Imam Tom Live
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How to Develop Better Habits | Imam Tom Live
Join our weekly livestream with Imam Tom as we discuss habits you can do to start and end your day in the right mindset within Islam. We will also cover the latest news from Gaza and issues afflicting our Ummah, book recommendations for personal development, as well as a personal Q/A session where you can have a dialogue with Imam Tom directly on stream.
Organize your thoughts and goals with our exclusive companion journal, Habits to win Here and Hereafter!
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. A lot of the talks, including my talks, had to do with Palestine, of course, Philistine. May Allah grant victory and free our brothers and sisters there and make it easy for them. In addition to, sort of, how to navigate what we're going through. So if you were at Masjid al-Iknah, maybe drop a line, drop a comment, let me know what was your favorite part of the convention, what was your favorite part of the weekend. I had three talks that I had to give. One of them was with Yaqeen Institute and Dr. Waimir Enjim talking about, sort of, lessons from the people of Gaza. And we talked about the inspiring figures or some of the inspiring figures that have all come into our consciousness since the escalation in Palestine in October, such as Abu Duya, Khalid al-Nabhan, such as Taysir, such as Rifat, such as other people. So, you know, we tried to derive lessons of, you know, courage and lessons of steadfastness and resilience and faith. And one of the things that I brought up was the martyrdom of Taysir, you know, in his last dying moments, him, you know, raising his finger to the sky and making shahada and then prostrating before passing away and returning to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Very, very powerful and something that is inspiring to all of us. I also had another talk on, sort of, the importance for the youth. And it was one that was targeted and intended for youth on speaking out. And I shared some of my own experiences. Right now, we are in a situation, welcome very much, we got Yemen in the house, we got Malaysia, Pittsburgh, welcome everybody, Virginia. My own experiences speaking out, even long before I was a Muslim, how oppression always, sort of, relies upon silence. And this is something we've talked about in this program for several weeks on end. And the silence will, the bullying tactics and the silencing tactics will never end until we stand up to them and actually put an end to them.
So, if you were there, Mariam from Michigan, welcome. Watermelon also from Michigan, Patterson, Melissa from Patterson in the house, Uganda, mashallah. We always have quite the international crew. Welcome everybody. And if you were at, if you happen to be at Masjid this year, let me know what your favorite program was. I also had a lot of, a good time when it came to, sort of, the sideline conversations. I was able to spend some nice time with Sami Hamdi, which is always a good treat. And many mashayikh, many da'is, and other people were able to swap notes and, sort of, strategize for the future. Welcome everybody, mashallah. Nimra from Canada, Debbie from Chicago, lots of people. Rochester, awesome from Rochester, mashallah. I wonder if you're the awesome that I know from Rochester. The other thing that's been happening in this past week, very, very important to talk about, is even further escalation in Palestine and the region beyond. Israel has violated the sovereignty of two nations, Lebanon and Iran, conducting strikes in each of them, has killed, has conducted targeted killings of individuals in Lebanon and bombed more indiscriminately in Iran. Now, several important things have come about that are important to reflect upon. One of these things, the one particular attack that happened in Lebanon, it only killed two people, and this is something that they were, sort of, bragging about or gloating about, saying about how they used such precision and there were no collateral damage. But they didn't realize that this was actually incriminating for their behavior in Gaza, that if they had been able to use such precision strikes all up through this time, then clearly what they've been doing in Gaza is completely intentional, which everybody pretty much knew anyway. The other thing is to see
how these strikes have been framed in the media, which paying attention and media literacy is very, very important. Noticing the ways in which things are framed are essential to detect bias and to make sure that people are being fair. So one of the things that was happening was the newspapers were talking about there was a precision strike in a Hezbollah stronghold, right? This is the way in which they chose to frame the issue. And this is the same tactic that they had used in Gaza when they were talking about the Hamas-supported hospitals and to use it as a justification for striking the particular target. Now, a lot of individuals have come forward since then and said this is not some sort of occupied territory by any military force, this is a residential neighborhood. And many people have relatives, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents that live in this neighborhood. So to set it up, and this is actually going to set up our discussion later for a book that I recently completed reading, that to set it up as a Hezbollah-controlled neighborhood is something that is done deliberately in order to justify the violence that takes place and if there happened to be any collateral damage. We've got a Dhaka from Australia, wow, Allahu Akbar. It's always impressive to see all the nations that we have represented here. And of course, we say the nations for clarification, but we know that we're all one Ummah. Now, why would Israel, here's the question that has come up in the last few weeks, why would Israel choose to be a Hezbollah-controlled neighborhood? Now, why would Israel, here's the question that has come about, why would Israel go and violate two-nation sovereignty and escalate at this particular juncture? What are they trying
to accomplish? Many analysts have pointed out that this is not a coincidence, that this is happening at the exact time where charges have been brought against Israel in the International Criminal Court for actual genocide. South Africa is the nation that introduced sort of the court proceedings and we're all ashamed and embarrassed that it was not a Muslim nation that introduced these court proceedings, but at least Alhamdulillah, Malaysia soon joined in after, props to Malaysia, and after that, I believe I read a report that the OIC also signed on to it as well, which is not insignificant, if it's true, but part of the reason perhaps, and many, Turkey, okay, Zak is telling us that Turkey has also joined, which would be major news, so the escalation of the conflict and the lashing out at other people, exactly as sitting on a mountain just pointed out, that Israel is terribly afraid that the U.S. will abandon it, and we've pointed out that the U.S. is the enabling factor here. The United States government, against the will of its own people, is the enabling factor in all of this, that if they were to stop or pull out their support, that there would be no support and very, very soon everything would end. So the tide is turning so much against Israel, both internationally, the governments, it's becoming more and more costly to support Israel, that perhaps, and many analysts have pointed this out, perhaps that Israel is attempting to escalate the situation, provoke a response, drag the United States into a more violent and regional conflict, which would sort of
solidify their lines. So we ask Allah ﷻ, Elizabeth from Mexico, bienvenido, we ask Allah ﷻ for assistance, these are very difficult days, things are moving very, very fast, and we ask Allah ﷻ for patience for what is to come. Excellent, very good. So we'll see how things are going, but for those of us in this part of the world, and this is something that was one of the main points and takeaways from Mass.Ikhnah, and especially in this part of the world, and this is something that was one of the main points and takeaways from Mass.Ikhnah, points and takeaways from Mass.Ikhnah, and especially from the talks of Sheikh Omar Suleiman and Sami Hamdi and others like them, that us in the United States have a particular responsibility, they have a particular responsibility to stop the violence. Netanyahu has said that they who relies upon the United States for munitions, and if that dries up, then Israel will be sort of left-stranded. So inshallah, we hope very, very soon that we'll be able to get the political will to stop that support here, inshallah ta'ala, and to help our brothers and sisters in Gaza. Let's see, we have Waalaikumsalam, Aisha from Somaliland. Welcome, RMB Tempo Inc., Christian but support Palestine. Excellent, welcome to the program. Excellent. In our next segment, so we're going to transition from that talking about current events, we're going to move on to something that I would like to share with all of you, and this is something that is going to be a running segment, okay? So we're going to be able to, if you're able to follow along, whether it's live or if you can't, then catch up with the recordings. We're going to go through some books together, all right? So we're going to go through some books together,
catch up with the recordings. We're going to go through some books together, right? Because this is actually a very, very beneficial thing. We'll be able to learn together. I'll be able to review and reflect on some things. So I've got a book that I picked out. I was thinking, okay, what's a useful book that's not too long that we can kind of zoom through that would be beneficial for everybody? And I picked this one book, which is basically, it has to do with your daily habits, okay? It's got, you know, a long flowery title, but it's al-minah al-'aliyya fi bayan as-sunan al-yawmiya, okay? Which is part of a genre, okay? This type of book is part of a genre that has to do with sort of your daily habits. And it's not just about your daily habits, it's about taking your daily habits from the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. That part of, I want to say it, I want to say it, that alaykum as-salamu alaykum, Lina from Malaysia, welcome everybody. That if we want to be right, and this is not unrelated to our sort of political discussion when it comes to trying to do what we can to help our brothers and sisters and the ummah across the world, that our ability to act often comes down to our discipline. It comes down to our sincerity, and it comes down to our, the tawfiq and the barakah that we have from Allah ﷻ. Basically, that means the success that Allah ﷻ gives us, right? The blessing that Allah ﷻ puts in our time. And we can't necessarily, we can't necessarily have an expectation that we're going to have a lot of blessing in our time if we don't have a schedule, if we don't approach our day in a systematic way where we are where we are organizing ourselves, if we kind of just laze around, or if we don't have any plans and time just sort of slips and slips and slips, then this is something where we're not going to be
maximizing what we can do. We're not going to be building that discipline that we need, okay? So it's extremely important to have a schedule period, and it's extremely important to have good habits in general. The Prophet ﷺ said that the most beloved type of action to Allah is that which is constant and consistent, even if it's small, right? This is something that's very fitri. Like a lot of people recognize this. One of the books that, like Atomic Habits, was a book that became very, very popular because there's a recognition that if you even were to just read one page a day, okay, on the solar calendar you get through 365 pages a day. That's a book or two. Many of us, unfortunately, in the age of social media and the age of sort of online and phone culture, we don't read books anymore, right? You read articles, you check the news, you check what's going on on Twitter or on Instagram, and then a whole year goes by, right? Some people have noticed, okay, 2024 is in. It's not that it's the Hijri calendar, but it's something that is like a reminder, okay, to mark time and to think about our goals. How many books did you read in 2023? Maybe you can share that in the chat, people, without, you know, trying to have the intention of bragging or anything like that. Just share, just to give everybody a sense. How many books did you read in 2023? Yeah, you mean Atomic Habits is not the book that we're going to be going through. It was another book that I referenced. You want me to show the book again? This is it right here. Yeah, so Tala, Mashallah, very honest, zero. Okay, other people coming in with one. Okay, Mashallah, we're all in this together, right? We're not trying to name and shame anybody. We're trying to just be very real about where we're at, because when you take honest account of where you're at, now you can be like, okay, I'm going to set a goal. If last year,
if 2023 was zero, your goal for 2024 can be one. If 2023, you read three books, then your goal for 2024 can be five, right? It's not about a competition. You're only in competition with yourself, right? That's what I want to get across here. Okay, and so let's make a habit. Let's make an intention to get through some books together, Inshallah, or at least to be an inspiration for that, and to benefit from each other, both in the types of books and also to get into good habits. How are you going to get through books if you don't have a structure to your day and a certain organization of your time? So that's important, aslan, right? That's important just to have any structure or any schedule, let alone to have a structure or habits that come from the Prophet the best of creation, okay? You can look at other people, right? You can look at, I know there's like some marines on social media. They say, you know, how to maximize your time. Here's the schedule you need to have. Okay, that's great, but wouldn't it be even better if we got our daily habits and our daily schedule from the Prophet ﷺ? Lina is asking about an English name or translation of the book. I don't believe there is, so I'm going to be your translator, and we're not going to go through every single page. We're just going to take the highlights, because sometimes he goes into some fiqh, and sometimes he goes into some hadith and differences of opinion, stuff like that. That's not our concern. Our concern is the zubdah. Our concern is to grab the essence of the book to try to develop or get some ideas about how to structure our day, okay? So if we start with the book, okay? The book begins by, it organizes it according to time, okay? So it's imagine like it's like 24 hours in the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Now what do you think?
I'm going to throw this to the floor, everybody watching. I want to see your answers in the comments. What do you think is the first thing that this book starts with? What do you think is the first thing? What time of day? Does it start with, you know, with breakfast? Does it start with dinnertime? Does it start with... What do you think it starts with? Exactly, Taala. Maghrib. Good guess, Watermelon786. Not true. Definitely Fajr, Debbie says. Fajr, other people. Salah. Okay, very good. Okay, just Fajr? It actually starts before Fajr. The time before Fajr and the night prayer. Allah. The book starts with the time before Fajr because one of the most important things in your life, and I'm talking to myself first. Don't think that I've got it all figured out or I'm some sort of saint, is the night prayer. The night prayer, Tahajjud, exactly, J. Flower, Nimra, exactly. It starts with Tahajjud, okay? The night prayer is probably the most significant thing in your life if you're doing it, and it's probably the most significant thing that you could add to your life if you're not doing it, okay? Imam Al-Shafi'i, rahimahullah, he said, if you ask for something, like you ask Allah for something, dua, whatever, but you're not praying at night for it, you're not serious. You don't really want it. If you really wanted it, then you would be up at night praying for it before Fajr. Of course, we know there's... We could go on all day about the merits
of qiyam al-layl, praying at night. It's the fast track to enter Jannah, okay? We know about the special time before Fajr, the last third of the night, where Allah ﷻ descends to forgive our sins and to grant us whatever we want, okay? That's all well known. But what were some of the other things, how the Prophet ﷺ approached this practice that's so, so important? Let's see. We see that the first thing that he ﷺ did when he woke up is to brush his teeth. With the sawak, of course. The sawak's a little toothpick, you know, they cut it from the root of the tree. It's very nice and refreshing. But things that can replace that these days are brush your teeth. Now, there's a couple things here I want to point out why this is significant. One of them is the importance of hygiene and cleanliness, okay? How does your breath smell when you just wake up first thing in the morning? Not so great, right? Now, imagine if your normal schedule, you wake up, you roll out of bed, okay? It's late, you catch the tail end of Fajr, you have to go to work or you have to go to school, okay? And you don't have time. You didn't build into your time, so you didn't brush your teeth. And now, what's the first impression that you're going to make either to your spouse or your kids or to your classmates or to your co-workers? Probably not a very good one. The Prophet ﷺ, the first thing he did where he would brush his teeth upon waking. The second thing, the second reason why that's significant is that what did he not do? He didn't look at his phone. Of course, he didn't have the opportunity. But I want to demonstrate to you what probably the majority of us do. And if you guys want to make each other feel better, you can all admit in the chat if you look at your phone first thing
in the morning. I can admit that probably, I probably look at my phone first thing in the morning. And I'm going to stop that. Inshallah, we have mutual accountability between you and me right now, right? Salahuddin says he does for sure, right? Okay, everybody's laughing. I'm guessing that this is something that's very common. Okay, so let's all, yeah, there we go. Morning reboot. Okay, we're all in the same boat. Trying not to, Lina. Yeah, us too. So let's all make the intention right now a small thing. We're not going to look at our phones first thing. Now, I read somebody, it's very hard, it's very hard. Somebody pointed out on social media, and I think that it's a good point, that what they've done is they've found a different way to wake themselves up. For me, I have my alarm clock on my phone. And that's very difficult, because as soon as you go and turn your alarm off, your phone's already in your hand. So what are you going to do? You're going to check your messages, okay? So somebody said they actually bought just like an alarm clock, or they use some other sort of method of waking up. I think I'm going to try that. I'm going to try to use an actual alarm clock to wake up without the phone. Debbie, mashallah, she leaves her phone on a different floor entirely. Allahu Akbar. That's what I do throughout the day. We'll talk about this later. Like I leave it on, because I work from home mostly, I leave it like with my laptop and workstation. And then when I'm down or I'm somewhere else, I try to leave it off. Yes, and all of us know that we've definitely been using our phones a lot more since everything that's been happening in Gaza, and we don't want to necessarily stop anybody from doing good work or from sharing things that need to be, or from raising people's education information. But there's also too much, and there's also bad habits. There's other things that we could be doing instead, especially the very
very first thing that we do. Dunya uses the living room prayer clock. That's pretty nice. Yeah, I need to get one of those, at least one that goes on for qiyam. Okay, excellent. So the first thing he did, alayhi salatu wasalam, was brush his teeth. He didn't, of course he didn't look at his phone, but you and I shouldn't either, okay? And he took care of something with his hygiene. Then he, alayhi salatu wasalam, said a du'a or a dhikr, whatever you want to call it, which sets the stage for the entire day. And this is one that probably, that probably most of you know. He said, alayhi salatu wasalam, alhamdulillahi ladhi ahyana ba'dama amatana wa ilayhi nushur. He said, praise is for Allah, the one who brought us back to life after he had caused us to die, and to him is the return. Very, very well known du'a or dhikr, okay? Why is it important that the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wasalam, said this particular thing? He could have said a lot of things, right? There's a lot of different things that he could have said. Why did he say this particular thing, and what significance does it have? One of the things to realize is that this phrase, or this prayer, or this part of dhikr, it starts off with gratitude. You start off your day with gratitude. Alhamdulillah, okay? You're starting off praising Allah. What are you praising him for? Alladhi ahyana ba'dama amatana. Is that he's the one who brought us back to life after he had made us die. Now, they say, even in English, they say that sleep is the cousin of death, and it's a sign for us, a sign of Allah's power, that he has made us such that we actually go to sleep at night,
and we're not conscious, right? Someone will poke you with a stick, right? Draw funny faces on you with a sharpie. You're not going to necessarily wake up. You're unconscious, and that is a, it's a sign that then Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la can bring you back from that. He can put you into that state where you can't feel anything, can't hear anything, and then actually bring you back from that state every single day. It's as if Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is saying, if I can do that for you every single day, then don't you think I can bring you back after you actually die, right? So, sleep is sort of like a microcosm. It's a, yes, al-mawt al-sagheer, as Salma says. It's like a little tiny taste of what's to come, and it's supposed, if we wake up remembering that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la brings us back from this little death, then it will instill in us the confidence and the surety and the certainty and the certitude that He's going to bring us back from the big death once we die at the end of our lives. Wa ilayhi n-nashur, and so Allah ties it into that, and He says, and to Allah is the return. Now, this is how you start your day, okay? You start your day thinking about your death. You start your day thinking about your afterlife, not just that it's going to happen, okay, which is important because that provides motivation and urgency, right? You feel like being lazy, and sometimes, hey, you need a day to recharge. I came back from Chicago after Masikna, and boy, I was just like absolutely shot, like I needed a day to recover, but as a daily thing, nobody can live that way every day, right? We have to have urgency. We have to have nashat, right, like energy. We have to feel the need to work, right, to get to work. We have things to do, important things to do, and so remembering the shortness of your life is actually a really,
really important component to that. Remember that I just woke up from being dead. One day, I'm going to really die, and there's no coming back except for the resurrection, and the second part of that is that the Prophet ﷺ reminded us that our resurrection is to Allah. Our gathering is to Allah, meaning that everything we're about to do, everything we're about to do for the entire day, we should keep in our minds. That we're going to have to meet Allah with that action, okay, before you go to spread gossip about somebody, before you harm somebody, before you say something mean to somebody, before you do something that Allah wouldn't like, that you are going to have to meet Allah with it. So we see the way that we start off our day is extremely important, okay. If we just wake up and roll out of bed and jump in the shower and, you know, sing some sort of whatever pop song is on the radio, that sets us up for a completely different future. That sets us up for a completely different day than if we start in the way that the Prophet ﷺ started it. Shayma, naboot, yes, I did. I was not in the main hall, I was in the parallel sessions. Alhamdulillah. So that's how the Prophet ﷺ would start his day. A couple little things and then we'll end the segment. So after he said that, alayhi salatu wa salam, he would wipe the sleep from his face, okay. Maybe we could say that's another part of hygiene, okay. And the Prophet ﷺ, it is well known that he would look in the mirror, like looking in the mirror is something from the sunnah because your appearance, husn al-nadr, right, or having a good appearance when you meet other people is part of your akhlaq, it's part of
your character, it's part of etiquette. And after he would wipe his face, alayhi salatu wa salam, he would look up to the sky. And there's hadith about this. I'm going to skip over the references but they're all sahih hadith from Sahih Bukhari and Muslim. He would look up to the sky, alayhi salatu wa salam. Now I want to hear from somebody in the chat, why would he look up to the sky? It's dark out, there's no sun, you can't see the birds. It seems like a strange thing to do. He would look up into the sky, alayhi salam, from Brazil, Saudades, to remember Allah. How is he going to remember Allah by looking up into the sky? What's in the sky at night before Fajr that's going to remind him of Allah? Whatever it is, if it's the moon, if it's the stars, if it's just the miracle of the night being so dark, like Sheila says, if it's just, you know, Tala is saying the stars, Lina is saying the moon, even just the vastness of Allah's creation, if it's just the moon, if it's just the stars, if it's just the moon, if it's just the stars, Lina is saying the moon, even just the vastness of Allah's creation, like Sheila says, it is something that ties you to Allah's signs, okay? Allah subhana wa ta'ala created the earth in a way that everything in it is a sign, okay? And it's a tragedy of our modern lives that we spend a lot of times, a lot of times completely cut off from Allah's signs. Think about it, the Prophet ﷺ wakes up, he looks at the sky, maybe he sees the moon,
maybe he sees the stars, he definitely sees the darkness of night, right? Pitch black. He goes about his day, he sees palm trees, dates, he sees the sun, he sees fields, he sees the earth under his feet, the mountains, these sorts of things, right? Allah talks about all these things in the Qur'an, and he uses these as examples for Allah's creative ability and his creative power, how he's created things in such a beautiful, intricate, complex way, that that's supposed to bring you to think about him, that's supposed to be something that ties you to faith. Now imagine the opposite scenario, okay? You wake up and you're shrouded with artificial light from these lights that you have, you look outside and you can't see the night sky because of the streetlights, and you leave your house and you walk on the concrete, you go from your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned office or whatever. You can actually go a long, long time in modern life without touching or seeing or experiencing any of Allah's signs. And think about what that does to your relationship with the Qur'an. Allah's talking about these things in the Qur'an. وَالشَّمْسِ وَالضُّحَهَا وَالقَمْرِ إِذَا تَلَّهَا Right? وَالنَّهَارِ إِذَا جَلَّهَا And all the other sort of things Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la brings up these signs in the creation, because the signs are meant, they're put there for you to remember Allah, to remember his favor upon you, how he's made the earth beautiful. Allah didn't have to make everything beautiful. Allah could have made you and me with the ability to eat and drink and oxygen, but he didn't have to make it beautiful, right? He could have made us like, you know, eat little pills for our food, like in the Jetsons, if you saw the Jetsons growing up,
instead of having like pomegranates and dates and beautiful things, beautiful colors, right? Everything could have been gray if Allah wanted to, right? But that's not how Allah made it. Allah made everything as a sign. And so the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, one of the first things that he did was looking up to the sky and having that connection with Allah's signs. And so if we're talking about habits, and we're talking about, we're all going to try to not look at our phones first things in the morning. We're all going to try to wake up before Fajr, for even if it's two rakahs of night prayers, right before Fajr starts, we're all going to try to do that. Okay? Let's also try to set aside a little time, even if it's like 30 seconds in the morning, to actually connect with Allah's signs, whether it's a tree, whether it's the moon, the stars, the sky, right? Whatever it is to try to connect with Allah's signs. The next thing that he did, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, we're going to close this segment here, because it's going to take longer to cover this part. But the next thing he did, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, is to recite the last 10 verses of Al-Imran, Surah Al-Imran from the Quran. And those 10 verses are extremely important, and they have a lot of lessons in them, but it will take some time. So we'll go over just those 10 verses next week, inshallah. But I think we've come across from some. Shayma, we'll talk about tahajjud. It's better to recite more than Surah Al-Fatiha. Surah Al-Fatiha is the wajib. You have to recite Surah Al-Fatiha, given that if, you know, no extenuating circumstances, you're not a convert, you don't know any of the Quran, something like that.
But at least to recite Surah Al-Fatiha, and it's much, much better, and you should, if you can, recite more than just Al-Fatiha. But we'll cover that in a future segment, inshallah. As for that, we've got our homework. Our homework, no phone first thing, okay? Brushing teeth, making the dhikr, and trying to connect with Allah's signs. I'm going to try to implement it. We'll meet back in a week and see how we did, inshallah. Yeah, AG Animations, I also learned. I learn things every time. That's why learning is important. إِذَا حَفِظْتَ شَيْئًا فَافَاتَكَ شَيْئًا If you memorize something, then you've definitely missed other things too. So we all learn. The next thing, so we'll have, I think, maybe two more segments for today, okay? The next segment that we're going to get into is a book that I completed recently. And I spaced, I forgot to bring the book with me to the studio, unfortunately, but that's okay because I took notes on it. And so we'll be running through it over the course of the next few weeks. It's a book that I highly recommend. It's called The Myth of Religious Violence by William T. Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh spelled C-A-V-A-N-A-U-G-H. William T. Kavanaugh. And it's a book that is very, very timely, especially with what's going on in Palestine and the, let's say, the double standards that we continue to see with the media coverage, with how Palestinians are treated compared with Palestinian lives compared to the lives of Israelis. And it just has a lot of,
it has a lot of really important lessons and it's not too difficult. Some of the books that I read, unfortunately, are very, very difficult reads. Like they're not for the average person. But this book is fairly simple to read and it's sort of, there's enough space in it that I think that if you can read it, then I definitely recommend doing so. But we're going to be going through sort of the highlights and the main points of it for the next few weeks. Paula asks, how do you recommend connecting with Allah's signs? And I would answer that spending time in nature, spending as much time in nature as possible. If it's a post-Fajr walk, right? If there's a park by you or, you know, even from your balcony or from your house, if you're able to look up just to notice the stars, right? If you're able to do that, not every, some of us live in major cities where we can't even see the stars at night. It could be a piece of fruit. That sounds strange, but it's true. That's a sign from Allah too. Allah mentions fruit in the Qur'an to see how it was made with its colors and its textures, right? To think about Allah creating this thing in the way that he did, right? That's how I would recommend. It could be birds chirping. That's one of my favorites, right? The chirping of birds or the noises that animals make. That's also a sign from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So we'll talk about, we'll just get into this book a little bit, and then we'll take any sort of final thoughts and questions, and then we'll wrap it up for tonight. Yes, we will definitely for the Muslims of Ethiopia. May Allah make it easy for you. So today we'll go through the intro and the first chapter, okay? If it's expensive, Debbie, then alhamdulillah, you get this for free. You'll get the summary for free,
Cliff's notes, or I guess, I don't know who Cliff is, Tom's notes for free. So what's the point of this book? The point of this book is that we've reached a day and age where there are a lot of prejudices and biases against religion and religious people, okay? That if you are religious, you are looked at as a threat much, much more easily than if you're not religious, okay? We've seen these things in the comments section of YouTube or elsewhere on social media, right? Or in conversation with co-workers or classmates, especially if you live in the West. People say religions always cause violence. Religions are responsible for most of the wars throughout history, most of the bloodshed, right? All these sorts of things. So this author is going to go into what he calls this myth, okay? And, sorry, I was distracted. Ariana, that's really nice. Ariana goes to her rooftop in the morning. That's great. If you're able to do that, then that's wonderful. And so the point of this book is to address this myth, and he calls it a myth, and it's very significant that he calls it a myth, because when he calls it a myth, he's trying to say two things. First of all, that it's not true. It's not true empirically. That means, like, by observation, that religious people are more violent than non-religious people, or that religions cause violence more than other things that aren't religions, okay? So that's the very, very, very first thing. The second purpose in calling it a myth is that a myth is not just something that's not true. It's something that is widely believed
and not questioned, right? That it has reached the level of dogma, and our old name was dogma disrupted, right? So we're going to be disrupting some dogma even here. That this idea that religions are particularly, especially violent, or lead to violence, or that religious people are particularly prone to violence, that this is a myth. It's not only not true, but it's widespread, and it's barely questioned by most people in society, especially, again, in the Western societies. So he's going to tackle this myth. He is going to break it down, and he is going to explain to us not only why this myth isn't true, because that's a fairly basic surface-level point, but also where did this myth come from? Who invented it? Why did they invent it? And what purposes does it serve? So in the intro, he gives just a little taste of what's to come, okay? Part of the reason why it's not true is that nobody—and this is going to be sort of a deep point that we're not going to have time to unpack today, but we'll see it in later segments—is that nobody can agree what religion means, meaning that the very idea of religion is something that nobody can agree all of what belongs in that category and all of what doesn't. Now, you might be saying that sounds really strange, because we say religion, okay, Islam, and Christianity, and Judaism, and Buddhism, all these sorts of things, okay? But what about nationalism? Is nationalism a religion? Okay, what is the definition of a religion? Religion, okay, it's some system that believes
in a higher power or God. Hmm. Some forms of Buddhism don't believe in a higher power or God, but we all think of Buddhism when we think about religion. Okay, well, maybe a religion isn't exactly that. Maybe it's about encountering the sacred. Maybe it's about, right? So he's going to push this to its final, its endpoint, to basically show us that the idea of religion is very, very arbitrary, that it's very, very difficult to come up with a definition of religion that includes everything that we think should be there and excludes everything that we think shouldn't be there. And from a Muslim's perspective, we would go one step further and say that much more useful than thinking about things in terms of religion would be to think about things in terms of truth and falsehood. These are the categories that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la gives us, al-haqq wa al-ba'tr, things that are true and things that are false. But we'll get there in due time. That's just one element of the book, and it's a very, very interesting one. The second element of the book is that what does this myth do? What does it serve? How does it function? What does it create? And one of the things that he says is that the idea of the myth of religious violence, it creates this kind of spooky character in the lives or in the minds, I should say, of most people, the religious fanatic, the fundamentalist, the extremist, the terrorist. That is a threat. Now, we've seen this over and over and over again, both in the United States and the West and also in Palestine. The person who is assumed to be an extremist or assumed to be violent, he's always a religious person.
He's not considered to be a secular person or a nationalistic person or anything like that. The myth that religious people are more violent basically turns religious people into legitimate targets of violence. That's one of the main points of the book. So to say that, uh-oh, this religious fanatic over here, he wants to come take your freedom or he wants to impose his sharia law on you, right? Now we have to arrest, now we have to spy, now we have to shoot, and now we have to bomb in order to stop this violence from happening. You see how that works? So this is one of the main points of the book and it's an extremely important point. He also pushes the idea of some of the answers that people are ready to give when it comes to this idea that religious people are violent. Some of those answers aren't super helpful. They respond like, well, the people who are claiming to do religious violence, it's not really religion, it's really economics or politics or things like that. The author says that's not really a helpful response and we're gonna see why. There's other people that say, well, they're misunderstanding their religion, right? This isn't the true Christianity or this isn't the true Islam. Now this guy's not a Muslim, but he also says that that's not the most helpful response either. The real response, he says, is a response that responds to the myth by solving the problem that it was invented to solve. If the myth is posing a problem of violence and trying to solve this problem of violence by explaining it in some sort of way, there's this violence, what's at fault? Ah, religion and religious people, right? Then we need to solve that problem in a different way in order to prove that the myth isn't true.
So the first chapter of the book, that was all just in the introduction. The first chapter of the book is called the anatomy of the myth. If you guys have ever done anatomy class, you split something up or dissect it and you see all the different parts that it's made up of. So he's going to go into the anatomy of this myth and what he wants to show, he talks about three different claims that make up this myth of religious violence. The first part of the myth is the idea that religion is absolutist. We'll talk about what that means. The second is that religion is divisive. And the third is that religion is irrational. So the idea that religion is absolutist, what is meant by that? And he pulls a bunch of quotes from a ton of different authors, historians, et cetera, across time, is that absolute has to do with complete certainty, that religious people are so certain that they're right, that they can't admit that anybody else could possibly be right and therefore they're more violent. We hear this all the time. Or that religion is absolutist, that people are so fervently believe in what they think is true, that they only accept blind obedience to it. We hear this a lot too, blind obedience to religion. You're not a rational thinker. You're not a free thinker. Now, the author pushes back and he says, okay, are any of these things exclusively true about religion and religious people? Don't we see secular nations being just as guilty with absolutism? Don't we see people saying that the United States of America is the best country? This is a superiority. Don't we see that there is blind obedience if you're part of the military? You're not allowed to disobey orders.
These are proof that secular nations are just as guilty as being absolutist as any religion is. What the author exposes is that what is being absolutist is really decided ahead of time. What people mean to say is that it's just religious people being religious. But he says that this is not something that exclusively belongs to religion or religious people. It's found just as much with anybody. The second claim, that religion is divisive. Okay, so here's the logic. He says, okay, people will say, oh, religion is divisive. It creates this us versus them. And therefore that leads to violence. Religion is divisive. Also in that, it's violence is symbolic. Okay, it's not just about dollars and cents and resources and stuff like that. It's about truth and falsehood. It's about the right and the wrong. It's a cosmic war, even extending into the afterlife, right, heaven and hell. People also say that religion is divisive in the sense that you commit to a religion like you commit to nothing else. And the author again pushes back and brings up examples to show that this is not something that's only true of religion. That if you go to any nation state, and I live in the United States, so we can take that as an example, the same thing happens. And all you have to do is look at what happened after 9-11 and the war on terror to see what did President Bush say? You're with us or you're with the terrorists. That's us versus them. The idea that it's a cosmic war, he called it a crusade, right? The ultimate commitment, violent language, yes, it's just as much present in secular nations
as it is for religions. It's not something that's special for religions. And finally, the idea, and we'll end the segment with this, that religion is somehow irrational. And it's funny, I actually pulled up a tweet that I saw today that I had to respond to because I thought it was hilarious. Rob Henderson, who I don't know who this person is, he's quoting some sort of article. I'm not sure if he's the author or not. He says, one reason for Islamists rage is their awareness of the extreme vulnerability of Islam to rational criticism. Islamists are aware of what happened to Christianity once the intellectual nitpickers got going. They think that prevention is the only cure. Now, anybody who knows anything about Islam knows how ridiculous this sort of statement is. And I retweeted saying, laughs in usul al-fiqh, right? Because the Islamic tradition is very, very different from the Christian tradition in the admission of rational inquiry, rational thought, critical thinking, testing things, right? Searching for answers. And in my own personal experience, when I grew up in the church, people would tell me, oh, we shouldn't ask that question. You just have to believe. Whereas in Islam, I was always encouraged to ask questions and I always have asked questions. Some of those questions I've kept with me for years and I didn't find a response until quite some time. But yeah, that's correct, Morning Reboot. You can take it from me who lived in Medina for five years and has a degree in Sharia. It is all about trying to look at things critically and rationally. The idea that religion is irrational or specifically or particularly irrational is something that has no empirical basis. According to this sort of myth, there's an idea that that makes religious people more fanatical, more zealous, more passionate and more fervent than non-religious people.
And if we see, again, the author points out and he brings up many examples, secular examples, where we see the exact same behavior. So it's not something that is limited to religion. What really is going on is that people, they already have it out for religion. And that's a great point, Samia. Never trust anybody. That's a red flag, somebody who calls Islamist, which is really nothing, just an invention in the first place. So H asks, what if rational thinking brings someone to asking dangerous questions, such as who questions Allah features and location? There's different things. And Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la points out in the Quran that there are different types of questions. And some of those questions are rewarded and praised and responded to seriously, and other questions are not. Asma, yes, I would recommend that book for someone for 17 or 18. So for example, H, when the hypocrites or the people who reject faith ask questions, what's their intent behind asking a question? Are they asking a question to discover and to learn? Or are they asking a question to avoid responsibility and to prolong their sort of being found out as being deniers? This is something that Allah discusses extensively in the Quran. And for example, if you take Bani Israel, historically, the people who followed Moses out of Egypt, they ask questions and they ask lots of questions, but their questions are not sincere questions. Their questions are merely a facade for their ined, for their stubborn disobedience, meaning that they recognize what's true, but they're trying to find excuses. And if any of you have children, you know this very well. You're asking your child to do some sort of chore, clean up their room.
Say, oh, do I have to? Well, can I do it tomorrow? Right, they're asking questions maybe, but the questions are not sincere questions. They're only meant to avoid. They're questions of avoidance. And so if that's the type of question we're talking about, then that's a question that is blameworthy because it reveals a sickness in the heart, okay? And there's plenty of examples of that. However, there are times in the Quran where some of the prophets asked questions. And some of those questions came from places of wanting to increase their certainty and certitude, right? Kaifatuhil mawta, right? Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam asks Allah, how are you going to resurrect the dead? Awalam tu'min, right? Allah responds like, don't you believe? And Ibrahim says, yeah, I believe, but I just want to see it so that I increase in faith. And so then Allah shows him. He doesn't reprimand him. Similarly, when Musa Alayhi Salaam, Moses asks Allah to reveal himself and Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la reveals himself to a mountain and the mountain crumbles. And so Musa falls down prostrate, right? Or unconscious. This is something that Allah responded to in the positive because of the intent of the questioner, okay? So there are questions that lead to certainty and there are questions that lead away from certainty and they have a lot to do with the intention and the purity of heart of the person who is asking. Emma says, I've heard religious people are more violent because since God, the divine commands or it's perceived to command, then it's obeyed without question. Yes, Emma, that's exactly one of the doubts that he responds to. That would come back under the sort of divisive, religion is divisive and religion is absolutist. But we would push back just like the author did and bring up secular examples that are exactly the same.
That there is complete obedience to the nation state. There's complete obedience to the army. If you're in the army or you're under a military commander, you don't have the freedom to disobey a command, right? And so this is something that is not exclusive to religion at all. And the people who only have it out for religion, they make it seem like it's something that is only comes from. They have them in the call to be taught exactly. That make it seem like it's something exclusive to religion. So anyway, we'll end with that today. It's a lot to think about and a lot to digest, but we'll pick up from there for next week when it comes to addressing this myth, the myth of religious violence, a very, very important topic. And I think noting from all of you, it seems like something that's very, very useful. I think we come across these sorts of questions and doubts lots. So we'll use the rest of our time before we sign off for tonight to address any sort of questions that people have left over. Selma brings up an interesting point. She's quoting Marwa, Mashallah from Norway. Welcome. She brings up the point about don't ask about things that if they were revealed to you would harm you. And that is true in a context. There's a context to that thought. I mean, welcome, Debbie, thank you. There's a context to that and it's tied to Selma. It's tied to the result. Meaning that there are things that you can ask about that asking about them would harm you if they were revealed. And there are other things that you could ask about that aren't like that, right? So we have to differentiate between the two. There are things that you ask about in order to increase certainty. If you carry a doubt with you, and many of our teenagers are afflicted by this, okay?
Then you have a responsibility to address that doubt. If you don't meaningfully address that doubt, then it's going to fester and become a problem for you. That's a very different sort of intentionality than people sort of asking about things unnecessarily. Shayma, does Yaqeen go live every day? I don't believe so. This program is weekly. So it will be Wednesdays, 9 p.m., excuse me, no, 8 p.m. Eastern time, that's New York time. Morning Reboot says, I mean, in the army you could theoretically practice free will, but it's highly discouraged societally. Well, we could say the same thing about religion. Morning Reboot, you can theoretically sin and disbelieve, but you're going to have to face the consequences in the afterlife. So again, these things are not particular. Nidal says, how do we deal with absolutism amongst other sects within Islam? That's a little bit of a different question. The scope of the book is addressing, is absolutism particular to religion or more found in religion or exclusive to religion compared to any sort of other secular ideologies or nationalism or things like that? And the answer is no, it's not exclusive. But if we're talking about within Islam, there are sects, yeah, there are some people, I would hesitate to say just sects, that there are people of every sect and flavor that could deal with some training for how to deal with difference, legitimate difference within the religion. H, how do you keep sincere intentions and good deeds? Try to minimize doing them in front of people, try to do them in secretly if you can, and try to make sure that they are, if you can't, then make sure that the deeds that you do in public are the same quality as the deeds that you do in private.
Lena asks, how do we control our intentions though? Sometimes I'm afraid of getting mixed up. Perfecting the intention is an ongoing battle that is never perfect and complete. That's why there's forgiveness, okay? And the scholars mentioned this, there's a difference between, you begin an act with an intention, you want to do your best to preserve that intention, but you don't want to let Shaitan commit west-west, right? Or to sort of these whispers so that you're so paranoid that you never do anything in the first place, right? That would be a problem. So attempt to, attempt your best to, attempt your best to perfect your intention, and it's always sort of just do the best that you can. That's all the time we have for today. The recording will be up on YouTube after it's over. Any other further questions, we'll try to take them and address it in another form, inshallah. But we don't want to overstay our welcome. For this, we'll pick up next week, and I hope you enjoy this as much as I do, and we look forward to your questions and participation. May Allah reward everybody who participated in tonight's program. May Allah grant us what's best, and may Allah continue to aid and support and grant victory to our brothers and sisters in Palestine and our Muslims the world over. BarakAllahu feekum, taqabballahu minna wa minkum. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
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