Fatherhood & Islam

This one that I've done the marine hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala shuffled MBIA, Will. mursaleen they've been aliquot Latina Mohamed Salah was Quetta, slim, Allahumma alumna MA and Farah no one fat man Bhima Island Jenna was eaten and many other other anime we start with the name of Allah, all praises to Him when we give prayers and salutations upon the final messenger Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa salam, we asked the last pounds, our honor to teach us beneficial knowledge and to benefit us by what he teaches us, and to increase his knowledge. And

the topic for today is based off of a talk I gave at the ethnic convention, about fatherhood.

And fatherhood in Islam is an essential thing to understand, especially in confusing times, such as that we live in

the dominant society would have us believe that fathers are not important, or at least, are not essential.

There's a big shift and a big push to try to make every person substitutable for the other. To minimize and downplay the differences between men and women, to make fathers seem like they don't really have

an essential role to play when it comes to raising children. And now, even to birthing children a lot of most time. But of course, we know that Islam completely contradicts all of this. And so whether you're a man or a woman, it is important to understand about the role of fatherhood, just like it's important to understand the role of motherhood because each of us comes from a father and a mother. And each of us has an inheritance. Now we derive from what our parents gave us, and each of us attempts to improve upon the inheritance that we were given. I don't think any single one of us will be content to just be as good of a father or as good of a mother, as our parents were, we

hope, the hope of everybody is to give our children better than what we have. So talking about the father, the father is the foundation builder. And that's the idea that we're going to revolve around tonight. But before we get into what it means to be a father, understanding what is a father, what's the role of a father, what's the purpose? Why do we need fathers? What are they good for? What are they have to look out for? We have to talk about gender first because you can't be a father, if you don't have a very, very important thing and that is being a male. Gender is something that is a fundamental aspect of the creation that ALLAH SubhanA wa automate. He says yeah Yohannes in a HELOC

on El Camino, Corinne Wanda, which are under commercial Obon mokaba Lolita Ara fu we actually recited this ayah today in Joomla. Okay, Allah aspirins Otto, the creator said oh you people, certainly we have created you from male and female. Okay, so this is exhaustive categories. There's no third category here. The last round Tala also says what mean cliche in Hola, Karna Xiao Janie La La Quinta cone. Everything that we have in the universe is created in pairs, in the pairs of male and female and ALLAH SubhanA. Allah tells us in this particular eye, that it's done with a purpose, Allah Allah come to that karoun So that perhaps you would give thought, so that perhaps you would

consider and ponder upon this reality and what the purpose is. Now Allah Spano Dada says, and another I will enter who hada xojo Janey at Sakura. While Omega may not have attained either tuna, he says that and He is the One who created as XO, Jane and Islam listed rock origins in Arabic, if you put the olive and lamb before something, it exhausts the category. Okay, if you say, for example.

In this case, let's just go with this example. Allah subhanaw taala says as XO Jane, the two parents, meaning there's not any third option available listed raka gems intelligence, there is no third category available. One of those two categories of being another existence Allah says and DECA while on. And he says later. And while he said that rocaille entre and the male is not like the female? Are these things, human constructions? Are they just things that we've invented for ourselves? Is it simply that you know, you have a boy and the boy has a certain anatomy. And then we taught him to play with balls and trains and cars. And then there's a female and the female has a

certain anatomy and we taught her to play with dolls and cetera, et cetera, therefore, that we're the ones who have created this gender and all these sorts of things. No lost pounds, Allah says I mean miltefosine either told them that there is an inseparable connection between your biological sex and your gender. This is something that human beings

I have universally recognized up until the last handful of years. Now all of a sudden is under question and under attack. But this is ancient wisdom that is borne out by logic, tradition, religion, and culture.

Why is it significant? Going back to the point that Allah said, Allah, Allah come to that guru, and hopefully that you would consider, hopefully that you would ponder this reality? Why would Allah subhanaw taala create us into genders? Why wouldn't he make us like amoebas or like other organisms that can simply pinch off a part of myself and reproduce?

The reason is because we have to depend on other people. And in that dependence upon other people, we find the arena in which we are able to better ourselves as moral subjects, as people who are expected to improve ourselves to better ourselves. You've heard of silos and echo chambers, right? Everybody, you know, when it comes to social media, somebody disagrees with you, and you unfollow, and you block and you bad, you do all these things until you're surrounded with only people who agree with you. Right? Well, what if we reproduce that way? What that's the ultimate echo chamber, that's the ultimate silo to have. You don't need anybody else. You don't need to negotiate a

different culture or a different temperaments or a different personality. Right? You just simply make a clone of yourself, how peaceful would that be? No arguments, right? That's not what Allah subhanaw taala wanted for us, he wanted us to have to have a different gender constructed differently constituted differently for us to negotiate everything, sometimes too much, but everything why? Because in that negotiation, and in that struggle is purpose in that negotiation. And in that struggle is moral edification, we become better human beings. If we do it, right, we can do it wrong, we can screw it up, we can actually become worse human beings if we fall into this vise

and that vise, but if we do it right, it will actually lead to our improvements. And it will ultimately lead to our salvation. There's somebody who, you know, they're not Muslim, but they're female, and they have a podcast, that's called maiden mother matriarch. And the idea behind her podcast is supposed to give to show that every woman has a certain trajectory in life, okay? That you start out as a maiden, right? Because I can say an hour of somebody who is right, they're not married, they don't have any experience, you know, with opposite sex, they don't have family of their own, or somebody's daughter. But then you're not supposed to be arrested in that stage of

development for your entire life, you're supposed to graduate. What's the next stage in your life, the next stage is to be the mother You be you get married, okay. And then you have a family, you have responsibilities, and then you have a different social role. But that's even not where it ends. And beyond that your kids grow up, you know, they move out or, you know, they start to take care of you. And you graduate to becoming the matriarch. Now, you're in charge. Now you're giving guidance, now you're helping with the grandkids, these sorts of things. This is what structures human purpose, okay? This is what makes life purposeful, to know what your role is to know where you fit in. If you

take somebody and you if they never graduate from one role to the next, you will find that the fits rather the innate sort of human personality, we, we see something wrong with that. There's something that you know, that hasn't happened, that should happen, it'll become more apparent when we talk about men. So basically, I tried to think if we had a male equivalent of this from the maiden mother matriarch, what would it be? And I came up with and maybe you can help me if you have a better term, I came up with ELP, from from editorial, write out, Father, elder, okay, you start out as the out, you're the person who's the warrior yourself. You're, you know, you're you're in training, you're

not fully you know,

you're not fully responsible, but you have some sort of role, then you graduate to become a father. That's straightforward enough. And then finally, you become the elder we don't want to use patriarch because people are allergic to that term these days. But you become the elder now you're giving guidance now you're sort of being the the older person like Holly demeanor and the truth, you guys watch our show, I can get you, you know, analogues. If an individual does not follow the trajectory, or they get stuck in one of these roles. It's not dignified and actually takes away from their dignity. Right. Within non Muslim circles, you go to the bar, and there's nothing sadder than a 40

or 50 year old guy at a bar trying to pick up some young girl, right? Doesn't happen and happens all the time. But it happens at one Genesee tonight, right. Why is it embarrassing? Why is it we say

be creepy or cringe these days. Why? Because by that time that person is 40, or 50, they should have been past that stage, they should have been responsible, they should have a family, they should be worrying about their livelihood and their kids and what's going to happen, they shouldn't be at a bar trying to pick up chicks. That's disgusting. And the same thing, if somebody tries to hold on, like, sometimes maybe we can give an example for men and for women, you're in your 60s or 70s. Okay, but we see them in this economy, that's not very good. Right now we see them maybe, for example, they have to have a job, they have to work there at the grocery store. Okay. They're clearly someone

who should have retired already. They're clearly someone who needs other people to take care of them. But in our society, where family structure has been destroyed, and social bonds have been destroyed, and everybody's kind of off by themselves, very individualistic society, we see a person who's arrested in their development, they're arrested in their progression, they should be the matriarch or the patriarch of the elder, they should be somebody who's taking care of the grandkids and sipping tea on the porch. They shouldn't be at a grocery store working a minimum wage job. Right, this is undignified. And so this is exactly why it's important to understand your role as a

man or as a woman. What are the stages that you should go through what to expect from each stage, and how to traverse the path from one stage to the next in a peaceful and successful manner. So this is just focusing in this talk today is only focusing in on one stage for the men. And that is the stage of the Father. So we're leaving the stage of the app, which is pre fatherhood, that we'll talk about what you need to get into fatherhood. And we're leaving the stage of the elder, which is not post fatherhood, but you understand you're graduating to another sort of sphere. There's two things that you need. And it's significant here that to be a father is not something that you get to

identify as, right. I identify as a father even though I don't have any kids. So people might say these days, no, you actually need something to happen to you in order to be an actual father. Okay, those two things are marriage and children under the law, okay. When it comes to marriage, marriage is something that is praiseworthy, and is something that is according to some of the roadmap and obligation but it's definitely a stressed sunnah. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he said Maria mashallah Shiva Minister Tara Minco Melba speleothems Oh, watch for in the whole in the whole vaudeville little bustle were asked on a limb from she said he was talking to the young guys said,

Hey, young guys, whoever from among you can get married and get married. Because it is a humble little buzzer I mean, it's more likely that you're going to be able to lower your gaze and not look at things that you shouldn't look at, well, axon, Farage. And it's going to be more protecting of your private parts, meaning you're not going to sin. You're not going to act on your lust. So marriage we see is the solution the halal permissible solution for all of the desires that you have the young men here I see that in future you guys are going to be there soon. Okay, when you go through puberty, and you start talking about girls in Oh, Mashallah. Look at her. Right? You're

going to be if you're not there already. Just give it a year or two, you're going to start to be interested in girls. Allah subhanaw taala gave you the way to deal with that. What's the way to deal with that as marriage, not having a girlfriend or having a boyfriend? I haven't secret admirers or you know, Valentine's Day. Forget all of that. It's too when you're old enough. You're responsible. You go up to the house you talk to the father insisted on why they come here I am. Here's what I'm about. Here's what I intend. And this is what I would like to et cetera, et cetera. That's how a man does it. Okay, so this is half of our deen the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said half of our

deen we can skip the narrations. But that's a very, very well known thing. Why is it half of our deen? Why would the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam say that getting married is half of your deen

because it brings you into this relationship. And that relationship as opposed to purify. Okay, that's the same thing. We started out saying the whole wisdom behind creating us in two genders in the first place. You can't go it alone. You can't get better by yourself. You need someone to call you out on your stuff. And there's no one who can call you out on your stuff better than your spouse. Because if you come to the masjid, or if you put yourself on Instagram, or if you put yourself on social media, you can play the angles. You can make yourself look a certain way. You can tell people anything you can seem pie as you can seem wealthy if you want you can seem more powerful

or connected than you are but when you go home to your spouse, your spouse knows exactly who you are. All your shortcomings, all your strengths, all your weaknesses, and so there's no way to hide from it. That intimate relationship

It has accountability built into it. And we need that accountability. Because if we didn't have that accountability, we just had relationships with everybody the way that we have relationships here and the messaging, then we would have a lot of things that we hide from people. And we would have this, this hypocrisy, and how we conduct our affairs. So even though sometimes you find people they say marriage is just a contract. And it's true that when it comes to the history of Islamic law, and the religion that and they wrote about marriage as technically a contract, but that describes the bare minimum of what it has to be, and not the aspiration and ideal of what it can be, because the

aspiration and ideal is that marriage is a means to Paradise, and a means to transformation. So that's only one ingredient to become a father, you got married, you're halfway there. Okay, like some of my friends from the University of Medina who are married, but they don't have kids. I say, you know, yeah, I take three weeks to respond to you. Wait, you'll figure it out. When you guys get kids that will be a different story. Right? The second is children. Okay, the second ingredient is children. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Teresa will Julie will elude and Sue's me Allah doodle valued. In Nemo Catherine de como, envia Yama, PM, he actually encouraged us to have

children. And we don't have to worry about overpopulation or these sorts of things. That's a scarcity mindset we believe that Allah subhanaw taala will provide doesn't mean that we waste doesn't mean that we pollutes, but we believe that Allah subhanaw taala will provide here the prophesy sort of says, marry, a beloved and a childbearing woman, he's talking to the men here, because I will be the most numerous or we will be the most numerous. He said, He will be the most numerous of the prophets, and we will be the most numerous of owners on the Day of Judgment.

Having children is something that brings us into again, the same idea as marriage, it brings us into yet another level of responsibility, you won't get it until you see that baby in your arms, that innocent baby who doesn't have any way to provide for itself or defend itself or anything, all of a sudden, you are responsible for that baby.

Whether it's sick or healthy, whether it's you know, going to succeed or fail, it's your responsibility. And the second one that reality hits, you're a different person. You're a completely different person than the little life you have after being a father to the life that you have before being a father completely different.

So marriage brings you into this role and this relationship of improvement and accountability and transformation. Having children brings you even further in, which is why homosexual relationships are so condemned, same sex relationships are so condemned in Islam, and let's say it as well, masturbation is so condemned in Islam, It's haram, all these things are impermissible. Why? Because Allah subhanaw taala gave you all these tools to bring you into this relationship for your own salvation and transformation. And you're going to squander it.

You're going to somehow use it for evil, you're going to use it in some purposeless way. It's like if somebody gave me young men, you guys like cars. You like cars? Yeah. You like cars? What's your favorite car?

Porsche, Porsche, okay. You gave you get rich one day Insha Allah, you're gonna be a famous football player, famous soccer player. And you remember your old Imam Tom. And you're gonna give me a Porsche. All right. Now, what if I got the Porsche and I just let it sit in the driveway.

I never took it out anywhere. I never drove it anywhere. I just left it there.

Could anybody say that I was grateful for this gift. Now, or what if I took the Porsche even worse, and I hooked it up to a plow.

I got a ball hitch on the back. I hooked it up to some farming implement, and I'm off roading. You know, I'm on my farm and I'm, you know, I'm using it to plow the fields. This is ingratitude. Right? I took the gift. The gift is supposed to be used in a certain way. And I totally wasted it. What's the point? Well, same sex relationships and even masturbation are the exact same thing. And there's a few other things within how you know, we have prohibitions from certain things that we can do that I won't mention here. But all of these things are the same. You're taking the gifts that Allah subhanaw taala gave you to be used in very specific ways to apply to very, very specific E means and

ends and purposes, and you're totally wasting it. defeating the purpose entirely. That's why it's haram. And that's why it's ridiculous, and that's why we care about

out these sorts of things. You have to try to bring yourself into this realm of responsibility for your own good for your own salvation, transformation, accountability, marriage, children, this is the way this is the Sunnah. And it's the way of dignity as well.

Good. So if we see if we want to personify this a little bit, we can look to one of the characters that was brought up in the Quran. When you see Musa he said, Musa alayhis salam is one of the most frequently mentioned individuals in the Quran, and we're able to see a lot of different

parts to his sort of plot his character development, if you will, or his plot arc. We see that he starts out somewhat like the troubled youth. Okay, he's in Egypt has people are oppressed. Okay.

He has someone from his tribe who's getting in a fight on the street. Could it it could have been Utica. Right, two guys fighting on the street, different gangs. He calls out to Musa Hey, Mohsen, come and help me out here. I'm getting jumped. What is Musa do Musa jumps in on the side of his of his bro is gang members. Yeah, this is us. Team Ben as far either Let's go. Throwing gang signs or whatever. I don't know. All right.

There's an analogy to be made there. That's all I'm saying.

Then he gets it. So it's he overstepped the bounds he hits the guy and he accidentally kills Okay, then, and he regrets what he did immediately. The following day, same character, same situation. Now he knows better. Right now he sees this person is no good, even though he's from my tribe. And that's how Musa breaks free from the logic of tribalism and gangsterism, that truth isn't in your tribe. Truth is in obedience to Allah, Spano dada. So that's where he starts from. Okay, that sort of situation. And then Okay, so he's got now a rap sheet. He killed somebody. It was an accident, but he killed somebody, he asked to flee. He goes to Medina and he goes far out. And what does he

come in contact with? There's two young ladies who have a flock of animals or a herd of animals that need to water their animals. There's a bunch of tough dudes around that they don't want to get mixed up with. And so he takes them the whole flock and he brings them he waters them. And then like a top G, like a sigma male, he sits down on the sit in the shade and just kicks it and relax. What a boss move, right?

Look at the development, look at how being in just that situation, that relationship. He's not married. He doesn't know them. But he there he sees young women that are vulnerable and he steps up to protect. That's a man. He's got what it takes and look at the nobility that I drew out of him. He didn't want praise. He didn't want money. He didn't want anything. He put himself in that relationship. And he rose to the occasion and brought it out of him. Okay, then. Okay, so fast forward a little bit. The father of the two girls sees this virtue says, Hey, Mary, either one of my two daughters, they would work with me for a little bit. Okay. Then when it's time to leave.

He's fully transformed. He's father motion now. And so even more virtue is brought out in him and one of my favorite ads that shows the progress of Musa there's two of them, but only one of them is relevant to this talk. When he comes in there in the desert, and he sees a fire from far off. What does he say? If Ron Ron Safaga Leah Holly, on coastal in ni en us to now en la li te caminhada de tava sin Oh Agito Allah Nari Buddha, think about it. Now let's think about it. Musa is in the middle of nowhere. Okay. There is no lights, there's no electricity. There's no police. There's no grasstops there's no rows. This is like surreal. There could be bandits. There could be lions at

that time. There could be anything. And he sees a fire. He doesn't know who who's at that fire. It could be someone who's going to kill him. It could be someone who wants to kill his whole family take everything that they have. And what's his reaction? Family, you stay here? I'm gonna go see what's going on. That's a father. That's what fathers do. Look at what it brought out of him self sacrifice, protection, courage, nobility. So we see the story arc of Musa is really an amazing thing. And it's amazing in several several ways. But this is just one way the virtue is required of you but the situation also drags it out of you. And that's what fatherhood is all about. What are

the virtues that both it takes to be a father and that fatherhood is supposed to drag out of you

being trustworthy and being truthful is one of the main things.

Right? Allah subhanaw taala sent me in on what Medina brugia alone and saw that too. Now I had Allah Allah

From the believers are men.

He says Men Reja Sadako. Now I had to Allah Ali, who they lived up. And they were true to what they promised the loss of Hannah with.

In addition to being truthful and trustworthy is sacrifice we already talked about Musa and the fire. We've seen other examples such as Musa in our world, and in our contemporary issues. remember some of the images that come through with the refugee families. Remember, there was that one father, I forget where he was from, but he had the famous picture of him getting out of the boat, he has his kid under his arm. And eventually, I think he was selling pens somewhere, right? These These, these images that go viral, and they're on the front pages of newspapers and things like that. The heroic things that fathers do every single day, it takes sacrifice. Every single father, I'm sure, would

gladly take on pain themselves than to see their children in pain. That's the type of thing that fatherhood is made of. Think about and maybe many of you have examples, and I have example from my own father, if your father had a job, that was hard, that was degrading, that didn't earn him any respect. Your father would go to that job every single day. And he would, even with a smile on his face. Just to know that he was putting bread on the table for you.

That's a foul.

You have to be patient. You have to sacrifice and you have duties. You have the duty to protect and a loss of power. The artist says that if we don't protect that he means the man.

Then there would be well Lola def Allah He knows about the Homi Bhabha, the Mad salami will be our own. That was our salah, too. And what massager do we use Qaddafi as Smola he had cathedra. If there weren't meant to protect, then we would not have a single monastery, we will not have a single synagogue, we will not have a single church, we will not have a single mosque.

And if you want to look at something amazing. You can't find any verse like this in any other book of Revelation. You go to the Bible, you can go to the Torah, you go to the Vedas, or the Bhagavad Gita, you can go to any book, any book, you're never going to find a verse like this. Because Allah subhanaw taala says specifically, it doesn't just say Emma said, that would be like us, okay, we get it. He says, specifically, he says the words so there will be churches and synagogues and monasteries, and massage and mosques. If there weren't men that protect then these things would all be destroyed because there are people unfortunately in this world that want to destroy the good and

the men are here to stop that from happening. But protection goes beyond just physical protection and protection in this life. It also comes to the afterlife as well. Allah subhanaw taala said yeah, you know, who and physical leave from neuron Nakoda nests are the major. He said, Oh, you people who have believed protect yourselves and your families from the Fire, whose fuel is people and rocks or stones? This is part of why the father Ibrahim Ali salaam, as was so wicked, because he took the role of a father and he failed on both counts. He inverted entirely. The father is supposed to protect you physically. And I suppose that which is why we don't something like abuse. parental

abuse is something that is haram. Because you're supposed to protect people physically, but you're also supposed to protect them spiritually. You're supposed to protect their afterlife. And what was the father of Ibrahim idea? He said I'm doing. He was failing on both counts. He was failing on the second count, by making idols with his own hands, telling his people to worship these idols. And then when his son challenged him, what did he say? He said, If you don't get out of here, I'm going to stone you to death. I'm going to kill you.

What type of father is that? He failed on both counts. So fathers are supposed to protect and they're also supposed to provide a la speranza Asada jello Kawagoe Nalani Sabby my father Allah Allahu Allah Amala about what the man Saku mean and worry him.

Allah azza wa jal, he said that men have a degree of responsibility and authority over women. Why it's conditional, because of what Allah Subhana Allah has given them that he hasn't given the other. So mostly, most scholars, they interpret this to mean strength and physical ability, the ability to protect that we were just talking about while we met un*able mean I'm wearing him. The second thing because of what they

spend on that. And many other automat have said if you fail to spend on them and if you fail to protect them, then you're a woman is not as or who demands that you don't have that degree of authority or respect because unfortunately, unfortunately, we find that some men these days are so called men.

They want all of the authority, and all of the privileges of being this type of man, the aspirational man that Allah subhanaw taala calls us to be, but they don't do any of the things that are required for them to deserve.

Every privilege in the city are has a corresponding duty.

We don't think there is no class men or women that's just just privileged. And it doesn't work like that. Every privilege has a corresponding duty has a corresponding responsibility and expect or to one's privilege without fulfilling your duties as a crime. And as not obedience to Allah spawn Tada

with our protection, and our provision that men and fathers are supposed to provide, there is a spiritual risk. And that spiritual risk is that we become too attached to the dunya at the expense of our afterlife. And this is the context in which a lot about Allah says, in a mean and wily coma as well as you come fitzer Is that some of your spouses and children are a test for you. Meaning that if we if you go you can find people that all they care about is protecting their children protecting their children protecting their children to the or we just say at the expense of their religious obligate obligations, where men and fathers are supposed to find that balance. Allah on

the other side of feeble utin and then Allahu and Saurfang. Well, you've got a fee how smooth you said the hula hula fee will be we will do we will also all Bridgette in these houses that Allah spawns ANA has permitted or has raised, in which his name is remembered and praised and glorified in mourning and knights who's in their rejet men law tell he him tiara, their trade and commerce does not divert them while they are on and their sales do not divert them on the thriller.

It doesn't let them get carried away or become their exclusive focus such that they forget to remember a loss of power to Allah. What a farm is Salah Italia is a cat and the establishment of prayer and the establishment of there's a cat Yeah, ha foreigner, Yo, man. They fear the Day of Judgment. So the father and the man has to be balanced. Yes, we protect Yes, we provide. But we also aren't just materialists, we're not only providing materially and unfortunately, sometimes you find that there are fathers in the Muslim community that only focus on this aspect at the expense of the other the expense of setting up your children for their religious education and their religious

practice and their religious obligations.

The main point and we'll come back to it right now, before we make it to the I think the last part of this talk is that the privileges that we have as men and as fathers are not to be eliminated. Rather they're a test.

Allah is bound to Assad will leverage Ali Ali hinda Raja Wallah who has even Hakeem men have a de Raja, a degree of authority of privilege, whatever you want to say over women.

Why the purpose is so that we wield this privilege justly. We believe in just power in Islam, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wielded just power he was the just ruler, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, seven types of people who are going to have shade on the day of judgment where there is no shade. The one of them, he said is the just rule or just because you have power and privilege does not mean that you are guilty.

Unlike what some people think, these days, but what matters is how you use your privilege and how you use your authority. You can be the source of much good if you use it justly. And if you facilitate not only the interests, the worldly interests, but the afterlife interests of the people under your authority, as well. Of course we know that as men, there are obstacles in the way of us doing this work. There are obstacles in the way of us wielding our privilege and our power in a way that is facilitating to our womenfolk and to our children. And we're going to outline some of those obstacles because they're very, very important to be aware of. One of the obstacles is that we live

right now, in a world that is at war with men.

We do we live in a world that is at war with men it's also at war again.

As women, but it is in a different way at war against men, the worst thing that you can be, and maybe many of you are not aware of this stuff. But for those of you who are tied to higher institutions of education, we maybe see a little bit more of it. To be a sis hat male, is the most evil thing that you could be the most privileged. Okay, if you don't know what that is, bless your heart to be a cisgendered, which is the fancy way of saying your sex is your gender, heterosexual, which means to say that you're doing things right. And a male is to be assumed by our society to have an evil amount of privilege and power that you cannot possibly wield justly. And so the

totalitarian solution to that is to try to strip people from their privilege and take them away from any sort of ability to act responsibly. We see this in school may see that many of our schools if you go to, again, higher education, we see that it is disproportionately favoring females, when it comes to even just the whole setup of sitting down and writing and obeying and these sorts of things that come much more easily to women than to men, especially from a young age, we see that women and girls tend to do much better in the American schooling system than boys and men do, especially God forbid, your boy has some sort of, you know, is on the spectrum or anything and needs to move around

and doesn't like to sit down and these sorts of things. In another time and another place, these were seen as praiseworthy behaviors for boys. In our particular society, where we find ourselves, these are things that get you sent to the principal's office.

A more pervasive enemy of us as men and fathers, is right here in the sand,

the smartphone,

the smartphone and social media is one of our most trenchant and dangerous enemies as men.

it cheapens the value of our wives in our eyes, every haram thing that you look at. And it's not always a matter of intention, though, sometimes it is. But it doesn't matter what you're doing, the algorithm is going to throw you something because everything as we say, Sex sells, the things that get clicks, the things that get views, the things that get shared, or up scrolls, or how whatever metric they use to measure these things. And they do measure these things, is the female body. And so men have to be extremely, extremely careful and vigilant when it comes to these sorts of things. If you need to make sure that your social media account is not just yours, but also your spouse's or

not just yours, but somebody else in your, in your, in your family, or a good friend, a trusted friend, whatever you have to do, you're doing it and your afterlife is not worth it. You say that you're just looking, you say that you're just scrolling, but it's working on you. It's wearing you down. And it's eroding the value that you put in your wife. It's eroding the value and the time that you give to your children, how many people they're just mindlessly looking at their phone, that kid is trying to connect with them. And they're just like, what, what are you saying?

That's what this thing has done to us. There are people who are paid six and seven figures to figure out how to steal more attention from our eyeballs. That's their job. If we don't do something to fight back, then we don't really stand a chance.

To be a man in this world, it's very, very difficult to be a father, in the form that Allah subhanaw taala wants us to be father was responsible for others dignified father's taking care of our duties, facilitating things for others. We can't do it alone. Just like we said, with the phone, it goes for everything. We can't do it alone. So there are certain things that we have to do in order to make this successful. And in order to make this sustainable. One of those things, of course, the primary thing is to be connected with your Lord to be connected with a loss of power. There is no success and no triumph in this arena or any arena if you don't have a strong connection with a loss of 100

Dad, gone are the days when you could just do what your parents did and just be a normal Muslim and get by. There's too many enemies. They're too strong. They're too smart. They're too well funded. You have to actively work on your heart. You have to actively work on your sincerity you have to actively work on your connection with Allah is prone to auto measure yourself when you read. Do you ever cry over the Koran? Do you ever cry over your sins? Do you ever feel like you're not doing enough? These are? These are praiseworthy things. They show that your heart's alive. They show that you care and they show that your connection with your sustained

There is still there. The second thing that we can do that we need as as men and as fathers, is we need an ecosphere. Okay, we can't do it by ourselves. There is success in diversity. Every single one of us needs mentors. Every single one of us needs peers. And every single one of us needs apprentices below us. This is how it works together, you see the improvements that the young men experience when they have a believing soccer coach. That's just one example. You have all these young Muslim men who have a mentor who's also a Muslim, that can help bring them along, and they can grow so that they can graduate from one stage to the next. Every single one of us needs a mentor

like that. It doesn't matter what age you're in, and you're 40 or 50, or 60, or 70, you need someone who's 10 years or 15 years ahead of you, to tell you what's coming to help you look out for the dangers that lie ahead. And in order to give you good advice, just like you need peers around you to check you and to hold you accountable. How are things going,

you see that you're doing something on social media, you're doing something, maybe you're you're not taking care of something that you need to take care of, we need that type of accountability. And we also need people underneath of us who are willing to learn from us because that makes us act better as well, to know that we're responsible for someone younger, that's looking up to us who's copying us who's going to do what we're doing. That is how we try to raise or say rise to the occasion. There's a wonderful quote by Martin lanes. You know, he talked and it's it's very,

it's a very apt quote, before I bring it to that, I'll say one last thing is that we need it within these relationships of mentors and peers and apprentices, we need the freedom as men to be vulnerable. That's something that unfortunately, we don't have a lot of, and we'll say, even with our women as well, we need the freedom to be vulnerable, and not be punished for being vulnerable. Because as men, it's very, very difficult to be vulnerable with somebody else. When we're out there with the non Muslims with our TJ Allah with whatever we have, we have to be lions, we have to put on a stiff upper lip, as the British say, right. But we need to have people in our inner circle that we

trust enough that we can let our guard down. And that we can become vulnerable but with and we need to have that honored and not punished.

The last thing I will say and this is a quote from Martin lings. And it's relevant today, because we see where feminism has taken us and other sorts of things that our society believes in when they try to respond to the fact of privilege and authority by attempting to intervene systematically and removing that privilege and authority from men. Martin lings has a quote, or he says that, if a boy were to inherit the kingship of his land, and he finds that he has his father's ropes, and the father's ropes are much, much larger than he is. Rather than cut the robes to fit the boy, we must allow the boy to grow into the to fill the robes. And that's what we find with manhood and with

fatherhood in our society. Don't take these boys and try to stump them or try to take away the privilege or the honor or the power, whatever, you know, advantage that they have, whether it's an inheritance or whether it's in family or whether it's whatever, allow them to grow into that position and wield it morally in a moral way where they're actually going to be taking care of others. It's not an issue of systemic of system. It's an issue of morality. And if everybody inhabits their position in a moral way, then Allah's will will be done on earth and justice will be served. And Allah subhanaw taala knows best