Tom Facchine – Everybody Has To Choose

			So everybody has to choose at the end of the day, you know, sometimes we wonder, we sit back and we
see, oh, this person was born into a Muslim family and they had a decent upbringing. And, you know,
even the family tried to impart, you know, the guidance of Islam on the person, they ended up not
practicing, or even leaving the faith, when they're older that that can happen, that's within the
realm of possibilities for what can happen. And then you find somebody who, you know, is the
furthest thing from Islam, they have absolutely no exposure to it. And then at some point in their
life, they come across it even in a very, very small and distorted way. And then it ends up they end
		

			up going down the rabbit hole and becoming a muslim and you know, changing their entire lives, which
just goes to show that this thing, it can't be inherited, right guidance can't be inherited, it has
to be chosen and who chooses it and who doesn't has to do with the several factors, but probably the
most important one is the purity of your heart and your intentions, right? If you're sincerely
looking to be guided, Allah is gonna guide you, right, no matter how long it takes, or no matter how
kind of
		

			twisty and then turning the the road to guidance is, eventually law is going to bring you to the, to
the right place, whereas a person who they have no intention to be guided, you know, they don't
really care there, they live in sort of the situation of neglect, right, then this is something this
is something else. So why would that person necessarily be deserving of guidance, oh, it gives
guidance to whom he wills, but Allah subhanaw taala, looks at your heart and sees the person who's
ready to receive it and wants to receive it and is yearning for it. And that's something that, you
know,
		

			a counterpoint to this, or maybe something that would specify this a little bit, or show where it
doesn't necessarily apply is one of the beautiful things about Islam is that you don't and Sheikh
Abdullah used to point this out as well, you'll find a lot of people who are very, very educated,
and other faith traditions becoming Muslims, you'll find Buddhist monks that have become Muslims,
you'll find you know, reverends, and pastors and preachers and things like that people have PhDs and
in the Jewish faith, or in the Christian faith, or various things, becoming Muslims, but it's
extremely rare. It's extremely rare to ever find somebody who is an actual scholar of Islam, right,
		

			someone with PhDs or master's degrees in Islam, leave Islam for something else. Very, very rare.
Usually, if you see somebody leave Islam, as someone who doesn't really understand what Islam is, in
the first place, somebody with a very, very poor understanding, and this has become a meme. You
know, it's like we at people are now asking people and even Google's in on the joke, how many raka
are in Surah Fatiha, right. And people answer, like I used to do, too, right? Those are the kinds of
people that in general, in general, leave Islam or people who experience a sort of very, very
cultural, overly cultural iteration of Islam and they have some sort of trauma, you know, from that,
		

			but it's extremely rare, you know, to find if you're talking about the people who have studied at a
systematic level, the faiths hamdulillah one thing that we can be proud of as Muslims is that it's
kind of one directional. Now, a lot of people who study seriously they they find Islam, whereas
very, very, it's very rare to find somebody who is extremely educated about Islam and then leaves it