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Michigan Mosques Say NO! | Imam Tom Live
Join Imam Tom Live this week as we discuss what happened over the past seven days. From Joe Biden having trouble visiting Michigan because no Masjids in the state were willing to host him, to the incredible turnout in DC protesting the Gaza Genocide, there is a lot to cover. Plus, the ICJ hearings, habits that you can add to your pre-Fajr routine, and we continue to read the book "The Myth of Religious Violence."
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. live stream. I'm your host Imam Tom and it's a pleasure to be with you this evening. We have a very, very interesting show lined up for you tonight. We're going to be talking, as we normally do, a little bit about current events. A lot of stuff is happening every week, especially to our brothers and sisters in Palestine. May Allah ease their affairs and grant them victory and ease. We also have the following segment of our book that we've been reviewing, Myth of Religious Violence. We also are going to proceed with the actions, daily habits of the Prophet ﷺ. And we have some interesting clips that we're going to show and review and watch together as well, inshallah. So welcome everybody, wa'alaikumussalam, wa'alaikumussalam. We have Amina, MRS, Yaseen Parker. Welcome everybody to the program. Always feel free to drop in where you're watching from. We have always a very international audience and I love that particular because it really reflects the ummah as a whole. And something I've said before, and I'll say again definitely, that everybody in the ummah should take time to learn about the different parts of the ummah. If you're in Somalia, you should know something about your brothers and sisters in Bosnia. If you're in Turkey, you should, or Turkey, you should learn something about your brothers and sisters in Mali or Mauritania. If you're in Indonesia, you should learn something about your brothers and sisters in Afghanistan. That is how we stick together, by knowing about each other and then through feeling things towards each other, right. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, when he talked about feeling as an ummah, right, feeling as if we're one body, how do you feel as if we're one body? You can't just conjure it up out of nowhere. You have to develop that feeling. You have to structure that feeling. How are you going to structure that feeling? How are you going to get to the point where one day you actually feel something when your brothers and sisters in Afghanistan are going through something? Well, knowing about them and knowing about their struggles and knowing about their history,
maybe a little bit about their language and culture, is a really, really fundamental and easy way to do it. So with that, welcome again, Jay Flower. I've got Debbie from Chicago. Walaikum Assalam. I enjoyed my brief time in Chicago last month. Jay Flower from Saudi Arabia. Oh, which city in Saudi Arabia? Jay Flower. Plus to spend five years in Medina, Alhamdulillah. We have Ali Ashakur from New Jersey. Walaikum Assalam. Also from New Jersey. I am a New Jersey native. I come from South Jersey, born and raised. We've got Sadiqa, Walaikum Assalam, from Canada. Denise from Chicago as well. Walaikum Assalam. Ahmed Salim, Shaykhana. Walaikum Assalam. Walaikum Assalam. Shaykh Ahmed Salim in the house watching tonight. MashaAllah. Pleasure to see you on here. May Allah make it easy for you and help you down in Atlanta. Walaikum Assalam from Al-Quds. May Allah bless the people of Quds. Jay Flower from Ta'if. I was blessed enough to visit Ta'if one time and I absolutely loved it. I wish I had spent more time in Ta'if during my time studying over in Medina, but the trip that I made was very enjoyable. MashaAllah. Let's see. Who else do we have? MashaAllah. Virginia. We have Kalamazoo, Michigan. Matt Hunt. Welcome to the program. Yusuf. Peace to you. Walaikum Assalam. Very good. So, you always prove me correct when I say that we have the whole ummah here. We have the whole ummah here. And I know that in just a little bit, our brothers and sisters in the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia are probably praying Fajr
and they'll be on as well. And then after them, our brothers and sisters from Pakistan. MashaAllah. Many of the folks from the UK are sleeping right now. No blame on them. They'll catch it after when it's recorded up. MashaAllah. From Minnesota. Welcome. Walaikum Assalam. South Jersey also. MashaAllah. Very nice. Camden County. MashaAllah. That's where I was from. A little town called Audubon. Very nice. Okay. Excellent. So, we have, as I said, a very nice program lined up for everybody today. We're going to start with what's been going on since the last week. And one of the biggest pieces of news that has come across my desk was the decision by the government of the UK to proscribe a certain Muslim group as a terrorist organization. Now, this hasn't been officially enacted or gone into effect yet. In fact, as far as I am aware, that will be debated in parliament tomorrow, Thursday, and it will be going into effect if it's not voted down on Friday, if I'm correct about that. Walaikum Assalam. Roblox from Syracuse. MashaAllah. We have Nayar from Tampa. MashaAllah. Nice to see you here. Welcome, everybody. So, this group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, you know, there was sort of a trap laid for them by Piers Morgan on his show where he had one of the directors of Hizb ut-Tahrir on the program. And there was a video clip of them having a demonstration and someone chanting for jihad. And what they meant was that the armies of the Muslim nations, such as Egypt and etc., should go and should help the people of Gaza and Palestine and liberate them. That's what was intended by that. Of course, it was taken out of context. Piers Morgan himself on air was hurling accusations at his guest. And now, a short time after, we see that this particular
organization is now potentially being designated a terrorist group. Now, you don't have to be a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir or be a supporter of them to see, first of all, to oppose this and to see the danger in this, right? Because anybody who is a practicing Muslim knows that the way that the law plays out is not symmetrical, and it's not fair, and it's not applied in a principled manner. So to give you a sense of contrast, in this week in the UK, something else happened, where I believe it was a Zionist who flew to occupied Palestine and fought for the IOF and actually posted extremely controversial, and controversial is not even the right word, it's offensive and disgusting videos. And for the sake of our viewers, if some of them are young, we're going to not even mention the specifics of it. But basically, live streamed some of his deplorable activities, was able to come back to the United Kingdom, and was invited by a charity, his name was Simon Levi, I believe, invited by a charity and put up on a poster bill and as part of this, you know, touted as some sort of local hero, or put up as an example for other people. Now, I want to highlight the double standards that are at play here, which everybody is well aware of, is that it's unconscionable and unimaginable that anybody would be allowed to go and fight in a foreign nation's army, and then come back and not only be allowed to just live life as normal, but to be heralded as some sort of hero, is a very, very disturbing thing. And yet, it is a group such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, who again, you don't have to be a member or a supporter, to oppose prescribing them as a supposed terrorist organization, which is in the UK, as far as I understand, a peaceful organization, they do not call for any sort of
violence. And then to see the way that this other individual is treated with kids gloves and not even, I've heard that the UK charity organization is investigating the charity that invited him. But the point still stands, is that we see, and this is something that we experienced in the United States, it's also something that our brothers and sisters in the UK and in other Western nations experience, where terrorism and their designating an organization as a terrorist group, usually is an excuse for anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic rhetoric, and anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment. And how we can tell is that these designations, they're not applied evenly, they're not applied to the groups that we have here in the United States that are actively calling for violence. Somebody told me, and it needs to be verified, but they told me that the KKK isn't even registered or considered a terrorist organization in the United States of America. And yet we have talk about people wanting to designate the Muslim Brotherhood or something like this as a terrorist organization. This is extremely dangerous. And so we call upon everybody who's got a voice and everybody who's able to oppose this sort of thing, right? That this is nonsense, it's not fair, and that these are scare tactics that are meant to silence the advocacy and the education that we've been doing for the Palestinian people. And it's important to remember that we're not going to be silenced, that we're not going to be intimidated, but we also want the law to be applied fairly. And so we ask a lot to ease the situation and for everybody who's able to speak up, should speak up on the issue. In other news, we had sort of a press release from President Biden, Genocide Joe himself, Butcher Biden. Guys in the studio, can we put that up on screen? We have the press release. Here it is. Statement from President Joe Biden marking 100 days of captivity for hostages in Gaza. So this was a monumental
sort of benchmark. We've passed 100 dates and all of us have kind of lost sleep and shed many tears and have been very, very angry and gone through all the emotions from what we've been watching in front of our eyes. Now, Biden releases this press release and manages to not mention the Palestinian people whatsoever, which is and is not surprising. It is surprising that after 100 days and feeling the pressure and the announcement, some of the Muslims here in the United States have announced their determination to abandon him in November, that he would not even feel the pressure to at least even address or make some sort of half-hearted attempt. It really shows how insignificant and worthless Palestinian lives are to the President of the United States of America and also how insignificant Muslim opinion is and Muslim votes are to the President of the United States. Now, people are saying that he's trying to schedule a trip to Michigan and we have many, many Muslims here in the state of Michigan, the United States of America, and that he's actually having trouble finding people who are willing to meet with him, right? And this is not a surprise. Now, this is a very, very important form of pressure that Muslims and Arabs are exerting and we hope that there's some sort of change that comes about from all this pressure that we're exerting. Now, as a believer, as a believer, we believe that we're supposed to do the right thing no matter what and we're supposed to be the truth tellers and we'll get to that in a minute as well with some of the other pieces of news that are going around. So, when it comes to holding your elected leaders accountable, this is not merely a political issue, right? There's very, very little difference between or there's very, sometimes it's not even possible, most of the time it's not even possible to
separate, and we talked about this last week, what is an Islamic issue and what is a political issue because for us it's all one, right? Our Islamic beliefs, our Islamic sensibilities are standing up for justice, our truth-telling, that's an Islamic imperative, that's something that Allah ﷻ commands us to do, right? And that's something that is the way of the Prophet ﷺ and the way of the first companions, the Salaf, and all the righteous after them. So, we have to make sure this is not just a political duty, we're not just doing it because, you know, we like to get involved in politics or things like this, that this is a religious obligation, is to raise awareness about what's going on, to stand up and to be counted on the side of the truth. We want that if Allah ﷻ were to ask us about this after we meet him, right, in the Day of Judgment, that we want to be able to say confidently that we spoke up, that we did everything that we could, that we tried to tell the people the truth around us and be witnesses to that truth. Two other things we'll touch on before we transition to our next segment, and this also highlights the importance and the need for Muslims to stand up and tell the truth in this particular climate and these particular lands especially, and that is the complete lack of news coverage that some really, really important events have gotten or have not gotten, let's say. So, one of them was the criminal court, the ICJ, the International Court of Justice. Many people were at least, let's say, given hearts, they were heartened and encouraged that such a major international institution would carry the case and hold this case brought by South Africa, joined by many, many other nations, against the occupying force of Israel for its crimes. And we've talked before about how maybe there's no enforcement mechanism, maybe this is not going to actually quote-unquote do anything, but it is a new level
of exposure and a new level of education and a new level of sort of, I guess you could say, bringing things that you and I already know to the mainstream. Some people that aren't on social media, the first time that they're seeing some of these atrocities is by watching the court proceedings. Now, this makes what I'm about to say particularly a shame because when it came to the, when it came to the news coverage of these court proceedings, the first day where South Africa presented its case against Israel, it was not covered by any major news agency in the United States of America, and many of the western news agencies did not cover it at all. The second day of the court proceedings, when the occupying state of Israel defended itself, all of a sudden now, it was on the major news channels and people were allowing, they were allowing this sort of thing to be aired. So people only were allowed to hear one side of the story, which again, we shouldn't have been surprised, but it was surprising to be honest, just to see that level of obvious, obvious bias. Similarly, in the United States, we had a very, very large demonstration in Washington DC that took place. Some estimates about 400,000 or higher people that showed up to demonstrate against what's going on, the barbarity towards the people of Gaza. And again, yet again, there were almost no mention of this particular demonstration in the major news networks. So if this is the climate that we exist in, if we see that the corporate media that supposedly free press is not even going to give airtime to the truth, not even going to give
airtime to both sides, right, we're not even asking for, you know, 100% coverage, just to give both sides an opportunity to speak the truth, then that makes our duty as Muslims to stand up as witnesses for the truth even more significant, that the time where everybody needs your voice is, it's much more important to use your voice in moments and situations where people are in desperate need of your voice. And we live in a time where that has proven to be true, that the world is in desperate need of your voice, that you have to speak up in any capacity that you're able to, to bring the truth to as many people as possible. So that being said, that covers our current events for this week. We're going to transition to our Habit Building Program. So we've been going on, we've been talking about this book right here, which is part of the genre of books, which is called, is sort of referred to as, and sort of how you should structure your day. And last week we had talked about how in the Prophet Muhammad, when he woke up, and he woke up before Fajr, and I'd love to hear actually, let's take a second here to get some input from you all, how have your habits been going, right? We talked about, first of all, waking up before Fajr, okay? We've talked about not looking at the phone right away. Alhamdulillah, last week I can confidently and happily say that I did a really good job not looking at the phone right away. I challenged myself, even though I still have yet to make it out to buy an actual alarm clock, I'm still using my phone for my alarm clock, but I have stopped looking at my phone until I'm done my Salah, until I'm done Fajr and the Adhkar after it, etc. And that has been a game
changer, Alhamdulillah. Wa alaikum salam, Daniella Tan from Malaysia, salamat atan. So how did you do? How did you do waking up before Fajr? Has it been, you know, again we talked about a couple of people last week, they said maybe you were able to do it three days a week last week, okay, well then the next week maybe your goal should be four, right? We're not perfect people, we're only trying to get a little bit better each time. So we said that in addition to that, the Prophet ﷺ would take some time to connect with Allah's signs after making Dhikr, right? After saying certain things, expressing gratitude to Allah ﷻ for awaking him for another day, he would look to the sky, and then we mentioned, mashaAllah Daniella, going strong two weeks already. Yeah, mashaAllah, good for you. We mentioned how he would recite certain ayat from the Qur'an, okay? Excellent job, Nabila says, I've been waking up before Fajr, haven't looked until after Fajr, Allahu Akbar. So we're part of team us, mashaAllah, very good. Yes, and I don't know about you Daniella, or anyone else, Ahmed and Nabila, but I personally have felt a lot more productivity in my days. I definitely get through a lot more of what I had wanted to get through if my day starts before Fajr. I'm sure you all experienced something similar. So the Prophet ﷺ, he would recite the last ten ayat of Surah Adh-Imran, okay? And we mentioned some of the main points from those particular ayat, and it's interesting because it connects to his practice, of looking to the sky and connecting with those signs. We talked a lot about sort of connecting to Allah's signs and how important that is. MashaAllah, from Turkey, mashaAllah.
There's one more point that I'd like to point out in Adh-Imran that I think is significant for our times especially, and then we'll move on to sort of some of the other things that he used to do ﷺ. So one of the things that Allah said, and particularly if you go to ayah number 196, he says, so, and these ayat are some of my favorite in the Qur'an. When Allah says, don't be amazed or don't be deceived by the people of kufr, the people who deny Allah, how they're able to just do whatever they want in this world. They're able to move, to go around, they've got freedom. You guys are locked up, you guys are oppressed, you guys are in a hard situation, and they seem to have everything. Allah ﷻ says, don't let that trick you. Okay, don't let that fool you or delude you. And you start to wonder, why? What do you mean? How could that possibly delude me? That could delude you in thinking that they're doing something right. Right? Like the story of Qarun, you see the rich guy passing by like, wow, that person's so blessed. That person's so, you know, Allah loves them so much, they gave them so many blessings. And you don't realize, you don't realize how it's actually a punishment for them. Or it's actually something that's going to set them up for a failure. So then Allah ﷻ says, مَتَان قَرِيلٌ ثُمَّ مَأْوَاهُمْ جَهَنَّمْ وَبِتْ سَلْمِهَا That this is just everything that they enjoy in this life is just a temporary pleasure. Right? It's a side quest. It's not the main point of being here. After it, later, their resting place is going to be the hellfire. And what an evil resting place.
ذَٰكِنِ الَّذِينَ تَقَوْا رَبَّهُمْ لَهُمْ جَنَّاتٌ تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهَارُ But for the people of piety, the people who have faith, then they will have with their Lord gardens, running rivers. خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا نُزْنَ مِنْ عِنْ لِلَّهِ This is something permanent to enjoy forever and forever. So we see that one thing that Allah ﷻ wants us to absolutely learn and doesn't ever want us to forget is that when it comes to what you see in this life, it is not a clear indication. It is not a clear indication of what is going to happen in the afterlife. It's not something that's like, oh, well, the rich here, they're going to, the blessed here are going to be blessed there. Right? The people who are rich here and powerful here and successful here are going to be rich and powerful and successful in Jannah. No, that's not how it works. That doesn't mean that necessarily being wealthy is bad. We have our wealthy companions, right? But what it means is that you can't draw that conclusion from what you see in the dunya. Okay? That the most important thing is having taqwa and Allah ﷻ has his own plan when it comes to the dunya. Exactly like Amirah said, it can be their test. Yes, a hundred percent. So, after reciting the last 10 ayat of Surah Al-Imran, what did the Prophet ﷺ do to prepare for night prayers? We haven't even reached night prayers yet. Well, obviously, he would prepare himself to clean himself. And we talked already about one of the first things he would do ﷺ was to make, to use his sawak, which today we have toothbrushes. Maybe you have a sawak at home, but about how that hygiene is an extremely important part of being a Muslim and that cleanliness is part of faith as the Prophet ﷺ said, right? So, he would begin by washing his hands three times and he would rinse out his mouth and his nose three times and proceed on to make
wudu. Now, this is not a fit class and we're not going to explain all the process of wudu. You should hopefully know that, inshallah. If you don't, then there's lots of resources out there on YouTube and otherwise for new Muslims to understand how to make wudu. But what I want to draw your attention to and what I was sort of interested in was the thing that, one of the things that the Prophet ﷺ said after making wudu. And there's a couple different ahadith that are narrated. The one that interested me especially was the one that's narrated in Sunan al-Tirmidhi. And there's some discussion as to whether this is completely authentic or not. However, the meaning is certainly correct of the du'a. So, the Prophet ﷺ said, اللهم جعلني من التوابين وجعلني من المتطهرين. After the shahadah. We know that making the shahadah after the ash-sharwa lillahi lill'Allah, ash-sharwa lillahi lill'Allah, after making wudu is something the Prophet ﷺ used to do. And then this. So, this statement, اللهم جعلني من التوابين. O Allah, make me of those who turn to You. التوابين. تواب يتوب is to turn, literally. And figuratively, it means to turn back to Allah, like tawbah. We say that we make tawbah, means it's a turning. Like imagine you walking away from Allah step by step and then you decide, you know what, I'm going to turn around and come back. That's what tawbah is. So, we're asking Allah ﷻ to make us from among the tawwabeen, the people who repent, the people who turn back to Allah. And we're asking Allah ﷻ to make us from among the mutathahireen, the people who purify themselves. Now, there's two things that I think are really interesting about this particular hadith. And one of them is the relationship between the inside and the outside. We've said already that Islam is a clean religion,
that we have hygiene that's built into our religion in a really important way. Now, the Prophet ﷺ connected these two things. He said, من التوابين ومن المتطاهرين that between purifying ourselves on the outside, making wudu, and purifying ourselves on the inside, right, which is tawbah, which is repenting to Allah ﷻ. And many of the scholars have said that one of the most useful things that you can do when it comes to your tawbah, or when it comes to, well, when it comes to your wudu in particular, is to look at your limbs and think about the places that the water is actually touching, and to make repentance and seek Allah's forgiveness for the mistakes and the sins of those particular limbs. So, if you're washing your hands, for example, in wudu, you're imagining, you're imagining, what were all the sins that my hands committed since the last time I made wudu? Maybe I hit somebody, maybe I took something that didn't belong to me, right? Maybe I made a gesture, right? The Prophet ﷺ condemned even mocking somebody even with a gesture. Maybe I did that, okay? And then when you're having your water run over that part of you, you're actually watching the sin just wash off. And you're imagining it, you're imagining it leave you entirely. That's a very powerful thing. Now, imagine if you do that, not just for your hands, but then for the rest of you, do your mouth. Imagine all the things that you said. Did you say a bad word? Did you make fun of somebody? Did you tease somebody? Did you speak badly about someone behind their back? Right? You think your face, you think about your eyes, right? When you wash your face, you run water over your eyes. Think about all the things that you've looked at. We live in the age
of social media, right? What are all the things that you've looked at? Did you look at something that was impermissible to look at? And imagine the water running down over your eyes and everything just being washed away and wiped clean. I mean, you wipe over your head, right? You have your thoughts, all the things that you thought about. You have your feet, you have everything that you walked to, everything that you could even extend it drove to, right? Put down the gas pedal on the brake, right? So you can imagine every single part of wudu. You can imagine the water washing away the sins of that part. And you see the connection that the Prophet ﷺ made, أَمَلْ أَللَّهُمْ جَعَلْنَا مِنَ الْتَوَّرِّبِينَ وَجَعَلْنَا مِنَ الْطَحِّرِينَ is that if you purify yourself regularly, that's just once a day. Imagine doing this five times a day. That محاسبة, that مراقبة, that taking yourself into account, thinking constantly about all the things that you've been doing. Don't you think a person like that is going to turn back to Allah? Don't you think a person like that, Allah is going to forgive? Don't you think a person like that is going to have a very strong relationship to Allah and have a very easy time leaving their sins? This is something that all of us should try to put into practice. So let's make that our goal for the following week. Let's try to perfect our wudu. Take time. Most of the time we're just slapping water around and we're rushing, right? Let's try in this coming week to really be present in our wudu. Think about each limb as you're washing it, cleansing it from sin, and think about Allah making you a more repentant person through the purification of your body, inshallah. And we'll see how it goes and we'll check back in next week. Okay, so next up, now that we've got our assignment for the week for our personal development, our
habits, let's go to, we have, I believe, studio, the guys in the studio, we've got a clip that we're going to show, correct? We're going to take a look at a speech in Washington, D.C. from last week and maybe pause and give some reflections on it. Here we go, Bismillah. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Behind me, you have over 200 martyrs that are represented by their families. 200 martyrs whose stories were never told in the mainstream media, posters that you have not seen on the light poles here in Washington, D.C. or in New York or in Chicago or in Dallas. And all of us represents now over 36,000 people that have either been martyred or that are under the rubble. And I want you to appreciate that in this country, this isn't our first protest. We have taken to the streets in the name of one victim of state violence for months at a time. If we were to take to the streets for every single casualty and every single person that is under the rubble for the last three months, it would take us a hundred years to honor each and every single one of those victims. Pause that right there. So there's a couple of things that are very significant. First of all, when he's talking about we represent so many martyrs, he's talking about himself as a Palestinian and the people behind him who are also Palestinians, all of their family members,
right? A lot of time, people who don't have anybody who is a relative or friends or family in the region, they think of it as, oh, that's just over there. But that's not true, okay? So we have many people in your daily life, my daily life who have family there, right? And so these things are extremely, extremely personal. Some people who are in Gaza, maybe up until October 1st, and then they just happen to come back or leave on vacation or something like that. And then they're trapped out and their family or friends are trapped in, right? So that's what he is referring to specifically when he's saying that we represent these martyrs. The second thing I wanted to point out, right? And that's something, Amita, you're right, that us is hurting over there. Exactly. And so as a believer, we're supposed to be calibrated so that we feel the hurt just as they do. Now, why I brought that up is that that's a surprising thing. If you talk to some people who are non-Muslim, they are amazed to even meet somebody who knows somebody who's in Gaza or who's in the West Bank, that this is an entirely closed off world to them, a world that they've never stepped into. So a lot of people, unfortunately, only hear one side of the story through the people that they happen to know. So telling your story and sharing those things is very important. Now, the second thing that I wanted to point out with, in addition to the fact that, yeah, the news hasn't been covering it, Sheikh Omar said that as well, is that the fact that he called them martyrs, that's significant. Some people, they say, well, you shouldn't call them that because, you know, people, they get uncomfortable, right? And people, they might not know what you mean. But it's very important to not erase the Islamic dimension of Palestinian liberation, just as it's very important to not erase the Islamic dimension to everything that
we do. If we were to sanitize and police, sanitize our language and police ourselves with every single thing that we say and do, we'd reach a point where there wasn't necessarily any Islam left that we're practicing, right? We translate every single thing into their language, right? We have our own language and our own way of talking about things. And if people have misunderstandings about what those things mean or refer to, then we can have a conversation and educate people as to what they mean and refer to, right? But what's happening is that some people are playing dumb, like they don't understand, and then trying to accuse us and make us seem like we're violent people or things like that. For example, the whole chant, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Now, there are people who are saying that this is a call to an open genocide. And that's very, very false. Nobody who says that means anything of the sort. It's not a call to violence at all. It's a call for liberation. But the people who claim this thing about this chant, they know very well that it doesn't actually mean anything violent. This is something that they're just using in order to silence us, in order to demonize us, in order to make us seem like violent people. And again, it's all ironic, because who is the one who is actually committing violence here? Guys in the studio, can we go back to watch the rest? And if we were to collectively take to the streets for the rest of our lives, for just one of the people on these posters, for just one Wa'al al-Dahduh, it would be worth it. They ask us where our Nelson Mandela's are. We say that our Mandela is suing you criminals at The Hague right now for genocide.
We say that our Mandela's are the children that have resisted over seven decades of occupation standing in front of Israeli tanks. We say that our Mandela's are the Wa'al al-Dahduh's and the Mu'taz's of the world who continue to hold up cameras to your genocide, unintimidated. We say that our Mandela's are the Rachel Corey's of the world, are the allies of Palestine, that despite all of the Israeli propaganda over these years, have never relented in standing by our side and saying that we will not go home until every Palestinian can go home. Dear brothers and sisters, I wonder what Desmond Tutu, who went to Palestine and recognized Apartheid and said this is even worse than what we experienced in South Africa, and who particularly bemoans watching ambulances blocked by checkpoints and Apartheid walls, I wonder what he would say watching this genocidal government bomb hospitals and ambulances today. I want to capture not just the cruelty of the moment, I want to capture the insanity of the moment. How low is the threat? So we see one of the really important things that Sheikh Omar is highlighting is tied to our last point about how they're always trying to make sure that the terms upon which we're asking for liberation or striving for liberation, they want to police our chants, they want to police our slogans. You can't say from the river to the sea, you can't say martyrs, you can't say struggle or resistance or anything like this. And in the same breath, they'll say, oh, if only you tried peace,
you violent Muslims, right? When we put our lives on the line, when we put our lives on the line, Muslims, right? When we point to who are our equivalents of Nelson Mandela's, and how are they being treated, right? That every single person who has attempted to stand up in a peaceful way has been slaughtered, moaned down, bombed, assassinated, marginalized, right? And so we are in a moment that's very, very interesting. And everyone save your receipts, because there's going to come a day, inshallah ta'ala, that Palestine will be free. And people will pretend to have supported Palestine, just like people pretend to have supported South Africa now. And we know that historically, that there were nations that supported South Africa as an apartheid state up until the very end and allowed it to happen. And then after everything was settled and set, and Nelson Mandela was imprisoned and called a terrorist, and then he was finally, well, now he was the hero. We just had MLK Day, right, in the United States, Martin Luther King, Jr., who the United States government tried to undermine and prevent from doing his work at every single step. And now we pretend that he's a hero. There's going to come a day when everybody pretends that everybody that we're celebrating now are heroes. And the memory of the liberation of Palestine will become another example of people trying to pat themselves on the back. Well, we're going to keep the receipts, and we're going to show them when the time comes that you fought it every single step of the way, every single peaceful
person, every single truth teller, every single journalist, every single person for the people who are the Zionists who are rhetorically saying, oh, where are the Nelson Mandela's and the Martin Luther King, Jr.'s? They're alive or they're already dead. There's been plenty of them, dozens of them, if not more. But it's okay. We will continue our struggle, just like South Africa continued their struggle, just like other movements have continued their struggle. But we will remember in the end that who was in support of Palestinian liberation and who fought against it with everything they had until it was too late and they couldn't even pretend to be against it anymore. Studio, how much left of the clip do we have? You want to finish it out? We'll finish it out. Yeah, let's finish it. Threshold. How low the barometer that calling for a ceasefire is too much for some politicians and media commentators and people who claim to be for human rights, with the backdrop of 10,000 murder children, how low is the threshold of morality? And so we say that if with the backdrop of genocide, you have still not found it in your moral conscience to call for a ceasefire, you are heartless. And we say that if with the backdrop of the occupation and apartheid that enabled the genocide in the first place, you still have not called for the end of the decades long
atrocities against our people, you are shameless. And if you have failed to see our humanity, we have not failed to see your hypocrisy. And you've made it clear that shipping lanes in Yemen are more important to you than our lives. And you've made it clear that you want our votes without hearing our voices. But we're going to make you hear our voice today on behalf of all of these families and all of the martyrs and all of those that are still standing strong. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. We charge you with genocide. We charge you with genocide. We charge you with genocide. We charge you with genocide. We charge you with genocide. Yeah, that's a mic drop moment there, folks. Mashallah. Well stated by Sheikh Omar. 100% hitting all the main points. Never knew Biden's middle name until that speech, to be honest. But yeah, absolutely correct. And we pray for the success. We pray that we live to see it. But even if we don't, a free Palestine, a liberated Palestine with dignity for the Palestinian people is something that all of us have to continue working towards and striving for. May Allah grant us success. Next up we have
the continued review of the book that we've been going over, The Myth of Religious Violence, by William T. Kavanaugh, a very, very important book. And for an academic book, this is one that's pretty accessible. Pretty accessible compared to others that are maybe a bit too dense or you have to be sort of a specialist to read. This is something that is much more accessible. Even if you can only understand 40% of this book, I would recommend it. And some people complain about how expensive the book was, you know, but to be honest with you, it's not a dime novel, right? So sometimes you have to invest in things, right? If you think about your food or you think about a car or you think about clothing. Yeah, even with books, sometimes you get what you pay for. So if you have the means, it's a good investment. You're investing in your knowledge. And if you don't have the means, may Allah give you the means and expand your risk. So this chapter, the next chapter, is one of the most interesting and honestly was filled with the most new information for me personally, of the entire book. And the title of the chapter was The Creation Myth of the Wars of Religion. Okay, now, the creation myth, when you call something a myth, you're saying that it's not true, even though it's widely believed to be true. And a creation myth is how something started, okay? Usually, you know, if people are sort of talking about religions that they don't believe in, they'll talk about their creation myth is how they believe the world started. Well, Kavanaugh is doing something different here. He's talking about the creation myth, not of the universe, but the creation myth of the wars of religion. Now, that's kind of interesting because the wars of religion seems like such a fixed, incontrovertible, self-evident, obvious part of history of the European, especially of Europe.
The tale that we've been told, and this is the myth time and time again, is that people were fighting over religion. They fought bloody wars for hundreds of years in Christian Europe. They couldn't get along because of their religious differences. And so who came in to save the day? Who stopped all the violence and bloodshed? It was secularism. It was liberalism. It was the separation of church and state. It was the Reformation that made Christianity tolerant, right? All of these sorts of things, okay? So in this chapter, William T. Kavanaugh is going to absolutely blow that myth to smithereens. And he does it step by step. So he shows the different components of the myth or the anatomy of the myth. What are its component parts? So he says, the first part of the myth is that with the religious wars, so-called religious wars, that people were fighting each other based off of religious differences. And wow, he goes on for pages and pages and pages, probably a dozen pages, just with bullet points of examples and evidence to prove that the wars that are now remembered as the so-called wars of religion were not as clean and neat as people remember them as today. That there were Protestants that were fighting Protestants. There were Catholics that were fighting Catholics. There were Catholics fighting Protestants. There were Protestants fighting Catholics. It was all over the place. There were people of the same religious sect and denomination that were fighting each other. And there were people of different denominations and religious sects that were fighting each other. So it's a myth to say that people, the book's name, Joyeria, is the myth of religious violence. Let's see, I'm going to go over there with the, I think the
camera's mirrored, unfortunately. The idea that everybody's just opposing everybody else based off of their religion. So the first thing he says, that's not true. That's absolutely not true, is that it was, if it were based off of religion, then how could you explain the fact that people were making alliances and breaking alliances and making enemies and changing sides irregardless, or let's say regardless, of what their religious commitment is? The second part of the myth is that the primary cause of these wars, of this bloodshed, of this fighting, was a religious cause as opposed to a political cause or an economic cause or social causes or anything like that. And again, the author, William T. Kavanaugh, he says that this is completely untrue and it doesn't match the historical record at all for a couple reasons. One of them was because many of, a lot of historians have commented about how the sides that were involved, that were constantly shifting, were fighting for lots of reasons. So it wasn't just because of their religious fervor, even if people spoke in religious language or justified what they were doing with religious language, that there were very, very clear economic motives involved. There were very, very clear social causes that were happening and political motives as well. The third component and the third part of this myth, he says, that, or let's even say, I'll back up and I'll say, the second reason that this can't be true, that this particular part of the myth, that people were fighting for religious causes as opposed to political causes, as opposed to economic causes or reasons,
he says, and this is sort of what we went over last chapter, that back then when these wars were being fought, you could not even separate between those things. Separating between religion, separating between politics, separating between social causes. To the person who lived in 15th century, 16th century, 17th century Europe, these things were all tied in together. There was not yet a world in which religion was separate from politics. So that if you were to hop in a time machine and go back and ask people, hey, why are you fighting? They would say, you know, are you, or let's put it this way, are you fighting for religion or for politics or for economic reasons or what? They'd say, yes. These things are all wrapped together into a singularity. They're all tied in together. And people didn't even have the language to describe separating these things apart, let alone the conceptual sort of ideas that they could possibly be separable at all. And the final component, the final component of this myth of the religious wars of Europe was that the modern secular state came in and saved the day. That we had religious kingdoms, we had religious violence, religious wars, and then the liberal state, the secular state, came in and stopped everyone from fighting. Religion was reformed. It was put as a private thing that people just did in their own private lives. And then everybody got along. This is also not true historically. And not only is it not true, but it ignores a good 200 years of history. And that's something that the author does a great job of showing, that on the other side of the supposedly religious wars of Europe, you didn't get secular states. You didn't get
liberal states. You actually got what he calls absolutist confessional states, that religion what he calls absolutist confessional states, that religion actually had a stronger hold of politics and government after the wars of religion than before it. And it wasn't until the 1800s where this sort of idea of the secular liberal state and the privatized religion and the separation of this, even in the United States of America. And we'll get to that, I think, in the next chapter, where he brings up some really, really crazy, interesting court cases and other sorts of evidence, historical evidence, to show that even in the United States of America, that the separation of church and state was not something that had the same meaning that it has today until about the 1940s, which is fascinating. But we'll get there. That's for another day. So this idea that everything came, you know, that religion was the cause of all this war and struggling. And then, you know, they kind of came up with secularism and the nation state in order to sort of, you know, everybody just sort of knows their role and the reduced role. And then this saved everything. This is not true. In fact, now Kavanaugh asks an even more provocative question. He says, rather than be the solution to religious violence, okay, he says that the formation of the nation state was actually the real cause of the violence in the first place. Uno reverse. And we'll have to wait, I think, until, yes, I think we'll have to wait until next time, next week, to get into the details of that. But he basically is going to go on to demonstrate that all of the violence that Europe faced around this time
was the violence of the old order transitioning to the new order. So the foundation of the nation state, the assumption of the nation state taking over the powers that used to belong to the church and that these so-called religious wars of Europe were actually part of this longer process of nation states in Europe seizing powers that used to belong to the church and to other sort of, you know, the nobility and aristocracy. But that's for another day. We've got, I think, about eight minutes for any questions, any questions and answers that we could potentially provide. Could be anything that's on your mind. Could be anything that we talked about earlier today or in a previous live stream. Let's have at it. Amita asks, nationalism. Yes. In a word, yes. But we'll get more into more specifics next time, Inshallah. Erica says, half of the time realized how much I bought all the things I was told in the West. Unlearning, unlearning is one of the most important tasks. And you shouldn't feel bad because all of us go through it. We're all sort of exposed to a certain world and we're taught certain things and we assume that those things are true. And then part of the process of growing older and maturing is that you realize, wow, I was told a lot of things that weren't true. Jay Flower asks, is there any way to contact any shape or personal issues? It's a little too general. I don't necessarily do that sort of thing, but may Allah make it easy for you and connect you to someone who you trust. Amita asks, was it for power then? And we would respond that, well, the thing is that power and religion and societal issues and economic issues weren't even
something that could be separated back then, which is hard to explain, right? The people of Gaza and Palestine right now, did they resist their occupation because of just religious motives? Religious motives are there. It's Al Muqaddas, right? It's holy land. There's economic reasons, right? That's where they've been for generations. There's a ton of different reasons and those things aren't necessarily separable. A. Caldry asks, what's a feasible solution or counter to secularism? Well, I have a lot of videos on that, but in other forums, that's a big question, not for just tonight. Let's not think about that. I think, let's see, what's a more productive question? What's a more productive question? Well, Adiz is responding to J. Flower. It's different. He or she is from, I assume she is from Saudi Arabia, and so it's different to just go to a masjid to find someone with your personal issues. That's very difficult, but usually there's fatwa hotlines. I know Sheikh Mohammed Saleh runs some sort of fatwa hotline or something like that, or sometimes in Saudi Arabia, where is your country that you mentioned, J. Flower, there's things like at the Haram you can call in for a specific issue. I think that's what I would recommend. Let's see. So a more fruitful question, A. Caldry, about what's the solution or the counter to secularism is to just think about what kind of world you want to live in and then start to make that world, start to build that world out. If you want to live in a world where faith is a much more central part of everything that you do and the decisions that you make, then you can live, the first step is to live your life that way, and the second step is to
build institutions that operate that way, such as Yaqeen Institute, such as other think tanks. There needs to be about 20 Yaqeen Institutes probably, YouTube channels, religious programming, anything, right? So there's a lot of work to do. We don't have to necessarily figure it all out ahead of time, the path is made by walking. Matt Hunt asks, Michigan mosques say no, that was in reference to Biden trying to meet with Muslims and Arabs in Michigan, but not having, not really finding anyone to meet with him. Assalamu alaikum, from Pakistan, may Allah accept your prayer. Javaria asks a common question, are there any countries you recommend, aren't all of them secular more or less? Yeah, there's no real country I'd recommend. They are all more or less secular, and that's why, you know, you just think about, instead of thinking about categorically, right, it's like, oh, this place is going to be better, or this place, think about where you live right now, think about what's your tolerance level, right, for living with certain affronts, or things that you can't do, or things that you would like to do. Are you able to tolerate the situation that you're in now? Are you able to contribute to a better world and to make incremental changes? Or are there specific things that are really, really preventing you from practicing your religion that you would need to maybe look at your other options? That's sort of, I think, again, a more fruitful way to think about the issue. Okay, we just got about two minutes, I'm trying to scan. Are there any other questions? Everybody, thank you very much for your participation tonight. It's always
a pleasure exchanging, and I love to see the people in the chat exchanging with each other, and helping each other, and helping to answer questions, or if there's something that somebody missed that I mentioned earlier. Very good. People have linked to the book that we're going through. Some of the Christian groups in the United States believe that their support to Israel is part of their faith, and is written in the Bible. I'm not sure if we can know, but how will Allah deal with this kind of issue if there are people of the book but don't follow the full truth? Well, the normal situation is that Allah categorically holds people to account according to their sincerity. So there are people who are just misinformed, and it's not necessarily their fault that they were raised in a certain environment. However, that's not to absolve them from all responsibility either. There is such a thing as neglect, even a criminal level of neglect. And so when it comes to that level, if a person is neglectful, they're not even trying to find the truth, then that would be a crime, and Allah knows what he's going to do with that person. However, if there's a person who's ignorant, and they've been raised in a certain environment, and they did the best, and tried the best with what they had, then it's up to him whether he has mercy on them. And Allah knows people's internal states. So I don't think that's necessarily something we have to worry too much about. Allah's got it covered. Very good. So with that, we're coming up on an hour. Thank you very much everybody for your excellent attention and participation. I look forward to spending next
week, and remember our assignment. We're going to try to tweak our Fajr routine specifically. And what did we say? What was our assignment for this week? Who can remember? What are we all going to try to work on? We've already said waking up before Fajr. We've already said not looking at our phones until after Fajr. Yeah, wudu. Very good. We're going to try to make our wudu much more intentional, and we're going to try to make some of the adhkar, the dua, the prophecies that I'm going to make after, and we're trying to help bridge that gap. Have a more intentional wudu that's hopefully going to connect that external side of us with our internal side of us, and make the external purification of our limbs a cause for the internal purification of our hearts. May Allah make it so. Thanks again. Everybody have a great week.
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