Tom Facchine – The Islamic Cure for Overconsumption – Tom Weekly

AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the concept of "ingerence" and how it is linked to personal and cultural reasons such as the belief that men should be
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AI: Summary ©
We live in such a throwaway culture and
such a disposable culture that Islam has so
much to educate people about sustainability and about
proper consumption and not overly consuming or not
taking too much.
Of course there's the famous hadith of the
Prophet ﷺ who saw someone using a lot
of water to make voodoo and he told
him to, you know, calm down, to not
use that much water and the Prophet ﷺ
reiterated even if you were in a river,
even if you were in a running stream,
you look around and it seems like you
can't even possibly waste water in that situation
and the Prophet ﷺ is saying to only
use what you have to.
Of course these are people, the companions and
the Prophet ﷺ that lived without refrigeration, without
storing up food.
There were times when the Prophet ﷺ would
wake up and ask his wife Aisha, do
we have anything to eat?
And she would say, no, we have nothing,
zero.
And then he would say, okay, I'm going
to fast.
You know, Abu Bakr only had one or
two pieces of clothing.
In the fiqh books they talk about the
permissibility of men praying in one piece of
cloth, in one garment, because some people were
so poor they didn't have more than one
cloth.
Or you hear people dying and being buried
and there's not enough cloth to cover them
in their graves.
If you cover the head and the feet
come out, you know, this is not just
for lack of options.
We saw that as Islam spread and grew
and the companions, they, you know, conquered lands
and more money came in, that that ethic
continued of really only using what you need.
That's why hunting for sport is not permissible.
You're not allowed to just shoot creatures and
not eat them.
You know, everything that we consume has to
be tied to a purpose.
And it's really fascinating because they have this
term that's called planned obsolescence.
So if you've paid attention that some things
that were made in the 60s and the
70s, you know, they were made to last.
You know, those big tanks of cars with
the real metal and tables and drawers, you
feel like that thing is, it's really heavy
and it's, but it's also not going to
go anywhere.
It'll be there for 70, 100 years or
more.
And now everything is cheap.
You've got Ikea furniture, which is just like
wood pulp that's stuck together with glue.
And, you know, it can't even barely hold
a shelf of books without collapsing.
You know, we live in a throwaway disposable
culture.
They've made everything, whether it's the phone and
technology, the cars, so that it will stop
working.
They've planned it so that it will stop
working.
They've made it so that it will break.
They want it to break so that you
can buy a new one.
It's crazy.
But that is what happens when you have
society that's completely secularized.
It's decoupled from any type of divine guidance.
Then that becomes logical.
If you want people to buy more, you
only care about GDP.
You're going to look at GDP and make
an idol out of it and think that
this is the reflection of whether a nation
is prosperous or happy or not.
Guess what?
It's not.
Then it only makes sense to make throwaway
stuff because then people are going to make
more, buy more.
There's going to be more stuff.
That's what our society wants us to have,
more and more stuff.
There's retail therapy.
You start feeling sad and you go buy
something.
Muslims should have a lot to say about
this, that we should be on the front
lines when it comes to demonstrating to people
how to be happy and thrive with less.
You don't have to be constantly buying stuff.
You don't have to constantly update your wardrobe
or get new things.
You can actually be perfectly fine with the
things that you already have or even, here's
a crazy idea, less than what you currently
have.
And part of this is super important if
you want to take it to another level,
to understand where all of your things come
from.
A vegetable, a piece of fruit, you have
no idea where it comes from.
Does it come from New Zealand?
Does it come from South America?
Does it come from Europe?
You have no idea.
Thousands of miles, tons of oil and gas
was spent and who's the person who raised
it?
How does he pay his workers?
Does he pollute the atmosphere?
You have no idea.
It's a society built on convenience.
You just go into the store, you've got
an alienated relationship to it, you just buy
it and that's it.
It's been commodified completely.
I would issue a challenge to anybody.
I'd be happy to do this challenge with
you.
Imagine if you went through 2025 only buying
things that could be grown or produced within
the state that you live.
That would be incredible.
Now whether you realize it or not, you
would be following in the sunnah of some
of the great scholars and wise people of
Islam such as Imam Nawawi, Rahimahullah, who he
moved from his village to a larger city
in order to teach and he didn't even
trust the food that was around him in
that big city so he had his father
send him food through the mail from their
farm because he wanted to be sure, absolutely
sure where his food came from, that he
knew it was halal, how it was raised,
the conditions it was raised in.
Now imagine you did that for your clothes,
your furniture, your paper products, with everything.
To me, that's Islam and that is Islamic
and that's something that we should be trying
to promote.
We don't just operate off of convenience.
Is it more convenient to go to Walmart?
Yes, it's more convenient to go to Walmart
but Mr. Walmart doesn't live in your city.
Mr. Walmart doesn't live in your town.
You don't know how Mr. Walmart treats his
employees.
You don't know if he pays them fair
benefits.
So we have to do better.
Islam is all about ihsan, about trying to
do not just the bare minimum but the
best that we can and so this is
something that we should share with society.