Tom Facchine – The Benefit Of Using Kind Words

1 thing I learned from Sheikh Abdullah Shanqidi

is to always say something positive

to people and where they come from.

You know, this happens a lot sometimes, especially

those of us who read the news and

the politics and stuff like that. If we

hear about something negative that happens, then we

meet somebody who's from that

place, we we kind of put them on

the spot. Like, oh, like, what do you

think about this is going on or this,

and it's kind of uncomfortable. You're putting them

in a in an uncomfortable position.

You know, Sheikh Havdalah taught me that that

a better way is to mention something positive

about that place that they're from, and he

would do that for everybody.

Because for, you know, being in Medina, you've

got people that are visiting from all over

the world. So 1 time, there was a

group of pilgrims from Iraq,

and they came and they gave their salam

after the lesson was over and stuff like

that. And so he praised Iraq. He said

Iraq. He's like, you know, all of Arabic

grammar is Iraqi, he said. You know, he's

and he goes in the different schools, like,

there's a school of Basra and the school

of Kufa and the school of Baghdad. He

said all of it is from Iraq. And

you could tell, you know, like, when you

say something, you would pray something about a

person and where they're from, you know, it

just makes them feel good. It just makes

them feel happy. And so, you know, a

lot of times this is also, I think,

an indication where Muslims need to be

aware of the

geography

of the Muslim world and the history of

the Muslim world,

right, to be able to understand sort of

some of the subtler differences between,

places that might at first glance seem the

same.

Okay. It's something that's very meaningful to be.

It shows that you care. It shows that

you care. And so if, you know, if

we're gonna

learn

the,

you know, founding fathers and the constitution, the

bill of rights to for a citizenship test,

and we should also,

you know, learn some things about the ummah

and the different parts of the ummah and

where they come from, you know, sort of

what are the sort of major sort of

influences or parts of their history

and culture

so that we're able to interact at that

level and sort of put people at ease

and increase that sort of love and bond

between us.