Tom Facchine – No Limits- Israels Growing Atrocities and Global Indifference
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A trap. What do you think is the best strategy would be right now?
Do you think the US would support them in a larger war, even though
they said they wouldn't? That's the thing. I mean, like, I think
that obviously this is comes off of Netanyahu, who's visit to the
United States. He had private meetings with both Trump and
Harris.
We don't know what took place in those meetings. We don't know what
kind of
guarantees that he sort of received or possibly threats, if
any politician views Israeli policy as too damaging to their
own credibility. We have seen instances such as with Ronald
Reagan, where they have basically said even Biden early on, not post
October 7, but you know, in the beginning of Biden's
administration, saying to Israel, look, you have to cut it out. You
have to stop it now. This is bad, bad for popularity and bad for
politics. So we don't know what was said behind closed doors. We
do know that Netanyahu was testing how much support he has and
whatever he saw, whether he's right or he's wrong, he is betting
on having enough support, which is, if he didn't think that, then
there's no way he would engage in this escalation. Now, what will
the US do? Will the US, especially We're just a couple months out
from an election, it's hard to see people willing to escalate before
an election. Participation in a foreign military conflict where
the United States interests are not really sort of affected is not
a very popular move. However, Biden is a lame duck president,
and so he can kind of do whatever he wants. So that would be up to
him. Now, when it comes to the next elected President, that is
another story entirely. So all that to say it's complicated, and
we're not really sure exactly what is going to happen. I don't see
personally, I don't see the United States allowing itself to get
involved more. However, definitely the narrative within Congress that
is strongest to get involved, if you pay attention to the rhetoric
from the right, from the Republicans, is always anti Iran.
So definitely, that's got to be in Israel's thinking when it's trying
to escalate with Iran. And I'm sure that it was intentional to
try to assassinate Hania in Iran, because now Iran feels more
responsible for having allowed this happen on their own soil,
it's tempting them into a response. Many congressmen have
explicitly said that they want to go to war with Iran, or they want
to do something to Iran. This is something, I think, that is in
their calculus. What happens next? We'll have to wait and see.
Aisha nashiro says, can you explain more what they did in
Sudan? Yes, Israel has its hands in what's going on in the Civil
War or the massacres in Sudan. They are arming, along with other
sort of collaborators. They are arming
the belligerent groups and the mercenaries that are operating in
Sudan. So we see that Zionism has
Zionism has extreme effects across the globe, not just in in occupied
Palestine.
Yes, thank you, Seamus. They support RSF.
They definitely have an interest in destabilizing Sudan. Sudan has
been the heart of
Islamic political movements for some time. So there's definitely a
an interest in destabilizing Sudan, which is a shame, because
the people of Sudan are some of the most lovely people in the
world. I mean, I there were so many Sudanese that I benefited
from, including professors. When I my time in Medina,
I was actually many people don't know this. I was actually planning
on doing my master's degree in Sudan,
but then the political situation deteriorated there. There was a
lot of protests over the food, the prices for basic food stuffs, and
then covid happened. So I wasn't able to do that, Alhamdulillah,
but that was how close I was to going there.
Let's see what else we have. Yes, yes. Also the UAE is involved in
that. Your 100% right there.
Failed State is right now, 100% right.
Shakira, why they come? Saddam one off the law he would've got
to Irvine California. Welcome Amin.
Oh, we've got Zulu from France while I am Saddam
Ra, see who else we have. Yes, UAE are also very involved. 100% we
could get into it. Seamus. It looks like you're pretty well read
on this.
It wouldn't it definitely wouldn't be possible without collaborators
from the inside. And that hooks up to our next topic, which I'm going
to get through the rest of the chat for a second, when it comes
to the state of the nation states, the post colonial nation states
that sort of control the Muslim world, that have been installed
since World War Two. I.
This is a very, very important central structural component to
all of what's going on. It has diminished the capacity of the
Ummah to do anything or to come to the aid of the Palestinians. Alagm
Saddam, Minami, Islam Khan, we're just about to talk from Dhaka,
Bangladesh. Yes, and we definitely are here for you in DUA and in any
other way possible, we'll be talking about what's going on in
Bangladesh. Very, very important things and heartbreaking things in
just a second.
Sada asks, Where do you think this will end? What can we do? Well, we
don't have a crystal ball. Well, we can't see what's in front of
us, and Allah only asks us to do the right thing. So raising
awareness is the very, very least that we can do, attempting to
influence if you're someone like me, you're in a Western country,
the United States is the one who sort of dictates foreign policy
for a lot of the world, attempting to get involved and to change the
foreign policy the United States is one of the most important
things you could do to help your brothers and sisters across the
ummah. If you're not, if you're in a different place, then it would
depend on the specifics from where you live. MD Farhan Ahmed says,
Why Middle East countries threatening to a withdrawal from
Abraham accords.
Abraham accords were a horrible idea. That's why the Abraham
accords were basically slow genocide. You get either slow
genocide or fast genocide in Palestine, with the occupation
from Israel and Abraham Accords, was just slow genocide that Israel
did not adhere to any of the conditions or stipulations of the
Abraham accords. They were slowly taking over the West Bank in
Jerusalem. They were not listening to any of it. So it was the slow
annexation of the whole two state solution, the whole peace process,
it was all a ruse to buy them time, to basically take more and
more and more land from Palestinians.
Angela link, yeah,
100% You're right. Why are we still giving money to these evil
people? We should do whatever we can and exercise our political
power to stop it, to stop giving money to these horrible regimes.
Faizan asked, What are your thoughts on nectar now his
ministry using nukes on Gaza? I don't see that as a I think that's
more bluster, right? You have to really separate between rhetoric
and policy.
I think that most Israeli politicians, even though they're
very arrogant and even though they're very evil, they still
recognize that there are certain things that are beyond the pale
that will really make them a pariah state very, very fast. And
that's probably one of them. That's probably the one thing that
they won't actually do. But there is a certain political effect to
to
saying that you would do it right, just like the United States. How
many times do you know people in Congress say we need to nuke Iran,
or we need to nuke these guys, or nuke these guys? They know that
they're not really going to do it or get the chance to do it.
However, the rhetoric does something when it comes to
the audience and other things.
Why are good Muslims not able to rule along? Well, that's because
the garrison states that have been set up across the Muslim world
from after colonialism and after World War Two are controlling
everything. That's why Imran
Khan asked an interesting question, how do we understand
Iran? And I'll say what Sami Hamdi says. And it's true, Iran is its
own nation state with its own interests, right? Sometimes we
think very sort of sloppily or categorically. Of you know that
either they're heroes, right, of the resistance, or that they're
the most evil thing. They've never done anything good, or that any
seemingly good thing that they do is, you know, in reality, evil.
You know, that's sort of simplistic, right? It's a nation
state. Nation states have their own interests. They have interests
in being portrayed in a certain way, as being portrayed against
Islam, against the United States being portrayed as supporters of
Palestinian resistance, but they also have other interests as well.
It's a good point about the UAE they are but they do have a lot of
support from Israel as well. Emad, or whatever the name is,
Abdul Wahid, yes, very good.
All right, we got we're going right into the political
questions. Sahib says, Any updates on the Houthis? Do you think of
Iran attacks? Will it be through Hezbollah or directly? Do you
think Lebanon is going to is going to get involved as well, since the
attack on Beirut,
I don't know. Again, nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody can see into
the future. There's definitely, you know, there are some reports
that are saying Israel is running out of munitions. Israel wants an
escalation. It probably can't handle an escalation unless the
United States getting gets involved. I heard, I think I read,
before jumping online here, that you.
Now they are meeting today that there's many sort of, what they
call the access of resistance, are meeting today to determine
basically what they're going to do. I don't think that you're
going to see a full out attack scenario, response scenario,
because that would give Israel what at once, and that would
provide sort of a justification for the United States to get more
involved. However, I would expect something probably from Lebanon,
but Allah knows best. We'll see.
Yes. NAF says the ICJ also ruled the diplomatic accords weren't
legal, which they weren't.
That's true. Seamus, they are already a pariah state. Halafa,
life. That's true. That is true. Amina, I think I'm Saddam
raftallah,
oh, that's a good question. Have you seen gotten the chance to
respond to some of the criticisms surrounding your recent blog posts
on Western voices and liberation movement? I haven't really,
because I've been I've been traveling. There are a few things
that I'm going to respond to it at certain points in different
WhatsApp groups and things like that. However, I have not seen, I
haven't really seen much valid criticism, to be frank. And that's
not just to toot my own horn, like, you know, I'm a very self
critical person. I like to think, and I have mentors that would tell
me, you know, hey, it's like, this is a little bit out of line, or
whatever. Most of the criticism that I've seen of it either
overestimates what the left has done for the Palestinian movement
and for Muslims in the West, or is very sort of fear based, or is
very leftist based, meaning identity politics. You know, pipe
down their white Imam, this sort of thing, which isn't our way.
It's not our way to be frank. So I'm happy to engage with anybody
who's who's critical of it. I know there's people that I respect a
lot that don't agree, which is fine. I don't claim to have it all
figured out,
but stay tuned. There'll be more of that. Inshallah, you.
Okay,
Tala says, why don't all the Imams and all masjids gather all the
Muslims and show them the power we hold? Why are we just talking?
Well, I'll tell you. What can I say that? Because the messages
don't function like that. Tala, the masjids are facilities that
are often Okay. Let's say this yakin Institute. We have our own
study that we did when it comes to masajid and Imams. And I'll just
speak the United States, over half of the masjids in the United
States don't have full time Imams. We have not prioritized personnel.
When we do get good personnel and masjids, they are usually
micromanaged. They are usually
they're treated as just employees. They're not treated as community
leaders. We have a structural problem with the message. So it
would be nice if we imagine that all the Imams, but all the Imams
are overworked and underpaid. All the Imams need a weekend off to
themselves, all the Imams. You know, that's the situation we're
in. So these things do have consequences, right? Not being
able to have a an Imams union or a licensing sort of for Imams that
creates standards both for the Imams and for their employers,
creates a scenario in which imams are actually very weak and
messages are underutilized. So sure got a vibrant conversation
going on today.
Yes, people are pointing out the brutality of the herties. That's
an important
Touche, Seamus, touche,
it is important to not minimize the butchery of the Houthis. A lot
of people, unfortunately, when their only lens is politics,
sometimes they forget nobody is this isn't a comic book. Like
nobody are, like 100% heroes and 100% villains, like there's a lot
of dirt to go around, right? So it's important to keep those
things in mind and realize that in the realm of politics, sometimes
you have good actions that are done by compromised actors, right?
We're not taking away from any of the good that was done, but we
also can't be romantic, you know, romantic about it?
Um, Shayna, great, great question, how has nationalism we can support
for the causes of the Muslim ummah? Well, living in Al Maghrib,
you know that, for example, if Al Maghrib and Al jazair were to team
up, they would be quite a force. But we don't have that. We have
nationalist sort of ambitions, and we have
the way that borders were drawn, who was installed in power, who
was supported? It's unfortunately, a very, very sad situation across
the Muslim world that the governments care about themselves,
that they're only looking out for their own survival. They're not
looking out for what's in the best interest of the ummah. Thankfully,
the Muslim ummah.
Self is still fairly intact, despite the governments that rule
over us and that try to steer us in certain ways. However, it is
true, the nationalist sentiment is a very big obstacle, maybe the
biggest obstacle, we were in when we were in Malaysia. I'll give you
another example, Shema.
Some of the people asked really great questions, because we were
there for the umatics conference, and we're actually trying to build
up this sort of umatic feeling that we feel together as one, as
an ummah, as the Prophet sallallahu Sallam wanted us to
feel, however, in Malaysia and in Indonesia, they had a problem
where they received Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, and there
was a lot of bigotry against them. They weren't necessarily welcomed,
or they were treated as guests, but guests in the sense of like,
okay, so when are you going to move on and go somewhere else? So
they were complaining like, Yeah, this is an unrealized ideal.
Sometimes the nationalism is what stops us. Compare that to the
attitude of the unsolved when the muhajireen came to them from Mecca
that the Prophet sallallahu, alayhi wa sallam, took those two
groups of people who were completely foreign to one another,
and made more Aha, bayna Huma, and made them brothers, made them
inherit from one another, made them live with one another, and
they were fine with it. That's a very anti nationalist type of
attitude, right? So we see the barriers and the obstacles that we
have to get over, and nationalism is one of the primary ones,
chieftain.
How can we overcome the feeling of being completely overwhelmed by
all the hurt we are witnessing around the Muslim world? But let's
keep growing country after country. I agree, and I feel the
same way Subhanallah,
we really you do need to pace yourself. You don't want to become
incapacitated, right? Because the strong believer is better than the
weak believer. We want to have capacity. So if you're putting
yourself in a situation where you're bombarding yourself with
awareness of so many things that you can't even do anything, and
it's diminishing your capacity to do anything, then perhaps it's
best to turn off the internet and to put your phone down and to
focus on what are the local issues that you can actually contribute
to. That is a very, very important ingredient, right? We don't want
to become we want to be aware, but we don't want to become crippled,
right? So balancing between those two things is very, very
important. Saladin asked, Have you ever considered making your own
channel so you can go hard on some of these topics, so you're not
restricted by by one c3,
I think about it all the time. However, I would, I would need
people to take care of it. For me. I don't want to have any social
media presence in my name, I would want it to be a collective effort,
and other people sort of running it for me and that sort of thing.
So it would have to be an arrangement like that, so that I
can focus just on what I'm trying to do.
And there's only so much time in the day, so we'll see. Who knows
I'm open to it.
Blogging, blogging. Thoughts, who are the Druze?
How much time do you have no say? Because salamander, we are, we are
lucky to have you here. Thank you for joining up. Elias,
if I'm allowed to speak about this, thank you for the qualifier.
Is Afghanistan going to get involved? I don't see that as
happening. There was talk a certain brigade from the Taliban
get ready to go to Gaza. Go to Gaza. I mean, anything's possible,
but I don't necessarily see that happening, but I could be wrong.
Aisha asks, What can we do this presidential election to show our
solidarity against all the oppression happening in the world,
especially what is happening in Palestine, you can make sure that
that's your issue. You can vote. And I can't tell you who to vote.
You know, as
the brother was saying, I can't on a Yan platform tell you who to
vote for, who to not vote for, however. You need to ask yourself
one question, how much is Muslim blood worth to me? And let that
dictate your vote. Don't allow yourself to be scared into voting
for x or voting for y just because you're running away from this or
running away from that. If you act in a principled way, then,
Inshallah, it will be better.
Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. What else do we have? Let's do it.
Let's deal with all of them. Let's go
Halal fit. Life brings up something that a lot of people
feel. And, you know, I know it's not PC, but let's just put it out
there, because I know a lot of people have had the similar thing.
Perhaps it's not very PC of me to say, but what can we say when only
the Shiites are willing to help? Because,
again, we have to distinguish between the people of the Ummah
and the governments. But it's certainly true that this the Sunni
lands are more
oppressed and kept down by their governments,
in the sense of not having any capacity to do anything
to help the people of Gaza or Palestine.
There you go. Seamus plugs, belonging theology. Shout out to
Paul.
Williams blogging theology is a great channel. You can go there
for some of the more theological topics you all are asking about,
Raihan chaudhalah from Toronto,
same answer to Rux. That's where the Muslim armies are, because
they're all Garrison states that were set up by the Western powers.
We can't really expect anything from them. To be honest with you,
they're they're doing exactly what they're designed to
do, how the Ummah can be united. I'm glad you asked.
Okay, a lot of good stuff. Amina
says, What advice would you give to Muslims who want to remain
steadfast in western colleges while studying Islam theology
within departments previously known as Oriental Studies? Yeah,
well, I wouldn't study Islam or theology within those departments,
because you're not going to actually learn Islam or theology.
You're going to learn, you know, Western religion, which is a whole
different animal. It's good to study the history of ideas, and
it's good to understand ideology, but all of these departments are
ideologically situated. All these departments are based off of
certain premises that are not based in our episteme. They're not
epistemically Islamic, right? So if you understand sort of the
architecture or the anatomy of those things, that's the best way
to stay steadfast is that you actually understand. You don't
take these things at face value as self evidently true, that you
actually see them for what they are. This is how they think about
religion. This is how they think about Islam, etc. But it's a
really important question. Ruslan raftola, we have nurio waiting.
Saddam raftola from Uzbekistan. Hope you're well, let's
see what Shakira. Imam Tom, what do you think about this coming
elections for us Muslims living in the US? Should we vote? Please
advise, there's only so much I can tell you on this particular
platform, you can check my other things. Actually, we just dropped
when we were in Malaysia, we recorded for Islam 20 1c if you
don't know Islam 20 1c go subscribe to Islam 20 1c Dr Salman
and I recorded a nice little video there. You can get my election
advice there.
Okay, what else do we have? Atica, A salaam, talabom, rijo,
Asmaa, still benegracia,
thank you. Toppos, one that's obvious. Bono, thank you very
much. May Allah, bless you.
Okay, what else do we have? Okay, we finally got to the end of it, I
think, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about Bangladesh right
now. Exactly. Glad you mentioned
it. Good point by Mojo. Thanks for bringing that up. Okay, let's talk
about Bangladesh. So we have, let's bring up the media guys. I
know we've got something
all right. So there have been,
there's an ongoing, unfolding situation in Bangladesh that is
very, very hard to watch, where the garrison state, right, the
post colonial government that has been set up, we see as doing sort
of the evil work that it is designed to do yet again. So there
was a quota system that was sort of in place in Bangladesh, where
if you were the descendants of people who had fought in sort of
the Revolutionary War, the War of Independence, then you would have
easy access to government jobs. And obviously in a lot of these
sort of corrupt Garrison states, government jobs are the best jobs
to have with the best benefits and the best pay. So there was a lot
of corruption around that. I've been told by Bangladeshis that I
know that there was a lot of people faking that they were part
of it, and younger people were frustrated that they were not be
able, they were not given opportunities based off of merit,
to the point where there were people who are valedictorians,
people who are very, very qualified, who aren't able to get
the best jobs because they're being taken up by this sort of
archaic quota system. And so there was protests, and from what I
understand, they were very peaceful, but the government
reacted in an extremely brutal and harsh and barbaric crackdown.
People have been kidnapped, people have been shot, people have been
killed. And this actually increased the agitation and the
demonstrations and the activism of the people of Bangladesh against
the government now, not just calling for the removal of the
quota system, but also calling for the resignation of Sheik Hasina of
the PM, the ruling party as well of Bangladesh. So this is a very,
very important thing. Now what's wild is that the United States
will pride itself off of being supposedly a first world country
and different from all these other countries. But this is a very,
very similar thing that happened with the encampments in the United
States that we see.
That the governments that are in power today, they exist for their
own survival and their own interests, that they do not
represent the interests of the people, and so they actually call
upon the military and the police against their own people. You had
universities in the United States called the police to come in with
guns drawn against their own students. For what? For protesting
something peacefully, for not wanting their university to be
financially culpable, tied to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
And we see a very, very similar thing in Bangladesh, where we have
the government that is only interested in its own survival.
When there are any protests, it calls in the police, it calls in
the armed forces, and tries to put it down that it is the government
against the people. So if you want to know, many of you have wanted
have wondered, why can't the Muslim armies do anything? Why
can't the Muslims do anything for azer Palestine? This is exactly
why. Because the Muslim governments are against their
people. They are not for their people, and they're operating in a
way to keep them in line. So we ask Allah subhanahu, a to make it
easy for us and to make us triumph and to make us do what is pleasing
to Him, and our DUA and our solidarity go out with the people
of Bangladesh. A
a
commentary brings up some points about living in New Jersey and how
difficult it is sometimes with the pro Israeli narratives, may Allah
make it easy for you
and bro ducky while I am Saddam raftallah
Yazid
yes, no. Seba, another good point, the government literally had the
internet shut down for almost a week. We couldn't reach our
families that whole time. These are the these are the dirty tricks
that they play, right? So you ask yourself, Is the government
for the people? Is it serving the people, or is it actually
weaponized against the people? And compare that, and here's where we
get to, you know, again, as Muslims, as people who care what
Allah thinks, compare that to the khulafa or Rashidun al mahdien.
Compare that to Abu Bakr radi Lahu, to Ala Anu, when he was
given the authority over the Muslims. And what did he say to
the Muslims? He said, If I do something wrong, straighten me
out. He didn't even just say to tell me. He said even to
physically straighten me out. And when AMR RadiAllahu, anhu, when he
was the Khalifa, that he would pace the streets at night to make
sure that everybody was taken care of, Islam is for good governance.
Islam is for governance that takes care of the people. As the Prophet
sallallahu said Kula Kumar in WA kulukum as Yeti, right, that every
single one of you is a shepherd, and every single one of you is
responsible for his flock. And he compared, he said that the leader,
the Imam or the Amir, is responsible for the entire flock,
everybody who is under him. So how can we compare this, the paradigm,
the example that the Prophet SAW set out for us, compared to what
we see now is the Government of Bangladesh acting as if the people
that it is like a shepherd over the flock? No, they are using
weapons and shooting and killing, and they're acting as if they are
the enemy of the people. So we see such a vast difference between the
good governance that Islam came, came to give accountability,
responsiveness, right that we find in the pious predecessors, the
Salaf, versus the complete aloofness and animosity and enmity
that we find
with the garrison states that rule over our Muslim brothers and
sisters throughout the world.
Ruslan says, would love to visit Malaysia more someday we are
neighboring Singapore. Yes, I highly recommend
same Seamus, giving us more history. Mashallah, Sheamus,
you're well read. Maybe you should give us some book recommendations.
Hasina buried hundreds of Dayo, Bandi, ulama in 2013 and mass
graves wouldn't put it past her.
Samiha, yes, we couldn't even call bangladesc directly known as for
five days straight along must die.
It is heartbreaking. Kagura,
Internet came back yesterday, apparently no sabe was telling us
also Minami confirms that May Allah help the people of
Bangladesh.
Yeah, now shame, I agree completely that comparison, it
does Shatan and fuck right. How different are the two things?
Okay, very good. So let's proceed. So that's all for the news, except
one last thing, which is the Olympics. And we, I think we've
got some media to show here. Now, every four years or so, the
Olympics comes around, and we've seen the pageantry. There's a lot
of sort of
chest beating. I remember, you know, the United States, it likes
to advertise, if it's winning in the gold medals, it'll show the
gold medal count. If it's not, if it's only winning in total medals,
it'll only show the total medals count. There's a lot of, you know,
competition and things like that. However, this Olympics has been
one of the most controversial in memory, and that is because we had
a very, very provocative display at the opening ceremony where a
bunch of transgender individuals sought to recreate the Last
Supper, mocking Risa Ibn Maryam, alaihi salam, mocking Jesus, the
Son of Mary. And this was a it was an insult. It was tremendously
insulting. Now, there's a couple points to make here. One is that
the Olympics is something of a scam. Everybody should realize
this in that these are athletes who make very, very little, if
any, money off of this, you know, this event, they're basically
taught that they are competing for pride and competing for national
sort of, you know, patriotism and glory and these sorts of things.
However, in the Age of Television deals and streaming deals, etc,
the people who organize the Olympics make a ton of money, a
ton of money, billions of dollars off of the labor of these
athletes. Okay, now, when people tune into the Olympics, they want
to see the sports. They want to see people competing. They don't
want to see transgender, whatever, mocking religion. And yet, the
people who are organized in the Olympics are trying to capitalize
off of this moment, in order to force this ideology down people's
throats, in order to normalize this sort of thing, and in order
to make a mockery of religion. And how fitting apologies to our
French brothers and sisters, but how fitting that this is all
happening in France. So we see that sports are just as political
as anything else. Don't let anybody tell you that sports are
political. Look at how when Russia invaded Ukraine, it was
ostracized, and look at how much worse Israel has done to
Palestine, and yet somehow Israel is still still in it. Tell me that
sports aren't political. Tell me that the Olympics are neutral or
not political. We see that the open mockery of a prophet of
Allah, subhanaw taala, is on display. So again, show me how,
where's the neutrality. Show me what, where this is something that
is not political. There are always very, very significant political
messages that are being conveyed through international sports,
especially the Olympics, especially FIFA, all these big
organizations. And what we see is that 2024 it's almost as if this
is the year that the West lost moral legitimacy, if you didn't
realize it before that, we see that with the international
institutions, okay, such as the UN and the ICJ, and every single
institution that has allowed the genocide in Gaza to to continue.
And we also see it culturally, all of the Nobel Peace Prizes and all
of the sort of the posturing that the Western world was the most
moral, the most enlightened, and this is what we have at the end of
the day. What's at the end of it? The end of it is mocking Jesus,
the son of Mary, alaihi salam. We see that who are the people that
are left to defend Isa? Who are the people that are left to defend
Jesus. The Muslims are the only ones left. Not even the Christians
will defend Jesus's honor in the way that the Muslims will. As
Allah subhanaw taala says in the Quran that he is the servant of
Allah and the bearer of the Gospels, one of the five greatest
messengers. We've actually got this. I think if we can link to it
and show it on Yaqeen Institute, who is Jesus in islama blog post?
It's a very, very important one. This is by far one of the things
that will shock Christians. If you're ever in the situation to
talk to Christians about Islam, most of them have no idea that we
believe in Isa, or that he's a prophet, or that we respect him,
or anything like that. So this is a very, very,
it's very, it's very important opportunity to take this, because
there are going to be people that are outraged. I know some people
like Kagura are saying, I'm surprised that the Christian
population wasn't more outraged. Well, they've been socially
engineered to be not outraged. But yes, there are some people that
are very outraged, and this is a very, very important opportunity
for Dawa. So you're outraged by this. Guess what? I'm a Muslim,
and.
I'm outraged by this too, that no prophet that we believe, that
Jesus is a prophet, he should not be mocked. Religion should not be
mocked like this. This is completely inappropriate, that the
so called, and we saw this with Charlie Hebdo and everything else,
the so called right to free speech is, in reality, a political
maneuver to taint and mock everything that is sacred, to
taint and to mock everything that people find holy, morality,
virtue. And so this is something that is not neutral. It's not just
about free speech, because as we've as we know and as we've seen
the last nine months, you can't say everything. There's certain
things you're not allowed to say. But when it comes to making fun of
religion, we're always allowed to make fun of religion. To make fun
of religion. Yes, good point. Minami, Islam Khan and the hijab
is banned at the Olympics as well, because, again, France so we see,
nothing is ever neutral. There's no such thing as neutrality.
Nothing is a political there's no such thing as not being political.
Everything has a political dimension to it, and politics is
on display once again, 100%
Yazid. If it was the Muslims committing a genocide, it would be
front page every day.
We wouldn't hear the end of it. I
uh, Irina asked a good question. I can't get what's the relation
between Jesus and the Olympics? There is no relation to it. They
had to bring it in there because just they wanted to be provocative
and mock it and make fun of it.
So honestly, if I were you, and I do realize that we have people
from Palestine that are participating in the Olympics, and
there's some people who, you know, I know there were some Algerian
athlete who refused to go up against an Israeli athlete, and
there are admirable moments like this. But if you were to put me on
the spot, I would say that, if you're a Muslim, don't watch the
Olympics. Don't give them that money from their advertising,
their commercials and the TV deals that they've got. I think that
it's high time that maybe the Muslim, and this is we're thinking
about unity. We're thinking about an ummah. Maybe the Ummah needs
its own Olympics, right? Where we honor the prophets, where we wear
hijab, where we have these sorts of things. Maybe we need our own,
our own cultural institutions. Yep.
A lot of people putting out the hypocrisy, 100%
yes, range, I completely agree it was not family friendly
whatsoever. And that is one of the crazy things,
is how aggressive it is towards children, honestly, like you, you
you take these things and you can't, you don't even want to go
outside anymore. Subhanallah, like it, puts you in a scenario where
you just don't even know what you're going to be looking at,
some sort of very sexually explicit
thing. But people, as we're saying, people have been
desensitized to it, and the desensitization is actually a
social engineering project. This is something that's very
intentional to get you to be desensitized to it so that you
won't be offended.
Oh, I see is another point. Yes. Toothless,
very good. Okay, so let's transition now. We're going to
talk Kitab Asia. We're going to talk what Sahih Muslim, the
chapter of Asir, or the Kitab Uji had. We've got a very interesting
Hadith today talking about meeting your enemies. And so the question
will pose to everybody, yes or no question, it'll make it easy.
Should we hope, as Muslims, to meet our enemy in battle? What do
you think? What does Islam have to say?
Should we hope to meet? I know a lot of the young guys out there
and be like, man, like I want to let me add it right. They're
raring to go. Should we hope to meet our enemies in battle? There
you go. I like it. No. Seva, Muslim nation, Cricket World Cup,
the Ummah soccer tournament.
Sorry, we'd have to call it football. I know, I know
Rick Rashid,
okay? Minami Islam Khan says, Yes, I think that you're responding my
question, Should we hope to meet our enemies in battle?
Abdul sama says, No, we have khilaf s a no. Irina says, should
we I don't know, that's what I'm asking you. Shayma says, No, we
shouldn't. Abdul sama says there's a hadith,
and that is the hadith of this particular chapter. Yes, the
prophet Alayhi Salatu was Salam. He said, specifically, let me get
it up here. La Taman no Leq Allah Adu, what either a tomo HUM
faspiru, the Prophet sallallahu, sallam, said.
Do not hope to meet the enemy, but when you meet them, then be
patient. And there's another there's another rewire, there's
another version of this hadith, which is also correct letter the
manolika do was ALLAH, hello and Al Jannat, tahta, Villa Raf, very
similar. Don't hope to meet the enemy and ask ALLAH SubhanA wa
Taala for a well being. That's a very important addition. And if or
so, if you meet the enemy, then be patient and know that Jannah is
under the shade of swords. We don't have time to explain all of
that, but one of the important things here is that we're taught,
and we're taught to not hope to meet the enemy. Muslims don't go
looking for trouble. That's the the main takeaway from this
hadith. We don't go looking for trouble. We don't we're not
aggressors. We're not looking for a fight. This is not the way of a
Muslim, okay? Because, as the or the mat, who have explained this
hadith, note that is associated with vice and with
non praiseworthy, we say blameworthy qualities such as
pride, boastfulness, recklessness, right? These are things that you
would associate with somebody who's just all the way looking for
a fight, like some of the nations who occupy Palestine are acting
like, okay. Now that's not to say that the only type of military
activity or sort of fighting in Islam is only defensive. That's
not strictly true either. I know some people have tried to make
that claim popular in recent years, in light of 911 and sort of
the War on Terror discourse, that there is room within fiqh for
things like preemptive strikes. You can see it if you go into the
fiqh and the Sira, the Prophet sallallahu, sallam. However, it's
very, very calculated. It's very rules based. It's very, sort of
animated by all the rest of the rules that we've talked about and
that we will continue to talk about, it's not the same thing as
aggression, right? There are situations where you need to
display a deterrence power, but even the display of deterrence
power is only to stop the evil of your enemy, and that is if you
want to tie everything in Islamic sort of the rules of war. It's all
about stopping the evil of your enemy. Right? Is that we want a
situation in which a just peace prevails, but sometimes you have
to do things to establish that just peace. It's not going to just
happen by itself. And unfortunately, there are evil
people in the world with evil plans, and evil does not rest. Now
the second half of the Hadith where the prophet said, if you
find yourself in that situation, then the most important virtue
that you can take with yourself is patience. And certainly, nine
months into a genocide, we see the people of Gaza displaying immense
patience. That patience in the middle of this thing is the most
important virtue to have. It's what's going to get you through to
the end. It's a very, very difficult. It's extremely hard.
You will ask, just like Allah says in the Quran Mehta and Asra Allah,
when will Allah's help come? But Allah subhanaw taala has a plan,
and as long as you're doing what Allah subhanaw taala wants, then
we have good hope in Allah. We believe that Allah is with the
believers. We believe that he is with the righteous. We believe
that everything that happens Allah is showing us something. He's
showing us something, and he wants something from us. He's showing us
who are the traitors. He's showing us who are the people that don't
value Muslim blood, who are the people who don't value Palestinian
lives, who are the people who are ready to sell out the Ummah just
to get a position in a cabinet or in a campaign? Right? So maybe we
say, well, why does it have to last so long? Well, Allah
continues to show us things, and so pay attention and notice what
he's showing you, and try to learn and do what and do what
Allah spun Allah would want us to do.
Okay,
here we go. Sa, Ada, you have a point. Yeah, you'll be a martyr or
your win. That's correct. But when it comes for hoping for the actual
encounter, then the Prophet saw him said, No,
but if you find yourself in that situation, then exactly right.
That's a good point to Yazid about the Muslim French sportsmen such
as Zidane and Benzema.
Unfortunately, as we've seen, I mean France, I think, I think it
was France that they sacked the footballer for even tweeting and
very, very minimally in support of Gaza. So imagine what they would
do if you, you know,
tramped on, trampled on what they think is sacred. Ah, wait a
second, we're not sacked.
Are neutral and tolerant anymore.
Good answer. Salma, correct. Arena, correct,
okay,
okay. Azita has to go to work. Thanks for joining us today. You
uh Minami Islam Khan says it's not about fight or being reckless, but
shouldn't we sometimes meet face to face for negotiations or other
discussions? Yes, that's a good point. That's not what the hadith
is talking about. So when the Prophet was saying Allah Adu, he
means on the battlefield.
He doesn't mean meeting in the linguistic sense of just any
meeting, like a negotiation or anything like that. Rick Rashid,
we talked about Malaysia earlier, gonna have to watch the recording,
because it was awesome.
Muna Mara from Montreal, Ozil
also is a good point. Yes, 100% he was silenced.
Yep. May sage, your 100% right.
Okay, very good. And with that, we'll turn to our last segment for
today. We've got a really, really specific and interesting segment
of our personal development section. We're going to talk about
atomic habits. Now, you all had homework. Does anybody remember
what it was? It was two weeks ago, a long time ago?
Oh, yes. Do you remember what it was? No, he doesn't remember what
it was. Nobody remembers what it was. Okay. Whoa. Chart, right?
Yeah, yeah, okay, to track, remember, just to become aware of
your habits. That was step one. Step two was to rate them, plus
sign, minus sign, equals sign. And we said that we were going to come
today with a habit that we were doing over the last two weeks, and
one example of a plus, one example of a minus. Okay, so work on that.
Hit us up in the chat. What did you get? And we're
going to do stuff with that today. Now we said that there was a stage
three that the author was telling us that we're talking about
speaking or naming or calling out that this was actually a really
important tool to increase our awareness of what we're doing. So
he had given the example of just like, Okay, I am now drinking a
cup of water, right?
This is something that draws attention to the things that you
do, because sometimes you don't even notice your bad habits,
because you do them so automatically. So when you're Doom
scrolling on your phone, right, you don't realize you're doing it.
You then you look up at the clock and 30 minutes have passed and you
haven't done anything. You were supposed to be doing your
homework. You were supposed to be doing other things, right?
So
that is really important to sort of being able to put yourself in a
position where you're able to intervene, that if you don't, if
you're not aware of your habits. You cannot put yourself in a
position where you can intervene in your habits. Swarming asked you
believe the state of Israel has a right to exist under any borders?
Habibi, no state has a right to exist. What
do you think this is? States aren't people, nobody, no state
has a right to exist.
Okay, so I'll lead off, since I don't see a lot of examples in the
in the chat,
let's
see Abdullah positive decaf Mashallah.
One of my habits is drinking coffee. Okay? I drink three
espressos a day. Okay? I think that's a plus. I'm totally,
totally fine with that.
What's one negative habit that I that I put on sometimes I
definitely Doom scroll with YouTube,
and that is something that will have a lot to say about sort of
the habits that come about with the phone as well, because the
phone is really, really,
it's really bad for our habits. We talked about it a little bit
before YouTube shorts, Abdullah, that's you.
Alhamdulillah, thankfully I don't scroll shorts, because you can't
control what's what comes up, you know.
But I, you know the main sort of thing, Saddam patience, okay, Rick
Rashid, is his patience? Doom scrolling, the bad news, yeah,
that's true.
Okay, so let's get into it. Maybe you'll think about some of your
things. Okay, here we go. Shayma, thank you sleeping after fajr.
Okay? Negative, excellent. Great example. Great example. Great
example, plus arena walking instead of sitting for a long
time, excellent. That's exactly what we're talking about. Great
examples.
Muni ware, Salaam raftola from India, noseiba, so.
Scrolling YouTube while talking to my mom on the phone. You're so
honest. May Allah, bless you for your honesty and help you with it.
Attika, I completely agree. Espresso is dilisio so and lasim
Fatima Valley, also with the YouTube Amina says negative habit
checking Twitter for news instead of real articles. Yeah, that's
part of why I got off of social media, because they really, really
do, hack your brain, and they hack into your habits. You end up
wasting so much time on them as well.
Alright, good.
Keep them coming. We'll get into some of the techniques, and we'll,
we'll, we'll, we'll circle back. So today
we're going to talk about the best way to start a new habit. Okay,
you're going to like this, because it gets into very specific things.
The best way to start a new habit. Now, he cites a study, and it's a
really, really interesting study. It was an experiment that was done
with three groups of people, okay? And the the idea of the goal the
study was to see what would get people to exercise more? So they
divided people into three groups. The first group was just the
control group, okay? The second group of people were exposed to
videos that were showing them why it's a good idea to exercise. What
are the consequences of not exercising? So it's only focusing
on motivation, okay? The third group gets the same thing that the
second group has the videos the motivation, but then they're told
and they're handed a pen and paper to make a plan for exercising. All
right, you see the setup here. Now the the results are shocking. The
results are actually shocking. There was no difference between
group one and two
in how much they exercised between 35 to 38%
that means that receiving motivation
is not effective at all. Statistically. It's statistically
the same as not receiving any motivation without a plan. So
that's the main takeaway from the study, is that the plan is really
the thing that is going to push you over the edge to be able to
develop a new habit. Now think about this group three. So we said
group one and two were both like between 35 and 38%
35 to 38% of them exercised the way that they wanted them to. What
do you think the percentage was for the third group that not only
received the motivational videos, but then were actually put in a
position where they had to plan on how they were going to do it?
91%
91% of them exercise according to what they wanted to do, which is
amazing. Okay, like so we see that the takeaway is that motivation is
not enough. Motivation, honestly, is not very effective when it
comes to establishing habits, that it is mostly about having a plan.
See,
we got a couple trolls here in the comment section and some other
people as well. Amanda Walker, while they're
healthier, diet, very good
sleeping before he shot. I mean, yeah, I've had to sleep before he
shot when I came back to the US because my body was still on
Malaysian time.
Okay, so we see that we need a plan. And this is what's called
implementation intention, all right, that is the word for it,
implementation intention that the strongest cues, if you're looking
to start a new habit, the strongest cues are time and place.
Time and Place are the strongest cues to establish a new habit.
They did this. They This is why, if you go to sort of political
action committees and people that are involved in elections, one of
the things that they always do when they got you on the phone,
they say, where are you voting? How are you going to get there?
Because they know that that last question making somebody think,
well, my local polling spot is there, and I need to take the bus,
or I'm going to walk, or I'm going to get a ride, that that
dramatically increases the likelihood that the behavior is
actually going to happen if you don't do that, if you don't make
your implementation intention, that you're leaving it to chance,
you're leaving it to chance. And a good amount of the time we won't
follow through, right? We'll get distracted. We will get busy with
something else. Sometimes we'll just forget. And this is not due
to a lack of motivation, like we're often told, it is actually
due to a lack of planning. So we are going to do an activity
together right now.
We're going to, I want everybody to make a statement, okay, an
implementation intention. You're going to think about a new habit
that you want to have. You.
You're going to write it down in this form, okay? You're going to
say, I will blank. That's the behavior, the action that you want
to do at blank. That's the time when you're going to do it in
blank, and that's the location where you're going to do it at,
okay, so you need to have three ingredients. I will x at y in Z, X
is the behavior that you want to do at is the time when you want to
do it, and z is the location where you are going to do it. So let's
see.
I've been practicing my Malay So, but I've been very sporadic at it.
So let's I'm going to do one right now. I will practice Malay
at,
let's say immediately after I pray Lord
in location.
Let's say in,
in the car before I go. Let's say I go to the masjid for Doha, I say
in the car before I go home there. So I've gone and I've prayed
though her I come back to my car, I'm in my car before I turn the
ignition key. Or maybe because it's super hot here, I'll turn the
ignition key and put the air conditioning on. And before I
leave, I'll do I'll work on my language study, that's the sort of
example that we're looking for. Let's see what you can come up
with.
Oh, I like the habits here,
less junk food, very important core and effort in the morning.
Yep. So uh oh,
we're gonna get to that arena. What if we have difficulty in
following plans? That's an extremely important question.
Thank you for asking it. We are going to get into why do we have
difficulty following plans? It's not your fault, believe it or not,
arena, it's not your fault that you have difficulty following
plans. We just need to adjust those plans. There's something
about the way that you're making those plans that makes it hard to
follow those plans. We're going to look at that and figure out how we
can make better plans so that following them becomes easy.
Yeah, most of us do. Shama, we often leave things to chance. It's
even sometimes something that we like subconsciously do on purpose,
because then we can kind of get out of it, actually, if you want
to go be really crazy about it. Shayma, there's an example of this
in the Hadith, an exchange between Ali ibn Abi Talib radila Huan and
the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam, where I'm trying
to remember the exact scenario. I think it was about taking a
certain means to wake up at night, okay, for night prayers. And
the Prophet sallallahu, sallam, he mentioned this particular thing,
and Ali radila Anu indicated the gist of it was that I'm going to
rely on Allah, that
he wasn't going to take the means that the Prophet saw them was
suggesting. And so the Prophet saw them walked away, and he was a
little bit frustrated with Adi and saying that. And he actually
quoted one of the ayat the Qur'an about being, you know, Ekta Roy in
jadalah, that, you know, people are prone to dispute and to argue.
So this is something that people do, and it's a trick of the
shaytaan to leave things to chance, because it lets us have a
way out.
Shakira says, I have no Facebook, but I watch just YouTube for
learning corn or cooking. That is habits. Yeah. I mean, YouTube is
very useful, but, like anything, it can be used against us as well.
Here we go.
Al Ishmael says I will continue to read Quran between Asr and Maghrib
at the masjid. Good, nice.
Rick Rashid says I will try to be more patient with my family on a
daily basis. Okay, I don't think that's specific enough, but we'll
get to why. Abdullah says I will go for a walk after lunch at the
park across the street. That's nice and specific. Excellent.
Fauci Magali says I will clean my room at 8pm Nice work. Arena says
I will read a page while riding on the train in the morning.
Excellent. See, we're pros.
May say, says I will exercise five times a week after fajr at home.
All right, nice. Hamda says, After breakfast, I will memorize a surah
and do my Arabic course in sha Allah.
Okay, you didn't say where though.
Amina says, not in the mood to is the new code name for this? Yes,
we're all guilty of it. Amina not in the mood too. And that's
exactly the point. Is that this whole idea of looking at the
architecture or the anatomy of our plans doesn't surrender it to our
motivation or our inspiration. Because anything that you do
sometimes you're going to be highly motivated to do it, and
sometimes you're not going to feel like doing it. And so basically.
Want to create a scenario in which it's not subject to those
fluctuations, that the plan is foolproof enough that we're going
to follow through on our habits even when we don't feel like it.
Saba says, I will stop YouTube scrolling whenever my mom calls,
maybe take out what? Why YouTube from the phone. Tried it before,
but got it back again. See, this is good though, but you're
thinking about, what are the structural design elements that
you need to in order to we're going to talk more about that in
order to achieve your goal. Omi says, I will read 100 salawats In
the morning when I take my daughter for a walk. That's nice
arena. Says, What about people with difficulty in focusing?
Because, like me, I can't focus too much, or I'll be prone to
overthink, and eventually the plan will flop. Not gonna lie.
Maybe I don't know. Need to know some more specific details. I
think before I can comment on that,
one school of thought would say, Well, why is there a difficulty on
focusing? Are there too many distractions? Are there
elements within the space that you're at is the space that you
live in your environment that'll be next chapter, designed in a
distracting way. Oh, that's a really, really important one. So
maybe it's the way that your environment is designed. We will
talk about that next
what if you have other things Fatima Kali says to do that will
interrupt the habit? Yes. Well, that's very important. That's
going to be in later chapters where we talk about that.
Okay, Muna says, I will stop looking at my phone after father
prayers at home. That's an important one too many of us, as
soon as we
as soon as we're on the salah Salaam Alaikum, Salah Salaam
Alaikum, style for Allah, stop for us. Phone,
and we say, well, yeah, I can do my Dicker and stuff while doing
it, but doesn't really work out very well.
I actually did that range. I turned my history off as well.
Aisha says, Try finishing Surat Al Baqarah after fajr every day. Wow,
that's that's ambitious. May Allah make it facilitate that for you.
Nice. Emma, okay,
good. Shakira says, I'll recite Quran after fajr time and pray.
Duha, nice.
Create a sense of urgency for the habit 100% okay? Abdullah says,
Would you consider some habits to take greater priority over others,
like sleeping habits? Or Yes, I would, and that's where we're
going to get into it now. Okay, so we have a general structure for
how to make a habit that we want to tie it to a time and a place. I
will do this at this time in this place. Now let's go to an advanced
technique. Okay, an advanced technique is
what they call habit stacking. Okay, so rather than trying to
come up with a new habit, and many of you already did it, rather than
trying to come up with a new habit out of thin air. You're going to
take the new habit that you want to do that you're not currently
doing, and you're going to stack it on top of a habit that you're
already doing. Okay, so you take something that you already always
do, and you tie a new habit to it. So it might look like, let's say,
every day you pray the hur. After the hur, I will read Quran. Okay,
you're not reading Quran right now. You're always praying the
hur. And so that's how you do it. Many of you already did this,
right? But the key, and some of you asked about this, the key to
the success of this method, is selecting the right cue,
the right cue after the at lunch, after lunch, whatever it's going
to be. And there's two things you have to keep in mind. One of them
is that the cue has to occur at the right frequency. So for
example,
if you said, I don't know like I'm going to like, if you let's
imagine you had a problem brushing your teeth, like you didn't brush
your teeth enough. You said, Whenever I watch Imam Tom live
stream, I will brush my teeth. That means you're only brushing
your teeth once a week, right? That's not enough. So you want to
have a cue that's going to be the right frequency for the habit that
you're trying to establish. The second thing you have to keep in
mind is the cue has to be highly specific. Okay? And this is
probably the biggest thing that you need to keep in mind if you
want your habit to work, that the cue has to be extremely specific.
And he gives a great example of one that he tried to do that was
not specific enough so he wanted to start a push up habit that
started doing push ups. So he said,
at lunch, I will do push ups in my office. And what he found was that
his cue was not specific enough. Well, am I doing push ups before I
eat my lunch after I eat my lunch?
Like it actually failed. The habit failed, and so he had to go back
and look at why did the habit fail? For him, the habit failed
because the cue wasn't specific enough. There was too much
ambiguity in his plan, to allow for distraction, to allow for
procrastination, to allow for it just to be left to chance, right?
We're saying or left to inspiration. And so he made the
cue much more specific. He said, Okay, when I take my laptop and I
close my laptop to break for lunch, I'm gonna do 10 push ups.
So that cue is specific enough that there's no room for
ambiguity, there's no room for distraction. There's no room for
procrastination. You know exactly the moment that you're going to do
that thing, and so that is what a successful habit looks like. So
let's try it out. Our homework assignment will be to try to start
one new habit for the coming week, to do it according to the method
that we said, Either you're going to come up, come up with it out of
thin air, you will do certain thing at a certain time in a
certain place, or you're going to stack your habit onto something
else that you're already doing. Experiment. Don't worry if you
fail. If you fail, come back next week, and we'll talk about why it
failed. Was the cue specific enough? Was there something
distracting? I think the next chapter is about environmental
design and the other sort of distractions that might be around
you that might make your habits fail. We'll talk about it. But the
point is, everybody, think about one habit that you want to start.
Start it this week, and we'll check in, and we'll see if how we
did you
let's see what we got here. We'll run through any final comments,
questions or concerns, put them in the chat now and then we'll wrap
up. Halafa, life uses a timer. A lot of people have success with
timers.
Farha, Farooq says reciting Surat Al Baqarah and Saima istiq and
durude Ibrahim,
okay, oh, arena, I'm sorry to hear that. I don't know. I don't have
any expertise with schizophrenia or any mental health training, so
I can't really answer you there. Sorry about
that. Ct nuriati says, I find using tespe helps me to focus on
my dick. Yes, I've also found the same thing
adeshmaya said before reciting Quran or starting wudu. I will use
MS wek, and that's a nice one. I would, I would suggest that you
choose one of them, or you're saying both, I think, by or before
either or both reciting Quran or starting with i
Okay, thumbs up. No. Say, but says listening to restating Orientalism
on blogging theology made me think how English has become a global
language, and if having this makes us submit to colonization, if so,
how should we communicate globally? That's a great question,
very deep question. I don't, I don't, not surprised by that. And
save always has good questions. I think that
somebody said that if you were to take every Muslim in the world
that speaks English, we would be the fourth largest group of people
in the world.
English truly has become a language of Dawa and a language of
the ummah. I don't think that the
language that we speak is so deterministic as to limit us in
very, very problematic ways, like you might be suggesting, right? I
don't think that using English alone necessarily makes us submit
to colonization. It can if we view it as this prestige language, we
look down on other people for speaking Urdu at home or Arabic at
home, or whatever, and we want to speak French, we want to speak
English. That's that's being colonized, right? But if we don't
have that inferiority complex, if we look at it as a tool, then it
actually can be a very, very powerful tool for the ummah.
Because where we're at right now is that we have a ton of Muslims
that speak English. So if that is something like a trade language or
a lingua franca between us, in addition to the other important
languages of the Ummah, that this could be something very, very
important for communication that the things that happen in the
English language have, maybe we say even just English and Arabic
and Urdu have a wide, wide reach. And so it becomes very important.
Actually,
Dr Farhan made a good summary lesson of the day. Don't leave it
to chance. Atica, how is food? Malaysia? It was delicious. I love
Malay food, except for desserts. No offense, sorry, my Malaysian
friends, I don't, I don't find the desserts to be very appealing to
me, but that's okay, because the other food is so good that you
don't even need desserts. Now, people asked me if I wanted to eat
durian, and that is the sort of very, very controversial fruit,
and I'm not. I.
I do not like durian, but I was happy to learn that there are many
Malays that don't like durian as well. So I didn't feel didn't feel
so bad for that.
May sage asks, What if I tried super specific method before and
it didn't last. It worked for a time, but eventually was it up.
We're going to look at that may as we get through the book, like for
example, next chapter is about environmental design.
Having a super specific plan is only one element. There are other
elements too,
analyzing your habits, so maybe next week, why don't you bring
exactly what that habit was,
and we'll try to analyze its design.
Omi says, How do I create a solid habit that I want to do throughout
the day. Should I start with one time? I definitely think that you
should start with one time. Oh, you continue. You say, I struggle
with creating habits around so that time due to coming on my
menses. Yes, that's I was thinking that Omi, when we were talking
about reading core n, if you tie it to the prayer, then women,
obviously you're going to have about six or so days, depending on
your cycle, where you're not doing that. So it might be better to tie
it to something else.
Yeah, and if it's you know, it sounds like for you that it's
longer than than than many others. So yes. So then it should be tied
to something else. I would suggest tying it to one start to one time
of day. You can try to
you can try to up it after that, but at least to start small, we're
going to get to that's a later chapter as well, starting small
and consistent, which is not, ironically, the guidance of the
Prophet saw that Allah loves the thing that is small and consistent
more than trying to do. Let's see, one day you do like 1000 salawats,
okay, but then you fall off quickly and it doesn't last. It's
better for you to do five salawats, but you do it every day
for years, right? So our outlook is trying to find that
consistency.
So I think if you try to implement the method that we talked about
today, extremely specific queue,
a very specific time and location. Then, Inshallah, hey, how about
you make that your your attempt on me
try to do it for this coming week. We're going to be back at the
regular time next week. So Wednesdays, 8pm New York time, 8pm
eastern standard time in the United States. We'll be having a
live stream this coming week. That's Wednesday night. So let us
know how you did.
Yep, we do May, that's 100%
right? Yes, Attika, I do like gulab jamun,
uh huh.
Zhan says I don't know or do as a Pakistani, I can only speak
English. I've had so many people find it so bizarre and frankly
disrespectful that I don't know or do well, maybe we can both learn
Urdu,
though I found it very difficult. I found learning Urdu harder than
Arabic, but
we can get there. I would love to learn all the languages of the
ummah. The Ummah is a beautiful we have a beautiful Ummah with
beautiful languages, beautiful cultures, and we should stay
grateful for that.
So that's the end. Let's see. Amina says, If speaking a colonial
language made us into maintainers for colonialism, then half of the
world would fit into that language can be a retrospective tool to
decolonize as much as it has been a weapon that is perfect. Let's
just end on that. I think you really hit it on the head. Amina
couldn't have put it better myself.
Uh, human *. Will there be live streams throughout September? Yes,
we might adjust times, but right now it's just going to be on this
time forever. Amina gets the last word. Appreciate everybody's
participation. Was a great session, and we'll see you next
week. Inshallah, tada, so panic. Salaam. Alaikum. Off to LA.