Israel Bombs Rafah During Superbowl, that Biden Tweet, and Constructive Conversations

Welcome, everybody to the Yaqeen Institute live stream. I'm your host, Steve. I'm Tom Facchini. And it's a pleasure to have you with us again, this evening, or at least this evening in this part of the world. Welcome to the program, we apologize, we have quite a few technical difficulties, we're still working through the kinks, but it looks like we're up and running now. So I appreciate everybody and actually very touched by the patients of everybody who was hanging around, we're gonna try to make it up to you all. With a very special episode tonight. We've got a lot to discuss, as normal any at any point during the program. If you have questions, pop them in the chat. You can

also just say hi, and tell us where you're viewing from. It's always a pleasure to see the diversity of our audience. We've got people from all over the world. So without further ado, I think we're gonna get right into it and talk about current events that have been happening the past week, obviously one of the big the big news stories for the Muslim world was the Super Bowl, but for all the wrong reasons, right, there was something that people have been calling the Super Bowl massacre that took place that seemed to wait just for the Super Bowl to kick off in the United States when the IDF assaulted the last sort of area that was supposed to be protected area in the Gaza Strip.

Known as Rafa right? This was a place where I even said I'm gonna

have a lot of regard to we've got yes mean. Very good. Welcome, everybody. Mashallah. So, you know, what the IDF has been doing. And it has, since October 7 has been squeezing down the people of Gaza to the south like a tube of toothpaste.

And every single place that they had said was going to be a safe zone, the place where you should go if you're looking to get out of harm's way, they have attacked, and that happened now suspiciously, but not unfortunately, very surprisingly, they waited to unleash this bombardment upon Rafa until the literally the start of the Super Bowl when everybody in the western world would be presumably distracted. And unfortunately, there were over 100 people killed, many more injured, horrific scenes, a lot of people have seen the images and the videos throughout the week. And we're not going to put them up here because they're actually quite gruesome. But this was something that obviously,

was very upsetting to the point where now there's has started to be a little bit of discussion, even in Congress, when it comes to the House of Representatives in the Senate, about some soul searching and maybe some hesitation are is the United States government doing the right thing in sending money in lending support. This has been a long time coming and extremely overdue. And unfortunately, the Senate on Sunday, they passed the resolution to send yet more money, military aid to Israel. However, yeah, we can bring that up in the studio, right. And this is a $95 billion bill with aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Now, initially, it was a bill that that also included things for the

border with Mexico, and that bill was defeated. But not to be outdone, I believe it was, I believe it was Senator Schumer from New York, but I could be wrong about that. Re did the bill to leave off the border, the things that have to do with the Mexican border, in an attempt to just to get this military aid past. Disgusting indeed, I mean, and so this is something that passed the Senate, it still has to go to the house, it's not 100%, certain it is going to pass. If you are in Washington, DC, or the surrounding areas, Maryland, Virginia, even as far as Delaware, or New Jersey, or southern Pennsylvania, I highly recommend if you're able to get down to Congress this week, you

know, if you have a can take a half day off of work, or if you're working remote, and you can rearrange your schedule. There are people, Muslims and non Muslims, people who are sick and tired of the United States funding a genocide and funding the horrific massacres that all of us are seeing and following on social media, I recommend that you link up with them and get down there and make your voice heard. It's perfectly legal and permissible, and it's within American political culture as well, to go down and to have a face to face confrontation with the senators with your representatives, and to tell them that you're not happy with how they're behaving, and how they're

voting that they are giving money to, to this specific cause, which the world has condemned the entire world has condemned at this point. Yes, I agree. A cadre they are some of the most gruesome images that I have seen since the beginning of the escalation here. We ask Allah subhanaw taala to give us patience, but also to give every single one of us that Sophia, right this access the facilitation, to exhaust all the means that are available to us to put a stop to it because at the end of the day, if you are a United States citizen if you live the United States, that's your money. That's your tax money. That

As the government is sending abroad to kill children, and that's something that should upset every single one of us.

So, in other news now while this was going on, okay, we have the the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who has been his his mental faculties have been challenged in the past few weeks. He's had several gaffes and slip ups. He called President Sisi, the president of Mexico. He's not he's the president of, of Egypt. And he said other things seem to lose track midsentence. For the first time, I believe in history, he will be refusing a cognitive test

in his reelection bid, which is very, very strange behavior that his White House sort of staffers have had to explain. Now, while this was going on, let's pull up from the guys in the studio. Let's pull up. That's what he tweeted. Of course, now, it's not Joe Biden himself tweeting this as some sort of staffer or intern. But in an effort to attempt to be maybe I don't know, relatable to the youth, he posted this tweet of him with laser eyes,

saying, What does it say you're just like, we drew it up, or just like we planned it. Now, the intent was surely to refer to the Super Bowl and the game that was going on, and the fact that the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. So I've been told, however, the timing of the tweet was so dark, and the double meaning of someone being at the helm, when this specific massacre, and this in general, this genocide is taking place, has something that really really did horrify a lot of people, and show people, you know, a perfect sort of, we could say, representative image or a symbolic image of what has been going on for the past several months, and it was not lost even on the White House team,

they've had to delete the tweet and shame after they realized that this was being taken and understood in a completely different light. But it does also show and many people have reflected upon this, about the, the ambivalence, and we could even say obliviousness of many people still in the United States of America, when it comes to how its government functions, especially abroad, that there are many, many things that are done in the name of Americans abroad, with your tax money and my tax money, and that it is done to overthrow democratic regimes. Sometimes it is to destabilize societies, sometimes it is to intervene, or to drop bombs or to have drone strikes. And these things

often go without any sort of oversight or any sort of awareness of the American people. Now, then there are people who are very upset at the United States government, and even at Americans. And we wonder why, and our media presents it to us as if all these people just hate us for our freedoms, or these people are just, you know, they're savages, or they're barbaric, or they're hateful, when in reality, the vast majority of the time it is the policies of the United States government that are at the bottom of so much unrest, and sort of, you could say animosity, so as any person who has a shred of responsibility, or feels the need to actually have their government be responsive to what

is their own best interest and their own sort of will, that it is on all of us to hold our elected representatives accountable and to be aware, to not get lost in the endless distractions, especially the Super Bowl and things like that, that we have to and one genre, one genre, I mean, all of us Inshallah,

that to to take advantage of all the means to hold our are to hold our representatives and our governments accountable, to not let them do things in our name that we would not have them do. And of course, as we have no article Rockman joining us from from Pakistan, we could say everything that's been going on in Pakistan the past week, with a sort of overthrow of the popularly popularly elected parties, they're a very similar story at story and the people of Pakistan have been very courageous, despite they've got the army intervening to attempt to steal the election from who the people have expressed their support for. So we asked a lot to give everybody the courage and

steadfastness to be able to persevere and stand up for justice wherever they are, and wherever they may be. And finally, when it comes to current events, we have I think we have a commercial. So in, in response to one of the other sublines for the Super Bowl was that the nation of Israel purchased two ads to run during the Superbowl. And these ads were very, very politically charged and motivated attempting to portray

or to drum up sympathy for their side now, okay, anybody can purchase an ad however, in the United States, there's actually laws and rules that govern what foreign nations can do when it comes to airtime. And these rules were completely flouted and not followed at all that you know, these commercials, you know how much money it takes to run a commercial business.

Superbowl about $7 million per commercials 30 seconds, you're paying $7 million in order for you to have so many eyeballs on the message that you want delivered. And many groups have taken advantage of this Christian groups have taken advantage of this too, to preach their religions and spread their religion. You know, there's nothing necessarily illegal about it. However, if you're a foreign nation that's doing it, there needs to be some sort of disclaimer, according to US law. There was no such disclaimer with the two commercials that Israel ran. And of course, with the amount of money that Israel receives from the United States, it feels a little bit disgusting, though, that that's

actually not their own money, but my money and your money if you're from the United States, that has now gone to a foreign nation, that then it purchases a 32nd $7 million commercial Superbowl commercial with in order to justify its genocidal campaign. Twist the times we live in. So anyway, so Sheikh Omar shared on Twitter, we bring it up here in the studio accounts or what.

I'm not sure if that's it, because the the actual commercial that was run during the Superbowl was about fathers. And there was a commercial that che commercial a man shared

to all the dads.

The patient wants,

the brave ones, the Compassionate ones. The grieving once said,

to all the dads who have been killed by the IDF for over 120 days, we vow to bring you justice.

Very powerful stuff. And as a father myself, obviously that that resonates with me.

Much more so than sort of the storyline of what was the opposite storyline was just trying to drum up sympathy for people who were in a place where they shouldn't be doing things that they shouldn't do a lot at the site, a lot of stuff.

So with that said, we'll transition now to the second segment of the show, we have a very special guest on with us this evening.

We can bring into the studio, Ahmed Sheikh, he is somebody who is an Islamic estate planning attorney, he is someone who is has very active substack. And I became familiar with his work through his substack in which he has become something of a watchdog for the Muslim community. And being a watchdog. And being a whistleblower certainly draws a lot of negative attention and controversy. And we won't shy away from that. However, I believe that the things that that Mr. Schaefer are is bringing attention to are absolutely essential conversations that have to be heard, and very, very, very timely conversations, given the level of political organization that has been motivated and the

motivation that everybody feels now, so many people are asking in this program every week, what can I do? Who can I donate to? Who are the reliable organizations and the trustworthy organizations? what's the way forward? And to be frank, the Muslim community has been behind the curve and scrambling a bit. But we also want to make sure that our energy and our money and our efforts are being applied in the best way forward. And we're happy to have admin Sheikh with us to help us think through what that will look like. Thank you so much for joining us on the program.

While they come sit down. So you know, I'm trying to have you know, because

there's two aspects to it, right. So we could characterize a lot of the,

the organization when it comes to Muslims in the political sphere attempting to have political influence as an abject failure. And I think that is where you and I would probably agree, because the way I said it in a flipbook is that whatever we've done since 911, whatever we've done for the past 20 some years, we, that has contributed to our failure to stop 30,000 Palestinians from being slaughtered. Right. So we're sort of sitting on a watershed moment where we can't repeat the mistakes of the past. We have to turn a new leaf. We have a small amount of time, it feels like there's an urgency, but it also feels like there's an immense opportunity where people are paying

attention, they want to contribute, they want to get involved. I want to have you talk to the audience and make them understand what is the sort of terrain that we see now when it comes to Muslim organizations in trying to organize politically and what is missing.

So I'm

A lot of what we can attribute to is kind of the modern sort of Muslim political organizing happened a little bit before September 11, specifically during the 2000 elections. And then there was this one organization that was kind of combined with it was Kerr ampac. Another organization, that American Muslim Council, and they there was a, there was a, there was somebody named Agha say it who created something called the American Muslim political Coordinating Committee, it was it was a PAC, and they did an endorsement of a presidential candidate, and they wanted to have a Muslim bloc vote and, and get involved with political with the political process. And they actually endorsed George

W. Bush and George W. Bush was, was very, it was very nice and charming to them. And, you know, brought them in many Muslim leaders actually, personally spoke with George W. Bush, um, he brought up the big issue that Muslims had with Clinton at the time, which was secret evidence being used in immigration proceedings. And he actually brought it up during a presidential debate, he thought that Arabs should be treated like human beings, and gore wasn't really willing to go that far. And then, of course, you know, Bush became president 911 happened.

The same organization

endorsed Kerry afterwards. And then they wanted to endorse Obama. But Obama asked them to not endorse him. They he didn't want any public Muslim support at all, which was incredibly dispiriting that organization, of course, does not exist anymore, that PAC is now long gone. But there are other other political organizing that has primarily been not moved, moved away from from the political action committee seen. Its there have been a lot of Muslim nonprofits, a lot of them because a lot of them want Zika. And they want to be Zika eligible and all of the things that they do, they,

I think that there's a, there's a desire to raise money and figure maybe, in some of this is kind of speculative as to how this, this this developed. And, and part of it is maybe cultural within the Muslim community we want. We want donations to be considered to be tax deductible, and we want it to be eligible. And and a lot of that you're allowed to do some lobbying, you're not allowed to do any electioneering with a lot of these nonprofits, and many nonprofits in order to want to be relevant. And many donors actually want their nonprofits to consider it to be relevant to show, okay, hey, we're doing things we're talking to politicians. And so you know, we're being invited to these stars

that they're doing with pictures and selfies. So it is important to to have relationships. But a lot of these relationships, have some level of humiliation built into them. In many instances.

I just sort of pull a couple of things out from what you're saying here, just for the just the odds. So would you say that there was a feeling after after what happened with Bush and the change? Would you say there was a feeling that we got burned, that many of those Muslim community organizations sort of then shied away or pivoted away because they feel like something happened that they didn't foresee? When you say that's accurate? I think that for the people that were involved with that it had to be very, very dispiriting.

Now, those were the specific people and there's that generation now a lot of that generation is still there, they're still obviously cares leadership back then is the same is essentially the same leadership is right now. And they were of course involved in that in that same same as impact on the other third organization, I don't believe exists anymore. But but a lot of a lot of that generation is still there, like care here in California, has a has a PAC, they've had a pack for about 20 years, but they they really just endorse candidates, they really haven't raised any serious money or have really done anything with it. They do host fundraisers with with other wealthy people, or with

wealthy individuals within the Muslim community are donors or, you know, political donors. But it's not it's not something that they haven't really focused on the on the political organizing aspect of it. Now, there is an exception to that. That is in the emergence of the past several years of an organization known as engage and I've written quite a bit about engage in that they are there are some Muslims that are involved. There are some non Muslims that are involved. They've been primarily

Funded by non Muslims. And their main focus has been, in my view, to be to be there for getting Muslims to support the Democratic Party, the Democratic agenda, etc. And being safe, because remember to the Muslims need to be the Muslims who do go to speak to politicians, especially national politicians like Obama, Biden, they need to be vetted, or they need to be vetted by people who are maybe skeptical of the kinds of politics that Muslims might have, specifically with respect to Middle East policy right?

Over that, especially like you were saying, the Obama years and then the Clinton campaign, that you know, who was allowed in the room, right, was heavily sort of controlled to the point where you could make an argument that said that some of the people that were handpicked were not very good representatives

of the Muslim community. So one thing that I see you saying, or at least an implication of what you're saying is that we have a lack, because I asked you sort of about needs, right. But it seems like we have a lack of organizations that are really just focusing on political strategy. And because you sort of seem to indicate that maybe the organization's were doing a lot of things, right. And if you're doing a lot of things, then maybe you're not going to do this one particular thing extremely well. That may be what your funders are looking for. Maybe it's pushing you into politics, or that's what everybody's caring about now. But we don't necessarily have good focused,

sustained, right. organizations that represent the Muslim community, in politics, develop strategies hold candidates accountable. Would you say that that's accurate? I think so. I think that with a lot of Muslim organizations, they, especially when there's this marriage with the Democratic Party, there's this need to be relevant within the party itself. And so say, for example, in the early Obama years, um, the big issue was health care and healthcare legislation. And suddenly, these a number of Muslim organizations began talking about health care and became experts on health care and health care policy. Now, this this also, this also became an issue with you know, whatever, whatever

it is, during that era, that becomes an issue and with, pertaining to the Muslim community, obviously, it was a Democratic Party priority to be involved with, with countering violent extremism within the Muslim community. And to be relevant in those circles, you needed to actually have a position on extremism and how to make Muslims less extreme stuff like that was going on, you have to accept the framing, and this was one of the big problems of CVE, you have to accept the framing that Muslims are inherently dangerous, which is contradicts the FBIs own sort of studies of the thing, you know, anybody who's ever done a workshop with FBI, you know, I mean, you had to if I mean, if

you wanted to be invited to the right rooms, if you wanted to get your pictures taken with politicians, you needed to adopt the frame, otherwise, you're in the wilderness. And if you're in a nonprofit, and your job is to get grants, it's to get money, it's to get donations, you're not in a comfortable place, if you're going to be the stranger all the time. Right. So I guess that's my, that's my question where I would like to go because you have a lot of powerful ideas about both how things were done wrong, and how things should be done correctly. So let's imagine we have a blank canvas. Let's imagine now that there's a lot of people who are watching, that have good intentions,

they're probably naive, there probably is a steep learning curve. They're trying to understand the process and the players and things like that. If we're making organizations that fulfill the objectives that we want, what should they look like? How should they learn from mistakes of the past, in the past? How do they not be tokenized? Or in the wilderness? How do we get to effectiveness that is representative of actual Muslim interest? So there, there are a couple of things that that go on. With nonprofits. I mean, a lot of the Muslim community is organized through nonprofits, that's where leaders come from. That's where that's where a lot of the stuff actually

happens. If it's a conference, it's being done through a nonprofit, you know, obviously, the the organism, you know, Yaqeen is a nonprofit, a masjid is a nonprofit. And so a lot of this is just run through, run through nonprofit organizations. And there is this. There are a few trends. I mean, obviously some there I think there have been some criticisms about okay, well, I mean, to what extent is there there's influences that are coming from, from American culture, American law, the way things are organized in the United States because the nonprofit sector has some very, very serious

as ethical problems, and has some very serious problems that have really nothing to do with the Muslim community, but because the Muslim community is kind of

operating under this frame, we have we have, we have some structural issues. Now, if you're a nonprofit organization, and you're a fiduciary for the nonprofit organization, your main purpose in being a fiduciary for the nonprofit organization is to is the nonprofit organization itself. It's the it's the corporation itself, right? And so when I was when I was involved with this now, I mean, one of the things that you're thinking about as well, how does this benefit is now? How is this going to increase turnout here? Or how's it going to increase donations? Or how is it going to make us more relevant as an organization, et cetera, et cetera? I'm not speaking for everybody. And it's

not, I'm just talking about myself. And that's kind of like what we normally will think about when we're thinking about like nonprofits.

Now, there's this, there's this notion from, from corporations, right? So if you're a for profit corporation, the idea here is that, you know, you want to increase profits for shareholders. And that's all right. And then there's, then there's this movement within corporations about Well, wait a minute, that can't be everything, there should be this corporate social responsibility movement, that we should really care about everybody in our supply chain, we should care about the environment, we should care about whatever that says. So. And one of the questions that one person just asked me before, like when I was talking about this notion about, about

fiduciary duty, and and what we need to do is, you know, if we if we have nonprofit, and I thought about it in terms of like, no matter, right, I mean, there are these people, they donate to our organization, they think that we're doing something good. And we need to make sure and spend it in the best possible way, in a way that they kind of expect us to do. And there's a lot of ways that you can, you know, Miss spend money, etc, especially something like Zika. But one of the questions I think it was,

it was it was, check shakaama cool. He was asking me this years ago, I don't even know if he remembers this, but he was like, you know, that who's the who's the fiduciary for the OMA? Right? Like, who is? Who is there for our brothers and sisters around the world?

What is there as far as a larger role, not just for the organization itself, but for everybody, in our community? Everywhere.

And that's something that doesn't exist in nonprofits, because the notion of corporate social responsibility, doesn't, doesn't, that's not really defined for us yet, it doesn't really exist as a concept that's really, really intriguing, especially a lot of my academic work was is with secularism, and how sort of adopting these, if it's a secular model, let's say of education, right? You are unknowingly adopting a certain way of doing things, there are certain concepts and structures and practices and a culture that you sort of are, that's becomes your default, you know, your ground zero. And what you're saying reminds me of, you know, not just in education or other

spheres, but even in nonprofits that we're basically stepping into, and we're using a vehicle, and the vehicle has a logic to it. Right? And it's set up in a certain way. And there are certain maybe even values or metaphysical assumptions behind it, would you say that we need to Islamist sighs, the nonprofit in order to move forward?

I think there really has to be an element of that. Absolutely. I think that we need to reimagine how Islamic leadership works, who it works for, what our values are.

Because I don't necessarily think that and this isn't really any fault of anybody who's running a nonprofit. I think that we slip into our rules, you know, and we always do I mean, we get to, you know, I'm a lawyer for somebody, I'm in court and I'm, like, focused on that. I don't care if my client cares about me or not. Right. I mean, that's, that's that's the case with with any types of any types of roles that you have. It's an understanding of what your role is. And and who are you supposed to? What, what what type of what type of function are you supposed to serve? And when we understand, you know, that as a nonprofit, are we supposed to help Democrats win is that our long

term goal and then we're going to talk to them and we're, then we're going to make friends with them and they're gonna maybe respect us because we help turn out the vote. Or, you know, is it is it really important for me to, you know, what does it actually do for the Muslim community?

If I get a selfie with a specific politician, right, right, what, what did that? What did that politician do to earn a selfie with a leader in the Muslim community? Um, and, you know, I think that there's there's just a lot that when you understand what it is that your role is, and maybe it needs to be, you know, just adopted by by Muslim organizations in general, why? Why do we exist? Do we just exist for ourselves as an organization? Do we exist for the ummah? And if so, what does that exactly mean? Yes, excellent. And you've talked a lot in other, you know, conversations that we've had about, about morality statements, or morality clauses and sort of ethics, right? Could you, we

don't have a ton more time. But could you walk us through maybe? What if we're imagining constructively in the future? What should Muslim nonprofits be adopting when it comes to morality clauses or ethical standards that they don't currently have now that's going to prevent them from slipping into that sort of just into that role, where we're only serving the organization? We don't even pick our heads up to see if it's working or serving us? Yeah. So it's kind of interesting, when I bring up things like the morality clause, or nonprofits or whatever that are, you know, like corporate social responsibility, these are all things that exists here in the United States, because

that's kind of what I know. Right? And so, you know, when we when we think about, Well, who do we associate with and why? And, and there's this these questions about well, can we is it okay to, you know, if there's somebody who supports genocide? Um, is it okay for me to sit on a stand on a lectern with them and talk about our common shared values on something we actually do? share in common? Is that, is that appropriate? Now, is it appropriate at another level to share a lectern with somebody who shares a lectern with somebody like that? Right, right. And so, so those are, those are things that we actually need to consider. And I think that a morality clause like you if

you are, if you're a Muslim leader, say you are, say you're a CEO of an organization, and you commit some sort of a crime, right? That involves moral turpitude, you you defrauded somebody, right? And, you know, you need to have some morality, a morality clause will typically state that, well, you know, if you defrauded somebody and you were convicted of defrauding somebody, you probably shouldn't be CEO of our organization anymore. Right? That's, that's what a morality clause does. Now, what I'm thinking of doing is actually expanding that to, to a morality clause that encompasses not associating yourself with

immoral things, as we understand them. Right. And that, but I mean, I think this this is a In part this is some of this is obvious, especially now, when we all agree, generally within the Muslim community, while we all agree about about Palestine, and we support our brothers and sisters in Palestine, right now, that hasn't always been the case, necessarily, within the Muslim community. But we all we're all on the same page right now. And this is actually a really good moment, to demand these things of our Muslim leaders and of our Muslim nonprofits, other types of things, I think, is a matter of like, szura, right? Like, what if there's a Muslim leader who makes like

statements of gopher? And what does that even mean? And, you know, those types of things? I think that those are, those are really important things that need to be addressed as well. But, but I think that if somebody supports if somebody supports, you know, Jenner, genocide, or supports somebody who supports it, or gives money to them, or, you know, or tries to, I mean, if if somebody carries their water that they're not doing, they're not working for the OMA, um, they're working against, right, and then those people should not be in positions of Muslim leadership, they should not hold positions of trust within the Muslim community, ya know, fundamentally is about Yeah, no,

no. And that's what our latest comment here by a gallery brings up is that, you know, the more granular we get, I think that's really what we need to figure out. Right, exactly what you're saying how many degrees of separation is acceptable, like and the example you gave about a lectern or a panel? Right? You know, okay, it's pretty obvious to not let yourself be tokenized. Or to be used in a sort of a faith washing exercise where you're on the panel with someone problematic. But what if it's another degree removed? What if it's you on a panel with somebody who just got back from a panel with some, you know, these are the types of really granular things I think that we need to to

tease out through shorter through folks like yourself who have, you know, a certain set of experiences and skill sets, folks like myself who have a different set of experiences and skill sets to sort of come up with standard

All right, baseline standards, what are our red lines really, and then to approach organizations and to start to create a culture of accountability that neither goes too far to one extreme or the other, because sometimes we in the Muslim community, we're ready to break out the pitchforks for the mob just for an accusation. Right before it's even proven. And then on the other side, we're ready to completely overlook everything. You know, in other cases, right, so the I see this, and I think I think you're with me here, I see this as a constellation of issues that cuts across a lot of what we struggle with in the Muslim community in North America. And it feels like if we're able to figure

this out, and it is a golden opportunity, that we can improve the quality of our institutions significantly through the development of these sorts of things.

Any last thoughts or final thoughts that you'd like to share with us before we, before we bid adieu? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that that brings up the issue of,

of what about people who are critical of Muslim organizations and institutions? If we have some baseline standards for that? I think that we're going to have some space within the community to address what is good leadership, and what is bad leadership. Instead, right? Now we have this wishy washy, well, he's, well, he's a Muslim, and we shouldn't criticize them. And we're all trying to work on the same thing. And we're all we're all good. And we're all wonderful. And let's let everybody be, because I mean, that's not true. There's actually people within the Muslim community actively working against the interests of the Muslim community. That's been the case, not just in

the United States. That's, that's been the case throughout all of Muslim history. And, and so if we, if we do have some sort of understanding of what are the standards, we I think we're going to be much better off as a community. And we'll be able to do a lot more for our brothers and sisters in Palestine, as well. There's anywhere else in the world. Excellent. Wonderful. I want to say thank you so much for coming on the program tonight. Really enjoyed it. And we'll be in touch. Well, it's been a pleasure, Zack.

Turning now to our segment, okay, we have a couple things that will keep it a little bit short since we started late. And we're running over time. So we've got our,

our book here that we're running through habits taken from the life of the prophet Mohammed site setup, that have to do with the actions of day and night. And in the next part of this, we've talked a lot about sort of how to wake up and sort of habits for the early morning and making my prayers and remembering along connecting sort of with his signs. Now we finally gotten to the part of the book that talks about actual, the actual federal prayer. So the first prayer that we make in the morning, and there's some specific etiquettes there's certain there's certain things that are recommended to do specifically and I'll talk to the guys here for a second or maybe the ladies as

well if you do go to the masjid but specifically about approaching prayer in the masjid going to the mosque. How should you conduct yourself, one of the Sunnah, and one of the parts of the Sunnah for going to the mosque is actually making will do your purification at home, before you leave, right? So that you're leaving to the mosque, you're only there for that purpose. And then you're ready to jump right into your prayer and to your worship. Another one we have and this was probably something that's maybe a little bit less well known is walking peacefully the Prophet. So I said, I've encouraged people to walk and proceed peacefully to their places of prayer. Now, that sounds

obvious, but then what happens is that sometimes we leave a little bit late, or we're delayed on the road. And then what what ends up happening is we rush and that rushing can be in a car, right? That rushing can be when you pull up and you you park crooked and you block somebody or, you know, you go in, you throw yourself into the mosque and you sort of maybe cause a commotion, right? Because you are you're hit you're hastening you're you're rushing, you're trying to get there in a certain amount of time.

And then what happens the consequence of this is that you actually might even accumulate sin in your effort to get to the mosque as soon as possible. Right? If you're on the road, and you cut somebody off and that person, you know, then you're making gestures at the person, right? And you're about to go pray and stare and stand in front of your Lord and have a conversation with your Creator. Those two things don't go together. What quality do you think is going to be in your prayer? Do you think that your prayer is going to be peaceful when you approach it in such a hasty manner? Right. And so proceeding to the prayer in a dignified and peaceful way, is an essential part of having a peaceful

and beneficial prayer. You know, that includes how you park that includes how you walk that includes, you know, putting your shoes up on the rack, not just leaving it for some

Ready to trip on, that includes approaching the actual row of people praying, that includes also not being on your phone until the very last minute, there's some people, sometimes you're approaching the prayer, and you're getting in that last text message and you're, you know, pushing buttons on the phone. And then up until you're just about to join the line. And then you expect to say, Allahu Akbar, and you're going to be in the prayer. And as if you're going to be able to focus, as if your attention isn't going to be back with the phone. Just like with talking, when we talked about how to prepare yourself, the time between the event the call to prayer and the prayer itself, about the

time that you spend, when you make blue, right, when you purify yourself, this is all given to you as a runway, right? So that you can get in the mode of being prepared for your worship, that it is going to be focused, that is going to be clear, it is going to be sincere and it's actually going to benefit you. And every little bit that you take away from that whether it's rushing, whether it's being busy with something else, right then it is going to detract from that prayer.

Once you get to the MSG, we have the studio can bring up we have the prayer upon answering the masjid, we have that for people to see.

Here we go. Okay, so when the Prophet SAW, I said, I'm going to enter a mosque, he would say this, and he encouraged us to do it as well, that you say, Allahu miftah, Li abueva rhotic. Right.

And then when you are leaving, there's also something else the prey. There's also something else to say and they're very, very interesting. And their meanings and the difference between the two. Okay, so you see

Allahumma inni es el Carmen phobic. Oh Allah, I ask you for your bounty. Now it's, it's interesting to reflect upon the difference between the two, when you're entering the mosque, you're asking ALLAH to open the doors to his mercy. And then when you're leaving the mosque, you're asking ALLAH to open the gates of His Bounty. That is because what is the mosque for was the mess you for, it's for your forgiveness of your sins. It's for bringing your creators mercy upon you. And then when you leave, you're going back out to your work to your jobs, whatever else you have to do. And so that's when you ask Allah for his bounty.

And then finally, and this is another sort of reinforcement of the importance of leaving early and giving yourself enough time, which unfortunately, in the modern era, we do a very, very poor job of doing is the importance of the first row. And I think in the studio, we also have this if you could bring it up one of the Hadith that was mentioned by the prophesy son, about the yes, there we go about the importance of the of the first row and we're talking here, the men because the prophets, I said, I'm also instructed that for the men, the best row was to be in the front. And for the women, the best row for them is to be in the back. But the prophesy said, I'm also said that if the people

knew how much reward was in pronouncing the other, or for standing in the first row, meaning in the message, and found no other way to get to that, except by drawing lots than they would draw lots, drawing lots like picking the short straw, right. And if they knew the reward of the lower prayer in the early moments, then they would race for it, meaning they would go early. And if they knew the reward of a shot and feathers in congregation and the machine, then they would come to offer them even if they had to crawl, sometimes, and every single one of us is guilty of it. We were too spoiled by the modern conveniences of life, we think, Oh, the water is cold, or it's cold outside,

or oh, I have to fire up the car, I have to start the car, I have to do this, or I have to do that. And we let them we let those sort of circumstances. What is the shaytaan tells you tells us that Oh, you're tired? You didn't sleep enough? All these sorts of things. They stand in our way, don't they? And then we essentially are undervaluing what is going on when we actually go to the mosque and pray that all these sorts of things when it comes to the forgiveness of your sins, when it comes to all the sort of blessing and

success that your Creator is giving you from your worship in the mosque, that we don't value it enough that we consider it basically the promises that I'm communicating to us. If you really knew the value of going to the mosque for prayer in the certain times doing the certain things, then you would certainly you wouldn't act the way that you did, which is on us that we basically see that we don't value it enough

to conclude tonight, before questions, and no we don't necessarily take personal questions here. It's not really the right forum. It's best to reach out to someone on an individual level for that. But when it comes to we'll have our personal development section. And then we'll take questions so if anybody has any general

Questions or other questions, and you can drop them in the chat. And then we will sign off for tonight. So when it comes to our personal development,

we are starting a new book this weekend. And as a Lowood. Well, I forgot that book at home, so I can't show you the cover of it. But I've have my notes. So we'll do what we can, that it was the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. And that's a very grandiose title. Right? You know, people have these marketing teams, and they have to make their books seem extremely convincing. However, there's much good in the book. And there's much good in the topic in general to talk about leadership. If we look at the life of the prophet Mohammed salah, he said on that he was an in immensely capable leader, he was an exceptional leader, a superior leader. And one of the things that this particular

book errs, there's a title addresses is a lot of misconceptions about leadership that you might not understand what a leader does, or what leadership often is. And I think we'll get into that next week a little bit more when he talks about myths of leadership, thinking that being a leader has to be the person who knows the most, or the person who's out in front or the person who does something first. These are all myths. That's not really what leadership is. And the first sort of myth to deal with when it talks when he's talking about leadership, is to think that you don't need leadership is to think that leadership as a skill is only for the presidents or the people running organizations

or, you know, the big movers and shakers. And that's not true. That's not true at all. And we have a Hadith from our traditional saying of the Prophet Muhammad Ali salah, where he said, Hello Kong raw in Aquila comas, udon unreality, he said that every single one of you is a shepherd.

Every single one of you is a shepherd. And every step Shepherd is responsible for his or her flock. That means that no matter who you are, if you only gives examples, right, the leader, the head of state, right, he is responsible for the whole nation, a father, and a husband is responsible for his family, okay? A wife and a mother is responsible for children in the house. Even if you were a servant in those times, you were still responsible for what you were entrusted with, right? So every single person,

every single person has responsibility.

And if you have responsibility, then you need leadership, you absolutely need leadership. So rather than think about sort of running some sort of fortune 500 company, let's think about being better. Husbands, let's think about being better wives, let's think about being better parents, let's think about being better people in our family, right, that this is an essential aspect of being a good Muslim is having some sort of leadership. Now, when it comes to

the first chapter of the book, he calls it and he, he calls the separatism, obviously into 21 Different laws. The first law that he mentioned is what he calls the law of the lid. Okay, what is the law of the lid, the law of the lid essentially means that leadership depends or determines rather, how effective you can be. Okay? That leadership when it comes to the ability to influence people, or the ability to get people to do something that maybe they wouldn't normally do, if left to their own, that

developing leadership is going to unlock potential that you didn't have before. And that specifically of all the characteristics and qualities that you need in order to be the most effective version of yourself. Leadership is one of them that's right there at the top. So let's imagine for example, that you are, you know, let's say that you're a wife, you're a mother, you your job is to raise the kids, okay?

It's a battle and so hospitals are under attack right now. May Allah assist and aid our brothers and sisters in Palestine, and accept their martyrs and lift the oppression that they're under.

When it comes to your effectiveness also matter, you're whether you're a mother, you have kids, okay? You put food on the table, you work hard.

You call your your kids to come to the table to eat and they don't come.

What's going to happen? You get upset, maybe you yell, maybe you try to guilt people, maybe you try to do these various things to get your kids to come but they don't. They don't come when you ask them to come. Or the same thing could happen. If you're the father, you ask your kids to get ready for something. You have to go to an important appointment appointment that they kind of blow you off, they don't listen to you and then you end up being late for the appointments and extremely frustrating experience that many, many people many, many people

are familiar with. Right? So II

Even when it comes to being a parent, even when it comes to effectively leading within your home, how to get your children to listen to you, or how to get your spouse to listen to you or to consider your point of view or to adopt another way of thinking about something or doing something that every single one of us can stand to be a better leader. And this is something that is actually there's there's rules to it, like any anything else, there's, there's practices, there's ideas, there's techniques, right? And so the first technique, or the first idea is to realize that you need this thing. Because if you don't realize that you need leadership, why would you necessarily concern

yourself, he's like, Oh, I'm never going to need that. No, you need it. Even if you're just you know, you only have one or two people, family members under you, you need leadership.

So, there's the one of the benefits of this book is that it's also an activity book. And so there's activities to do. So this is going to be

this is going to be your homework for the week. Okay.

There's three steps to this homework.

Okay. Number one, is that you're going to make a list of five major goals. And what we mean by major goals is that you're going to make a list of five goals that are going to take at least a year to accomplish. So a major goal would be like memorizing the Quran, for example. Or you want to start a business, or you want to start up a new program at the masjid or you want to build a masjid, right, these are major things that are going to take more than a year to accomplish, you're going to make every single person, you're going to make a list of five major goals. Okay, step two, is you're going to go through that list of five things, you're going to ask yourself, how many of these things

require cooperation from other people, because some things you can do on your own. But other things, you need other people to help assist. And that's where leadership comes in. Okay? Now, the third part of this is you're going to now rates your leadership, I'll pay close attention, because we're going to give you sort of categories to rate your leadership, you're going to rate yourself from one to 10. And then after that, you're going to ask somebody else to rate you one to 10. And you're going to compare, okay, this is what I want you to do for next week. So there we go. So the four areas in which you want to rate your own leadership from one to 10, rate your people skills, how

good am I with dealing with other people to your planning and strategic thinking? Three, your vision

and four results?

Okay, yes, exactly. So we have those four things. Yeah, that's the reality check. So you have those four things, raise yourself, after going through the other things that we said to do rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. I'm a seven with people skills, but I'm just the two is strategic and planning and thinking and planning, etc. Then after you've done that, go to someone who knows you well, and ask them to rate you to and compare, we're going to check in next week and see if it was higher or lower, or what you learned about yourself, and what you learned about the difference between how you perceive yourself and how other people perceive you, and how you perceive your

leadership ability, and how other people perceive your leadership ability.

So with that, we have just a few minutes for any other questions. I would really encourage anybody who's asking anything about marriage, to talk to somebody, not in an anonymous form on the internet, because that is a it's my belief, there is a that's a very, there's a high stakes situation. And you need to get somebody who knows your particular particular situation, do not go to generalities. So we're talking about marriage and divorce, I would strongly discourage people from asking other people in a chat, I would definitely encourage you to find someone qualified. There are federal banks, there are scholars there are hotlines, there are people, you know, in any Muslim country in

the world. There are people and I used to see them when I lived in Medina, that their job was to stay there all day by a phone waiting for a phone call for a certain situation. Alright, so please, if you are looking for something that is more than just a general answer, please reach out to someone qualified because a an unqualified answer is really going to end up doing more damage than not having an answer at all.

I don't see any other questions. But we had we made the best of it. I know we had again, we had some technical difficulties tonight. I appreciate everybody's patience and everybody tuning in.

If there is nothing else than I think that we will be to do tonight we'll say goodbye. We hope that you have a blessed week. And we will look forward to checking in next week. I'm going to do this I'm going to do the same exercises to so we'll have a very frank conversation about our our leadership,

our leadership abilities as they are now with the hope to again the whole

purpose is not to feel bad or to feel good about our current leadership skills but to improve them to improve them and so we'll go on this journey together in sha Allah Tada I ask a lot to bless every single one of you bought a coffee comes a pentacle a homeopathic a shadow and the answer stuff we'll go to