Islam & Human Rights

If you look into the history of human rights, where it came from, what are the ideas behind it, that it is not universal, it does not apply to everybody. And it actually has assumptions about who human beings are, that contradict our theme. Today, we're talking about Islam and human rights. And it's very relevant because in the football, we talked, when we brought up some situations that have been happening around the country and around North America, where the idea of human rights is being

it's being called upon for certain ends, right? So recall that the situation we had

people, young folks in the schools, Muslims being forced to learn certain things about gender and sexuality that completely contradicts our deen.

And then, when we are even trying to do the bare minimum, which is to opt out of it, to not be there, we're being told that we're violating somebody's human rights, that they have the human right to be affirmed that they have the human right to be recognized and celebrated. And if we do not, then they are erased, and it might be a form of violence against them. How do we get here? Right? It's very loaded language. That's what we're going to try to unpack today. Because human rights means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And if when we disentangle it, we're gonna see what lies at the very, very bottom of it.

Somebody asked me one time they said, you know, when I talk to I talk to people, I like to tell them that I'm, I like to talk to them on the level of humanity first before I talk about being on the level of Islam.

And my response to that was, well, why on earth would you do that? Because when you talk to people, they say, I'm a human being, you're a human being, it seems like you have something in common. But the trouble is, nobody can agree about what that actually means. It's true. Everybody is part of the human race, quote, unquote, the species, whatever we want to call it. But how do we interpret that fact? What does it mean that I'm a human being, you're a human being the devils in the details, as we say, and that's what nobody can agree upon. Because if you've got a hard materialist over here, who doesn't believe in anything except survival of the fittest, the fact that you're a human being

and I'm a human being, it only means that we're in competition with another with one another, it only means that you are my potential enemy. When you consume that means one less for me, when you take something, it means one less for me. And some of the brothers who know the street life around here, they understand that that's the mentality that a lot of people have. Being Human doesn't get you anywhere with somebody else. You say, Hey, I'm human, too. Nobody cares. That guy is gonna try to snatch your girls snatch your watch, snatch or whatever he can. He doesn't care that you're human. Right? However, if we relate to people through our deen through Islam, then we have very,

very clearly spelled out things and we'll get to that, we'll get to that inshallah. So one person can say, hey, I'm a human, you're a human being. And they can interpret that in the way of saying, well, that means that we're enemies, just that somebody else can say the same thing. You and I are both human beings, we should have some sort of sympathy for one another, we should have rights that we recognize from one another. And there's no way for either of these two sides to have any conclusive sort of solutions to their problems, and to see which one is right.

If you look around the world, and you see the way that human rights is being used, just like the case we saw that we talked about today, there's other situations where we see the human rights is called upon to step in, in certain cases where the scenarios are completely opposite. So if you go to France, and we have our Muslim sisters in France, who can't wear the hijab, or can't wear the niqab, that it's actually illegal to do it in public, or in public buildings, or in universities or in government buildings, or things like that. Right. Some people they say this is a violation of human rights. But then if we go on another part of the world to Iran, right, where the laws are

different. Now, there are women who are ripping off their hijabs and they're saying that this is also our human rights. So on one part of the globe, we're saying that human rights is to put it on another part of the globe, we're saying it's human rights to take it off. How does this make sense? It makes sense if you go into the history of what human rights is, and the the idea here and the hope here, I'm gonna try to break it down for you. That if you look into the history of human rights, where it came from, what are the ideas behind it, that it is not universal? It does not apply to everybody. And it actually has assumptions about who human beings are, that contradict our

deen. And this is important for where we come to to get today with the things that we mentioned in the book.

You have to understand that we live in the United States of America. United States of America has a certain cultural inheritance from Europe. And if you want to

zonin on one thing, or focusing on one thing that defines the European experience, it is a traumatic experience with Christianity. Europe as a continent had a traumatic experience with Christianity. The Catholic Church would institute inquisitions would try to determine what do you believe? Do you believe in the right thing, if not, we're gonna burn you at the stake. If not, we're going to kill you, we're going to persecute you. And they did this all over. They did this for a long time.

And then what happened? Once the Catholic Church lost its monopoly on power, and it lost its monopoly on the right to interpret the religion and to be the only game in town. When it came to Christianity, there came a huge pushback in the other direction.

This is what's known as a movement called the enlightenment and the Enlightenment in European philosophy. They attempted to replace the order and the guidance that the Catholic Church had given Europe. But they attempted to do it without religion, to completely try to sidestep religion entirely. They thought that if they could find a universal culture, based off of what they call universal reason, that we will be able to fix all problems that society had all misunderstandings, all disagreements, war would stop, poverty would stop hunger would stop, everything would stop. So this was their main goal. And they said, they set out to do this. But how would they be able to

communicate to people and educate people as to what they were entitled to, or why somebody shouldn't attack somebody else to steal their resources or to steal what they have?

They came up with the idea of human rights. They said that the one thing that we all have in common is that we're human beings. And if human beings exercise their reason, they think about it hard enough, they will see that is in their own benefit, to treat each other with respect to not harm each other, et cetera, et cetera.

But problem is, the problem is, when you when they attempted to do this, this idea of human rights, they couldn't avoid making certain assumptions about which human being that we're talking about. How do we define what a human being is? Where is a human being destined to go? What is their purpose in life, all these different things. And this is actually really significant and important, because if you have a difference of opinion, about what it means to be human, then the rights that you think that that person is entitled to is going to be completely different. If you think that a human being is just a bunch of cells, a sack of cells, that's going to die and then be worm food. And that's it.

No afterlife, no heaven, no hell, you're going to think that human beings are entitled to a certain set of rights. But if you think that there is such a thing as a soul, if you think that there is life after the death of the body, if you think that there's a resurrection, if you think that there's a God, if you think that there is eternal punishment, or eternal bliss, then the idea of what rights a human being is going to be entitled to are going to be completely different. And that's exactly what happened. Because the people who are the architects behind the Movement for Human Rights, they had a certain definition of what it meant to be human. And it completely

sidelined and completely excluded. Anything that couldn't be observed, or seen or measured with a ruler. Anything like things to do with the soul. Anything's like things to do with God.

For those interested, this is a branch of philosophy or a brand of philosophy called philosophical naturalism, philosophical naturalism as a physician, that everything that exists is purely material. And therefore, everything that happens can be explained in terms of natural causes. You Muslims, you say that Mohammed split the moon? Well, I can explain that due to some sort of optical illusion that took place or some sort of mass delusion, delusion or hallucination. You believe that the angel Gabriel came down and gave prophets revelation? Well, we can explain that through hallucinations and through stories and through things like this. This is philosophical naturalism. And once you put a

name to it, you realize that it's everywhere, that most of the textbooks that you would have studied history from, or especially science from or anything in public school, you would find that philosophical naturalism is the philosophy of the textbooks that you study. They do not recognize a soul. They did not recognize an afterlife. They did not recognize God. They did not recognize Heaven and Hell and these sorts of things.

When you subtract God, when you subtract Heaven and Hell, when you subtract the soul, when you subtract the afterlife what is left?

The folks who came up with human rights, they said that, well, what's left is property. What's left is property.

And that's why we have such a big emphasis on property rights in the United States of America.

The thinking goes, the most fundamental thing about you is your body. Right? The most essential thing that defines who you are is your consciousness. Let's see, I have a left hand here and a right hand here. If I want to, I can move my left hand, if I want to, I can move my right hand. That's part of my territory. If I want to move out bellows left hand,

can I do it? Not without coming out there and grabbing them? Right? I can't do it of my own conscious will. I have to do by force or by bribes, so I'll give you something, right.

So the thinking goes, Okay, that's what it is right there. That's where you draw the boundaries of the self. The self is like a piece of land, it's like territory. And your consciousness means that you are the sovereign, you're the king. Over that territory, you can control it, you can make it move, you can do, you know, stupid Tiktok dances or whatever it is you do in the privacy of your own home, that this is your territory of the sovereign, but you can do with it what you want.

downstream of that idea, downstream of that idea. This is where we get things like my body, my choice. So you've heard, for example, when it comes to abortion, when it comes to, you know, having Kula when it comes to abortion, even when it comes to hijab, and we'll talk we'll talk about that in a second.

People saying this is not acceptable, my body my choice.

And we'll talk about why that contradicts Islam in a bit. But the idea is that I own my body, and I owe my body completely. We've already subtracted God, we subtracted the soul, we've subtracted the afterlife, the only thing left is me and my body. I own it completely in the most absolute sense, and nobody can tell me, nobody can tell me what to do with it.

We'll come back to that later.

If you own your body, if we assume again, we're rolling with the Enlightenment folks, here, we're rolling with the philosophical naturalist for a second. If we assume that this is true, I own my body completely and totally.

What does that imply about the good, what is good in life good in life is to be able to exercise my autonomy, to be able to exercise that conscious, well. If I want to write, I want to move my right hand, I should be able to move my right hand. If I want to move my right hand, and someone stopping me from moving my right hand. That is the biggest crime that could possibly happen.

This is called autonomy, autonomy, the ability to do what I want. With what I assume that I own.

This idea of owning yourself, and autonomy, it has tremendous consequences for how we think and feel about things in American culture. I know brother Jamil, you've heard of I bet you've heard of what do people call when you get married, they call it the ball and chain. The ball on chain, right?

Anybody else hear of this phrase? Maybe the folks who don't come from the US haven't heard of this phrase? People actually going look it up refer to marriage, and especially a wife as the ball and chain. You guys know what the ball and chain is? You ever see the prisoners that are in jail, and they've got like literally shackled a heavy ball to their legs so they can't run away. Right? So the assumption here is that marriage is a punishment. Marriage is a limitation. Marriage is a bad thing. Why? What can't you do when you're married?

A promiscuous, thank you very much. Someone had to say it. And he chose very academic language to say, I appreciate that.

Exactly. If you if you're tied to marriage, you can't be promiscuous. And with if you're going to start from the idea that I own my body, and the best thing to do is autonomy is to be able to do what I want, then how could marriage be looked at in a positive way? Marriage is a prison sentence. Marriage is the ball on chain, it's a punishment. It's something that's going to restrict my freedom. That's why they throw bachelor parties, and bachelorette parties. We're celebrating your last day of freedom all the nonsense things that people say in those scenarios.

It's only possible to think this way and we'll contrast that with a slab I'm looking to contrast that right now. The prophesy said I'm so this is half of your deen

half of your deen

look at the difference between imagining marriage as something that restricts you limits your freedom something that you got it Ah yeah.

We joke we say the wizard or DACA. Lea, right? We call though I call the wife the interior minister. Right? And those are jokes, okay? But it's an American culture, English language is another level to call somebody who is the mother of your own children, who is supposed to complete your religion for you to call them on the ball on chain. Alright, as very inappropriate. And it's indicative of this way of thinking about our bodies and thinking about autonomy.

If marriage is a ball and chain, okay, then what's the flip side of that? The flip side of that is people assume, and this is what is part of what's gotten us in trouble today, that people should be able to pursue any sexual opportunity that they find, and they experience. And way back in the day, it was limited by cultural sensibility. So people were still freaked out about homosexuality. And so they didn't think about that. But they thought about, if you want to have girlfriends, or you want to have boyfriends, what's wrong with it? What's wrong with it? If you choose it, if you're consenting, and she's consenting, then where's the heart? Right? Then the cultural sensibilities

start to get eroded, and they started to shift. Now it was okay, if it's two guys, if it's two girls, now if we change our genders, now, if we do this, the only thing that's holding it together is the idea of autonomy, the idea that I should be able to do what I want,

without looking in any way to what it is the thing that you're doing, or what is it that you want to do, or trying to make a judgement about what it is you want to do, hey, what you want to do is wrong.

Ask the ladies to please quiet that butterfly thing.

Within this framework, you don't have any ability to tell anybody else, hey, what you want to do is wrong. They say what is my life? Mind your business? It's my choice. I'm not hurting anybody. Where's the harm?

And these are the things that are said. Because this is where we're as how we're set up to believe.

It has other influences and other sort of consequences. It has consequences on how people think about their own faith. It has consequences, intergenerational consequences. Okay. How do you view your parents? How do you view your grandparents? When your parents tell you I want you home at 10?

Dad, Baba, okay, there's a certain degree of that, that that's normal. But look at and this is why I discourage anybody from letting their kids watch Disney movies. Look at every single Disney movie out there. Find a one single Disney movie with a positive pet father figure. Can anybody think of a positive father character in a single Disney movie?

Oh, wait.

Not Aladdin.

Lion King. He's killed. That's easy. You get rid of them?

Yeah.

No, say again. Was

Cinderella, the Cinderella have a father? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. So fathers are either completely absent, or killed off? Or they're evil and they're restrictive and they just don't understand

and abusive. Exactly. Now, what does this teach your child? This teaches your child to rebel against your parents, your parents don't understand you. They're standing in the way of you doing what you want.

What's wrong with it? There is no harm in it. This is what you want to do. This is freedom. This is following your heart and all the other nice platitudes and slogans that we have to justify.

If you think about it, you start it. I own my body. Nobody can tell me what to do. It's all about autonomy, doing what I want. This is where it comes down the chain. This is where it happens, where it unfolds. And so people become suspicious of all restrictions, restrictions from their parents, restrictions from their culture and their tradition and restrictions from their religion. Oh, yes.

How do you how do you account for the fact that one person prays five times a day and they feel like it's nothing

and another person prays inshallah five times a day and they feel like it's the hardest thing in the world?

The inside is different. The orientation is different. The regard is different. Do you see this thing this is actually going to put you into paradise? This is actually your true liberation.

But somebody else thinks of it as just limitation. I could be going to make money. I could be doing this. I could be playing games. Why do I have to pause the game?

Five more minutes. 10 more minutes.

These things matter how we think

about ourselves, what's the definition of the human being we say no soul, no God, no afterlife, just materials just me, I own myself, I can do what I want. Everything else takes care of itself.

And so we see that this affects and actually infiltrates us and colonizes us as Muslims, even when, even when we think that we're defending our faith, let's go back to France. Well, let's go back to the US.

When teenage girls or young women, they try to justify wearing the hijab. What will they say? How will they defend it? They're more likely to say, my hijab my choice.

Then I will say, This is an order from Allah sounds odd.

You see how the outcome might look good. But the way that you got there was crooked.

If my hijab my choice, even if it's technically true, we're not going to force anybody but just for the sake of argument. If we're defending hijab based off of choice, does that mean that if someone doesn't choose it, that it's okay, that's fine.

This is a command from Allah subhanaw taala.

This is something I mean, technically, you have a choice. Yeah. But the choice is whether to obey or disobey Allah subhanaw taala. And

if we make an idol out of choice, then we end up in hot water very, very quickly.

If we can criticize our fathers and feel like our fathers are restricting us

that the male scholars got it all wrong, because they were in fact infected by the patriarchy. Then what about the Prophet Mohammed Salah ha Davison.

What about when our teenage girls say, A man can't make laws to govern my body.

A man can't tell me what to do with my body

wasn't the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam, a man.

You see how these things have consequences.

The idea of autonomy. Part of why it's very popular has continued to be popular is because autonomy is very, very easy to manipulate. If you're a corporation, if you're a politician, we saw that under Trump, we see that every day with commercials to get people to feel like they're making a choice. You go on to the gas station, you see you got four coolers full of drinks,

50 different brands, you feel like you've got an amazing choice. But if you follow the money, you'll see that all of those drinks and brands are only owned by about three or four companies. So you get the illusion of choice.

There used to be back in the day a Dr. Pepper commercial, where people are like you and me. And they have you know, normal clothes and walking down the street. And one at a time. They rip off their outer clothes and got a Dr Pepper shirt underneath.

But all the texts of every shirt is different. So something says like, you know, rebel, says this or whatever. And I just thought that was so funny because that's exactly what we have. We have the illusion of choice in our society. People making you feel like you get to choose, let's take gender.

You get to have 100 genders now 200 genders they keep on coming with them. 500 genders, what gender Do you want to be? What pronoun Do you want? You can have a letter as your pronoun, nobody knows how to say it.

You can have it

is this meaningful choice. But if I choose I want to live under the car. Or I want to tell somebody in a college campus, there's only two genders? Do I have that choice? Do I have that freedom?

See how they react? You don't.

Autonomy is a weak concept. And it's a weak thing because it leads to less anxiousness, it leads to promiscuity, it leads to poor choices. If you're just doing whatever you want to do, just to say that you're the one that gets to do it, that's your freedom, that's your, then it's going to be a very, very dark road that you go down.

When you stagnation, stagnation too, of course,

of course, because you're only going to be a slave of your desires. And that's the thing we live in a time of inversions, the modern world is full of inversions. Just like what they call gender affirming care, is actually child abuse.

In reality,

what they call freedom is actually enslavement. There is no freedom except being a slave of Allah subhanaw taala and being a servant of anything else is slavery.

So that has to do with who is a human being. This is the idea of what a human being is in the human rights framework is the human being is only matter. It's only material. It's only things that you can touch. There's no God. There's no afterlife, there is no heaven and hell, there's

No.

Revelation, there's no prophets anything like this.

The idea of now what's the idea behind it of what's going to happen to you after you die? As you can probably imagine, the idea is that there is no such thing beyond the afterlife, there is no thing beyond death, there is no afterlife, there is no heaven and hell

does this have consequences on what rights you think that you're entitled to? Oh, yes, it does? Oh, yes, it does. If you don't believe in the afterlife, then this is the only shot you have.

That's why they say YOLO. You only live once, which we don't believe we say you you live twice.

You only die once.

But this is real. Because if this is the only shot that you have,

you're going to cling to life, you're going to cling to the pleasures, you're going to be sucked in by the dunya. And Allah subhanaw taala actually criticize as many as raw eel, the Jews for this attitude. Right? He says that, if you were true, or if you are correct in your belief that you would be in heaven alone, then you should seek death. But nobody is more clinging to life, except the, but these people are other than these people.

And so you see how this has real consequences, imagining that a human being the definition of a human being has nothing to do with an afterlife. It makes us all in a scarcity mindset, that I gotta get mine now. Because there's nothing coming after I die.

And the last thing we'll touch on here, before coming to a new subject, is what does this understanding of the human being think about religion? If we say a human being is just physical matter, no God, no afterlife, no profits, then how can we account for religion? What's the idea of religion within the human rights frame? The idea of religion is that it is something invented by human beings. Just like your culture, just like you eat biryani, or you eat Giovannucci or you eat my soul, or you eat, you know, whatever, we can go down the list.

Okay, you're Muslim, and you're Hindu and you're Christian, it's just your culture.

That's the assumption and the implication of the human rights, right? We only define human beings as material creatures, that religion has to be material as well. What do we say rites and rituals and beliefs and these sorts of supposedly neutral language, we're not talking about truth and falsehood. We're not talking about right and wrong. We're not talking about good and evil. It was a very, you know, spiritual ways to talk about it, not secular ways, not ways that jive with human rights. And if you look into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it's actually very interesting. You'll find that article 18, I believe, it supposedly guarantees the rights for people to practice their

religion freely, which sounds like a good thing. However, you scroll all the way down to the bottom, I think the second to last article and article 31, or something like that, you'll find that they say that the right to the freedom of religion is restricted to anything the state deems necessary for public safety, public morality, or the personality of the state. That caveat, that addendum that later part of it is only possible if you think that religion is just phony. If you think religion is just the outcome of human activity, and culture.

All of these assumptions that are behind the idea of what it means to be a human being, within the human rights frame, it creates what we call an imperative for action or a call to action, it's not neutral, it's not neutral, it actually puts certain things up as good and puts other things down as evil. And so the maximization of freedom, doing whatever you want, pursuing every pleasure you have acting on every desire that you have, like we said in the clip, but today is good in this way of thinking about the world.

And the evil, the well, the evil has to do with pain, it has to have restrictions, it has to do with people telling you what to do. You've got all these the uncles in the machine and the Auntie's in the machine that are, you know, shaking their finger at me.

And that's not an excuse for bad etiquette. But the idea that this is just a complete wrong thing. They're trying to save you. They're trying to save you in this life and the next, this is something that is not viewed as okay, it's actually a restricting thing and a bad thing, if under this definition of what it means to be human.

The next thing that we want to highlight is that human rights is not neutral. Politically, it's not neutral. Philosophically, everything we just talked about shows human rights is not neutral. Philosophically, it has a certain idea of what it means to be human. And that idea of what it means to be human is completely contradicting Islam's idea of what it means to be human. Okay, but it's also not neutral politically. And that means that it sets up a hierarchy. Human rights does, as to view is more human.

And who was less you take the war on Yemen, versus the war on Ukraine.

Look at how each one is dealt with in the media,

which people are read as being more human.

People from Ukraine, you have literally people on a nightly, like on the nightly news on CNN and CNBC, you can look up the quotes, saying things like, we never expected it to happen to a European nation. White people with blue eyes, actually people said this on air. And the one person said, let me choose my words carefully before he's before he said something like that.

The mask came off for a second, they showed that what they really thought and racism is there and racism is a part of it. But another part of it. Another part of it is that viewing humans in this materialistic way, it sets up some people to be read as fully human, and other people to be read as not quite human. Remember back when back in the 90s, maybe some of you remember when the United States had a boycott or sanctions against Iraq, right after the first Gulf War.

And half a million Iraqi children died as a result of those sanctions. Okay, people think sanctions is just like you're going to hurt Putin or whoever you're going to hurt. Putin is going to be fine. It's the kids that suffer. It's the women that suffer it's the other people that suffer. Half a million Muslim children died. Because of the the US sanctions against Iraq, and actually a reporter cornered Madeleine Albright, who was part of the administration at that time and asked her point blank, is it worth it?

What'd she say?

said yes, it's worth it.

Without hesitating, without hesitation, yes, it's worth.

Because half a million is just a number. It's just a number. It doesn't mean anything. But we're these people registered as fully human. They're religious. They want Sharia law. They believe in God, they believe in the afterlife. They don't think of themselves as just material. They don't think of themselves in these waves. Now they weren't registered as fully human, go to Palestine. And the same thing happens. How are the Palestinians treated in the media versus the folks from the occupier side? We see all the time. And you can see it spelled out very clearly in the in the news article headlines. It'll say Israelis killed, but Palestinians died as if it was a mystery who

killed. Right. And lots of things like that. That was actually one SubhanAllah. I had it on the slide presentation that I made up.

It was from the New York Times.

And it said something like Israeli missile finds.

Kids from Gaza, or of people from Gaza at a cafe getting prepared to watch the World Cup. The article was about a bomb being dropped on people and killing them. And the headline said finds

didn't mention anything about the people who died

and brought up the World Cup.

If that if those people are not registered as human beings,

that I don't know of a clear example.

So putting things in this way, human rights framework, this is what a human being is. It's only material we expect you to be secular and democratic and you know, not really religious only in your own home, private religion, these sorts of things. Some people there's a hierarchy. Some people are read as fully human. And some people are read as subhuman. And the people who are read as subhuman are more prone to be to be violated and punished and bombed.

There's a second way in which this political hegemony works.

We're Pakistanis in the house.

Everybody know what Biden approved for for Pakistan? What education initiative he approved for Pakistan,

hundreds of millions of dollars for LGBTQ education in Pakistan, your tax money in mind,

hundreds of millions of dollars being approved for just this type of thing in Pakistan.

While there are people without safe drinking water, while there are people without electricity, or people without a roof over their heads, while there are people we've seen the floods happening in Pakistan over the years.

What does this tell us about the power of the political side of human rights is that it's not just about sorting people into who who is more human and less human. It's also about trying to create full humans. It's also about indoctrination. It's also trying about and this is where it comes in to our schools and our kids in these public schools, and people trying to say, to be fully human, you got to get with the rest of the program. You got to look at yourself as materialistic. There is no real God, you might believe it. That's okay, but you're gonna believe it at all.

I'm not here, after life, morality, good and evil, these sorts of things, you have to keep it at home.

Now, some people might say, and many people we have in this community, you know, mashallah, they came as refugees, and they came as refugees, partly because of the human rights discourse, you have the UN that attempted to try to eke out some sort of human rights for everybody so that people would have some sort of

demand that could be made good on when they tried to come to a different place, because they're forced out because of violence or whatnot. So is it all bad? No, it's not all bad. But there's a difference between deploying something as a tool, using something as a tool versus believing in something. You can use something as a tool, but you know, what it can do? And you know what it can do you know, what the dangers are, I know that if I have a shotgun, and I'll pass it off to Ackman, who's my student at Sunday school, right? Probably not a good idea. There's a lot of dangerous do and no offense to you I've met you're responsible, young man. But that would not be good judgment on

my part.

Because this is a tool that is dangerous. And if you misuse it, you can hurt yourself. And you can hurt other people around you.

Using a discourse that goes against our beliefs, can you do it? Yeah, you can do it. Sometimes, maybe if I meet the mayor, right. Or if I meet the school board, I might need to use the language of human rights just so they understand. We have the human right to do this, and that and that, okay. But I don't believe in it. Because I don't believe in the whole under girding of this ideology that, that imagines that human beings are material, and they don't have these sorts of things that along with them, no human beings, as we'll come in a second, human beings, they are mostly souls, they are primarily about the soul, everything is about the soul, and the afterlife.

But you have to be careful, even if you use the discourse of human rights, or you try to use this language to try to get some of your rights. If you use it too much, what's going to happen is that it's going to make it stronger and harder to remove. And then also, you're at risk for changing on the inside and believing in it. Like the examples we gave with the hijab, if we keep on you might have to explain to your coworker or your employer or your teacher, you might have to say, I wear the hijab, because that's my choice. That might be the only language that they're ready to understand at the moment. But if that's all you say, to the point where you believe that you've put yourself and

your faith on a very, very dangerous and weak setting,

because the second that you stopped believing that you should be your choice, you have full justification to leave it.

Needless to say, the idea of who a human being is within a slab is completely completely, completely different. The first and most essential thing to understand about the cosmology of a stand that means what is real, is that the most real thing, it's not matter. It's not atoms, it's not you or me, the most real thing is Allah. That's why one of the last names is ad hoc, the truth, the reality, Allah is more real than I am real, more real than you are real, more real than the cameras and the YouTube videos or the channel or anything, Allah is the most real thing.

And everything else unfolds from there.

Human beings we believe are created, we didn't just come up out of nowhere. We didn't just come from monkeys, we didn't we're not just the product of random processes, mechanical processes, natural quote, unquote, processes.

If we were then we would have no purpose. Why are we here? We believe that we are creations and that the one that created us as wise. And if the one that creates something as wise, then there's wisdom in the creation of that thing. And that gives us purpose.

It's not just for play, it's not random. We are here for a reason. And we have value. If Allah subhanaw taala created you then you have value, because he is the most wise and he would not have created something if there were not value to it.

When it comes to defining ourselves,

the most real part of ourselves is not our bodies, it's our souls. Because the soul is what's going to either get us into an we'll get there in a second, it's going to get us into the afterlife or not.

The body comes and goes. You're a teenager or 20 Young something and you're putting up you know, posing for his Instagram and stuff like that posing for the tick tock. Trying to get other people to pay attention to you look at you. Give him 50 years, you're gonna be old and wrinkly. No one's gonna want to look at you anymore.

The body fails. The body deteriorates, the body goes away. And yes, we can

believe that the body will be resurrected along with the soul of the afterlife. But the most important part of you is not your body. The most important part of you is your soul.

When it comes to the relationship to your body, do you have complete just because I get to move it and do things with it? I have complete ownership of it. No, I did not. This is a trust. This is something that's given to me by Allah subhanaw taala. And that all comes downstream from believing that Allah is the most real thing that I'm a creature and he created me that means that there are responsibilities that I have, that there are duties that I have, I can't act in any way that I want.

If I do, it's going to put me in trouble for myself, for other people and with my Creator.

One of the things that Allah subhanaw taala created us with one of the expectations he has if it's not autonomy, it's not just doing whatever I want, and I get to feel good because I chose it. I chose it I get to choose.

Then what is it?

Allah Spano Tala, when he talks to the angels, and he told them what he was going to do, he was going to create human beings. He says in Niger, I don't feel out of the Khalifa. He said, I'm going to put on earth Halifa. And that's significant because Allah could have said other things. He could have said, I'm going to put in sand on earth. He could have said I'm gonna put nests on Earth, or measure on earth or any other word, but he chose Khalifa.

Because Khalifa is not a description of what you and I are.

It's a description of what you and I were meant to be. It's a job description. It's an aspiration. It's like if I went along to one of the young guys here, and I said, You know what, you're going to be a man one day.

Think about the reaction.

Think about what that does for somebody, that person might think in their whole lives, wow, I'm going to be a man one day, I got something to look forward to, I have something to train for, I have something to discipline myself, I've got to be ready. I've got to be worthy.

That's what Allah did for us. In the dragon, Phil Califa. I'm going to put on Earth, somebody who's going to take care of the creation the way I want them to take care of it. Somebody who's going to do on Earth, what I want them to do with it. Someone who's going to take care of everybody who's going to deal with justice, that's going to be merciful and compassionate, and fair.

Very, very different from imagining that you and me are just a sack of cells with no creator and no afterlife.

Looking at things in these ways, defining the human being in terms of what Islam says, not human rights, not anybody else. It results in different imperatives. Remember, we said that the imperative of the Human Rights frame was about autonomy, as long as you choose it, that's the best thing you can do follow your heart to do you do whatever you want.

We have a whole different set of virtues, a whole different set of imperatives and goals. Obedience is in itself a goal last time the otter has the believer saying so me, I know what I thought we heard and we obey. At the same time, they're not forgotten, right? And then later we evade no Samina. Well, I thought that we heard and then immediately we obeyed, that's a virtue.

So for me to say, I wear hijab, or I have a beard, or I don't shake women's hands or whatever, because that's my choice. Okay, maybe once in a while, I have to break that out so that somebody understands, but that's not really what I believe, I believe, and I do what I do, because I'm obeying Allah. Because I believe in the virtue of obedience, obeying my Creator is a virtue. And that's something that I aspire to do I succeed 100% of the time. Nope. Nobody's perfect. But that is something that I aspire to

prudence, the idea of not consuming too much of refraining from taking too much or using too much.

If this world is all I have,

and the best thing that I can do is just whatever I want, that there's no limits for me. Every girl chaser every food, eat it every experience, do it. As they say YOLO

completely different than if I'm saying no, I'm created, I've got a job. I've got to raise up to this level and be a Kalita of Allah to be a steward for Allah in this dunya

that I'm only going to take what I need to do the job.

I'm going to eat what's enough for me and I'm going to share the rest. I'm going to live according to my means and I'm going to make sure everybody else is set and good.

We believe in loyalty.

We believe in obedience not just to Allah to Allah, but we also believe in loyalty and obedience to our fellow brothers and sisters and they have rights upon you to your parents.

Due to extended relatives, are they hard to deal with? Sometimes? Yes, they are. Are they right all the time? No, they're not. But that doesn't mean that they don't have any rights upon us. They have rights upon us. That comes downstream from everything that we're talking about who is the human being? What's the reality that Islam talks about?

It means that they have rights upon us. And we have a certain amount of loyalty to them. And finally, the last thing, the last virtue, the last imperative that this way of looking at the world, because Islam has an entire worldview, what it tells us what it teaches us has to be righteous.

To do the right thing when nobody is looking to do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do. Not just because I chose it.

But because it's the right thing to do to look at the quality of the activity itself. Is this a good thing? Is this right? Is it ethical? Is it moral, I don't care if anybody else is doing it. I don't care if everybody else is selling lottery tickets. I don't care if everybody else is selling alcohol. I don't care if it makes me feel free or autonomous or whatever. I don't care if it's what I want.

Righteousness, to do the right thing the prophets have always said and he said, even if the Day of Judgment is to be established right now, and you've got a sapling in your hand, you plant the sapling.

Are you ever going to see the fruit? Are you ever going to experience that shade? No, but that's irrelevant. We don't live for the dunya. We don't live for the results where people have process. We do the right thing.

No matter the results, we do the right thing. And Allah subhanaw taala has our reward.

So we see that two entirely different ways of looking at the world. The idea of human rights, you might need to use it. In very, very limited scenarios when you're talking to people. However, be very careful. Because it assumes things about who the human being is. It assumes things about the soul that assume things about the afterlife. It assumes things about religion and assumes things about God that completely are at odds with a snap and true rights. And true justice is taken from understanding what we're doing here, who we truly are. What is the nature of the soul? Where are we headed? And what are the criteria that Allah subhanaw taala is going to judge us upon in the

afterlife. Well, Allahu Tada.