Tom Facchine – Medina Stories #04 – How Medina Changed Me

			Medina changed me in every, every way.
		

			You know, I think most people that go to Medina, I think they'll say this too, that there are
certain things that I thought were super important Islamically or otherwise, before I went to
Medina, that upon completing my study, I realized weren't as important as I thought.
		

			And vice versa. There's other things that you go in thinking are maybe not that big of a deal. And
then by the time your studies are over, you realize, Wow, this is really a really major thing.
		

			I think,
		

			for me, personally, the biggest thing that I took away was, what level of
		

			diversity is acceptable within Islam? Because
		

			you don't know, if you don't study, and it
		

			can become a tricky thing. Because if you have a lot of zeal, and you want to be really cautious
about it, you know, a lot of people are going to make you feel like, there's only one way,
		

			you know, and a lot of times, there's more than just one way, I'm talking about 50, we're not always
talking, we're not necessarily talking about theology.
		

			But then the opposite is true, too. There's some people that they just want to make it seem like
everything's acceptable, you know that there are no boundaries. And that's not true either. That,
you know, you can say that Islam is some sort of like, circle, there's borders, there have to be
borders. If you want to make Islam distinct from something else, then there has to be borders of
what are we going to say is this thing called Islam and what's not? What's out of bounds. And so,
without going abroad to study, I would not have had any sense of what those boundaries were. And
from my orientation, before I went to study, I would have definitely thought that those bounds were
		

			much more limited, and smaller than what I came to find out what's true. And again, that's not
saying that there's a green light, for every single thing, there are boundaries, there are borders,
and those borders are significant, but let's just say that it takes an education, it takes an
education to start to get a sense of where those boundaries are. And that if you don't have the
opportunity to go and study or to have that sort of education, you know, that might not be really
super relevant for you to worry about. You should just focus on being that basic Muslim and be the
guy that goes to the masjid or the girl that wears hijab and does the best that they can and is nice
		

			to the neighbors and is good to the other Muslims and is feeding people and taking care of people.
And you let people who study worry about those things. It's not necessarily your your issue. So, you
know, I could talk all day about what, you know, the changes that were made in me, but I think
that's one of the biggest things