Imam Tom Live
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Musk's Take, Columbia's Skunk Surprise, Islamic Unity, and India's Ram Revelation | Imam Tom Live
Join us this week on Imam Tom Live with special guest Rawda Fawaz from Cair/Columbia University. We will discuss Elon's despicable Gaza stance, the skunk attacks on Columbia University's campus by IDF soldiers, Islam's unity in the face of oppression, and the Islamophobic events in India with the Ram Temple. We will also continue our book conversations from last week!
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. This is a Yaqeen Institute video containing references to the Qur'an, sunnah and hadith. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome back to Yaqeen's live stream event. Our weekly event hosted by me, Imam Tamfukini. We're happy to have you with us. As always, let us know where you're watching from this week. It's been a busy week and one of the lessons for this week is to roll with the punches as we say and to attempt to solve things on the fly that things don't always go the way you planned. Now you might notice that we have a very different background. We don't have a lot of fancy equipment that we usually have. And that's because of several sort of things that Allah subhana wa ta'ala destined and decreed for today that prevented us from using the same space that we always use and prevented us from using the same equipment that we always use. But it's a humorous and humbling reminder that in life things don't always go the way you plan and that you have to adapt and not lose hope and that everything happens for a reason. And one of the great things about being with Yaqeen Institute is that you get to work with a bunch of wonderful people who have a similar sort of outlook on life. So we're able to kind of laugh about it and say qadr Allah ma sha'a fa'a. So alaykum as-salam. Let's see who we have with us today. I know I saw we had some returning viewers from last week and one of the cool things
about this program is that yeah, we get to develop something of a community between us. You start seeing the same people week in and week out and obviously there's some things that we'll check in. We've got a lot of things to check in with this week. You start to recognize people. So I recognize Daniela Tan from Malaysia I remember, alaykum as-salam, salamat datang. We have Suleyman with us, ma sha'a Allah, Ahmed Kafafi. We have Asif, ma sha'a Allah. We have a bunch of people, some returning, some new faces, Sayyida Ruhina, alaykum as-salam, Shafi. Welcome Mariam, alaykum as-salam, rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, Muhammad Hasbullah from Malaysia as well, ma sha'a Allah, salamat datang. Welcome to the program. I'm really trying hard to come to Malaysia insha'Allah ta'ala this summer. There's going to be a conference there, Umatics conference if you guys are aware of Umatics and I believe it'll be the last half of July. So I'm hoping insha'Allah, make dua to Allah subhana ta'ala that Allah facilitates it because I've been to Malaysia once before and it was absolutely wonderful. I had an amazing experience with the people of Malaysia, the masajid of Malaysia, the Islamic culture. It was a very, very pleasant experience and one that I'm hoping to repeat as soon as I can. Alaykum as-salam, we have a chef, if I'm saying that correctly, from the Maldives, insha'Allah, we always have a very impressive international crew, Amina from Diop, insha'Allah, I'm guessing, I don't want to take any guesses there, welcome. Let's see, Zeebo, let's see, we have a question here already from Zeebo, alaykum as-salam, rahmatullah. My friend and I were having a chat and she told that we don't need to study or do anything because we all die, but I have a lot of dreams, what do I do?
Well, you know, Allah subhana ta'ala said in the Qur'an and the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam instructed us that even though Allah subhana ta'ala has decided what is going to happen, that all of us is responsible for acting because we don't know what that thing is that Allah subhana ta'ala decided. So it's not an excuse that we're all just going to die, that we don't do anything, no, this is the daar al-aml, this is the abode of action, right? And the next life after we die is daar al-hisab, is the abode of, how do we translate that, as of reckoning, right, where we see the fruits of our actions. Wa alaykum as-salam, rahmatullah, Queen Ebony from Ohio, welcome, Ohio, unfortunately I haven't yet had the chance to make it out to Ohio, but I hope to do so soon, insha'Allah. Jamita, wa alaykum as-salam, MRS from Virginia, insha'Allah, Nazli Noor, Istanbul, hoş geldiniz, hoş geldiniz, merhaba, from Istanbul, Istanbul, as some of you might know, was the place where I was able to visit and I studied in a study abroad program there for six months before I converted to Islam. So Istanbul is very close to my heart, I lived in Iskudar for six months and it was a major impact on me in coming to Islam. We have, yes, Australia, ma sha'Allah, wa alaykum as-salam, Qadi al-Din, I think, or Qadi al-Din from Maryland, Grace Rose from Canada, Shafi'ul-Anwar Buzri from Malaysia again, ma sha'Allah, salam at the time, Imam Huzaifa, allahu akbar, ma sha'Allah, Shaykhina, welcome, we've got Zain from Misr, Umm al-Dunya, ahlan wa sahlan, Nusayba from Worcester, ma sha'Allah, I was educated, I was able to go to Worcester, alhamdulillah, and do some programming there with the wonderful community in Worcester and the first thing that they taught me was how to pronounce Worcester because the first, I had no idea, Nabila Chowdhury from Philly, Philly's own, ma sha'Allah, Philly is close to home for me, Brooklyn's in the
house, Sean from Brooklyn, ma sha'Allah, I've been to Brooklyn several times recently and I'll be coming back again. We have Rita, hi from Italy, ma sha'Allah, Benvenuto, Afghanistan, allahu akbar, I just love always seeing where everyone's from, Berlin, Connecticut, haven't made it to Connecticut Sayyid, Naveeda, Ann Arbor, wa alaikum salam wa rahmatullah, hope to make it out to Ann Ardor, Senegalese from Georgia, okay, I thought it was Senegalese, I know some Diops, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, excuse me if I'm not, Amberine from Canada, ma sha'Allah, excellent, excellent, excellent, yeah, so Seneca's asking also about predestination, if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has written our lives then how do we have free will, and I will tell you, after wa alaikum salam to Zainab from South Carolina, and wa alaikum salam to Elaine Tang, also from Alayhi salam at the time, Nabila from New Jersey, wa alaikum salam, I will answer that with an answer that I was given when I was not yet a Muslim and I asked a Shaykh who was very dear to me, his name was Shaykh Abdul Fattah, and he was from Egypt, I asked him the same question, and he told me, he answered it like this, he said, if you have a child, right, your son or your daughter, and if you tell them, go over there, run to the car and run back and I'll give you a piece of chocolate I have in my candy, I have in my pocket, you know as their parent, you know as their parent that, what they're going to do, if they're going to take you up on that or not, just like, you know, if you set a plate of food in front of them, maybe you have some of this, some of that, you know what they're going to eat and what they're going to reject and refuse to eat, okay, now that's you and your child, but what about Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and you, who created you, much more than a parent, so if we have, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, if
the parent knows what the child is going to do, because of the familiarity and the knowledge that the parent has, does that mean that the parent forced the child to do anything, doesn't the child still have free will, right, this is the analogy that I was given, and it made sense to me, and then, and it still makes sense to me now, mashallah, we got a lot of folks in here, I would love to say salam to all of you, Sabah, Ustadh from India, wa alaykum salam, Oregon in the house, mashallah, Leicester, I believe that's how you say it, Nejmi, Tampa, Nair, Kashmir, Seneca, mashallah, Fairbanks, Alaska, allahu akbar, Texas, Elena's, okay, yeah, salamat pagi, it's not the time anymore, Daniela from Penang, excellent, Mahrez from Somalia, ya Allah, welcome everybody, UK's in the house, it's late for you, you should be sleeping, no, I'm just kidding, I'm happy that you're with us, welcome, inshallah, I'll be in the UK in April, Marcellus from Minnesota, Scotland, Michelle from Scotland, that's wonderful, I hear that Scotland is beautiful, and I would love to go someday, anyway, we, I could spend all day just talking about how beautiful this ummah is, and all the different places where the Muslims are, and all the wonderful cultures, and colors, and clothes, and traditions that we have, but we do have a wonderful show, and I would hate to cut into it, so today we're gonna scoot on over to talk about current events, and we have some really, really important current events that have been happening in the past week, umm, one of the things that has been going on, we had, for those of us in the United States, we have this ongoing saga where we have people who are trying to push back against the government because of the US government's enabling of the, of the genocide in Palestine, to our brothers and sisters in Palestine, so there has been a lot of political activism and agitation, we've seen people interrupting President Biden during his speeches, we've seen, umm, you know, many
demonstrations and things of this nature, but unfortunately, what we still see up until this day is the Democratic Party and the people who are charged making excuses and dismissing our concerns, so I think, guys in the studio, we have a clip here from AOC that we're going to play to demonstrate the type of attitude most people have had, you know, so honestly, here's the thing, I think sometimes people want electoral politics to be, we overly identify with, it's like, if you vote for someone, they have to be the embodiment of you, and that's actually something that I think Donald Trump provided to a lot of people, where it's like, if you voted for him, and if you were a Donald Trump person, like, you, you want, like, it, it symbolized so much, but I think what we have here in this situation is a more just honest thing, there are plenty of things that the President does that I completely disagree with, I think, you know, right now, what's happening in Gaza, I can't, I just, I can't go on every single day seeing this, I don't associate myself with what's happening, but at the end of the day, we have to acknowledge that we just can't allow this fascist movement to grow in this country, and what I think is actually, okay, so the, the elephant in the room, the elephant in the room is that who's the fascist, and nobody's saying anything here about any particular party, or any particular candidate to endorse, or does not endorse it, but AOC, and this, this attitude, and AOC, for those who don't know, is one of the most,
quote unquote, progressive politicians in Congress, and she has done a few things to indicate some sort of, you know, for a ceasefire, though it's been very lukewarm, but the attitude that Muslims find from their representatives is this attitude, this dismissal of Muslim concern for our brothers and sisters, there's a genocide going on, and with one sweep of the hand, the politicians in the United States are, they are construing our concerns, and our rage, and our upsetness, and refusal to accept this genocide, as us not identifying 100 percent with our, with our elected representatives, or our elected president, which is a slap in the face, to be frank. Now, what's the takeaway home for us as Muslims, and I think that this is important, is that when I, when I look at these things, and there's so many clips like this, with AOC, or other people from the left, from the right, from this party, from that party, they fail to understand something very, very essential, and important about Islam, and about Muslims, and what they fail to understand, is that us feeling for one another, as brothers and sisters in faith, is part of our deen, is that this is not just a foreign policy issue, this is not just an issue among other issues, where we line up, this is your policy on the economy, and this is your policy on this, and this is your policy on that, that when you slaughter us, when you slaughter Palestinians, every single properly calibrated Muslim in the world, feels like you are attacking me, you are slaughtering us as well, because the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, that the believers are like one body, and in another hadith, he said that the believers are like a bunyan, he's like a building, and he put his fingers together like this, that we fortify,
and strengthen each other, so they literally are betting on us, or either they don't understand, or they're betting on us forgetting this, right, they underestimate us, just like they underestimate Allah, they underestimate Muslims, they don't believe that we actually, or maybe this is completely just foreign to them, that they've never cared for somebody else in their life, outside of their country, in the way that we care for the people of Palestine, right, so this is a fundamental mistake, and misreading of the situation, and one that if they don't change their tune soon, I think they're in for a very, very rude awakening electorally, because people, Muslims are very, very sick of this, now we had another thing happen in this past week, which was Elon Musk, who, you know, obviously he's the person who is in control, and owns Twitter, formerly Twitter, now X, and he basically was caught saying some stuff that was anti-Semitic, I mean, I don't think there's any doubt about that, but since then, he has been forced, and we can put it up on the screen studio, since then, he has been forced to undergo a type of re-education, and some people have commented and said it's a humiliation ritual, where they've taken him now, they brought him, they called him into occupied Palestine, and they showed him sort of these, you know, they're props of propaganda, and atrocity propaganda, right, and now he took a trip to Auschwitz, right, the concentration camp, or the former concentration camp during World War II, conducted by the Nazis, where, you know, millions of Jews were gassed, and killed, and slaughtered, and it was an absolute tragedy, 100 percent, but as many people have pointed out,
that Musk is being, his face is being smashed into a genocide that happened in the past, and it is distracting his vision from a genocide that is happening now, currently, against the Muslims, and against all people of Palestine, so we have a a quote here from Musk, that he said after engaging in this sort of trip, where he was, I'm sure, paid for, and flew out on a first-class ticket, the education of hatred among children and Gaza must stop, when I was in Israel, I understood the need to invade the strip, if toddlers are taught that they must kill Jews, they will believe it, it has to stop, that's Elon Musk, now you see the type of bias that's at play here, and many people, I was on Eddie with the Dean show, not too long ago, and he demonstrated how every accusation is a confession, that really, when you look at it, who are the ones that are taught to hate, it is the school system in Israel, that teaches their youth to hate Muslims, to kill Arabs, to hate Arabs, to speak against this, and this is well documented, right, now unfortunately, this is the consequence of this, is compromise, One of the last popular free platforms that we have, okay, so we know that Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, who owns Instagram and Facebook, has been very heavy-handed, very anti-Palestinian with his censorship of those platforms.
But Twitter slash X was supposed to be something that was different. And despite the fact that there is a larger degree of freedom still on X and Twitter, people have noticed a distinct change, and they have noticed a change in the tune of the type of reporting and things that have been going on, where now there's more bias, there's more accounts being shadow banned, or followers being taken away, and this type of thing. So we ask Allah ﷻ to aid us, but we also learn from this that when it comes to us as a Muslim community, that we can't rely always on the goodwill of people who aren't from us, people who aren't Muslims, or people who aren't sympathetic to Muslim causes, that if all of this is dependent upon one man, and this one man is compromised, then it's something that affects all of us. The last thing I will mention, and this has to be mentioned for our current events, is this past week there was a ceremony in India, and we know that India is being occupied by an ideology, a Hindu nationalist supremacist ideology that's known as Hindutva, and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Now there was a masjid that is a very famous masjid, it's been around for hundreds of years, called the Bebri Masjid, and this has been a site of contention since Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist sort of movement has gotten going, because there was an allegation that the Bebri Masjid was built on top of this particular Hindu temple that was there before.
Now, putting aside the historical fact that Hinduism as one blanket term, as a religion, is an invention of the British, and this is something that is well documented, you can read up on it in William Cavanaugh and other sort of scholars, and we have some people here I'm certain in the chat such as Qadri and others that have noticed that they have family there, I've seen videos of people in Mumbai, people in other parts of India, that they held, they built a temple, a Hindu temple on top of the destroyed Bebri Masjid, the Bebri Masjid was destroyed by mobs in the 90s, and now they built a Hindu temple on top of it, and now they had a coronation ceremony, all of your so-called Bollywood superstars that maybe you watched growing up, Amitabh Bachchan, etc. showing up to this particular ceremony, and it green-lighted a lot of aggression towards Muslims, and those Muslims in the United States, we understand a little taste of this, a little tiny taste of this, because when some people come into power, and they set the tone for what's acceptable, then other people feel entitled to act out, and that's exactly what has been happening in India. So we ask Allah ﷻ to aid our brothers and sisters in India, things are in a very very difficult situation, but Allah ﷻ is Qadir, and Allah ﷻ is able to assist them and to grant them victory, and to stop the provocation, everything happens by the will and power of Allah ﷻ, and it very well could be that just like Allah ﷻ is allowing what's happening in Palestine to unite us, that Allah ﷻ is allowing what is happening in India to unite us as well.
And with that, we're going to turn to our next segment, it's a very very important segment, where we have a special guest with us tonight, someone who I've had the pleasure of meeting before a few times at conferences, and hopefully inshallah she will be writing for Yaqeen Institute somewhat soon, Sister Rolda Fawaz, who is an attorney and a lawyer with CARE, I believe, welcome to the program. Assalamualaikum Imam Tom, thank you so much for having me, and thank you again to Yaqeen for these lives, I know for my family and my friends, these have really been something to look forward to every week. Waalaikumsalam, thank you so much for being with us, we're happy to have any excuse to bring you on. Now, there's several things that we could have brought you on for, unfortunately what we brought you on to talk about today is the situation at your alma mater, which is Columbia University in New York City. This is a very very prestigious university that I had the pleasure of visiting and delivering some talks and a khutbah at. Now, Columbia University has been in the news for some time because of the repression from the administration upon pro-Palestinian activism. It was one of the first, if not the first, major university to ban the chapters of JVP, the Jewish Voice for Peace, and SJP, Students for Justice in Palestine. Now, in response to that, and when I had visited, I visited to give a khutbah and to give a talk, they had formed a coalition I think of over 90, at the time 90, student organizations that were going to continue sort of activism for Palestine. But there's a horrible environment of intimidation and silencing and bullying that is going on there, and there's one particular professor that is very active on Twitter that has been absolutely disgusting in his targeting of Muslim students or anybody who's speaking up on pro-Palestinian issues,
weaponizing his sort of fake victimhood, to put it bluntly. He's a tenured professor with every protection in the world, and he, at the slightest sort of agitation and protest, acting as if he's under existential threat. And yet his rhetoric has empowered and emboldened people, not only has it been allowed by the college's administration, but it has empowered and emboldened people to act out against the pro-Palestinian protesters. And just this week we had something horrible happen where there were two students who are actually former IDF soldiers who used an illegal military weapon against Columbia students. January 19th, two former Israeli soldiers, now Columbia University students, attacked students on campus at a peaceful protest for Palestinian freedom by spraying them with an illegal chemical-based weapon called skunk, according to victims of the attack and witnesses. The former Israeli soldiers injured dozens of students, at least eight of whom were hospitalized, and many more went to urgent care. Students say that they are dealing with intense physical symptoms and have hospital bills to cover on top of their schoolwork. So I want to get your reaction to that. What are the sort of things, Raul, that you're aware of, and what has been the response of the university in reacting to this attack on their own students? Do we see parity? Do we see equality when it comes to how Columbia University is treating its Jewish students who are pro-Zionist, pro-Israeli, versus the students that are speaking up for Palestine?
Yeah, unfortunately, I was not surprised to see the university's reaction to what happened, which basically has been to send out a very vague email saying, you know, events occurred on the 19th, we're investigating. And then after intense pressure, so I'm part of a large alumni network for Palestine, and we have been calling, emailing nonstop every administrator that's listed on the website, basically. Every office we can find complaining and trying to pressure them into opening a serious investigation. They've now said that they are investigating what they claim is possibly a hate crime. And that's been the extent of it. There have been no promises to cover medical bills. No administrators even visited the students in the hospital, which I will say is actually abnormal because I went to Columbia for law school. I graduated in 2022. During my undergrad, I was at the University of Virginia when the Nazis marched on the school. And a lot of my friends were taken to the hospital after a car drove through the crowd of counter protesters. And administrators of my university then visited students in the hospital, even though it was unclear what had happened yet at the time. It's just something that administrators are supposed to do. So it's very shocking. And I actually think the number of students in the hospital is now up to at least a dozen who've had to be hospitalized. And when they were released, their medical reports upon discharge all state exposure to a chemical agent. Skunk is the same weapon used against Palestinians in the West Bank and in occupied territories as a method of crowd control.
And I also want to know, you know, most of the folks who the two the two students who threw skunk are currently I think only one has been identified. But they are like just students at the university. And Columbia has long actually encouraged acceptance of students in its dual dual studies program with Tel Aviv University. That encourages students to apply who have, quote, military service in their background as as as a, you know, a positive extracurricular, as though they're not part of a military that has a decades long history of massacring Palestinians and, you know, a long history of human rights violations. So it really is shocking to most people. But as a former student, I'm not that surprised because during my time there, I was also president of Columbia Law Students for Palestine. And it was difficult to to say the least, to just even hold a simple event without having major pushback, hecklers, people having to find security and just no defense of any of our own rights as a student group to hold an event. So it's it's been shocking. But I will say, like, they're the students there are really incredible. They have not stopped today. There was a massive demonstration in the middle of campus in support of the students who have been harmed. Alumni are trying very hard to pressure the university. But I but I do think that this is just it's truly a parody of the liberal arts institution and all it supposedly stands for. I mean, it's a heck of a thing, right?
Like most if you're a student, you expect to be worrying about, you know, your grades, you're making class your tests. You know, maybe you need to do a, you know, a campus job or something like that for some some side money. And to worry, to have to worry that agents from a foreign government or let's not say agents, let's say soldiers that have spent time and served in a foreign nations military are going to attack you because your university has some chummy relationship with some foreign nations. You know, you know, universities is a heck of a thing. And it's something that's embarrassing. A lot of people have been waking up in the past hundred days to the entanglement. You know, I was reading and we'll get to this later in the program about sort of the the lemon test. Right. And that are administrated to the government's entanglement with religion and how that developed over time. We talk about separation of church and state and the necessity of stopping entanglement of the state and religion. But look at how entangled the United States is with the state of Israel when it comes to and Columbia's in New York City and the NYPD has a close relationship with the idea. Right. And some other police departments do as well, where there is academic entanglement, where you have these sorts of whitewashing that's going on with trips to Israel and fieldwork in Israel, which lends further legitimacy to it. If anybody has watched and I recommend that you do the some of the documentaries such as Israelism, which highlights, among other things, the type of entanglement with Hillel. Right. The organization of Hillel on campuses across the country and how they are doing the work of a foreign nation on American soil,
recruiting people to go serve in their army, potentially radicalizing them and sending them back here. And now we have to deal with them here. Right. This is a high degree of entanglement. It's very, very, very, very strange. And it's very dangerous. So what do you I mean, where do you see things going? What would you recommend for for current students of Columbia or other students that are still in college right now? And they might face a similar sort of circumstance. Absolutely. So I think the first note I just want to make is that universities in the United States are supposed to be beacons of liberalism and free thinking. But, you know, if if the veil was not lifted before, it's definitely been lifted now that there is a normative spectrum and limits on what freedom is, according to these so-called liberal institutions. And they give us authoritarian definitions of safety and equality and justice. And they tell us to celebrate what they celebrate and condemn what they condemn and compromise our values until we cannot recognize them in hopes that maybe if we do that, they'll throw us a bone. And I think students know this and have known this for a long time. And they are on the front lines of a lot of this resistance and protest for Palestine here in the US. So I just want to encourage anyone watching to support students in your community. There's a local university that has an MSA or SJP chapter that's doing work. You know, if we always could use support from members of the community and students should reach out to members of their local community as well to their messages to their community centers to to get that support because it's extremely necessary in terms of what students can do moving forward.
Obviously, as I said, the university is a very flawed place, but there are some protections that exist, especially in public universities. So the difficult thing for Columbia as well is that it's a private university and I'll get to the protections that exist for, you know, some perhaps exist for students at private universities in a minute. But at public universities, the First Amendment to the US Constitution does technically protect your right to free speech and expression without government interference. And in this context, government interference does mean you're, you know, public university since it's funded by the state. And I just want to remind any students watching who are at a public university that your speech is supposed to be protected. And if it's not, then you have to assert that your rights are being violated. You should find a lawyer to support you and consult with one. And there are not many limits on what how your speech can look like. Your speech can be controversial. You can criticize the state of Israel. You can criticize the US government. And your speech does not have to be, you know, civil, whatever that means to people. You can't be forced to hold dialogue sessions with Israeli advocacy groups, which is something that students have been forced to do, which is crazy because that's compelled speech, which is illegal in a public institution. Its part is under the First Amendment. And they can't discriminate against you based on the viewpoint of your speech either. Obviously, we're seeing a lot of these laws being violated right now at a number of public universities, including universities in Florida, Rutgers, as well as in Texas in the UT system. And I've been working with folks at all of those, actually.
So make sure that you are, you know, looking into what barriers are being put against you and consulting with lawyers if you find that your speech is being limited because it absolutely should not be. At private universities, unfortunately, your rights are a lot more limited because the First Amendment is not very protected on those campuses. However, back to my point earlier about universities supposedly being beacons of liberalism, most university handbooks do actually have a commitment to a free exchange of ideas. That commitment's been forgotten in the past few months. But I do encourage students to look closely at their student handbook and find that language and use that language to challenge the administration when they try to limit the work that they're doing. The other protection you have is under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which protects students from discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or perceived religion. So if someone looks Muslim, that counts. And if they're discriminated against for looking for, you know, someone assuming they're Muslim, that counts. And that applies in private universities because they get some federal funding. I encourage students to file Title VI complaints, which you can do on your own online. It's pretty quick because a lot of the people being targeted right now are people who are Muslim, who are Arab, who are, you know, Black, brown, etc. They should, you know, file those charges as soon as things happen and mobilize to file those charges.
Because if we file enough of them, the Department of Education, whether at the state or federal level, will be forced to open investigations into these institutions and their policies. It's not a perfect strategy, obviously, but we have to use every tool in our toolbox. As an attorney, I'll be the first to say the law is far from perfect and very, very frustrating, especially as a Muslim person. But it's a tool, and if you know it well enough, you can use it to your advantage. So that's kind of, you know, that's what I encourage students to do. Finally, in a more strategic sense, this is not legal advice. I, you know, it's important to remember that so many of us who were or currently are at these institutions got pulled into, whether willingly or by force, these, like, you know, capitalist, orientalist, DEI programs, which profited off of our likeness and our image and, you know, have probably still have pictures of us up on their websites. I mean, I remember being at Columbia Law School at a networking event that was hosted by the law school and literally being followed around by a photographer because I was the only hijabi in the room. Like, my friends didn't want to stand next to me anymore because they were afraid of getting their picture taken while they're, you know, eating a little hors d'oeuvre. Like, it was ridiculous. I'm sure my picture is floating around there somewhere, although maybe they'll take it down now that I'm speaking up against them. But it's important to remember that, you know, they still count on you to get more students and more applications to get donations. They use your picture. So if you've been ever involved in any of these kinds of programs, you should leverage that. You should reach out to them and say, you know, your diversity is not genuine. It does not want to hear my social political views. It doesn't want to learn about what justice looks like for me.
It doesn't even want to consider looking towards a world order where our brothers and sisters in Palestine are living freely and with dignity in their homeland. And that's not, you know, that's not a genuine kind of program that I am interested in being a part of or interested in promoting. And I will go out of my way to tell my community not to be involved, not to come here, not to apply here, or tell my alumni friends not to donate. I know most alumni from Colombia who support Palestine have called the university pledging to withhold donations. So I think these are these are things that you definitely can and should be doing in your own capacity as well. Excellent, solid advice. We had some people that really resonated with your experiences. I know that I'd see, I think Nusayba Qasim said it's so true. That she used to experience the same sort of thing. So a very common thing. They love us when we're on their brochures. They wish that they had our diversity and they love to display our diversity in a showy way. But when it comes to actually making us feel safe, when it comes to people speaking up for our issues, now all of a sudden you won't even visit us in the hospital. What fickle friends. I'm just going to throw one last question at you. And that is, OK, what if you have a professor like this particular professor at Columbia who's causing problems, who's creating an environment and basically doing everything but explicitly encouraging people to attack you or make you put in a dangerous situation? Yeah, it's a really difficult question, especially at a university like Columbia. That's a private university and the administration would have to be the one to take action.
I would encourage finding faculty support, if possible, to stand up to this professor, to complain about him, to again, file formal complaints. Every student, even if you don't have him as a professor, should file a formal complaint of harassment, of discrimination. Any box that you see, just check it off, because if they're inundated with these complaints, at the very least, they will be forced to see what is he doing and how is he making students feel. If you're actually in his class and you're visibly Muslim or Arab and you feel like his views might be impacting your grades, for example, or your ability to finish the class. I mean, that is absolutely worthwhile of a complaint and you should actually escalate that to whether it's a career counselor or there are education counselors, people who help you choose your classes and things like that. That should be something that's escalated so that they're keeping an eye on it and so that also your own grades are not impacted if that's something that you're worried about. But, you know, one thing I think that's been a little bit, it's been great to see a lot, you know, growing faculty support for students who are doing this work. But it has, I will say, been a bit frustrating seeing that there are a lot of actually Muslim faculty at a lot of these universities who have been very silent to any of them who are watching. Please speak up. I understand that, you know, your job might be on the line, but these students' jobs and careers and futures are also on the line and they are being very, very brave and, you know, thinking about what is important in this moment, what is important for our deen. I mean, we're Muslims before we're professors, before we're lawyers, before we're students. And Allah, you know, tells us in Surah An-Nisa'i,
أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَامِينَ بِالْقِصْتِ شُهَدَاءَ لِلَّهِ وَلَوْ عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِكُمْ You know, oh, you believe the upholders of justice and bearers of witness to the truth for the sake of Allah, even if it may be against you, yourselves or your kinsmen. That's I mean, that's that's all you need to know. And so I hope that, you know, that faculty support continues to grow. And I hope that we see more of it from Muslim faculty. I know at Columbia, there have been some that have been supportive, but there's a lot that have been really silent, including at the law school. And it really has been just disappointing to see. So if you're a student at any of these institutions, you know, have these private conversations with the Muslim professors, especially, you know, see what if they haven't supported you, ask why and see what ways they are willing to. Because it's this is this is the time for us to be reaching out to our community, be supporting each other, because if not now, then when? Yeah, Mashallah, excellent, excellent advice. And I think I would just add for everybody who's watching, visibility has become a very powerful thing. Right. You know, five, 10 years ago when these sorts of things would happen, you know, you would feel like you're the only one going through it. And then when you see your face on the doxing van or whatever it is, then it's very, very difficult. You feel like your life is over, is about to end. Now we have the ability to blast it on Twitter, on, you know, on Instagram, on something else. Now you realize that there's actually very many of you and you can get together and you can advocate for each other and you can actually expose the intimidation tactics of other people. And this is a huge thing. So we ask Allah to give us the courage because what you know, you're talking about all those courage that give us the courage to speak the truth. That's a common theme that we've been running through the past hundred plus days. Being Muslim, you know, taking Islam seriously has to do with trying to find that courage to have that voice, because if you try to hide away, it's only going to hurt somebody else. Maybe you maybe you escape with your neck, you know, but what about the next person?
Right. We have to be together. We have to stand up together. It's the only way forward. So thank you so much. Yeah, you'll have a final comment. Sorry, I just have one last thing, just because I'm a lawyer and have to say the last thing, I guess. But the the one last thing I want to tell students actually is like this and this is to help, you know, if you ever do need an attorney, it helps us help you document everything. There's a crazy guy on Twitter who's a professor who's saying all this stuff. Like I know it gets really tiring and exhausting, but screenshot it all. If he's sending an email to you and, you know, acting kind of weird, even if you're not sure, but you're just suspicious of them, save that email. Like any communications that you get agreeing to something, disagreeing with something, communications with administration, with other professors, anything, document all of it. Because I'm literally dealing with situation right now with students who were given permission to send an email about Palestine, their TAs to their students. And then the professor denied giving them their permission and went against them when they were disciplined for doing so. So document everything. You can't honestly at this point, you can't really be too paranoid. The worst case scenario is you have went to screenshots you never use. But when the time comes, it will help you if you need to defend yourself. Excellent, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Very, very valuable advice. Thank you all so much. OK, that was very informative and enlightening. Pivoting along to our next segment, we've got the conclusion to the book that we've been sort of going through, the myth of religious violence. And boy, is the alaikum salam from Iran, Chitorri, assuming you speak Parsi, a language that inshallah, hopefully one day I'll learn, along with all the other languages of the ummah. So we have our grand finale of this book, which means that next time we're going to be transitioning to a new book. And but the the ending, he ends with a bang.
There's a lot, a lot, a lot to cover. So we'll get right into it. That Kavanaugh, his last part of this book is a very, very important book. The myth of religious violence is he talks about the use of the myth or the uses of this myth. What myth? We're talking about the the myth of religious violence, that religious violence, that religious people are more violent than nonreligious people or that religions are the source of all violence or that religion is particularly violent in some sort of particular way. OK, now, why he's asking, because he's taken us through and you can go back to our previously recorded episodes, if you're just joining us now, as to what's the anatomy of this myth? Why isn't it historically true? What ideologically is at play here? OK, but now he's going to answer a really, really important question, which is why? Why did people come up with this myth? What uses, what functions does this myth have? Right. Because we said that, well, we'll get to it. Well, we noticed that he answers. He says that this myth, what it does is that it justifies certain types of violence and it delegitimizes other types of violence. And he brings some really, really interesting examples. So, for example, he brings a court case that happened in 1940 in the United States where there was a religious group known as the Jehovah's Witnesses and they were there were a bunch of them that were beaten. Some of them were even killed. Why? They were oppressed because they refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Right. And there was a really interesting dynamic where this court case went all the way to the top of the Supreme Court. And in 1940, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Jehovah's Witnesses were wrong, that they had to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance. Now, three years later, that was reversed.
OK, so that's an important takeaway for everybody in the United States. You are not legally bound to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance. The Jehovah's Witnesses, they took one on the chin for us. But what's really interesting is that if you go into the language that the justices used when it came to arguing their case, what you start to see from the 1940s on is you see the characterization of religion as a dangerous and divisive force. And this language and this myth, this idea that religion is divisive or that religion is dangerous, if we let religion into the public sphere, that it's going to cause harm, that this was not the way that people used to think about religion, even in the United States, which is known as a secular country, up until 1940. OK, so the things that are referenced, such as the wall of separation between church and state that Thomas Jefferson wrote about, yes, they were on paper, but they weren't the reality of lived experience in the United States. And there's actually a really, really interesting website that I came across, which actually demonstrates that. It's called, well, we're not going to say it here, but maybe we'll put it later in the description. It shows that the original 13 colonies of North America, all of them had an established church, which is very strange if you think about the United States of America, separation of church and state. How is that possible? They not only had an established church, they had established churches up until and through the 1800s.
OK, so some of them, if I'm looking, I'm looking at a graphic right here, Virginia from 1600 when it was founded for 224 years until 1830, they stopped supporting their established church, New York until 1846, Maryland until 1867, New Hampshire until 1877 and so on and so forth. These original 13 colonies, right, they each of them had an established church. Some of it was the Anglican church, some of it was congregationalist, some of it was Methodist. They had established churches. So it wasn't the reality on the ground was not what we think when we think, oh, it's America, it's the Constitution, it's the separation of church and state. That this particular thing was of it was a recasting of memory that started happening in the 1940s. Now, this has become relevant again, and there was unfortunately not enough time to talk about it. But another thing that happened this past week was this particular headmistress of a school in the UK who was concerned and moved to prohibit Muslim students from praying. And she got up in front of the camera and explained how all the Muslim students were bullying people and somebody suddenly put on a headscarf. Right. And she basically is trying to enforce this idea again, exactly what we see here that Kavanaugh is talking about, that religion is it is divisive, that religion is problematic, that it's a force of division and potentially hatred. So this is a very, very, very recent way of looking at things. It doesn't even stretch back that far, even if we go to a place like the United States. What we know as and I reference this with Sister Relva as the lemon test that wasn't even developed until the 70s.
OK, that the seven there was sort of a process between the 1940s and the 1970s where the separation of church and state was sort of it was strengthened and strengthened and strengthened. So we had, for example, there were people who tried to stop the government from supporting Catholic schools with money. And so they started using this argument of separation of church and state in order to punish the Catholics. What they didn't realize was that other groups like atheists would use the same arguments to stop the government from doing anything to support religion whatsoever. So then in the 60s, you had prayer taken out of schools. And then in the 70s, finally, with Lemon versus Kutzman or Kurtzman, you had what was established as the lemon test, which is now the ruling sort of law of the land of the United States of America, that the establishment clause is violated or if it isn't violated, if things have a secular purpose or they have a predominantly secular effect or if there is no entanglement. So they use these three criteria to determine when that separation of church and state has been violated or when it hasn't. Anyway, that's particular to the United States. But the main point and the main takeaway for everybody else is that there are two main functions or consequences of this myth of religious violence, that religion is particularly violent and divisive and religious people are particularly irrational and hateful on things like this. Abroad, OK, so there are certain consequences abroad and there are certain consequences at home. Abroad, abroad, the myth reinforces and justifies Western attitudes and policies across the world, especially in the Muslim world.
It reassures Western people that our violence brings freedom, it brings peace, it brings justice, it brings democracy and civilization, while their violence brings terror and oppression and hatred. And this goes from Bernard Lewis to Samuel Huntington and their idea of the clash of civilization. Right. If you read their works, and I'll spare you from having to read them all, they are very ignorant about the policies that the United States have pursued in the Muslim world and the aggressions and they dismiss them. They basically say that all of the anger towards the United States or towards the Western world, from places in the Middle East, from places in Asia, it's because they're religious crazy people. That's basically what it says, as opposed to the actual policies of the United States government or the government of the UK or things like this. It allows people to change the subject, to refocus on, well, what about what you're doing? Well, what about this movement? Well, what about that movement? And we've seen this happen over and over again when it comes to Israel and Palestine as well. That the myth of religious violence helps to form consent for foreign aggression by diverting attention away from scrutinizing past policies and their effects. When someone ignites an American flag or occupies or protests an embassy, the American people suddenly go like, why do they hate us? They hate us for our freedoms or something like this, or a politician comes in and says, oh, they must hate us for our freedoms without having any awareness of the policies that have destabilized their societies that have done violence to them. Sometimes dropped bombs on them, starved them or caused any sort of assassinated their political leaders or replaced them. That's number one.
The second consequence of the myth of religious violence is that it establishes some types of violence as good violence. So we see that when it comes to violence for a secular cause, that it is considered good and necessary and right. So when we look at how the media treats the violence that goes on by the Israelis, right, towards and against the Palestinians, that it's always just. It's always right. It's always necessary, whereas any sort of thing that Palestinians do to resist is considered horrible and dismissed right away. This is an extreme Western bias, and it is rooted in it is rooted in this myth of religious violence, as folks like Sam Harris and Chris Hitchens write in their works. They will criticize all day the torturing of witches right during the history of Christianity as something that is barbaric, but they will justify the torture of, quote, unquote, terrorists in order for secular interests. So this is something that is completely inconsistent and not based in historical fact. I'll read you one last quote and then we'll move on. And this is we'll end the book with this and we'll conclude it because Kavanaugh talks about the Palestine and he talks about the Israel-Palestine situation. And he's writing in 2009. So we see how things don't change. Right. So he says, for Berman, and he's quoting some person, the Israeli logic of crushing the Palestinians under a blanket of greater violence is perfectly rational, if perhaps regrettable. While the futility of the Palestinian attacks against the superior force is evidence of madness, Berman is right to refuse any justification for attacks on civilians, as do we. We refuse the justification for attacks on civilians.
But he goes further to insist that any explanations are also impossible. This move guarantees that the blanket of greater violence imposed by the Israeli occupation is always seen as a response to and never an aggravating factor in the futility and madness of Palestinian violence. Berman rules out a priority, meaning ahead of the game, up front, any serious consideration of the actual root causes and history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by declaring one side to be mad before any empirical work is done. And that could have been written today. It could have been written 10 years ago. It could have been written 20 years ago. It could have been written 40 years ago. It is still true. The myth of religious violence lies underneath and is responsible for these double standards and this asymmetry. Anybody have questions, make sure you send them in. We're running a little bit over time tonight, but it's going to be fine, inshallah. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am. We have one last segment tonight before we get to before we get to take any final questions. And that is following up on our daily habits. So one of the things that we've done here is we have attempted to help uplift each other with daily habits by following the daily habits of the Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam. And last time we talked about wudu and we talked about the importance of being intentional and aware in your wudu. And I want to ask everybody who's watching, Daniela, Qadri, Ayhan, Born of Silence, everybody who's watching, how was your experience in the past week? Did you attempt to did you attempt to pay attention to your wudu? Did you attempt to see almost in front of your eyes the sins falling off of your different limbs? Did you take it slower?
Were you able to notice any sort of difference? With your wudu, I'll say that even though I struggle with some of the other things that we've been talking about implementing, I've still been able to keep on the habit of not looking at the phone or messages or anything like that until after Fajr and Dhikr, alhamdulillah. Just to be upfront, I've struggled with the night prayer. I've had some things and it's been, it's, you know, alhamdulillah, you have setbacks and you have triumphs. But I have tried and the task for us this week, Ayhan, was to pay attention in wudu. So you're in wudu all the time. Alhamdulillah, that's great. It's from the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ to always be in wudu. But when we do make wudu, that we're trying to pay attention to that wudu. It's not just automatic. It's not just slapping water around. Okay. And that if we want a better prayer, then paying attention in our wudu and being more intentional and realize what is going on, the wiping of our sins away during wudu is going to help us have a better prayer. So I would rate myself maybe like 40%, right, for the past week, maybe 40% of the time. I was able to, I was able to keep that in mind and remember and have a better wudu. And I think, you know, SubhanAllah, I think I think it did have an effect for myself. And I hope I hope it had a positive effect for you. So if you tried this or if you were with us last week and had this little assignment, let us know. How did it work for you to focus on to focus on your wudu? So the next thing that we have, I think we have guys in the studio. I think we have a clip to play, if I'm not mistaken, from Shaykh Omar.
The Prophet ﷺ is saying that the way this society is going to be established and distinguish itself, the secret ingredient beyond what we already know of the good things that Allah has put in us to naturally incline towards, this secret ingredient is going to be that those same people that are spreading peace, those same people that are feeding the poor, those same people that are working, are not making an excuse for themselves to not fight with their bodies and stand up to replenish their souls at night. This is what's going to be your secret ingredient to building this society, O Ansar, in a way that no one has ever built a society before. This is where it's going to come down to, the characters that build the culture of Madinah. وصلوا بالليل والناس النيام MashaAllah. So we have very, very powerful words from Shaykh Omar about the necessity, and all of us fall short, and we ask Allah ﷻ to aid us and assist us in this. But when it comes to all the things that we're talking about, and you know, with me, you get faith, you get politics, you get it all wrapped up into one. But if we're talking about seriously wanting to make a change, we're only going to go as far as our sincerity will take us. And we're only going to go as far as our character will take us. That the tools for changing society are the same, more or less, as the tools for changing yourself. And so, one of the key technologies that Allah ﷻ gave us, and the Prophet ﷺ gave us, to change ourselves, is the night prayer, is the tahajjud. And so, if that doesn't motivate us, and we said before, Imam al-Shafi'i said, if you want something,
like if you want something, for example, you want Palestine to be free, you want justice on earth. If we're not making night prayers for it, then we're not sincere. That was according to Imam al-Shafi'i. And we ask Allah ﷻ for assistance with it. So now that we're motivated to get into our night prayers, okay? And I am, and I hope you are too. What did the Prophet ﷺ say, some of the things that he said in his night prayers? And what are the lessons that we have? We're going to look at two du'a that he would make. Because, obviously, he would recite Qur'an, and, you know, whatever you recite, that's between you and Allah. But when it comes to some of the du'a, some of them are really, really important. And remember, this is how the Prophet ﷺ is starting off his day, right? He's doing this before he does anything, before he goes out to take care of his livelihood, you know, milk the sheep, whatever he has to do. So this is setting him up for success the rest of the day. One of the du'a he had, he made. Yeah, and we have it here. The guys in the studio got it up. MashaAllah, they're ahead of me. اللهم لك الحمد أنت نور السماوات والأرض ولك الحمد أنت قيم السماوات والأرض ولك الحمد أنت رب السماوات والأرض Three things. We're not going to be able to do a word-by-word translation. Time doesn't permit. But there's two aspects, I think, thus far, that pop out to me from looking at how... Then this is one of the du'a the Prophet ﷺ would open his prayer with, okay? So du'a al-istiftah, okay? You make Allahu Akbar and you say a du'a. He would often use this du'a to open up his night prayers. It's all gratitude, or it starts with gratitude, right? And we talked about gratitude for another day, right? You woke up, it was like a resurrection. Every day you're resurrected, right? So Allah is reminding you that He's going to resurrect you when it really counts, the big time. So we're grateful. You have the praise. The praise is for you. The praise is for you.
And what you do, you are the one that runs and controls and sustains this entire universe, right? So imagine, you haven't even gone to work yet. Maybe you've got stress, maybe you've got bills, maybe you've got things that you're... Maybe you're in a precarious situation. But you're starting your day with this remember, this reminder to be grateful to realize that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is in control of everything. He goes on to say, أَنتَ الْحَقُّ وَوَعْدُكَ الْحَقُّ وَقَوْلُكَ الْحَقُّ وَلِقَاءُكَ الْحَقُّ Is that you are the truth, and your promise is the truth, and your statement or your speech is the truth, and meeting you is the truth. And then he continues on, and Jannah is true, and the fire is true, and the prophets are true, and the hour is true. Right, so we see all of these sorts of... we're getting perspective. The Prophet ﷺ is getting perspective. Before you, you know, I don't know, your kid knocks over the glass of juice and spills it on your nice skirt and you yell at him or something like that. Perspective. Perspective, right? Is that the things that really matter, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and his promise of Jannah in the afterlife and forgiveness, and his speech, the Qur'an, and meeting him, and paradise, and hellfire, punishment, the prophets, the hour, everything. These are the most essential things for you to remember as you go throughout your day. And then he says, so then there's like an action point that he ends with, like the final third of the du'a, اللهم لك أسلمت و بك آمنت Is that I have, it's almost like an aspirational statement, right? Like you stand in the mirror and you say, you know, I'm gonna be the best today, or I'm gonna do this. This is almost like an aspirational statement. It says, I've submitted to you, and I believe in you,
and I rely upon you, and I turn to you or, you know, resign myself to you, and I complain to you, and I seek your ruling and everything. So forgive me for what I've done, for what I've sent ahead, and what I have delayed, and what is secret, and what is hidden. SubhanAllah, right? So you see, okay, mashaAllah, Daniella tried it, and she said, mashaAllah, she experienced a lot more focus. That's what I want to hear, alhamdulillah. I had the same experience. So we see that, subhanAllah, this is your du'a, this is your starting off your day with this. Look at how it calibrates you. Look at how it sets you up for success in the dunya and the afterlife. And then we have one more du'a. How the Prophet ﷺ would begin his qunoot. Okay, so you know that now you've made your du'a al-istiftah, you've done al-Fatiha, you do other than the Qur'an, you do other raka'at, however many are comfortable for you. Now you're going to pray winter. You raise your hands in du'a. What would the Prophet ﷺ often say in this last crucial part of his du'a? اللهم اهدنا فيمن هديت وعافي من فيمن عافيت وتولنا فيمن توليت وبارك لي فيما أعطيت Okay, some of the points here that Allah ﷻ stresses, or I should say the Prophet ﷺ, there's a communal aspect to this du'a, which is really interesting, okay. It's not just اللهم اهدني, like, oh Allah guide me. Guide me among those whom you have guided. So this isn't just like an intellectual exercise, that Allah ﷻ has guided people, like the prophets. And those are your examples and your role models to follow and to imitate because as human beings how we learn best and part of the wisdom of sending the Prophet ﷺ, and not just sending the Qur'an as a book and here you go, you got the instruction manual, is because we need an example.
We need a role model, especially kids. They demonstrate this time and time again that we learn best through modeling. And so we want to be guided among people who are guided. We want to have عافية, well-being, holistic well-being among those who do. And we ask Allah ﷻ for بارك وبارك لنا فيما أعطيت and we ask, we don't ask for more. We don't ask for more. We ask for blessing, which is profound. Allah ﷻ, we want Him to bless what we have. We don't want just more and more, give me more money and a bigger house and more, you know. Okay, everybody loves that. But anybody can have that and it's not going to do anything for you. What is better to ask for? And by studying the du'a of the Prophet ﷺ, we learn how to ask Allah. We learn how to ask Allah. And so he says, and put blessing in what you've given us, whatever you've given us. If you've given me a lot, if you've given me a little, just bless it. It's much, much more important than you giving me more. وَقِنَا شَرًّا مَا قَضَيْتْ And protect me from the evil that you have determined, that you have judged and decreed that will happen because you are the one who judges and nobody judges over your judgment. You are the one who abases, right? Or you are the one who honors. تُبَارَكْتَ رَبَّنَا وَتَعَالَيْتْ And you are the most majestic. And we've gone over time, but for that du'a, we really, you know, can excuse it because it's really, really a wonderful and important du'a. And it's really crucial. I can't stress enough how crucial it is to ponder and to have tadabbur. We know about having tadabbur of the Qur'an. That's true. We also need to have tadabbur of, you know, and tadabbur is sort of deep meditation on the du'a of the Prophet ﷺ. How did he make du'a? What did he make du'a for? What didn't he make du'a for? What did he pair together? What did he sort of leave, right? These sorts of things are extremely important and instructive.
So we'll take any final questions that we have from everybody. وَعَلَيْكُمْ سَلَامًا أَفْطَلْنَا أَفْطَلْنَا MashaAllah. Glad to see that everybody is a big fan of night prayers and the opportunity to cry, right? MashaAllah. سُرُور, welcome. Yes, if everything is going crazy around you, you can always rely on the night prayers. My favorite late night snack? Usually cashews. I really like cashews. I usually have various types of nuts lying around. I'm a protein snack guy, right? Not too many sweets, not too many carbs. Just try to keep it, you know, protein. And I didn't learn that from Sheikh Abdullah of Douro, but I'm sure he'd probably agree. MashaAllah. The first du'a, Aisha, was du'a Al-Istiftah, right? So it's one of the du'a the Prophet ﷺ would make when he is entering into the prayer. He said Allahu Akbar, right? And then you make a du'a to commence the prayer, to start the prayer, right? Kind of orients your heart or if you want to think about taking aim with an arrow, that this is something that, you know, it's like you're taking aim with your arrow. The quality of your du'a, the quality of your prayer, it might depend in part upon the quality of your du'a that you mentioned the first. Shaq Aman said, would you have Uyghur activists on for an interview? Yes, absolutely we would. 100%. I would be honored. Maybe you can, maybe this is something anybody can answer, Sheikh Omar.
What's your favorite late night snack? Buona notte, Aatikah. Aatikah Rahman has a question. Past week's episode you forgot to mention that if we intend to wake up for tahajjud then we have to leave witr in the first part of the night and only pray Isha, right? If we intend, I'm trying to follow this, excuse me, it's getting late here. If we intend to wake up for tahajjud, then we have to leave witr in the first part of the night and only pray Isha, right? I'm a little confused. What I think that you're asking is if I pray Isha and I'm considering, okay, am I going to pray witr now? Or am I going to wait until before fajr? Then is it better to pray witr early or later? Obviously, if all else being equal, it's better to pray witr in the last hour of the night, but praying witr period is better than not praying it. Now, if you want to get into some crazy stuff, you can look into some of the actions of the salaf would actually make up witr after fajr if they missed it. We have narrations about that, which is strange to a lot of people because a lot of people they think, oh, you know, I missed it. That's how haris, that's how, what's the word? Keen, okay? That's how keen people from the first generation, the second, third generation of Muslims would be on their night prayers, that they would even try to make it up or at least what they could when they woke up. As-salamu alaykum, India. May Allah aid you all. Question from sitting on a mountain. I wish I was sitting on a mountain right now. Maybe I'll go to Malaysia and sit on a mountain. That sounds like a lovely time. Do you have to fall asleep to pray tahajjud? No, you don't. What if you stay up all night? Does that count? Yeah, sure.
Very good. Can you tell us a story? Okay, Shaykh Omar, he's bringing the gems today. MashaAllah. Okay, can you tell us a story of one of your teachers and their qiyam? I can tell, you know, this is really... I had the benefit of making Umrah with Shaykh Muhammad Salah. And I always joke, Muhammad Salah, the football player? No, the Shaykh from Huda TV. Banana chips is another good one, Aisha, mashaAllah. And I really, really enjoyed praying qiyam with him. I didn't pray qiyam with many of my teachers in Medina. But I prayed qiyam several times with Shaykh Muhammad Salah. And one of the things that really, really left an impression on me, and being on Umrah with Shaykh Muhammad Salah in general, you have this feeling that you're just there with him. Like you have the feeling that he just does this every day of the year and it's just normal for him. And it's like being with him, you're just kind of along for the ride. Even the way he recites Qur'an, sometimes if he's leading qiyam al-layl and he's got people behind him, he'll recite kind of quietly. You have to listen really carefully to hear him as if he's just by himself. As if he's just by himself. So that was something that I really, I really got that feeling from him and his qiyam al-layl. And I was very, very impressed by it. Salt and vinegar chips are nice too, Valerie. They're nice too. I like salt and vinegar chips. Not necessarily for a midnight snack, but you know, in general. Okay, mashallah. Well, it's getting late here. We've been...
Yeah, mashallah. Allah yudha alayk. Mashallah. It's getting late, at least on the East Coast. Well, I think we're going to sign off and let everybody go tonight. But we appreciate the wonderful interaction as always and joining us for this wonderful time together. It's a time that we cherish together. I believe next week, next week we're taking a break. Yes, because I'll be traveling. Unfortunately, I'll be in a plane up in the air somewhere. So we will not have our regularly scheduled live stream next week. So we'll skip a week, but we'll be back at it inshallah, the week after. And we really appreciate this time that we shared together. May Allah bless it. And may Allah resurrect us together on the Day of Judgment. Subhanaka Allahumma wa hamdika sharafa la ilaha illa Allah wa astaghfirullah wa atubu ilaik. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah.
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