Tom Facchine – Framing Contemporary Issues From An Islamic Perspective
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of balance, avoiding extremes, and staying balanced in contemporary issues. They also stress the need for caution and understanding of cultural differences, avoiding promises and errors, and avoiding labels. The conversation also touches on the negative impact of human sensitivity on society and the importance of avoiding cultural sensitivity and acknowledging it is a reflection of a human act.AI: Transcript ©
He made us a middle community or a middle path or a medium community, however you want to translate that. And that has several consequences when it comes to anchoring ourselves in making sense of contemporary issues.
Because in contemporary issues, you find yourself getting drawn to one extreme or another, right? Are you liberal or conservative? Are you red pill or feminist? Are you a bootlicker, or a *? Right, we have all these sorts of extremes. And we want to be anchored and we want to be in the middle, not some sort of contrived, fake middle, but the real middle,
the middle that loss opponent is going to be pleased with. And so we have to consider this when we're looking at these sorts of contemporary issues. Whereas the World Cup or any of these sorts of things that are happening, how do we stay balanced? And what are the two extremes that we're supposed to be staying in between as balanced people of faith? A couple of things that come to mind. Okay, we have here, Islam is a balance between affirmation and growth. I think that's a very important one these days, a lot of things, especially on social media and the self help culture and sort of the democratization of psychological language and psychological knowledge has led to a
culture of hyper affirmation, right? Everything that you do is okay.
You're you do you you live your best life, you cut off anybody who challenges you or you know, downplays your dreams or anything like that. Or let's be more specific, anybody who gives you any sort of challenge, or constructive feedback is being read as somebody who's toxic somebody who doesn't believe in you somebody who is holding you back. And so we have this kind of hyper affirmation culture where
the human self is identified with their desires. And so whatever you desire, whatever passes through you, you have to act on it, you have to express it, you have to do it. Just do it says Nike. And that's supposed to be your entire source of happiness. Right? This is very, very counter to Islamic Guidance, which says that we do not automatically trust our desires, right? Allah subhanaw taala says that written or decree for you is jihad. Even though it's distasteful for you, you don't like it? Right, wasa and Takahashi and right and it's possible that you could dislike something and it's actually good for you. And it's also possible that you could like something and it's bad for you.
Right? We know this if nobody lives their life, according to the modern sort of hyper affirmative credo, but we use it when it suits us, right? If you go to a kid, and if you like, atmosphere, if you got younger siblings, okay? If you offer them candy for dinner, or broccoli, what are they going to choose? Candy every single time does that mean it's good for them.
Now, if they have candy every single night, their teeth are gonna run out of their face, they're gonna have horrible health problems, diabetes, all these sorts of things, right? Just because you like something doesn't mean it's good for you. Even animals are like this. Some animals, for example, if you give them grain or hay, and they'll prefer the grain, but the hay is better for them, right. And yet, if you let them, they'll just keep on eating the grain eating until they even die. There's happens, right? And so we can't simply accept that our desires are 100% foolproof, that's who we are. No Allah is found to Otto says that our desires are methodically now there are
things that kind of pass through, almost like clouds pass over the sky, some of those desires that come from our own selves, some of those desires, they're whispered to us by the shaytaan. And the whole point of us being here in life is to interact with those desires, how are you going to interact with them? Are you going to train them and apply them in a good way? Are you going to push back and discipline them in order to be of benefit? Or are you going to just submit to him and say, Well, that's what I want to do. I'm going to do whatever I want. So I give more space to that, just because that's the moment that we're in. We're sort of in this moment of hyper affirmation.
Everybody's just talking about affirm everything, affirm everything from everything. And people, when they look to religion, they come in with false expectations, because they are chasing affirmation, right? They want to go to a religion that affirms them, they want to go to a community that affirms them, they want to hear from a preacher that affirms them. But life is more than affirmation, you need to be challenged sometimes. Right? I once had a friend who was a Christian, you know, he's kind of like an in law.
And he said to me one time, you know, I don't understand the point of going to church, I can just read the Bible on my own.
And my response to that, well, okay, if you read the Bible on your own, you're going to keep on going back to the same parts that speak to you that inspire you that you like the most. Maybe if you show up to church on Sunday, the preacher has something for you that it's difficult to hear, but maybe you really need to hear it. You maybe you really need to check yourself. And one of the last sort of places that we have in American culture that
sort of keeps this ethos has to do with sports in the military. Obviously, everybody knows I'm very, very critical of American foreign foreign policy. But when we're talking about military culture, this idea of challenging yourself, this idea of No, you can be better than what you are right now. And you should push yourself and you should keep on grinding and keep on looking for your edge and challenging your weaknesses and addressing your weaknesses and things like that. It's not completely dead in our culture, it's still there. But at sideline, this is not mainstream anymore. Right? The mainstream is sort of this hyper affirmation, so it's not as in between the two extremes. Okay.
affirmation and growth. Right, tell you, you're doing okay. But in the sense, how does the lost pounds oughta affirm us in the Quran, by telling us that ALLAH forgives, not by telling us that we're fine how we already are, by telling us that ALLAH forgives, and that's very, very different than the messages that we get in social media, and things like this, right? A lot of saying, Listen, you try your best, and Allah is going to accept it. And it's going to be okay. Not saying you know what, you're cool the way you are, you don't have to do anything. That's a completely different idea. And Allah always challenges us to be better. But the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam and his
sunnah, balanced between these two sort of sides between Toby, right, and sort of like, challenging people, encouraging people versus challenging people. So this is something that we have to do to be balanced.
Islam is also a balanced way between accountability and mercy. Very, very similar thing we have on one hand accountability, which is holding everybody accountable. Okay. Do we have any aspects or sectors when within our society now that go to an extreme with accountability? Yes, we do. Somebody go on social media, they find a tweet that you made 10 years ago, right. And it wasn't hip to the whole woke culture that exists now. And now you're gonna get doxxed. Now we're going to reach out, we're gonna, I'm going to tag your employer, or reach out to your employer and say, Yo, this person look into their problematic views that they have, they're a bigot, they're this they're that and try
to get somebody fired and put their livelihood in jeopardy for something that you don't even know if they still believe in that anymore. Right. Is this an extreme? Yes, that's that's an extreme. Right? That's an extreme accountability, that is way more fault finding an extreme than true justice. Right. And yet, we can't go to the other extreme, the other extreme would be sort of this well, we're going to accept everything from everybody just pure mercy that we might we might say that this extreme is kind of represented by the whole God as love doctrine, right, that some of the kind of cultural Christians have today. Well, God is love. Well, how do you Muslims, you know, believe in a
God that doesn't just love everybody. We believe that God loves everybody, but only to a certain extent, right? That love doesn't stand in the way of justice. Right? Because in reality, and you can look again to parenting is a very nice analogue, if I just spoil my kids and forgive and be merciful for every single thing, and never expect to give consequences is that love for them? That's not real love. That's fake love. That's phony love. That's false love. Sometimes when the situation comes for, there needs to be an amount of tough love. You need to have a consequence for your kids, so that they experience a natural sort of the natural consequences of their actions. So they learn. So
they learn. And so again, Islam is being balanced between this over accountability, hyper accountability, and the sort of extreme of mercy. Again, all of these are tied back to how we navigate issues, okay, just because somebody says something, and you don't like that person. Okay? You need to be charitable and fair enough to recognize the truth that that person says, even if you don't like it, okay, Andrew Tate post something and he spot on, okay? Even even a stop clock is going to be right twice a day. Are you going to use the example or that situation to score points? And say, well, he does this and well, yeah. Okay. Yeah, maybe you're right. But is that really the
way that we should be? Should we be dealing with what people are saying?
Or should we be using every single instance,
Assam as the balance between authority and independence, okay. We don't have the extreme submission to authority that, say, like the Catholic Church had, where I can't be forgiven for my sins, unless I go to confession and get the indulgences from the the father where it is, right or even there are some flavors of Islam that go to extremes with this. It's like,
you know, I can't do anything without the sheiks approval. Right. And if the sheikh says the jump off a cliff, I'm gonna jump off a cliff. The Sheikh says to invest in Bitcoin, I'm going to invest in Bitcoin, well, the sheikh doesn't know anything about Bitcoin. He might be a Wali, he might be, you know, a saint, but if he doesn't know finance, I'm not going to take his financial advice. It has nothing to do with his authority, right? We have a limit to authority.
And yet, so it has there's, you know,
Have a reasonable amount of authority. That doesn't mean that we go the opposite extreme and just sort of you know, as I was recently reading Fazal Romana this past few weeks, and just do away with all sorts of authoritative figures in a snap. It's like a robbery and even cathedra and, you know, Sahih Muslim and, you know, the the fifth Imams and all these people who know, way more than we do, about the Koran, about the Sunnah, we take their interpretation seriously, we don't just throw them aside cavalierly and say all these guys, you know, they were all
was what they were all
Historical Society, and they were just speaking for the interests of men. And, you know, they were kind of, or they were close to the ruler of scholars for dollars, these sorts of things that's very immature, and it's very sloppy. And that's not the way. Okay, so Islam is a median point, it's a middle ground between these two extremes, we have authorities that aren't to be worshipped as authorities, and they're in authority for a reason. Because they are the most skilled or the most able, right, and we rely on them in to a reasonable degree. Yet, we don't cross over to the extreme of being tethered to them. In an in an unfair and extreme way.
Islam has also represents a balance between cognition and virtue, right? So we're talking about sort of intellectualism. Okay, there are some people who treat Islam as if it's philosophy. And we saw this, we did a recent video on philosophy, and some people got really up in arms, you know, in the comments section, for various reasons for mutually exclusive reasons. And some people were talking about
philosophy is everything philosophy is thought is thinking is reason. So hold the horses, it's not true, first of all, and second of all,
why? Well, we say why can't that be true? Because Islam is less cognitive than philosophy is, okay.
There's an important virtue elements that needs to be introduced there. Whereas philosophy, at least the Western tradition of philosophy, is something that's all about reason and thought and logic and these sorts of things.
And morality is kind of downstream of that it's kind of derivative of that. We would say no, that Islam is a nice, happy medium between cognition Allah subhanaw taala tells us to use our reason tells us to think about things in the Koran. But at the end of the day, if you recognize the signs that Allah is prone to Allah has put in the creation are not, it's not a function of how much you know, and how smart you are. It's a function of how clean your heart is, and how virtuous you are. A law makes that clear in the Quran.
esotericism and esotericism, this whole idea about the rituals versus the feeling, right, we can't have one without the other. Okay, so we can't say that, well, I feel that I'm righteous in my heart. And I don't pray, right, that's phony, that's fake, right. But we also can't have the opposite where I come in, I pray five times a day, and I do everything to the tee. But my prayer is just mechanical. Right? Those are two extremes Islam is in between, you have to have both.
And we could go on but the important thing is to realize to not get again, all this is applied to attempting to stay balanced when we get into contemporary issues. Because once you get into contemporary issues, you're going to be tempted to get drugged down to one extreme or the other. Right. Hyper individualism, hyper collectivism, hyper accountability, we've got some people that, you know, speak poorly of white Congress, in the community in the Muslim community, right? They say all these guys, you know, they're privileged, and they need to check their privilege. And they're as if like, people are responsible for the wrongdoings of everybody with the same skin color, right?
And then we've got the opposite extreme, right. So these are just examples that we know when you're dealing with contemporary issues, you want to have an Islamic perspective, you want the sound to be your paradigm for understanding these things. One of the most important things is to not get dragged down to any of these extremes, to try to stay balanced in between.
brief detour for factors in life that lead to doubts and confusion, okay? And this is extremely relevant when we talk about how do we get sucked into the extremes. Okay, what's responsible for okay, we go down this path, this person's all the way they've down the rabbit hole on red pill, the gynocentric order and all this other stuff. I mean, I'm not trying to throw shade, but you know, it's like, you know, it, you can go down a rabbit hole and some people that that's all that they ingest in the media. It's like, okay, hold on, like, like, that's not the whole story. And then feminism is a similar rabbit hole, right? That's like,
to the point man, and people don't understand because, you know, I used before I was a Muslim, like, I studied feminism quite a bit. Okay, like, and I was a feminist, okay, like so I understood myself as one and I read Judith Butler and I read bell hooks and I read De Beauvoir and all these these folks and people don't get some of the stuff that's in radical theoretical feminism.
The idea that the
The best type of feminist is a lesbian, because she's more committed to women than she is to men. Right? You'll find this stuff in the books, you know, people don't get it, people think that just feminism is just about, you know, treating people equally. And you know, like, you know, having respect for women and voting rights, it's deeper than that, which is part of why feminism as a concept is not very useful term, because it's so imprecise, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But, you know, you can go down that rabbit hole. And you know, some people, you know, I think it was De Beauvoir who said that childbirth is inherently oppressive to women.
Childbirth is inherently oppressive to women, because it takes them out of sort of the wage economy, and they're not able to sort of have the sort of same privileges that men have, et cetera, et cetera. So how do we avoid why do we get pulled down into the extremes? You've got the extreme Red Pill guy over here? gynocentric order, then you've got the extreme radical feminists over here, who is on another sort of end of the extreme? How do they get there, and you know, the people there, they're Muslims, they pray five times a day, and they go to the masjid and stuff like that. And yet they have these convictions and these beliefs, how do we get here?
I think there's three,
there's three problems, or three factors that I want to touch on. And one of them is way more important than the other two,
post Christian problems. I think that's the real, real central thing that we're dealing with, as Muslims in North America. The second one has to do with popular perceptions of Islam, it does do work on us. And third has to do with poor representation of Muslims from ourselves, which also doesn't help things. We talk about post Christian problems, okay. There's a whole bunch of them, we have to realize that we're living in North America, we're stepping into an arena. Imagine, for example, there's some places in the in the country where you go up Southside LA, for example, and you're wearing blue, and you step on the street, and you're wearing blue. And that might get you
sharp, because you've got the wrong gang colors on right. Now. You just like blue, you're from Utica, or you're from Bosnia, or you're from, you know, Palestine or whatever, you just like the color blue, you didn't realize that when you stepped into this arena, blue means something. Right? And so you get taken out. Okay, then the next day, maybe you switch to red, and you think red is safer? Nope, red gets you in trouble with a whole different group, right? You're stepping into an arena where things mean certain things, and you're unaware. That's the situation of Muslims in North America, whether we realize it or not. We're in this arena, where people of European descent have
been reacting to Christianity, the excesses of Christianity and the excess over Christian over corrections to Christianity for centuries. And then we step in. And so we take a certain position, about science, about evolution, about the Big Bang about gender roles about all these sorts of hot button issues. And it means something so specific within the space. And it doesn't necessarily have to mean that from our tradition. That's their tradition. What do we mean? Okay, like, for example, we have if you go back to the opposition between science and faith, okay, this is a very, very clear one, the opposition between science and faith, you got a lot of people in North America that
understand these two things as conflicting. Right, I said that, well, I believe in science, I believe in things that I can see. Okay, well, you don't just believe in things that you can see. Right? You believe in love you believe in mercy, you believe in compassion, you can't see these things? Right? You believe in China, you've never seen it, you've never been there. Right? So there's, it's actually not a philosophically true statement, you believe in much more than the things that you can see. But you're saying that you only believe in things that you can see, because you're reacting to an abuse of Christianity has historically that said that? Well, you know, we have
a monopoly on the interpretation of this religion, and we're going to be able to tell you, whether you're in * or whether you're in heaven, and we're going to sell your spot and heaven. Right, the Catholic Church and the indulgences. You know, it's like, just give us a donation, and I'll give you your receipt and you can have your spot and heaven saved for you. That was what that was what they were doing. Right. That's what they were doing.
Subhanallah and then so Okay, so then the church has a monopoly, right? The church has monopoly over the interpretation of the of the text. It's very centralized. It's very top down and they say that, you know, it's a helium, assuming it's a geocentric universe, right? The earth is in the center of the solar system. And these things are true, and the earth is only this amount of years old. And then what happens in the Renaissance starts to get kickoff, and people are starting to get interested in science and experimentation. They're trying to they're getting data, and it's conflicting with what the church is telling them. Or saying, Well, hey, guys, oh, wait a second.
Well, have you thought perhaps that maybe it's possible that the sun might be the center of the solar system? Or it's possible that the Earth might be round and possible that all these sorts of things, maybe the Earth is a lot older than we realize? What was the church's reaction, burn him at the stake? off his head? We can't keep this guy around. Right? And then so you have this like, seriously North America.
In Europe, they're like a place of religious trauma. Like you've got people that are hundreds of years downstream of this and they have these things that they don't even realize they have these opposition's like, science is always like sticking it to the religious people, you know. And then the religious people are always trying to stick it to the sciences, whereas in Islam, we didn't have this opposition at all. We didn't have the best scientists, usually many, many times in Islamic history, were also very religious people, and actually were contributors within religious fields and been broached, and all these people, everybody knows, right? We didn't have this sort of thing. We
have a much more robust imperative in Islam to go seek knowledge and to experiment and things like that, because we have faith that whatever comes back from the Atilla right from the Ayat of Allah in nature, they're going to just confirm what we already have in the Quran. Right?
Allah subhanaw taala calls, you know, he references I think, a source of data to the benign and
with some benign our inner Lemercier own right, he says that and the earth, you know, we established it, and we are the expander of it. Okay, some people, they say, Well, maybe this is talking about the Big Bang as possible. Who knows, maybe we don't have 100% knowledge of what Allah subhanaw taala meant when he said that, but it's a it's a plausible interpretation, because it's really it's kind of strange that Allah describes the creation of the universe, and particularly the skies or the heavens as expanding, right? So we don't have this sort of opposition that we have. So what happens if you're a young Muslim person, you're growing up in North America, you go into the public schools,
your friend is an atheist, the person that sits next to you is an atheist. And they're like, Well, I only believe in science. I don't believe in any of that phony religion stuff. This is hundreds of years in the making. Right? This is from the trauma of Christianity, trying to be you know, very, very
dogmatic and we'll get there and top down and react, responding to certain things in the way that they did violent crackdowns, completely anti intellectual.
And people have a bad taste in their mouth as they should, as they should. But we as Muslims need to be careful not to get pulled into this opposition, because it's not ours. It's not ours. And it's not universally applicable across all space and time. This is just something that was experienced in Europe and America in relationship to Christianity.
Another sort of thing let's talk about and I bring this up as often as I'm allowed to,
we have the Doctrine of Discovery. Oh, well, let's, let's Let's start. Let's start back. Okay.
Westerners are very concerned that Islam was spread by the sword, right? This is a big sort of stereotype in Orientalist literature. Well, you know, convert or die. Take off my sword and say the shahada, Allah, Allah, Allah. No, you're done. Right? Aladdin, all these sorts of nonsense, right? This is the stereotype.
Was it historically true
of Muslims and Islamic lands? Of course, absolutely not. Anybody who's interested can look at the work of Dr. Richard Bullitt, and he's a PhD and a very prolific author that talks about the historical spread of Islam.
And how non violent it was. What are they reacting to? They're reacting to how Christianity was spread.
Christianity was brought to the sword of Christianity was converted or die the sign of the cross or Kucha, you're done. Right? the papal bull issued by the Catholic Church in the 1490s, the Doctrine of Discovery upon which the interaction with the entire Western Hemisphere was based. Any land belonging to a non Christian person is up for grabs.
Take it however you want, violence, non violence, whatever, take it.
People are going to come back I can hear the comment section. Now all that was long ago when you talk about stuff going on. Now, up until 2005. The Supreme Court is still referencing the doctrine of discovery. The Oneida Indian Nation here in central New York took the state of New York to court trying to get their land back.
And the decision was against them. Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the decision and cited the Doctrine of Discovery in her decision.
Can you believe it? And this is the second time it was done once before in the 90s when the fruit when the court when the court case first came on night versus Cheryl? Right? This is stuff that they keep on referring to. This is the history of Christianity. So who's got the problem? Right? And that makes it difficult for Muslims, because now people are treating us like a wall. So yeah, we know what this is. We know what you guys are up to. We know, you know, Oh, yeah. Mohammed had all these battles and stuff like that. We understand that entirely. Spreading it by the sword. Everybody dies except convert or die. That's the opposite scenario. You're talking about your history, not ours. So
we need to understand, we need to understand. And then finally, finally, you know, point to the Inquisition, right? Or the inquisitions. Okay, so we'll take again, it's not as spread by the sword as a phony lie. It's a myth.
What was spread by the sword Christianity? Okay, we all know Muslim Spain, right? We had a degree of religious freedom and tolerance and acceptance, pluralism, maybe in, in the lucea, between Muslims and Christians and Jews. And then when the Christian kingdoms kind of united and the Castilians pushed other people out, first the Jews, then the Muslims, and they had an inquisition, okay, they would actually torture people to find out what you really believed. And if you believed in the wrong thing, again, you're gonna die. And if you believe the right thing, then we'll keep you around. Okay, this is unprecedented. In the history of Islam, we never had an inquisition like this, at
least not in any sort of official way. And this has to do with the relationship between politics and the state and particular sort of totalitarian influences within Christianity that we don't have time to get to. But this is the trauma that we're talking about when we're talking about what does it mean to be a Muslim in North America, this is the space that we step into. Okay? People have these associations, this history is in people's bodies, even if they don't know the history in their minds, when they're reacting against something to to Islam, they have a prejudice against the slump, or they have a prejudice towards a certain mentality, right? Oh, we know how you guys treat women.
They're talking about their own experience. They're talking about Christianity. Oh, we got and we know how you guys treat religious minorities, we know how you guys spread your religion, what they're really doing is they're projecting their own experience upon us. And it's very, very damaging for us to take that on ourselves.
That gets into popular presentations, right of Islam, and how we can adopt if we're not careful, we can adopt to those popular sort of perceptions of Islam, and it can pull us down into these extremes. Okay, if you've internalized the idea that Islam is oppressive towards women, as the society in general, has a historical experience where Christianity was oppressive towards women, look at the statements of Paul, look at how women take the last names of their husbands. Look at how, you know, in medieval Europe, women were not considered legal persons, if they committed a crime, either their father or their husband were fined or jailed. Right. And so when we step into
this thing, we're asked to pick a side, we're asked to pick a side. And if we don't know our own tradition, our own history and our own faith, if Islam is not our paradigm, that we will get pulled into one extreme, or the other.
Those are factors that lead us to these doubts and confusions these things that pull us down that prevent us from looking at contemporary issues with from an Islamic perspective or with an Islamic perspective. Okay, so let's talk now about point number three questions to consider and methods for methods to use for dissecting contemporary issues. Okay, just a few important points we have dealing with the issue itself. Okay, and not sort of incidental aspects of it. We have understanding the difference between to ibid. And Talia,
we'll talk about in a second, understanding the difference between the legal and the ladder and understanding the boundaries of acceptable disagreement.
Okay, dealing with the actual issue, what's the ruling of protests in a sense?
That's the test case that I bring up, right? You've probably read affetto or aware of or aware of effects where that says that well, protests are haram.
Okay, well, why what what's the reason that protests would be not allowed. And then the reasons usually cited are, well, it could be rebellion itself, or an act of rebellion, or there's gender mixing, or there's other sorts of things, you know, this damage, damaging property, or these sorts of things, chaos, whatever.
In the United States of America, if you want to have a protest, you can go down to the police office, and you can fill out a form and get it approved, and then actually have the cops protect your protest, so that there's no sort of funny business going on. Okay, so what's the issue with fatawa, like this fence was like this, is that they confuse the issue itself for incidental things that might happen. That might happen along with it. Basically, to put it another way, is, what if we had a protest, where there was no rebellion where there was no destruction of property where there was no chaos where things were approved by the government and very orderly? What a protest be
allowed?
The answer is yes. Because it's free from all these sorts of things that you know, in the United States within political traditions in the United States. This is something that's normal. This is something that's accepted. It's even looked upon as something that's positive. Right? So how are we going to give something blanket you know, this is just an example of when you look into an issue, it's easy to get sucked into the incidentals? Okay, well, this happened with Bitcoin as well. Right? People Bitcoin
Then came along, and we're not going to talk about the actual financial structure of Bitcoin because that's outside of my paygrade. You can look at other scholars for that. But some of the fatawa that were coming out about Bitcoin were very, very bad fatawa
Oh, Bitcoin is used by criminals. And so it's haram, so you shouldn't do it. That doesn't make any sense. Criminals eat Cocoa Puffs for breakfast, I shouldn't eat Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. Right? That's not a valid reason to say that something should not be used. Okay, you have to deal with the issue itself. You don't deal with incidental things that happened to be along with it that aren't essential to it. Bitcoin is permissible or not, there's a whole bunch of things that are essential to it that we have to discuss to determine whether it's permissible or not. Any other contemporary issue is the same. But look at the issue itself. Don't look at who's saying, don't look at other
things that may or may not be present, right? You have this with the mela discussions every year. People talk about node, it's like, oh, well look at all the HUD on that goes on at the motor, there's dancing, and there's this and there's that there's tons of that don't have that. Right, you're dancing around the issue without talking about giving a clear ruling on the mode or whatever. The point is the process point you have to deal with the issue itself. Don't dance around the issue with all these incidental things, accidental things that might be present sometimes and might not be present. Other times, you have to actually deal with the issue itself. Second thing is understanding
the difference between the aboute and Talia. Okay, when we're talking about Feck, we're talking about Sharia. There are certain rulings that are tab booty means that they are done out of pure devotion. There's no asking. There's no questions. There's no ifs, ands or buts, right rock.
The Federal prayer is to record. There's no why. There's just to record, it's never going to be three. It's never going to be seven. Right? If you wake up feeling really pious and great. You don't get extra points for adding to it. fetcher is to is to add booty that means that that's something that we don't ask about. You can't really get why it just is the way it is. And that's how Allah wants you to worship him. All rules in the city are not toppity are some rules are Mirandola. Right? They're things that have Italian things that have a reason behind it.
And so if something has a reason behind it, then you assess the situation. If that reason is there, than the ruling is there if the reason is gone, and the ruling is gone. Like for example, at the time of the prophesy Saddam, he was asked about straight camels, right? Runaway camels. And at the time, he said, leave them because either their owner is going to catch up with them, or the wolf is gonna get it. Okay. When it came time to Earth man, time with man when he was the Khalifa, he reversed that ruling.
Even though that's a clear profit from the Hadith, there's a clip to me, that's a clear Hadith of the Prophet alayhi salam, he reversed the ruling. And he said no, we're going to gather up the camels, we're going to keep it kind of in a lost and found that we're going to we're going to benefit or try to find the owner or something. Because the circumstance was different. Okay, Medina had grown to be enormous. There were lots of people that were bandits that were thieves. Right? And so the situation was different, the ruling had to be different. So these are two types of rulings and you can't confuse one for the other. Okay. There's certain things for example, the the protest
example is another good example. Okay. People were saying that protests are haram because it's rebelling against the rulers. Okay, well, what if it's not rebelling against the rulers? Okay, what if it's a recognized thing of of expressing my dissent? Okay, is the prohibition of rebelling from the ruler something that's top booty or something? Why? Is it something that we just do out of devotion simply? Or is it something that has to do with a greater MCSA or a greater objective, which is the preservation of life, right, or muscle Aha, when it comes to kind of minimizing harm and things like this? If there's a rationale to it, then we have to enter into the the arena of
rationale to discuss it. We don't just treat everything like this is a clear cut hokum and we don't we can't have any further discussion about it. The next thing is talking about the difference between understanding the leader and the law, every single person has the leader. Don't be fooled by someone who has deleted from the Quran or listen, every single sect movement, heretical group has the legal right Dash has de Lille, okay, people who you know, go to the graves and worship the dead have deleted everybody has deleted okay? What matters is not just having the Leal but it's your Delilah. Delilah means does that delete or the evidence that you're using prove what you're
claiming? Okay, does it prove what you're claiming? And so understanding that is a huge point. A lot of discussions about contemporary issues people talk past each other and they talk past each other because they present the least they present evidence and they act as if the interpretation of it is self evident, or they act as if there's only one way to interpret it when the entire reason that you'd agree you disagree is you disagree about how to interpret the evidence. Okay.
The will go back to the motive example them
A lot of examples, a huge one, both sides completely talking past each other. Okay? All the folks on the Salafi side of the issue, say that, well, the the prophesy said I'm didn't do it and the Companions didn't do it. And so don't do it. Okay. And the other side says, well, we don't need a precedence for it, if we don't take it as an aid.
If it's not an act of worship in and of itself, we don't have to have a precedence from the Prophet it. So that's are the companions. And so there's an entire talking past each other. Okay, as opposed to
actually talking about the data and this particular eye or this particular Hadith and what it means and what it doesn't mean. Okay. And when you're in that arena, then you're actually talking about things. And the final thing, and this is a key component to all these discussions, is understanding the legitimate bounds for disagreement. Understanding what is legitimate interpretation, and what is illegitimate interpretation is the interpretation of the evidence that you're coming with linguistically valid. Does it adhere to coherent interpretive principles? Are you are you cherry picking, right? I've seen Western scholars Orientalist scholars that are Muslims, supposedly, they
throw away Abu Hurayrah on one page of their work, saying that Isha, you know, rejected his Hadith or challenged from or whatever, which is a half truth. And then when it suits them quotes, Abu Hurayrah, the very next page or two pages later, for a hadith that supports their agenda, okay, this is not being academically honest, this is not being coherent or cohesive and your principles, you have to if you want to be respected, with a conclusion that you've come to, through interpretation, you have to use coherent and consistent principles. If you're using valid and consistent principles, and it comes to an interpretation, then okay, we can have an agree to disagree, we can have an
agreement to disagree and understanding it's, that could be its own presentation entirely. But understanding what we can agree to disagree about is an essential part of coming together as an ummah, especially in North America, where we have so many different
types of Muslims. And honestly, you know, historically and Sheikh Hatem al Hajj talks about this, sometimes in his social media posts. Historically, it is regrettable that certain Muslim groups have used political power to eliminate even acceptable interpretations that aren't of their own. Okay, short of an inquisition sort of scenario, that, that, that we're not talking about that sort of thing. But we need to have the maturity to accept a certain degree of valid interpretation and valid difference, whether that comes to FIP, whether that comes to certain issues, contemporary issues, especially, we need to have the maturity to realize that we're not always going to agree. And we
need to be able to distinguish between people who are using valid and coherent and consistent interpretive principles from those who are not. And we can't shortcut the whole conversation by saying, Well, you're not really a Muslim, or you're an agent of the CIA, or you're just a motet, you're just an innovator. Or you didn't really study or you hardly speak Arabic, or you made a mistake reciting the Quran, right? Those are all cheap shots. And they're dancing around the issue. They're not how you have an intellectual debate or an academic discussion, you have to deal with the issue itself. And be prepared to agree to disagree and honor your opponent. And these sorts of
things.
Last point, common pitfalls and errors to avoid while tackling difficult ideas.
For we're gonna talk about four, although obviously, there's many more partisanship and sectarianism. So this is coming off just what we're talking about.
Avoiding partisanship and sectarianism is key to avoiding errors and tack, tackling contemporary issues. Don't be a partisan. We'll talk about what that means. elitism. Avoiding elitism.
context collapse. That's number three. And number four, has to do with rhetorical strategies and keeping focus.
Going back to the Andrew Tate tweet about the Disney movie.
You missed it, you weren't here. And here, we mentioned it. So
Andrew Tate tweeted with the lions haram about a certain
news headline that Disney's first movie with gay lead character bombs at the box office. So that's a Newsline that if people saw it, a lot of traditional Muslims if they saw it, they will be happy at that news headline, right? Good. Because Disney has been forcing this stuff down our throat for too long. Okay, that's ridiculous like they're going for,
you know, 30% representation I think is what GLAAD is going after by 2030.
Even though people who commit this sort of act they they're there.
So a very, very insignificant minority of people in the United States and throughout the world, and yet they're looking for 30% media representation for all characters. And so we've been, we've been dealing with this kind of heavy handed indoctrination from Disney for quite a while. So somebody points it out. And the traditional Muslim they think, Oh, good, then they see who said it. I said, Oh,
Andrew Tate said it. I don't know if I want to retweet it. How is the sort of maybe the feminists that follow me are going to react or this or how are these people going to react? Okay, we have to avoid partisanship and sectarianism. When we deal with contemporary issues. Muslims are people who accept the truth no matter who says it, as Malcolm X said, and no group has a monopoly on the truth. No group has a monopoly on the truth.
Sheikh Abdullah and Peter used to point this out in Surah, Saba, right. Allah subhanaw taala tells the story, you know, the Queen of Sheba and stuff like that she worshiped the sun. She was a sun worshiper, okay? There was a whole situation between her and so they man, so that man sends a letter, I'd be like, I don't want your gift. And yo, I'm ready to throw down. If you want to go that way. Like basically, it's like, you know, it's like, come to the true religion. But you know, if you want to fight, we can fight. And so Saba asks her advisors, she said, Well, what do you think we should do? And that was very smart of her. She's not just some sort of dictator.
And her advisers tell her, it's like, listen, well,
we're ready to do whatever you want to do. And so she comments and she says back well, if two people go to war, then the best of those people like the talented people are wasted. Right? Basically, it hurts both sides. Right? And Allah subhanaw taala comments on it by saying well could allocate and finally write a lot didn't say, shut up, you son worship or you don't know what you're talking about? Right? Or didn't say that? Well, we're not going to listen to this person. Because of, you know, yeah, she's Malika. He affirms the thing that she said that was true.
Despite all of her problems, okay. That is maturity. Right? We accept the true things that other we have to be honest and consistent. We take the true thing no matter who says it, even if you don't like the person that is being just Okay, so even if entertain even if you hate the guy's guts, even if you think he's maybe you think he came into a stem fake, and he's trying to play the Muslims or whatever, if he says something that's true. You have to acknowledge it. Yes, it's true. What he said, Okay, you don't play these sorts of points. That is a slippery slope to becoming biased and partisan and sectarianism. No group has a monopoly on the truth. There are some people that, you
know,
they're very prejudiced against selfies, or what they consider what hobbies there's other people that are very prejudiced against Sufis. I say goofy Sufis. Right. We got one side quantum goofy Sufis, and the other side called the other knuckleheads from knuckle, which means like, you know, to transmit the text. Where are we getting with this? This is partisanship and sectarianism. All right. And it's, it's, it's, you know, this isn't sports teams, right? It's not the World Cup. You know, we're not rooting for Argentina versus France or whatever. Okay, this is the truth. So we need to be prepared to accept the truth no matter who says it, no matter where it comes from. If you're a
Salafi, Wahhabi, whatever, and a Sufi Sheikh says something right about source and Fatiha, you have to acknowledge it, have the humility to acknowledge that it's right. Right, maybe he recited the Quran better than you. Maybe he's a half of maybe he makes Cottam every six days. Okay, if he's better than you in that, give him his his Hawk, give him his right. You don't throw out everything just because he's part of this group that you are, he has things that you disagree with, or you think he's wrong, and xy and z be mature enough to recognize the true wherever it comes from, and the same as on the other foot. Okay, the same goes the opposite direction.
Don't use every opportunity to score points against your enemy. And target group, right. That's what people want to do. Andrew Tate says something even if it's true, well, he does this and this and this. Right? People who are all up in arms about Yaqeen, enormous ly man or whatever, no matter what they put up, oh, why is he doing this? Oh, I can't believe you, whatever. They're going to drag it up again. Right, focus on the issue. Recognize the truth, no matter who says it, and you will be able to be balanced, you're not going to get sucked into, you know, sectarianism or group thinking. And you'll be able to navigate contemporary issues in an intellectually honest and balanced way.
Weigh the Harm and benefit of mentioning names. I've dropped a lot of names recently
in this in this presentation, but you should weigh the Harm and benefit of dropping names, right. Some people they are they are prejudiced. You bring up a certain name, and they're just going to recoil. I can't believe you. You respect that scholar, or the opposite. You bring up a certain name and they're just like automatically trust you. And you need to use wisdom.
Right. And you need to realize that sometimes citing certain people is going to alienate other people, right? You go into a masjid and you've got a large contingent of Sufis and you start teaching from you know, Muhammad, Abdul Wahab, okay, you're gonna upset some people. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're right. Or excuse me, that doesn't mean that you're wrong, you have a bad intention. It's just not wise. And it's not helping people to come together and unite. It's not helping people break down their partisanship and sectarianism.
Avoid name calling, and avoid imputing motives on other people. This is a huge, huge, huge thing. Well, maybe you're an agent for the CIA. Okay, great. You're an agent. I'm an agent, we're all an agent. Great. What have we done for the discussion? He just did nothing. Okay. You're in the payroll of this group. Or you're just saying that because you know, you've got clout and you're rubbing elbows with the politicians and this and that.
Don't get into people's motives. Don't do it. You know, the prophesy said, I'm told us, I'm in Zaid, on the battlefield on a battlefield right? Did you open up his chest when he killed them so that you that
you're only setting yourself up for potentially wiping out all of your good deeds, some day of judgment? Why would you do that you can talk about the issue. You can talk about a thing academically without getting into people's motives. It's a cheap shot, a cheap shot, stick to the issue, keep it academic, avoid name calling, and imputing motives. Why avoid name calling, because we're asked to have love for our brothers in Assam, and our Sisters in Islam. And we want it if somebody is wrong, we want to make their path to return to the truth easy. We want to make it easy for people to change their minds. And we want to make it easy for people to accept the truth and to
repent and to change their ways. And if you name called people,
boot licker Rand Kali are these sorts of things, or you know, anything else compassionate Imams, or whatever? Honestly, that's not You're not making it easy on that person. You're, you're almost baiting their ego to get involved. And you're almost kind of asking them to double down on their position. And you're discouraging them from changing their mind, you need to make it easy for people to change their minds.
So that covers parts, partisanship and sectarianism. The next is elitism, right, we go back to the issue of the World Cup, and all these sorts of things that mean things to so many people, billions of people on earth care about what happened at the World Cup. So what does it mean, if you're going to come in and say, you all are just addicted to entertainment in the entertainment industry, and you guys need to, you know, whatever? Sorry, I think that smacks of elitism a little bit. There is something to respecting what matters to people eat with all the complication that that brings with realizing that there are more important things in soccer. And that, you know, some people care about
it way too much, and that there's too much money spent on it. And it's glamorized and commercialized. Yes, you're right. But
you've got to take every opportunity to rub the common man's face in that when really this thing means something to them. I just don't think it's very wise, I think that just because you don't care about an issue doesn't mean that nobody else does or should, and you should be seem to be very careful about virtue signaling, by making it seem like you have all the priorities, and you're the person who is able to see things clearly. And everybody else is just kind of sheep, like, you know, being duped by this thing, even if it's true. Even if it's true. You have an inroad. When people express that they have an interest in something, you have an inroad to data to them, you can use
that thing to help them. Okay, how much data was done at the World Cup this year, tons of data, tons of data was done with the World Cup this year, it's hard to even it's hard to overestimate how much data was done at the World Cup. Okay? So if you want to be a party pooper, you wanna you want to rain on people's parade and say, Well, this is all just entertainment, whatever you can, but I think that you're missing a giant opportunity. And you're probably going to alienate people from kind of just dismissing too quickly, things that other people care about.
context collapse real quick here, we've hit an hour already. context collapse is something very familiar to people who read about social theory. You know, it's the idea that before social media before the internet, you know how YouTube, okay, we have a global audience and people that are, you know, all different walks of life. So I'm probably going to get, you know, pushback for many of the things I say, because right now, I'm addressing a mass audience. Okay? If we turn the cameras off, and it's just me and admin and see fit here, and we're just talking among the three of us, I can tailor what we're talking about to them. I know their situations, I know what's going to hit, I know
what sort of things that they care about. Right? And so I have an ability to to touch them in a more significant way. Okay, the broader my audience gets, the harder that is to do. And so you really need to be smart when it comes to knowing your audience and knowing not what to air on a mass scale. And this has got some some people in trouble within the last five to 10 years. Some academic discussion, some theoretical this
Questions where people have doubts or people question the quote unquote official narrative about something or other. There are certain academic discussions that need to stay behind closed doors that need to stay within the journals, academic journals need to stay within the URL amount and the stop the students have knowledge. You don't expose everything out on the mass platform like that. If you do, you're going to just cause chaos and confusion. And finally, I think the last point that we're gonna have time for is talking about rhetorical strategies and keeping focus, once you do address the sorts of contemporary issues you're trying to address them from an Islamic perspective
is important to consider. What's your What are you trying to accomplish? When you take to Facebook or Instagram or social media? And you try to say something about an issue? Okay, are you trying to be exhaustive about an issue? Are you trying to be extremely nuanced? Or are you trying to just address the main point, okay, that's going to depend on the format that you're using. And the less time that you have, the less nuance and the less exhaustive nature, you're going to be able to express within your treatment of the issue. Talal Asad, he says in his book formations of the secular that the freedom of speech is often misunderstood as just the ability to say something. He
says that it's also the ability to be heard, okay, what good is the ability to say something freely, if you don't have the ability to be heard, meaning if people don't have enough time, to hear your big build up, you're gonna start with, you know, your, maybe your, your little thing with Bismillah, Alhamdulillah sub samosa, and we've already gone past an hour here, how many people are going to listen to an hour lecture, there's going to be a population out there, and they're great people, not everybody is going to do that. Some people, they're only going to listen to a two or three or four minute video, if you make it two, or three or four minute video, you don't have time to get caught
in the weeds, you have to hit the main subject. And you have to hit the main subject in a way that's going to challenge and disrupt the moral framework or the intellectual framework of the person that's listening, right? We experimented with this, when we did the video that we did on slavery that's on our channel. Okay, we had like an eight minute video. And that's longer than many of our short videos. And we talked about the issue of slavery in Islam. And some of the pushback from very sincere and more knowledgeable people than me was that Well, you didn't talk about this, and you didn't address this. And you know, there's a lot more to say on the issue? And the answer is, yes,
there is. But that's not what we're going for. Right, we're not going for an exhaustive treatment, we tried to seize on one particular aspect, comparing the role of slavery and Islamic law, to the role of Refugee Resettlement within contemporary society, just to punch people in the gut, so to speak, to mess with their categories and try to shake their associations. So that opened a space where they could look at it in a different light from a different perspective, and you only have a certain amount of minutes to do that. Right. So when you're dealing with a contemporary issue, you don't always have the ability or the luxury to be to address every single thing, or to take all sort
of size into consideration, especially in trying to be discursively disruptive like that, sometimes you have to just pick a target and hit it, and try to shift the conversation. And then you hope that you're going to be able to follow up with more sort of long form content later. So all of these issues, all of these issues come back to the main idea of framing contemporary issues from Islamic perspective, we talked about the importance of having Islam as your paradigm, not just the source of where you're going on because source, you can cook the books, you can manipulate the tradition, you can, you know, interact with it however you want. We're talking about using it as your paradigm that
you're submitting to everything that you're experiencing, you're submitting to,
you're making sense of red pill and feminism and, and, you know, the quote unquote, how to use and the quote unquote, medical leaves, but bootlickers and this and that, and the other, your paradigm is a snap, and you're trying to make sense to navigate the issues. We talked about how to be balanced. Okay, we talked about the factors in life and the space that we move in that leads to us falling into extremes and not being able to make sense of these things in a fair way. We talked about different questions to consider and methods for dissecting contemporary issues, and common pitfalls and errors to avoid when tackling these ideas. And Allah subhanaw taala knows best bottle
coffee comb, salaam alaikum. O Allah Subhana Allah Who Ambika shadow Allah and stuff we look forward to we like we have any questions from the
Yeah.
About
how people can often go down rabbit holes
What about the label?
It's like when does it stop? By?
Yes.
Yeah, labels can be a trap right?
And we get this in the comments sections for our for our YouTube videos, you know, every week or every month, you know, what's your feeder? Are you a selfie? Right? You tell me, I'm not gonna tell you that you tell me, right? Because you know, you've got you've put some sort of credo on this label. And it means something to you, it means a lot of different things to different people. We care about the form more than the substance, right? If I wanted to, I could wear a white soap that was short and above the ankles, and I could put a pen in my pocket and I can have my SWAC and I can have the red Shimada right? And I could, you know, way down the the presentation a little bit more
heavily with Quran and Sunnah and Hadith and of course of the setup, right? And that would be whatever, I could easily appeal to that label. So somebody's asking me appealing to me through that label, you've made it easy for me to be dishonest to you, I can trick you. I know what you're looking for. I know what you want to hear. Right. And the same if somebody approached me, you know, with, you know, he's got a Koofi that has the, the shape of the sandal the probability set, um, and he's got a scarf on. And, you know, like, I know, his vibe, I know where he's coming from, I know what he wants to hear, I know who his authorities are, he wants to put a certain label on me or
whatever. Don't think through labels, labels makes it too easy for you to be prejudiced. And it makes it too easy to be tricked. Okay? It's clear what you're looking for. You have to pay attention to the substance of the thing you tell me, am I is what I'm saying. Adhering to the the guidance and understanding of this stuff. You go through my stuff and tell me if it is or not. And if you're not qualified, if you're not qualified to determine that, maybe you shouldn't worry about it. Right? Just kind of say, because what, you know, I'm gonna, what am I going to say? No, I'm gonna say, you know, you're clearly looking for this, and I'm going to just tell you to your face. You know, people
don't don't realize how boxed in their thinking is when they only think through labels. Many times, probably, I'd say most of the time labels bog us down, and they get in the way of our understanding, as opposed to aiding and supporting our understanding long as best.
People are like giving him a hard time.
Why should people just like, give them space? Like, you know what I mean? Why people like, just people?
Yeah, I mean, those are those are issues that are beyond the scope of this talk. I mean, and that's where the rubber meets the road. Why? Why are people divided about in the first place? Because there's a tension there. There's a tension between giving people space? Well, it's easy to give people space, if what they're doing just affects them. But what if what they're doing affects other people, then it's like, how much space do you give them? Right? And that's a million dollar question that probably nobody knows the exact answer to. Right. So that's another sort of issue that people need to not talk past each other and truly try to understand what the other side is saying. Both
sides have a point, right? And if you just try to play the scoring points game and act like the other side doesn't have a point, and that's, you know, I don't find that very, very convincing. Each side has a point.
Obviously, Islam, the Cydia is all about minimizing harm, and we want to minimize harm as quickly as possible. I've heard of the allegations that are out there, obviously, I don't have the time or the desire to go verify, you know, some of the things that people say that that the brother is involved in, but if it's true, like those are very serious things, and it's it's, it could be oppression, and that needs to stop as soon as possible. Right. Um, then again, you know, there's also the other side has a point that, you know, somebody's under the microscope, and they are,
you know, kind of not allowed to do to virtue of their fame and their public sort of celebrity, to be given the luxury of being able to grow into something and kind of being taken as somebody who's coming along in the right trajectory. They both have points, and that's why it's not a clear issue. Right. So, you know, where I think we go wrong is everybody again, they relate to it in a sectarian way. So you've got the red pills over here, the red pillars that are, you know, coming down hard on this particular sort of side of the issue, and then the feminists on the other side of the issue, and they're not talking they're talking past each other. Right, and they don't realize that you
know, each side has its own legitimate point. And actually, both are have truth to them. So Alana is best.
Someone who has a
21 year old single guy one as possible realistic methods of how to cope, it's in it's in patients.
Anything marriage will be an option in six to seven years earliest.
What if never, I don't really understand the question very much and you know,
talking about what are the options to prevent oneself from Zina if you're a
Young Adult stuff like that I got married at 21. You can get married at 21. You know, like, sometimes there's without, again, without knowing the details of the question or,
you know, sometimes people have
prohibitive expectations as to what it takes to get married, whether that's cultural, whether it's personal, or whether it's whatever.
If it's a really big problem for you the prophesy said, I'm set, he said, you know, like, whoever amongst you is able to then marry. And if you can't, then fast, that's what it is. I mean, you know, there's competing imperatives and other things are going to have to give way. Right? But without knowing the details of the situation, I can't really comment more than that.
How can you explain the eras of someone's liberal secular worldview without going into enlightenment philosophy?
Say that one more time, sorry, repeat it. How can you explain the errors in someone's liberal secular worldview without going?
I mean, the best reason is as the reason of the Koran, and the best rhetoric is the rhetoric of the Koran. How does the last pound to Allah deal with these sorts of things? There's different techniques and methods that he uses. Right? One of the common methods that he uses subpoena is to set up a situation where the false consequences of a belief are exposed. Right? So for example, when you get into the Okay, was the Koran authored by a human being or was authored by the Creator?
There's, we can say, Okay,
last final data says, Bring us or like,
right, and there's a whole logical sort of argument in there, already baked into that sort of thought experiment, implying that if it is of human authorship than by definition, it should be reproducible. And if you can't reproduce it, that means that it's not reproducible. If it's not reproducible, it means that it's not from human authorship. Right. So those sorts of things, you know, let people, you know, put people in situations where they have to challenge their ideas and accept sort of the false conclusions of what they believe in right, force them to be consistent. Because most of these things are not consistent. Most, you know, liberal philosophies and liberal
politics and liberal paradigms are not consistent over issues, there are certain things that are very weak consent is a very, very obvious one. Consent is a very weak concept. Okay, somebody brought up recently, you know, there's no real good liberal argument against beasty ality right, because the whole sort of framework is, well, sexual relations should be based off of consent. And supposedly, according to them, why people aren't allowed to marry an animal is because the animal can't consent. Okay, well, then, unless you're a vegan, you eat that animal. So the animal consent to that.
So when do you care about consent? And when do you not? Right, you're going to say that, well, we can't have relations or, you know, sort of sexual activity with the animal because there's no consent, yet, we can kill them because, you know, and their consent doesn't matter. There's a contradiction right there. Right. So those are the sorts of things it doesn't take, going on a deep sort of, you know,
you know, explicit analytical journey into you believe this, because of this movement and this thinker, that most people don't have the patience for that. You need to rhetorically challenge people, right, you need to force people to prove their consistency, and not let most people you know, they they're not very consistent, and they don't understand the consequences of the things they believe. So if you help tease out the consequences of the things that people believe and show how, you know, they're actually not consistent. People will start to be destabilized. Right? I think that's, I think one of the key things, destabilizing people from the certainty of their own
positions, and then you create a void that they need to fill in order to re gain sort of some sort of consistency and belief. Long as best
All right, thank you, everybody.
realized oh, it's waiting for me for that.
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