Sincerely, Yours
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Jazakumullah khair for joining us for another episode of Sincerely Yours. This is your host Ibrahim Hindi with my co-host Sheikh Abdullah Oduru. Sheikh Abdullah, how are you doing? Alhamdulillah. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh everyone. Thank you for joining us and being consistent with us. May Allah reward you all inshaAllah. I'm good man. Mashallah I love that color of your thawb. Appreciate it alhamdulillah. What is it like a off blue or something? Yeah, kind of like a off royal blue. We don't want to be too royal. We don't love the junior brother. We got to keep it humble. Mashallah, mashallah. I like I feel like my whole life is a quest of like seeing people in like really nice thawbs and being like where did you get that from? I need to like find out to go there and get a nice thawb for myself. When you go to Medina man, I'll tell you the tale. I just go to the tailors man. There's some tailors that we have. So alhamdulillah. Let me know inshaAllah. I'm heading there soon biidnillah. I will. InshaAllah. As always everyone, we're delighted to hear from all of you. Please let us know inshaAllah where you're coming to us from, where you're watching from. We want to interact with you. We want to hear from you. If you have questions during today's session, put it in the chat. We want to hear from everyone inshaAllah. One comment from brother Yahya says you guys are all on time today and he's laughing. It's true. We are on time today. JazakAllah khair. I see brother Asmar from Nigeria. As-salamu alaykum. Sister Aisha from Somaliland. She's different than Somalia. People should know that. As-salamu alaykum as well. Let us know inshaAllah where everyone is coming from. We want to hear from all of you. Blue Man from Toronto. InshaAllah Blue Man's with us I think every week. I love seeing the usernames and I'm getting used to all the people who are joining us.
Blue Man. Blue Man. I don't know if he's got the same self as you Sheikh. I think he's calling himself Blue Man because of the Toronto, what team is it? That's Blue? Blue Jays. Blue Jays. Yeah, maybe. There's no baseball anymore. I don't know if you heard about that. No, I'm not a baseball fan. We have Sister Basi, first time watching from South Africa. As-salamu alaykum. MashaAllah. Ahlan, ahlan, ahlan. MashaAllah. Welcome, welcome. We have a lot of folks from Africa watching us. I think because we've been bigging it up lately, talking about all the countries in Africa we want to visit. So our viewers are going up, alhamdulillah. Well, we have a great show today, a great guest, alhamdulillah. Someone who is familiar to both myself and Sheikh Abdullah. Dr. Usman Umarji, inshaAllah, will be joining us. He is the Director of Survey Research and Evaluation. He has a Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Master's and a PhD in Educational Psychology from UC Irvine. He has studied Islam at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. Dr. Umarji is also an adjunct professor in the School of Education at UC Irvine. As-salamu alaykum, Dr. Usman. How are you? Wa alaykum as-salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Alhamdulillah, doing phenomenal. Great to be with you both today. And great to see you as well. You know, every week I feel like I'm giving Sheikh Abdullah a bit of a hard time because I live in Canada and it's really cold and he lives in Texas and he's got great weather. But I think you have both of us beat today because you're coming from California. Alhamdulillah. Yes, we're blessed with good weather. So two Americans on the scene, brother. Watch what you say.
That's true. Past few weeks have been two Canadians against one American. We flipped the tables a little bit. Alhamdulillah. Dr. Usman, you know, part of the point of these sessions, these live sessions that we're holding is, you know, to help introduce people to the people they're getting knowledge from. And so I know a lot of people by tuning into Yaqeen, by reading our papers, by consuming the infographics, a lot of the work that they've been seeing has been work coming through either you personally or your department within Yaqeen. And so, you know, people want to get to know the person behind the information, the content that they're consuming. Who is the person behind the khutbah? Who's the person behind, you know, the paper that they're reading? And so that's kind of the point of all of this is to, you know, get to know our Masha'ikh better, to get to know our students of knowledge better, and to build, inshallah, deeper and better connection. So Sheikh, you know, tell us about your story. How did you decide to start pursuing knowledge? You know, when did you make that decision? And how did it go? Bismillah. Oh man, it takes me back now 20 years, no, actually more than that, about 22 years ago. So I was raised a bit about myself. I was raised in Southern California. I was born in Los Angeles, culturally practicing Muslim Pakistani household. So, you know, we observed, you know, all the cultural rituals of Islam, but definitely it was when I walked into college was a time that I made a conscious decision to be a practicing Muslim. And the story behind that is essentially that, you know, first time tasting freedom. So I went off to a university about an hour from my house and I was always, you know, staying out of like, I avoided the Kabbah, let's put it that way, right? I stayed away from all the major sins of Islam and I get to college and I'm living on my own in the dorms and it's like freedom, right? It's like absolute autonomy.
It's like do what you want. And you know, I'm a curious 18 year old man, right? I'm like, I wonder what this world is like and what do people do? And so the dorm experience really opened my eyes to the realities of kind of how people live in this world. So for me myself, just I mean, that's a long backstory, but like I love sports. So I got into the gym regularly, you know, you can't, I mean, when she got billows on the screen, it doesn't look like I go to the gym at all, right? You know, but like, and I did at some point in time, right? I was going to the gym regularly. I was hanging out with my dorm friends. You know, we would just play poker late into the night. And I was just kind of getting my feet wet with like independence in life. But then what ended up happening in a few months in that first term was I started to see like the devastating effect of like people who live a life of disbelief or people who don't have a law in their life. And so even though I was just culturally practicing, right, I was still just kind of like observing a certain cultural rules and I wouldn't cross my boundaries. But you know, in college, everyone is trying to figure out their identity, right? We're 18 years old. And so the fraternity started coming around and they're like, hey, they want to get people to rush. Right. And so this is maybe a US thing. So maybe for people in other countries, like fraternities are these clubs, right? They're there for men. And typically it's not good stuff that happens there. But, you know, when you're 18 years old and, you know, people are saying, hey, come and join us. We want you to be a part of our brotherhood, essentially. Right. It was, you know, it makes you feel, you know, a sense of, OK, someone values me. So, you know, I spent some time with those people just kind of from a distance, observing what they do, went to their houses at times. And immediately I was like, man, this lifestyle is disgusting. Right. This is disgusting. Things that they do. It's just about alcohol, marijuana, relationships. And same thing I saw in my dorm. So in about three months of living that, seeing that life, right, I was seeing it kind of from as I got almost like as an observer. I said to myself one day, you know, this is this is this is now I don't think I want to live my life this way.
So one day I randomly like decided to just open the Qur'an. I had a Qur'an like in every Muslim has that Qur'an on their shelf somewhere. It gets dusty for a while. We just pull it off the shelf, you know, blow that dust off of it. You know, opened it up randomly to a page and I read Surat al-Takathur and Surat al-Qari'ah, both of the Surahs. And nothing happens randomly. Right. You know, so Allah ﷻ, I believe, was sending me a signal about what are you doing with your life? And why are you exploring all these crazy things that are out there? And so I think at that moment it really hit me and it shook me that like I probably take my life a whole lot more seriously. And that started my path of becoming practicing, which led me to the MSU, Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine. And from there, you know, that's that's kind of what set off this whole path of seeking knowledge. You know, this might take us a little bit off tangent, but you know, that interesting question, because I think a lot of people have maybe a similar experience. They go, they experience, you know, a life that's different than the life that Islam expects of us. And then, you know, they realize that it's not all it's cracked up to be and they kind of come back. But at the same time, I think all of us also know people who, you know, also left their home as soon as they left their home. They went to university. They saw this life and they just, you know, drank from it and they just went, you know, part of the euphemism. But they just go completely into it and they never come back. And I think a lot of parents, especially myself, you know, Alhamdulillah, Allah ﷻ has blessed me with children and I worry about them now. And I worry about this question, like, am I sheltering them too much? Should they be exposed to this life? How do I make sure that when they're exposed to it, they have enough to help bring them back? And maybe there's no full answer to it, but I would love to know, you know, your insights, what you think about that. Yeah, you know, I mean, I think about this all the time for myself and my own kids. And it's a tension I deal with every single day.
I teach adolescent development in the university, so my entire course is on, you know, teaching people about what the teenage years are about. And Muslim parents are always wondering the same. What I see is, unfortunately, two extremes often, right? People say, you know what, we live in the West. They got to learn to live like the Westerners and they throw them into everything as if like that's just, they will learn, right? And they'll figure this out. And I generally find that that leads to a whole lot of bad outcomes because it's just too hard to develop a solid identity that way, right? And then I see the opposite, which is, no, we're living in a situation where there's like Islam is not like a dominant culture. So we're going to kind of shelter our kids at home completely and to the extent that these kids, when they actually hit the real world, it's like they have no idea how to function. Actually, I've seen this myself. I've seen these kids who are 16, 17. They don't know how to function around non-Muslims in any way, shape or form. So what is the happy medium? I think we're all know the answer in the coming decades as Muslims spend more and more time in the West. So, you know, tune back in for, you know, in 20 years, we'll give the answer to that. Right. But no, I deeply think that at the very basic aspect of it, it's like it's a developmental question. It's like when when do you think your kid like would you say to a five year old or three year old, hey, you're going to have to learn to use fire. So you might as well play with fire at the age of two or three. Are you going to say no, it's probably not a good idea. You've got to have some skills, some some motor skills. I know how to use your hands. You've got to know, like, you know, how things burn and eventually expose you to it in a very, you know, like there's a dosage of how you can get acclimated to playing with fire. So I think when we come to dealing with the society around us, we have to be very mindful of the same thing. Right. You can't throw them in prematurely once you feel like their faith is firm. They've got some solid attachment to a lot of messenger. They know the moral compass of Islam. At that point, right. Selectively letting them go. Right. We'll be a little bit safer than saying we'll figure it out on our own. So, Alhamdulillah, you said you mentioned something and it kind of ties into what you're talking about now.
You said freedom. Right. When you went to college, I was like, yes, freedom. I mean, I remember even as anonymous, I remember my first car freedom. I get to go out by myself. I have to call mom, dad to take me somewhere. Come home late. Come home when they don't, you know, they're asleep or whatever. So like you mentioned, it's that that sweet spot for parents to determine whether their children are ready to go. And like you mentioned, a lot of times, you know, may Allah bless the teachers and the but they're in these institutions. And then they're going straight to, you know, it was all boys at Koran school. But then they're going straight to it's all genders, both genders, both genders and in college. And they're hit with a quote unquote rude awakening. So what would you tell like the parents when you said freedom? That really hit because do they realize that before college they may not be free? If you could explain that, you know what that just break that down for us, for especially the parents to understand that about their children. Yeah. So a couple of things. The first is this notion that. The young developing person needs to feel a sense of autonomy in their life. This is the hallmark actually of adolescence and being growing from being a boy or a girl into being a man or a woman. It's that feeling that I have control over my life. And so it's part of human development. Right. The brain actually changes in that way. Right. That it seeks out certain types of experiences. It actually seeks out risk because the brain also wants rewarding experiences. That's why, like young people, like teenagers, they do crazy things. We all we all did this as kids. Right. And we're looking for thrills. We want roller coasters. Now, when you're like, you know, our age is like, who wants to go on a roller coaster? It's like, I don't know. I expose myself to that.
Right. Young kids like I want to do this. And it's because Allah has made their brain in that fashion. So if the parents don't recognize that the young person's brain is looking for experiences to have autonomy and experiences to have thrill seeking and they try to prohibit that, they're going to find it in some way that you don't want them to do. So I always tell the parents, like you've got to let them do it, but let them do it in a way that is safe. So, again, like I mean, it can go off the boat here, but like tick tock is like a common thing. There's a tick tock challenges that kids do. Right. And it's like crazy stuff. You look at them. It's like slap your teacher. I remember telling this to my students in the university. I said, this is a tick tock challenge. I dare one of you to slap me. Right. We'll see what happens. Right. Because like that is literally a challenge. Right. Or it's like, oh, this like your best friend's like one of them was like, go and kiss your best friend's girlfriend. Right. This is like disgusting stuff. But it's like the point is, the more crazy. Right. And the more like audacious it is, the more the adolescent brain is like, that feels good. That feels good. So if you make these kids never get that feeling by doing like these exhilarating things, they're going to do it in a way that we don't think is healthy. So what can you do? Let them have that space to do it in the huddle. So I talk to my daughter all the time, which is only 12. Right. But, you know, they all they're 12. But you feel like they're 16 or 18 with the way they think about life. Right. So what do you want? I want to go. But I want to go bungee jumping. I want to go skydiving. Right. Those are the things that she asked me to do. And I'm like, well, I looked it up. I'm like, you can't go to your 18 by the law. But it's like what throat, what thrill seeking experiences can I give you that you choose that will make you feel like you're getting that sense of that you choose what you're doing. You're getting the thrills and you kind of get it out of your system in some way. Right. So that's one aspect, I think, of freedom that we have to acknowledge is that like we like none of us like to be controlled by our wives, our husbands, our employers or anything else. So why do we think our kids would enjoy being controlled by their parents? Right.
You know, that reminds me, I remember one time I was giving a lecture to the youth long time ago and I respect this young young man. He came up to me after the lecture and he was like, I understand everything that you were saying and what we're supposed to do. And this is what he told me. This is what he told me. He said, but, you know, you weren't Muslim before and I just want to taste that. I just want to do it once, man. Is that something wrong with that? I was like, man, I don't know if you're going to come back, bro. I don't know if you're going to come back. So that's really important that you mentioned that to parents, that they let them have that experiential learning. But in a way that's that's guided, like you mentioned, I mean, you gave some solutions there. I mean, I mean, you were we were talking about camping, about the young men and how to raise these young boys as men. And, you know, the whole concept of rites of passage. I mean, for instance, in the fraternities, you have these types of initiations. You have to do some crazy things. Well, Allah will be he I lean. And Allah is the only one that knows what you're doing in the frat brothers, you know, know what you're doing. So I'm glad you mentioned that, you know, being that parents have to find a way they should should find a way and not just let it happen. Because it can it can be too late, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And also you have to take into mind of the gender of the child. Right. Like boys like to do like physical, aggressive things. Right. And I think with a lot of parents were just like, oh, my boy to be very calm. Right. And sit in the chair. Right. And read books. I'm like, that's not how the fitrah is for many of these people. Right. And the companions weren't like that. Right. But they were they were doing stuff. Right. Even I tell people like the prophet Muhammad would wrestle and take on like people like being physically involved, exposing yourself. Even you might break an arm. You might break a leg. It's part of doing these things. But if you don't give people a chance to do that, like I said, they're going to go do it in a way you don't want them to do it. Yeah. SubhanAllah. SubhanAllah. SubhanAllah. I mean, can you enlighten?
This may bust a bowl for some of these guys in the colleges, but can you enlighten the parents on you don't have to get specific, but we mentioned fraternities. Like, you know, OK, the young man, he comes from a religious household, quote unquote, religious household, even though he may be religious, but he feels free and he gets introduced to these fraternities. What are some guidelines you give some of these young guys and girls even, you know, when dealing with these fraternities that may be a Muslim fraternity, but they're not acting like I want to say Muslims, they're just not acting normal. So what are some guidelines you give these young men? OK, let's take a step back for it, because I think the guidance has to come. The question you ask, you know, I want to deal with that more deeply. Yes, we look leads people to wanting to try that in the first place. Right. Like this guy that came to this brother and said, you've been on the other side of the fence. I want to know what it's like. Right. And it's the fundamental notion that Islam is restrictive and that there is joyful, fun, wonderful things to do if only we could remove those restrictions. Right. And I think teaching our kids and teaching ourselves, to be honest, it's not about just for children, but teaching ourselves that Islam literally is the most liberating, free way you can live your life. And I didn't understand that for a long time myself. Right. But now that you know, I'll be I'll be 40 years old on Friday. You know, I'm an old man now. Right. You know, the zoom you don't see the gray. Right. But those are the things that young people are never told. Right. I never I never told that when I was a kid. It's like, look, you got to do this. You got to do this. You can't do that. You do this. You go to hell. Right. Like it's all like rules, regulations, punishments and nothing to do with regard, like my emotions, my psychology, like my needs. Right. And I tell them, I'm like, look, believe me, like the people who do those things that you're wishing I talk to them. I talk to my non Muslim brother. I'll give you an example right now. And I use this, by the way. So going back to your question of what do you tell people who are now experiencing this? Right. I don't know some friends to this day who are in France and doing this stuff.
You know, we meet up for lunch and dinner every now and then every few months and catch up. And they tell me things like, man, they're like, you had it easy. I'm like, what do you mean? I had it easy. Like, man, you never had a girlfriend in your life. Right. You found one person who married that girl. You're happy with her. Right. He's like, bro, I can't find happiness with a woman. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, I've had like 30 girlfriends in my life. Right. OK. Like one is beautiful. One was funny. One was super intelligent. Right. One was like, you know, just whatever, like, you know, whatever. She was adventurous. So there's a trait in every girlfriend that I've had. But I can't find all those traits in one person. So I can never be satisfied with a relationship I have. Right. And I just sat there and I was like, I'm going to love for Islam. I'm going to love for Islam. Right. Like, I'm the one who's free enjoying, like, you know, my my life. And this guy is important with every single person that he dates. Right. So it's things like that. Right. Or I've had friends who do the same thing, whether it be drugs or any other problem where it's like they are now addicted and stuck in a horrible lifestyle. And I'm going to come to find out you people like you're like the most free person you can be when you stay away from these things that actually destroy your life. So, yeah, that's that's beautiful, just, you know, you're kind of enslaved to these things. You don't even realize it. You know, it's kind of love, you know, and people realize, as you said, you know, you feel liberated and, you know, I was telling some Shukra before about a couple of years ago, because, I mean, you see what these young men in particular and it affects the females as well is like this, you know, you got the red pill movement, the MGTOW movement, men going their own way. And, you know, one of their tenets is like, don't get married. Why child support, prenup, all these types of things. And if the young man and woman don't understand, you know, the the Islamic objective behind marriage and the Islamic objective behind the whole gender relations, just like you said, you know, it's just
haram, haram, haram, you know, you can't communicate at all. And sometimes, you know, it's very, very restrictive, but they know that, you know, Islam is just learning it. And as you mentioned, through experience as well in a confined way, a guided way, that's the most liberating. Yeah. It's why, like you mentioned, we've got to teach our kids and ourselves. Why do we do what we do? That's what makes you feel like this is the way to live. Right. Because I just don't give example. I was dealing with a case recently, somebody with inheritance issues. Like every family knows the Muslim community, there's always inheritance fights, right? It's like, I don't understand. Why do I get this? Why does this person get that? Right. And when you take the time and you can show them the hikmah, right, the wisdom of Allah and how he's given inheritance, I said, look, this is going to happen to the family. This is going to break down the family and these other dimensions. I'm like, you're thinking about yourself and your bank account. Think about all these other factors. And this person stopped and was like, man, I didn't realize that there was that many dimensions to this. Right. So it's you. But if I just said, look, don't ask questions. This is the rule. Right. That's it. You're never going to feel satisfied. Right. So in a society where everything's always asking you to justify what you do, we have to work with teaching our children and ourselves. This is the hikmah, the wisdom of Allah and all that we do. This is why we pray. This is why we fast. This is why we don't do this. This is why we do that. This is why this is haram. This is why this is obligated. Right. So, ah, OK, things make sense. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Jazakallah khair. Jazakallah khair. So, Shaykh, like, first of all, before we continue, I just want to remind everyone, inshallah, in the chat, if you have any questions, please put them in the chat. We want to hear from all of you. If there's anything you want to ask Dr. Osman, there is a time in our session today where we will take questions from everyone, inshallah. So, Dr. Osman, as you're going through, you know, this pursuit of knowledge that started when you went to college, was there any time where you felt like moments of doubt?
And if you did, like, how did you overcome those? Yeah, Jazakallah khair. Alhamdulillah, by the blessing of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, I've never experienced any sort of a serious doubt about Islam. And I think the reason for that, there's a few. Number one, it's the mercy of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. I've never been tested with that. But a couple of things. One was seeing kufr, like with my eyes, right? And seeing what that lifestyle was like, showed me very early, like, you know, like 18 years old, I was like, all these other ways of life are disgusting, repulsive, and there's no foundation which they live upon. Right. So, it's never like there's another way of life that's better. Now, the second thing was that there's always questions as to, well, why do we do this in Islam? And so, those are minor issues, right? Like, why is this a ruling for here? Why can't I do this? And that, alhamdulillah, I was just very blessed again to always have mentors around me. One of the first things that I did when I was in college was enroll in a few different halaqas in the community. And just having a senior person, right, who's 10, 20, 30 years my age, you know, older than me, to be there for any question. I'm like, look, I got somebody on speed dial, right? I can text message them, right? I can phone, I can call them, right? It was just very, very liberating to feel like I never had to sit with those questions for too long. So, I mean, my advice is that if anybody ever has those issues, like, you've got to find real people, right? We live in a world where it's like all social media, right? Like, you ask somebody on social media, they know who you are, right? You can go and tweet at some shaykh and say, give me the answer. But until you sit with somebody, say, shaykh, this is what's on my mind. I'm not understanding this, or I don't understand that. They know who you are. They know your background. They know your life history. They know your psychology. They know where you're at with your iman. They will give you an answer that satisfies you. Because not all answers that are textbook correct are going to satisfy the questioner. So, I was very fortunate to have that network of brothers around me and scholars around me. And to this day, I'm so fortunate to have that. It's so rewarding. Absolutely.
You know, SubhanAllah, it reminds me of this story we know of Ibn Abbas radiAllahu anhu. Now, one person came to him and asked him, like, if someone commits murder, can Allah forgive them? So, he says, yes, Allah can forgive the sins. So, the man leaves. And then another day, weeks later, whatever it might have been, a different man comes, asks him the same question, can Allah forgive murder? And he says, no. And the students of Ibn Abbas, they turned to him later and they said, why did you say yes to one man and no to the other? He said, because I could see on the first person, he wants to repent. So, I told him to repent. And I said, and I could see in the other person the signs of anger. And so, I thought he might want to commit the sin of murder. So, I told him no, so he wouldn't commit it. And it's just, you know, that aspect of, you know, the Shaykh looking at the person in the face and seeing, you know, what that person's psychology is, where they are, giving them an answer based on that. Like you said, everybody right now is just completely online. And that personal connection is just completely cut off. And I think we're all the worse for it. But I think that's such an important point to try to connect yourself to real people in your life. Yeah, SubhanAllah, SubhanAllah. Shaykh, if you don't mind, what was the sequence of your studies? So, you know, you studied in Azhar for a while. Was that the beginning? And then you came back and continued your secular studies? How did that go? Yeah, so I would say my studies began in my college years. So, Alhamdulillah, I was a very avid reader. And so I always go through these phases in life, right? When I was in my teens, I would read sports, everything. Like, you know, you name it, any sport. But when you didn't know the Blue Jays, it's like, come on, man. How do you not know who the Blue Jays are, right? Like, you just, anything about sports, I devoured it, right? I could tell you the stat about any player, what year, how many points they had, rebounds, assists. Sorry, Shaykh Ibrahim, nothing about hockey. That's like forbidden in my world, right? You know? But, and then I went to like finance. I started reading everything about the stock market. So I was just in this habit of like obsessively reading.
And then so now when I like decided to become like a committed Muslim, I just literally was like just devouring books. And so that was the first path that I started upon. And I just, so that was the first thing, right? So through reading, that opened up a lot of questions, which is why I was like, look, books can't tell me everything. So I found these shuyukh to study with, right? And then my third year of college, something interesting happens. I used to hang out with a lot of, you know, we used to call them, these words may not be politically correct anymore, right? We used to call them the Fabi brothers, right? You know, they were fresh off the boat, right? They had just come from like Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and they're always speaking in Arabic. So here I am, I'm the MSU, right? And I'm like, man, these guys, they speak Arabic all the time. They can understand the Quran, they can understand the Hadith. Like I'm this miskeen, impoverished guy and I just gotta rely on these translations all the time. So I was like, I want to go learn Arabic, right? So I went to my university and they had a study abroad program. I was like, which Middle Eastern country can I go to? And they had a program in Egypt. So I went to the American University in Cairo during my third year of college, studying engineering in the American University. But really that was my cover for studying Arabic, right? I was like, I'm just there to study Arabic. So I spent my first year that year just studying Arabic and doing some Islamic studies. I came back, continued my thoughts with my powers in the community. And then the point is to got too frustrated. I was like, look, there's not enough people who... This is the early 2000s, right? It was like mid 2004, 2005 around this time. I said, there's just not many people in the West right now where I live who are born in America, speak English fluently, who understand the cultural context. I'm like, it's fortify that I better get up and leave and go study. I was like, someone's gotta do it. I better go do it. So I packed my bags and took off onto Azhar with my wife. I had just been married for about a year. And Alhamdulillah, my Lord, she pushed me too. She's like, look, you stick in this engineering job too long. We're not going anywhere, right? She's like, let's just leave while you're still early in this. So I went to Azhar for about, you know, I spent there three and a half years in Egypt, three years in Egypt, unable to finish because the revolution took me out of there. And then yeah, I continued my studies here and went back and did my master's and my PhD here. So.
Wow. Okay. There's an elephant in the room. You just, and you just breezed by and said, come on. You said the revolution took me out of there. Okay. You can be correct, but just like give us some experiences. Like who told you, okay, you gotta go. Or did you say we need to get out of here? What happened? Yeah. So this is like December, right, of 2010, if I remember correctly, right? Or November, around the time of the Arab Spring, right? So like Libya was going through a whole lot, right? The airports have been bombed, right? That's a neighboring countries, right? So Egypt was on edge. It's like, okay, like there was protests going around, but Hussein Mubarak was still in power, right? And people were like, look, these airports get bombed. You guys ain't going anywhere, right? You're stuck here. So Azhar actually shut down everyone, like all foreigners need to leave. And I remember this time just to put the context, right? We were, it was a police, it was like a militia out there. So, you know, the government wanted to like stick it to the people. So they pulled all like the military off the streets, right? They pulled all the police off the streets. And so now there's this kind of like chaos. So I remember like I'd be downstairs with a baseball bat doing my shift to make sure that no one comes to the neighborhood and does anything. And we had like big rocks we'd put like on each street. Anyone who comes in, you gotta show the ID. So it was pretty crazy, right? There was tanks and barbed wire everywhere. So, you know, we eventually, you know, like, you need to get out of here. So I'm leaving. So now I can't skip over the juicy story that I usually skip over is as I'm leaving out of the airport, I remember I was with Imam Soheib Webb and I, right? We were good friends. And so he was with same flight to New York and I'm trying to leave and I get pulled out of line by the Egyptian secret services. And yeah, they gave me a hard time. For another episode, you know, the hours I spent in an Egyptian prison under the airport, left, I'm glad I was able to get out eventually, but I'm banned from Egypt. So I could never go back and finish my studies. So are you serious? Yeah, I guess I was spending too much time organizing how to call it and moving around the scene. Gotcha. Gotcha.
So I had a daughter who was one year old and my wife was pregnant when this went down. So yeah. Wow. Yeah. That is a whole other episode, man. We need to make a series out of that. That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. May Allah make things easy for you. On the other side, the FBI was waiting back in the US, but that's a separate story. That's the third episode now. Wow. Wow. So Jeff, let's move on to the next segment. I think there's an A or Hadith that you wanted to reflect upon today. There's just so many. When you asked me to pick one, I was kind of like scratching my head for hours. Like what can I possibly say? If you don't mind, if you don't mind, I think there's something very important before we go off onto that, Sheikh Ibrahim, if you don't mind. Yeah, go ahead. I think it's very important that people know about your interaction with, I don't want to misquote the title, that dealing with surveys and data and collecting data, because I think it's important that the average person that tunes into Yaqeen knows that a lot of the research that we do, I mean, Mashallah, Sheikh Osman is the backbone to a lot of it, because when it comes to the information and quoting that, for instance, this happens with Muslims here, this percentage of Muslims, this is what happens to them. Like, for instance, I'm with the Convert Life Department. We do surveys and we send them out to converts, convert organizations to gather information, to make sure that whatever we produce has a strong foundation, i.e. with surveying and collecting data. So if you can touch on what made you get into that and then what is your role within Yaqeen and why it's important, okay? And then thirdly, which I learned from sitting with you numerous times in hours is, you know, how there's a, if you wish, if you would, you know, if you can,
how does a fiqh or an understanding or methodology in producing surveys? I didn't even know that, but you enlightened me, very much so, you know, subhanAllah, very, very interesting. So if you're able to expound on that, I appreciate it. That's a lot, that's a lot to talk about. Yeah, that was like five, six questions. I think it's important, I think it's important. So alhamdulillah, you know, it's, you know, Allah facilitates in every experience we have in life, right? Nothing is wasted. So I did my degree in engineering, you know, left, became an imam, right? Then left again, went back to graduate school. And when I was in graduate school, you know, I just, I realized like my engineering background, my math background made statistics very easy for me and enjoyable. And I saw the power of prediction and of probing what people believe and do in terms of understanding future behavior. So that was my whole PhD was on like understanding what people believe in like fifth and sixth and seventh grade, how it predicts who they'll become in their 20s and their 30s and their 40s. And what parents believe and do when their kids are like seven, eight years old, how that predicts what their kids become in their 20s and 30s and 40s. So I said, look, there's nothing that I know of in the Muslim world that has done really deep systematic analyses of Muslims longitudinally to understand, look, this is like, that's chicken bites question, way at the beginning of the episode. What do we do with our kids, right? Do we do this? Do we do that? We don't have answers because there's no precedent in our modern society. And there's no data to actually tell us what is successful. So that was a kind of my driver for kind of entering this role in Yateen. It's like, look, we need to quantify, understand what are people doing in the East, in the West, right? White, black, male, female, all these things, convert, non-convert, what's adaptive, what's maladaptive. But that's really what I try to focus on to understand that, look, okay, so people say, well, like the recent paper I'm working on, it's like, what does religiosity have to do with mental health? And it's like, you can just conjecture and argue, and some will say, oh, it has nothing to do with it. I'm like, let's actually find out. So it turns out that when we do these studies and we probe people, realize, ah,
believing in these things leads to these worldly outcomes that are really, really helpful. So religion and mental health have a strong relationship. The more religious you are, typically you find better thriving in life, right? Or if you parent this way, right, your kids will have a stronger identity this way. So that was kind of where the impetus came for really focusing on surveys. Now, the methodology, that's a whole, that's probably another day in time, but like, suffice to say that like, people should be cautious of statistics at times because you can lie with them as much as you can tell the truth with them. So by changing the way you word a question, it's like a lawyer, right? A lawyer knows how to ask a question in a way that can get a certain response. And so can a survey engineer, essentially, right? So, you have to just be mindful that, you might get manipulated, right, in a survey to serve the interest, right, of... I'll actually give an example about this. Recently, there was a survey that went out, some random survey, I forgot who ran it. It had to do with like LGBTQ identification in America. And it had some like large inflated number. And when you dig deep into it, it's the way they ask the questions facilitates a certain type of a response. And so you can actually now tell people, oh, look, so many people identify as this and this and that, when it's like, that's probably an exaggerated number because if you ask it a different way, you've got a way lower number, right? Well, that's interesting because, SubhanAllah, the average person, I want to say the average person, when they consume some content or something like that, or something comes in the email with a company, you don't want to answer these questions, right? But you would love to know the percentage of people that do this. Yep. But you have to participate in that as well. And that's one thing you taught me, SubhanAllah. We don't want to sit there and go, oh, God, that's okay. Yeah, okay, I'm this color. But then when you see the information, you appreciate it. So I think that's something that's very enlightening for me. And with a lot of things we're doing with these imams, we're going to do surveying, we're going to have some stuff with converts as well coming out again. So those of you that may know a convert to Islam or a convert yourself,
please take five to 10 minutes to answer these questions. It's intentional. We want to help serve. That's ultimately why we're here, inshallah. You know, this is the way that we want to serve Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. So jazakumullahu khair for that. But you got to promise us a whole another episode on that as well. I think it's important that the general public understand the whole process, because that was very enlightening to me. Jazakumullahu khair. Yeah, I'll add just one point, because it's so relevant to what we've recently been doing. So people often talk about what is the role of religiosity in life? And so they'll do all these surveys, right? These large organizations globally will do it. And they'll say things like, oh, religiosity doesn't matter. Or religiosity has a small effect. And when you wonder what do they mean by religiosity, they ask a question that says, for instance, how often do you go to church? Right? And that's their measure of religiosity, or how often do you go to the masjid? Or they might ask, like, how religious do you feel you are? So I'm like, those are really not good measures of what it means for us to be a practicing Muslim, right? To live Islam. There's so many dimensions, right? So we developed a very intricate measure that we call basic, right? Your beliefs, your attitudes, your spirituality, your institutional connections, your contributions, to holistically understand what it means to be a Muslim. And how does your holistic practice influence your life? And it was incredibly powerful and predictive in so many things that matter, right? Mental health, relationships, right? You know, peer relationships. Like, you know, it just, you know, it blows everything else out of the water because we actually started with Islam's definition of religiosity rather than some non-Muslim, off the shelf, secular definition, right? No, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Again, going to the foundation and making sure we don't start somewhere that's built on some other foundation that's not conducive to our creed and our foundation. That's beautiful. Jazakumullah khairan. All right. So Shabrahim, you want the ayah? He's waiting, man. All right. No, actually, I'm really happy you brought that up because sometimes people ask me, like, what do you think is the most important thing Yaqeen does? And I always say data. Because, you know, even if you have different, you know, different approach to answering questions,
maybe that some of the fellows that Yaqeen might have, everybody makes use of the data. Even if you're a masjid, even if you're, you know, a Islamic conference, you want to know, hey, what topics should we address? Maybe look at the doubt survey, right? You want to know how to deal with converts, maybe look at the convert survey. Even if, like, every single masjid and organization in North America, in the Western world really can make use of the data that you are producing, alhamdulillah, you and your team. So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward you for all of your work. Ameen, ya Rabb. Tafadhal, inshallah, with the ayah. You guys are the ones who design all this stuff, right? Shaykh Abdullah's heading the convert stuff. So I'm just helping you, you know, Shaykh Ibrahim, you're doing all the imam resources. I'm just trying to create a survey to help you, so. But really, I mean, like, helping each population, that's what we're really trying to do, because converts are different than imams, right? They're different than an immigrant. So knowing what each of them do is so important, right? So bismillah, the ayah I want to share with today is an ayah from Surah Al-Baqarah where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talks about fighting of all things, right? كُتِبَ عَلَيْكُمُ الْقِتَالَ وَهُوَ كُرْبٌ لَكُمْ That Allah says that fighting has been prescribed upon you, although it is something that you do not like. So my explanation is not going to be about fighting, but it's about the next part of the verse where Allah says وَعَسَىٰ أَن تَكْرَهُ شَيْئًا وَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَكُمْ وَعَسَىٰ أَن تُحِبُّوا شَيْئًا وَهُوَ شَرٌّ لَكُمْ وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنْتُمْ نَا تَعْلَمُونَ This principle to me, like, if it was halal to get a tattoo, this is what I would tattoo on my arm. It's not halal, so no one would do it, right? But like, it's this verse I just want to like have pasted everywhere, everywhere I go I'm reminded of it, which Allah is telling you that He gave fighting as an example, right? You know, Allah has asked us to fight even though it's something we don't like. But then He tells us the reason. He says, perhaps there are things that you don't like in this life, but those things are in reality good for you. And perhaps there are things that you really like and you love in this life, but those things are just actually bad for you. And Allah knows and you do not know.
And so I wanted to select this because I study motivation quite a bit, right? And why human beings do what they do and what drives their behavior. And so many times what drives human behavior is our own pursuit of what we think is in our self-interest, right? So if I think that something is gonna be good for me, right? I'm gonna want to go and do that. If I think something's gonna be bad for me, I'm gonna abstain from doing that. But Allah is telling us in this verse is that human beings, hold on just a minute, put the brakes on. Your intellect is not so developed to fully understand where all the good lies and where all the evil lies. You need to rely upon Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala to be the one who determines as our creator where good is and where bad is, despite the fact that your nafs will actually, will play games with you, right? Our fitrah will tell us that something is good when in reality it's bad. And our fitrah will tell us something is bad when in reality it is good. And so I bring this up because in the world that we live in today, especially for those of us who are living in non-Muslim societies, it's always this rationalization that people get into, which is, I know Allah and his messenger tell us to do these things, but I want to do things that are good for me, right? It's like I had this, you know, all the time, especially with money, it's obvious. It's like, I know Allah's interest is haram, but how can I not take interest? It'd be foolish for me not to take interest in today's society. It's good for me to take interest, right? Or, you know, I hear this as well, like, Shaykh, I know we're not supposed to mingle with opposite gender and, you know, have like, you know, relationships, but like, how am I ever going to get married? How am I going to know if this is the one I'm supposed to marry? And this goes back to this fundamental premise that if you think that way, one doesn't, you don't want to admit it, but it's, you believe that you know what's best for you and that that is something which we need to learn is not true, right? At many, many, many levels. I'll give some funny examples that you might think are, I mean, they're silly, but they get at the core of this behavior, right?
They've done these really cool studies where they do things like they take somebody and they say, okay, Shaykh Abdullah, if I was to ask you, would you like to sit in like a giant cardboard box that's dark for like 20 minutes? You think that'd be a fun thing to do? Absolutely. You're, okay, there we go, right? Yeah, everyone says no, that's going to be terrible. It's going to be horrible, right? And they would do this. They literally do the experiments and they put the person in the giant cardboard box and sitting in a chair and it's dark and they can't use their phone. They can't do anything right. And after 20 minutes, they asked them, how was the experience? And they find that people consistently rate the experience as being far better than they perceived it to be. And then sometimes they do the opposite. They've given things like some like a work processor and say, okay, I want you to correct this, like all the errors and the commas and like how painful is that going to be? And they're like super, super painful. And they go through it and they find it not to be as painful. The point of these studies is that look, things that like a human being thinks would be obvious, like, yeah, this is going to be fun or this is going to be terrible, are often like we're really, really off on. And this is like silly things of life, not even like serious things, right? Let alone things that have like these massive implications for like human well-being and like, you know, like, you know, the way a society should live and these laws that can influence like poverty and wealth and like, you know, war and like justice, like these macro issues. And we think that somehow we're just going to know them, right? You don't even know that if the restaurant you go to, you're like, oh, I think this burger is going to taste great. And you go in like, oh, that burger was terrible, right? Like we can't even predict if that meal is going to be delicious, right? And you can predict like, you know, how much money should go to this person or this transaction should be halal and, you know, talking to this girl this way is right and wrong. No, you don't know. And the sooner that we can just absorb this, right? And Allah talked about this in the Quran in another place. And I find that really nice because nothing is nicer than people going to a shaykh and framing a question to get the answer they want. Happens all the time. You both got me, right?
We're like, you know, they set you up and you're like, you know, you're like, I know what you're doing because you want this answer, right? And Allah talks about this, right? He says, wa'alamu an fiikum rasoolullah, right? Know that the messenger of Allah is amongst you. law yudhi'ukum fi katheeran min al-amri la'anatum That if he was to obey you, right, in so many of these issues, you would be in hardship. And that's again something that like with age, like I think I've stumbled across where it's like, stop trying to use your mind to say what is good for you and what is bad for you. Like, I really don't know. And what I find most enjoyable about this is that it's not just a test of doing what Allah wants, but I see it as a test that people are always looking for the sweetness of Iman. It's that elusive thing. You hear this in this hadith that, you know, there's a sweetness to Iman. And I was reflecting and I'm like, you know, just doing if I do the things that my nafs wants to do, that Allah also wants me to do, like my nafs tells me that it's bad to, for instance, like kill somebody, right? And so I don't and Allah tells me not to kill somebody. So I'm like, that's not where I'm going to find like this deep insights into life by doing the obvious that I already wanted to do. But it's in doing those things that my nafs is like, you really, really want to do this. But Allah is saying that's not good for you. Or you really, really don't want to do this. And Allah is saying that's what you need to do. That is when the sweetness of Iman will manifest. Right. That is when one will say, aha, man, Islam is beautiful. Right, man, Allah has a wisdom and his messenger that like I just never fully appreciate it. But if you've got to go through those experiences of saying, I want to do this, I'm not going to do it. Or I don't want to do it, but I got to do it. Right. It's so many things that are counterintuitive in life. Right. Like who imagines that like, OK, getting up like every morning, like go to like a random like non-Muslim, right? Like, you know, yeah. Like, you know, I go to sleep maybe at like midnight, had a long day. But then I get up at like five in the morning. All right. And I do my salah. It's like, aren't you exhausted? Right.
Aren't you like, you know, beat? And I'm just like, man, if I miss my salah, I feel lethargic. Right. I feel lazy. Right. You know, when I do my fajr, right, and I get up and, you know, of course, if one is doing tahajjud even on another level, I'm like, it's counterintuitive. You're saying getting less sleep in this case is making you more efficient and productive and more wholesome. I'm like, yes. Why? وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنتُمْ نَا تَعْلَمُونَ Because Allah knows us and we don't know ourselves. Right. Like, you know, we sit there scrolling all day on our phone thinking somehow this is going to make us happy. And then we're like, man, what in the world did I just do? Right. We don't know what's good for us. And this is where liberation lies and not having to make that choice for yourself and like struggle and say, you know, it's like, look, Allah knows. Whatever Allah you want me to do, I'm going to do it because I know I'm going to find khair for me there. All right. And that is what we want to internalize. It's like Allah's always looking for the khair for us. Right. And that's going back to this freedom. Right. If you want to be free, Allah's walking you to freedom. Right. If you're going to walk that path with him. And then, you know, you get that hadith qudsi, where people are always looking for this enlightenment. Right. And the Prophet said that hadith where Allah said that nothing, my servant doesn't get closer to me than doing more than doing anything other than the obligatory. And then he gets closer to me by doing the nawafil, the voluntary until I love him. And when I love him, I'm his seeing by which he sees, his hearing which he hears, his hand with which he strikes. And that level comes with following this type of guidance. Right. I don't want to do it, but I'm going to do it. Right. And so that's that's my reflection. So. MashaAllah. MashaAllah. JazakAllah khair. JazakAllah khair. JazakAllah khair. I want to rip it off, make a khutbah for myself for Friday, inshaAllah. I'll just take some of these points and use them on Friday. SubhanAllah. I think it's so important. It's such a common question. Right. Why is Islam so restrictive? Why do I feel like it's you know, I can't do the things that I want to do.
And I think that just that insight of like, you don't know what's good for you. You could not possibly understand what's good for you. That's such a powerful. It might be difficult for young people to understand, but it's such a powerfully true thing. How many times in our lives we thought like, oh, if I don't marry this person, I'm going to be so sad. And then like a week later, a month later, you're like, Alhamdulillah, Allah save me from this person. Yeah, exactly. That happens in our lives all the time. SubhanAllah. You know, I have this analogy, if you don't mind, I'll share that kind of capture some of this. Right. Shadal, you have a point. Go ahead, make that first. And I've been toying with this. I call it the chocolate chip analogy of Islam. Right. Which is, you know, everyone loves chocolate chip cookies. Right. But when you think about the ingredients that go into a chocolate chip cookie, they're not all delicious. There's like flour, there's like salt, right. There's like, you know, like baking soda or baking powder, right. There's butter, there's eggs, right. And then there's sugar, right. And I was reflecting, I'm like, look, if we were like, if I just said, hey, you know, eat the sugar, right. That might get too gross as well, right. If I said just, if I said eat the eggs, right, that's nasty raw eggs, right. Eat like the salt. But like Islam is like that chocolate chip cookie, like all these ingredients, right. Like it's when they come together, that chocolate chip cookie comes together. And it's delicious and melts in your mouth. And you're just like in heaven, right, that state of spiritual awakening, right. That you could, you know, you rarely get to, right. And like I tell people, I'm like, you got to see Islam that way. There's things you're not going to like, there's salty things sometimes. Your nafs doesn't like it. But if you don't do it, you're not going to get that full experience. So it's kind of my metaphor that I've tried to kind of think that, you know, everyone likes chocolate chip cookies. So when you say Islam is like chocolate chip cookie, then it makes Islam like more enjoyable. And you know, that's interesting, I remember when I was in my first year, man, in the University of Medina, Oslo, we're going through a road to another for a Bible, a book of Islamic jurisprudence,
where you say Islamic theory, Islamic theory of law. And I remember in the hash in the footnotes by Dr. Shaban, he mentioned it was a certain mess. Other issue is talking about. But then he branched off and he was talking about how Allah is the repository for good and evil. And it was just like, boom, like a lot, you know, a lot of, yeah, and we'll just, you know, when teaching the names and attributes of God, I highly implore all of us, you know, that if there's a lesson on names and attributes of a lot to really get involved in that, because it's so profound, it takes you to the it serves as your anchor. The thing that, OK, everyone says Allah knows everything and it doesn't make sense to say Allah doesn't know that. So if that's the case, he knows the sit on one. I mean, you know, I just couldn't. I just couldn't. I mean, what I was doing in there, I mean, there's not a leap that falls from a tree, except that he knows it. When he said that, that he's the repository, he is the source of disclosing what good and evil is, regardless of your limited intellect, opinion, et cetera. So subhanAllah, Jazakum Allah khair for that reflection. It just reminded me of that. Hey, Sheikh, you want to play some rapid fire questions? Not really. I'm terrible at this game, but let's do it. All right. Actually, there's a few questions people put in the chat. I want to throw them out here because we did market this as the scholar who's a baller. I didn't see that. You know what? Now it makes sense. I was so confused. I got a text message this morning from our dear beloved Muhammad al-Shinawi. His text message said, you're a baller? Like a question, like you play ball? And I'm like, and I responded. I said, does a bird have feathers? Like, of course, he asked the question. Now I understand. Okay, good. Okay. Before that, before that, the Nets or the Lakers, brother? I mean, LeBron, what's going on? I'm not a Lakers fan, so I'm happy they're not doing so well. It's a non-Lakers fan. Who do you follow, Sheikh? I've always been contrarian.
So, you know, you're, you know, you're, you're, you're a buddy, you know, Hakeem, you know, I used to love Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets back in the day, Jordan and the Bulls, right? And even I picked the Clippers over the Lakers, man. So I just, I'm a no Laker guy. No, no Lakers, no Dodgers. I do the opposite, so. That's why I find, alhamdulillah, like, it's fun practicing a slam, because I can just do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. You know, right? Here's a question from the audience. Who is your favorite basketball player? And who do you want to play a game with? Sheikh, LeBron? Question mark. Question mark. So my favorite player of all time, I just, I'm old school, right? I got to say Jordan, right? It's just, it's like, it's too beautiful watching that movement, right? So I've always been a Jordan fan to this day. He's the GOAT, right? He's the greatest of all time. Who do I want to play with? I'd love to play with Shaq, to be honest. Shaq is a phenomenal personality. One thing I learned about Shaq recently that I love, this guy goes out every single day and just goes and like, gives like, khair to people. Like, he'll go to a store, find some kid, buy him like a bike. He'll go to like a store, like he bought like a family, like a van. Every day he looks like he does this. So like his like, Mashallah, his like personality is very like, warm, loving. Like, I'd just love to spend some time with Shaq and play with him. But plus, you know, I played basketball with Sheikh Tahir. And so like, you know, when he posts me up, like, you know, I feel that pressure. But Shaq would take it to another level. So. I played against the dream, man. I know, I know, man. I'm so envious of you, man. The dream, man. I was trying my hardest. He's just laughing back and I'm like, this is the NBA, man. I have no, like, I don't know, man. Yeah, it's strong. Was it recent? No, this was years ago. I mean, because, you know, we know him in Houston. But, SubhanAllah, man. I challenged him one day. He was like, come on, man. That was a mistake, man. Big mistake. But did you think you had a chance? Have you seen, if anyone's a basketball fan, the funniest thing is when random basketball players that are like, nobody's, they get challenged. Have you seen his videos? It's absolutely hilarious.
Like the worst basketball player in the NBA, like Brian Scalabrine, right? You know, like, yeah, you've never heard of him. Someone will go to him like in a 24 hour fitness and they'll like literally challenge him. And they'll lose like 20 to zero. Like there's, there's, there's no such thing. Yeah, I remember Dream told me, I remember Dream told me, he said, Hakim Olajuwon, he said, he said, he said, a lot of kids come from college. MashaAllah, they're good, they're good. And he looked me dead in the eye and he was like, the NBA is a whole other level. I said, whoa, I can tell the way you said it. He said, the NBA is a whole other level. He's good in college, but the NBA is a whole other level. Yeah. So when Hakim was in Toronto, Raptors legend, he used to attend my father's masjid. And I did get to meet him a number of times and attend my khutbahs a number of times. I just remember the first time I prayed next to him, I lost my concentration in Salat Ameen. Allah forgive me, because I couldn't help but realize his thigh was twice the size of my thigh. And it just took my concentration away, SubhanAllah. If you pray next to Shehabullah Durrah, you're going to feel the same thing. What else? All right, here's the second question in the chat. Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady. As a Raptors fan, I feel like I know both, so go ahead. Man, they're like homeboys. You can't pick between the two of them. I mean, obviously Vince Carter had the dunking on McGrady, but man, McGrady, he's smooth, man. Silky, silky, man. Yeah. I love watching his game. Yeah. Unpopular opinion. I feel bad for everybody who's not a sports fan right now, but I feel like even though Vince Carter was the better talent, he never lived up fully to his talent. And Tracy McGrady had a better career at the end. Okay, other questions we got. I like these questions. Keep them coming. So these are just random general questions, answer rapidly. Do you prefer chai or coffee? Chai. I actually don't drink coffee at all.
Yeah. We have that in common. I don't drink coffee at all either. Mountains or oceans? Mountains. Even though you live on the ocean. I live next to both. Mountains are also not far away. The problem with California and oceans is you can really only go in the evening to avoid the fitna. So mountains are good. MashaAllah. What is your favorite city? And you can't say Mecca or Medina. I've never been to either yet, so I couldn't say those. So inshallah, the time will come. But favorite city, I love Istanbul. That place, inshallah. Yeah, that's a good one. What's the most beautiful place you've ever seen? I guess the kind of same question. You know, I'd probably say Yellowstone National Park. It is the most beautiful landscape I've ever witnessed. And I just love it. I'm just in awe of it when I'm there. You're standing there and you see geysers shooting up and steam coming out and all kinds of amazing blue and green lakes. It's majestic. You need to take me to Banff, Jaffa. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I keep telling Sheikh Abdullah too, you've got to check these places out. I mean, at least once in your lifetime, you need to go see it. And it's not too far from you guys. It's probably not too expensive to get a flight out there. All right, so me and Sheikh Abdullah are going to come meet you there. And we're going to record our future episodes from there. All right. It's a date, Sheikh Abdullah. Okay. What's the most interesting thing you've ever tasted or eaten? That's an interesting thing.
You know, I'm actually not very like, I love adventure and trying all kinds of different experiences in life. I don't do that with food. So I'm very safe. So I'll eat exotic fruit. So like lychees, these type of things I love. Those are like the things I look for, like tropical fruits. Yeah, that's an answer. I mean, Sheikh Dawood gave us last week, the durian fruit. Oh, no, I won't go near that, man. That's too much. I couldn't either. Okay. Are you the kind of person who could sleep on an airplane? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can sleep anywhere, anytime. This is a gift of envious. Okay. What job do you think you would be the worst at? My job would I be the worst at? Come on, man. That's a tough question. I'd be terrible at a lot of things. Oh, an artist. I have absolutely no artistic talent. Like I can't draw a specific figure. My five-year-old laughs at me when I try to draw and all my kids do. So it's just one of those things that I would be terrible at. That I wasn't given as a gift. Fair enough. What superpower do you wish you had? Oh, superpower. You know, I love Suleyman's story, right? And so I think being able to like control the jinn would be pretty intense, right? But or control the wind. So one of Suleyman's powers, man, like I just dream about what it would be like to live in his kingdom. Small, shameless plug. Tell us about your book. Tell us about your book. That's why I wrote it, man. I just love that story. It's such a fantasy story, man. I want kids to be able to see it. What's the title? Tell us the title. The King, the Queen and the Hoopoe Bird.
The novel of Suleyman alayhi salam. Excellent. Okay, similar one. But if you had to be an animal, which one would you choose? And why? You know, I don't have hops. I can't jump high. That's like my limitation in basketball. So an animal I could jump, that would be great. Like, you know, like one of those like leopards that can like jump up like 10 feet high. That'd be fast and jumping high. I'd be set. There you go. That's a pretty good one. Okay, we got some questions in the chat for you, Sheikh. Let's see. Here's a good one. In your opinion, Dr. Omarji, why do Muslims think or have a negative or not so positive reaction when it comes to the word psychology and the subject of it? What is your favorite thing in psychology? Jazakumullah khair. Yeah, so I think Muslims have, rightfully so, and they should be skeptical of a lot of the social sciences and their foundations, whether it be psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, all of these fields. Right. They are coming from certain paradigm and worldview. So I think the skepticism is good that you don't absorb it completely as some sort of revealed truth. At the same time, there are there's a lot of truth in them. You just have to dig and understand it. So, you know, psychology is a study of the human mind. And, you know, you can call it whatever you want to as an English word. You know, we can call it a nafs, we can call it anything. And there's an Islamic version of that. So I don't think Muslims should be averse to psychology as a subject, because we have a huge tradition in our, you know, from centuries, both the Qur'an, the Sunnah and the Ulema have talked about human psychology in detail. But modern Western psychology is where I can see that people should be cautious and wary of. Now, what I love the most about psychology. So my training is as an engineer and then as a jurist. Right. So like Shihabullah, you know, like Usul and Sharia, these are the things that I was into for years.
But then when I began to work with the community as an imam and working with the youth and with parents, I realized that, you know, you're not a judge. You're not there to just tell people right and wrong. We're there to move hearts. Right. Because the heart has to accept this truth before. That's the biggest motivator of anything. So when it comes to psychology, what I love is that helps us understand how to get people to do what they're supposed to do. Right. Especially from a faith perspective, because, again, you've said this, you can tell someone this is haram, but they're dying to do it. Or you tell someone this is like wajib and they don't want to do it. So psychology helps us understand what underlies human behavior. And this is why Ibn Qayyim, rahimullah, and some of those great Muslim scholars, use that science to actually move us in the direction of getting closer to what was to come. This is another question. So I'm going to give a source to the study you mentioned about people not knowing what they perceive as good and bad, the people who are in the cupboard or box. I don't know if you have that offhand. I don't have a citation offhand, but these are the motivation, which means like people's perceptions of what motivates them. And it's pretty much so you type in into any like academic journal, like MetaMotivational studies, you'll see all these different variations of these studies where people will be put into scenarios, asked what they'll think about them, and then you'll see just how wrong they are about their predictions. And even when they put them in the brain scanner, the same thing happened. Their brains were completely different. They thought that they wouldn't find it rewarding and all their reward circuitry is going off in their brain. So meta motivation is the term to find. Maybe I can post it in the YouTube later, the specific links to the papers. Insha'Allah. One more question here. Sister Raihana, she says, what tips would you provide in keeping teenagers firm on their deen? Yeah, Jazakumullahu khair. Great question. I'm sure you both have wonderful things to add to that.
But if one of the most important things I can say is good sohbah, ensuring that your teens, teenage years, one of the biggest aspects is developing that sense of belonging. And so when I mentioned my story earlier about why did I even look at the fraternities as a place to go, because they were really about that camaraderie and that friendship and having a space where people feel like they're valued and part of something bigger than themselves. Our youth need the exact same thing. When they're in public school all day long, right, they're looking for belonging in that space. We need to provide for them a healthy outlet of most good, high quality Muslim spaces where they can feel like they belong there. So we're not going to rate no matter how much Qur'an you give your kid, no matter how much, you know, YouTube shuyukh, that you know they listen to, not be, they need to be in the presence of other people who are reinforcing that identity, which they need to keep. Even to the extent that if the knowledge that they're getting is less and not as high quality, like that's fine because this is, we're in this long term. We want this identity to perpetuate for a lifetime, not for it to be a fad for a few years. So find a good circle of Muslim youth that your kid can be around. And that means that parents have to be willing to make friendships with those families as well. And you've got to create a village for yourself. That's the best advice that I can give. Also, what we do is, as human beings, is copying other people. We don't really want to admit that. We think everything we do is rational and I do it because I believe in it. We imitate. So if they're around other good people, they'll imitate that good behavior and so on. Absolutely. Jazakallah khair. This is a question we were going to ask you, but someone in the chat asked it. So it's good. Two birds with one stone. What advice would you give your younger self and or what is something you wish you knew when you were young? All right. So the advice I would give myself is stop getting upset when things don't go your way. Because when I grew up, I was, Alhamdulillah, Allah had blessed me with parents who put me in good schools and good educational opportunities.
And I always felt like I was deserving of things. Right. So it's like, well, I did well. I should get into this university. Oh, I did well. I should be able to get this job. And so anytime I would get a setback, it would bother me a lot. And I'd feel slighted and like the world is not fair. And I'd go back and tell my young self, stop getting upset. Why? It might not. It doesn't matter. It might not have been fair. But Allah has a wisdom in everything he does. Allah closes doors that he knows are not good for you and he opens doors that are good for you. And I look back now and I tell myself I got rejected from the top schools that I applied to, despite the fact I felt I had all the grades to get into there. I got rejected from jobs that I applied to, despite the fact I had all the qualifications. I look back and I say, well, I got rejected from the universities I was dying to go to. And Allah took me to another university where I found my faith and I found my wife. So Allah knew what was best for me. The jobs I applied to, I didn't get. I got a different job that again, put me around good Muslims who were in that job. We used to have like, you know, like Salah every day, Dhuhr and Asr, Maghrib in our offices. Allah facilitates if you follow the open doors that he opens and you accept the closed doors. It's just don't get upset. Allah knows what he's doing. It goes back to that first premise, right? Wallahu ya'lamu wa antumna ta'lamu. You think you know this job is good for you. You think this school is good for you. You think this woman is good for you. Just chill. All right. It wasn't meant to be. Allah has his qadr. He knows what he's doing. I love that. Just chill. It's good advice to give. Alhamdulillah. Jazakumullahu khair, Sheikh, for being with us and giving us your time. I think it was a great session. Sheikh Abdullah, I don't know if you have any questions you want to ask before we wrap up. But Jazakumullahu khair. I know we asked a lot of you and for you to give us some time. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. Jazakumullahu khair, Sheikh. You're awesome, man. As you all can see now, mashallah, man.
He has a lot to offer. Always benefit when I'm talking to him. And Allah bless you in Al, California. And the brothers over there. I hope you see your brothers there, man. So we'll look forward to meeting you all in person. Shaykh Rahim, I'll meet you in Toronto soon. And then we're going to have you down in California, inshallah. Insha'Allah. Jazakumullahu khair. Assalamu alaikum. Walaikum assalam.
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