Tom Facchine – Muslim Influencers Profiting from Apartheid
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AI: Transcript ©
Assalamu alaykum Rasool Allah everybody. Welcome back to
Yaqeen's weekly livestream. I'm your host, Imam Tom.
It's a pleasure to have you as always.
Today we're gonna be mixing up in a
little bit and doing something a little bit
different. We're going to put your questions at
the very front of the episode. So if
you have anything at all, any questions that
you'd like discussed, something on your mind, something
you've always wondered about,
then send it right now. Send it in
the chat below.
After we check-in and see where everybody's tuning
in from tonight, we'll be going through your
questions, and we'll also be going through questions
as we continue through the program tonight. Got
a very, very solid episode for you all.
As normal, we're gonna be talking about the
current events, the Rafah massacre,
or the the quote unquote rescue mission
that took place,
as well as
the Gaza peers'
insidious,
nefarious
role in that
massacre, we're also going to be addressing normalization
and some doubts, some common and, some common
doubts about normalization,
which is going to be a really, really
important segment of today's show.
We're also going to be changing a little
bit the way that we do their own
section. We're going to be asking you questions.
So we'll see what you all know.
And we'll
be hopefully having a little bit fun with
that. And we finally get to finish
our book on self development today, the book
about leadership,
21 laws of leadership. We're doing laws
192021,
which means
that next episode we will be starting a
new book, and that is exciting.
But first, let's see who all is tuning
in tonight and where everybody's from.
Assalam,
miss S. We have Mohammed Jahid from California,
Agha Mohammad Sahin, Rahima Armstrong from Cardiff, South
Wales, UK. Masha'Allah. I was not able to
get to Cardiff unfortunately,
but I've heard so many wonderful things about
Cardiff, inshallah, next time. Amanda Walker, Wa Alaikum
Assalam,
from North Carolina.
Aye Qadiri from SoCal,
regular viewer. A Qadri, welcome to the show.
Michelle from Kentucky.
Also, we have
Walaikum Salam, Honey from Dubai, Abdallah Khan, also
from SoCal, Walaikum Salam,
Lagos, Nigeria.
Rufai.
Very good.
We have free doctor Afiya Siddiqui Amin. I
love the username.
For my rub from Turkiye.
Ahanawasat and Hoshkelden is.
Pensatur,
7 from Chicago. Welcome to the program.
Now let's see. We got Lake Omasama, Hershey,
PA. MB, welcome back.
Nice questions are coming in, we'll get to
them in a sec. I
see
Sadia, Sammy from,
from
Australia. Welcome to the program. Truth for Peace
from the UK.
Abdul Arham
from Pakistan, welcome to the program. Zee from
Minnesota.
Jesus was a Muslim.
From Jakarta, Indonesia.
Welcome.
From
Maryland. Oh my gosh. What's with the usernames
tonight? The usernames are very creative and, and
endearing tonight. We have Sara from Canada, Alaikum
Assalamu wa rafteullah. 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 Assalamu
Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu
Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalam,
Saeed from Indiana.
Ali Yu from, I didn't say where from,
but alaikum.
Sana from Massachusetts.
Welcome. Alaikum Salam. Shamnam from Germany.
Very nice. Welcome from Germany.
We have Asariha Ahmed from Atlanta.
We have Faiz Mohammed from New Zealand. Allahu
Akbar.
To
everybody. Okay. Ali was from Nigeria as well.
India's in the house. Omar Esh,
Eshrafi.
Belgium's in the house. Little frog.
The Hanbali. Mohammed from New Jersey. Yes, my
home state. And I'm a sahan.
Okay. Very good. We've got more people from
California, from Brunei. Alaho Akbar.
Sabrina Sharbaoui from Brunei.
Very good.
Okay. Let's see. I know I know I
saw some questions coming through. Let's get to
your questions before we get on to,
current events and what's been going on this
past week.
I know.
Let's see. Let's see. I know I saw
one here in the beginning.
Yes. A Khalduri says, not sure
how
if I should feel resentment towards other Muslims
who are silent about Palestine.
Maybe I'll give you a pass on social
media platform like LinkedIn, but why so silent
on personal socials?
That's a good point, hey, Caldrey, and I
I think a lot of people are feeling
this out. There's almost, like, 2 extremes in
a way. There's in one sense,
there is an important
distinction
or point that needs to be made that
when it comes to either political engagement or
to all of the issues that are affecting
the Ummah today,
that
no one person can do everything. Okay? That's
true, granted.
And that not everybody should be doing the
same thing. All right. Also granted.
However,
it's also true that
Philistine in particular
is a certain type of test for how
we feel, and it is an aqeeda issue
for us. It is not,
it is not
it is not the same. It is not
the same caliber of any other Muslim land
other than Mecca and Medina itself. And when
I was in Ireland and there were many,
Palestinians there that were living in exile,
one of them said to me, and I
thought it was a wonderful quote, he said,
how you feel
about Mecca reflects the state of your heart
in terms of your relationship with Allah
with your Creator,
And how you feel towards Medina
is a reflection of the state of your
heart in terms of what's your relationship to
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
And how you feel towards fiddlestein
is a reflection of the state of your
heart for how you feel towards the Ummah
of Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And I thought that was profound, because
it is a check. And what we have
seen, especially in the Western nations, unfortunately, but
all over the Ummah, is that
some of us,
whether it's because we've been infected with tribalism
or ethnonationalism
or,
whatever else it could be, even assimilation,
that we have been,
we have been,
we have witnessed
some segments of our community
not showing up for Palestine
as much as we should.
Now, again, that goes with the 2 caveats
we already mentioned. That doesn't mean that everybody
has to do everything. That doesn't mean that
everybody has to do the same thing. Even
some people have an appetite for protests. Some
people have an appetite for other types of
political action or engagement. Other people have other
types of things that they're good at or
skills that they're able to lend towards the
cause, whether it's writing, whether it's talking to
friends or talking within the workplace or anything.
Right?
However, we have seen that there are certain
segments within our community
that are insufficiently
moved
and feel insufficiently
stirred
by the issue of Palestine, the occupation of
Palestine and what is going on. In fact,
some of those segments are actually
inconvenienced
by the occupation
of Palestine because it stands in the way
of their comfortable assimilation and proximity
to power and status.
May Allah guide all of us.
Let's see. Abdul Arham, he asked a question,
how does Deen lay out the trajectory for
Philistine from this point in time? Well,
I'm going to, as I often do, push
back against the way that the question is
framed, because, you know, in the Quran Allah
did not say when Palestine is occupied, then
you do x and then you do y
and then you do z, and that's how
you get to liberation. That's not what He
said, that
Allah gave us certain things in the deen
that are very explicit and specific, and then
He gave us other things in the deen
that are general principles.
And therefore there is a process of extrapolation
and application that has to take place. And
this is a process of Ijtihad that requires
some scholarship, whether it is scholarship both of
the law, both of the Quran and the
hadith and the sources
of, of Islamic law, and also understanding the
realities, also understanding the political realities on the
ground. So there is no one silver bullet
magic answer where we can say in extremely
granular detail that first this, then this, then
this, then this. However,
there are very, very important principles
that when we realize that politics is a
sphere, and it's not a sphere that is
separate
from Islam.
Islam is a political deen, and politics falls
under
Islamic guidance.
Islam sets the guardrails
and sets the rules for what you can
and cannot do. There are certain things we
do not believe in Islam, but the ends
justify the means. We are not Machiavellians.
We do not believe that you can do
anything,
that is just about grabbing power, no matter
how it's gotten, in order to achieve the
end that might be a positive end. That's
not our creed and that's not our belief,
that there are guardrails that are sent down
by the Sharia, which is why understanding the
Sharia, understanding the Quran, understanding the hadith, understanding
our Islamic scholarship
is very, very important to be able to
structure
and guide
our
calculus
when it comes to what are our possibilities,
what are our options.
After that,
there are certain particular principles that have to
be taken very, very seriously,
some of which we'll get to later in
the program. So I'm not gonna spill all
the beans right now when we talk about
normalization and some of the doubts that exist
about normalization or some people who think that
normalization with,
the occupying force of Israel is a good
idea. There are some things
that we have to be aware of that
are political realities
that
tell us that that is not a good
idea. And then there are also some religious
considerations
that we have to take into concern as
well. So the we do not separate these
two spheres. That is a product of secularism,
to separate politics, to say, oh, we just
believe, you know, politics is realpolitik, and we
just do anything,
that's going to gain us power. No no
no no no. That's not how it works.
That everything in a slam,
whether it's how you go to the bathroom,
right, or how you clean your mouth or
which sandal you step into first, the right
one or the left one, Islam has guidance
for it. Some of that guidance is extremely
specific. Some of that guidance is general,
right? But it's, there's no
arena in which Islam is completely silent on
a particular
field of inquiry or thought. So we have
to be sure that we understand what we
have in our tradition
and our sacred knowledge to
start the conversation and to guide it from
there.
Let's see who we've got. Oh, Trinidad is
in the house. Walaikum Salam. Leticia.
Youssmee Antti from Houston.
Welcome. Houston was lovely. I was able to
visit it once. I found it very, very
charming place. Islam the way I am from
Newcastle.
Welcome. Sisu from Malaysia.
Send them at the time.
Okay, missus s. What to recite the Duat
on the day of Adafat? We've got lots
of information
in the Yafin Institute for which du'at to
recite, for 'Adafat, and there are many. But
keep in mind that the general,
the general
guidance
from the Prophet Muhammad when it comes to
du'a is that
du'a has to be heartfelt,
that you have to have presence of heart
with what you ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala,
for. And so that we make sure that
whatever you're praying for, that you're praying for
it with you're not just a machine. You're
not just, you know, print yourself off a
list of du'at that you find online, and
you're like a robot, like Siri or Alexa
reciting these long du'a and you don't even
know what they mean. It's very important. Even
though even though we can make an exception
for certain du'a the prophet
made because they have blessing in even repeating
them, even if you don't know them and
understand what they mean,
but when it comes to other du'as, especially
on the day of Arafat,
that your heart should be present and you
should be attentive to what it is that
you are asking for.
Let's see what other questions we have.
Some of the questions I don't quite understand,
so forgive me. I skipped over your questions
either that I didn't necessarily understand all of
it.
Sauna asked or sorry. Sauna asked a question.
What's your view on this line of thought
that there's no organized group of elites or
those in power? They're all just disorganized individuals
who go to whatever it takes to keep
their status power money. That's a great question,
Sara.
I do think that sometimes we get a
little bit simplistic in our analysis and our
especially our political analysis.
Sometimes we get very conspiratorial.
Right? We imagine that
everybody is just pulling the strings behind this
sort of closed door board meeting somewhere, and
they're, you know, plotting everything out.
As we've seen, and anybody who's lived long
enough can observe, that
power is not so total. That's what they
wish you would believe. They wish you would
believe that they that the elites have this
sort of total and complete control over everything,
and that's a very sort of, discouraging
and despairing type of
assumption to make.
In reality, there's different types of people in
the world. There are certain people who are
ideologically committed. And if you look at the
current Zionist occupation, we see this. And the
politicians in the United States, some of them
are
very, very,
ideologically committed to the project of Zionism, to
the project of Israel. They are true believers
of the movement, if you will.
There are other people that are simply following,
as we say in Arabic, they're Maslaha, They're
simply following the dollars. There's if
if if Zionism is making them money today,
then they're a Zionist. If anti Zionism is
making them money tomorrow, then they'll be an
anti Zionist. Those people exist too. And then
there's other people that are sort of cloud
chasers and just sort of follow behind in
the wake of other people who are maybe
more bold and committing certain actions. So it's
it's important to understand these typologies because each
different type
requires a different type of time or sort
of interaction or plan. You don't treat somebody
who's ideologically committed to something the same way
that you would treat somebody who's just following
their interest. Right? Somebody who some people who
are ideologically committed to something, there's nothing you
can say or do that will change their
mind. Other people who are they're just following
the dollars, then you have to create a
situation in which they stand to profit
off of doing the right thing, which is
difficult. It's difficult to construct such a situation,
but that's more along the line of what
you're looking at. So understanding, I think, those
sorts of nuances, I think is, is important.
Good question.
Tina Jamaleddin,
from Malaysia. Salawa from Dallas. Nice.
Amber Good from London.
Pastafai from Maldives, walaikum Salam.
Worcester, Nusayba from Worcester. I learned how to
say Worcester because I went to Worcester. Worcester
was very lovely. Rick Rasheed,
Levi or Levi, from Belgium,
Sisu has a question, thought, or maybe a
thought. What if the victory promised is actually
the unification of the Ummah in the whole
world by giving our best to spread dua
via the current situation and our gathered duas.
Yeah, absolutely.
And one of I'll I'll say this while
we're on the sort of,
the theme of being nuanced and not being
overly simplistic
in our analysis of different situations, whether political
situations or otherwise, We have to be careful
to reject false dilemmas. Right? So people will
always present false dilemmas. Well, you have to
be this or
that, or that there's only these two options,
or that you're doing this
and that means that you're not doing that.
No, Habibi, we can do multiple things at
one time. Right? I can pat my head
and rub my stomach. I can chew gum
and walk at the same time. Right? Many
of us can do multiple things at once.
So if we're talking about dua, we're talking
about dua, we're talking about worship, we're talking
about,
political engagement,
a lot of times you hear people say,
well,
instead of political engagement, we all need to
just be, you know, making sure that we
pray and make our du'a. Habibi, let's do
both. Let's do both. Like, we can very,
very easily do both. Wa 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 Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum
Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalam.
Dina from California, Agha Mohammad Sahin.
Okay. Abdul Raham has another question.
If a person wants to pursue higher education
in a country which supports Israel as of
now, is it acceptable to travel and study
there? I'm a doctor with intentions to train
there.
I mean, I refrain from giving fatwa, and
I think that's the mature thing to do.
I would be wary of people who give
you Fethwa online without knowing your situation
because
we in this modern era have forgotten what
Fethwa is. Fatwa is a nonbinding
religious opinion that can change from time to
time and place to place. Right? So if
the person who is asking me is in
a life threatening situation, if they're responsible for
people,
who are under their care, people who need
chronic medical attention or emergency medical treatment, and
this is, like, their only opportunity,
that is a different situation than somebody who
really is just gratuitous. They don't necessarily need
to do that.
So every situation is different. If you're looking
for fatwa, you need to connect with local
qualified scholars who know your situation. Right? Two
conditions, local and qualified.
Hanan from Kurdistan, Walaikum Salam, wa rafta Allah.
Saadia asked an interesting question, and one that
I've been asked before. Is it a good
idea to donate a free Quran, for example,
when giving dawah? Shouldn't we be careful if
the non Muslims might bin it? I love
the phraseology there.
Yeah, there's two schools of thought on this.
One school of thought is that
you hand out the Qur'ans freely like water
because you want anybody to benefit.
Now, the second school of thought is that,
well, you should be a little bit more
careful because other people won't respect the Quran
or might not respect the Quran,
as much as they should, or maybe they
even do something, you know, maybe they keep
it in their bathroom and read it while
they're on the on the toilet, Isaac Amunillah,
right? This is a very real concern.
However,
alhamdulillah, in usoolafik, we have tools for how
to think through these things, and I personally
lean towards the first camp more. I think
that
the
purpose of the Quran or giving someone a
Quran is to read it,
hoping that they will come closer and be
guided, giving them an opportunity
to
hear and experience the Quran, even if it's
mediated by a translation.
Whereas doing disrespectful things forto the Quran,
is that
a
probabilistic
scenario? Is that a certain scenario? Is it
a fiftyfifty thing? Is it a minority situation?
Right? You have to go through a certain
set of probabilistic reasoning. We use probabilistic reasoning
in usula fiqh and fiqh in general, that
what's the likelihood of this thing to happen?
Because if you wanted to go off
of possible but unlikely things, then everything's haram.
Right? Because you can always think in every
single situation
of something haram that might happen,
but it's not likely to happen.
So of all the people that you give
Qur'ans to, okay, and the proper,
the
proper or the obvious thing to do, the
main purpose of a Quran is to read
it. So you have a high likelihood that
people are going to read it, and you
have a low likelihood that people are going
to
bin it or do something disrespectful to it,
probably.
Then you prioritize
what is more likely to happen over what
is less likely to happen, and Allah
knows best.
Mariamah asks, is it Haram to make du'a
against the oppressors?
Absolutely not, because we have examples of the
Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam making du'a against
the oppressors.
So that settles it right there.
However, there might be some nuance when it
comes to, you know,
what is the nature of the oppression? Is
the oppressor a Muslim? Are they not a
Muslim?
These sorts of things. However, the general rule,
this is something that the prophet
himself did. In fact, it is the usul
of the kunut, right, which the prophet for
a period, extended period, was making du'a after
fajr, and he
like like, during, sorry, during the fajr prayer,
and it was specifically against individuals
that he wanted Allah to punish. So this
is something that the prophet
did.
Okay. Sana asks, have you heard of the
Bilderberg
meeting? No, I haven't. I'm not in the
no.
Yes, it does feel that we're up against
Allah's sauna, but Allah
is able, Allah is capable, Allah.
The
the forces of evil wants you to feel
like there's no way out.
But Allah
is able to bring victory to whoever he
wishes.
TripleDARE asks, Wadi Qum Salamatullah,
some Muslims are against oppression, of course, but
are extremely reluctant to openly express this due
to potential social ramifications. What advice would you
give to reassure them? I would say again
that this is sort of Fethwa territory where
you're getting into. A person needs to understand
the specific situation in which that person lives.
If that person makes a social media post,
are they going to get
dakalbaab in the middle of the night, that
they're going to get arrested and thrown into
a prison and tortured? Or is this somewhere
in the West where you have free expression?
These are site specific things and these are
actual factors that will affect the ruling of
this particular type of question.
But however, we have the general guidance of
the Prophet
which
says that if you see a munkar, something
that is obvious and known wrong, that you
change it with your hand, and you if
you are not able to, then you change
it with your speech, and if you are
not able to, then at least you hate
it in your hearts, and every Muslim has
to go through that process to figure out
what situation are you in of those 3.
Dina asked, is it acceptable to donate money
or aid sacrifice to charities? Example, Islamic Relief
Organizations.
There's a couple things in there,
and I believe that it's probably not the
best
forum to address this issue.
But when it comes to irid sacrifice, it's
not necessarily,
if you're if you're talking about substituting money
for a sacrifice, then no, then the the
sacrifice is supposed to be.
It's supposed to be a specific sacrifice,
and so it's not replaceable by money per
se. Is it better to do it
local, or is it better to do it
where the most need is? This is a
very perennial question that there you'll find scholars
on both sides. When it comes to,
zakat in general or zakat al fitr or
the rid sacrifice,
these are all different situations.
So this is a broader fiftieth discussion that
we really don't have time for here in
general.
Okay. Here we go.
We'll try to wrap it up with just
a couple more questions.
Youssmeanti asks, how do we overcome sadness and
desperation for Palestine suffering?
Where do I and Charity feel not enough?
Too many casualties already and still no solution?
That's a 100% correct. We all feel that
way. Usmeanti, thank you so much for giving
voice to that.
We might not
I think your question assumes that we should
be,
that we should be
getting over it. Maybe we don't get over
it. Maybe this is something that actually
indicates our own morality and the fact that
our hearts are alive that we can't get
over it. I don't know about you, but
I can't sleep these days. I I have
a very, very hard time sleeping. My mind
is always turning things over. I've gotten certain
kind of, like, stress habits that that I've
developed
because of Gaza, because of Palestine.
Right? Now I can look at that in
some way and say, okay, well, I want
to overcome this. And, yeah, in order to
be functional, in order to prepare for this
show, in order to prepare my writings or
whatever I'm doing, I need to be a
certain baseline of functional.
However
however, you know, it is also a mark
that you are alive, that your heart is
alive,
that you feel this way in the 1st
place. So maybe maybe we just accept it.
Maybe we don't necessarily get over it.
I apologize for anybody whose questions I
I skip over. Some of them are intentional
and some of them are
Because whenever a new question is added, it
bumps up things.
Courtney g has a very good point, and
I I I wanna highlight it. I agree.
It's like free expression in the West is
a myth. I've faced threats, torture, and attacks
for speaking out against Israel, for standing for
Palestine speaking out against Islamophobia. I a 100%
agree with that, Courtney.
Maybe we can have a discussion about nuance,
about the types of restraint and the types
of power. There's soft power, there's hard power.
Right? But there's definitely I agree with your
your general gist is that there is a
myth of just free expression. There is no
such thing as free expression, even in the
lands on paper,
right? Legally, there is no such thing as
pure free expression.
And, in fact, one of the things that
Zionism has done, especially in the so called
free world, which again that is kind of
a farce and a facade, I agree, is
that it has
tried to create levers and strings to control
people,
even extra legally.
So things that are not within that are
not illegal per se. When they're able to
create legal artifices or new sort of legal
language and frames in order to punish people
they have, such as hate speech, such as
everything is antisemitic, such as, you know, these
types of things.
However,
they're also happy if you just get fired,
right, which is not a strictly you didn't
do anything illegal. However, they will try to
associate a social cost,
along with it as well.
So that's at least got us through the
majority of the questions, at least enough where
I'm satisfied enough to move on,
to the next segment of our program. And
please keep the questions coming. I'll keep circling
back and cycling through.
So if you have any that that come
up to you,
if you if I skipped your question, there
are a couple
there are a couple questions I skipped just
because it's kind of a can of worms.
It would take us far afield,
and there's others that I might have just
missed.
Very good.
Wa Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum Assalamu Alaikum.
Rashid from Malaysia.
Oh, man.
There's some really good comments here, but I'm
gonna try to, I'm gonna try to circle
back to them. We'll try to move on
for now.
We'll get to that that that comment, Sada.
It's a really good one. I appreciate you
mentioning that. So when it comes to current
events, obviously, one of the main thing on
our mind, of course, is Philistine and particularly
Ilazah and particularly Rapha. So we've talked about
how
the Zionist occupiers have squeezed
down,
the Palestinians and the people of Gaza like
a tube of toothpaste
to the very, very bottom of the Gaza
Strip, or what some people call the the
envelope, the Gaza envelope,
To Rafah. Rafah is on the border of
Egypt. It is the place where it is
basically
the last
remaining
sort of
space that was not
actively overrun
in the same way that the north of
Gaza was.
However, we see that
in the past week there have been more
and more
aggressive action
against Rafah, more and more slaughter,
particularly
with a so called with a so called,
hostage
rescue
mission. Yes. Well, we got the
well, this is how it's being framed. And
one of
the false frames of the Zionist
occupation
this entire time for the last 8 months
is that it was
really just after the hostages, that if the
hostages had been released, that this whole thing
would have been over. Now, even to the
point where many of the billboards that were
put up around the United States and in
North America were bring them all home, bring
the hostages home, etcetera, etcetera. However,
the actions and behavior of the occupying Zionist
entity entity has demonstrated that it doesn't care
about the hostages whatsoever,
that it has been and it remains the
greatest threat to the lives the lives of
those hostages,
not their captors or not the people or,
you know, resistance factions
of Gaza. So if we see, and we
have some media here, about
how this was portrayed. Now over 200 people,
100 of people were killed
in this raid that I think supposedly rescued
4 hostages.
Okay. But look at how the titles of
the news articles, which we have come to
expect by now, in Israeli Hostage Rescue Minutes
Made the Difference, right? So this is The
New York Times, the most famous spokesperson for
imperial Western values
in the world probably,
that has
automatically put you on the side of the
Israelis,
automatically puts you on the side of the
IDF and of the Zionist occupiers
by framing it almost like as a an
action movie, right? Minutes made the difference. Like
they it almost didn't succeed.
But thanks to the quick thinking and the
brilliant action of the heroes, right, it gets
you thinking clearly about who are the heroes
and the good guys and who are the
bad guys. Similarly, we have the BBC here,
another mouthpiece for imperialism,
Gaza War, which
the Western media really has to decide
whether this is a war or whether this
is slaughter.
Well, that's another subject. Don't get me going
on that. But anyway, the title is What
We Know About Israel's Rafah
Hostage Rescue Raid. Again, notice the language that
this is all about hostage rescue raids. It
has nothing to do with the 100 that
were slaughtered,
in order to supposedly rescue these 4.
Despite all of the actions
that,
the IDF has
already taken, which show complete disregard,
We've seen the IDF
actually assassinated
and sniped
their own people, their own hostages waving white
flags,
dropping bombs on locations where they knew hostages
were. This is something that is very well
known at this point. NBC, another mouthpiece for
imperialism. We have Israel's hostage rescue,
new details on how it unfolded
and almost, I'm guessing, like, fell apart. So
again, the sense of suspense.
Who is the side that you're expected to
identify yourself with? According to the framing of
the article, you're expected to identify yourself with
the IDF and their supposedly
implicitly heroic mission.
New York Post, one of the worst rags
out there inside Israel's hostage rescue raid and
how it nearly failed. So a very similar
thing. The sense of near failure, but we
managed to pull it off with no comments
or recognition
of the 100 that were murdered in cold
blood in order for these to be
these people to be,
supposedly rescued, that they are actually going more
into a more dangerous state. And we've seen
also, and we'll get to this now, what
was the state of the hostages? So supposedly
all of these let's go to the next,
media we have.
Supposedly these hostages are being saved from this
horrible fate.
Okay.
But everything that we've seen for the last
8 months indicates
that
not only
have the Israeli prisoners
been and hostages been treated better than Palestinian
prisoners and hostages,
that the Israeli
hostages and prisoners, when they are released,
they are subject to gag orders. They are
subject to intimidation. They are subject to
silencing by their own government, trying to prevent
the narrative from getting out there
of the humanity of Palestinians and even the
humanity of the Palestinian resistance factions. So we
have here, you know, a,
this line here on Saturday, such as that
the person said that his captors presented him
with a cake on the occasion of his
birthday. SubhanAllah. Now you've got people who are
starving,
right, and people who don't have enough supplies
for themselves,
and they are contriving to try to
try to get a birthday cake to their
prisoner.
Now I want you to see
how much humanity that requires and how much
prioritizing others, and who is the real barbarian
and who is the real terrorist. This is
a very, very famous one.
Right?
The quote here from one of the captives
that was released. When we got there, first
of all, they told us that they believed
in the Quran and they would not harm
us. So they are looking to put their
prisoners and their captives at rest as much
as possible to tell them that they have
no intent to harm them whatsoever. Now we
also have images of how the Palestinian prisoners
and hostages have been treated. Oh, so here's
before and after. So you see very, very
little difference here before and after.
The person has they've been fed well. They've
been taken care of, had their medical needs
sort of taken care of versus the Palestinian
hostages and the Palestinian prisoners, may Allah liberate
all of them, that they come back emaciated.
They come back with broken bones. They come
back injured.
Ahad Tamimi's father was released this past week
as well, and he looked just very, very
similar to this situation right here. He looked
like a shadow or a shell of his
former self.
So this is something that's a very, very
horrible situation, and it
throws a wrench in the narrative that the
Israeli media is trying to portray.
And last but not least, we get to
the US's involvement in all of this with
the Gaza peer. So
supposedly, remember, this was Biden's great solution
when he tried to portray this as a
merely humanitarian
issue and that we just need to make
sure that humanitarian
aid was reaching the people of Gaza with
no recognition whatsoever of the political dimension where
the United States was allowing and
funding the slaughter and genocide of the people
of Gaza,
or the fact that Israel itself was preventing
aid from reaching the the border through Rafah.
They're basically trying to
absolve
Israel from its responsibilities
or from basic humanity and say, oh, well,
we'll just build a pier and deliver this
aid anyway. Well, guess what? The pier was
instrumental to
the forces
that were used to
slaughter the people in Rafah in the Rafah
massacre
and supposedly liberate these few,
hostages.
That this is, it was a front. It
was a Trojan horse. It was a,
it was a ruse the entire time to
create a
foothold within Al Azzah where military operations
could take place.
So that is everything we've got here. Now
we're gonna talk about normalization, and this is
a very, very important thing because there's a
lot of misinformation that's going around on the
Internet about normalization. We're gonna talk about that
in just a second. But before that, let's
circle back and let's see. I know, some
people had questions.
I know we had that comment from Sana,
in a where that was where I think
we we left off, which it was a
good one,
which was stop the use
stop the use of the term white supremacist
when many non Muslim whites are in the
side of Palestine.
That
that is a very important reflection, Sara, in
that we have to understand
the nature
of the issue. Okay? What is responsible
for the occupation
of
Palestine and Nagaza? And this is not to
deny that white supremacy is a real thing
and a huge threat. And even especially in
the United States of America, that there is
a huge problem with white supremacy. There's even
a problem with anti blackness within Muslim communities,
something we don't talk about enough.
However,
there is, on the opposite extreme,
there is a push to collapse every single
issue into a function of white supremacy,
whereas white supremacy sometimes is an ingredient or
is an aspect or is a dimension of
an issue. But there are much, much larger
issues and issues that Allah
talked about in the Quran,
such as kufr,
such as zunim, such as more categories that
are spoken about explicitly by Allah
that
paint a more holistic picture
of what is going on. That's a very,
very important and subtle point,
to bring up.
Okay. Let's see what else we have. Waheem
Salam raftallah,
Boat Hero.
Yes. That's a great point. Courtney Gmail, I'll
reward you for,
for standing up and saying the truth.
Testify, ask do we need to fast on
the day of Arafat if we are traveling?
Well, you don't need to fast on the
day of Arafat in the first place in
the sense that it is not a strict
religious obligation, though it is a stressed sunnah.
So it is something that you should do.
But like all fasts, then if if you
are allowed to break your fast for traveling
in Ramadan,
then what do you think about Yom Aleutafa?
Let's see.
Education says I do pray for Gaza, but
I also pray for other oppressed peoples like
the Indian Muslims. Yes. May Allah help them
and aid them and free them from their
oppressors as well.
And individually oppressed people, that's a good point.
Hanan asked a question about Dajjal, and I'm
I'm purposefully dodging all questions about Dajjal. I
think this is very speculative, and anybody who
knows me and knows my work,
I don't talk
too much about the Dajjal even though it's
an important topic and a lot of other
people are handling it. But,
a let's just put it this way, a
lot of people for a very long time
have thought that this is the Dajao, and
that the Dajao's coming now, and that the
Dajao's right around the corner, only to have
been proven wrong.
Right? So these things are very speculative,
and
we have to be careful. It's important to
arm ourselves with information about the Dajjal, but
I don't see it as very fruitful to
spend our time trying to speculate.
Are we right on the cusp of the
Dajjal coming or not?
We know that
even the prophet
said that the Dajjal will come at a
time where knowledge of the Dajjal is basically
gone.
Well, we're all talking about the Dajjal and
the knowledge is here. So what does that
mean? I think that there are more
productive and fruitful ways to sort of relate
to
what's going on without immediately going to an
eschatological
that means like end of times an eschatological
frame. Not to say not to say that
there aren't
eschatological elements to what's going on. Of course
there are. Nobody would would deny that. However,
some people go right to the eschatological
frame and dimension of things in an almost
disempowering
way where we stop talking about what is
our duty, right, because the prophet
said that if the hour were established and
you had a sapling in your hand, then
you plant the sapling.
Right? That is what is expected of us.
So rather than
unfortunately, some of us use these sorts of
things as distraction. We'll talk about the Dijaya,
talk about and I'm not saying learning about
it. Learning about it is very, very important.
It's a matter of deen, and it's a
it's an obligation upon us. But some of
us
talk about it,
to the extent where it becomes a distraction
from planting our seed, from planting our sapling,
from doing, from grappling with the question, what
does Allah
want you to do in this moment? That's
a very, very important thing.
All the land belongs to Palestinians. 100% agree
there. Rick,
Or is that Nick? I think it's Rick.
Very good.
Israel is a fake country. We're gonna get
to that in a second.
Very good.
Okay. Hanan asked the question several times. We've
answered it satisfactorily, hopefully.
For Marab,
says they are creating more resistance force out
of all of us. We all resist. Yes,
I agree. That this is something, subhanAllah, that
we've seen time and time again, that
the more they try to attack Islam and
the Muslims, the stronger we come back, which
is enough for us to take hope and
to see the silver lining that we will,
Insha'Allah,
rise to the occasion
and
do what we can do.
Amir asked a question that
I always take on because most people are
too afraid to touch it. At what point
do we put up arms and go over
there and rescue our brothers and sisters? Yeah,
Achiel Karim.
That is not a solution.
That will not work. You know, because let
me let me let me put you on
to something here. I live in the United
States of America. I have a vote in
the United States of America. Do you think
for a second and I'm not saying that
voting is the only answer or the only
arena of politics is a broad thing. And
it's not just voting. It's also lobbying. It's
also policy. It's also law. It's also community
building. Right? It's also organized money. This is
all part of politics.
But
without
the express approval of the United States of
America, does this genocide happen or not?
The answer is no. It does not happen
without the United States.
And so
my duty and the duty of anybody in
the United States, and I'll speak for my
context,
is
to stay here and try to change the
foreign policy of this country,
so that our brothers and sisters in Palestine
will not be oppressed, not be occupied, not
be murdered, not be slaughtered, not be genocided.
That is our duty. That is what it
looks like, in my humble opinion, to change
the monkar with our hand given where we
are at. And I can't speak for other
people on where they're at, but that's we
have to think you have to think strategically,
right? What is the objective
that we are
trying to pursue and what is the most
sensible
tactic to get there? Right? That if if
this entire
put it this way.
If the support of the United States of
America was was not instrumental to Zionism, then
would Zionists have spent so much time and
money and energy, decades decades, we could say
more than a century,
trying to convince the United States and the
UK to fund and bankroll and politically and
militarily support their project.
Right? So look at what they put their
attention into,
okay, in order trying to change the policies
of this nation and a couple other nations
that are able to kind of prop it
up. So
they understand
that in order
to achieve what they want, that that was
the appropriate strategy. So we have to think,
if we want to achieve a certain thing,
what is the appropriate tactics and strategy that
is best suited to that? And my argument
has always been that the most effective thing
that we can do as a Muslim Ummah
is to change the foreign policy of the
United States and the Western nations towards the
Middle East and the Muslim lands.
Wa Alaikum Assalam, Afiq
from Malaysia.
I had a classmate from Malaysia named Afiq.
So I don't think you're you're him, but
but you could be.
He was from Kelantan,
I believe,
Or Taringan, I'm not sure.
Let's see. What else do we have here?
Jack Beasley, if I have fast remaining from
Ramadan due to sickness, can I fast Arafa
without making these up first?
That's dealt with in the in
elsewhere. It's a sort of contentious fiqh issue.
I'm not going to opine on it here.
It's a good question. It's one that you'll
find scholars on both sides. Can you combine
intentions for making up or not? It's kind
of a sticky issue. Not gonna get into
it here, but a good question.
Maruyama has a good perspective on the Dajjal.
I'm thinking that every generation thinks they live
in the end times. I appreciate that.
Amira,
Alhamdulillah,
appreciate that.
Asada brings up a good point. I agree
again. Sorry, on fire tonight. At one point,
I think Muslims need to look into themselves
on why we're at such a state. Sure,
we had colonization, but now it's different, so
we can't keep blaming colonization for everything all
the time. Yes, we definitely have opportunities. Let's
put it out there. We have opportunities.
Mariama asked, could it be that the people
right now in Palestine are already promised their
place in Jannah? It could very well be,
Mariamah. That's a very, very good point.
That's a very, very good point.
Pens of Tor 7. Yeah. I mean, I've
I mentioned voting as one tool. Like, it
is not a particular thing, and that has
a whole separate conversation that we can get
into. I'm not under the illusion that that
voting isn't a is a particularly useful tool.
In fact, I take the opinion of Henry
David Thoreau,
who said in the 1800 that he can't
think of a more feeble
expression
of your political will than to cast a
vote. But it is one available tool among
other available tools to us. And so I
take a more sort of all tools in
the tool belt type of approach.
When when Mahmoud says, the first thing Americans
must do is vote out corrupted politicians or
change the rules when so that corrupt politicians
cannot occupy office. We have a lot of
structural issues.
Ameen Ameera.
Ameen wa Yaqum. Lovely du'at. Thank you so
much.
Very good. What's your favorite thing about Eid
al Abha? It is the tekbiraat. I love
the tekbiraat.
The tekbiraat is one of my favorite in
fact, I'm just pumping out tekbiraats from my
phone or my my laptop,
as much as possible. I love listening to
the different styles of tech bit off throughout
the Ummah. I our,
our Ummah is so rich in culture and
traditions and different types of things, right? I
really, really
love the ummah.
And so the taqbiraat
is one specific
part
of 'id and what 'id is that,
gets us to experience that variety and that
diversity
of the ummah. And actually, the 'id khutba
that I'm going to be giving, Insha'Allah,
will be on sort of reflections on the
Takbiraat.
Alaykum Salam Alaaimo. When
are you and Yaqeen coming back to Minnesota?
I don't know. Habibi, I wanna come as
soon as possible. I love Minnesota.
I have unfinished business in Minnesota.
A lot of good things going on there.
May Allah bless you all.
But for the meantime, in the meantime, we
have to get on to a very, very
important topic, which is normalization.
And I've got, I think, an image here
from the studio that we can bring up,
representing a meeting that was happened from president
of
Israel,
Isaac Herzog, and
MBZ
of the UAE.
This happened in January 2022,
and it is a very sort of
interesting pictorial representation
of normalization. And, you know, for you art
critics here,
I'd like to point out that notice how
we've got 3 Israeli flags
and 3,
Palestinian flags in the background, and we've got
2 leaders of countries
and no Palestinians in sight.
If you want to understand normalization, that's what
it is right there. Period.
No Palestinians in sight.
Now I'm going to break it down because
there is a lot of misinformation
and some well intentioned misinformation
when it comes to normalization, what it is,
what it isn't, what it could do, what
it would do.
We're gonna get into that right now. But
if you wanted it in a word,
it is skipping over the Palestinians and ignoring
the Palestinians.
Oh, those are Emirati flags, as I've been
corrected.
Well, that's even worse. There's no Palestinian
Palestinians
and no
Palestinian flags either.
So question 1, what is normalization? What does
it mean to normalize with Israel?
Okay.
Normalization,
strictly speaking, means to establish diplomatic,
economic, and political
relations with the occupying force of Israel
and treat it basically like any other nation.
So it'll be the opposite of an isolationist
approach.
It would be an approach that basically you
know how countries have embassies
that, in between one another, and they have
airports
and airlines that fly in between one another,
and they have businesses
that can basically,
you know, do trade with one another, that
that is what normalization
means, that instead of isolating Israel and refusing
diplomatic
relations
or economic relations or political relations, then you
are actually establishing
these ties.
Now what does it signify?
Okay? What's so bad about
normalization?
Normalization,
it grants recognition
to the occupying force of Israel that it
is a legitimate state,
And that has been something that the Palestinian
resistance
has had an issue with since day 1,
that the recognition
of the validity
of the state of Israel
is a key
contention. It accepts, normalization
accepts the original sin
of the State of Israel,
which is the
leveraging and the exploitation
of the international
community, the Western Nations,
to impose unilaterally
a racially supremacist,
Jewish supremacist homeland on this on the land
of the Palestinians.
And so,
establishing,
normalizing
relationships with Israel
recognizes
the legitimacy for such a project to exist.
It is, in essence,
spitting on the graves of the great grandparents
and grandparents of many Palestinians
who
died and perished during the Nakba,
who were slaughtered and worse than slaughtered,
during 1948
and around that time,
that it recognizes
that
Israel has, as Israel, has a right to
exist.
Now, some people will say, well, wait a
second, that sounds antisemitic. You're saying that Jews
don't have a right to exist in Palestine?
No, no, no, no, no, that's not what
we're saying.
The Jews having a right to exist in
Palestine versus Israel having the right to exist
as a state are 2 separate issues.
And the Zionists would like you to think
that they're the same issue.
But in fact,
the state of Israel, which is Zionist and
racist and supremacist to its core,
to its constitution,
to its founding
events and the founding events,
right, that this is something that does not
have a right to exist. Israel does not
have a right to exist. No nation on
earth has a right to exist,
especially if that nation was established
on conquest, on colonization,
on supremacy,
on barbarity,
etcetera, etcetera.
So the position with this thing in mind,
with this in mind about what normalization
represents:
Imagine
somebody comes into your house
when you're a little kid,
and they take over your house, and they
force you to live in the basement
and they tie your hands up and they
give you dog food and they treat you
in horrible ways, sometimes they come down and
beat you, and they they don't let you
come and go as you please, etc.
How would you hope that your neighbor treated
that person?
Would you,
what would you do if you saw your
neighbor cutting the grass for that person?
Or your neighbor
trading cookies and brownies and things like that?
What would you expect from your neighbor? If
your neighbor had any ounce of loyalty,
if your neighbor had any ounce of morality
or duty,
then you would expect them to disapprove
of that action and to do whatever they
could do
in order to in order to stop it.
So the position of
normalization
is one of cowardice.
It is one of humiliation for Palestinians
and the memory of
their
ancestors.
And
it is betrayal.
It is a betrayal
of the Palestinians, which is why you don't
see any Palestinians
or their flags
in those pictures.
That it is skipping over the Palestinians in
the process. We hear all the time about
the US is trying to conduct a deal
with Saudi Arabia, is trying to conduct a
deal with the UAE, is trying to conduct
a deal with Egypt, is trying to conduct
a deal with Qatar or with this or
with that nation.
What about Palestine?
What about the Palestinians?
Where are they? It is an attempt to
skip over,
to skip over the Palestinians and to cut
them out of the process, to say nothing
of the fact that Palestine is a waqf
lila,
that Omar Ibn Khattab made Palestine a waqf,
and that it's nobody's to give up, and
it's nobody's
to give away.
Now the second question, we've got question number
2 over here:
what are the potential consequences of normalization for
the Palestinian struggle? This is very important because
some people have started to wonder
if normalization
could create a situation
in which we could actually end the occupation
in a roundabout way, in an indirect way.
Now we'll address that in a second.
But the first most
fundamental thing
is that
all
of the
peace talks and all of the so called
efforts of normalization
are predicated upon one thing.
And that is the rejection of the Palestinians'
right to resist.
And this is why the Palestinians reject normalization.
This is why all of the Palestinian resistance
factions reject
normalization,
and they criticize
the other nations for having normalized relations
with the occupying force because
they are expecting
and they are saying and arguing
that, hey, if you guys, Palestinians, just lay
down your arms and just sort of stop
fighting, then maybe then you can come to
some sort of peaceful
resolution.
Now, I want you to understand what it
would mean
for Palestinians to give up their right to
resist,
to disarm, and to basically
just rely on a quote unquote peace process,
that it would mean giving up all of
the leverage that they had, it would mean
more settlements, it would mean more checkpoints, it
would mean more evictions, more denial of the
right for their people to return to Palestine
once they have left,
and it would be also a failure to
learn from some of the other things that
have already happened to the Muslim Ummah, such
as Bosnia.
People with short memories.
Let's remember Bosnia.
What happened to our Bosnian brothers and sisters
when they were told
all you have to do is give up
your right to resist
and lay down your arms
and you will be treated fairly
and equitably.
What happened to our brothers
and sisters in Bosnia? It was a massacre.
It was shooting fish in a barrel, that
this is precisely what the Serbs wanted,
because then they could attack without any
opposition.
And this, in fact, is exactly what the
Zionists would like as well. The Zionists would
love if they didn't have any resistance. They
would love
to completely take over Gaza. We've seen that
them making
plans for settlements and kibbutzes on in Gaza.
Do you think that if the people of
Gaza
laid down their arms and stopped,
gave up their right to resist,
that
those plans would halt,
that the land grab would continue and would
accelerate,
and they would have absolutely
no leverage
to bring people,
to bring the Zionist occupying entity to the
table and force them to negotiate, which is
our next point: that if you want to
actually negotiate with somebody,
you have to have leverage to force them
to negotiate. And this is a lesson that
is taught to us by the prophet Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam and it's taught to us
by Allah Azzawajal in the Qur'an. If you
look at the story of Musa and Fir'aun,
did Musa give up his leverage?
Did he stop
bringing the curses, or bringing the plagues, or
bringing the miracles, or all the things upon
Firaun?
That was his leverage to force Firaun to
negotiate.
If Musa
decided to go home and give up his
right to resist,
he would have
no leverage and he would be crushed right
away.
Just like the prophet Muhammad
when it came to the long struggle against
the Quraysh and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah,
that the prophet created
leverage,
and the leverage
is what enabled the negotiations
to take place. Anybody who's saying that the
Palestinians will be able to negotiate
after they give up their leverage.
Either you haven't been paying attention to the
last 75 years of Palestinian history
or you're just making an ideological statement. You
haven't thought this through. That if you look
at the history of the legal solutions,
you look at the history of all the
peace talks, quote unquote, the peace process, quote
unquote, that this has always been a sham
from the West
to get the Palestinians
to recognize the right of Israel to exist
as a Jewish supremacist state, as a Zionist
state,
and to get them to give up their
only levers that they've ever had the entire
time, which is their resistance.
All previous attempts at negotiations
have failed.
All previous attempts of quote unquote peace talks
have failed, and it hasn't failed because of
the Palestinians.
And the Palestinians
have also tried the route of
civil disobedience.
The people of Gaza themselves in, I believe,
2018
marched to the wall
in a peaceful demonstration,
the the march of return. And what did
they receive in response?
They were sniped in the kneecaps.
They were deliberately
maimed
and injured for life
just because
of their willingness
to resist resist, even their symbolic
resistance was offensive.
So if this is the type of enemy
that you're up against, do you really think
that giving up all of your leverage
is going to enable you to have
a better outcome
or not? I would say
not.
That
the Zionist entity
is going to pursue its occupation
and its
land grab and its colonization of the land,
whether there is a resistance or not. They're
going to try.
Some people are trying to portray it as
if,
well, if the resistance stops, then we're going
to be able to hold them accountable, then
the international
community will come and save the day, the
UN will come and save the day, or
this sort of body, or that sort of
body, or one state solution
and Palestinians will become citizens and then they'll
go through a civil rights movement like in
the United States. This is all wrong headed
thinking. Look at what the Zionist movement has
done time and time and time again. That
the only thing that has stopped them
from a total and complete displacement of the
Palestinians
and a complete erasure and eradication of the
Palestinians
has been the resistance,
has been the right to resist.
And that's not to say that
anything is perfect and we're not idealizing
this side or that side or this faction
or that faction. We can talk about, you
know, whether we approve or disapprove of this,
that and the third, but that's not this
is not the place for it, that we're
saying that the general idea
is that and this is recognized under international
law. We're not saying anything controversial here. International
law recognizes
the right for an occupied people to resist.
And
Allah
recognizes and establishes, better word to say, establishes
the
right
for occupied people to exist.
Why are you justified
to fight back? Because they turned us out
of their homes.
That's right, in the Qur'an.
And someone's going to come along now and
say: Well, you've been turned out of your
homes and you've been fought against, but no,
don't do anything.
Give up your right to resist, and they'll
maybe they'll treat you nice enough so that
in 60 years,
in 60 years there won't be any Palestinians
left
if you give up the right to resist
and if you give up the only leverage
that you have.
So we'll end it there. There's a lot
of sort of misnomers and some sort of,
false arguments being made out there. But I
hope I hope that
anybody who Listen, listen. I'll admit. Listen.
I was not the most educated person on
the history of Palestine and all of the
sort of resistance factions and all the different
peace talks and all the different accords and
all the different players.
But then I took it upon myself to
educate myself.
There are
many books out there. There are dozens of
books out there, good books that can help
you educate yourself. Any
objective
observer and student of the history of the
last 75 plus years of the occupation of
Palestine
understands
that the peace talks have always been a
ruse, that the peace process has always been
a ruse,
that they've all been predicated upon recognizing Israel's
so called right to resist,
giving up on the right to return for
refugees in the diaspora of Palestinians,
and
laying down arms and relinquishing the only leverage
that the desperate Palestinians have, which is their
resistance.
That once those things are done, then you
can kiss Palestine
goodbye.
Now, let's go through some comments and some
questions. I'm sure that there's going to be
plenty of,
plenty of commentary
here. Walaikum Assalamu waftallah.
From, let's see, we've got Canada. Aloha Akbar.
Is that Smila Rahma from Scotland. Lovely.
Welcome.
Amir has the follow-up question. He says, I
understand the intention.
However, the US government has been sold out
for decades and does not represent their people
anyway. So isn't that option kind of pointless?
Well, not necessarily. Right? But it's true what
you say, that they have sold out their
people, they're not accountable to the average American
person or else they wouldn't support Israel, because
the average American person doesn't want to be
supporting Israel and funding a genocide.
However, there are,
there are levers to power. There are multiple
levers to power, as we've mentioned. One of
them is the political route about
voting or getting someone, let's even forget about
voting because I know some people get triggered
when I talk about voting,
getting somebody elected or getting somebody
unelected, basically getting someone's time in office up.
If you're able to do that, then that
is a lever of power. Money and influence
is a lever of power. Business is a
lever of power. There are many, many levers
of power that the United States government responds
to, which, as again, if you study how
Zionism has been able to institutionally
capture the United States, they have done the
same thing. You look at the universities in
the United States of America.
All of the presidents of the major universities
are
glorified fundraisers.
They are responsible for raising money for their
endowments. And so the Zionists were very, very
slick, and they basically said, well, we're going
to organize our alumni money, and we're going
to put tons of funds earmarked every year
for these endowments.
And therefore, when any university, now you have
a pro Palestinian encampment,
we're going to threaten to take away that
donation unless you crush it.
That's a lever of power. So there are
many levers of power that can be exercised,
and they are,
they're right here waiting for us to to
take advantage of them.
Come to Glasgow, please, Insha'Allah. I would love
to.
We are up against a system that has
been centuries in the making, which has succeeded
in colonizing Muslim leaders, either economically or by
blackmail. And, of course,
there is nafs and self interest involved. Yes,
a 100%. Agreed.
Sala says Jews have existed in Palestine. Yes.
And they had a better,
more peaceful existence in Palestine when it was
ruled by Muslims.
Let's see.
Oat Hero asks, Is it haram to insult
the name Israel because it's the name of
Yaqub
This is a topic I hear about a
lot. I haven't really seen anybody insulting the
name Israel. People, when they're insulting something, or
they're not really even insulting it, they're criticizing
it, they're criticizing
the nation state, right, the occupier,
right? So I don't necessarily see a lot
of people insulting the name. I mean, it's
their fault that they attach their genocidal colonial
project to such a noble name.
Smila says, Normalization is a deal between those
who have sold their souls to the devil
for for self advancement at the expense of
an oppressed people. Oof. That was very succinct.
I completely agree.
Pensator 7. Imagine if that neighbor was family
or your brother. 100%.
Very good.
Ghazada Mamnoon asked the question, why every other
country talking for Palestinians but not them? Who
is Israel to hold everything in its hands?
Yeah. No, that's that's exactly
one of the main points
of the problem of normalization,
that all these people get in a room
together, and Palestine is not present. Or if
Palestine is present, you know who's there?
Somebody, some tokenized individual. And we're not gonna
try to name I know some of you
named names already, but I'm best. Yes, exactly.
People who the West have basically cultivated to
be their guy
who have very little credibility among the Palestinian
people at this point, right,
that so they can say that they didn't
pass over the Palestinians. But if you go
on the street, and it goes a city,
or in Khan Yunus, or in Al Quds,
or in Ramallah, you ask the people on
the street
if they're representative, they feel represented in these
meetings, of course, the op the answer will
be way different.
Free obvious, Doctor. Afia Siddiqui has a great
comment. How relationships can be normalized with those
who oppress your Muslim brothers and sisters for
decades exactly,
that that is such a dishonorable, humiliating stance
to take. May Allah protect us from that
such humiliation.
Yes. And Leticia brings up a great point.
I know why US is in the ceasefire
talks, but they cannot be trusted at all.
They only have the interest of Israel. I've
I brought this up last week, Leticia, that
the United States wishes to portray itself as
a neutral mediator
while
they are conducting conducting the genocide. And there
are people, US military personnel with boots on
the ground in Gaza, in addition to the
funding, in addition to the the,
the armaments.
So a 100% right. The United States is
not a credible mediator whatsoever
That,
it should pose as a neutral party. That
is not a neutral party.
Good point, Smela, about Netanyahu. Yes. There's all
the receipts are online, 100%.
That the Oslo Accords, especially, but also all
of these sorts of,
individual, quote, unquote, peace talks, quote, unquote, peace
process.
It was
really just buying the Zionists' time. It was
serving the interests of Zionists because they're playing
population games, they're playing displacement games, they're playing
the settlements game, they have many, many tactics
that they're pushing out the,
that they're pushing out the Palestinians.
Shmila says everything you say is documented fact
and even covered in premier form of Zion
as mikopeled.
Yes.
General Son. So we have a book recommendation.
Thank you for that, Smeela.
Yes, Ekadri, we're all somewhat guilty. I agree.
Like, we all have to step up. Like,
nobody here is just throwing blame
on others in order to deflect it from
ourselves. Let's all take a moment and
grapple with what we can be doing better.
Yes. And Rashaad brings up a great point.
This is what was done to the Native
Americans here in America. Absolutely. If you're confused
about peace processes,
then go ask go ask Native Americans.
They'll tell you all about it.
Or the prospect of laying down your arms
and being granted something in return.
Mohammed asked about Mahmoud Abbas. I mean, you
can there there's a lot written on on
these sorts of things. Mahmoud Abbas
was somebody who,
has a very, very checkered reputation, let's just
say.
Many, many Palestinians view him as somebody who
is
sold out.
And that there's a important discussion as to
what is the role of the Palestinian Authority.
Are they really doing the work for Israel,
of Israel for it?
I'll leave that for another another time.
Now Saba, brings up a great point. When
I was in college 10 years ago, Palestine
was in the news, our college made sure
the MSA and Hillop really made nice with
each other
by forcing us in one room with rabbis
and chaplains. This is a very important point,
Nisayba.
This is what I call well, many people
call it faith washing.
It also is the depoliticization
of the issue. So all of these
movies and documentaries and feel good sort of
stories that make it seem, oh, there was
an Israeli boy and a and a Palestinian
boy and they became friends across the border
and this sort of thing, very depoliticizing
of what is actually the nature of the
issue that is going on. The issue is
not hate.
The issue is not hatred of the other.
The issue is not,
bigotry. The issue is not a lack of
understanding. The nature of the issue is political,
that if you ended the occupation
of Palestine and of Palestinians,
that if you dismantled the state of Israel,
you would actually allow the possibility for a
new sort of governance and a new sort
of
state or whatever nation
to take place where it would be better
for Jews and Muslims and Christians and everybody.
The current arrangement is not good for anyone.
And so it's this is one of the
sort of Zionist lies that, you know, that
the Palestinians or the Muslims want to push
us onto the sea. No, that's not true
whatsoever.
This has to do with a government,
and that we refuse. And it's important for
everybody
who has these sorts of ties to universities
or even the workplace
to not accept
the framing of this issue
as just an issue of a lack of
understanding or intolerance or of hatred,
or that this is just an interfaith issue,
that if Muslims and Jews understood each other
better, then the then all the issues of
Palestine would be resolved. This is not this
is a deliberate attempt to depoliticize this issue
and get it away from talking about the
occupation, and that the occupation has to end,
and that the state of Israel
should be dismantled.
Danger of what exactly, Sara?
Okay. I know we've got a lot of
things.
Okay. Abdullah asked a question right here from
the studio. How do we handle the deep
seated culture amongst our Christian American neighbors that
has become God, family, country, guns in Israel?
Well, you know, the only real problem is
the last one.
And so there's always, listen, with anybody you
talk to, there's always a bridge
towards understanding.
Most Americans really hate to feel like they're
being taken advantage of. And that same,
you know, god, family, country, and guns type
of conservative
is probably upset about how much money the
United States government
spends on welfare.
And it's probably very, very critical
of
anybody who receives welfare. And that's a separate
conversation. We're not saying that that is
a correct
analysis of the situation.
But what we're saying is that's what that
person believes, and that can be used as
a bridge. Well, do you know who's the
biggest welfare recipient? Is Israel, is Israel, is
the biggest welfare recipient. That they have their
free college and their free health care, and
they live they're they're living the, the modern
dream
on your dime.
And that would upset
any sort of God and country conservative in
the United States. So there's always sorts of
there's always opportunities,
dawah opportunities, discursive
opportunities
that, that can be sort of leveraged in
these sorts of situations?
Good point, Diat Saradi. We can't stop talking
about the 9,000 hostages in Israeli prisons.
Yes. Good point.
Courtney, you're a 100% right. What's happening in
Palestine? Exactly. What's happened to Turtle Island? A
100%.
Okay. Very good. We've reached the end. One
day, Insha'Allah, Gaza. I love that. We visit
Free Palestine and pray in Al Aqsa. Pray
in Al Aqsa and travel from Al Aqsa
to Gaza,
sali min
peacefully
with no with nothing to worry about except
what we're going to have for lunch in
order to help the Palestinian people rebuild, if
that is necessary at that time. May Allah
let us see it in our lifetimes.
Very good. So
let's transition now. We've got, sort of a
new way to deal with this ilm segment.
And, well, we've gone this has been a
long conversation. We've gone a little bit longer
than usual,
But I've I've personally benefited from, from the
conversation.
Let's go to our ilm segment. Now, we've
got some questions for you all. Okay. Now,
the subject today is the sunun of greeting
each other. Alright? How do we greet each
other? What are what are some of the
sunn, you know, plural of sunnah,
that is related to greeting each other in
a step? So we've got question number 1.
Are we able to do the poll, or
are we gonna just do comments?
Okay. We're just doing it in the comments.
So, everybody, you can answer A, B, C,
or D. How should you return?
How should you return the greeting if someone
says to you, Salaam Alaikum.
Should you say back to them, salaamu alaykum?
A. Should you say back to them, wa'alaikum?
That's option B.
Should you say, C, 'walaikum assalam?'
Or should you say, D, 'walaikum assalamu wa
rafaa t'ala?
Let's get some answers.
Turkiye with the first response.
Birinci.
I need to practice my Turkish. I've I've
forgotten most of the Turkish that I used
to know.
You know, subhanAllah, I was using you know,
Turkish has some of the best proverbs that
I've seen in any language.
I was using one for a presentation I
gave the other night,
And I'll just leave it here for the
Turks. And if you don't understand it, then
if this will be like an if you
know, you know sort of thing.
An laiana,
si vrissinex as. An la maiana, davosorna
as. I busted that out in a, in
a presentation. So let's see. Most people are
saying d.
Some people are saying c.
And notice I was crafty with how I
frame the question here, because I said should,
which indicates kind of the best
possible way, and that would be d.
The best possible way to respond
is, Wa Alaikum Assalamu Arhamatullah.
It is acceptable to say, Wa Alaikum Assalam.
And, you know, if you don't know any
better, then okay, if you're doing out of
ignorance A or B, it's not necessarily a
problem.
But the standard, the minimum response is c,
and the better best response is d, because
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said in the Quran,
and if you are given a certain greeting,
then you should respond to the same or
better, and obviously responding with better
is, is better.
Very good. Let's go to question number 2.
Okay. It's sunnah
for the following person to begin salaam. Pay
attention. Who should
who should begin salaam?
A, a person riding, beginning salaam to a
person who's walking.
B, a younger person
starting salaam to an older person.
C,
an individual person
saying salaam or beginning salaam to a group
of people,
or, d, all of the above?
Okay. That was a pretty easy one. Everybody's
coming through with the d's.
Very good.
You guys nailed it.
Excellent.
Straight a students. Everybody.
Excellent.
Okay. Let's try to get number we have
one more, right? Let's get number 3 and
the final one. Okay. The sunnah of greeting
each other. Yes or no? So here we
go. High stakes question.
It's sunnah
to shake hands when greeting each other with
salaam. Assalamualaikum. Now we're we're apply gender rules
here. We're not saying,
it's sunnah for a ajna b man or
a non non Mahram man to give to
shake hands with a non Mahram woman. That's
not what we're saying. We're saying man to
man, or woman to woman or
man to his,
you know, his sister or something like that.
Is it a yes or no to shake
hands?
Oh, we've got a little ichtelevir el Hammat
here. We've got a little bit of,
difference of opinion.
Yeah. I agree, 8 Calduri. Next time, Michela,
we'll have the polls up and running. It's
more of a just like a tech issue.
We were locked out of the studio today.
We have some things, you know, going on.
Mohammed asked, am I friends with the Towards
the Eternity team? I am oh, am I
with the Towards the Eternity? No. I'm not
with them, but I am I know them
and and we're friends.
Actually, I wish I was going to Tuukier
this, this summer because they asked me if
I was coming through to, to stop in
the studio and film some things, but, unfortunately,
it's not in the plans.
Okay. We've got a lot of answer, and
Amina is answering d to a question that
has no d. I'm assuming that you're talking
about
assuming that you're talking about a previous question.
Okay. The answer is actually
a, that this is a sunnah. It is
a sunnah to shake hands when giving the
salaam. And if you really, really want to,
I can go into here, break out the
daleel here.
Yes.
That is the actions of the Sahaba. May
Allah be pleased with them all.
From Hadith Katah
And that is related in Al Bukhari
number 6,263.
So there you go.
Very good. So that concludes. Thank you for
playing. Insha'Allah, we'll have some sort of slicker
way to deliver the questions,
next time, but thank you for playing.
Hopefully, you benefited. I benefited. And now on
to our final segment for tonight, which is
the conclusion
of our book on personal development,
the
laws of leadership
by John C Maxwell. And we got only
3
laws remaining.
Now
law number 19.
We'll start 1920, 21. Number law number 19
is called the law of timing.
The law of timing
means that
being a leader
is not just about doing the right thing,
it's also having a sense of
timing. As that doing the right thing at
the right time is an extremely
important element to being a leader.
That
a wrong action at the wrong time, that's,
yeah, that's a disaster.
But even the right action at the wrong
time, it might not work. It might provoke
or
inspire resistance to what you're trying to do.
Now, you might have good timing, but you
might have the wrong action. That's an innocent
mistake.
But true success comes from the right action
at the right time, and the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam implemented this.
If you look at
his decision what to do after the Battle
of Uhud, where it was
somewhat of a loss scholars differ was it
a loss for the Muslims, or was it
sort of like a draw, a stalemate, whatever
have you, that they were in a weak
and compromised position. But the prophet understood
the danger of the moment,
so he gathered everybody together despite them being
injured and weak, and they marched to pursue
the Quraysh outside of Medina
to make them think
that they had reinforcements and that they were
going to now, fight again.
And sure enough, the Quraish, they paused
in their retreat and they said hey, wait
a second, why don't we go back and
we keep fighting the Muslims? We had them.
We could have beaten them.
And then their scouts told them, Uh-oh,
Muhammad
is coming with reinforcements, let's get out of
here. And so you see the prophet
did the right thing at the right time.
The timing of his decision was key.
Just as the timing for,
the timing for hijra and the timing when
to actually
defend
themselves against the Quraysh and launch sort of
a more military campaign against them. These were
things that if the fighting against the Quraysh
had happened too early, it would have been
disastrous.
It would have been disastrous.
But it had to be at the right
time. And the same with the hijra and
everything else. Law number 20.
Law number 20, the law of explosive growth.
And this might be my favorite law in
the entire book
that
he says.
You add
as a leader, you add by gaining followers,
but you multiply
by developing other leaders. And this is huge
to me, because it is the mark of
sincerity.
I have reflected on this, that the mark
of a sincere person is that you want
your students to end up being better than
you.
You want the people that you're teaching
to actually surpass you.
And if a person is just trying to
keep you under their wing
and just keep you sort of limited to
what,
you know,
a certain station and not let you surpass
them, then this is not true leadership.
That leaders who attract followers,
they put themselves in a position where they
need to be needed. Think social media. You
need to be needed all the time.
Whereas
a true leader,
right,
they are the ones who develop other leaders
who they want to be succeeded. They want
other people to take over after them. And
we can see that throughout Islamic history. We
see Nur ad Din Zengi, who was a
leader and who who was the one who
followed after him. Salahuddin
surpassed him.
Right? Now it doesn't always have to be
surpassing. It might just be sort of keeping
things going, like the prophet
was an incredible, amazing leader,
and he trained the companions to be leaders.
He trained the companions to be leaders. He
sent them to places where they had responsibility,
where they sort of were able to,
you know, test out their, that responsibility.
And then once he was gone
we had the rightly guided
khilafa. We had the rightly guided period of
the of the of the hulafa.
That was, in general, a time of justice
and a continuation of the guidance of the
prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. So much
so that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
told us to stick to their sunnah as
well. Abu alaihab bin Nawajid, he said
he said follow
sunnati was sunnati khulafa ir Rashidin al Mahdiin.
So the prophet
explicitly told you and me to follow his
sunnah
and to follow the sunnah of the rightly
guided caliphs after him. That was because the
prophet
trained other leaders. They were ready to lead
from the time that the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam handed over the responsibility to them. And
finally, our last law, law number 21,
is related to that. It is the law
of legacy, that you judge and measure a
leader by the legacy that they leave behind.
And there is no
better leader than the prophet Mohammed sallallahu alaihi
wasallam, and you can only,
you only can what's the way to say?
That all you have to do to notice
that is to look at the legacy that
he left behind. The most common name in
the world is Mohammed.
And the civilization that he left behind from
Morocco to China in
very, very few years,
where people
flourished.
Christianity
even flourished. Judaism
even flourished under Muslim rule. This is the
legacy
that he left behind. And that is how
a leader
is measured, which is why, you see, even
some of the kuffar
praise the prophet
for his leadership abilities.
And that is a wrap
on the book of leadership. Let's go through
real quick to see,
any remaining sort of loose ends, questions, comments
that you've got, and then we will
sign off.
I agree with that, Sana.
Sana's point, I know voting is one way
to change foreign policy, but Zionists play so
dirty. AIPAC is essentially bribery. Bribery, excuse me.
Muslims cannot play the same game. We need
to find ways of holding our politicians accountable.
I a 100% agree. And the excuse me.
Allah said, wajaalhaqqwazahakalbaatalinalbaatalakanazahookah,
that falsehood will perish and that we should
not feel like we have to
reinvent falsehood or imitate falsehood in order to
succeed. That's not what we're asking for. That
think about how much effort and time and
money
required of them to perpetuate falsehood.
Think about how much easier it would be
to just establish the truth.
Okay. Very nice.
Excellent, Leticia. Give a person a fish they
eat for a day. Teach a person a
fish they eat for a lifetime. Very nice.
Oh,
That's a that's a good point. Even with
parents and kids. Even with parents and kids.
That's a great point. We all want our
kids to be better than us.
And so we should all train our children
to be better than us and put them
in that position, never feel threatened by them.
Yep. I agree, Mariema. That is that is
comforting to me, at least.
And I know you've asked this question many
times, Marima, about which,
which du'a
to make for the oppressed.
There are so many du'a. I don't have
one in particular, but like I said before,
that the du'a that is powerful, there's certain
times and situations where du'a is powerful. Yom
Ale'atifa is coming up. The day of Adafah
is coming up. That is a powerful time
for du'at. It is a time when
when du'at is is accepted. I'll I'll finish
with this.
I'll finish with this. I don't see any
other I don't see any questions. May Allah
bless everybody in this gathering.
That sometimes we fixate on the formula of
the dua, thinking that the power is in
the formula of the dua. And sometimes that's
true. We're not denigrating that.
However,
we should be at least as attentive
as to removing
whatever barriers might stop our du'at from being
answered.
Is there a particular sin or a particular
habit that you are engaging in, that you
find it hard to leave,
that perhaps no matter you could be using
the most powerful dua out there,
but
you are standing in the way of that
dua being answered by your dedication
to this sin.
It's possible.
And I'll say that to myself first. I
have looked in this past 8 months, I've
looked at myself, and I've said,
gee, I really, really need to fix this
and fix that and fix the other, and
I'm tired of that, and I'm gonna change
that,
if only
so that Allah might accept my du'a for
Palestine and for Gaza and bring about the
end of the occupation
more quickly.
May Allah forgive us all and continue to,
continue to aid us.
For my Rabb, may Allah accept your fasting.
Happy to share this suhoor time with you.
Mi'nya qum, Afiyatul soon. And may Allah bless
all of you. This was a wonderful session.
Look forward to next week, insha'Allah. Subhanakallahu wa
hamda kasharullah ilayla antastawqirukutuwileikh.
Assalamu Alaikum waftallahu.