Tom Facchine – Leftist Gatekeepers
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Assalamu alaykum ras tala. Welcome to Yaqeena Institute's
weekly livestream program. I'm your host, Imam Tom
Fakini.
Welcome to what should be a jam packed
and spicy session of our livestream,
where we're going to talk about the politics
and political unfoldings of the week, some very
contentious stuff, in addition to a blog post
that was put out by yours truly, which
is stirring up some controversy,
and we'll also start new books today. We've
got the 2 segments of, test your item
where we'll be asking questions from the audience,
where we're gonna start a, part of a
a hadith book Sahih Muslim, actually, in a
long forgotten,
sort of long forgotten part of Islamic knowledge,
and we'll be starting a brand new book
on personal development
called Atomic Habits, a very, very popular book
and 1 that I recently finished and benefited
from tremendously.
But without further ado, let's get to see
if we have any q and a right
now. Anybody in the comments,
tell us where you're viewing from.
Give us a shout out. Let us know
what's on your mind. If you've got any
questions, we'll be taking them first.
Mister DIII
appreciate you. I appreciate you, mister d.
We
we don't have all the answers, but we
try to point out what Allah shows us.
So may Allah accept from us.
I too was someone who spent years years
years on the left, so this is something
that is
not necessarily,
it's very familiar to me. Right? And so
something that I care deeply about is not
something that is,
you know, foreign to me or that I
have no familiarity with.
Muhammad Jahid from California,
The Sunshine State or is the Sunshine State,
is that California or is that Florida?
From LA, Siti Nuriati.
Hoping to
be in LA, what is it, on
October, November? I can't remember for Mass
LA. They have a a conference in the
fall. Mister d from Yakarta,
Indonesia. Welcome. Welcome.
From Karachi, Pakistan.
Falta Magali from Egypt. Umadunya. Welcome.
We've got Tahira Martin, if I'm saying that
correctly, from New Jersey.
I, myself, am a native of New Jersey.
Welcome. We've gotten
a to Bande
from New York.
I'm a man. Thank you. Give salaams to
everybody from Karachi. I think it's gonna take
you the rest of your life.
It's our Tasha Zainab from Greater Toronto Area.
Inshallah, I'll be in Toronto in the fall
as well. And if not in the fall,
then definitely by December, InshaAllah Ta'ala.
From the USA with return Muslim 604 returned
from Hajj a few days ago. May Allah
accept your Hajj, and we hope that you
prayed for the liberation and success and victory
of the people of Gaza and Palestine.
Congratulations. I hope it was a positive experience
and that Allah accepts it from you.
From SoCal. Welcome back to the program. You're
a regular.
We know each other by now.
And we got from Malaysia, the Gigahut.
Welcome. Welcome to the program. Inshallah, I'll be
in Malaysia this time next month in July.
From
Worcester.
Welcome to the program. I need to get
back to Worcester. Worcester was nice.
Shafi'i m,
from Florida.
Mohammed Saeed Khan from London, a Sharif.
Atika from Indonesia.
Very welcome to the program. I don't I
see a lot of introductions. I don't see
any questions. Nobody has any questions to drop
or discussion points.
Everyone's waiting waiting for the rest of the
program or what? M y from New York.
Good stuff. Well, if nobody has any burning
questions, then the chat is always gonna be
open for your questions. We encourage you to
use
we'll get right into it. Nihah Khan from
Calgary, Canada.
Welcome. Nerimen Nurai Mateen from Texas.
Good stuff, everybody.
Well, let's get to the program. 1st, we're
gonna talk a little current events, and it
was a very, very packed week. As you
know, the political scene across the world, but
also especially in the US,
is in,
an extremely contentious state. It's still primary season
for many people,
and this is something that wouldn't normally necessarily
get so much attention. But for us, it
has specific and special emphasis and attention because
the United States is
complicit, if not directly
contributing to the genocide and slaughter of our
brothers and sisters.
And so it becomes very, very contentious and
an important thing to keep tabs on and
to discuss what's going on in the political
scene because it is directly going to affect
what is going on in Gaza and Palestine.
Let's see.
Welcome. My name is Salaam Raflatul from Birmingham.
Zartasha Zainab, there's gatekeeping on both the left
and the right organizing, but also gatekeeping.
Looks like you got cut off there, but
I agree. It's definitely not just a left
issue, but we do have to talk about,
the particular things that are going on, which
is gonna directly relate to what we just
had. Bring that that asset right back. We
had so this week, we had,
there was a rally held in the Bronx.
The Bronx is a neighborhood of New York
City
where
AOC,
Bernie Sanders,
and Jamaal Bowman had a rally. Now this
rally was held in support for Jamaal Bowman
because he is 1 of what's known as
the squad, sort of 1 of the rep
the progressive,
democrats.
He's got a lot of popularity nationally, and
he has called for a ceasefire. So he
was
up for
reelection when it comes to,
the primary election. So this is within the
Democratic Party. Now, why it became
an extremely
interesting thing this week was because there were
actually people
from within the Palestinian
movement and Palestinian advocacy movement here in the
US that were protesting
at this rally
against Jamaal Bowman. Now I'm gonna explain it
to you, but this is very, very, very
significant,
the anatomy of what was going on.
Side 1. So there's 1 side of the
issue that was very, very upset that such
protesting
was taking place. They were represented by DSA,
Democratic Socialists of America, and many people within
the Muslim,
sort of political
circles, people who are more invested in electoral
politics that are used to thinking of Bowman
in a very positive manner. They say, wait
a second. What are you guys doing protesting
him? He is a progressive.
He is someone who's called for a ceasefire,
and he's running against and here's the stakes.
He's running against someone by the name of
Vladimir who is completely propped up by APAC.
APAC obviously is the lobby that coordinates its
policies and candidates with Israel.
So an untold amount of
dollars was thrown into this race from APAC
in order to to take it away from
Jabal Bowman and put it towards Latimer because
Latimer was going to,
be solidly in support of Israel. So 1
side was saying, what are you guys doing
protesting? By the way, the protest was by
an organization that we have had some of
their members on this show called Within Our
Lifetime.
Now
the other side, such as within our lifetime,
they said, wait a second. Hold on. We
have a very, very clear and reasonable
purpose for protesting
that this is about principles
and accountability,
that politicians
aren't our friends, that we owe them our
support no matter what. And in fact,
this sort of attitude from the Democratic Party
or any of the parties
telling us basically
that we have to support them no matter
what when they keep giving us garbage candidates
and garbage candidates and garbage candidates
is something that we have to change
1 way or another.
And what is even further than that is
that they had very specific demands. Right? So
they weren't just protesting to protest. They had
specific demands.
3 of them, as a matter of fact.
1 of those demands was they were calling
on Jamaal Bowman
and AOC and Bernie Sanders to refuse to
endorse Biden in the upcoming presidential election. Now
that's very significant because
Biden is directly responsible for the genocide that's
going on. And Bowman has not rescinded any
support or indicated
that he does not support or does not
endorse, Biden, which is something that is problematic.
Right? This is a person that okay. Yes.
They're running against somebody who's propped up by
APAC, but they're still supporting
the person who is genociding our people.
Now the second demand that they have
was that
we demand that these representatives
who paint and portray themselves as being progressive,
we demand that they stop conflating, that they
oppose the conflation of anti Semitism with anti
Zionism.
And I'm going to circle back to this
because this is a very, very important and
specific demand that they made. The third demand
that they had was that we want these
representatives to recognize the right to resistance of
the Palestinian people, which is granted by international
law and recognized by everybody. Now these are
first of all, these are 3 very, very
reasonable reasonable demands.
And the second point is that
the last 2 especially
are extremely
significant if you understand the terrain of advocating
for Palestine in the United States or in
much of the western world.
Let's circle back to that second demand that
they had, which was opposing demanding that these
representatives
oppose the conflation of anti Zionism and antisemitism.
We want them to come out and say
that
antisemitism
and antisemitism are 2 different things, that we
can criticize Israel
and it's not antisemitic
at all. Those 2 things are not necessarily
true, right, or necessarily the same thing. So
there was a, an exhibit at a museum
in Brooklyn,
and this exhibit was something that basically portrayed
Israeli's version of events that happened on October
7th, etcetera, etcetera, filled with Israeli propaganda,
and within our lifetime held a protest about
this particular,
this particular
installment or this exhibit.
Now these supposedly
progressive
representatives
actually
came out and criticized within our lifetime, and
not just criticize them, but called them anti
Semitic, tried to smear them, tried to say
that they were engaged in hate speech
simply for criticizing
the sort of Israeli propaganda
and criticizing Zionism.
So before everybody sort of falls in love
and says that Bowman was a hero for
the Palestinian cause or something like that, yes,
he did call for a ceasefire.
But he still kept intact
the entire
route of persecuting
Palestinian activism on the grounds of hate speech,
that basically any criticism of Israel
amounts to hate speech and that this now
becomes a legal issue. So that's a very
reasonable and significant demand. Now, the last demand
that they have, we're going to circle back
to that as well, recognizing the right of
Palestinians, especially in Gaza, to resist, this is
a right granted them to them by international
law,
is extremely important again because
the Zionist
forces within the United States are trying to
go the route of portraying
anybody who supports Palestine
or even Palestinian resistance as being terrorists.
Right? And so if
the representatives
aren't going to
stick their neck out for that and say,
wait a second. You have the right to
support
first of all, Palestinians have the right to
resist.
2nd of all, you have the right to
support the Palestinian right to resist, that this
is not a controversial thing and this is
not support for terrorism.
These are very, very strategic demands that are
very important to the long term continuity
of pro Palestinian
activism and advocacy.
So, basically, we had these 2 sides, and
they were criticizing each other. We had groups
like PYM, Palestinian Youth Movement, SJP, and Al
Aouda come out in defense and support of
Within Our Lifetime,
and you had other groups coming out and
criticizing them. But I commend I commend within
our lifetime from taking a principled stance
and not being bullied into backing down from
their principles. And I think that that is
sort of the connection that we have to
take when we are, as Muslims, trying to
engage in the political sphere, that we are
having a long term strategy. We are attempting
to stand on our principles,
and it is very, very, very easy to
make concessions. And you can always find a
rationalization
to make concessions.
But if you look at the attitude
of the early companions and the attitude of
the early Muslims,
Latimer eventually won the election. Some people are
obviously going to blame the protests,
on Jamal Bowman for that. But that's probably
not a likely reason for him losing. The
district itself is a very mixed demographic.
And a very important statistic that has emerged
and 1 that is important for us is
that
the synagogues
in that district were extremely important to getting
the vote turnout. Some of the synagogues reported
70% voter turnout, others 80%, others over 90%.
And so this is significant for mosques and
messages in the United States, some of which
have become allergic to anything political, unfortunately,
due to misinformation
about their status as a 501c3.
You are allowed to
become a voting center. You are allowed to
be this is perfectly within your rights. You
are allowed to educate about politics. You just
just can't come out and say you should
vote for this person and you shouldn't vote
for that person.
So we call on mosques. I think that
this is a very, very standard and easy
ask to take this into consideration when it
comes to the next round of elections that
mosques should also similarly
be
centers of voting where people can come and
we can leverage the population that we have
in a way that is appropriate.
But there's a larger issue at play here,
and this is going to set us up
for the blog piece and talking about some
of the backlash and responses to the blog
piece.
Is the issue of Palestine and Palestinian Liberation
best framed as a progressive issue or as
a leftist issue?
Are these allies that we have made or
that some of us have made on the
left or in progressive circles,
is it worth it? Are the allies actually
adding to what we're doing, or are they
watering down and even taking away,
especially when some of these allies are so
quick to make concessions
and abandon their principles? What kind of issue
is the Palestinian
Liberation or the Palestinian issue? That is something
where we're going to be getting into it.
But first, we're gonna circle back. I know
we've got some comments and some people introductions
here.
Yes. We caught that. We caught that. Abdullah
Ahmed from Nigeria.
Okay. We got someone from the home team,
Rabi Ajavad.
Taha from ICPA.
Courtney Gee from Ohio. Welcome to the program.
Mom of 5.
May Allah bless you and your family and
your children.
From Illinois. Amina Kasupovich
from Bosnia.
Saliha Ahmed from Atlanta.
Hazara Mamnoon
Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum
Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum
Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum
Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum Assalamu alaikum. How do
you equate my beliefs,
what I thought was the left standing with
human rights, with what the current American political
class gives me for choices? Islam gave me
the middle plat path. That is a wonderful,
I don't know if it's a question,
but it's more of a comment and I
completely agree
with where it is coming from, that Islam
is the middle path and we see that
Islam is neither left nor right, that
if you look at,
it's become trite
to say, but very few people are willing
to live with the consequences of it, that
if you go issue by issue, Islam is
about what is righteous and what is correct.
And sometimes that happens to place us on
the right politically and sometimes that happens to
place us on the left politically, and we
should not feel ourselves constrained to this side
or that side or to this party or
that party because at the end of the
day we have our principles
and we don't need to sign ourselves up
to an entire agenda or a whole platform.
So that now instead of just teaming up
with some group on 1 issue, now we
have to somehow accept 10 issues in order
to have them participate even on 1 issue.
I think that's a bad deal. I think
that's a deal we should not accept. And
that is something that we're going to be
talking about quite a bit in the next
few months.
Niya Naim,
and Abdul Rahman
agrees.
Okay. So getting into it, what did we
have this week? We dropped Yaqeen Institute dropped
a blog,
a blog, please, that was written by yours
truly called Intersectionality
and Palestine Solidarity:
Why Muslims Need to Lead the Gaza protest.
We're gonna drop that link in the chat.
I highly recommend that everybody give it a
read and
meditate on it and sip it in because
I know that it caused some controversy, but
a lot of people that I saw that
were either upset,
or otherwise didn't really necessarily demonstrate that they
even read it in the first place. Nisreen
from New Hampshire.
Welcome to the program.
Okay. So we have several different reactions, and
we're gonna talk about sort of I'll give
a very before we get to the reactions,
I'll give a very, very, very high level
overview though. I do definitely encourage that you
read it for yourself,
that
Muslims should not allow themselves to be silenced
or sidelined any longer by the political left
when it comes to advocacy for Palestine,
that unfortunately
many people on the left, including
Palestinians and including Muslims,
are in fact gatekeeping
and
side, pushing Muslims to aside.
And, and this is the point that we
care about,
hurting the movement, hurting the movement by doing
that, by basically making Palestine into only a
progressive clause, by making Palestine
Liberation into only a leftist clause,
basically that they are forcing us to either
enter into a political space that is not
indigenously Muslim
and not indigenously Islamic
and actually stands largely in many, many ways
against our values or to supposedly
just leave
Palestinian advocacy and support to them, who supposedly
know better. And we're going to get into
the nuts and bolts of that in just
a second. So let's go through. Wadham Salaam
waftallahu ta'ala Tariq from Georgia. Welcome. Let's get
into some of the reactions. There were both
positive and negative reactions all over the place
and we're happy to cause a conversation because,
you know, these are things that need to
be talked about. I personally, for 1, am
a a type of person that loves to
put everything on the table and discuss it.
And I stand in the possibility of being
wrong about everything. Right? But we're gonna get
through it, and we're gonna talk about it
explicitly, and we're going to try to,
figure out and get to the bottom of
it. I have spent we can keep rolling
through the comments as we go here. We're
not gonna read everyone out loud that I
have spent
most of my well, my entire adult life
and some of my teenage years
attempting to interrogate and get to the bottom
of the things that I believed in, the
things that I thought were true, the sensibilities
that I had, what I thought was a
good idea or a bad idea, both politically
and otherwise.
And I hope that people go through the
same process. I hope that people go through
the same process of critically self evaluating
where their ideas and values come from, because
we all know that there are a certain
constellation or a certain group of values that
are hegemonic in the world today, and are
those are the values of the Western enlightenment,
the values of the Western, quote unquote, democracies
or the Western nations that have colonized most
of the world.
And so we have to critically reflect as
Muslims
how are we being perhaps infected by these
types of ideas?
How do these particular ideas shape the way
that we think about issues and also shape
the way that we think to resist,
even when it comes to
our own oppression, our own genocide, our own
murder. It can happen.
Ulysses
Aparicio,
You sent me links to become a better
Muslim. I'm Mexican. Bienvenido.
And I'm from a state where there's almost
no brothers to help me out learn about
the Quran. Well, he says you should check
out Islam in Spanish. They have a lot
of good stuff.
Yeah. Islam in Spanish is a lot of
good stuff, especially for the Spanish speaking Latino
community. Welcome to Islam. I'm your brother.
I hope that you're able to find some
beneficial things there. Also, Eman Wesley Abu Sumayyah
Lebron does amazing stuff
for,
for the Spanish speaking Muslim community. Definitely highly,
highly like to shout him out. He's 1
of my mentors.
I would highly recommend his stuff for converts
in general and especially Latino converts.
Tariq Ahmed from Georgia.
Very good.
Tarek Tarek has the golden question here. Does
the left undermine Palestinian Liberation? That is the
golden question, Tarek. You hit the nail
on the head, and we're about to get
there, but not before we get through a
very negative reaction first. We're gonna use that
negative reaction
to try to highlight and demonstrate what's wrong
with this type of conceptualization. Let's bring it
up here,
And we will actually read through this comment
a bit just because this is you know,
it represents
prevalent ideas. Right? And so prevalent ideas need
to be deconstructed,
prevalent ideas need to be evaluated, they need
to be run through
our values as Muslims, the Quran and the
Sunnah, the understanding of scholars, our tradition,
right, our indigenous ways of knowings,
if you prefer that type of language,
in order to make sure that this isn't
another Western encroachment or a Western
Ruslan from Singapore.
So somebody said nobody is saying Palestine is
not a Muslim cause. That's not true,
but we'll keep going. But it's also a
Christian and Jewish cause. I actually say that
in in the the block piece with no
problem.
It's everyone's cause.
We are asking non Palestinian Muslims
to stop erasing us and distorting our struggle
against settler colonialism
as a religious issue.
Interesting. So they're saying that that's not a
religious issue, that it's really
a settler colonial issue and not really a
religious issue,
playing right into Zionist hands.
Palestine is also diverse with a substantial Christian
population.
Next slide.
It's insulting and
disingenuous that non Palestinian Muslims, such as myself,
namely a white revert, such as myself, platformed
by Yaqeen Institute slander our movement as exclusive
when they are actually just trying to speak
over Palestinians
and hijack our cause in the name of
Islam.
Allahu Akbar. And, I think that's it there.
Right? Okay. So this is a great comment
because it shows a lot of what's wrong
about leftist thinking. So thank you for that.
The first thing that we should say is
when you talk about centering Palestinian voices, the
the devil's in the details.
Who?
Which Palestinian voices would you like to center?
Would you like to center the Palestinian voices
who work for Yaqeen Institute and who read
the blog piece before we put it out?
Would you like to center the dozens of
Palestinian voices
who positively
reacted to the blog piece and reached out
to me and congratulated me on writing it?
Would you like to center the Palestinian voices
on the ground in Gaza who are resisting
the occupation
in a very, very
real way?
That's not who you're talking about. What you
really mean but are too afraid to say
is that you want to center the voices
that you approve of. Right? So you're papering
over the fact
that your politics and values are actually very,
very, very far away
from the values and politics of those who
are resisting the occupation on the ground. And
I hate to break it to anybody, but
you are not the movement. You don't get
to assign yourself as synonymous with the movement.
Now, unfortunately, we see this where many, many
people want to talk about honoring the martyrs,
honoring the martyrs this and honoring the martyrs
that. But many of those same people don't
actually share the values or principles of the
martyrs themselves.
And so there's a question to be had
here for those people who are using the
efficacy
of the martyrs
but really are kind of upstaging the martyrs,
are you
really supporting them, or are you more exploiting
them and co opting the movement yourself?
Using identity politics to control who can and
can't speak about Palestine,
first of all, is contradictory to what you
said, that Palestine is an issue for everybody.
And second of all, it will actually cause
the movement to fail because identity politics, once
you make something about identity politics, it's no
longer about principles or values. And this is
something, unfortunately, that the left struggles with a
lot, where a lot of the issues and
movements come back and collapse
into
into identity politics.
And when it comes to identity politics or
when it becomes about identity politics, there's no
definitive
authority for principles or what's right and what's
wrong or who speaks for who or who
doesn't speak for who. Identity politics, in other
words, will always be very, very easy to
infiltrate and co opt. That's why there's always
Palestinians that are already being co opted. Haven't
you seen? There are Palestinians who collaborate with
the Zionist entity. There are Palestinians that get
on CNN and, you know,
make the same points that the IDF make.
If it were ever just about your identity
then we wouldn't have the problem of tokenization
in the first place. Don't you know about
the Palestinian Authority? Don't you see Mahmoud Abbas?
Don't you see the other people who have
already sort of been compromised?
We even find this in the Quran, and
this is really interesting why the divine guidance
is eternal and good for all times in
all places, that this is why the colonizers
always rely upon and exploit identity politics to
keep us confused and divided.
Do you know that when it came to
Bani Israel under the oppression of Firaoun,
the person who was in charge
of sort of keeping Bani Israel in place,
his name is Khwarun and he's mentioned in
the Quran, especially in Suratul Qasas.
He was actually from Bani Israel. Allah says
this explicitly in Suratul Qasas. And Ibn Kathir
says
that Qarun is actually the first
cousin of Musa
So
as they say, all skin folk ain't kinfolk.
Right? And just because
you have an identity
doesn't mean that you get to appoint yourself
as the spokesperson or that you're jiving. Right?
That it has to be based off of
values.
It has to be based off of values.
If we do not base a movement on
values, it will be corrupted
and infiltrated
and co opted
so easily time and time again, and it
will fail. Now when it comes also to
identity politics, we don't use it to silence
people. This is not the way in Islam.
Malcolm X, who a lot of leftists like
to co opt his legacy as well, said
that I'm for the truth no matter who
says it. And Allah
in the Quran in Surat An Namal affirms
the statement of Bilqis who at the time
is an idol worshiper. She worships the sun.
And yet she says something that's very true
when she's considering going to war against Suleiman.
She tells her sort of her crew. She
says, listen, when we go to war, it
makes the honorable people dishonored, and it's sort
of a net loss. So let's try to
avoid war if possible. And Allah
says, wakadalika
yafalun,
which is an affirmation of what she said
even despite her identity.
Right?
Now, so if we want to get into
it and we'll we'll we won't spend too
much on this. We got a lot to
get through. When we think about who's going
to liberate Palestine, who's going to free Palestine,
who's going to stop the Zionist occupation
of Palestine,
is it going to be the Westernized elite
no matter what their identity is, no matter
where they come from, who their parents are,
you know, whatever their last names? Or is
it going to be the people on the
ground in Palestine?
Now if the answer is the latter, it's
going to be the people on the ground
in Palestine, then what is their
paradigm?
What are their values?
And how do we measure up to that?
Are we very, very similar to the values
that they're espousing,
or in fact, are we very, very far
away? And we should also ask, who is
a better ally? And this is where it
circles back to our initial thing. Who's the
better ally?
The progressive and the radical left or perhaps
the 2, 000, 000, 000 strong Ummah of
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, who are the ones
who liberated Palestine
under the reign of Omar in
first place. Finally, last point, the idea that
recognizing
Palestine as an Islamic issue harming non Muslims
is a nonstarter and actually, unfortunately,
not just plays into Zionist hands, but falls
for Zionist myths and the secular colonial myths
about Islam's inherent violent nature and its inherent
sort of oppositional antagonistic
nature with other faiths. The reality is that
both Christianity and Judaism
flourished
under Islamic rule, both in Palestine and outside
of Palestine.
So who's really playing into Zionist hands with
this argument?
And when we notice that if you go
throughout the history of the European colonization of
the Muslim lands, if you look at the
moves they made and how their main and
first job
was to neuter Islam and to marginalize it
and to strip Islam down as a political
force and to render it
not effective,
then we have the right to ask
who's doing the work of the colonizer today.
Allah
alone controls victory, which is why he said,
And then in the next verse, he said,
Allah controls victory. He grants victory to whom
he wills, and he reminds us that our
victory is not necessarily in finding the most
people to support us, or the people who
tell us that they're going to support us,
but that victory is in relying on Allah
and relying on his messenger and the guidance
that was communicated
and relying on the believers.
Next up, we've got a test a new
section of test year end. So we finished
our previous book. But first, let's circle back
and see what we got in the comments.
We don't have a whole lot.
Art Forged, they might as well have said
your name. Well, they did. They did say
my name, but that's fine.
Tarek,
Ahmed said, Nardin Qaswani led that, didn't she?
We're talking about the protest that we mentioned
in the very beginning from within our lifetime.
Yes.
Budadi
Khaimah or Sheima.
Very good. So now we've got we've got
our next segment, which is test your in,
and we're starting a new,
idea here. Yes. EK. EK, hit it. Thank
you. Thank you. Thank you.
Quality over quantity
always. This is Allah says in Surat Al
Baqarah. Allah says in Surat Al Baqarah when
it comes to the army of Talut.
Right? He takes the soldiers that are willing
to forgo drinking the water at the river,
and even they're apprehensive as being wildly outnumbered.
But
the people who understand, Arasih Khunafarim, they tell
them, listen, the people who are steadfast and
trust Allah
will always be victorious.
Who do we vote for? I can't tell
you because this is Yaqeen program. Yaqeen is
a 501c3.
But,
talk to me off
in a non Yaqeen platform, and I will,
I'll try to
say my piece. From NYC.
NYC in the house. From Maryland. Very old
name there. Abdullah
Abu Mahfou says, how do we respond to
those on the left who ask us to
show up to their rallies because they came
to pro Palestinian initiatives? I say if that's
your idea of what a coalition is or
an allyship is then we don't need them
because
this is not a I scratch, you know,
scratch my back, I scratch yours quid pro
quo sort of situation.
If you want to join up with the
cause for Palestinian Liberation or liberating Palestine from
Zionist occupation,
then
you do it because it's the right thing
to do. You're not doing it for favors
and you're definitely not gonna do it at
the expense of our principles.
Right? So don't expect that I'm gonna show
up to a pride parade or if I'm
gonna show up to to your issue, whatever
your issue is, if it violates Islam or
if it violates Islamic values. That's not gonna
happen. Right? And Muslims need to get out
of this mentality
where we
where we are only thinking of, oh, no.
They came out for us. Now I have
to come out for them. No. No. No.
Not at all. That's how movements get co
opted and watered down and fail.
Where are you based?
Wa Alaykum Salam. Beirut Khan. Hussein from Maryland.
Laiaheek,
Laura.
Okay. So let's keep going. We've got test
your end. We're gonna ask some questions for
the audience, our our our viewers here tonight.
We're starting. Guess what?
Kitab Assir
from Sahih Muslim. Now there is a very
good reason
why we did this. Okay?
Which is
alaikum al Salam, legend 25 from Azerbaijan, mashAllah.
There's a very good reason why we're going
to start talking about Kitabajihat or Kitabasiir,
because most people, many people, misunderstand it. Right?
They misunderstand it, which is why they fall
prey
to
particular ideas, such as the ones that were
voiced in that negative comment that Islam is
somehow going to mean. Making it an Islamic
issue means that somehow Christians are going to
be wronged or that Jews are going to
be wronged or that anybody's going to be
wronged. Right? This is a misunderstanding of Islam.
And if you go into the books of
the Hadith or the tradition, you'll find actually
tremendous justice and tremendous benevolence much more than
what we have today.
I completely agree, Laura. We need to find
our strength in our faith again. Exactly. All
strength comes from Allah. We say
Right? There's no might or strength except by
Allah. But how many of us walk the
walk?
Okay. So let's do do we have a
poll, guys, in the studio, or can we
do a, are we doing just a question?
Okay. We're just gonna throw it out so
you can send your answer in the chat.
We'll wait for some to come in. The
question is,
was the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam required to
declare war before attacking his enemies?
That is the question.
See what you think.
See what you think while I sip my
drink.
I got 2 nose,
3 nos, 4 nos,
5 nos
and 1 yes.
Here we go. Now it's getting interesting. We
always like like a little discussion, a little
back and forth.
Okay. Very good. This is the subject of
the first hadith
in this chapter of Sahih Muslim,
and it describes a situation
in which the prophet it describes a situation
in which the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
permitted
and did initiate an attack without
announcing
war. But
there is a very, very key
context to this hadith.
And first of all, the hadith demonstrates, number
1, that the default is that people have
to be made aware first. So, yes, that
is actually
that is actually
the default.
But there are exceptions to that default, such
as when you're already in a known state
of war or in the explicit text of
the hadith,
when there are people who have been given
the message in Arabic to the point that
hudjah as a concept has been established upon
them, that means that they have no reason
to doubt or deny Islam except because of
their own their own sort of, like,
what do you call it? It's like your
own stubbornness.
Right?
That in that situation that you don't have
to you don't have to strictly announce that
you are going to attack. However, it remains
must a habit, remains something that is always
praiseworthy
and a better thing to do.
And the default is that, especially in these
days when you've got, you know, when that
sort of situation isn't the situation that we're
living in, that, yes, that the the general
default is that you have to announce war.
But
you but the strict answer to the question
was the prophet required to declare war before
attacking them? The answer is
no. And that's, I think, what many people
are,
Zartasha has a nice it should be declared.
Yes. It should be declared. Though if there
is a group that you have obvious enmity
with or where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam had obvious enmity with and they were
already in a state of sort of warfare,
then it's not necessary.
Very good. Okay. Now let's go to the
second question, this 1 will get us into
that was just a warm up. Alright? 2nd
question,
what would you tell this is gonna be
a little more involved, it's not a yes
or no. What would you tell a Muslim
general about to go to war? The second
hadith of the chapter has a very, very
interesting
situation where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam advises
a a general about to go into battle
and tells him several, several, several things.
Now you could imagine, I'm sure, if you've
watched any Hollywood films, you've seen sort of
the the war movies and you see the
dramatic speeches that are made and how, you
know, they pump them up and all this
other stuff. Now I want you to think
about that in your mind as you see
the contrast
to what the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
actually tells them to do.
Zartosh has a good point.
Well, I see Ahmed says the rules of
war.
Ahmed Hamdan, free Palestine. I'm with you, brother.
Nusayba says fear Allah. Very nice answer.
What would you tell? Imagine that you are
talking to the general and army about to
go into battle.
What would you tell him?
Said that did not target women and children.
Wow. You all are really, really have a
high religious IQ.
Taqwa, Nasreen.
Invite them to Islam first. Sadia. Very good.
Wow. You all are on a roll. Everything
that's been mentioned so far is going to
come up. Salamullan
from Mauritius.
Welcome.
Do not hurt women, children, elderly, destroy animals,
the environment, leave the worship places alone,
but we're we're we're on the ball.
Follow the Islamic rules of war and fear
Allah, Laura, a 100%.
Well, you all are really, really on the
ball. That is exactly what the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam instructed his generals, which is why
Imam Muslim included this hadith in this bab
right at the top because he wanted to
make sure that it was very, very clear
that Islamic
warfare is completely different from any other type
of warfare. And this our first issue about
the left and, you know, different sort of
frameworks. We're making it into a human rights
issue, the issue of Palestine into a human
issue.
There is no framework out there. There's no
ideology out there. There's no worldview out there
that is more just
than the Islamic framework and the Islamic worldview,
that has more strict rules and clear guidance
than the Islamic framework and the Islamic worldview,
that will stop people from committing wrong. If
I'm a leftist or if I believe in
Marxism or if I'm an anarchist or if
I'm some type of other leftist revolutionary,
I can always find a justification
for the ends justifying the means to do
horrible things, to commit actual, you know, terrorism,
to to do bad things. But if I'm
a Muslim and if I follow a snap,
then I am not
it's not possible that I cross those lines.
It is absolutely
not possible that I cross those lines because
it will end
it'll end up very bad for me in
the afterlife.
May
I,
may I be better than what you think
of me. May Allah forgive me for the
the gap in between, what you say of
me and what I truly am.
I'm just a person. I try to do
what's right. I'm a sinner just like you
are, and the rest of us are all
sinners, and we try to get better every
day. I try to get better every day.
We'll come around to that in the next
segment. We talk about 1% better every day.
May Allah forgive us for our shortcomings and
accept,
the good from us.
So
the first thing the prophet
says,
fear Allah. So whoever said that, masha'Allah, right
at the beginning he tells his generals to
fear Allah. This is the overall skill,
the ultimate skill when it comes to warfare,
success, anything. That more than anything, you have
to fear Allah, meaning that you have to
keep with you the awareness that
Allah is watching you, what you do every
single second of every single day. If you're
able to keep that awareness,
then you will stop
at Allah's limits, and you will not oppress
people. You will not cross the line. You
will not do anything
that would anger Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And
that is something that no other worldview has.
The leftist revolutionary or the leftist activist does
not have that.
Islam has that, and that is why the
movement has to be Islamic.
And the way to free Palestine is Islamic,
because only Islam
keeps everything in its proper place without going
too far to the left or too far
to the right or too far forward or
too far backwards.
The perfect balance, it is there
All in fear Allah.
Now the second thing that the prophet
instructed
was exactly like we said, don't deceive,
don't
pillage, don't mutilate,
do not kill noncombatants. And that includes many
of the people that were mentioned already, women,
children, the elderly, monks, religious folks, and the
like. Right? Do not so we have not
the first thing. Imagine again, remember, think about
all those Hollywood movies that you've seen or
perhaps Bollywood movies where they're trying to, you
know, know, get all the guys to yell
and, you know, climb their swords or whatever
they're about to do to get them juiced
up for the battle, and the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam is telling them what not
to do.
When you go, you are representing Islam. You
don't do this. You don't do that. You
don't do that. And that this is what's
going to carry forth the Dua. How many
people have actually fought against Muslims and fought
against Islam
only to see how the Muslims conduct themselves
and then join Islam?
That's exactly what we're after. We're after the
long term. We have the longest view in
the room. And that's why then when, as
was mentioned, when you meet the enemy, somebody
said it was completely right. The first thing
that you do, imagine you never met this
person before, you know, invite them to.
Perhaps they haven't heard about Islam.
If they accept
Islam, then invite them at the time that
the prophet
said, invite them to move to Medina, which
is really fascinating. This is not gatekeeping. We
don't have any identity politics here. Sorry to
say. We don't have any, wait a second,
you guys are from Africa. Wait a second.
You guys are from Eastern Arabia. Wait a
second. You guys are from Persia. Wait a
second. You guys are from Rome. We don't
want you in Medina. No. No. No. No.
No. The prophet
didn't act like that.
He said offer them a stamp first,
and then if they accept, offer them to
come
to be in Medina and to live in
Medina.
And if they accept, then, alhamdulillah, then they
are entitled to things that not only Muslims
are entitled to, but even the people of
Medina are,
are entitled to. And if they refuse, that's
their right. We're not the prophet did not
force anybody to come to Medina,
but then there's there's a more peripheral
relationship there.
Now
let's say the situation that they refuse
Islam.
Fair.
Laqraha fiddeen. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said in
Surah Al Baqarah, there's no forcing people to
believe in Islam, which is the biggest myth
against Muslims and Islam, that Islam spread by
the sword. It is just the projection of
European Christianity that has that's responsible for that
myth because Christianity spread by the sword.
Islam did not spread by the sword. Islam
spread through dawah.
Now there were conquests. Yes. There were conquests.
But notice what the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
says to his generals. He says, if they
refuse Islam,
then offer that they are able to pay
a tribute.
Pay us a
tribute, and there's no fighting.
If they accept and say that they'll pay
a certain tribute annually, then there's no fighting
and you take it every year and done.
If they refuse,
then that's the situation in which you seek
Allah's aid and you fight. And the last
thing that he says, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, in
this hadith, if you and I found this
very, very interesting. If you besiege an enemy,
understand what the siege is. It's like imagine
they're in a castle and you're, like, you
know, surrounding the castle and you're kinda waiting
it out and trying to try to get
to them and see who's gonna break first.
If you're besieging somebody
and they ask
for you to give them Allah's protection or
Allah's ruling
or the ruling and protection of the prophet
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, do not offer
that because you don't have the right to
offer that. Rather, you can offer them your
protection
in a personal capacity.
You can offer them your ruling in a
personal capacity, but you don't have any right
to speak for Allah
and you don't have any right to speak
for the messenger
that we have a certain amount of epistemic
humility
that Allah
might rule differently or people who know more
about the religion than you do might understand
something about the situation
in which you don't. And this is also
dawah. As Lara said, everything's an opportunity for
dawah. This too is an opportunity for
dua. Because what would happen
if someone says we want you grant us
the protection of Allah and his messenger, and
you say, okay. Sure. And then you go
back to headquarters and they say, actually, you
know, these these people have been treacherous. They've
said, you know, whatever. Like, we can't do
that. We're not going to accept it.
Now it looks like you've deceived them in
a religious way.
Now it looks like you're not trustworthy
as opposed to speaking in a personal capacity
and saying, I will give you my personal
protection, and then what's up to Allah and
his messenger
are different.
And that brings us to the end of
this particular segment.
Let's see what we got.
And testify. We missed you. Welcome back.
You you can catch up later, inshallah.
Abdullah points out, yes. Look at the spread
of Islam from Indonesia
to from the Chinese Muslims. Yes. It was
not done with
any conquest or warfare whatsoever. Ayan Shaeed, alaikum
Salam, alaikum salam, alaikum salam, alaikum salam, Rick
Rashid,
Victoria Stracilla, welcome back. Wa Alaykum Salam.
So Abdullah Abu Mahfou brings up a good
point. He says, what are your thoughts on
Hezbollah
saying they will wage war with no rules?
Well,
any obviously,
we I don't have to say anything.
You compare
a statement which I didn't hear them make
that statement, so I don't know if they
meant something different or if that they indeed
but if they indeed said that statement and
they meant what is apparently meant from that
statement, then compare that with the hadith that
we just studied.
That as others have said,
they are not our teachers. Right? The famous
revolutionary,
Omar al
Mukhtar
from,
who was resisting the Italian colonizers
in Libya.
Right, when he was asked by his own
followers
to
execute prisoners or torture prisoners in the way
that the Italians were doing.
That,
he said, no. We're not gonna do that
because they are not our teachers.
Yes, Bosnia as well.
Congratulations,
Jay Probat,
on your reversion. May Allah accept you
you and make it easy for you.
Okay. Now let's go to our last segment
for today. We've got a personal development segment
segment, and we are starting a new book,
atomic habits. You know 1 of my pet
peeves?
1 of my pet peeves is dust jackets.
So I was gonna hold this book up
to see
just for you to see the cover, but
there's nothing there because I always take the
dust jackets off of all my books. I
can't stand them. I even throw them out
because I don't I don't find them to
do anything but get in the way, you
know, when you're paging through. And I'm someone
who reads all the footnotes, right, and takes
notes in the book and the footnotes. So
between the pen in my hand and 3
pages open and etcetera etcetera, it's a dust
jacket. It's just 1 thing going on too
many, so I get rid of it. But
the book is a well known book called
Atomic Habits by James Clear, and we're selecting
the book because we I think that it's
particularly useful for Muslims, and I think that
it particularly
gives voice to many things that are already
in Islam,
that are already Islamic values. And from the
things that aren't strictly Islamic values,
many of them are.
These things are it's not issue of Haram
and Halal. It's just about benefiting from certain
techniques,
benefiting from certain techniques
and attempting to use them as the prophet
said, it was reported to say, and there's
some weakness in the hadith that that wisdom
is the lost property of the believer.
Nilsayba is probe dust jackets.
It does look nice, but my books are
not for looking nice. My books, I mark
them up. I write. I underline. I do,
you know, all sorts of stuff in my
books.
So different strokes for different folks as we
say.
Okay. Pestify has read this book. So now
I want us to start off thinking about
this and benefiting from it together. So I
want everybody to think and hit us in
the chat.
You don't have to
tell us, but I want you to at
least think. And if you're comfortable sharing it,
then please send it in the chat. What
is 1 habit that you want to start
and 1 habit that you want to stop?
Let's think about it right now. 1 habit
that you want to start
and 1 habit that you want to stop.
Go.
I'll tell you what is what are mine.
Okay.
When it comes to a habit that I
want to start,
I want to get back into doing language
study again like I used to.
1 thing that I failed to do and
this is something covered in the book, is
that when you have life changes or changes
to your schedule,
sometimes your habits fall off because it disrupts
your sort of system of cues and rewards
and things like that. And so
in a recent period, I was studying
language.
In particular, I was doing Italian, but I've
done other languages as well for, you know,
10, 15 minutes a day. I was doing
it every day.
Right?
But I fell off recently. I think the
last week or 2, I haven't even done
once.
So I want to get back on that.
And what's something that I want to
stop?
I definitely have, like, nervous habits, like, especially
when I'm reading or if I'm stressed.
Like, I'll, you know, play with my beard
or I'll I'll, you know, do some stuff.
I would like to stop that as well.
What do we got?
Abdullah
says,
stop working after a set time. Nice. That's
a really important that's a huge 1. There's
a lot of good guidance in this book
to help with that, and I have struggled
with that as well. From somebody who works
remote and works at home,
stop when to stop work is very, very,
very difficult,
and there are very specific and important sort
of things to help us with that.
Music by Omar, praying Fadron and Mesheah, that's
a great example.
Okay.
Well, I see it says stop smoking and
start looking at things not emotionally. That's great.
Well, I see it may Allah strengthen you
and empower you. I'm hoping that with this
book that you're gonna be able to help
do that. Actually, he talks a lot about
smoking because smoking is a very, very addictive
habit. It's like the the habit par excellence,
right, in some sense. It's very sort of,
well known habit. United in Buonasera.
I'm doing well. Thank you very much.
Taybeh Hussein says, 1, reading Quran regularly. Excellent.
Good. We're gonna get on that as well.
That's 1 that I think we all have.
2, wanna stop arguing with family members. That's
I'm so glad that you mentioned that, Tlaib,
and you were willing to share that. That's
a huge 1.
Zartash Zainab says anger management, inshallah,
also a huge 1, very, very important.
Numa Ad Haqq says, I want to start
attending daily prayer every day again, and I
wanna stop showing off in any way, meaning
you wanna be more humble. Those are great,
great habits.
Saadia Abdullahi,
start reading more and stop watching things that
are not beneficial. We're gonna talk about the
smartphone.
Yeah. That the smartphone is a trap, and
it mixes your signals up for habits and
cues and everything this book goes into it
in the best way that I've seen a
book go into it. And I've read a
couple books on habit forming and stuff like
this, but this 1 is 1 probably the
best 1 I've read.
Yes. Pestify. Stop doom scrolling for Palestine. Oh,
how many times have I done that in
the last 9 months
without thinking well about
some problem?
Oops. Sorry. I skipped comments.
Instead of sleeping early. Good.
How to sleep early. We'll talk about that.
Sadah says start studying hadith. Excellent.
Stop getting upset without thinking well about some
problem. Very difficult. That's true, Salaam. May Allah
make it easy for you, but hopefully going
through this book together will also help make
it easy for you. Nusayba says start a
regular regime of morning evening of car and
stop raising my voice. Excellent. I love it.
Nermin
says talking a lot.
I wanna stop.
I want to start. Very good. Thank you
for your honesty.
Very, very good.
What else do we have?
Azul Biryani Wasamosa.
That's an amazing username, first of all. As
long as it's not Biryani diplomacy or samosa
diplomacy. It says start learning Arabic. Great. To
understand the Quran, stop investing in time and
things of no benefit. Excellent.
E
e muftia
is jump on my bicycle after fajr. That's
an amazing goal, a great, great habit.
Sadaldiya,
Start being more intentional in prayer, increasing in
dhikr. Stop being consumed by weapons of mass
distraction. Oh, I love that. I've never heard
of that before. Weapons of mass distraction. Yeah.
You know what that is.
Lara says, Insha'Allah, I want to memorize Quran
and stop talking so much. Excellent. We will
talk about things that are very helpful for
that.
Atika Rachman says, I'm learning Turkish and Italian,
and Turkish is so hard. 0MGI
also agree, Atika.
I found Turkish
harder to learn than Arabic.
I found Arabic much more
intuitive, at least for a native English speaker
and somebody who knows some Romance languages.
Obviously, Italian is, you know, is fairly easier
than than Turkish for me. I'm
also trying to improve my Italian and Turkish
skills, and it's difficult. But Insha'Allah, hopefully, we'll
get some habits or techniques for how to
keep to good habits and talk about the
difference between goals and habits. We will in
a second.
Nafisa Tubande, start reading physical books. I'm guessing
you mean as opposed to PDFs and articles.
That's a huge thing. And stop procrastinating.
We're gonna get there. We're gonna get there
together.
Tayeeb says I want to start using the
old Nokia 3210 and scrap my smartphone. That's
a great hey. We'll do it together, Tayeeb,
you and me. We used to call them
the brick phones.
Amina,
to start audiobooks.
Excellent. I like that. And to stop eating
sweets. Oh, no. You hit on 1 of
my problems as well.
I've got a bit of a sweet tooth.
May Allah help us.
And Courtney g has just given us love.
May Allah bless you, Courtney. Alright. So very
good. So let's get into let's get into
the book. This is gonna be the very,
very we're not this is not just intro.
We're gonna give you some
beneficial stuff that you can take with you
and hopefully apply, and we're gonna want to
hear back every week. We're gonna want to
hear back in how you're applying these things
in your life. And I'm gonna give you
my personal sort of struggles and also attempting
to to deal with these things. So we've
talked about habits we wanna start, habits we
wanna stop. Let's go to,
we're gonna talk about just the first chapter
today. So chapter number 1. And if you've
got the book or if you're gonna buy
the book and read it for the next
week, it's a very, very easy book to
read. The English is very easy.
We'll be covering chapter 1. So chapter 1,
we've got an illustration here, I believe. Do
we have
no. No. No. I'm sorry. Not yet.
He gives an illustration
of a melting
ice cube. Think about it. Think about it.
Picture in your head a melting
ice cube.
Okay? Now what is he saying about the
melting ice cube? He says that imagine that
we have an ice cube on our table
here,
and it is
29 degrees Fahrenheit. Sorry for the Celsius people
over the world. That would be what? Like,
let's say that it's negative 1, negative 2,
negative 3 degrees Celsius,
centigrade, if you like.
The ice keeps not melting yet.
Okay?
You turn the heat up 1 degree.
So in Fahrenheit, it's now 30.
In Celsius or centigrade, it's now
negative 2 instead of negative 3.
The ice still isn't melting. Alright? We're gonna
turn the heat up another degree.
Now it's 31 degrees Fahrenheit, or now it's
negative 1 degree centigrade or Celsius.
The ice still isn't melt melting.
This is not the time that we should
quit trying to melt the ice,
but
this is where most people stop
and quit their habits.
That they don't see the ice melting,
and therefore, they assume
that
all their work is for nothing, and then
they drop off their habit.
But in reality, if you were to keep
going
just 1 degree more to 32 degrees Fahrenheit
or 0 degrees Celsius,
then the ice would start melting. So just
because you don't see results
doesn't mean that you're not actually contributing
to eventual success,
and most people turn back because they don't
see success
fast enough.
1 of the lessons from this illustration
is the author's point about how habits work
or even better how change works. Okay?
How does change work? How does improvement works?
Improvement works
1%
at a time.
Unfortunately,
most of us, we think about just about
where we want to be, which is not
bad. We wanna set goals. We wanna think
about where we want to be after.
And we only think that we have to
put in a ton of effort all at
once, and then we get discouraged and we
quit.
Amber Affna, the title of the book is
atomic habits by James Clear.
Last name is spelled just like the adjective
clear.
Okay? So getting truly better is not about
putting in a ton of effort in 1
day. It's not. It is about only getting
1%
better every day.
If you were to raise the temperature just
1%
every hour, eventually you're going to melt the
ice cube.
If you're to if you were to improve,
whether it's Quran, whether it's not eating sweets,
whether it's your diet, whether it's exercise, whether
it's emotional stuff, whatever,
if you were to improve just by 1%
every day,
then
you would
very, very soon
be very, very close
to your goals. Now let's bring up I
think we got a graph here. Let's bring
up sort of, like, what we got here.
We've got the graph of here we go.
This is called the the valley of latent
potential. So the blue check out the blue
line on the graph here. The blue line
is how people think that change works.
People assume
that they're gonna continue to see progress
every day,
And that's why they quit their habits, because
they don't see progress every day. They put
in work. Let's say it's the gym. You
wanna do push ups. You wanna do stuff
like that. Right?
That, you expect to see progress. But in
reality, you see the opposite.
What's the first day feel like after you
go to the gym? What's the 1st day
feel like after you go for a run
or after you play basketball or do some
exercise or you're tired.
You're sore.
You're spent. You're exhausted. You feel horrible.
Right?
And so
and so you actually
dip.
Your actual progress
takes a hit
initially.
But if you continue to persist,
you will actually
not only catch up with where you thought
you would be, but you would actually exceed
it. You would actually go past what you
anticipated.
So they call this the valley
of latent potential. All of this is your
potential is building up. You gotta imagine that
you're cocking a gun or that you're pulling
back a bow, that everything that you do,
you're putting effort, effort, effort, effort, effort in,
and you haven't seen the results yet. Now
this is where it meets up with the
deen, because Islam is a faith and a
religion that gets us to think about
delayed gratitude. It's not about instant gratification. We
want instant gratification and so we expect change
to happen right away. No. That's not the
way it happens. We suffer.
We suffer
upfront, and then it pays off later, both
in the afterlife and with our habits.
We got another graph.
Okay. There you go. It's a similar thing.
Reality is that progress is not linear. You've
got up and downs. You've got setbacks. And
this is why and this is his second
point. So point number 2. Point number 1
is change is 1 change 1 get 1%
better every day.
Okay? And expect to not see results until
later.
Okay?
There we go. There's if you were to
get 1% better every day, I think what
did he say? You looked like 37%
better after a very short amount of time,
it grows exponentially.
Whereas if you were to go 1% worse
every day, you would very quickly be close
to 0.
Alright. Now
our second point
our second point, which is more reflected by
the last graph, but that's fine,
is that
if you want better results,
then you should forget about your goals.
And I love this. Yeah. Let's go back
to this graph. Forget about your
goals. If you want to make real progress
and you want to build habits.
Now, this was shocking to me because I'm
like you, I'm used to thinking about, oh,
the first thing I want to do is
I want to sit down and write out
what are my goals. I want to memorize
10 Jews. I want to read,
17 books. I want to learn this language.
Right? That's what we're taught when it comes
to improvement,
the first set goals. But the author zigs
while everybody
else zags. He says if you really want
better results, then forget about setting goals.
Focus instead on your systems
On your systems. He says, it's the systems
that produce results, not your goals. Your goals
do not produce produce results right, in and
of themselves. So he brings up 4 points
to justify this.
Point number 1, he said winners and losers
have the same goals. Right? You've never you
go to a loser and then somebody say,
well, you know,
you know, I guess I never made any
goals. You go to an Olympic runner and
they run the race and the guy that
came in last place, you go up to
the guy in last place, you say, what
was the difference? Like, did you you know,
he's never going to say, well, I didn't
make any goals. No. He had the same
goals as the guy who finished number 1,
and yet those goals didn't actually produce the
results that he wanted. So it's not necessarily
about goals. Winners and losers have the same
goals. Number 2, he says even if you
achieve a goal, it's just a momentary change.
It doesn't encapsulate what we're after, which is
really becoming a different person. And he's gonna
talk about more on that in the chapter
on identity, which I believe is the next
chapter.
The third reason he says is that goals
actually restrict
happiness,
that when you set your goal, you actually
also set your ceiling. This is something the
prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam actually indicated. He he
heard a man or overheard a man making
du'a to Allah to give him just a
place in the doorway of Jannah.
And the prophet told him don't limit your
dua because Allah
might give you something way better than that.
And you think you're being humble, right, and
you're actually holding yourself back. Right? So goals
are the same thing. Goals can actually hold
you back from meeting your true potential, which
might be way above what your actual goal
setting, you know, especially if you're like me
and you tend to sort of, like, be
very self critical and maybe have a low
opinion of yourself. Like, you might be capable
of much more than you think. And
that's leading into reason number 4, which he
says that goals are at odds with long
term progress.
That goals really don't result in long term
progress.
In reality, you do not rise to the
level of your goals. You fall to the
level of your systems. Alright. Great. We're talking
about systems. What what are we talking about
systems?
He talks the systems
are your habits.
Your habits are the compound interest of self
improvement
that you're trying to get 1%
better every single day. Right? That this is
what we're that's why the book is called
Atomic Habits. That's why he's having us
first think about habits and how we structure
our day. And this is a very Islamic
principle because in Islam,
we are people of
process or people of process. The prophet
said, if the day of judgment were to
happen like right now and you had a
sapling in your hand, you plant the sapling
because that's your process. It's the right thing
to do. You do the right thing no
matter what. Yes. Trust the process, Abdullah, no
matter what the results are. And when you
surrender that over to Allah,
when you trust the process,
you actually get better results
than if you had fixated
on results in the 1st place. And that
is 1 of the secrets
of the idea of atomic habits in the
first place. So it's gonna be a cool
book.
Let's
stop there. I think let's go run through
the chat, see if there's any sort of,
comments or outstanding questions. Again, take advantage if
you have if you got questions, anything that
your is on your mind, any reflections,
and then we will
wrap it up for the night.
Let's see. Pestify says, this is like going
to the gym or running for a month
and expecting results. We need to push and
keep going consistently. Yes. 100%.
MB says I want to stop talking about
others if they are not present. Oof. That's
a really important 1.
Excellent.
And wanting to learn the Arabic language.
Great goal.
Yes.
Any topics as well, as long as they're
halal.
As long as I can talk about them.
Don't get me in trouble,
Naimo.
Get it in now, and then we're going
to,
and then we'll we'll wrap up for the
night.
That's wonderfully put, Amina. Wonderfully put. Winners think
about doing the best they can at every
given time, which is like, Amina,
it's like they're in competition with themselves.
It's like they're not even even aware at,
like, what other people are doing. Whereas losers
only think about how to win. Losers only
compare themselves to others, and they don't think
about the process. They don't think about committing
to a, a certain thing.
K. All of my comments just completely disappeared.
It's telling me I've gotta reload the page,
so I think we're gonna call it here.