Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #072 – Is The Halal Lifestyle POSSIBLE In The West

			Some people wonder, you know, is it possible to live a halal lifestyle in places like North America
or Europe or the west or whatever? And I guess I have two sort of reflections on that. First of all,
I mean, what are we talking about here? When we say a halal lifestyle? Are we imagining a life
without sin? Because no life is without sin, right? So you know, you have to factor in your normal
amount of sin, right? That everybody has their their portion of disobedience, and everybody has
their secrets and their skeletons in their closet and their things that they're struggling with.
That's just what it is. That's reality, we can't do this little maneuver where we say, well, people
		

			are sinning and therefore you can't live a healthy lifestyle. If that's true, then there's no place
on earth that you could live a healthy lifestyle because sin happens every even Mecca, even in
Medina, either sin that happens there, right? So we can't have this over idealistic expectation
about what it might mean to live a healthy lifestyle. Okay, that begs the question, what is a
healthy lifestyle? And that's where I think you're directing your attention more to your your effort
and your paradigm than necessarily the outcomes with a caveat. I mean, outcomes are important, but
what I'm trying to get out here is that sin is going to happen, right? Is there a structural
		

			relationship to the space to your sin, right? And is that structural relationship totalizing,
meaning that like, you can't go anywhere, right, except that you're forced to partake in that sort
of thing that in North America, I mean, let's be real, it's like you have you have a lot of freedom,
you know, you have a lot of ability to move and live your own lifestyle. And every single sort of
countercultural or subculture takes advantage of that, right. I always say, you know, like, in high
school, you've got the goth scene, got the jocks, and you've got the punks, and you've got all these
sort of different groups of people having pride parades, and this month, and that month, and
		

			whatever, they're fully taking advantage of the freedom that they're afforded right to live their
lifestyle, right. And there's nobody stopping you really, from doing the same thing. Now, there is a
degree to which you can't just do it yourself. You have to have a community of like minded people,
and you have to build out institutions. And those institutions need to build out capacity so that
you can go from place to place in your day and your week and your month, and have that sort of
environment and culture and carry it with you. Right? Yes, if you're looking to do that, but that's
on us. That's all on us. We have the freedom we have the ability, we can make nonprofit
		

			institutions, we can make a coke off, we can make religious endowments, we have the freedom and the
ability to do that. So if we're not doing it, then who's really to blame, right? Are there certain
structural things in United States or North America that make it more difficult? Yes, public
education is a mess. It's horrifying what they're teaching in public schools these days. Are you
compelled to teach or to put your kids in public school? No, you're not you have the freedom to take
them out of certain things. You have the freedom to try to go for private or charter school or
magnet school or homeschool, right? But if you're saying, Well, I want to live a certain lifestyle,
		

			and I want to be able to have two incomes in the home and this and this career and this sort of
lifestyle, therefore you need public education. You need to put your kids in daycare, you need to
put your kids in public education that who's to blame for that? Is North America to blame for that,
or is it you and your values? Are you showing which thing that you're really prioritizing? Are you
really prioritizing a certain lifestyle? That's not a hello lifestyle? It's actually a lifestyle
dedicated to material advancement and sort of upward social mobility and things like that. So that's
the thing. I mean, it's like, you know, you have it's as halau as you want to make, right? And you
		

			and your crew, whoever they are, okay, you have the ability to start a nonprofit if you're, you
know, even a young person you can start your own nonprofit does, it's not that hard, okay. So
instead of less get caught in the discourse of Well, where can i Where can i Where can i What can
you do here? What can you do now? And are you ready to take the ball and run with it and do what you
can given the circumstances that surround you?