Imam Tom Live
7 / 43
Does Protesting Work? | Imam Tom Live
Join Imam Tom Live this week with guest Abdullah Akl as they discuss how protests are helping our cause, and how to do so with Ihsan. Please make sure to participate in the chat and ask your questions live to Imam Tom and to Abdullah Akl!
In addition, Imam Tom will continue to discuss the books from last week, "Amal al-layl wa-nahar", "The Myth of Religious Violence," and the last 10 verses of Surah Al-Imraan.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. 8 p.m. New York time. And I'm your host Imam Tom Fekhini. Welcome back to our program. This week has been a busy one as all of them have for the last little bit. We've got in developing news, we've got the International Court of Justice, the case that's been filed by South Africa against the Zionist entity of Israel that has now, there's a couple developments with that case, and the court hearings are going to begin this week. You can check many of your online social media news channels for further details for how to listen to the court proceedings. Now, in the meantime, since last week, more and more nations have jumped on board with this particular case that's being filed against Israel. But there's also some sort of concern as to how much good it's going to do, right? We know that the international organizations have not done a very good job holding people to account, especially if those nations are supported by the major world powers, particularly the United States. So it remains to be seen. It remains to be seen how effective this particular court case will be. But even if there is no enforcement mechanism for this particular court case, one of the significant things is that there is increasing isolation when it comes to the international community and the nations across the world. When it comes to, people are finding their voice, and let's say they are starting to form some resolve and even accumulate some political will to stop and to speak out against what is happening. So that in and of itself is a good thing and might lead to future developments later on. In other news, in the West, we've got sort of more, unfortunately, anti-Muslim sentiment that is hearkening back to the 9-11 or post-9-11 era.
Mint News reported on a story today, Mint Press News, sorry, where a group of Palestinian American men were pulled off of a Delta flight in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and they were held for questioning after an unidentified woman and her daughter called security falsely, claiming that the men had made a bomb threat. The men were speaking a mixture of Arabic and English on the flight, as many Arab Americans do, and the woman said that she felt unsafe around them. She also said that she found it suspicious that they took turns using the bathroom. I find that hilarious because when you're at an airport, that's exactly what you're supposed to do so that you don't leave your baggage unattended because you've got the announcement on the loudspeaker every five minutes or so telling you, do not leave your baggage unattended, do not leave your baggage unattended. So we're, darned if we do, darned if we don't, if you're a flying Muslim these days, you can't leave your baggage unattended, but you also can't take turns going to the bathroom because that somehow is suspicious. Now, after questioning, the police said that they found no basis for her claims and they told everyone to go home, but the police also refused to allow the Palestinian American men to file a false police report claim against the accusers. Now, it later came out that one of the accusers was actually a police officer, and so we have an airport that basically obstructed a claim from being filed holding this police officer to account or holding them accountable for a false claim, claiming that there was a bomb threat when there was no such thing, in what is a clear case of profiling anti-Muslim sentiment and prejudice. So we tell everybody to be careful out there and to also, now we have our phones we can record, alhamdulillah, and we can attempt to publicize these things. Just think 10 years ago where we were when these things would happen and people would get taken out for questioning, which has
happened to myself and many other people, and there was no means of redress. Now we have more means of recording these things, of sort of collaborating stories and swapping stories and finding publicity, right? In fact, the particular individuals that were guilty of this false police report were later identified, and that in and of itself is a means for holding people accountable. So yes, yeah, we are very serious, Valerie, and welcome everybody else, waalaikumsalam, to the live stream. This stuff happens all the time, and what's scary is that before social media this stuff would happen all the time and no one would know about it, right? I remember distinctly the first time that I flew to Medina when I got accepted to study at the Islamic University there, and I was flying out of JFK, and I was called up onto the podium and pulled out of line in front of everybody, and I had a TSA agent asking me very inappropriate questions about where I had lived, who my employer was, what their addresses, numbers, which mosque I prayed at, right? Now that was back in 2015, and in those times, you know, there wasn't really much social media activity, there wasn't really a lot of awareness so that you could take those claims and say, hey, like I feel like I'm being treated unfairly, and especially if all you want to do is get on the plane, then you're afraid of missing your flight, you're afraid of all these sorts of things happening to you. The psychology that sort of overcomes you is just to do whatever you have to do to move on, and so it's important that this day and age, you know, if you're on social media, that you share these stories, that you retweet them, or you repost them, or you put them in your Instagram, or your Facebook, or whatever else you use so that publicity happens, there's enough publicity around these stories, people who have also experienced these stories start to speak out,
and that we can gather and start to hold these different institutions and individuals accountable for this profiling that goes on, and it's a mix of racial profiling and anti-Muslim sentiment, but these are, yes, Laura Hassan, you're 100% right, I know some folks within CARE, and they are overwhelmed, there are so many of these cases, and some people are commenting and saying that the type of stuff that we're seeing is even worse than what we saw post-9-11, which is hard to believe, but at the same time, not. So when we think about what we're up against, right, and we've talked a lot on this program and other programs at Yakin about sort of Zionism and anti-Muslim sentiment, and some people want to use the word Islamophobia to also describe some elements of that, they're all related, they're all related, and if we're trying to take down one, then in reality we're up against them all, and this is just one front in the larger sort of struggle for our recognition and rights and justice and truth. Elizabeth Lopez, bienvenido. We've got someone from Boston tuning in, Sunna's Life, Bangladeshi, Mahrez from Somalia, mashallah, welcome everybody to the program. So if you, and hey, this is a good opportunity for you, if you've ever been the victim of anti-Muslim sentiment, whether in public, whether on a plane, whether going to the grocery store, whether you're flying while Muslim or driving while Muslim, then let us know, put something in the chat, send it to us, so that we can swap stories and we can sort of take heart in the fact that this is something that probably a great many of us have experienced. That wasn't my last rodeo, let's just say, when it came to this sort of thing. Walaikum as-salamu alaykum from Minnesota, we've got Mustafa from Canada,
Shaima from Illinois, Hala Akbar Hazem from New York, New York in the house, Saweba from New Jersey, welcome, welcome everybody. You know, one of these things, and I guess I'll share this just for the sake of beginning, how do you react to the situations Khadija asks? It's a very good question. It depends on the situation, I mean, like I said, if you are sort of, you're waiting to get on a flight, your mindset is, I want to do whatever I have to do to get on this flight, because it's an inconvenience, you're afraid of missing your flight, maybe you've got something very important that you're on your way to, and so it's very, very difficult to stand up for yourself and for your rights in those sorts of situations, and they know that, which is why some individual officers, they rely on that sort of situation to get you to divulge information that is unconstitutional, you're not even supposed to divulge, in my case, everything from where I lived to, you know, my employers and where I prayed and things like that. They will basically try to get you to voluntarily divulge whatever information they can. So if you're in a position to do so, then you should stand your ground and basically refuse to answer any questions, especially that are particularly invasive. Nobody has any right to question where you pray, to take down your address, to know your employers, things like that. Now, we're not giving legal advice here, you know, I'm not a lawyer, and you should really follow up with CARE. CARE has been a great help when it comes to assisting Muslims obtain their rights and sort of know exactly what they can and can't do, what they say, what you can say, and what you shouldn't say. Wa'alaikum salam wa rahmatullah, Wali Muhammad from Dallas. Inshallah, I will be in Dallas this time tomorrow, inshallah. So look forward to seeing you. I'll have some programs at A-I-I-A-N-T over the weekend. There's a lot of acronyms in the Muslim Ummah. Mehmetoglu, hoş geldiniz. Yes,
we have to stand up for our Ummah. Debbie from Chicago. There you go. A lot of people keep the numbers for CARE in your phone when you're traveling. Yes, Malik Abdurrahim reminded us that we had Imam Hassan Sharif was murdered in Newark, New Jersey, this past week. May Allah have mercy upon him and make things easy for his family. A great tragedy. And we forget sometimes that our Imams are our first responders and they're on the front lines. That you are somebody, if you are reading, you're reading salah in the masjid, you're standing in front of all these people, you're making a khutbah, you're a target. Or if you come and open the masjid, like in the case of the Imam. Now we don't necessarily know, I don't, I haven't seen any information particularly about the nature of this particular incident that happened to the Imam. But this is something that, this is something that can happen to any one of us. So we have to take courage. We have to take courage from everybody else's stories and may Allah protect our Imams and everybody else. Khadijah Mustafa is asking what is CARE? It's the Council of American Islamic Relations, I believe is the acronym. It's a civil rights organization based in the United States that helps Muslims when it comes to their legal rights. And you can look that up, or maybe somebody else can put it in the chat for Sarah Yusuf. What is their number? No, not I-A-M-C. I know, that's what I, we have a lot of alphabet soup when it comes to the Muslim community in North America. It's hard to keep track of all the acronyms and organizations. But if you've never been, if you've never been in a situation where you've been the victim of anti-Muslim animus or animosity, then consider yourself blessed and protected, but be ready, right? You should try to take precautions and it helps,
it helps for everybody to sort of know what you're getting into before you're actually in that situation. That you know what's coming to you, just like Qais Manoubi is reminding us, the less that you talk, the more you walk. There we go, mashallah, that's a really easy, an easily remembered statement. The less you talk, the more you walk. And we ask Allah for protection. At the end of the day, no matter who tries to silence us and scare us, it's all determined by Allah subhana wa ta'ala. So we have a great, we have a great session and a great episode lined up for you tonight. We've got, we're going to continue with our Daily Habits, the book that we were going through, specifically looking at the last 10 ayats of Surah Adh-Imran. And it's going to become very, very apparent how that sort of dovetails and builds upon some of the habits that we talked about. We'll have a check-in and all of us talk about sort of how that week went for us when it came to trying to not look at our phones and what successes and struggles that we had when trying to establish new habits. We're also going to go through the next section of the book, the myth of religious violence. But before that, we've got a very, very special guest, and I'm very, very excited that he's on our program today. His name is Abdullah Aqil. He is one of the organizers in New York City. With all the protests that you've probably heard about and been seeing, I myself have been able to go to a couple of them. I wish I had been able to go to more, inshallah, hopefully in the future. But we're really, really blessed to have Abdullah with us, and welcome to the program. As-salamu alaykum, I'm Tom. Happy to be here. Jazakumullah khairan for having me. Wa alaykum as-salam, wa alaykum. Thank you so much. Okay, so, you know, there's some people who are in sort of the tri-state area or the New York metro area that are very familiar with you and the organizations that you work with and what you do, but there's a lot of other people who aren't. So let's just give a brief intro. What's your role? What have you been up to? What organizations are you affiliated with? Yeah, my name is Abdullah Aqil. I am based here in Staten Island in New York City,
just over the bridge from Brooklyn or Manhattan, which many know. I am a member of Within Our Lifetime, United for Palestine, also known as WOL, which has the mission, the dream, the aspiration, but also the action to be part of and be part of the community that frees Palestine, inshallah, within our lifetime. And I'm also a member of the Muslim American Society of Staten Island, where I serve as their public advocacy director. MashaAllah. So it's very inspiring, I know, for me to see young people such as yourself so involved, and especially with this new generation of activists that I see you a part of, that is not just getting things done on the political sort of front, but is also making sure that the Islamic and religious dimension of what they're doing is front and center, which I consider myself the cheerleader of you all when it comes to these sorts of things. And definitely here to assist and to help facilitate, which is part of why we want to be on the program today. Give us an insight into what are some of the goals and what are some of the strategies. And obviously, when it comes to goals, there's going to be short-term, mid-term, long-term goals for the organizations that you're a part of. What's basically the plan? Yeah, so this goal really comes in so many different ways. As you mentioned, there's a long-term and short-term goal as well, but it all starts with organizing and making sure that we're organizing year-round, not only when Gaza is being bombed. And that was really one of the biggest missions that Within Our Lifetime made sure to take on, is that we need to be educating our community, protesting throughout the year, so when something happens in Gaza, as we know that there will always be something happening in Gaza as long as the occupation is there, we need to be able to mobilize at a very fast rate. And I think that's what's really special about what we've been seeing since October 7th to where we are right now, almost 100 days in this genocide, is that
we're mobilizing in unprecedented levels, where we've never seen this many people consistently come out in the streets with this type of energy. And so what Within Our Lifetime is doing is it's bringing this energy from the community into the streets of New York City, where communities that may have never heard about Palestine are knowing about what's going on, are learning about the genocide and the occupation. Locations in Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in each of the five boroughs are learning about what's happening in Palestine, and so at the root of a lot of it is education. But on the secondary layer, there is disruption. We need people to wake up and see that what is happening in Palestine is your business, is my business. For each and every single one of us that is paying a single dollar in taxes, it is our money that is funding this genocide, and we have to be active participants in stopping it. Excellent, yeah, and now that's super, super important. So education, visibility, I think is a big part, you know, making sure that, you know, SubhanAllah, it just came to mind when you're talking about disruption, how so much of our society is built around sort of convenience, especially the consumerism, you know, you've got your Starbucks and your whatever is your normal habits, and, you know, it's very, very comfortable, right? It lulls you into a sort of false sense of security. It's almost like a stupor, or almost like an opiate. Maybe Marx, he should have said, instead of religion being the opiate of the masses, he should have said that consumerism is the opiate of the masses, because it really stops people from feeling that urgency. And so we're talking about how do we achieve that urgency, okay? You're saying that basically you need to be visible, okay, first of all. You need to be on people's minds, and sometimes that requires disruption in order to maintain that visibility, so people just don't go back into their Netflix and chill
mode. Is that a fair sort of, yeah, that's a sort of, would you say that's a fair take about what you're trying to do? No, 100%. People are looking for that opportunity as usual, as organizers, as activists, people that are on the ground, is to make sure that we do not go back to business as usual, that if it's not business as usual in Gaza, where Palestine is free, then it must not be business as usual for us, which are funding exactly what is happening in Gaza. Additionally, we have to make sure that we are visible in the places that people frequent most, and that's usually transportation hubs, that's usually places where people visit maybe on a daily basis, huge avenues like Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, or museums, or really locations where we are going to make sure that not only the people, but the media, the entire world will hear us. Yeah, excellent. Now, one thing that I referenced that I'd like to hear your commentary about, it's my observation, because I sort of became politically conscious in the time after 9-11 and leading up to the Iraq war. Now, and even at that time, obviously, Palestine was still a huge issue, and there were escalations almost every year. But it seemed like that activism for the Palestinian liberation or the cause of Palestinian liberation, it seems to me like it had less of an obvious Islamic dimension than it does now. I guess my first question would be, what do you think about that statement? Is that jive with your experience? And two, how do you make sure that you bring along the Islamic dimension of what you're doing to your activism and the actions that you do? Yeah, I really love this question, because from a young age, I understood that activism is not something that's optional. It's something that you must do in order to bring about justice,
in order to bring about peace for either yourself or for your brothers and sisters. It might not affect you in any way, but your activism is something that's mandatory. And that might be because I grew up in masajid, like the Muslim American Society, where from a very young age, the idea of activism isn't disconnected from tarbiyah, that growing up and having that Islamic nurturing teachings of Rasulullah ﷺ is very much interconnected with getting justice for your brothers and sisters. And so that really translates to the movement, the Palestinian movement, where we see that in the middle of a huge protest, where thousands are filling the streets, we see that everything comes to the hall by the adhan, followed by the iqamah, followed by hundreds praying in the middle of a street, stopping everything, saying that our duty is to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala before anything. And something that we usually frequent, and we mention a lot in the protest, is that our brothers and sisters in Gaza actually made this beautiful du'a, where they said, where our brothers and sisters in Gaza are saying, Oh Allah, this land is your land, these armies are your armies, and the fate is your fate. So grant us a victory that will heal the hearts of a believing people. And so we remind our brothers and sisters in these protests, and I personally do this, where I tell them that if our brothers and sisters are being bombed by the minute, by the occupation, yet they take a step back and they say, Oh Allah, we recognize that this land is yours. We recognize that even these armies all belong to you, the people belong to you. And so we resort to you as a final person. You are our savior. And so how can we not do that at these protests, at these demonstrations, where we are standing for our brothers and sisters? And so salah is really at the core of everything. In addition to many of the chants that we say, where we say,
La ilaha illallah, wa shaheed habib Allah, these chants are not only chants to bring about energy in the crowd, but they are truly reminders that our martyrs aren't gone. Our martyrs truly are in a better place than all of us. Yeah, I think that's so significant for a lot of reasons. First of all, is that it bridges the gap between, I think, the, whatever you want to call it, the resistance or the Palestinian cause in Palestine, right? Which is extremely religious, right? Anybody who speaks Arabic and who listens to the chants, right? Or listens to the speeches or listens to, you know, even the mourning, right? Like, you know, you have people that are carried out of the rubble and they're making their shahada, or they're saying Quran, or they're doing, you know, various different things. You know, there's a palpable difference between some, not all, but many of the protests that are organized by more secular organizations, where, you know, Biden, Biden, you can't hide, this sort of stuff, which is fine, which is fine, it's not a problem. But I think it's an education for people in the West, because what we don't want to do is we don't want to leave intact the anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim sentiment that even allies of the Palestinian cause might have in the West. So maybe some people, they want to come to a Palestinian or pro-Palestinian protest or demonstration, but they get nervous when they hear the takbir, right? Or they get nervous when they hear the shahada, they're like, oh no. Maybe they think, like, is this some sort of call to violence, or is this some sort of terrorist slogan? And a lot of what you're doing, and you collective, I'm not, you know, obviously we have you with us today in the studio, but there's a lot of people with you. It's almost like a re-education process. And it's almost bringing the Palestinian cause, the pro-Palestinian movement here in the West a little bit closer
to how it really does play out on the ground in Palestine itself. That's extremely significant. And then also sort of, you know, like you said, I think that the second reason, if I can take up this much time, is to push back against our own sort of self-secularization, right? That there are forces that want Islam to just be what happened to Christianity, where it's just your private belief and you in the mosque and you with the prayer beads and the Qur'an. And obviously that's part of Islam, no doubt. But Islam is also about standing up for what's true. We are fundamentally a truth-telling people. And our mission, we have a charge from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to stand up and tell the truth, whether it's against us, whether it's against somebody else, right? And so it's not going to be this comfortable, you know, just prayer rug Islam. Yes, that's part of it. We'll bring our prayer rugs to the street and we'll use them, you know, to pray and to illustrate to other people that, you know, these things all go together. So I think that's tremendous. And I think that's very, very significant. And I really appreciate that aspect of your work. I've got one last question, but let's see. I wonder if you have any other comments about that before we move on. Yeah, no, JazakAllah khairan. And I even remember the protest that you joined us where we had Salah right in front of Washington Square Park. But the reality is, and something that I really want to drive home for really everyone, is that the Islamification of the Palestinian movement is Palestinian resistance. And so you cannot separate the both. Palestinian resistance is the Islamification of the movement. Because like you mentioned, that Palestinians on the ground feel that Islamification every single day. Not only are they in holy land, the land of Al-Quds, but also because of their martyrs, because of their daily interactions, because of what they see on a daily basis, they know that at the core of everything is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, is relying on your religion to get through everything.
And so JazakAllah khairan for really driving that point home. Okay, last question. Now, you guys caught some flack recently when it came to, in particularly, the shutting down JFK and obstructing sort of people getting to their flights. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to that about what the philosophy is when it comes to those type of actions. Now, we already sort of hinted at it because we talked about disruption. Disruption is important because it's keeping visibility, it's keeping people engaged, it's stopping them from going back to this consumerist, you know, individualistic lifestyle. But there were some people and some of them were imams that were saying, it's like, I don't really like this type of action where we're blocking people unnecessarily. And the fear is, I think, from their side, that they don't want to hurt the cause. So alhamdulillah, everybody's on the same page in their intentions. We all want the cause to succeed. And there might be sort of a difference as to thinking about what's the most effective and impactful means or tactics to help the cause succeed. So there were some people who were thinking that this is going to hurt the cause, alienate people, you know, make people sort of feel antagonized or resentful to the Palestinian liberation movement. So I want to get your thoughts on that and give you a chance to respond. Yeah, Jazakallah khair for giving me that opportunity. So the JFK protest, for clarification, was announced for Terminal 4, where one of the largest occupation airlines flies out IDF soldiers almost on a daily basis over to occupied Palestine so they could murder our brothers and sisters. And so our goal is to make sure to be loud and clear in Terminal 4. What we noticed is just putting out that call for Terminal 4 resulted in almost a shutdown in the entire JFK airport, where they then started closing other terminals in an effort to stop protesters and organizers from reaching Terminal 4. I myself made it to Terminal 4
and was threatened by the captain of Port Authority that told me that if I do not get on the next air train exiting the airport, I will personally get arrested. And so this was the largest sentiment. So they clearly know that we have a target in mind and that was Terminal 4. What we saw after that was from JFK, we announced LaGuardia airport further on to Wall Street. And the purpose of all of this is to fall back on that disruption, is that it is our tax dollars, it is my money, your money, each of our dollars, our hard earned dollars at times that we are willing to fight for in regards to other things. But when it comes to our brothers and sisters in Palestine, we have to fight harder. And so if my tax dollars are funding this genocide, I will do every single way and route that I could take to really disrupt where my tax dollars are going. And the biggest thing is, and I think it's the reality of this, is that people will not listen to any other form, is that we've seen that social media entities, Meta, Instagram, Facebook, are censoring us. And so we have to rely on in-person disruptions in order to create the largest change, the largest wave. And so my request for it to be all across social media, for people that are seeing the JFK action, is to do this wherever you are. Whether it's in JFK, it's in Chicago, it's in Texas or in California, or anywhere across the world. It's time for the world to hear us on a more elevated stage. Is that if A to B protests are no longer working, we need to shut down major transportation hubs in order for mayors, in order for governors, and even for the presidents of these countries to say that the people stand with Palestine. The people stand with the brothers and sisters in Gaza, and the people are demanding for a liberated Palestine within our lifetime. And they will not stop for anything less than that. We will not stop for just a ceasefire, and that's the reality of it. We will not stop until there's a cease for the genocide, a cease to the occupation,
and a cease to anything that stands in front of Palestinian resistance and Palestinian liberation. It's a very robust response, and I really appreciate you taking the time to go into that. And I think it's very significant, but also very telling. I think it's very significant that the initial action was planned to be something very specific and very targeted, because that shows a high level of strategy on your part. And I find it significant that that messaging got lost. Now, I'm not pointing blame at anybody, but I'm looking for opportunities to improve. And I think that if there are people who have criticisms of certain actions, especially with the way that social media sort of trains us, it trains us to be basically like running commentators on other people's lives, right? Which is kind of weird, because sometimes you see yourself being commented about when you could have been reached out to, right? And social media certainly, certainly shapes us and rewards that sort of behavior and drives us towards that behavior. So I would like to request from people who are sort of observing, and maybe they have questions, or maybe they even have criticisms, to reach out directly, right? To yourself or to other people who are sort of organizing these actions and to get the low down, because obviously it's a very, very different calculus if you're saying, well, we're just gonna shut down everything versus, well, we only targeted this one and then they shut down everything, right? Or it sort of spun out of this, of things evolve on the ground as they're happening in real time, right? Those are two very different things. And the last thing I'll say, and this is sort of a plug for what's to come for Yaqeen Institute, is that I personally will apologize to you and to all of our wonderful Muslim activists for not sufficiently providing you guys guidance on this stuff. I find it unfortunate that people would criticize before there's not a booklet for what Islamic activism should look like, that we distribute to mass and to AMP
and to, you know, with WOL and to all these sorts of things, right? So to sort of, yeah, I'll just put it like that. And one of my goals for the year, Inshallah 2024, is to actually provide a primer of this sort of nature, let's put all the tactics out on the table and let's say we have clear Islamic rationale and justification for X, Y, Z, A, B, C, and D, and then these can be used in these situations. Other sort of tactics, well, maybe they're not the best, but maybe break glass in case of emergency sort of thing. That's the type of guidance that you all should have in your hands. And I don't feel comfortable, at least in public, criticizing anybody until that guidance is provided. So I would hope that the, you know, I don't know, scholarly class or da'i class or imam class or something like that can step in and fill this void to come together, reach across the aisle, though I don't think it's much of an aisle, establish relationships, get on a first name basis with each other, you know, go have a meal at Ayat or a coffee at Qawwah House or something and hash this stuff out and learn from each other and benefit from each other. That's what I would hope. What's your- I think that gap is what organizers have been looking for imams to fill for such a long time, honestly, is we love the sight of seeing our imams at our protests. Like when we saw you come to our protest, wallahi, we were truly delighted as organizers because the reality is there's a huge Islamic movement that looks to imams to see how they act, to see where they are involved and where they aren't involved, where they criticize and where they applaud. And so when we see our imams correctly plugging into the movement and saying, here is the Islamic perspective and here is how Islam elevates you as organizers and here is how Islam guides you as organizers, that's what we truly look for. And on the comment on the public scene, that's the reality and my line is always open as well as within our lifetimes that we appreciate any kind of criticism
that comes to us directly before it goes to social media, before it goes to the public eyes where the reality of it is, that's exactly what Zionists are hoping for. They are waiting for that moment of division within our community where they can start cherry picking then what one imam said versus what another imam said and say, look, their community isn't even united. When the reality is the majority of our community is really united. We're united on a free Palestine. We're united on ending the occupation. We're united on a ceasefire as well. And so we're looking to our imams to build this cohesive relationship with us where we are able to build together. We're able to make this movement not only stronger but more unified. But obviously that happens through back channel conversations first before we then take it to social media where if anything, social media is used as a tool to applaud our movement. It's used as a tool to show how unified on the same page our movement is. And so I truly personally am looking forward to this booklet from Yaqeen as I know that Yaqeen usually pulls out with amazing content, amazing infographics and so I'll be the first one reading it inshallah. Barak Allahi Habibi. All right, let's see. Anybody have any questions for Abdullah before we let him go? I see WeLoveIslam had a question. Where did it go? What more can we do besides all that we're currently doing? Kind of a general question if you wanna take it. The floor is yours. No, this is a great question. To start, continue going out to protest. Be very consistent in that. We know that there's a national march taking place on the 13th in Washington DC followed by another one here in New York City endorsed by over 100 organizations happening here in New York City at Union Square. And so continue to take part at least in these national demonstrations but also in what's happening at home as well in your local cities. Additionally, continue to put pressure on your local government. Make it very clear that if your tax dollars are not funding your healthcare, they're not funding your education,
but they are funding an overseas genocide, you're going to make it very clear that it is completely unacceptable that that's the case. And so continue to show up to your elected officials, continue to take the ceasefire demands and to make it very clear on social media as well that you stand with the Palestinian people. Wonderful. We have a question from Qiyah and this is a very common one. That's why I wanna make sure we highlight it. What do you say to Muslims who believe that protesting is haram and people are telling them not to go because it's haram? Yeah, for the majority of this question, I'll leave it to Imam Tom, but directly you could see that the majority of imams have said, have taken part and come out to actual protests where we've seen them actually be on the front lines, where we've seen them actually applaud activists and take hand in hand with activists as it should be. Additionally, if there is a genocide where over 25,000 of your brothers and sisters are being murdered by the occupation, the reality is the question about halal or haram about protests might not be the right time. The right time is to go out to the streets, is to put immediate pressure on the government. And as I am sure any imam would agree, is the Hadith of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam where he says that when an injustice takes place in front of us, the first thing for us to do is to take action with our hands, followed by our tongue, followed by hating it with our hearts. Let's not jump to the third option by hating it in our hearts. Let's first use our hands and head to the streets. Let's use our tongues and chant for a free Palestine from the river to the sea. And let's also hate it with our hearts. Excellent. And I'll add an extremely abbreviated form that the only arguments I've seen for protests being haram are either construing it as Khuruj rebellion, which doesn't apply in the political culture of the United States of America, where we have a well-established protest culture, or it has to do with incidental things
which can be easily avoided, such as free mixing between genders and things like that. All of that stuff can easily be avoided, especially if Muslims are running the protests. So that's, you know, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you extract yourself and stay away from it, and then you cede the ground to let somebody else do it for you who doesn't do it by Islamic principles, and then you get to criticize it a second time. I love that. Harry asked a question that I think is interesting. He said, okay, do you think that protesting is a form of begging to the elite, knowing that, okay, we've been protesting for the last three months, deaths have been rising, I understand awareness is there, but what about change? So where does protesting fit in with the larger sort of strategy of things? This is an amazing question, because 10 years ago, we would have never seen this kind of consistency in the streets for the cause of Palestinian liberation. Where we are right now, which is really unheard of, where it's almost 100 days of consistent protests, of consistent shutdowns of floods all across the country, and really all across the world, that's truly unheard of. And if anything, the occupation is truly losing the public relations war, because on that front, every single country, every single person across the world is looking to the occupation where they truly look very dumb, ignorant, or arrogant, in the sense that they are losing the world's perception on what they wanted it to be as the world's democracy, as the Middle Eastern's democracy. And so they have truly lost that front. And so change in the last 75 years alone has been truly instrumental, has been drastic, if anything. And we've seen so many countries and world leaders call for a ceasefire, call for the rights of Palestinian people. And for one of the first times, and I'll end here, is that we are seeing the South African case in the International Criminal Court, where they are trying them in front of the entire world, saying that they are committing genocide, saying that they are committing apartheid,
and that alone is historic. Excellent, excellent response. And we would direct Harry to the inspirational videos of Sami Hamdi to see what kind of change is also being made. That's probably, I mean, there's some other questions, but I'll be respectful of your time and also the time of our viewers. Abdullah, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your responses, and I look forward to continuing the conversation. Amazing, jazakoum wa khaira for having me. Ameen wa yakoum, hopefully see you soon. Take care, assalamu alaikum. Thanks. Okay, mashallah, that was a very robust conversation. I'm very glad we had it, and thank you to everybody who pitched in with your questions. There was one question that we didn't get around to responding to, but I want to just touch on briefly. Maria Ahmed said that my masjid doesn't support protests, and hence the Muslims aren't coming out locally, and only non-Muslim allies are there. What can we do to make the masjid see the bigger picture? And I would just echo what Abdullah was saying when it comes to face-to-face relationships, right? Those people who are on the ground and trying to hold protests who are practicing Muslims and very Islamically minded, they need to have face-to-face relationships and a rapport with masjid leadership and religious leadership so that they can talk and understand each other's issues and understand each other's perspectives. A lot of time, it's just people talking past each other or not having any sort of relationship to speak to. So that's that. Now, we're gonna change topics a little bit here. It's a very, very important topic that we could talk about and probably use the entire hour to talk about, but I don't want to neglect our discussion of our daily habits. Last week, we had started talking about our daily habits and taking them from the Prophet Muhammad, salallahu alaihi wa sallam. So we started going through a little book, which is part of a vast genre that you find in classical Islamic literature that has to do with sort of the actions of the Prophet, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, from the second that you wake up
to the second that you lay down your head to sleep at night. And we talked about various things, and such as starting habits. One of the things that we talked about was not looking at the phone as soon as we wake up. And I wanna hear your commentary, everybody. Try to hit us in the chat. How did it go for you? We talked about a couple of things that we were gonna try to implement, and I'll share with you in a sec how my struggle, I will say, went to try to implement some of these things. And I wanna hear your struggles as well, and also your triumphs and successes, so we can kind of build each other up. So one of the things was that, okay, we said that the Prophet, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, just as a recap, when he woke up, that he would praise Allah. He would say the dhikr about how Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has resurrected us or brought us back to life. And we give praise to him for that. We talked about how the Prophet, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, would look at the sky and have a connection with Allah's signs, which is gonna set us up for the ayat that he would read before Qiyam al-Layl. We talked about how he would, alayhi salatu wa salam, use his siwak and brush his teeth and the importance of hygiene. And we talked about how all these things were, we also talked about the time that he would wake up before Fajr to make sure that he got in his night prayers. So how did you do? Were you able to do any night prayers at all? Were you able to wake up before Fajr even once in the week since we last talked? Were you able to avoid looking at your phone first thing? We talked about sort of strategies to do that. Let's see, Abdullah Abu Mahfuz, I tried no phone in the morning and I was successful three out of seven days, mashallah. See, that's progress. So Abdullah, if you're successful three out of seven days in the first week, okay, now maybe this week coming up, go for four out of seven days and the next five out of seven days, right? That's progress. A lot of times the shaitan wants to discourage us by making us feel like we're not making any progress at all. But something is better than nothing.
Okay, let's see, Khairon Nisar Rosli says, I reached out from my phone, but I opened up the Qur'anly app and read some verses before I check for important messages. Yeah, I have that problem with important messages as well. Aisha Ahmed, I shut down and put my phone in another room, but it was so difficult because I wanted to check news for Palestine. Aisha, I know how you feel that part of the temptation is to always go look for the news for Palestine. Laura Hassan says that she gets coffee before looking at her phone. That's really nice. Some people I know, and I've tried this too, is to attempt to make sure that you don't look at your phone before you actually complete your prayers. Right. I think that's also a helpful thing that some people can try. Harry mentions, yeah, when it comes to the end of the day as well, right? And we'll definitely get to that, about unplugging from your phone a certain amount of time before you go to bed. Shaima, you were very honest, may Allah bless you. I failed with not looking at my phone, not going to lie, mashallah. You encouraged the rest of us to be honest, which is great. And I definitely didn't have 100% success rate either. I'm not sure how many days I didn't keep a numerical count, but there were some days that I succeeded and some days that I failed. And I need to get an alarm clock. I did not get an actual alarm clock. So I'm still using my phone to wake up. As-salamu alaykum, wa rahmatullah, Ashraf from Singapore. Salamat tatang, see anybody else's. Okay, that's pretty much it. So now this week we're going to look at some of the ayat that the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, would recite before starting his actual night prayers. And how they actually relate directly to what we were talking about when it comes to relating to Allah's signs. We talked about the importance of Allah's signs and having some sort of regular way to connect to those signs throughout the day.
And that if we just shuffle through our days from one thing to the next without connecting to Allah's signs, that the Qur'an will actually be less impactful on us, right? And we will spend most of our days in a state of ghaflah where we're just kind of going through the motions. So the book that we're covering said that the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, would recite the last 10 ayat of Surah Al-Imran, right? Before sort of starting his night prayers. Now I found that extremely significant because if you look to the last 10 ayat, what does it start with? It starts exactly with talking about Allah's signs. Okay, so look at how significant just the theme of Allah's signs and contemplating Allah's signs is. That he, alayhi salatu wasalam, gets up. He does a few things. He looks at the sky, okay? He recites these ayat. He's preparing his heart, essentially, for a deep connection that everything that he encounters throughout the day is going to bring him back to remembering Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And that's, I think, the main takeaway for all of us. So starting with verse 190, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, and we can't go over every single word, but he says that in the heavens and the earth and in the alternation of night and day are signs, li ulil albaab, for those people who have reason or those who sort of are lub, lub is like, you know, they're weighty. They have some sort of weight to them. And weight in the metaphoric sense, like they're not superficial. Who? الذين يذكرون الله قياما وقعودا وعلى جنوبهم. People who remember Allah in all states. Standing, sitting, and even on their sides. ويتفكرون في خلق سماوات والأرض.
And they think, right? They think, and it's not just think. يتفكر, like تفكر, contemplate, right? Because it's the certain, if you guys know صرف, it's the sort of, the one type of the verb that has to do with turning it over again and again. Okay? Contemplating seriously Allah's signs. Okay? The signs that he created in the heavens and the earth. Now, it's important to notice here, what, okay, we say sign. And Allah says, ayat, ayat, ayat, sign, sign, sign. What do we mean when we're talking about a sign? If you pull up your car to a stop sign, right? If you just ran through it, and you said, okay, here's a red octagon with some letters written on it. And the cop pulls you over, right? The policeman pulls you over and says, hey, why did you run by that sign? He said, it's just a red octagon with some letters on it. What are you talking about? Right? That wouldn't get you out of trouble. You'd still have to pay your fine, or you still would get your ticket from the police. Because the nature of a sign is that it points to a deeper reality. Okay? The red octagon with the letters on it points to a deeper reality, which is that you have to stop here. If you don't, then there's some sort of danger involved. So when we say that the things that Allah ﷻ created in the universe are signs, it means that a mountain is not just a mountain. Okay? A star is not just a star. The moon is not just the moon. These things are actually placed here by Allah ﷻ to get us to think about a deeper reality. Okay? Which is why sort of the world of fact-finding or like the encyclopedic type of knowledge is a little bit of a misdirection and a little bit misleading. Because it still gets us moving in this realm of, well, we're learning things about the signs. Okay? Yes, the moon sort of the same face is always sort of facing us. We don't get to see the dark side of the moon.
And if the moon wasn't there, then the earth's orbit would be out of whack and all these sorts of facts. That's great. Alhamdulillah. We love facts. But facts don't penetrate into why is it there. It tells us how it works. It tells us some fun, interesting things. And it can even enhance our sort of appreciation for Allah's sort of diqqa, his precision, with how he places and created signs in the world. But it doesn't ultimately break through until the level of what is it here for? Why did Allah put it here? Right? And so when Allah is telling us about these signs that they are supposed to point to a larger reality, which is his ability, right, to create, his ability to sustain. And if you can notice, every time you look at the moon, every time you look at the sky, every time you look at a tree, every time you look at a mountain, you think Allah made this and he made me. And he sustains it. And he sustains me. And if he wants to, look at how powerful he is that he could make all of this without any effort. We're saying it doesn't even cost him anything. It doesn't exhaust him. It doesn't tire him out. Then can't he resurrect me after I'm dead? Right? And if you have some deep connection with the Quran, you realize that this is one of the points that he comes back to again and again and again. These things are placed here for that type of remembering. It's placed there for that type of consideration that he's trying to bring you back to. Now, when Allah continues to go, he does this thing that's a rhetorical style in Arabic where he's talking about somebody, a third person, and now he's putting words sort of on your lips for you to say, رَبَّنَا إِنَّكَ Sorry, actually before that, he says, رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هَذَا بَاطِلًا سُبْحَانَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ That, oh Allah, you have not created all of this in vain.
Meaning that if we only stuck to the level of, if we only stuck to the level of facts, if we only stuck to the level of the encyclopedic knowledge, the moon is this many miles from earth, and it is this big and has this much area, and et cetera, et cetera, that it would still not cross over to the ultimate consideration that Allah wants us to get into, which is why. It's not here بَاطِلًا. It's not here just for play. It's not here just for facts. It's not here just to be some sort of point in your encyclopedic knowledge about the thing. It's supposed to point you to a deeper reality. It's supposed to point you to a deeper reality to get you to think about Allah ﷻ, and to feel gratitude and humility in front of him. Allah ﷻ has more commentary. He says, you know, he puts this on our tongues for us to say, whoever that you enter into the hellfire, then that person is humiliated, and the people who are oppressors will not have any helpers. And this is very relevant when it comes to our times with everything that's going on in Gaza, that the people who are oppressors will not have any helpers. And it continues to go on. We're not going to go through every verse, and we'll move on for next week, but I encourage you to read carefully and closely these last ten ayat. There's a lot of really important lessons here, and it's very important that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ read these ayat before even starting his night prayers. Consider the types of lessons that are in this part of the Qur'an, and how it starts you on your day. How does it set you off so that everything you see in your day is now a sign reminding you of Allah ﷻ. That's the point, and we ask Allah for continuous remembrance of him. Transitioning now to our last segment of the day before we take any remaining questions, and that is our continuing sort of quick book review. I remembered it this week, The Myth of Religious Violence.
I'm somebody that really hates dust jackets. I don't know, what's your opinion on dust jackets? Hit me up in the chat. If I buy a book and it has a dust jacket on it, I get rid of it ASAP. I even throw it in the trash. I can't stand it. When you're looking through it, I'm somebody that, if we can zoom in here, I take copious notes. I've got notes in the margins, and I always use a blue pen, never black. I need to be able to see it differentiated from the text. I'm kind of a little bit particular with my books. To have the dust jacket, Erika, is the thing that they put on the outside of the book. It has the flaps, and usually it has a little bit about the author. It has some reviews on the back of the book, and you can take it off or put it on. It usually gets in your way. I agree 100% that dust jackets are annoying. I discard them very, very quickly. They're also disorganized, Harry, 100%. This is the book, and the chapter that I wanted to cover today, it's a really, really big chapter with a lot of amazing things in it, but we don't have time for all that, unfortunately. I'm just going to have to give you the bare bones and leave you to look at the rest on your own. The author wants to tackle one specific idea, and that is this thing that we call religion. What is it? What is it really? Is there such a thing that we call religion? Is it something that's definable? Is it something that's consistent? If you look in the dictionary, what type of definition do you get? Let's maybe have your opinions, or if anybody wants to copy-paste. If you think about religion, what is religion? What's the definition of religion? That's the question that animates the next chapter in Kavanaugh's book, The Myth of Religious Violence.
Whatever answers you come up with, I guarantee you that there is no one standard definition that everybody will agree to, that the idea of talking about things as religions is not an idea that's been around for very long. Let me explain it to you like this. If I take Islam, and Christianity, and Buddhism, and Judaism, and I put it all in one category, why would I put all those things in one category if I believe that one of them was better than the rest, if I believe that one of them was true and the rest of them were at least in part false? Let's say that I think that Islam is true 100%, which I do, alhamdulillah, the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and that these other things are false. Then why would I put them together in the same category? That this term, religion, actually has a history to it. It's actually a very, very, very recent invention. It's important to get into that history because it shows how the way that people thought about their belief in God or their faith has changed significantly over time. That if you were to hop in a time machine and go back to the 1500s or the 1300s and ask people, what is religion? They would look at you like you had 17 heads, like you were crazy. Or if you ask them, even better, to separate between religion and politics. Why did you do this thing?
Was it a religious motivation or was it a political sort of thing? They would look at you like you were crazy. What do you mean? There was no separation between those two things until very, very recently. The straight path ventured forth and tried to provide a definition. He says, religion is a path slash worldview that a group of people follow by worshiping a God or God's estel frula. I appreciate that you put in the estel frula at the end there, but before that, before the estel frula, you have one particular definition of religion that a lot of people would agree with, okay? Any path or worldview that a group of people follow by worshiping a God or God's. Okay, that's what we call a substantivist definition of religion. You don't really need to understand why that's called that, but the idea is that the idea that there is an essence that all religions have in common. Okay, big fancy word for we think that there is one essence that all religions have in common. Now, what if I were to tell you that there are types of Buddhism that do not believe in a God or Gods? Are you going to be prepared to say upon that definition, the straight path, that Buddhism is not a religion? See how that works? And so no matter what definition we come up with, you can go to Oxford, you can go to Cambridge, you can go to Webster, you can go to dictionary.com, you will always find that there are certain things that belong in the definition that shouldn't really be there, you think, or there are things that should not be there that are included. Let's take, for example, so some people, they say, okay, well, religion, maybe you don't need belief in a God. Maybe it's simply just things that you hold sacred. Okay, well, could we consider nationalism a religion then? You see how people, they stand up and they sing,
the Pledge of Allegiance and God bless America and all these different things that they have, okay, a way of life. Are we then going to say that ideologies are religions too? Is nationalism a religion? Is communism a religion? Okay, now we're saying that everything is a religion. So the term loses its usefulness. This is exactly the type of problem that Kavanaugh explores in the next chapter of his book, okay? And he basically comes to the conclusion, and I'm trying to distill a whole lot of text here and save you some reading, that the idea of religion as a category in which you can place Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism is a very, very recent invention that occurred because of the secularization of Christianity in Europe. That the whole idea of religion as something that's private, something that's interior, that your belief, it's something that just some things that you think are true, a list of propositions that you believe in, that this is a very, very new idea and it's not something that everybody would agree to or that makes sense if you go and apply it equally across the world. That when you make all of these faiths or religions comparable, Islam, Christianity, etc., you depoliticize them. You basically turn them into something that's optional, something that is nonpolitical, something that is private, something that can be separated. And so this was something that actually is a key part of European history where they secularized their own religions and they also came up with the category of religion in order to separate it from things like politics. This is why Islam is a big challenge to sort of the secular mindset.
Yes, religion has become a generalized term. So Islam is a direct challenge to this categorization because in Islam, for example, you cannot separate politics and faith. You cannot separate something that is considered religious and something that's considered political. If you go into a fiqh book, it starts with water and it goes through ritual acts of worship and then it goes to marriage and it goes to business and it goes to criminal law and it goes to all these sorts of things. It's all there together. This defies the categorization of religion as something that's just belief in God or belief in this or belief in that. So it's a way of putting things together. It's a way of putting things together in a unicity, in a sort of a unified way that recently European history has come to separate. Now the next chapter that we're not going to get in today but we're going to get into next week inshallah is why did they separate them? Why did Europe historically want to separate religion from state? Why did they want to invent the idea of religion that can be separated from the state or can be separated from politics or can be separated from economics and things like that? Well, that's another story entirely and we'll get into it next week inshallah ta'ala. Okay, so we've hit about an hour. Let's see if there's any questions or anything that we can clean up. Let's put it like this. I've got a couple questions that are going to talk about... I'm smiling at the comments about dust jackets. Yeah, I see that I'm not alone here with my loathing of dust jackets. But not everyone's as extreme as I am when it comes to just throwing them out.
When it comes to... Okay, so if you're not going to use the term religion, which the idea of religion presupposes or it assumes that this thing is well, let's call it the fancy terms are universal and trans-historical. That means that religious experience is the same everywhere for all people in all times across all cultures. Rather than saying that there is true religion and there's false religion. There's haq and there's batil, that there's truth and there's falsehood. Our definition or a more Islamic definition of what we're talking about would be what's true and what's false. We would never think to include in the same category as Islam idol worship. That's stark. We can understand why these things are... The point becomes clear when we make it so dramatic. But if we're talking about religions, if we think of religion as a category, then Islam is right next to idol worship. They're two religions. They're comparable. They're similar. They're two examples of the same phenomenon, either belief in the afterlife or some sort of ritual symbols, whatever you want to call it. And we would object to that sort of categorization. We say that no, Islam is true, whereas idol worship is false. That's the kind of thing that we're talking about here. We love Islam. Ask me to make dua for Kashmir. Oh Allah, free the people of Kashmir and make them victorious. They are in our hearts all the time. And we ask them to, we ask Allah to bring them beneficial rain or snow or whatever they need. Let's see, let's go to the chat, see if anybody else has any questions before we wrap up for the night. Erika lives in Sweden, and we know that Sweden does have a hard time with religions.
But many people believe in a higher power, which is instructive because many people have a fitra. Many people have a sort of a natural disposition to some sort of belief that they can't shake, right? And that's sort of a fascinating thing. Laura Hassan asks, how can I inspire my friends to take action regarding Palestine? Some are still wrapped up in their first world problems. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple ways to think about it. I mean, there's one way in which people are idiosyncratic. That means that different strokes for different folks. Some things work on individuals and other things don't. Some people need to see their own stake in an issue. But there's a larger problem that I think affects everybody, which is what does it mean? What are you here for when it comes to your purpose in life? And that's why our conversation with Abdullah Akil was so important because our activism is grounded in our Islam. And that means that if there's something immoral that's going on, then it's our business, right? That the geography of ourself and the geography of our affection goes beyond the borders of my skin. And I care about people across the world. And I care about them in not just a wishy-washy way, and not just a self-interested way. These are my tribe or my people or whatever, but I care about them in a metaphysical way. That I am concerned that the creator of the heavens and the earth is going to hold me accountable for allowing this evil to persist, or at least not speaking out against it. That's another level, right? So that sort of is the deep work that needs to be done. Shayma Nabut asks about tips for focusing on Salah. That's a whole topic we'll probably get to a lot of later in the book about our habits. But
I think lots of people have compared it to a marathon, okay? Any sort of exercise. You need a stretching period, a warm-up period, and a cool-down period. You can't expect to just flip it on like that, right? It's not a light switch. Your khushu or your focus is not a light switch, okay? So the longer that you build the runway up to your Salah, and the longer your runway down from Salah is, you give yourself more of an opportunity to prepare yourself to be focused in it. Amita asks, am I an author? I write lots of stuff all the time. SS asks, I understand the impact of demonstrating, but many of them are done for a long time. I'm guessing that means protests, where it leads to people missing their prayers. No, that's not true. No, no. There's many protests where people, they built in prayer. And that's exactly what Abdullah and the protests that he's doing specifically set aside time for prayer. This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that the only things that I've seen that are objections to protesting Islamically are all incidental features that can easily be averted or removed, such as mixing with the opposite gender or missing your prayer. That's an argument for Muslim organizations to be organizing the protests in the first place, because if you take them over, then you're going to be building in time for prayer. Then you're going to be, you know, building in sort of gender segregation and sort of Islamic norms into those sorts of things. When did I revert? 2010. That can be seen elsewhere. Lots of good questions flowing in now. My thoughts on ICJ. Like I said, I think it's more symbolic than anything. I think it's more
of sort of helping continue the isolation and the pariah status of Israel, but I don't expect any actual enforcement. Most of our international institutions are being made a mockery of, such as the UN, the ICC, the ICJ, all of them. They don't really have any enforcement mechanisms. They'll never bring a power like the United States to task for the invasion of Iraq or the other crimes that have been committed, so they probably aren't going to do anything about Israel. However, this could be the building of a political will for something else down the road, so we encourage it. Nuseiba asks about my paper on feminism. Nope, not out yet. It's in the works still. It was actually very difficult to want to write about it when everything started happening or the escalation, the most recent escalation in Philistine, but alhamdulillah, recently I found a way to talk about both at the same time, so inshallah, it's moving again. Give just another couple minutes. Let's see if there's anything back here. Attain yaqeen and stay persistent with it, Shayma asks. Sacrifice for the sake of Allah. Sacrifice for the sake of Allah. That's the quickest thing I could say, that the more you sacrifice for Allah, that the more you will trust Allah. It's basically like if you've ever, and I've never actually done this in real life, but I'm aware of the phenomenon of these team building exercises where you fall backwards and you have someone catch you, right? That's for what? It's to build trust, okay? And once you've done it five times, then you trust that the person's going to catch you. Well, you have to do that with Allah. You actually have to do things in your life where you simulate that sort of thing with Allah ﷻ, put yourself out there, make yourself vulnerable in a certain way, leave a job, leave a friendship, leave something for Allah, and watch Allah catch you, and watch Allah save you, and watch Allah elevate you,
and then you'll, there's no turning back from that. Wa'alaikum salam, Maldives, masha'Allah. I would love to visit the entire ummah, everywhere. Much love for everyone in the ummah, all across the globe. Okay, I'm seeing mostly repeats. Very good, excellent. Well, thank you, everybody, for your excellent participation, your questions. Now, when we meet again next week, insha'Allah, we're going to attempt to check in again, see how our habits are going. I'm going to challenge myself to continue to try to wake up without the phone, or at least, even if I have to rely on the or at least, even if I have to rely on the phone's alarm to not check any sort of messages or anything until at least I've prayed Fajr. We're going to also try to challenge ourselves to pray night prayers, even if it's just two rakat before Fajr, just to wake up on the early side of Fajr. If you're sick, you have extenuating circumstances, of course, you know, but have the goal that when you become healthy again, that you're going to get back on this habit, just like was the habit of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and we will check in with you next week. I hope everybody has a blessed week. May Allah ﷻ help our brothers and sisters all across the world, all over the ummah, and to have mercy on our martyrs, and to cure our sick, and to assist us all. بارك الله فيكم سبحانك اللهم و بحمدك اشهد ان لا اله الا انت استغفرك واتوب اليك Until next time. As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-raḥmatullāhi wa-barakātuh
Welcome back!
Bookmark content
Download resources easily
Manage your donations
Track your spiritual growth
1 items
1 items
1 items
25 items
50 items
9 items
