A Great Chat with Mufti Menk

So, I'd like to start with yourself, share your heart if that's okay.

If you had to pick a single point to focus on improving ourselves, and for those of us with children to develop our children, what would it be

Bismillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah. Rwanda

probably the most important point, self discipline.

Most of you will probably be aware, but in case you're not, there was an experiment done

many, many years ago

by a psychologist and Stanford University. And what he did is, he got these little kids,

four years old, four and a half, five years old kids.

And he placed them in a room and he put a marshmallow in front of them.

And he told the kid he says, Listen, I'm going to leave the room for a while, this marshmallows here.

When I come back, if the marshmallow still here, I'll give you two marshmallows. But if it's not here, and you've ate the marshmallow, then that's it, you just have the one marshmallow.

So there there was a challenge between instant gratification as an eat the marshmallow or long term rewards, meaning kind of bed, the temptation, control yourself discipline, and then get double the reward.

So you see these little kids trying to avoid the temptation of eating the marshmallow, you know, some of them start spinning around, some of them sing. Some of them tried to lick the marshmallow, you know, somehow trying to

get the two marshmallows without.

So this is what they call a longitudinal study. So they monitored these kids over time.

And I noticed that the kids that resisted instant gratification over time, they dwell better in their studies.

They had a higher rate of graduation, they had better jobs later on, they had better relationships and everything else. So the conclusion from the research was from the experiment, the famous marshmallow experiment, it's probably one of the few things that is directly linked to success

is self control or self discipline. And the entirety of the deen is about that.

And Allah Allah is the size for Imam and half on my palm or Obi Wan Hanif sandeel helwa for in nettle Janetta he El Moussa Whoever fears the station of his Lord and controls the self from its whims and fancies next step Jana.

So

for ourselves best in self control for our kids, the best thing you can train them in and be intelligent about this because potentially this crazy experiments could come out of this and now don't want to be responsible for it

is to teach your children self discipline a lot of Blitzer grant me a new success era mean does not want to shake her head in this study. Also correct me if I'm wrong, there was a young Muslim child as well. And they brought out another marshmallow and then another and he didn't take any of them. He said because they had gelatine in it

I don't know about I don't want to take responsibility for correcting you.

Just joking, not

a lot. Of course, instant gratification. Delayed gratification is a is a huge quality suburb, the foundation of all of our good qualities.

With the make, we heard from you earlier to like Mahara marriage. And it's funny when you're talking about the qualities and people fall in love, before they've even spent any time with each other. And when we speak to people, often I find my friends who are married and I asked them, What are they looking for in their spouse? And even the other way, you almost get like a prototype answer. I'd like someone who's practicing but not to practicing, you know, they've got to be a good person they you know, got to be earning well, etc. And you end up with this kind of Very Vanilla list of what they want.

What would you say if you could say of all the questions three top questions that a person should ask their potential spouse

or the family should ask when considering marriage. I think Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim, one of the most important things is when you ask a question directly to the person you want to get married to, they may deceive you if they want to marry you sometimes. And a lot of the times people don't realize that it's so easy to say, Yeah, I pray five times a day, and then you get married to them and they don't pray, or read lots of Quran and they don't even know how to read the Quran, it has happened. So it's easy to say ask the questions, but you have to know from someone who knows them. That's what we and that's why the prophets are seldom speaks about knowing a person, either by

having lived with them. In fact, it's remarkable how powerful the Allahu Anhu mentions in a specific way about knowing someone either by living with them, traveling with them or doing business with them. Obviously, when it comes to who you're going to get married to, you would have to either communicate with people who know that person. So say, for example, there is a potential spouse for a daughter of mine, I would need to contact or get hold of some of the crowd that this guy mixes with just to find out without having asked him specifically because you're going to ask someone do you smoke? He says, No, I don't. And then when you marry him, he smokes. And then he tells you, Well, I

thought you were asking me about cigarettes, I just smoke weed.

And that's happening. It's happening right now. And there are people who say, Well, what's wrong with weed? The whole world does weed. It's the fact that this is what's going on. It's not the way so as much as we have a list of things, it's not wrong to have a list of things to check, but how you're going to check that is what's of essence. So I've also told people, you have a list? Are you a person whom someone who takes your list would actually be interested in?

That's a very interesting one. Because I've had sometimes brothers and sisters say I need a spouse like this, this this, some of them are prohibitive, which means it's very difficult to find a person like that. The first question I say, say for argument's sake, we found the guy, we brought him here, when he looks at you, do you think he'd be interested in you? I mean, you want to use of Alaihe Salam, you know, you got to also be someone who's somewhere you know, up the lines them and so it's tricky, but I think it's important to check out character. When when they're upset when they're angered. A little bit, how do they react that says a lot about a person. You know, when when things

don't go their way? How do they react? That to me will will tell you a lot about a person. Similarly, the issue of responsibility, are they responsible? Is this person responsible, responsible, meaning religiously, obviously, to begin with responsibility with their prayer with Allah subhanho wa Taala a few other matters, you know, trustworthiness comes into the issue of responsibility as well. And, and thereafter, you know, you look at broader character, because the Dean has been included, you know, responsibility, like I said, it would include as a Muslim, to be a person who prays to be a person who's got a connection or Allah who's God conscious who knows what

to do and when to do it. And how much of it to do.

Allahu Allah, may Allah make it easy. As much as we have access to millions of more people than our parents did. And our grandparents did. For some strange reason. It is a million times more difficult to get married nowadays.

Agreed, guys.

There it goes. And multipack Habibi before you say anything have figured out how to fix the mic stuff. Yes. So we pick it up. And we put it on this thing here my shower, so you can sit down you sit back and relax Wow.

Oh my the wires a little bit shorter on my side people in

the middle

just a round of applause for that ladies and gents.

You know, I have a question for share Huazhong problem solving. I feel a bit silly asking it now. But I will still ask that question or that. But I do not ask them if they make yourself actually question continuing it slightly. Because something you said was very interesting about when you ask the question the route through asking the question and I guess outside of the couple, there's often quite a few different people involved potentially, in a marriage situation. And sometimes you may be asked about someone else with regards to marriage. In that situation.

How truthful should you be what should you do? Like you know, we have a problem in the Ummah, because I am taught when someone wants to do business with another, or someone wants to marry another and they asked me for a reference. I have to be brutally honest. But the fact is, they will go and tell those people that I

said this and this about them. So now it's going to be disastrous for my relation. So many people just say, Please don't ask me and they know a lot about it. So we've got a double edged sword here. In reality, you're supposed to be brutally honest. And you're supposed to say, Listen,

I don't think it's a good idea, or I think it's a good idea. And if you don't want to worry that way, you can say, Look, maybe this person might have changed, but they've been in x, y, and Zed. The last time I knew this is what happened in front of my eyes, and so on. Or you could say, Look, I've heard a lot, I've done this. I've heard so much about this person, but I have never seen any of those things. So best you find out from someone who might have seen it.

You see, so that's a way of just warning them. Because I found we've got so many problems in the OMA a lot of the times, the parents of people who have already decided to get married, they, they just pushing their parents into submission. They're coming to you and saying, What do you think of this guy, they just want a rubber stamp validation for it. And you know, this is a disaster. But unfortunately, it's already happening. You know, a month or two later, you see the couple come together, they look at you, they ignore you, and they walk on. And you know what happened? Because you told the father something, and the father told them that you told them that in order to try and

get them to break it. And they didn't. But then three years later, they come to you and say, we're not getting on? Well, I thought I told you that that a few years ago. But so we facing a disaster. A lot of people are not honest, when someone asks you, what do you know of this brother? You know, for marriage purposes, they won't say to because they feel that, you know, why should I tell you? But that's not Islam. But then again, when they do tell you is it Islam to go and sell them out and let the people know, look, I was told this by this person, it was just an Amana. So we've got to deal with both sides of that. If I if you want me to tell you a fact, you've got to, you've got to

protect my the confidence here.

It's like the scholars, when people used to go to the scholars with their problems, the whole village knew about what what they were going through. So they stopped going to the scholars. So who do they go to they go to someone else.

And that's why we always tell the scholars that you know what,

someone's come to you with problems. You dare even breathe a word at home, they shouldn't know what's going on. That's an Amana, you take it to your grave. Unless they would like you to let someone know, or unless it's so dangerous and disastrous that you have to let someone know,

Allahu Allah. Just like

Chef Hodges.

In your lecture, you mentioned the problem solving abilities, how the Sahaba and so this is why we're saying that, how do you develop the ability to problem solve

so one of the one of the things that as adults and as parents,

we like to do, which we shouldn't do is we like to spoon feed our kids.

So we see it as a token of love if you remove a hurdle from a person's path, as opposed to letting them climb over the hurdle themselves.

So often you'll see a young kid trying to fix something that will walk by us and ask Sweetheart, don't do it like this here. Do we just like this? Or let me do it for you give me they'll fix it. And so on.

Worst, yeah. So from the from the seer of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam we learn the exact opposite. So Anna Sydney Malik are the Allahu Anhu Allah was the servant of the prophets of Allah, Allah, he was set down for some 10 years. And he says in the 10 years, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam never told me do this, like this. And don't do this like that.

Which means the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is creating a safe environment for him to do what he needs to do learn what he needs to learn fall with when he needs to fall, learn to climb back up when he needs to climb back up, so that he's prepared for a better version of life.

So number one, in our problem solving is give some space for people to

rehearse, practice, make mistakes fall and get back up. Part of that space is safety. So lack of input luck, you will know full well that that's not will not go on to that bolt. So don't say it to slip the guy figure it out. And that way they develop confidence in being able to tackle problems themselves, sometimes give them problems to solve.

Like whether that's a logical problem, whether that's a physical problem, whether that's mechanical problem, whether it's a family problem I've talked about

consultation. Like if you sit with your kids down and say, Listen, sweetheart, I have this business dilemma. What should I do? Like Trust me, the level of maturity and problem solving ability that that will induce in the child is phenomenal. Yeah, there will be the awkwardness where he feels almost at your level. But that's just, that's part of upbringing and training. So whatever you want the person to be good at, give them opportunities to be good, and that give them opportunities to practice. And my dear brother, the world is changing. What worked yesterday will not work tomorrow.

Can I take a minute in this machine.

So one of the problems that no one realizes this coming, or some people realize is automation.

I was in one of the countries overseas, there was a man his single job in life was to open the gate and close the gate. So I said in our country, there is a button, you click the gate opens automatically. There is another thing that there's an attachment on my car as I come near the gate that opens automatically, which means that job became redundant.

And Australia and now trucks are self driven. Some people drive Uber Uber currently is working very hard to make the cars driverless, like currently, they take some 2730 plus percent from commission from the workers. They're trying to even take that away so that they can keep all the money themselves. So there'll be driverless Uber cars coming through mean all those and Uber will also lose their jobs sometime soon.

Even medical, I saw latest, not latest but a recent thing. Legal Advice is now given by computers and medical advice given by them operations happening by technology. So

think tanks predict that in the Western world, jobs will come from five days a week to four days a week.

And then it will reduce to three days a week. Like that's where it will reach equilibrium. This is the forecast and the amount of problems and anxieties and financial hurdles and social problems that will stem out of this as unpredictable. And the normal traditional ways of working through life will not work. So me and you have to become problem solvers and innovators for situations that we can't even see arising. But this is a responsibility we need to communicate to our population that we need to create people with the ability to see a novel problem create a solution, entrepreneurial type of approach, so that they can excel in the coming environment Allah protect you