how he places and created signs in the world. But it doesn't ultimately break through until the level of what is it here for? Why did Allah put it here? Right? And so when Allah is telling us about these signs that they're supposed to point to a larger reality which is his

ability, right to create his ability to, to sustain. And if you can notice, every time you look at the moon, every time you look at the sky, every time you look at a tree, every time you look at a mountain, you think Allah made this. And he made me. And he sustains it. And he sustains me. And if he wants to look at how powerful he is that he could make all of this without any effort, we're saying it doesn't even cost them anything, doesn't exhaust them, doesn't tire him out, then can't he resurrect me after I'm dead, right. And if you have some deep connection with the Koran, you realize that this is one of the points that he comes back to again, and again. And again, these things are

placed here for that type of remembering, it's placed there for that type of consideration that he's trying to bring you back to. Now, when a look continues to go, he does this thing was a rhetorical style in Arabic, where he's talking about somebody, a third person, and now he's putting words sort of on your lips for you to say Robina indica, but sorry, actually, before that, he says Robina Mahabharata how that belted on Subhanak, Athena, other than not, that, Oh Allah, you have not created all of this in vain. Meaning that if we only stuck to the level of if we only stuck to the level of facts, we only stuck to the level of the encyclopedic knowledge, the moon is this many

miles from Earth, and it is this big and has this much area and etc, that it would still not cross over to the ultimate consideration that Allah wants us to get into, which is why it's not here. belvilla It's not here just for play. It's not here, just for fact, it's not here just to be some sort of point in your encyclopedic knowledge about the thing, it's supposed to point you to a deeper reality. It's supposed to point you to a deeper reality, to get you to think about Allah subhanaw taala and to feel gratitude and humility in front of him. Allah subhanaw taala has more commentary, he says, you know, he puts this on our tongues for us to say, whoever that you enter into the

Hellfire then that that person is humiliated. And the people who are oppressors will not have any helpers. And this is very relevant when it comes to our times with everything that's going on, and that the people who are oppressors will not have any helpers.

And it continues to go on I we're not going to go through every every verse and we'll move on for next week by encourage you to read carefully and closely these last 10. Yet, there's a lot of really important lessons here. And it's very important that the Prophet Mohammed slay some read these ayat before even starting his night prayers. Consider the types of lessons that are in this part of the Koran, and how it starts you on your day, how does it set you off, so that everything you see in your day is now a sign, reminding you of ALLAH SubhanA wa Tada. But that's the point. And we ask Allah for continuous remembrance of Him.

Transitioning now to our last segment of the day, before we take any remaining questions, and that is our continuing sort of quick book review. I remember that this week, the myth of religious violence. I'm somebody that really hates dust jackets, I don't know what's your opinion on dust jackets hit me up in the chat. If I buy a book and it has a dust jacket on it, I get rid of it ASAP. I even throw it in the trash. I don't I can't stand just you know, when you're looking through, and I'm some of the if we can, I don't know, zoom in here, I take copious notes, right, I've got notes in the margins. And I always use a blue pen never black, I need to be able to see it differentiated

from the text. I'm kind of a little bit particular with my books. And so to have the dust jacket, Erica is the thing that they put on the outside of the book that like it has the flaps. And usually it has a little bit about the author, it has some reviews on the back of the book, right, and you can take it off or put it on and it usually gets in your gets in your way. I agree 100% height on the set. That dust jackets are annoying. And so i discard them very, very quickly. They're also disorganized every 100%. So

so this is the book and the chapter that I wanted to cover today. It's a really, really big chapter with a lot of amazing things in it. But we don't have time for all that unfortunately. So I'm just going to have to give you the bare bones and leave you to look at the rest on your own. That the author wants to tackle one specific

idea. Okay. And that is

this thing that we call religion. What is it? What is it really?

Is there such a thing that

we call religion? Is that something that's definable? Is that something that's consistent?

If you look in the dictionary, what type of definition do you get? Let's maybe have your opinions or if anybody wants to copy paste. If you think about religion, what is religion?

What's the definition of religion?

That's the question that animates the next chapter in Kavanagh's book, The Myth of religious violence

whatever answers you come up with, I guarantee you that there is no one standard definition that everybody will agree to, that the idea of talking about things as religions is not an idea that's been around for very long. Let me explain it to you like this, okay?

If I take, okay,

Islam, and Christianity, and Buddhism, and Judaism,

and I put it all in one category?

Why would I put all those things in one category?

If I believed that one of them was better than the rest, if I believe that one of them was true, and the rest of them were, at least in part false.

Right, let's say that I think that Islam is true 100%, which I do under the law, Qur'an, the Prophet Mohammed, sigh, Saddam, and that these other things are false, then why would I put them together in the same category?

That this term religion actually has a history to it, it's actually a very, very, very recent invention.

And it's important to get into that history, because it shows how the way that people thought about their belief in God or their faith has changed significantly over time, that if you were to hop in a time machine, and go back to the 1500s, or the 1300s, and ask people, What is religion? They would look at you like you had 17 heads, like you were crazy. Or if you ask them even better,

to separate between religion and politics, why did you do this thing? Was it a religious motivation? It was a political sort of thing, that they would look at you like you were crazy, like, What do you mean, there was no separation between those two things until very, very recently, right. So the straight path ventured forth and tried this to have a, and tried to provide a definition of religion as a path slash worldview, that a group of people follow by worshipping a god or gods or stokfella. So that's, I appreciate that you put in the Estelle for love the end there. But it before that, before the ISTEP for Allah, you have one particular definition of religion that a lot of people

would agree with, okay? Any path or worldview, that a group of people follow by worshipping a god or gods, okay, that's what we call a substantive vists definition of religion, you don't really need to understand why that's called that. But the idea is that the idea that there is an essence that all religions have in common, okay, big fancy word for, we think that there is one essence that all religions have in common. Now, what if I were to tell you that there are types of Buddhism that do not believe in a god or gods?

Are you going to be prepared to say, upon that definition, the straight path that Buddhism is not a religion?

See how that works.

And so no matter what definition we come up with, you can go to Oxford, you can go to Cambridge, you can go to Webster, you can go to dictionary.com, you will always find that there are certain things that belong in the definition that shouldn't really be there you think, or there are things that should not be there that are included. Let's take for example. So some people, they say, Okay, well, religion, maybe you don't need, you don't need belief in a god. Maybe it's simply just things that you hold sacred. Okay, well, we could we consider nationalism or religion that you see how people they stand up and they sing, you know, the Pledge of Allegiance and God bless America, and all these

different things that they have, okay, a way of life.

Are we then going to say that ideologies are religions to is nationalism, religion? Is communism a religion? Okay? Now we're saying that everything is religion. So the term loses its usefulness. This is exactly the type of problem that Kavanaugh explores in the next chapter of his book, okay, and he basically comes to the conclusion and I'm trying to distill a whole lot of text here and save you some reading,

that the idea of religion as a category in which you can place Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, is a very, very recent invention that occurred because of the secularization of Christianity in Europe. That the whole idea

idea of religion as something that's private, something that's interior, that your belief, it's something that just some things that you think are true, a list of propositions

that you believe in, that this is a very, very new idea. And it's not something that everybody would agree to. Or that makes sense if you go and apply it equally across the world,

that when you make all of these faiths or religions, comparable Islam, Christianity, etc, you d politicize them, you basically turn them into something that's optional, something that is non political, something that is private, something that can be separated. And so this was something that actually is a key part of European history, where they secularized their own religions. And they also came up with the category of religion in order to separate it from things like politics. Okay. This is why Islam is a big challenge to sort of the secular mindset. Yes, religion has become a generalized term.

So, Islam is a direct challenge this categorization because in Islam, for example, you cannot separate politics and faith. You cannot separate something that is considered religious and something that's considered political if you go into a flipbook. It starts with well, the, it starts with water.

And it goes through ritual acts of worship. And then it goes to marriage, and it goes to business and it goes to criminal law, and it goes to all these sorts of things. It's all there together. Okay, that this defies the categorization of religion as something that's just belief in God or belief in this or belief in that.

So it's a way of putting things together. It's a way of putting things together in a

unicity in a sort of a unified way, that

recently, European history has come to separate. Now, the next chapter that we're not going to get in today, but we're going to get into next week Inshallah, is why did they separate them? Why did Europe historically want to separate religion from state? Why did they want to invent the idea of religion that can be separated from the state or can be separated from politics or can be separated from economics and things like that? Well, that's another story entirely. And we'll get into it next week, inshallah. Tada.

Okay, so we've hit about an hour, let's see if there's any questions or anything that we can clean up? Let's put it like this. I got a couple of questions that are going to talk about.

I'm smiling at the comments about dust jackets. Yeah, I see that I'm not alone here with my loathing of dust jackets, but not not everyone's extreme is as extreme as I am when it comes to just throwing them out.

When it comes to, okay, so if you're not going to use the term religion, which the idea of religion

presupposes, or it assumes that

this thing is, well, let's call it the fancy terms are universal and transhistorical. That means that religious experience is the same everywhere for all people in all times across all cultures.

Rather than saying that there is true religion, and there's false religion, that there's Huck and those Bethan, that there's truth, and there's falsehood, okay. Our definition or a more Islamic definition of what we're talking about would be what's true and what's false. Right, we would never think to include in the same category as a slam idol worship, right? That's Stark, we can sort of understand why these things are, you know, the point becomes clear when we make it so dramatic.

But if we're talking about religions, if we think of religion as a category, then Islam is right next to is right next to idol worship. They're two religions. They're comparable. They're similar. You're two examples of the same phenomenon, either belief in the afterlife or some sort of rituals, symbols, whatever you want to call it. And we would object to that sort of categorization. We say that No, Islam is true, whereas idol worship is false. That's the kind of thing that we're talking about here. We love Assam, asked me to make dua for Kashmir Oh ALLAH free the people of Kashmir make them victorious. They are in our hearts all the time.

And we ask them to We ask Allah subhanaw taala to bring them beneficial rain,

or snow or whatever they need.

Let's see. Let's go to the chat. See if anybody else has any questions before we wrap up for the night.

Erica lives in Sweden, and we know that Sweden does have a hard time with with religions.

But many people believe in a mo

Higher Power, which is instructive because many people have a federal, many people have a sort of a natural disposition to some sort of belief that they can't shake. Right. And that's sort of a fascinating thing.

Laura Hassan asked, How can I inspire my friends to take action regarding Palestine? Some are still wrapped up in there first world problems.

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of ways to think about it. I mean, there's one way in which

people are idiosyncratic, that means that different strokes for different folks, some things work on individuals and other things don't. Some people need to see their own stake in an issue. But there's a larger problem that I think affects everybody, which is

what does it mean? What are you here for when it comes to your purpose in life, and that's why our conversation with Abdullah, aka was so important because our activism is grounded in our snap.

And that means that if there's something immoral that's going on, then it's our business, right? That our the geography of ourselves and the geography of our affection goes beyond the borders of my skin. And I care about people across the world. And I care about them in not just a wishy washy way. And not just a self interested way, these my tribe or the my people or whatever, but I care about them in a metaphysical way, that I am concerned that the Creator of the heavens and the earth is going to hold me accountable for allowing this evil to persist, or at least not speaking out against it. That's another level. Right? So that sort of is the deep work that needs to be done. Shaman

booth asks about tips or focusing on soda. That's a whole topic, we'll probably get to a lot of a lot of later in the book about our habits, but I think

lots of people have compared it to a marathon. Okay, any sort of

exercise, you need a stretching period, a warmup period and a cooldown period, you can't expect to just flip it on like that, right? It's not a light switch, you're for sure, or your focus is not a light switch. Okay, so the longer that you build the runway up to your Salah, and the longer your runway down from Salah is you give yourself more of an opportunity to prepare yourself to be focused in

me to ask am I an author, I write lots of stuff all the time.

Sss I understand the impact of demonstrating, but many of them are done for a long time and guessing them means protests. Were at least two people missing their prayers. Now that's not true. Now there's there's many protests where people they built in prayer. And that's exactly what Abdullah and the protests that he's doing, specifically set aside time for prayer. That is, this is exactly what I was talking about when I said that the only things that I've seen that are objections to protesting Islamically are all incidental features that can easily be averted or removed, such as mixing with the opposite gender, or missing your prayer. That's an argument for Muslim organizations

to be organizing the protests in the first place. Because if you take them over, then you're going to be building in time for prayer, then you're going to be, you know, building in sort of gender segregation and sort of Islamic norms into those sorts of things.

When did I revert 2010 that can be seen elsewhere?

Lots of good questions flowing in now.

And my thoughts on iCj, like I said, I think it's more symbolic than anything. I think it's more of sort of helping continue the isolation and the pariah status of Israel, but I don't expect any actual enforcement.

Most of our international institutions are being made a mockery of such as the UN ICC, the ICJ all the all of them, they don't really have any enforcement mechanisms. They'll never bring a power like the United States to task for the invasion of Iraq are the other crimes that have been committed. So they probably aren't going to do anything about Israel. However, this could be the building of a political will for something else down the road. So we encourage it.

And you say that is about my paper on feminism? Nope, not out yet. It's in the works still.

It was actually very difficult to want to write about it when everything started happening, or the escalation, the most recent escalation and Philistine but hamdulillah recently I found a way to talk about both at the same time, so inshallah it's moving again.

Give us another couple of minutes. See if there's anything back here.

attain your pain and stay persistent with it. Shame asks

sacrificed for the sake of Allah, that's the quickest thing I could say that the more you sacrifice for Allah, that the more you will trust Allah. It's basically like if you've ever and I've never I've never actually done this in real life, but I've, I'm aware of the phenomenon of, you know, these team building exercises where you like, you fall backwards and you have someone catch you, right? That's for what it's to build trust, okay. And once you've done it five times, then you trust that the person is going to catch you. Well, you have to do that with Allah, you actually actually have to do things in your life where you simulate that sort of thing with a lot of fun to put

yourself out there. Make yourself vulnerable in a certain way leave a job leave a friendship leave something for Allah and watch Allah catch you and watch Allah save you and watch Allah elevate you and then you you'll there's no turning back from that

Maldives, masha Allah.

I would love to visit the entire OMA everywhere. Much love for everyone in the OMA all across the globe.

Okay, I'm seeing mostly repeats. Very good. Excellent. Well, thank you everybody for your excellent participation, your questions.

Now, when we meet again next week in sha Allah, we're going to attempt to check in again, see how our habits are going. I'm going to challenge myself to continue to try to wake up without the phone. Or at least even if I have to rely on the phone's alarm to not check any sort of messages or anything until at least I've prayed measure. We're going to also try to challenge ourselves to pray night prayers, even if it's just to record before February, just a wake up on the early side of February. If you're sick, you have extenuating circumstances, of course, you know, but have the goal that when you become healthy again, that you're going to get back on this habit just like was the

habit of the Prophet Muhammad sai Saddam and we will check in with you next week. I hope everybody has a blessed week and I lost bone to other help our brothers and sisters all across the world all over the Ummah and to have mercy on our martyrs and to cure our sick and to assist us all. Particle V comes back from him like a shaman, Lila and iStockphoto will take until next time, salaam alaikum.