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Focus in the Age of Distraction | Iman Cave
Spending time on social media, gaming, and reading the news allow you to connect with your family, friends, community, and the world as a whole. But is your screen time getting in the way of being the best version of yourself? What are the dangers of consuming too much, and what is it getting in the way of? Omar Usman, author of Fiqh of Social Media, joins Sh. Abdullah Oduro and Ust. Morad Awad in the Iman Cave to discuss how to manage our digital tools while maintaining a strong sense of responsibility, focus, and prioritization in our lives.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. He was asking the imam for help with getting married and the imam was like, let me see your phone. He opened up social media app and went to the, you know, the For You page and he was like... Astaghfirullah. Who do you want me to recommend for you with this? The ability for someone to grapple with a problem or an idea or a concept for like four, five, six hours is now like a unique skill set. Most people can be like, yeah, I can learn anything. Everyone thinks that. Everyone thinks I can learn anything because I have access to all the information. Try to learn something and see how long it takes before your brain is just like, yeah, I can't take somewhere. I got to work on something else. Yeah. Imagine a kid that grew up, that was maybe four or five at that time. They're 20 now. Every time they come, hey, dad, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, one second. Dad, dad, dad. One second. Yeah. What do you mean? Age five, six, ten, fifteen. They get that. And then at 18, 19, it's like, I don't have a connection with my kids. They come to youth director. Can you fix this? We don't know. We don't know where we went wrong. I hear that. There was no, we never had a big fight. We never had a big argument. We never had a big falling out. But we just, they don't listen to me. We have no connection. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you all. I'm Abdullah Oduro and welcome to the Iman Cave, where we discuss issues of male excellence while being grounded in faith. The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said in a portion of a beautiful, beautiful hadith that we should all memorize, to be diligent on that which benefits you. And the only way that one can be diligent on that which benefits him or her is particularly to stay focused, to be on one course, the one thing, if you will, to constantly think about that thing, to start hoping by the permission of Allah to get to the finish line. We see nowadays that starting with myself, I remember when the letters T-E-E-N were behind my age, 13, 14, 15, 16, especially later, 17, 18, 19.
I would always hear from my basketball coach, from my mother, may Allah bless her, is to be focused. What do you want to do in life? You know, this is the time you're going to be an adult or you are an adult. There's going to be a time when you have to go out and get out of the house. Are you looking for a job? Is this the right job? How's school? All of these questions, sometimes you feel bombarded with all of these questions, and rightfully so. But guess what? That is a part of life. That is a part of life. And it is important to stay focused for all of you young men out there, and even older men as well. That's what we're going to talk about today, inshallah. Focus, distractions, and where does that fall in the life of the young man? Is it even important? We're going to discuss that today, inshallah. Starting with our co-host, inshallah, Murad Awad, inshallah, entrepreneur, inshallah. And he is also someone that is very, very involved in the community. And he has, inshallah, we didn't shout out your initiative that is helping feeding Muslims, starting in Dallas, but inshallah, all around the world. The name is Hamburgottis. Hamburgottis. It's now a food truck, but inshallah, it's going to have numerous locations around the world, bi-idhnillahi ta'ala. And, I mean, we're even going to talk about that and how that required a level of focus to transition from a religious, you know, being a youth director, but now you're a religious consultant, also entrepreneur, and doing and getting it done. Alhamdulillah. And to my left, inshallah, I have a dear friend of mine, inshallah, barakallah, brother Omar Osman. He's currently a technology consultant, and he's one of the founding members of Qalam Institute here in Dallas that we know of around the world, inshallah, barakallah. Masha'Allah, in the issue of distractions and focus, he's done a lot of work, very rich, rich work, I must say. He started out writing the book, The 40 Hadith, on social media, and he also has the book, The Fiqh of Social Media. Many of us, you've probably seen this online.
If you haven't, type it up, please. Fiqh of Social Media. He actually started out giving presentations on this around the US, and masha'Allah, it's been a book. It's actually called The COVID Book, because it was written in 2020. And we're going to kind of use this as the anchor to talk about this particular issue. Even though there's a fiqh of social media, the internet in general, stay tuned. We're going to talk about all of this, particularly with myself. I remember, you know, I had the cellular phone, right? We call it the, in Saudi Arabia, it was the jawal, you know, the Nokia. You know, the Nokia was the main phone, man. Mobile. The mobile, yeah. When Steve Jobs first presented the iPhone, right? Oh, dude. Right, it was like, okay. Life-changing. Life-changing, exactly. Really, as they say, change the game. But is that a good or a bad thing? You know, sometimes you hear the scholars talk about the usage of the internet. Is it something that is beneficial or harmful? Is it something that's a case-by-case basis, depending on the person, their lifestyle? There are a couple of things I want to touch on in regards to the internet and focus in general, but in this chapter of the internet, and even get a little more specific of social media, in regards to friends, family, and dare we even say females, or when men get online and they see the opposite gender. One thing that I noticed, I walked into, I'll start with what I saw recently, but then I'll go back to something that happened to me as well. You know, I walk in a restaurant. I mean, you probably walked in a restaurant and you see, you know, the youth, they're just sitting at a table, communicating, and they're at the same table. When I first saw that, I'm like, wow, that's interesting. And then I started to think, does that assist in their communication skills? Is it a plus or a minus? You know, I remember the statement, and I mentioned this before,
it's a statement that talks about distraction. It says, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. You know, when you're scrolling on the phone, and then the mechanism of scrolling up and down, and you can just, and it's different subject matters, and you don't know where to stop, where to go, you know, what to stay on, but you're scrolling because you are supposed to look for something that dealt with your homework or your project. Two hours later, you realize, you know, you were supposed to do that work two hours ago. So it's crazy about that example. Imagine what led up to them getting together for dinner. They all had to message each other and coordinate a date, a time, figure out when everyone's free. They probably read reviews for like half a dozen restaurants to figure out what kind of food to eat, where to go. They coordinated all of that, and then by the time they get there, they're not talking to each other. Yeah. And I guess it's a good beginning, right? Family. So is that even a familial type of situation to where they'll all coordinate together, but when they get there, they're not communicating with each other, or is it? Yeah, I think it happens a lot. Like people come, you know, you're in the same home, right? You're in the same area, but you might not be talking to each other. You know, families might have everyone's on their phone at dinnertime. And that's not something new, by the way, right? Like when I was growing up, it was the TV. It was, oh, can you sit and watch TV while you're eating dinner? Does the family have to eat dinner together? And if someone called your, you know, the landline at your home. Yeah, landline, yeah. There was, it was an etiquette issue. Like, can you go and answer the phone during dinner? Yes. Or do you let it ring? If your friend is calling you while you're eating, you have to let them know I'm eating dinner right now. I'll call you back, right? There was like, there was family rules around it. And I think now it's not, yes, now it's a cell phone. So the gadget is different, but the challenge is still really the same. Interesting. I think it's just that the phone is so pervasive that the default is just that you use it and look at it because it's so interesting. There's so much stuff going on
that we haven't stopped to actually assess like, oh wait, should we actually set boundaries here or not? Interesting. That's very, very interesting. Even the TV, it united the family in the sense that like, you would all watch the same thing together. You're watching the same thing. There's no options. Right, you'd be talking about the same thing, laughing about the same stuff. But the phone kind of has everybody in their own tunnel. Individualized. So you have a family of seven and each one is in his own world by himself or by herself. And even the TV. You don't know, this person is sad, this person's happy, this person's miserable, this person's, right? And they're all sitting together and one person could hear a comment and be annoyed and the other one can find the same exact comment funny depending on the mood and the tunnel that they're in. But even the TV allowed for some discussion, right? Because the TV would be on for like eight minutes and then we'll go to commercial. Yeah. And then you would sort of talk and like do things or whatever and then it would go back and everyone can kind of watch. But now the phone, it's just constant. Like there's no break. So with the family, I remember you were mentioning something before we got started. You were talking about the family structure and how if someone is surfing through the social media and how that can bring a means of separation even further. Yeah, so you mentioned I did presentations on this topic. So Hamza got to travel for, I'll say four or five years. Yes, sir. Right? And so after each one, people hear the material, they react to it differently, have different types of questions, different stories. Some things are anecdotes, but you hear an anecdote, enough times it becomes a pattern. Right, okay. And the thing for me that became the pattern was I would go and I would get the same complaint. It would either be from teenage children or from the sisters basically saying that the husband or the father, the man of the house would come home from work and was like, you know, we understand he's tired, he's been working hard, he's busy, you know, all these things. But he comes home, he gets down on the couch and he opens up WhatsApp and he's just chatting, forwarding videos, watching stuff, arguing back and forth, sharing memes, whatever. And then it's time to go to bed.
And it's like, we're trying to be understanding, but at the same time, you come home and it's just WhatsApp from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. And basically, he's there, but he's not there. Yeah, that's very important, man. You know, and that's a good message, too. For the young men, a lot of times your mom, you come home and your mom is there. She's probably prepared something for you or your future wife, inshallah, on those that are married. And then you come home and then you're on the phone. That is something that is not, dare I say, pleasing to the mom and, you know, even attractive to the wife. Because when you're going home, you're on social media. They want to talk about their day, your day, have a level of conversation. And subhanallah, it really distracts you. But it really is, it's a competition, Sheikh, at the same time. Because look, right now, the work went from the workplace to home through our phones, right? So everybody is accessible at any given time and place. So, you know, back in the day, I feel like people used to go to work, clock in, and then it's the grind. I want to be the best, today I want to do the best, I want to excel, I want to get promoted, I want to get a raise, right? But nowadays, you're competing with people who are working 24-7, basically. So you come home and you don't want to shut your phone off and then get to work and be like, just missed, you're not in the loop. You missed out, what happened yesterday night? You're behind. You're behind, right? The fear of missing out. Was it FOMO? FOMO, right? I think one of the ways, I've been trying to funnel it, because I'm guilty of that myself, right? And you know, working with the community, it's just very difficult. Everybody feels like you're always there, at any given moment, any given time. This person is free in the morning, this person's free at night, and you're supposedly free all the time. I just archive all these chats and stuff like that, that I don't, you know, that cluster, and I just keep the important stuff in the front.
Before that, man, it's really, when mentioning the family structure, I like how you said, because I remember that, I don't want to say, in my day, man. Got a great beard, but I, you know. You can say, in my day, if your beard is gray. Yeah, okay, in my day, right? In my day. Teens, don't run away, okay? In my day. No, but, you know, when sitting at the table, eating together, there's so much that is gained from that. Because you hear about your sister's day, you hear about mom's day, and then everyone's talking, laughing. You know, the brother is joking, making fun of the sister, sister making fun of the brother. You learn about your children, you learn about your parents, you learn about yourself, because dad may give some really good advice, because he's eating now, you know? It's really interesting how you said, the landline. And for those of you that don't know what a landline is. The landline. It's a phone that's connected to the wall that has a whole different service. Well, not it's connected to the, you know, even your cellular phone, but. The dinosaur. The dinosaur, it's a big phone. You know, when that phone would ring at the dinner table, you know, I remember my mother used to say, this is a funny thing to remind me. I, you know, I'm a teenager, I hear the phone ring, I'm about to get up, she's like, stop, who knows you? Who knows you? Stay here and finish your, you know, who knows you? Obviously, right? Stay and finish your food. Yeah, exactly. And I'm like. And then the FOMO kicks in, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the FOMO, man. But what does that do for a young man? Because it's like, no, prioritization. What is more important? The time we're going to go meet up at the football field or sitting with a Haqqan Nasri Sahabati? The one that has the most right upon my, with my companionship, we're right there. And I'm cutting it off. How does that make mom feel? Right? So it kind of nurtures that level of responsibility, prioritization, right? I guess from responsibility is prioritization. So I like how you mentioned, you know, even if you get on the phone, dad will say, the phone keeps ringing. They keep calling, right? They keep calling.
Hang up, call, let it ring 10 more times. And then dad is going to say like, who is that? And then what does he say? Tell him what? You're busy. You're busy. You're having dinner. I remember my friends, you know, so let me call you back. I have dinner with the family. And it was both ways. Because if you called someone and the answer said, I'm eating dinner. You knew, you just hang up right away. Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. You know, I think that what makes it very difficult for parents nowadays is that there's no inherited culture of retaining this family bond. Like, you know, back in the day, I felt like a father would learn from his father how dinner's supposed to go. You know, I break bread. The father, you know, scoops first and then everybody eats second. And, you know, there's a respect. There's something that's going on there that was inherited. And now, with the technology introduced, I think some parents failed to create a new culture. Right, right. You know, that's compatible with today and the challenges of today. Yeah, yeah. Like, I'm Palestinian. You go to every Palestinian family, you'd find almost a uniform level of respect. You know, like, okay, this is how it goes in the family. You know, we do this first and this second. And this is the job of the kids. And this is the job of the women. This is the job of the men, right? Now, it's like, okay, how are we gonna deal? Yeah, I just let my kids use the phone, you know? Yeah, they can answer a call. And you go to another family, no, no. They gotta leave their phones in the room. It's dinner time. I mean, what do you think about this? I mean, I think that there's static standards. Like, there's universal standards that shouldn't change, right? You know, I hear, and sometimes in my house, you know, the table, there's no phones there at all. And there is an intentional dinner time. Oh, okay. Right, there's time where we come together, we eat. That's at least time we're gonna get together. I'm gonna ask questions about everybody.
Dinner time, it's a special moment. And I think it needs to be like a tradition. Allah, I'm universally, and especially to the young men out there where, you know, sometimes, you know, the parents got divorced and it happens. It's from the qadr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But taking part, when mom says it's time for dinner and you're out playing with your friends, you're on your computer, get off the phone, man. Get off the computer and go and be with your mom, you know, because it's important. You never know what kind of emotional connection will take place with her. And serenity and sakina. And that's what I mean by, particularly for a young man, that he has to step up and take that level of responsibility, even though it may mean separating from his friends and being with his family. But what if the kids are learning this from the parents? What if the parents are the ones distracted during dinner time? Kids grow up. I was gonna say, a lot of times, the parents always blame, like, oh, my kid doesn't, he's on his screens all the time. And it's like, well, so are you. You know, and the kids are just watching. I mean, you see all these videos that go viral, like the baby, like, pretending things on his phone or like trying to swipe, even though it's like a paper magazine or trying to swipe it and stuff like that. It's like, they're mimicking what they see. And so if the parents are constantly on, then no matter what you tell them, like, oh, this is bad for you, you shouldn't be on your phone, they copy the actions. Yeah, and it's tricky because someone could be focused on the phone. Yeah, it might be really important. It might be an important work email or a message or whatever, but all they see is the phone. Yeah, yeah, and that's where the prioritization comes in because, you know, I tell a couple of brothers and I remember one of my mentors told me like, before you get, when you're on your way home, stop at a coffee shop, stop at a garage, something, and just recalibrate because your family doesn't deserve you coming home and being on the phone and continuing what you didn't finish at work or whatever it is. Stop, recalibrate, realize that you're going into another world,
which is all of that outside is for them. You mentioned like, you know, the importance of like your mom is there, like go and spend time with her and things like that. I'll share with you the other side of the example too, do you think, how long ago did the iPhone come out? Was it like 2009? Roughly, yeah, yeah. Imagine a kid that grew up, that was maybe four or five at that time, they're 20 now. Every time they come, hey dad, blah, blah, blah, and you're like, one second. Yeah. Dad, dad, dad. One second, boom. Yeah, what do you need? What's important? But age five, six, 10, 15, they get that. And then at 18, 19, it's like, I don't have a connection with my kids. They come to youth director, can you fix this? We don't know where we went wrong. There was no, we never had a big fight. We never had a big argument. We never had a big falling out, but we just, they don't listen to me. We have no connection. Beautiful, man. Exactly that happens to me so much. Happens to me so much. And I tell the father oftentimes, I'm like, when's the last time you spent quality time with your son? He's like, what do you mean quality time? Like I talked to him on my way, dropping him off to school and come back. I'm like, no, no, no. Did you ever go out to a restaurant, camping, traveled somewhere, just you and him? Or just pick his brain on how he feels about school, his hobbies, basically just spending time with him. He's like, oh yeah, I don't know, man. I never felt like I ever did that. Yeah, yeah. And it's that point that he realizes sometimes they start crying, subhanAllah. Like, man, I really don't do that. The dunya, man, the dunya, this worldly life, it can really distract us, and that's subhanAllah. You even mentioned, you have a chapter in your book, Takathur, right? Can you expound on that? Because that's a chapter in the Quran,
but what does that have to do with thicker social media? Does it have to do with distractions at all? So the idea is currency. Okay. Currency in this life is wealth, right? If I wanna show that I'm successful, I show that I have more money, right? The car that I drive, the house that I buy, whatever, that demonstrates that I have kind of won at this game somehow. Currency is also used to enact justice, right? So if I wrong you, if I libel you, you can go and sue me, and in exchange I have to give you a financial penalty, right? If I get caught speeding, there's a financial penalty. Currency is how we kind of make things even. In the hereafter, we know that the currency is deeds, right? If I wrong someone, I have to give them my good deeds, they give me their bad deeds, et cetera. Online, and Takathur is that you're competing over this currency, and you're gonna keep competing over it until you enter your grave, right? Online, the same competition exists, but it's not a competition over money, it's a competition over attention. Attention. It's how much likes and validation can I get? How many views can I get on my thing? How many minutes of watch time did I get on my thing? How many people like my selfie? How many people left a comment on the picture I posted of my kid? It's that attention thing of like, oh, I posted this thing and I got so many engagements, so many whatever. And that's the competition. And so people who are successful online, right? Just like we say, okay, so-and-so is successful because he's built a business empire. You were talking earlier about someone that owns like a chain of fast food restaurants, and you said the successful person, right? Because they've amassed a certain amount of wealth. Well, online, that person wouldn't necessarily be a success unless they had a million followers or five million followers. Now everyone says, oh, that person is successful. And the problem with that is that in terms of currency, what do we do? We emulate. So, oh, okay, these people are successful.
Let me copy their habits. What books are these business people reading? What is this business person's morning routine? You know, how do they make decisions? How do they manage people? And so when it comes online, it's like, well, okay, here's this person with 10 million followers. What did they do to get popular? And sometimes it's not- Whatever it takes. Whatever. And yeah, sometimes it's not the greatest thing or the most admirable thing, but they're popular. Let's transition over to friends now. Okay. I think I can't remember which stat it was. I mean, what the source of it, but it was talking about it asked youth what if they had an opportunity to be a certain, have a certain career, what would be their number one choice? Influencer. Influencer. Influencer. Is that alarming to you? Yes and no. Okay. No, because I think there is a legitimate business there and there are people who do it. And I think it's like anything else. Anything can be done well. It can be done unwell or in a bad way, right? And so there may be an influencer, and I can think of a couple of examples in my head, but let's say a tech influencer who's built up a huge following and what they do is they review tech products. And people, oh, because of their views, they've built a level of trust. And now when this person says, hey, I bought this electric car and it's a piece of trash, people will be like, yep. I trust that opinion. I'm not going to get it. But they say, oh, I, you know, I got this phone and this is the best phone that came out this year. People will probably buy it because they trust that person's opinion. So from that perspective, I think it's good. I think where it can be detrimental or maybe there's, you know, a challenge in terms of Islamic spirituality is when sort of you yourself are the product or you're having to make compromises yourself about the thing that you're selling. And I think that's where it starts to become problematic. What if you're not even selling anything like vlogs and pranks and things like that? Foolishness. You're getting millions of views to go in a mall and to, you know, to rizz or to prank people. Prank people.
Right, right, right. How does that, like, is that, would that be the good, bad or the ugly in your view? I don't know. I think it depends on a person's intention, right? Like if you're building a business out of it and something, then maybe. But also it's just, it's that Islamic question of like, are you doing something productive? You know, something could be, let's say, permissible from a technical perspective. But like, did you add value to someone's life? Adding value. And I'm not saying that entertainment doesn't, because entertainment does have its place and does have value. Definitely. I think the problem with, let's say, let's use the prank example, right? So like someone that's built a channel based on pranking. The problem is that it's not entertainment. It sort of becomes an obsession, sort of an extreme. Because the way that online works, like you do something now in order to get more views, more followers, you have to, you got to dial it up a notch. Yeah. So it's not like, you know, it's not like a candid camera show where like the shtick is the same and you get a couple of laughs and move on. It's like, okay, this video got a million views. How can I amp it up? Right. And so it goes from just being a prank to like, I got to keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. Yeah. And it's like, okay, pushing it, I understand. But to what end and for what purpose? And what, and what, and what detriment of the one that is being pranked on, right? And that's where, and I've seen that with certain people. It's like they start off, it was just a humble, you know, some slight of entertainment to make the viewer laugh and to bring forth happiness to the viewer. For those of you that are sad out there and so on and so on. But then it came to sometimes lying that you're doing something to that person. Now issues of morality can be. And there's like, I mean, there's like Muslim kids are like, they'll do this prank video and like literally lie. And like the mom starts crying because she thinks it's for real and it's like, okay, you just kind of did that to your mom to get views. Like there should be a line there. Right, right. Exactly. And that's important because the youth may say, no, I just wanted to make the people happy and it's fun. But then, you know, like you mentioned learning them around at what expense. And this is the the gother thing, right?
Because if you know in business, if you say, I got him, I got to make money at all costs. What happens is you transgress boundaries. Yeah, right. So if I need to make money, I'm more willing to cheat. The more desperate I am to make money, the more willing I become to cheat someone. The more obsessed I become with making money, the more I might say, you know what? This thing is haram. But I kind of need it. Yes. Right. And so when the currency shifts to attention, well, now you're going to be making compromises again. But the compromises are going to be on like your haya, your family and those kind of things. Even if the intention is to make a video and a person hurts someone else, lies to them or, you know, emotionally scars them, they still are left with the sin. Even if it's fake. Even if you go and tell the person, oh, no, it's just a prank. I just did it for the video. Yeah, because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you know, he forbade us from scaring the believer, for example. And lying even while joking. And lying even while joking. And lying while joking. Right. So the sin stays there. The sin stays there. And now it's public. It's documented. Yeah, it's documented. And it's a recurring sin. It's not a private sin. It's a compound sin. Yeah. Because like every time someone views it, and every time someone's inspired by it and does it to them. من سنة سنة اللهم سيئة. You know, so they started a bad sunnah. And how many people like watch these pranks and go do them to their own families and friends? And they see that. They see, oh, this person is successful doing it. Let me emulate them. Success again. Let me copy. Let me copy. That's the formula. So we need to define success now, you know. Let's define it, Sheikh. Exactly. What is success like in our time? Like, how does a person successfully engage with technology? Right? Isn't that a question? Yeah. Like, that's it. Social media. Wait, do you want to cut this?
Yes, you want to cut. You're going to get it and have it at the very end, smiling. I need that picture. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. There's something I read in it. So there's a quote that I got from there that I like to repeat. The people you follow is the company you keep. When you wrote that, what does that mean to you? So what it means is like, you think about growing up before technology, right? The company that you kept was who? It was the friends you ate lunch with at school. It was probably, like, I'll give you my experience, right? So growing up, suburbs of Houston, public school. So it's the friends that you eat with at lunch. It's probably like the kids on your street, right? You ride the bus to school together. It's the kids in your parents' social circle. And it's like the kids in your Sunday school class at the Masjid or your Qur'an class, right? That's sort of the company that you keep. You choose some of it. You don't choose some of it. But that's sort of your circle. And you had a relationship with celebrities, you know, famous people, so to speak, in the sense of like, oh, Hakeem Lajon is my favorite player. I have the Sports Illustrator where he's on the cover. You know, I have his basketball card. I watch the games. But like, that's kind of it, right? Or like, oh, this is my favorite actor. I've seen all their movies. That's kind of about it. But now it's like, okay, if I follow this person online, it's a parasocial relationship. They don't know that I exist. But I see everything that they do every day. And this is especially like family vloggers, right? I know what the inside of their home looks like. I know their kids, how old they are, their ages. I know what kind of food they eat. I know what kind of stuff they make. I know where they go on vacation. I know their likes, their dislikes. I'm keeping company with them. But they have no idea who I am or that I exist. But I'm immersing myself in learning as much as I can about them. And so before it was you would get like an interview in a magazine would be like the extent of it.
Or you'd have to go and get like the biography of the person and read about it. You have to read, right? And that would be the extent of the knowledge that you got. But that was also a one-time thing, right? Like you go and you went and you read a biography of Michael Jordan or whatever. And that was it. But like now if you're a fan of LeBron James, like you could be consuming hours of his content on a daily basis. Every day you could be seeing everything that he tweets, everything he posts on Instagram. You could be, you know, if he releases a new, he's got a new podcast. You watch his new video that he puts out. It's not that you look up his highlights on YouTube. You know, you just constantly you can immerse yourself in that one person to like the end. You know, it's almost unlimited how much content you can get from that person. But to that point, you're now, if I'm spending so much time following that person's content, that becomes the company that I keep. And from this because, like for example, LeBron James, for example. I don't like it when a lot of the young basketball players, particularly, we can make this with any sport or any profession. They look at the NBA because they try to emulate NBA moves and practices and you don't have the basics down, right? But one thing I tell them is like, especially with this new podcast is with JJ Reddick, I think it is, right? It's like, OK, what are the moral practices in the mentality of a winner that we can extract from that? Like when you watch him play, OK, you see certain moves that he does. OK, you practice that move over and over again. And you get with somebody that kind of knows basketball, says, look, before you want to do a turnaround fadeaway, first get your footwork right. OK, which side of the ball do you dribble? So kind of. Sounds like you're mad at someone for doing step back threes on you. Yes, I'm mad at my nine year old for doing step back threes. It's like I'm asking the three point line. Come on, man. So is it and I'm going to use this word. Is it realistic to say just totally cut off social media for for our young men? No, it's hard, right? Because now this is where this is like this is the public space.
OK, when when you were in high school and you wanted to hang out with your friends, where did you go? High school, hang out with my friends, the gym or go out to restaurants. Restaurants, restaurants, movie theater. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Come on. The mall, the mall. OK. The mall was the big one, right? You would get dropped off. You'd walk around with your friends and hang out. You'd probably eat something. The food court. Yeah, flashback gaming. I'm a little closer to high school, but yeah, but but that was the public space. That's where you went to hang out. Now you ask you ask like a 16, 17 year old kid. Well, especially a boy. Where where do you hang out with your friends? My kids are asking me to drop them off at the mall. They they might sometimes go to the movie theater, but really not all that much, especially in comparison what we did when we were kids. Oh, yeah, but what they're doing is they got the headset on and they're playing games together or Netflix. But even but even when they're talking to each other, right, it's it's online. It's not in person. Sometimes they're texting each other when they're with each other. Like we did in the beginning. Yeah, you're watching the Super Bowl and everyone's on their phone because you're sending each other the memes for the game related to the game. What does that do to the interaction element of a man a young man? I think it I think it hurts it because there are certain social skills. Excuse me that you don't develop. Okay, and I see it. I see it and I hate I hate to be because my kids do the okay boomer thing to me. I hate to be the boomer but like I see it at work with like the really young kids. They don't have the social skills of doing how to conduct themselves sometimes like just you know, how to shake hands and like talk to someone and maybe have to make small talk and I'm not saying like not being able to make small talk is like the end of the world or something right? Like there is a level of sort of social awkwardness that enters into the picture when you're just not used to meeting people. What were you telling me about meetings like when they're in meetings and even I mean even yeah, even at work right when people are in meetings are constantly on their phone. Like if you're working from home like that's one thing right?
You're not in the same room as other people. So the way that you behave is going to be differently right? You're on you're on zoom. Okay, you know, I'm not going to lie like I have it down or if I'm on zoom, I know how I can use my phone without it showing on the camera. I can still maintain eye contact with the camera. Like everyone's got that right? But people you know, sometimes you go off camera and you're just playing games on your phone. You're scrolling social media. You're working from home. You got Netflix playing on on one screen while you're working on the other. Like there's just this super distraction mode where you're not really connected to anyone or anything. Right, right. So that's the that's the distraction element. But you said that even some supervisor when they go to look for a job or when they get their evaluation. Yeah, and people like I think I think it can hinder it can hinder someone's growth, right? We were like we talked about focus and stuff earlier before starting and I think the ability to focus and keep yourself free of distraction is a skill, right? And so in the professional world, especially once you're in like the 5th, 6th, 7th year of your career, you know, probably got a degree. You've got some kind of certification. You're doing some kind of job, whatever, you know, whether it's accounting or finance or technology or whatever project management this that at a certain point people's like raw skills of the thing that they have to do for their job sort of level off. Right, you know, like I used to ask him because my dad was my dad's a pharmacist. And so I used to ask him in the hospital. I'm like, well, what you know, what makes someone good versus not good because I worked as a tech for a while and he was like, well, you understand he goes everyone's replaceable because everyone's skill set is the same. Everyone's got the exact same farm D degree every you know, every all these people were at the top of their class and did really well and they're all super qualified. But now it just comes down to who actually people want to work with who knows how to actually run the pharmacy manage people and talk to people and all of that. And I think what happens at work is that people like they don't realize because especially especially it happens and I'll say kind of the unique Muslim thing,
you know humble a lot of us grow up going to good schools getting good education and things like that. So we kind of enter into the workforce thinking like, okay, I've been above average my whole life. There's no reason for me to think that's not going to continue. Except that everyone else is also sort of above average. And so now all the things that I'm good at like, well, everyone else is good at them too. All right, and all these things that I thought that I was really awesome at and could figure out. Well, like other people kind of do it a little bit better, right? And so now I need to figure out how to move ahead how to get ahead how to develop new skills. And if someone has been spending the last five years working and I mean look COVID was what it was four years ago, right? That's a lot if you spent the last four years not deliberately working to increase your skill set or work on yourself and you've just been doing this cruise control like yeah, I get my stuff done and I'm a distracted and I watch Netflix and I do this and I do 20 million things and yeah, I can work while I watch Instagram blah blah blah. Like people notice yeah, people can notice how engaged you are at work how checked in you are at work and and also the people notice your level of progress. Someone can look and say like you're exactly the same today as you were four years ago. Wow, and unless you've put in some effort to like actually grow and develop yourself. It's not going to happen and to be able to do that. You have to be able to put the distractions aside and actually like kind of get that exercise of like study and development and work on things you commented and you spoke about one of the books we talked about earlier deep work. But yeah, can't move for it. Would you advise that for I think it's a great book and I think I think the thing that he points out is that the ability for someone to grapple with a problem or an idea or a concept for like four or five six hours is now like a unique skill set because someone most people can be like, yeah, I can I can learn anything everyone everyone thinks that everyone thinks I can learn it because I have access to all the information resource.
Everyone thinks I can learn anything but like try to learn something and see how long it takes before your brain is just like I can't take somewhere. I got to work on something else. Yeah, right like you can you can probably go like 20 minutes max and you're like I need a break and these are scrolling social media blah blah and then you come back and like give it another 15 minute chunk. It's like a choppy Wi-Fi exactly. That's a perfect example. It's your your your entire process is going to be lagging the whole development process is lagging exactly like that. And so someone that can actually sit and maintain focus for that long is unique and it's going to be valuable than in the marketplace. There's one thing I was thinking of when we were talking when we were talking about friends and relationship building and whatnot. So you mentioned there's a skill set that's required to develop relationship, but there's something specific to men that you know, we read about in a lot of like the classical works Islamic works and history called Farasa, right? How a man is supposed to be able to sit with another man and kind of just kind of size him up know what kind of what kind of guy he is and that's something big for men because you know, Inshallah when you make relationships, you're supposed to be able to know what type of dude this is just by comments or in ways they talk ways they act where they've been who they chill with and stuff like that. And when you become a father, you're supposed to rate somebody that comes to ask for your daughter's hand, right? You're just supposed to sit with somebody and kind of like know off the bat like, yeah, I know what kind of dude this is, right? And I feel like with social media that's like almost disappearing, right? Yeah, it's almost disappearing. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's been replaced. I would say it's been substituted. Substitute. Yeah, it's been substituted. Like I you know, I remember a relative in our family was getting married. Okay, right. And so my dad was kind of the point person.
And so, you know, like oh so-and-so has offered their hand for so-and-so. My dad's like, okay, and he's like, you know, tell him to go meet us at this restaurant for dinner. All right, cool. And so we go and we sit there and you know, it's my dad's show. I'm just kind of taking a backseat. I'm like, all right, I don't got it. I don't got to worry about it. And so the whole time he's just my dad just making small talk with the guy, right? And I'm thinking like, okay, we're vetting this guy for marriage. We're asking him like this, this, this, this, this, you know, how do you, how was, you know, he was just making small talk the whole time. And then when we finished, I'm like, you didn't ask him anything. He's like, I got what I needed to know. Boom. Listen, man, that is, and he's like, you just, that is so golden. He's just like, you just got to, there's a certain things about how they talk, how they conduct themselves, what kinds of things they say, they're, he's just like, I got what I needed. Oh, that's, that's just, that is the value with sitting with your elders right there. That's rites of passage. That's it. Because exactly what you said, when you didn't talk to him about the juicy issues or, you know, no, he's like, no, I got it. Because the body language that he says something, how did he respond? What was his, you know, his facial, you know, all of that takes place. And I think that's depleted with the social media. It's, it's, it's reduced to an emoji or an emoji. I saw his LinkedIn page. Yeah, he seems pretty good. Well, and that's the thing. Like, I remember someone asked me to vet someone. And what I did is I looked them up online. I'm like, oh, here's all the pictures of this person here. This is the stuff they posted. I'm like, this is how I sized them up. And I was like, okay, I'm playing the wrong game. You told me this about the Imam. You said the Imam asked when a young man came for... He came and the Imam, he was asking the Imam for help with getting married. And the Imam was like, let me see your phone. He opened up social media app and went to the, you know, the For You page. And he was like, you know, what do you want, what do you want, who do you want me to recommend for you with this? You know, and it's... Yeah, I love him. So, I mean, we're talking about family.
You know, it kind of separates the interaction or has a potentiality to separate the interaction. Friends, we kind of seek to be validated to increase the interaction or the number of interactions that we have kind of validates us, making us more popular and, you know, would be termed a success. Well, now going into this chapter, you kind of alluded to it, you know, having the farasa, having the insight of being able to decipher. And you gave the beautiful, beautiful story of your father may Allah preserve him of being able to decipher and see if this is... the right person or not, and how that's kind of taken away with the social media element when looking at, and this is a reality, when looking at the females and the young men, they go on to social media and they look at the opposite gender, right, and allowing that to distract them, even offline, you know, to be honest, I mean, Mashallah, we've all dealt with youth, all of us, we all were youth in this country, in any country in actuality. But, you know, especially for like those that are in late high school, early college, you know, they're told, okay, you can't until you graduate, don't even think about it. And some of them are muftun. Some of them are heavily, heavily, heavily distracted by the opposite gender. What would you all advise in regards to, you know, especially online, especially on the online sector, when getting on social media, and, you know, we can even talk about notifications, how one needs to deal with the notification aspect, how to properly navigate through that? I think it just, everything changes so rapidly with like, how people talk to another, right? Like, when I started doing Ficus social media project, it was like adding each other as friends on Facebook. Okay. Now it's like, you're sending each other disappearing messages on Snapchat. Disappearing messages on Snapchat. Can you break that down?
So basically, it's, you know, you send, there's no chat history, right? Like if you, on WhatsApp, WhatsApp will prompt you like, do you want to download your whole chat history? Right? So you've got all the messages there. But disappearing just means that like, there's no trace, there's no track record. So you see it once and it goes away? You see it once and it goes away. Isn't that a snap? Didn't Snapchat start out with that? Exactly. And I think other apps have it now too. But like, I'm saying is the landscape is changing so rapidly all the time. I don't know a good answer other than like, someone just really has to be disciplined. And, you know, just know what your pitfalls are. And if it means you got to delete the apps, delete the apps. If it means you got to do something else, do something else. But also it's, you know, I think there's a general theme in terms of with the social media stuff, right? Which is, whatever you eliminate, you have to replace. Right? And so if I'm saying like, okay, right now, friendships, if my only interaction with friends is with the headset, playing multiplayer games online, or only talking to each other on the group chat, and I'm saying, okay, this, whatever, that thing might be good, but it's opening me up to a lot of other bad things. So I want to cut it down. If I'm going to cut it down, I need to replace it with something else. Right? So if I'm, you know, the group chat, we need to start getting dinner together. If I'm not going to the mushroom and meeting people, maybe I start going to the mushroom and meeting people. If I'm not involved in any sports, maybe I get into a guys basketball group, you know, but whatever the thing is, if you're eliminating, you got to replace it with something else and like, find some other way to fill your time. Everyone's going to be different. Everyone's got different ways of doing it. But like, this is I think the true taqwa mujahidah of the time.
That's the word. All of the words, right? I mean, you said mujahidah. And I think that's the, I think, you know, I wanted to mention this earlier. There's that real, it's a good book called Indistractable by Nir Eyal. E-Y-A-L. And the thing that I learned the most from it is he says that distractions, like we'll say, okay, this video game is a distraction. He says, no, those are what he would term as proximal distractions. But the actual element of distraction is a feeling. It's that he calls it the, he terms it as the, or defines it as the inability to deal with emotional discomfort. Right? You don't want to go through those uncomfortable moments of studying, of deep work. So what do you do? Just scroll and go through other people's worlds and see what they're doing. Everyone knows you shouldn't text and drive. Right? Really? I didn't know that. But tell me what happens. Even if, let's say you're being good about it. I'm not using my phone while I'm driving. But you get to a red light. What happens? You scratch the itch, man. You scratch the itch. You scratch the itch. Okay. Going to sleep and waking up in the morning. What's the sunnah of going to sleep? You got to recite certain afghar. When you wake up, you got to recite certain afghar. A lot of people don't. And I would say it's not because they don't want to follow the sunnah. But I think a lot of people are cognitively depleted. Cognitively depleted. Because what happens is when you're going to sleep, this is what happens to people. Right? You're in bed. You got the alarm set. Everything. Lights are off. Watching Netflix. Watching YouTube. Up until when? The sweet spot. You know what the sweet spot is? The sweet spot is when you're watching something and you're so tired that your eyes are closing. And you momentarily fall asleep and the phone falls on your chest. And you pick it back up and keep watching. And now you know that if I turn my phone off at this instant, I'll be able to fall asleep right away. Wow.
And it's because, and a lot of people have commented that it's because there's this inability to be alone with our own thoughts. And I'll take it one step further, which is this. And a lot of people have written about this idea of white space. Like white space in our lives has disappeared. Right? And that's just the downtime. So if you're, if you know, if you're at work and you're walking from, you're walking from the third floor to the first floor to get some food, you're on your phone now. But before there was some, there's just some quiet time. You're at a red light. There's some quiet time. You're sitting in the waiting room with the dentist. There's quite, you're waiting in line at the grocery store. Right? There's white space. There's nothing for you to do. You're just standing there waiting on the cashier. Now that space is all gone. It's taken up with the phone. And what I think, and I think very strongly about this is that the major impact that it's had is it's traded off with dua. Because dua is supposed to be that time where your mind is calm and it's just the personal conversation with Allah. Right? Yes, there's the ritualistic duas, like you read the morning supplications and all that. Like there's the ritualistic aspect of dua. But there's like the sincere dua that you just sit and pour your heart out to Allah. And I think the thing that we have now is because we're not able to be alone with our own thoughts, means we also can't be alone with Allah. And so now every spare moment is filled up with the screen. Yeah, subhanAllah. And that's the beautiful, because the process is like, it reminds me of the verse, you know, when Allah says, وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِي خَلَقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافِ اللَّيْلِ وَنْهَارِ الْآيَاتِ لِلْأَلْبَابِ الذين يَذْكُرُونَ اللَّهَ قِيَامًا وَقُعُدًا وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِي خَلَقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ So it's a, verily the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alteration of the night and the day are signs from an understanding. Those that ponder, وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ اللَّهَ قِيَامًا وَقُعُدًا No, yeah, those that mention Allah SWT standing, sitting, and lying on their sides وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ They think, they ponder. So it's that process of the محاسبة
Like when you're sitting in a grocery line, you're sitting in traffic, coming home from school and there's so many things that happen in school and you just turn off, you're just quiet, you just think of, you ponder, you review your day, you review your actions and then from that, وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ And then what do they do? رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقَتَ هَذَا بَعْتِنَا So they thought, they had the mental process, they went through it and then they came out and said something that acknowledges the thinking because they looked at the creation رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقَتَ هَذَا بَعْتِنَا What if there's no time to do تفكّر? That's what we're talking about You know what's popular online? Shower thoughts Shower thoughts? These are like epiphanies people have while they're in the shower And it's because that's the only time you're not on your phone When you consume stuff, it's like exercising, right? You need a rest day Your mind needs time to rest to make the pathways and make connections and for ideas to kind of cultivate But if you never let it do that, all of a sudden when you're in the shower for 10 minutes it's like your mind is doing all this overdrive And that's kind of sad, especially for a young man because he has to know how to separate and detach Like Salah is supposed to detach from all of these things But even outside of that, in the white spaces like you mentioned And I even talk about that, you know Within one of the workshops I do is talking about boredom How boredom is so beneficial for people but having to use it in the right way I think there was some survey that was done A lot of people that would fall into or be bored they would be more altruistic They would go out and donate blood They would go out and, you know, if they were active within that boredom But the problem is boredom, especially amongst our youth is looked at as a negative thing I mean, human beings, I don't want to blame the youth It's looked at as a negative thing to where if we're bored, something must be wrong I have to do something And unless I'm jailed under a shower
then, you know, that's what I'll be forced to think But it's really voluntarily detaching I think it's so important for a young man in particular You know, even growing up, Shaykh Sometimes we have the funnest times when we were bored Like with our friends, with our siblings You make up games Creativity comes out Like, oh, you remember that game we played? You remember when we decided to do X, Y, and Z? Don't touch the floor, jump on the fridge Yeah, some crazy stuff And I think we make the most memorable moments with that boredom And something with parents, too Parents are scared to let their kids be bored It's like, oh, the poor thing, man, just give him an iPad You know, why is he just sitting there? He's like, there's nothing for them to do That's because the parents are on the phone The kid's bored because the parent doesn't have time for him The parents are on the phone You know, my Shaykh, I remember when I studied Fiqh in Medina I studied with Shaykh Aamir Behjat Shaykh Aamir, he's a young Shaykh He's not too old, maybe in his 40s and whatnot And he's very energetic, masha'Allah, tabaraka Allah When we started our Fiqh course The first thing, he's like, alright guys, just leave social media Leave all your phones, all that stuff If it's important enough, it's going to get to you They'll find a way to you And they're like, Shaykh, what about the news? The ummah, what's going on? He's like, even the news, Talib Ilm doesn't read the news I felt so bad, you know, because I'm like Shaykh, how can Talib Ilm be disconnected from the news? He's like, look, most of the news you're going to end up reading or watching Is irrelevant to you and just distracting you from something better He's like, if it's important enough You're going to hear about it And you're going to go and read more about it And that's it, and just leave, make a pleasant exit He's like, if it's not important, why do you need it in your life?
You're not going to be a student of knowledge until you leave it You leave everything And I think that was my It was that moment where I just felt I felt sovereign Like you had control of your life I had control over my life You know, people would call me, I'd find like You know, like a few missed calls And they're like, yeah, I don't want to get back to him Oh, let me call this person back And I'll call, I'm like, okay And this goes back to the hadith Right, like I'm not going to Okay, this person is just going to take an hour of my time Talking about You know, the sahab and the salaf They used to count their minutes And I remember reading a quote from one of the salaf He said, the time difference between Chewing bread and drinking soup And dipping the bread inside the soup and eating it together Is the recitation of 50 verses Right So they actually calculated that time difference So they used to maximize their time to that extent That's how, you know, I forget It's dealing with salatul fajr They say, the time frame It slipped my mind But they measured it by the amount of verses that were read Yeah I can't remember what exactly it was It slipped my mind They'll say, the amount of reading this amount of verses So it shows you how connected they were They used that as a measurement How much they read Quran, first of all To know what an average verse takes Right, subhanAllah But again, you know, subhanAllah I think, you know, it's just important to know To voluntarily detach and ultimately have control over your life And I think that's very, very important You know, for the man to have a level of control over his life And say, okay, I know when to stop You know, whether it's with the family
And staying at the dinner table Or whether it's with friends And knowing when to Because some of those friends You may have beneficial conversation for an hour But you got to prioritize I got homework Or I'm studying for this course, this online course Can't talk to them now You know, and having enough courage to even say Yeah, I was just busy at the moment Or I don't feel like talking right now Right, and that, you know, takes courage The Power to Say No There's a really good book I think it's called The Power to Say No Knowing When to Say No Right You know, for yourself And on social media And that's why You know, you mentioning Mujahid It's enough fighting the self for the betterment of the self You know, one person I really admire I remember I was visiting the city that this guy was in I was like, hey, let's, you know, get together for dinner And I'm like, this is the time that I'm free Whatever, it was a business trip And he was like, oh, no, I can't come And I was kind of pushing him And then finally he was just like I'm sorry, I can't This is the time that I memorized Gram And I was just like, wow I was like, all right What are you going to say? And I was just like That stuck with me It's like in order to accomplish And this is an adult, right? So he's not a kid going to motherhood So it's an adult with a job and everything But the idea is like If you want to actually accomplish something Or do something Or, you know, kind of build the confidence of like Yes, I did this thing Then it's going to require control You have to be like intentional with your effort And on top of things You can't be letting like the device control you Or your actions, right? Like it takes intentionality and purpose to be like No, this is the time that I memorized Gram And this is not negotiable So, I mean, in the month of fasting What would you say about the fasting from electronics? Is that a healthy means? What are your thoughts on that? I'm not a fan of people who do the announcement Like I'm fasting for 30 days from social media And like they make a big hoopla about it It's like, just shut it off You're going to do it, you know? Like you're sort of You're drawing all this attention to yourself unnecessarily Like, again, for what? Like, you know Are you worried that people aren't going to miss you? So you have to let them know Like, please let me know that you missed me while I'm gone
It's very desperately seeking some kind of validation Oh, please stay But, you know, I hesitate to like turn fasting Into a Lent type of thing Of like, oh, I'm giving up this thing for Ramadan or whatever And I think it's more important to focus on Like first, look, first and foremost is the purpose of fasting Which is, you know, your taqwa, forgiveness and Quran Like, focus on that The social media, let it be But like, if they're sustainable habits You can build through the course of fasting Then, yeah, one thing that I would recommend Is like, instead of just taking the 30-day break And then going back to exactly what you had before Maybe if Ramadan, like last 10 nights Presents an opportunity Like, maybe make it an audit Right? Okay You know, what apps have notifications on? I need to turn those off Let's start there What apps do I have on my phone that maybe I can delete? Do I really need Facebook and LinkedIn and Snapchat And Instagram and Twitter and this other, whatever Do I need all of these things? Or can I maybe delete a couple of them? Maybe I delete it off my phone I leave it on the laptop So I don't think that I'm missing out But like, it's not there all the time Maybe I need to go through Who are all the people that I'm following? What pages have I liked? What accounts do I need to unfollow? You know, what WhatsApp group chats do I need to leave? You know, filter Maybe make this an audit time So that what you're doing now It's not that you gave it a break for 30 days And you're right back at it But maybe something that's sustainable And carries some momentum after the month is done Evaluation, holding yourself accountable Being responsible And I think that's very, very important In regards to what we're talking about today I think that's the overarching message Is be responsible Be focused and know when to say no Know what's mostly important Prioritizing Alhamdulillah This is a beautiful, beautiful gathering I learned a lot, mashaAllah From both of the illustrious brothers here And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala To make you an individual of focus and purpose
May Allah bless you all Jazakumullahu khairan Wassalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh
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