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.