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America Unraveling: Political Violence | Imam Tom Live
We discuss political violence and its implications for Muslims in America. We analyze the increasing political polarization and how Muslims can contribute to healing. Imam Tom also delves into the anxiety surrounding the future of America and Allah’s provision. In "Test Your Ilm," we discuss the Islamic perspective on the permissibility of deception in military contexts. Finally, in Personal Development, we focus on "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, emphasizing the first law: Make it Obvious.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome back to Yaqeen Institute's live stream. I'm your host Imam Tom and boy we have a jam-packed session for you today. A lot of stuff been going on. We're going to be talking about current events, the attempt of assassination on Donald Trump. We'll be talking about what that means for the US and the world. We're going to be talking about Project 2025. We'll be going through also some really interesting sort of analyzing how political institutions are circumvented by sort of what they call lawfare and sort of dirty tricks that people play. And also how do societies and civilizations fall apart and what lessons can be gleaned from that. I know there's some people who are rooting for that to happen but is that always a good idea? We're going to talk about that. We have a special segment of test your ilm this week where we're not only going to be doing our normal hadith or chapter of hadith from Sahih Muslim about Kitab al-Seer. We're also going to be talking a bit about Ashura which was yesterday. May Allah accept everybody's fasting and their worship. And then finally we get back into atomic habits where we're going to start to learn how to make it obvious. That's rule number one. How to make our habits obvious and benefit from that as much as possible. But first let's go to the chat and let's see who we have with us tonight. We've got brother Razik Vaid. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. Sami Abbey. Thank you very much for the kind words. We do our best. May Allah forgive our shortcomings. Rick Rashid. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. Welcome back to the program. A lot of familiar faces. Mrs. S as well from Virginia. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. Saleha Ahmed from Atlanta. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. I haven't been to Atlanta in a bit but hopefully before too long I'll be able to make it back. Had a positive experience there. Rick Rashid from Canada. Yes. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. Who else we got? Ryan Ross. Peace be upon you. Sara. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum.
Coming up with the questions right away. Do you have any suggestions on readings about the Arab Spring? As I've heard some say it was a disaster and some say it wasn't. I'm glad you asked that question the way that you asked it because one thing I observe from a lot of the thinking within Muslim circles is that sometimes it can be very absolutist. And what I mean by absolutist is that very very black and white thinking. You have some people that, well let's just put it this way, that the people who tend to make these issues seem so black and white are usually not trying to have exploratory conversations about what we can learn and what we can sort of improve for the future. But rather they're trying to conscript and interpret and give meaning to that series of events or that singular event to fit it into a larger narrative that they already sort of believe is true, right? So that requires a simplification. That requires sort of absolutist black and white thinking. So I mean it's a mixed bag. Anything that happens in history, very few things are not a mixed bag. And we're going to talk about that as well with some of the things that have been going on in the U.S. specifically on the institutional front. So I don't have any readings off the top of my head. I'm more a little bit more into political theory than I am into current events analysis. Though I do do that, but that's not necessarily. Most of the things that I've read are articles from news sites and things like that. So I wouldn't necessarily have any book recommendations for you, but it's a good question. Rick Rashid had to take a break to get a snack. Let us know what you what you're snacking on. Minami Islam Khan. Welcome to the program. Thanks for piping in with some recommendations. From Tunisia. Welcome. Always a pleasure to have people from Tunisia with us. Pestify from the Maldives. Another friendly face.
From Philly. The city of brotherly love. That's right. Right down the road. Rick Rashid asks us to keep the people of Sudan and Arduas as well. Always. The entire Ummah and its suffering, but specifically Sudan, not just because its merits as a place of Islamic knowledge and people of amazing character, and I personally have benefited tremendously from the people of Sudan in my own life, but also because what's going on in Palestine is structurally related to what is going on in Sudan. That means both Israel has a hand in what is going on in Sudan and the sellouts. From within our own Ummah also have a hand in what is going on in Sudan, unfortunately, but that's another topic. Who else do we have here? Rifa Gulei. From Peace Circle Ranch, Colorado. That is an amazing name. Peace Circle Ranch. Welcome to the program. Juju S. from California. Southern California, no less. Inshallah, I should be in SoCal, October, November. Let's see, who else do we have? Sidrus Ubundu, Alaykum Salaam, Fairfax, Virginia. Ahlul Biryani with Samosa and not Biryani with Samosa diplomacy. Welcome back from Maryland. Secret Samira, Alaykum Salaam from Kenya. Well, where you're at is not a secret anymore, Samira, but welcome to the program. Kenya, a lovely place with lovely people. Shayma Budadi, Alaykum Salaam, from Al-Maghrib, Qadir al-Abbas, Alayk. Rahma Balok from Durham, North Carolina. One place I have yet to visit, though I would really like to visit, inshallah. Azlina A. from KL, Malaysia. I'll see you in a week, inshallah. Actually, we're going to be taking a week off next week from this program because I'll be in Kuala Lumpur for the entirety of next week, inshallah ta'ala. From Muhammad Habibi from Durban, Alaykum Salaam, welcome.
Welcome. We have Rufa'i Saeed from Lagos, Nigeria, Alaykum Salaam, Fatima, Alaykum Salaam, mashallah. It's always, again, and I'll never stop saying this, it's a blessing. I'm very, very excited, inshallah. I hope Allah allows me to complete my travels to Malaysia. It's always beautiful to connect with the Ummah and to go travel throughout the Ummah and to come together, bring our minds together, bring our hearts together, and I feel like during this program we do a little bit of that here as well. Zahir Yunus, Alaykum Salaam. In light of the increasing political violence and social unrest in the United States, how does Islamic teaching address the issue of political violence and civil strife? Well, I'm glad you turned in, sir. You tuned in tonight because that's exactly what we'll be talking about in just a moment. Alaykum Salaam, Nusaybah Qasim. Welcome back to the program. Nancy Yahya, Alaykum Salaam. Another return viewer from Al-Qahira. Muhammad Jahid from California, Alaykum Salaam. Zahir continues, what guidance can the Islamic tradition offer to individuals and communities in navigating such challenging times? Hasbi, Alaykum Salaam, from Atlanta. Another Atlanta folk in the house. Shabana Khan, Alaykum Salaam. Oh, Zahir's from London. Very good. Fatima says, sadly it's becoming more and more obvious that countries are behaving like corporations. Oh, I like that point. Alaykum Salaam, Jahangir from Islamabad. I have heard that Islamabad is a very beautiful place. Thanks for tuning in. Shabnam from Germany, Alaykum Salaam. Sariha, Alaykum Salaam. May Allah preserve you and all of us and all the Ummah. Rick Rasheed, eating chips and dip. I hope you brought enough to share.
Murad Ali, naughty naughty Murad. Murad Ali says, how does it feel to be a white Neocon imam? I wouldn't know. But Murad, and don't tempt me because I don't like to get involved in drama, believe it or not. But I will say that some people that speak down about white imams, their politics are based off of dead white Europeans like Marx and Lenin. So square that circle for me. Kashif Ahmed, Alaykum Salaam, from Manchester. Manchester was so lovely. I was very, very blessed to spend a day or two in Manchester and it really, really impressed me a lot. Harris from Brisbane, Australia, down under. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Rifqa Ghulay, can you send a shout out to Yusuf, Sumaya, Asma and Ayub. I just did. Mashallah, Yusuf, Sumaya, Asma and Ayub. Salaam Alaikum to you all. May Allah bless you and keep you and preserve you. Watermelon 786, Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah from Detroit. Very good. Ahlan wa sahlan. Detroit's a special place. I was blessed to visit Detroit in the last year. Abu Salman says, Alaykum Salaam, please do a video on the suffering Sudan, UAE involvement. Well, you said it, 100%. UAE has its hands in Sudan, what's going on in Sudan. Also, Israel has its hands in what's going on in Sudan. That's why there are structural issues and we'll talk about it. But you're right, it does deserve its own special treatment. Alina Simone, Alaykum Salaam, from Malaysia. Alaykum Salaam, love and the coffee, always welcome. Usama Anjum from Huntington, New York. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Sharon, Puerto Rico. Oh, Puerto Rico, you're not alone in Puerto Rico. In fact, you should check out the three Puerto Rican Imams, Abu Sumaya, Wesley Lebron and Daniel Hernandez and Yusuf Rios have a nonprofit organization called the Three Puerto
Rican Imams. They do extensive Dawah work in Puerto Rico. Bienvenido to the program and I hope that you find what you need. Hopefully, you're able to link up with some people, inshallah ta'ala. Puerto Rico, beautiful people, beautiful culture. Welcome to the program. Rai from Liverpool. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Didn't get a chance to go to Liverpool, unfortunately. Laura from Morocco. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Welcome back to the program. Good to see returned viewers. Shahla from Karachi. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Alina. Yes, alhamdulillah. I'm happy to be there. Plenty of things to enjoy. First stop, I think, is to get some kopi susu. Melbourne, Australia. Zaid, Carlos. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Fish Biscotti. Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Hold on now. I don't know if you're allowed to have that username, Fish Biscotti, because, you know, biscotti is very, you know, it's close to my heart. And Fish Biscotti, it sounds like some sort of reprehensive bid'ah. Anyway, we all make mistakes. Mohammed Zaman from Memphis. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Ashraf Katumba from Saudi. Ahlan wa sahlan. Where from Saudi? Ayu Madinatin. Fiz Saudi. Barakallah fik. Elias from the studio. My man Elias holding it down. We got the other guys back here holding it down behind the scenes. May Allah bless you all. Everybody who makes this possible. Art Forge. Alaykum Salaam from Atlanta. Quebec. Raza family from Quebec. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah from Montreal in particular. But wow, it's been a minute since I visited Laval way back in the day before I went to Medina. And I have not been back to Montreal since, unfortunately. Fatima, what is a neocon? Don't worry about it. You're better off not knowing. Yes, Minami Islam Khan. Thank you so much for sending that. Please keep the people of Bangladesh in your du'as. We are going through challenging times. Yes, that happened so late we couldn't even add it to the program formally. But the unrest that's going on in the universities and
the crackdown, the brutal crackdown on the students there. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala aid the people of Bangladesh. Wonderful people, wonderful place, wonderful culture. May Allah protect them and let justice prevail. Blue X. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Good to have you with us. Minion. Alaykum Salaam. Um Usaid from the UK. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Let's see. Abdullah asks a question. Our own Abdullah Abu Mahfouz. What are your thoughts on decaf? Decaf is like, oh, I can't say it. I can't say it on air. Let's just say it's not recommended. Okay. Ask me in person, Abdullah. There's something that I told Sheikh Tahir Wyatt about decaf way back in the day in Medina. That it's just, if you're going to go to the trouble of drinking coffee, why would you take all the fun out of it, right? It's like that meme. I think someone was making the rounds. Someone said, um, did you know that switching your morning routine from coffee to green tea can eliminate 80% of the joy from your life or something like that? Like, why would you do that to yourself? Though I understand some people can't tolerate the caffeine. So that's, I'm not in that situation. NY. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah from NY, from New York. Asmina Mansoor. Alaykum Salaam from KL. Glad to have you with us. Inshallah be in your area soon. Muhammad Ahmed from Allen. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. Quaker Boats. That's a funny name. Alaykum Salaam from Glendale Heights, Illinois. Sinclon from Nigeria. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah. HF. Alaykum Salaam. Amin. Go for it HF. Shoot your shot. Alina. Yes. Yes. Except for, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I need help everybody. All my Malaysian friends and brothers and sisters. One thing that
I can't do. Yes. 100% teh tarik all day long. No problem. Nasi lemak, my favorite. Roti canai, my favorite. Durian. I do not, I do not love durian. Durian is hard for me. And I know that that is controversial, but that's controversial. It's kind of what we do here. So apologies to the lovely people of Malaysia, but I have a really hard time with durian. I'll stick to the mangoes. I'll stick to the teh tarik and the kopi susu and the other things. Norilo. Alaykum Salaam, Rafatullah from Uzbekistan. Very welcome to the program. Uzbekistan. Lovely, lovely people. Lovely culture. I had a good friend studying with me, a classmate of mine, Uthman Mohamedov, who was from Uzbekistan. Shout out to him. Very, very dear friend. Pestify says, just saw President Biden tweet about being sick with COVID. Yes, he's got COVID. Insinuating Elon Musk of buying the election. Yeah, that is funny. But we'll talk about it. We'll talk about the role of money in politics, or let's say the infiltration of money into politics, especially the United States, and how basically this is something that has been a workaround to circumvent democratic institutions or other, you know, the way that things are supposed to work, if we don't want to use the D word. Big salams from Utica, first pillar. Yes, first pillar. Alaykum Salaam. Big love to Utica. Shout out to Utica. My landing spot, coming back from Medina. I appreciate the wonderful community in Utica a lot. May Allah bless you all. Fatima, I agree, decaf is a little bit of blasphemy. Who else do we have? Yep, The Beast, you're right. Harris says, my crew, some people saying bid'ah, very good. And we got, now we got the fuqaha weighing in. Murad asks a question, has normative North American Islamic institutions and leadership failed the activist class? In short, yes, Murad, in short, yes. And I hope to be a small part
of the solution to that failure. Such that they feel so comfortable operating in Kufri ideologies. Yes, honestly, you hit the nail on the head. There's more to it than that, but that definitely is a large ingredient to what's going on. So one of the things I'm working on right now, I work on it every single day. I'm up to 59 pages of written material on trying to lay out a framework for Islamic activism. And I know I'm not the first person. This is going to be a contribution to this field that others such as Sheikh Omar Suleiman and Imam Dawood Waleed and others have contributed to. Many others have contributed too. We need to push it forward and start to provide very concrete solutions and provide a framework and speak to the issues in practical ways that are going to put things into practice. And that's what we're going to put things in these young people's hands. There's a reason why young people are ready to change the world. They're idealistic. That's what Allah gifted them. And if we as a scholarly class and the institutional class does not channel that, then they will go elsewhere. They will go elsewhere. So we do share a responsibility in that. What are we doing? We're shooting the breeze. We're grounding with our brothers. There's a book by Walter Rodley about grounding with your brothers. That's what we're doing right here. We're getting on the same page. We're becoming one mind and one heart, inshallah, before we get into it. Nazish Khan, walaikum salam wa rahmatullah Fabulous45, walaikum salam wa rahmatullah. The Beast, did I skip your question? I didn't see that question. I apologize. Not every question that I don't say is a question that I intentionally skip. Sometimes the chat's moving up really fast and I take my eyes off to make eye contact with you and then I lose it. You had a question about Sunni-Shia alliance against Zionists. There's got to be tafseer in that. Anytime where we use loaded terms, we have to really know exactly the specificities of what we're talking about. What type of alliance? What type of Shia? What type of this? And we'll talk a little bit about
this with Ashura when we talk about Ashura, but it's not categorically off the table. Just as it's not categorically off the table to have an alliance with non-Muslims. The Prophet when he came to Medina, the first thing he did was make a pact with the Jews that were living there. And that was something they had a pact to defend the city together. So that was their common goal. Didn't require anybody sort of come over to the other side or they didn't have to hold hands and sing Kumbaya or anything like that. So there is a precedence for this sort of thing. But the devil's in the details as they say. Glasgow, haven't been that far north, but I hear it's lovely. Laila Yassin from Virginia. CT Nuriati, my husband doesn't like durian too. Alhamdulillah, I didn't want to be the only one. Walaikum Salam Atika from Indonesia. Walaikum Salam. Welcome. Samira, the program begins once we run through everybody. I am going to get through all the comments. So if the comments keep coming, then we'll get to them. So if the comments keep coming, then we're just going to keep on waiting. No problem. But that's okay, because we're getting to know each other. And this is actually something that I believe enhances the quality of the program. Maya Rahib, Walaikum Salam, Rafatullah. Phoenix, Arizona, JH, Walaikum Salam, Rafatullah. Atika Rahman, Walaikum Salam, Rafatullah. Buongiorno. Very good. Morning, chai and coffee is very important. Yes, agree. Lazim, Wajib. Maya Rahab, will you ever come to Massachusetts? I might be coming to Massachusetts in the fall, Maya. And absolutely, I would love to. Nusrat Ghori from Alabama. You want to know about this? You haven't seen anyone wearing it. This is from Tunik. So it comes from North Africa. You can check out Tunik online, T-U-N-I-Q. I always plug their stuff. I love their stuff. They're a very ethics-based company, sort of artisanal clothes. Sometimes it can be a bit pricey, but I believe in their ethics. I believe that they adhere very closely to what we would
imagine as Sharia guidelines for what is sort of clothing and things like that. Shahla, why on earth everything goes wrong in the Islamic countries? We are ready to tolerate each other, follow the rules in America, etc. Laws are implemented, but Islamic countries, no laws implemented. Well, there's a long answer to that. We'll get into some of it. Zaheer, Walaikum Salam, thank you very much. My plans, what I've been working on recently? Yes, you will see soon, inshallah. Let's see, Maghrib time in New York. Yes, just about. Here we go. What else we have? Sarah, regarding revolts like Syria, and I wonder if we can add Pal to that. I think you mean Palestine. Some have said, was it worth it when so many have been unalived, when there wasn't even a chance of victory or no leader? It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, Sarah. That's what we say in the United States. We mean that hindsight's always 20-20, right? And again, this is what I would call a more absolutist or ideological sort of interpretation of history, where you go to it and say, see, I told you so. It didn't work for this reason or that reason. And I don't really find that very helpful. I advocate a more exploratory sort of approach saying, okay, it failed, but does the fact that it failed mean that there's nothing to learn? Maybe this was a necessary step in providing for something that comes later, and that requires serious study, and usually not black and white thinking. Aghuzan Farali, Hibbo, Ifrah Omar, wa alaykum as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. Yes, I am fine, alhamdulillah. Eva Samad, how am I supposed to find a halal place to work in a non-Muslim country, and I do not have any Muslim friends? Do the best you can, and always strive to do better. Simple, but really, I'm serious. Do the best that you can with the opportunities that are available to you, and then always plan to continue to do better. Fatima has a good point. All right, we're almost at the end here.
From Indonesia, Farah, wa alaykum as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. Maria Hamdani from Chicago, Nafisa Toubande, do you have any advice on how to keep one's sanity amidst what is happening to our brothers and sisters around the world? I am losing it sometimes. I feel you, 100%, 100%, I also feel you. And I have taken refuge in certain formulas of dhikr, certain things of dhikr, both in the Qur'an that the Prophet shallallahu alayhi wa sallam used to say that maybe I wasn't using so much in the past, the ones that more have to do with relying on Allah, hasbillallah, wa ni'mal wakil, ni'mal mawla, wa ni'mal naseer, is one that I really lean on heavily. Asbillallah lazeel la ilaha illa huwa alayhi tuwakkaltu wa huwa rabbil aashir adheem. These sorts of things that rely on Allah's transcendence and control over even these issues, because yes, it's dark, but inshallah, we hope that things will continue to get better. Yes, Atika, thank you for that clarification. Topi is an Urdu word for cap. I believe it's also the word they use in Malay for the general cap, though not the word for the specifically sort of Malaysian hat. I am Sameeha, Sameeha alaykum as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah Ahlan wa sahlan, welcome, from Dallas, Texas. I should be in Dallas next month in August, inshallah, briefly, and then back again in October, I believe. Okay, and Nis Amira, alaykum as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah from Malaysia, may Allah bless you. Ghuzan Farali, of course, I can pray for you. May Allah protect you, give you the best of this life and the next, ameen. All right, that's great. I mean, I think it's a good problem to have if you've got so many friendly faces and friendly people from around the ummah to give salams to and to check in on. I think that's part of why we do this, so that we can sort of have even a little bit of hope and take solace in one another in these dark times. But there is a lot to talk about, and let's start with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which happened this week
that has been featured very, very heavily in the news. A lot to say about this particular issue about political violence. I know one of the first things that when something like this happens is that for the Muslims in Western countries, all of us in our group chats are always saying, please don't be a Muslim. Please let the shooter not be a Muslim, because we know that if the shooter is a Muslim, then we as an entire community are going to be blamed for it and it will provide an easy pretext and justification for sort of cracking down on us and spying on us and jailing us and doing all these sorts of things. So unfortunately, we are held accountable for things that we don't do and things that we don't support. Thankfully, it was not a Muslim who did it. And there were lots of, and I'm glad you mentioned that, Sada. Sada said, I'm going to say it looks kind of sus. A lot of people are saying that there's a lot of conspiracies coming out as to who did it, what's the motive, was it set up, was it fake, all these sorts of things. Fatim, a great point. We're going to touch on that in a second. It does seem, it does seem like this is a genuine thing. It doesn't seem like a fake. It doesn't seem like there are necessarily any ulterior motives, right? If it were something that were an inside job or something done from the left, they would have picked somebody different. And it's a very high risk sort of thing. So most of the conspiracy theories that I've seen out there, some people saying that it was Israeli intelligence, some people saying that it was a radical leftist, some people saying that it's an inside job from the right. I don't really see a lot of veracity or logic to those claims. I think that this seems to match from what we know the profile of a lone wolf disgruntled person.
He's very young, only 20 years old. And it was a registered Republican and somebody who was, yeah, like somebody who doesn't seem to have many ulterior motives. I know some of his classmates said that he was bullied like every day relentlessly. So the conspiracy theories, we have to pump the brakes on those as we say, we have to take it easy with those. Now, what we do know is that this was a spectacular security failure, that it's shocking to a lot of people that there could have been such an easy attempt on the former president's life. And that if the person was a better shooter, honestly, it would have been a tragedy, at least according to some, and we'll get into that as well in a second. So we've seen a lot of blame going around. They're trying to say that secret service is underfunded or not doing their job or the local police. Some of the details, and that's what makes it sus as I think Sada was saying, that there were local police officers that actually saw the shooter and actually confronted the shooter and had the gun turned on them. And then they basically just walked away, which is very positive. There's all these videos going around where people who are there who are trying to alert police officers, hey, there's a guy on the roof with a gun, right? That's wild. That's very, very odd to see this sort of thing happen. And so it is a little bit strange, but it seems to be, and Allah knows best, more an issue of incompetence than it is about some sort of conspiracy. And Allah knows best. We will see how things go. I know there's gonna be a lot of commentary about that. Let's check it real quick. We've got, yeah, we're definitely gonna talk about what this means about violence. Let's see, Mad Sauce, wa alaykum as-salamu alaykum. Victorious Drusilla, welcome to the program.
Fatima, they care more about his ear than thousands of Palestinians. Allahu Akbar. Put that up there on the screen, guys. That comment is extremely, extremely important and one that we're going to roll with in just a second. We've got a video we're gonna show in just a few seconds that makes that exact point. Now, everybody's concerned about violence. Now, everybody's talking about, oh, this is such a tragedy. And we're saying, yes, it's a tragedy, no problem. But what about the 186,000 Palestinians that have been killed in brutal fashion over the last nine months and for the entire duration of the occupation? Clearly, this is a very hypocritical thing for the United States and all the media class and all the pundit class to get together and fold their hands and nod solemnly and say, oh, this is so horrible, where they don't even blink an eye at the slaughter that they are funding and committing in other parts of the world. We have that clip. Can we roll it? Violence has never been the answer, whether it's with members of Congress of both parties being targeted and shot or a violent mob attacking the capital on January 6th or a brutal attack on the spouse of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or information and intimidation on election officials or the kidnapping plot against the sitting governor or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump. There's no place in America this kind of violence for any violence ever, period, no exceptions. We can't allow this violence. Yeah, that's wild. It's wild and it's hypocritical for two reasons, and we'll get into it a bit more. One of them, the first most immediate one, as Sister Fatima pointed out, that this is really rich, as that video very, very succinctly and beautifully illustrates.
All of the examples of violence and political violence that he's giving are ones where quote-unquote American lives are jeopardized, especially the political class, whereas the political class is responsible for way worse violence across the world, even just in the last nine months. But hey, let's go back decades. Let's go back to the invasion of Iraq. Let's go back to the toppling of governments that were democratically elected in Central and South America. Let's go to, like the United States foreign policy and intelligence agencies has hands in a lot of dirty stuff over the past decades. And our only examples that we bring to mind with political violence are this, right? It's very, very tone deaf. It's very, very hypocritical. It also is problematic because we've seen rhetoric from President Biden in the last week try to shift the blame for this climate of political violence to the pro-Palestinian encampment movement and not, let's say, the violent response of the police and sometimes the National Guard being called in on your own people, right? Which side is construed as violent? Who gets to be defined as violent here? Somehow the students are considered violent for demanding an end to violence, for demanding an end to United States participation, active participation in violence in Palestine. Yet the police and the SWAT teams that go in with live ammunition and military grade equipment are not considered violent somehow. Tell me how that makes sense, right? Where individual Congress people, when they're confronted in Congress, can say things like, we should kill all of them and flatten Gaza and all these things that they have been recorded as saying. And yet what happened to Hind isn't violence.
What happened to Hind's family isn't violence. Or all of the other little girls, such as Sidra and the other girls like Hind and Sidra, that that's not violence. It's extremely hypocritical and extremely infuriating, especially as a Muslim, to see this type of rhetoric, which is just completely, it's just completely, it's like dust, it has no weight, it has no value. It's empty words, or as we say, kalam fadhi. Now we'll get also to, I know there's a lot of conversation. Let's run through that and then we'll get to, I think we have another clip to demonstrate this type of hypocrisy from none other than Shaitan Yahu. But we'll see that in just a second. Let's see what we got. Samira, I like your point, Samira, and I agree. Someone died that's too risky to be a stunt. I agree with that. Somebody was shot in the background, a father. That is a very, very, a very sad thing. Trump, Pestify says, Trump posing for a photo op is what makes it sus. Not at all. If you know Trump, Trump has his background in reality television. He's been on pro wrestling programs. He is made for that sort of moment. He's very calculated when he does that sort of thing. So he definitely has a stage presence, as we say, or he has a sixth sense for sort of the theater of something. So that doesn't surprise me at all. And Minami Islam Khan brings up the idea about the crowd. The crowd, the events seem to remain in their seats. Well, it all happened very fast. And honestly, if you were in that situation, it's not apparent that it's gunfire, right? Even police, they can't always differentiate between gunfire and fireworks or other things like that. So that also, again, is not necessarily a red flag to me. Neither is the idea that The Beast is saying here that Secret Service was involved and that no way that they were that incompetent. And I saw some videos broken down by former Secret Service members that broke this down, that actually those buildings were the responsibility
of the local police and that the Secret Service has to usually work with local police forces, which makes it make a lot more sense. You're right. You would expect people of Secret Service caliber to not make those types of mistakes. My understanding is that that particular zone was supposed to be local police and they sort of dropped the ball. Exactly, Samira, 100%. Not surprising from Trump. Yep, 100%, saw a good point. Yes, that's true, Abdu'l-Nasir. Politics is unfortunately full of a bunch of hypocrites, which is why the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us to not seek leadership. This is a hadith from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam where he discouraged people from seeking leadership. He said, Alaihi Salatu Wasallam, that if you seek leadership, you will be left alone with it. Like Allah will not help you. It'll be just you. You won't have any blessing or barakah or tawfiq. But if you don't seek out leadership and it's thrust upon you, the people thrust it upon you, then Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la will aid you and give you tawfiq in it anyway. The beast wants to know why were the female bodyguards, why were there female bodyguards anyway? This has actually become a talking point on the right where they're criticized. The head of secret service, I think, made a 30% quota, that 30% of the secret service has to be female. And so now this has become another thing in the culture war where the right is saying, oh, these diversity hires or these quotas have made the secret service less effective. And I don't know about that. I don't necessarily think that that's what's the point. I think that it was probably more an issue of local police dropping the ball. Yes, and I agree with Zaheer here. We do need to be careful about spreading conspiracy theories. It doesn't make us look good. It makes us look, we're supposed to be more intelligent than that, right? It kind of is fun to think about things and think through things, but especially in public, right? We hit that forward button on WhatsApp and then it comes across forwarded many times, right?
And it's this crazy conspiracy. It's undermining of our credibility, unfortunately. Yes, and Sana brings up a good point. A lot of people, one of their main reflections from this is that this might be the nail in the coffin for Biden's campaign, that being surviving an assassination attempt and that dramatic photo and how he sort of shaped it is very, very strong for his campaign, in favor of his campaign. Violence is the language of the oppressor. Sameer, that's true. What else we have? Yeah, Nadine is 100% right. Total dehumanization of a group. And we have seen, we have seen that this rhetoric is out of control. We're gonna be talking about that. Fatima is right. Palestine is exposing the world, 100%. Yep, Laura brings up a good point because the people controlling the politics in the West need to control the narrative. Muslims cannot be seen as the good guys. They need an enemy. They need a common enemy. If they wanna fund, the FBI has an $11 billion budget, right? The CIA, the other sort of institutions that wreak havoc either at home or across the world, or that spy on us domestically, stop us at the airports, or the ones that destabilize other nations across the world and make other people angry at the United States, which is not a good idea. That, exactly, that they need a common enemy. They need to be able to tell people that the bad guy, we're doing this to keep you safe. That is the ultimate excuse, which is why, and I'll say this and I'll say this again, for all the people who have had their feathers ruffled by me sort of challenging the left and the left's claim to the issue of Palestine and Palestinian liberation, that when, what am I supposed to say with meta? I'm not supposed to use the word Zionist with meta anymore. What are we supposed to say? People who believe in Zionism, when they justify their project, when they ask for money from the United States,
when they ask for weapons, what do they say that they're fighting? Do they say that they're fighting Arab nationalism? Do they say that they're fighting human rights? They say that they're fighting Islamic fundamentalism. They say that they're fighting Islamic terrorism. That's what they say that they're fighting. And then we see people, even from the left, when they get challenged, they call us Islamic fundamentalists. They say that we're Wahhabis. They use the language of the war on terror. They use the language of criminalizing Muslims. You square that circle for me and tell me how that makes sense. Anyway, we need to move on. Let's see. What else we got? Haiderabad is in the house. Saba Ghul. Wa alaikum salam wa rahmatullah. You've got it. Good point, Shahla. Hi there says, which modern day political structure most closely describes how leaders can be elected in the Sharia? Well, a short answer to a long question. If you look at the ways in which the four Khulafa al-Rashideen were elected, or elected is not the right word. There were a variety of methods. So Abu Bakr was nominated and then accepted by a small sort of vanguard. Though there's difference of opinion about that. Some of the scholars of Ahlus Sunnah, they also say that he was actually directly appointed from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Anyway, Umar radiallahu anhu was directly appointed with no conversation by Abu Bakr. Then Uthman, we know that there was a council and even that council sort of the shura was expanded to the entire city of Medina. And then Ali, it was sort of thrust upon Ali. So there was a variety of methods by which the rightly guided Caliphs came to power, which demonstrates that the manner in which someone can assume authority is something that is not fixed in stone. It is not ta'abudi. It is not something that is extremely limited. That it is something that as long as it does not explicitly contradict Islam, that there is room for a variety of methods of that.
So that's my quick response to that. Amina says, these days my teacher introduces us the aqidah through the study of history of Islamic civilization and the position of Palestine throughout the centuries. History repeats itself 100%. And as one of the Palestinian uncles in Dublin, Ireland told me, he said that your feelings towards Palestine is indicative of how you feel towards the whole ummah. And I thought that was amazingly, amazingly relevant and true. DK Larussa, wa'alaikum salam, here in Louisiana. Ahlam as-salam, welcome to the program. Bills, oh yeah, you asked me about Malaysia. No, I am still in the United States. I'm traveling to Malaysia inshallah ta'ala Sunday, and I'll be there from Sunday to Monday. Okay, so come find me. The Beast says, did you see that they are now trying to blame Iran? Yes, there's another thing that's pivoting to Iran. Israel stepping in saying that Iran is the greatest threat to world peace. Ha ha ha, that's really rich coming from Israel. We see this thing. Okay, let's see. Yes, that's true, MY. It'll be interesting. MY brings up a point, they're gonna call him a gunman because he was not a Muslim. We know that if it was a Muslim, we would see this as an, it would be under terrorism legislation. And so this is actually in a really important point when it comes to what is called lawfare. So lawfare is basically the creation of law and legal devices by which you can punish people in certain ways, right? So the entire post 9-11 framework of terrorist law, Patriot Act, all these sorts of things was specifically made to incriminate Muslims in a very specific way, in a way that's different categorically from the rest, how a non-Muslim person would be tried, right? Raza, we'll get back to that in a second. Here we go. So we've got another clip. Let's bring up Sheytan Yahu himself.
My wife, Sarah, and I were shocked by the horrific assassination attempt on the life of President Donald Trump. This wasn't just an attack on Donald Trump. This was an attack on a candidate for the presidency of the United States. This was an attack on America. It was an attack on democracy. It was an attack on all the democracies. On behalf of myself, my family, the government, and people of Israel, we wish President Trump a speedy recovery, continued good health. I'm in a Sheytan regime. I can't believe I had to listen to that. First of all, it's clear that Netanyahu, and there's an article that dropped today about this, is trying to patch up his relationship with Trump. But I'm betting that he's- betting that Trump will win the election. Obviously, we don't know what's going to happen. Actually, Netanyahu's relationship with Trump was not all that good. Despite Trump- Trump's funny because if you go back into his statements, he says anything. He says anything and everything, so you can always see him contradicting himself. He says whatever he feels he needs to say, depending on the audience and the moment. But he has also criticized Netanyahu for not being willing to make a deal, not being a good faith negotiator, being someone who basically is an obstacle to peace. Take that for what it's worth. Now, Netanyahu probably sees the writing on the wall and wants to shore up a sort of relationship and try to develop relationships with what he thinks is going to be the next president of the United States, because he's probably very concerned that, let's say, Trump sort of goes rogue like he has gone in the past and says, you know what, no more military aid for Israel. Not saying it's going to happen, but we can pray, right? Then he would- he knows that he's in a very tough situation.
So that's the first thing. The second thing, obviously, is the utter hypocrisy of Netanyahu trying to have his Charlie Hedbo moment, where remember back with the Charlie Hedbo incident, and he and the rest of the Western leaders are marching arm and arm through the street as if they're the leaders of the free world and democracy, etc., hiding, of course, the way in which that they are directly responsible with blood on their hands for a lot of violence and a lot of oppression and a lot of horrible things across the world. This is hypocrisy and narrative and spinning. But the good thing, and I think the silver lining for all of us, is that most people, or let's say more and more and more people, are seeing through it. More and more and more people are seeing the hypocrisy of this sort of thing. That's why they make videos like the one that we showed earlier with Biden, juxtaposed against what's going on in Palestine. That more and more people are seeing through this, and so we can hope that we're approaching a critical mass that will turn things around. Raza asks, Sheikh, I think we're supposed to choose lesser of lesser evil, so vote for Trump. Sorry, I'm putting you on the spot. Yakhin Institute's a 501c3. I cannot tell you who to vote for, who not to vote for, but obviously the devil's in the details. Who you think is lesser evil? Do you vote at all? Do you vote for a third party? That's up to you. I can't comment on that here. But if you are interested in what I think, then you'd have to go to another platform and see. Murad Ali, another good question. I know you're speaking about US domestic politics, not to get you in trouble, but that's a great intro. But how should we view the axis of resistance? Yeah, I mean, this is something that has come up in a lot of spheres. I think that when it comes to people within the United States, I think that the main focus, to not lose our eyes on what's important, is changing the foreign policy of the United States. I think that there
is a very, very easily... He is Polish, the beast, by the way. That there is an easy thing for, an easy... What's the word I'm looking for? An entry point to the average American that the United States of America, for decades at this point, has been using its power for evil. That it has been intervening and destabilizing and toppling perfectly fine societies for quite a while. And that if people knew what was going on, then they would probably try to rein back. And the fact that our tax dollars are going to this as opposed to the crumbling infrastructure, as opposed to healthcare that people can afford, life in the United States is not easy right now. If people were able to organize around this, I think that we could achieve a lot of good. And it makes it less relevant about the axis of resistance or whatever. Because again, for me, and I am speaking to the U.S. audience when I'm saying this, I think the main goal has to be to change U.S. foreign policy. I think that once that happens, then breathing room is created for other possibilities to happen. Bill, thank you very much. Yep, look forward to being there. Who else we have? Amin. Yes, Amin. I agree with that 100%. Rick Rashid, yes. He did say, Trump did say that he will end the war in Gaza. But again, Trump says everything. If you look through all the things that Trump has said, you will find him saying pro and against on almost every single issue. And he changes like a chameleon. He's a chameleon. He's a showman. We know this, that he doesn't really believe in much except for himself and his own personal interest, as opposed to Biden, who is actually a committed Zionist. He's actually somebody who believes in the Zionist project.
Sharon, I'm new Muslim, so I need to ask why they're behind Muslims. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that question, Sharon. Maybe you can clarify. We might not, Sarah, we might not have a better of two evils in this particular situation. Elias says, Trump also said, let them keep going. Yes, exactly. And he was saying that about the Zionists and letting them continue their genocide within Gaza. Yes. No, exactly. So these people, listen, we know that you can't trust politicians, right? So you have to take with a grain of salt anything that you hear them say. Even people with the slickest, most appealing rhetoric, like Obama, who was a skilled rhetoricist, he was a skilled rhetorician. He was a skilled rhetoricist. What happened when he was actually in office? Their actions speak louder than their words. But anyway, we have to turn the page here. We'll talk about, okay, so the other thing that dropped this week is Project 2025, right? This is something that was leaked. It was a project by the Heritage Foundation. This is something that is 900 pages long. It's got the left media, the democratic friendly media in a tailspin, saying that this is sort of a conspiracy, that it's going to overthrow the government, that we're just a step away from fascism, all these very similar, familiar alarmist bells that have been ringing for quite some time. And there's truth to that. But I think that we need to realize a couple of things. One of them is that if you go through the actual, you actually go through it, like anything, it's a mixed bag. There are some things that many Americans would actually welcome, such as the disbanding of the FBI. I thought that was funny that that was in there. It actually said that one of its goals
was to disband the FBI. And there were other things that some parts of the population would maybe appreciate, such as rolling back certain things when it comes to gender ideology in school and things like that. But of course, there are other things that are very, very worrisome for Muslims and for other people. What's gotten people most in a fix is the potential for trying to increase executive power to work around, basically, anybody within the government that could oppose Trump. Now, there's a lot to talk about when it comes to this. First of all, that I think that it's hypocritical of people on the left and people who are democratic friendly to act so shocked to the point where they think that this is something that they don't also do and participate in. In the reality, you have groups like the Heritage Foundation, you have them on both sides of the political aisle, you have left and right think tanks that make documents like this, that make their sort of scenario sheets like this, that make their grand plans. If you want to go back to the LGBTQ movement, they've done the same thing. You could imagine in another sort of mirrored reality, the right wringing its hands and clutching its pearls about the left doing the same thing. The reality is that both sides participate in this exact same thing where they make their demands, they make their plans, and they see what they can get away with, which is interesting when it comes to the way that politics are supposed to work. A lot of times, Muslims are very, unfortunately, naive about politics. And they think that it's just about electing people without realizing that no, both sides or whatever interest group you're a part of, does a lot of work to not just figure out who to elect, that's part of it, but also how to get around the system. And it's unfortunate, politics are dominated and infiltrated by money, that's part of it. But it's also about sort of
developing policies and thought in order to convince other people to get your project put in place. So sometimes as Muslims, we actually play, you know, and there's reasons for this, where we act as if this is just like, you know, we try to keep our hands clean. But this is something that everybody does. Everybody plots like this, whether they announce it to the world or not. So this doesn't come as a surprise, honestly, anybody who follows politics very closely, this type of thing happens all the time, what the left, the right, the center, any group, every group does this type of thinking, and you're going to agree to it or not. Now, the thing that's most alarming is that each group, both the left and the right, are no longer looking to be accountable to the people and implement policies based off of their merit, or even win elections, though that is something that they're still concerned about. They are very, very much engaged in trying to find a workaround, trying to manipulate the rules, to manipulate the regulations, to work around the regulations, the rules, the laws, the systems in place, in order for them to get their way. That's alarming. And that is actually something that brings us to our next sort of topic, which is the unraveling of America. It is something that is very, very dangerous, and it plays into the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Now, we saw a video of President Biden condemning violence, but it's also true, and I read no less than three articles just today about this, that Biden has contributed to political rhetoric that we could say perhaps contributed to this climate of political violence, that calling your opponents Hitler, calling your opponents Nazis. These types of things are very
inflammatory. And so some people, and these are not my words, these are the words of even The Hill had an article today saying, if you really think that somebody's Hitler, why are you apologizing that they got an assassination attempt on them? Doesn't that seem two-faced? Either you didn't really ever think that they were Hitler and you were just using that language, or you're being hypocritical, right? So we see that both, and this is again, one of the lessons from Project 2025 is that both left and right, both Democrats and Republicans engage in this inflammatory rhetoric. Both of them try to work around outside of democratic processes and against the rules in order to get their way. If Project 2025 was successful and they were able to replace sort of the legacy employees with their own sort of at-will presidential appointments, don't the people at the Heritage Foundation say, wait a second, if we put this into place, what if the next president is democratic? And then they take advantage of the powers that we just gave the president. They're not thinking like this, that every sort of workaround, whether it's gerrymandering, right, where they change the shape of the districts to play with who gets, every dirty trick that you come up with is now eligible for the other side to use it as well against you, right? And so this is something very, very alarming as we see the United States descend and become more and more polarized and people using very irresponsible rhetoric that creates a plausibility structure where somebody would unfortunately attempt something like an assassination. We see that this is how things fall apart. There's a useful distinction that one thinker mentioned that I think is tremendously helpful for these sorts of things. They said that
people need to differentiate between enemies and adversaries. An adversary is somebody who agrees to play by the same rules that you agree to play by, and now you're in competition to win, but you both agree to play to the same rules. Whereas an enemy is somebody who doesn't agree to play by the same rules. They're willing to break all the rules just to win. That type of person or group is very, very dangerous because it doesn't just mean that you might lose. It might mean that the entire game, the entire competition is ruined, right? And we need to learn this lesson as Muslims. There are people who within the Muslim community are adversaries, right? You might have an adversary, whether it's Sunni, Shia, or Salafi, Sufi, or, you know, I'm just thinking these are things off the top of my head, Deoband versus Bervi or Brelvi or whatever it is, there might be an adversary out there. But at the end of the day, if you can agree to sort of rules of engagement, how to engage with each other, at least you're not enemies to the point where you're going to break the rules just to triumph over the other one. We wouldn't want anybody, for example, going to call the police or to call the FBI and saying, it's like, oh yeah, these people that I disagree with over here are terrorists. You should go throw them in jail. That would be something where your dean is really shaky, that you should really fear Allah for that sort of thing. So there has to be an inner circle and an outer circle with everything, whether it's politics and political parties within a government or whether it's within Islam, that you have to differentiate. And Muslims historically have fallen into trouble when we have treated our adversaries like enemies and gone outside of the community to non-Muslims to enlist their help to fight our adversaries and to win over them.
And so if that can happen with non-Muslim politics as well in the United States is that once people stop playing by the rules, that's a dangerous situation. So this is all the more reason, some people, there's a couple loose thoughts here, and then we'll get to your comments and your questions. Some people welcome this. There's some people in the Muslim world that say, that are sort of accelerationists. They say, oh, the United States is finally crumbling. This is good. We want a multipolar world. And people like Sami Hamdi has pointed out that this isn't necessarily a good thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely not necessarily a good thing, that it just introduces more variables and unknowns into the situation. A situation like Syria, for example, was a situation that was multipolar. The United States could not get its own way. Russia intervened, and that was not necessarily a beneficial situation to the Muslims, right? So it doesn't logically follow, or it's not logically necessary that a weaker United States or a more multipolar world is going to net benefit the Muslims. It might, it might. But then again, depending on exactly what happens, it might not. And so when it comes to Muslim participation in US politics, this is one thing that actually we have the ability to remind people of, that you actually have to agree to play by the same rules. Money should be out of politics. We need campaign finance. We need tax money to not go to foreign wars and not go to meddling in other people's countries and societies and invest it at home, invest it in good things, right? These are things that I think that Western Muslims have the ability to contribute to. However, they will not realistically be able to contribute to them if they uncritically hitch their wagon to either the left or the right. Unfortunately, that's something that we have, people that just become assumed or assimilated through these entire movements, and then you don't really have any leverage or ability to move or
ability to do anything else. So can we survive this? Muslims in America, some people say, when do we stay? When do we leave? I don't know about you, but I was born in the United States of America. I'm a citizen. This is my homeland. I don't plan on going anywhere. If I absolutely must, then I will, but I want this thing to work. I am invested in an improved United States, one that does not meddle in the affairs of the Muslim world, one that does not intervene and destabilize other places of the world. And so this is something that I believe we have a duty to stay and try to accomplish. Can we survive another four years of Trump? Allah knows best. But can we also survive another four years of Biden? Yeah, Allah knows best. Let's go to the comments. There's a lot going on. Kashi said, tuning in from Houston. Lovely city. Enjoyed Houston my last time there. Sorry if you've said this already, but as Muslims have a united front, who exactly do you suggest that we vote for and should we vote at all? I can't say that on a Yaqeen program. Yaqeen is a 501c3. However, I will say that the first issue is uniting our message and articulating what our issues are in the first place. We are all over the place, and our messaging is all over the place, right? If we want to be a bloc, we don't have the ability right now to act in a coordinated fashion as a bloc. We need to have the conversations and go through the work of sitting down and figuring out what our platform is and what our priorities are, and then move on from there. Let's see. EK, Trump only said he'd stop the war because Habib was in front of him. Yeah, Habib is intimidating. Now we need to bring Habib to the US. Very good. Lisa says, Trump also wants to make Palestine into a resort for tourists, but nothing about what to do with refugees. I believe that was his son-in-law. But yeah, I mean, again,
people say anything. I mean, but the way that power works is that you have to make something so costly to somebody that they do what you want. I know that sounds Machiavellian, but that's how politics works, right? If it becomes costly to Trump to support Israel, then he'll turn back, just like most politicians will. Our process is thinking about how to make that a reality. Farah, decent point. Okay. Zaheer asked a question about civil unrest. Yeah, I mean, it's very concerning. I mean, we're navigating them right now. I think my general thing, and this is something that I've been going on for the last few weeks, is that I think Muslims are naive to hitch ourselves entirely to the left or entirely to the right. That if we allow ourselves to be cornered or shoehorned into the polarized debate, then it's probably not going to lead to good results for us. That we need to be a little bit more principled and realize that, like other groups that are minorities that are attempting to influence things, usually it works better to have some influence on both sides. If you look at even how AIPAC runs, right, and how many people have said, oh, we need a Muslim AIPAC, we need a Muslim AIPAC. Okay. Well, AIPAC works not just about throwing money at politics. They're very strategic as to where they apply their money. They know that they have the most automatic support from Republicans, and so they put most of their money actually into the Democrats, into primaries and primarying Democrats. If Muslims were serious about doing something like AIPAC, we have the most natural sympathy from the left. We have the most natural sympathy from Democrats. So if we truly wanted to imitate, excuse me, if we truly wanted to imitate AIPAC,
then we would be putting resources into primarying people on the right. But if you try to have that conversation, people will accuse you of being neocons. So we're not there yet. We don't have the maturity yet for that conversation. Very good. Let's see what else we got. A lot of comments. Boom. I appreciate Gary. Gary Bennett has a nice comment. Muslims need to introduce the principles and values of Islam into Western democracy as democracy itself. Democracy was set up by Christian values originally. I don't disagree with you. I think that Muslims are uniquely placed to introduce back virtue and principle into politics, and the decoupling and delinking of politics from virtue and values and principles has been a travesty, a travesty across the board, both domestically and abroad. Yep. Very good. That's very kind of you. May Allah accept. May Allah accept and forgive me my shortcomings. Old Miss Nan from Malaysia. Walaikum as-salamu alaykum. Glad to have you with us. Osama brings up a good point. I agree. Left wing, right wing of the same vulture. Allahu Akbar. That's a nice one. I like that, Osama. Left wing and right wing of the same vulture. Very good. We don't want to be a vulture, do we? No, no, no. No bueno. Yes, Biden does have COVID. Rick Rashid advocating for me for president. No, thank you. Minami Islam Khan. Is it true? Is it the project that Ruffalo compared with Sharia law? Yes. Yes. And we did talk about that previously. Which is his ignorance. And we talked about that last time.
Abdullah bringing up UFC trash talk is better than politics. Honestly, there's not a whole lot of difference between the two. That's true, Laura, as or unless if Trump changes the whole system as Putin did in Russia and he just becomes a virtual king. But here's here's the counterpoint, Laura, and I appreciate that point that you brought up. It distracts. I think it distracts away from the ways in which both parties have been circumventing the substance of democracy for a very long time. That if Trump were to formalize some sort of dramatic move away, then he would only be a little bit more honest. I'm not saying that that's good or welcome. That would be it would be its own type of tragedy. But it would be a little bit more naked and honest and obvious than all of the sneaky things that they've been doing for decades to basically take decision making power away from ordinary people and keep it with a small group of elites. Look at how the parties operate. The parties are not democratic at all. Look at what they did to Bernie Sanders in 2016. The delegates are the ones that hold the power. The electoral college is the one that chooses the president. You've got the deep state. You've got the three letter agencies. You've got all these sorts of things that have circumvented. Right. And they've done it while maintaining a facade of republicanism and democratic governance. So really, it would just be ripping off the mask from that facade. Now, again, we're not saying that that's welcome. But but there is the reality of the thing and the content of the thing. This is very, very alarming, as it is, even before something like that is going to happen. Look at how the president of the United States can kill an American citizen like Obama ordered an airstrike drone attack on American citizens in Yemen under his his watch.
Look at how the presidents have been spying on Muslims for years and years and years with there's no fly lists, all these sorts of things. These are, yeah, it's dark days. Right. So we hope for we hope for better days and we hope that we're part of the solution. That's what I always try to bring it back to. Very good. Malia Moore, Waalaikum Assalamu Alaikum. Yes, I agree. I am also tired in the fluctuations. May Allah grant us relief. Morad Ali says, I find it problematic. Everyone who wholesale throws the Muslim Brotherhood and any of its offshoots under the bus. Most of the critics are directly or indirectly supporting the perpetuation of a LWO. And then he continues. The choice is not simply between the oppressive status quo regimes and the fear of bloody revolutions. There's a more nuanced and healthy discussion to be had. I always try to bring it back to Morad. Again, exploratory thinking as opposed to everything or nothing. Yes or no. Black or white. Agree with me or you don't understand politics. I don't find that very helpful. I think that seriously studying issues and the factors involved and things like that is is important. R.C. says, I agree that the left right premise does not work for Muslim Americans. Can you talk more about the maturity you mentioned, like for being honest and having commas about planting seeds in the right? I'll give you a very concrete example. Thomas Massey is a principled person compared to most politicians. He is somebody that has been targeted by AIPAC in his primary. And the Muslim community in the United States, as far as I'm aware, did nothing, did not lift a finger to help him whatsoever. I think that that illustrates an immaturity from our side. I think that we have most Muslims in the United States have hitched their wagon to the left, that they're afraid of crossing the left or angering them or alienating them.
While the left continues to just give us symbolic victories, they haven't really given us any tangential or tangible victories. Even the progressive left, the Patriot Act is still on the books. We're still criminalized as Muslims, like the Iraq still happened, right? The destabilization, the genocide is still going on. So the left can throw a demonstration and a protest and bring a million people and we can vent and we can say this. And after six months, people will start to call for a ceasefire. And there's rhetoric. We can appreciate that because there is value to rhetoric. But hard wins, hard wins. How many hard wins do we actually have? How many that the left have delivered? I don't think very many, to be frank. I think we over exaggerate what the left has done for us, the Muslim American community. And so I do think that we need to play both sides a little bit, a little bit more, that we have an interest. And this will be taken out of context, but may Allah cause us to be charitable and understand things as they're meant to be said. That we have an interest in developing people on both sides that are amenable to our interests and willing to listen and are principled actors. I don't think that that's very radical or controversial. I'm Not Reagan says, I feel like we're dealing with unknown variables as American Muslims, whether the U.S. crumbles or stays afloat. What's happening now with Gaza and the severity is unprecedented. I agree with that. Flaqa? Flaqa? Like Spanish flaqa? As a Muslim, if you're moving the United States for your education, is it going to strike you? I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what you're asking. Anything can happen anywhere, anytime. Flippy Flippy says, is the deep state real? Yes. Yes, it is. To what extent? I'm not like a conspiracy theorist. I don't think that they're like, you know, super, super in control of everything. But yeah, there is something like the deep state.
If you look at look at the history of intelligence agencies, intelligence agencies up until World War Two in the United States were not supposed. We're only supposed to be wartime agencies. Right. The Cold War changed that where the formation of the CIA became a permanent agency with permanent powers to spy on people, on American citizens. And they actually, you know, they took part in the criminalization and the busting up of the anti-war left. They tried so hard to find. And I mention this because we see it today. They tried so hard to find if communists were behind the anti-war left in the 60s. And they kept on finding that. Actually, no, it wasn't. These are actually opinions held by American people. It's like they're going to try so hard to find that the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States is funded by this group or funded by that group or funded by foreign interests. And at the end of the day, it's like, no, these are actually American people that feel this way. Right. And so that entire history, I sort of got going off on a tangent. But that entire history demonstrates that there is something there is something like a deep state. If you're on it, you can't even find out why you're on it or have any sort of ability to get off of it. Tell me that that is a democratic process. Right. This is something that has been thrust upon us. And we ask a lot to to help us. OK, let's see what we got. Nusrat Ghori. Why not promote third party? Green Party still needs signatures on the ballot. We're not promoting anybody, nor are we discouraging anyone from anything. We can't do that with Yakin Institute. However, everybody's dirty. Everybody's got dirt under their nails. Some people think that these are, you know. Very clean candidates, but many people, they they shape shift. Abdullah, 100 percent right. America is in a spiritual crisis. Muslims have a lot of healing and good to offer to our neighbors, even if just by living as an example, there are many, many good people here. Yes. And personal relationships will always do more work than media.
I know it's easy to think, you know, social media and social media does have a real effect. Don't get me wrong. We learned from what the right and Chicago, the six year old boy that got stabbed, that what people watch on TV and what people, you know, in ingest on social media does have an effect on what they think. However, I believe that we can counterbalance that with positive personal interactions. There are many people in the United States that don't trust the media. In fact, I'd say the majority of people in the United States don't trust the media and don't trust politicians. That provides an opportunity, something that you can work with when it comes to developing an individual personal rapport. But you can't just hide behind your doors and shut the curtains and not say hi to your neighbors that it takes actually getting out there. Juju answer is yes. I've heard that a strategy to send a message Democrats is to leave the Democratic Party register as an independent. I mean, I'm not advising anything since I'm not in a position to do that with you. But yes, that is a strategy people have talked about. And it seems to it seems to be something that would make sense if that was your goal. D says if the Muslim countries are watching this genocide and not doing anything, do you think they would stand up to defend Al-Aqsa if it was being attacked? Again, I've said this before in other programs. We have to differentiate between the governments and the people. Yes, the people are 100 percent. The people are with Al-Aqsa. The people are with Gaza. However, the garrison states that were set up to keep them under control are not. And we have seen that exposed in a very dramatic way in the last nine months. Yes, Sarah, good point. Snowden exposed the surveillance on Americans. It's been going on for some time. Zaheer, I mean, the answer is yes, Zaheer. Zaheer says, how does the media's focus on U.S. political events and debates divert global attention from the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the political crisis in Gaza? I mean, the answer is yes, it does. As Muslims, how can we take responsibility to ensure that Gaza remains in our thoughts and actions, even as the spotlight shifts elsewhere?
Yeah, I mean, it does take a certain maturity and discipline to be able to keep your eyes on the prize and have a sense of priorities. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's all I'll say is that you need to have strategic thinking. You need to say, OK, what's my three month, six month, one year, three year plan for this thing? That that's what sustained action looks like, which is not just about showing up to one place and one sort of thing. Old Miss Non says it's scary as Muslims from a majority Muslim country looking into the choices of presidents. Americans have. Thank you for saying that. It's scary for us as well. We appreciate your sympathy. Filipe Filipe in the EU, we have something like that. Operation Gladio. Yep. Very well known. Abu Salman is the deep state and the private sectors have the same function with regards to giving to power and individuals. Yeah, it has to do with removing accountability. Right. So if somebody is elected and there's no money involved, then that person is accountable just to their votes. If someone steps out of line, then you can vote them out. However, if someone is put into power by moneyed interest, then that person is now more accountable to the moneyed interest that put them in power than the people that voted for them. Right. And the same thing with somebody who gets an appointment, a life appointment. You're right, human. I agree. Say Mohammed. I think it's enough to law. Good question. How do we separate pro-Palestine protests from any other social rights movements when people make it seem like we're indebted to them? One hundred percent. I think you should read my blog post on intersectionality and taking a lead on the advocacy for Gaza and Palestine. I think that's exactly what we're talking about. We're not indebted to anybody because we're still bleeding. OK. And there's a lot to say about that, but I'll suffice it with that, that if people really want to support Palestine, then they will support it because it's the right thing to do, not in exchange or transactionally for favors or for support for LGBTQ or for support for whatever else they're pushing.
That's not actually what allyship looks like. Shahzia Rafat says, it seems Bernie Sanders has changed sides, too. He's gone mute on Palestine genocide. So unfortunate. Yep, we've seen how he's really changed his tune. All of the progressive left, for those who think that our best friends of the progressive left, AOC, Jamal Bowman, they're not only very, very weak on Palestine and very, very weak on protecting pro-Palestinian voices and pro-Palestinian activism at home, but they also have been the driving force behind trying to keep Biden in the race. It's actually the moderate Democrats that are calling him to step aside, which is very, very, very strange. Yes, good point, old Ms. Nahn. 100% agree with you. Okay, very good. So we've finished that. Let's keep rolling. We've got now, test your ilm. And this is a special segment of test your ilm where we're going to touch on Ashura just a bit because Ashura was yesterday. If you are fasting, may Allah accept your fast. And we know that Ashura derives its initial significance from part of the sharia that was given to Musa alayhi salam. That this is something that the Jews were practicing even up until the time when the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam brought the Muslims to Medina. That this is something that they fasted on this day in gratitude for Allah saving them from Fir'aun. And this is a whole usooli discussion. It's a little bit beyond our pay grade here. However, there is a discussion about, is the sharia of previous faith communities a proof if you're making a legal argument or a fiqhi argument? And this is something that the scholars have disagreed about. If you go to the poem of Amir Bahja, Hafidahullah, in Usool, he says,
وَالثَّانِيًا أَدِلَّةٌ مِّنْهَا اخْتُلِفْفِهِ وَبَعْضٌ بِالْوِفَاقِ يَتَّصِفْ وَهِى الْكِتَابُ سُنَّةُ الْإِجْمَعُ قِيَاسُهَا فِي غَيْرِهَا نِزَعُ شَرْعٌ مَضَى مَقَالَهُ الْأَصْحَابُ مَصَالِحٌ مَسْلُحْ سِنَصْتِ اصْحَابُ Which is a lot, but basically what that means is that there are pieces of evidence or types of evidence in the sharia that are agreed upon. And the four are the kitab, the Quran, the sunnah, qiyas, and ijma' And then there are other types of evidence that are disagreed upon. Some of the madhhab said, yes, you can use that in a fiqhi argument. Others say, no, you can't. One of those is called shara'un man mada' or shara'un man mada' That's the sharia of the people or the faith communities that preceded us. Within the Hanbali school in particular, it is actually a valid proof with conditions. As Shaykh Amir, he says later in the poem, وَشَرْعُ مَنْ مَضَى لَنَا دَلِيلُ إِنْ لَمْ يُخَالِفْ شَرْعُنَا الْجَلِيلُ He said that the sharia of the previous faith communities is a proof as long as it doesn't contradict our own sharia. With this particular issue, we don't even have to go into that because the Prophet ﷺ specifically and explicitly commanded the Muslims to fast this day. In fact, he said that we are more deserving of this day than the Jews because we follow Musa ﷺ more closely than the Jews actually do. And before he passed away ﷺ, he said, if I were to fast this again, meaning if he were to live long enough to fast Ashura again, then he would pair it with a second day. That he would pair it either with the day before or the day after. Some of you maybe are actually also fasting today as well. We ask Allah to accept your worship. Now Ashura takes on a secondary meaning within Muslim history. And that is because somebody, don't cut to the media yet guys, hold off.
We're going to ask this as a question to the audience. Because some very important person, a sahabi, was martyred on this day after the death of the Prophet ﷺ. Who was it? Who was martyred on the day of Ashura? And while we get answers, I'll scan back the comments a bit. We did talk about Project 2025 a bit earlier. We'll pass on that question for now, though it is interesting. I kind of outlined a little bit of a strategy, not specific to 2025, but in general. Yes, I'm not Reagan 100%. You're a nightmare. You're human. Hussain radiallahu ta'ala anhu. Yes, the companion, the CT Nuriati studio as well. Minami Islam. All the answers are rolling now. Hussain, the son of Ali, the son of the Prophet ﷺ, was martyred on the day of Ashura. And that this was a tremendous tragedy in Islamic history. And a very, very interesting and rich event when it comes to talking about issues of political loyalty. When it comes to talking about the right to revolt or when is it justified to revolt against a ruler. When it comes to talking about the monarchy that sort of started to unfold during the time of Muawiyah. That kind of resulted in Yazid being appointed his son and then being slaughtered with him and his family on that day. And obviously what happened at Karbala, that's the name of the place where Hussain radiallahu ta'ala anhu was martyred.
That this has become a point of controversy because of the Sunni-Shia divide. Now we can't get into this too much. However, there are many, many dynamics back and forth between the Sunni and Shia that are worth mentioning. We're only going to touch on a few right now. There's sort of a mythology. There we go. We've got some assets here from our social media channels. You can go check out if you want to see more about that in particular. It's a gruesome story. It's a horrifying story and it runs the heart. However, we see that we can both agree that what happened to Hussain on the day of Karbala, or at Karbala on the day of Ashura was a tragedy and was wrong. Was it a big long conspiracy by the, not just the Umayyads, but sort of a string of conspiracy that goes back to other companions of the Prophet ﷺ? This is something that was sort of more of a historical invention of the Shia. That if you go into sort of when their beliefs developed, that Shiaism did not begin with the idea that, let's say that Ali should have been the Khalifa after the Prophet ﷺ. That was something that was a later justification for a whole sort of litany or a whole constellation of beliefs. However, it was more of a political debate or a political disagreement at first that then took on theological dimensions. And there's a lot to say about that, but for the sake of time, we're going to have to move on. Human assets dividing into schools and Sunni and Shia of fiqh, deviating from Allah's command of not dividing in the Ummah. It depends. It depends on what we mean by that. There are many different types of Shia. It's more fruitful to talk about the specificity of the beliefs.
There is something that the scholars classically called tashayyur, right? Which is the belief that, the belief... that Ali should have been the Khalifa instead of Uthman, that he should have been the third. This is something that you even find within texts such as Ibn Abi Dawood's poem, Al-Ha'iyah, when he says, what does he say? He says in the poem, when he's talking about the best of the companions, he says that the opinion that Uthman deserves the khilafah after Umar is the arjah, is the most correct opinion, which indicates that there was a difference of opinion. Even if it's a minority position with the Sunnah and it's pretty much non-existent anymore, that on the books, yeah, you can go back and you can find that opinion. Is it deviating? Is it dividing? What is the nature of the command of Allah to not divide? That has to do on the essentials that bring one into Islam or bring one out of Islam. That when it comes to, there is an acceptance and toleration of a certain amount of diversity that is built into Islam. And so we cannot eliminate and erase all types of diversity from within Islam by using the texts that talk about remaining a cohesive body in general. Sarah is right. The people of Kufa betrayed Hussein. There's a long story to it. But for the sake of time, we do need to move on. So the second part of our test here is going to be the book of Seer. This is Sahih Muslim. And the next chapter, so remember the previous chapter was about the impermissibility of deception and betrayal. Betrayal maybe was a better translation. The present chapter seems initially to contradict that. It is the permissibility of deception. Talking about what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam referred to,
and the scholars refer to as Khuda'a. Now, how do these two things go together? The scholars, they say this. The last hadith that we had dealt with was that the person who, somebody who betrays or breaks a promise or breaks a trust, they will have a liwa. They will have a banner on the day of judgment with their name announcing that they were a traitor. Whereas today we have the hadith where the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, the war or the nature of warfare is deception. So how do these two things go together? The scholars talk extensively about the difference between the two. All of them say that Khuda'a or deception does not imply violating a promise or violating a treaty or violating an agreement. That is something that you can never do. That is something that is haram, even in warfare. However, when it comes to warfare in general, that there are certain acts that we would call deception or even playing with perception, that is permissible. And I'll give you some examples of this. We see one that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam exhibited at the Battle of Badr. Very, very interesting part of the story of Badr, where the Muslims arrive at the scene first. We know the whole story about the wells and setting up their camps. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he goes out away from the army and he takes one of the companions with him. I can't remember which one right now. And they find a Bedouin. Now the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is trying to gather intelligence. Listen to what he says to the Bedouin. He asks him if he has seen the Muslim army and if he knows their whereabouts. Now they're far away enough so that they can't see them. Okay. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam gives the appearance or their perception to the Bedouin that he's not one of the Muslims or he's not with the army. Of
course he is, but he knows the Bedouin doesn't know who he is. So he's leveraging that asymmetry of information in order to test, first of all, this person's reliability and then to get information out of him. So the first thing he asks him is, you know, we heard something about a Muslim army. Where's the location of the Muslim army? Where are they at? And sure enough, the Bedouin tells him truthfully, where is the location of the Muslim army? It's such and such a distance from here to this direction. It's over there. You can find them. They're quite close by. And then because the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam had learned that this person is reliable, then he asks him the location of the Quraysh army. And the Bedouin also, because he's a traveler, he's traveling the desert, he hears things, he hears bits of news and information. So he tells the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam where the army was. And so the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam gathered military information and intelligence from this man by relying on a little bit of deception, by playing with this perception in order to extract this information. That's not breaking an agreement. It's not breaking a promise. It's not something that is considered a ghadr or he's not a ghadr for doing this. We also see this happen at the Battle of the Trench, where one of the companions had accepted Islam and his tribe did not know it. And so he asked the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam for permission to go across the trench to the other side and to sow discord between the enemy camp. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam permitted him. He gave him permission to do that. He went by night, he snuck into the camp, he said, oh, watch out, this other tribe is going to betray you. And then he went to that tribe and he said, watch out, this other tribe is going to betray you. And so they started to dissent amongst themselves and argue amongst themselves. And this was something that was very beneficial to the Muslim cause.
So we see that this is the fine, nuanced differentiation between the two. That when that in instances of war and struggle, you are allowed to create a perception that is not true in order to give an impression that is not true to achieve your goals. However, we should never, ever betray the trusts and the agreements and the contracts that we hold with other people, whether they're Muslim or non-Muslim. Okay, let's see what else we got here. Hello, JDM, from Queens. Welcome to the program. I don't understand. Farah Jahangir, Imam, is it Turia? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Okay. And our last part for today to our book, Atomic Habits, we've reached the meat of the book, the most important parts. We're going to start getting into the laws. Remember that we had four laws to this book, make it obvious, make it easy, make it rewarding. And what was the other one? I can't remember off the top of my head here. What do we have? Let's check the table of contents. Make it obvious, make it attractive was number two, make it easy and make it satisfying. So today we're talking about make it obvious. What does the author mean by make it obvious? He gives an example here, right, of the railway system in Japan. I've never been in Japan, but apparently they have a very efficient and effective railway system, right? The train system is very, very good and efficient. He points to the fact that one of the things that makes this railway system so efficient and safe is a practice that all of the conductors and the workers do when a
train is coming in or about to come in or about to leave, that they basically point at things and say out loud. So they'll point at the platform number. They'll make a signal for the time. They'll do lots of different things that almost seem ridiculous to do. Like, why would you even do them? But they've found that simply the act of pointing at things publicly in front of people, drawing their attention to it, and saying them out loud has reduced mistakes by 85% and cut accidents by 30%. This is something that you and I do without knowing it. If you leave the house, and you say to yourself, okay, do I have everything? Keys, wallet, phone, bus pass, right? This is exactly that same thing. What are we doing when we engage in this activity? We are trying to make it obvious. We're trying to make that habit obvious, the habit of making sure that you take your wallet with you and your keys with you wherever you go. In this case, trying to make the process of boarding a train safely or not. You know, when it comes to trying to do these things in a safer way. Naming. Naming is something that is very, very important to bringing it to our attention. That's the idea behind making it obvious that you are bringing something to your attention. So the author has an exercise. And this is something that I think all of us should do. Maybe maybe we can do it right now. Or you can do it in the week and we'll check in next time. Okay, which is to start by making a scorecard for yourself a habit scorecard. Okay, now what you're going to do just like this in a notebook or a piece of paper, all you're supposed to do for step one is just notice the things that you do. Literally, write them down. Don't comment on them. Don't do anything. Just say, okay, first thing woke up,
then use the washroom, then make wudu, then pray Fajr, then sit, make adhkar, then Quran, then made breakfast, then I don't know, looked on my phone for 30 minutes, then read the news, then write, just go through a day or part of a day and write down everything that you do. Making it obvious to yourself will show you already without even commenting on that right column there, it will already show you, there are some things when some things that you like that you're doing. And some things when you do them, you're going to be like, Oh, man, I wish I'd like bit bite my nails, right? I don't bite my nails. But if that was you, or smoke a cigarette, or listen to gossip, or, you know, watch something that wasn't really beneficial, or whatever, if that's part of your habit list, you're now drawing attention to it, you can look at it on a piece of paper and, and say, Okay, well, there's some things on this list that I'm happy with, and I'm proud of. And there's other things on this list that I you know, and I'm not that proud of, right. So this is the idea behind making it obvious taking those habits that we're already doing, bringing them out of the darkness and putting them into the light. So then we can look at them and decide, do we want to continue doing this or not? Now, there's a very, very important point of intervention right now. Sometimes we judge ourselves so harshly at this point that it actually discourages us and stops us from becoming better. We don't want that we don't want you to go through this negative talk of being like, Oh, my gosh, I'm such a bad person. I can't believe I spent 30 minutes doing that. I can't believe I did that. I'm so bad. Forget about that right now. Forget about that. All we want to do is notice, just bring it to your attention that this is what you're doing. Once you've done that, then go back later, maybe the next day,
maybe the day after and rate your habits with a plus or a minus or an equal. Is this something that I would like and this is not what you think is the habit good or not. It's simply the question is, is this something you want to continue doing or something you want to stop or something in between. If it's something that you want to continue doing, put a plus next to it. If it's something that you do not want to continue doing, then you put a minus sign next to it. If it's something where you're ambivalent about it, then you can just put an equal sign next to it. So this is phase two. Phase two is to go through with this evaluation. Okay. And the author makes a good point. He says that there are no bad habits. Habits are either just effective or not. You see the cue, you have the craving, you do your action, your response, and then you get that reward. Maybe the reward's bad. Maybe it's something bad for you, but really that's an effective habit. What we want to do is get out of thinking about habits as good and bad and into thinking about how do I make the habits I want more effective and how do I make the habits that I don't want less effective. Okay. So phase two is to go through positive and negative. Phase three is to read them aloud during the day while you're doing it. All of us sada, all of us, and you're right, I will be in Malaysia next week, so no live stream next week, but all of us sada 100%. We're all going to be filled with negatives. We all do things that we don't like, especially, I think we've established that many of us have negative talk and things like that. Many of us are very harsh critics of ourselves. So we'll have minuses, but we can laugh together. Hey, why don't we make this as a challenge? Next session, bring one minus sign and one plus sign
from your list. Okay. One minus sign and one plus sign. So the last thing is to read them aloud or say them aloud while you're doing it. Institute that point and name or point and call thing that the Japanese railway system does in your own life, right? I am drinking a cup of water. I am reading a book, right? If you're the things that you're saying are, I'm going to eat another piece of chocolate, my third one today, or I'm going to binge eat ice or I'm going to binge on Netflix, right? Or I'm going to do scroll social media, I am doing scrolling social media. You will actually start to develop an aversion to those habits that you want to stop, which is going to make changing them so, so, so, so, so much easier. So that's the homework assignment for everybody. And let's see, next session, we'll have two weeks to sort of try this out. And then we'll sort of come back together and regroup and do, you know, exchange and have a few laughs hopefully next time we get together. Final questions and comments for the night before we, before we tune out. I'm glad that we did not have any technical difficulties tonight. Thunderstorms rolling through this area. We haven't lost power, thankfully. Any final comments and questions? Let's see what we have. D.K. Larussa, multiple, the slight deception of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in our year of 2024. There's no nuance. It's just pure deception. Does this apply to non-Muslim wars like we've had Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine? I'm not 100% sure what you're saying there. But yeah, I mean, this is, I think the main point is differentiating between perception, because power is all about perception, honestly, more about perception than reality. Look at how
AIPAC has very, very, even though AIPAC has had a really rough year, honestly, AIPAC has taken a lot of hits and their capacity has been shrunk. They have championed their victories to try to create a perception that they're undefeatable, right? Because they know that if people think that they're undefeatable, that they will be more powerful than if people realize that actually they're quite weak. Walaikum Assalam wa Rahmatullah. Fatima Ali from New Jersey. Which part of New Jersey, Fatima? I'm a Jersey guy. I'm from New Jersey. Yep, doom scrolling. We'll talk about it, Sara. Attika. If I had espresso in this cup, Attika, SubhanAllah, I would never sleep. This cup is very large, right? Espresso, usually in a very, very small cup. Not much. Doesn't take much. Amin wa yaakum, Ibrahim. Abdullah says, what are your thoughts on healthy escapism as in finding rest or healthy distraction? Do you have any activities that you recommend? Yeah, I mean, like most things, like most things, it's on a spectrum, right? So there are really destructive habits like drug use. It's like really destructive. Then there's normal destructive, like doom scrolling on social media. Then there's less destructive, like, I don't know, reorganizing your closet. I'm not really sure. And then there's things that are, you know, more positive and more beneficial than that. So I think that, again, it's like, one thing that he brings up, Abdullah, is that many times when we're engaging in escapism, we're trying to change the we're trying to change the way that we feel. We feel uncomfortable. We feel judged. We feel stressed. We feel sad. And so we just do something because we're trying to change.
Now, we might have fallen into a habit that provides 5% relief, right? Doom scrolling maybe provides 5% relief. But there are other things that we could be doing that maybe have 50% relief and are much healthier for us, right? So I think that that's sort of terrain that we're in when we're talking about that. I'm a really big advocate for the outdoors and outside. Listening to the birds, you know, going for a walk, like these sorts of things are really, really important. And they're healing, honestly. I think that that type of distraction is welcome. Your Nightmare says, when is the next session? Do you have a schedule? We go live every Wednesday night, 8 p.m. New York time. We're taking a break from next week because I'll be traveling. But that and that answer is Rick Rashid. So we're skipping a week, first week of August. We'll be back at it. Inshallah to Allah. Sada asks about white Muslim sub communities. Your thoughts? Yeah, some people have put this together. But I'll be frank that, you know, first of all, race is a social construct. And I don't mean that in the colorblind way of like, you know, like it hasn't had effects. Obviously, the racial hierarchy that the European colonial powers have introduced to the world has had lasting damage in a lot of ways. However, it is a social construct in the sense that it doesn't, it's not real, in the sense that it doesn't have a tangible reality, like whiteness is a construction, right? Like, I'm Italian American. I get along really well with lots of other Mediterranean people, because we have a similar sort of culture. But someone who's a German American, you know, I might actually feel more culturally awkward with such a person than with someone who's not within my same racial category, right? So I don't think that whiteness
has enough of a real thing to have sub communities make sense. And I'm not for the Balkanization of masjids. I don't believe that that's the way forward. I believe that we need to find out how to navigate our differences and healthier ways than just starting up sub communities. Pestify says, have a safe trip. Thank you very much. Yeah, I wish I could combine to the Maldives inshallah one day. I hope I hope to. Thank you human. I took a have you ever thought about LASIK eye surgery. So if you get rid of the Ocali forever, I have thought about it. It makes me a little squeamish. But I also take it as sort of, like all the flaws that I have, I try to take it as a humbling experience, I have to wear glasses, I you know, I, I can't see you without them. I'm not blind as a bat, but I'm nearsighted, right? So that's just one of the things where a lot created me that way. And I'm, I'm fine with it. Yeah. Sada three cups of three cups of espresso a day. 100% Yes. Zaheer says, I'd like to thank you for an amazing session today. May Allah reward you for the work you do. And as to educate us all do you plan to visit London as I'd love to attend any lectures inshallah. I was in London actually in April, had a lovely time. London impressed me much more than I have any expectations either way. But I didn't expect to like London as much as I did. So I don't know when the next UK trip will be. But stay tuned inshallah. Is age than a social construct Mr. Beast? Yes and no. I mean, if we are using age as in a sense of trying to indicate maturity, then I think that you would agree that there are fully grown adults that are very immature. And there are some people who are teenagers that are extremely mature. So in that sense, yeah. But it has more of a reality to it. Perhaps more of an objective reality to it than race.
And maybe Allah knows best. Maybe that's not right. As Lina says, when in KL, try the one and only halal Italian food by an Italian chef at Publica. Whoa. All right. Didn't expect that. I will inshallah. Publica. I'll remember that. Mad sauce one. Alhamdulillah. I'm thankful to have been able to attend. We're happy that you, that you were able to attend too. May Allah bless you as well and the whole ummah. Om Tahir. Thank you very much. I hope it was beneficial. Healing, relaxing, forest bathing. Allahu Akbar. Hanging out in nature. That's what I'm all about. James Castro. In order to complete the great reset. Come on, man. Don't go full conspiracy on me. Yeah, I embrace the glasses, Sada. I embrace. In fact, these are quite old. I need a new pair of glasses. I'm going to try to get a new pair of glasses soon because I've had these for years and years and years. Yeah. Saliha. May Allah reward you. I mean, Hibba asks, Imam Tom, do you have du'a or lectures to get your du'a answered for rizq and jaab? We should be careful not to treat Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la like a genie, right? We make istikhara. We rely on Allah and we trust that he gives us the best of what we need. So the most, most important thing to, to have Allah accept your du'a. That doesn't mean giving you what you want, but to have it accepted is to remove the obstacles of it being accepted, which are the muharramat that you do, or the haram things that you do. That's the most important thing that you could change. GCC, human, Allah knows best. I don't have any plans at the moment. Amin wa yaakum. Abdullah talking about decaf coffee. Mashallah. Is that what chat GPT gave you? Kevin. Okay. Welcome to the program. Good to see you again. Catch up inshallah. Allah bless you. Namira Khan. Wa alaikum salam.
Where do you often conduct the sessions in US? I'd love to attend. Which sessions, Namira? These sessions? This is, this is a private audience only, right? Ilyas? Just me and the guys. This is a no. We don't have a live audience yet. We're not that, we're not going late night, but maybe one day we'll go there. I don't even know. That's a funny question. But I do get around into the US sometimes. So like I'll be going to, what is it? July? In August, be going to Dallas. I'll also be going to, let's see when September rolls around, I believe. Oh boy. Anyway, we can talk about it. I'll update you my travel schedule. There's places. Where are you based, Namira? That's probably the better question. CT Nuriati Studio. Try to visit Malacca. Oh, I would love to. I would love to. I don't know if that's going to be in the cards because we have a pretty packed schedule in KL, but I would love to. Iqaldi, I'm glad you think so. Namira, which lecture? Which lecture, Namira, are you talking about? I'm not sure which one you're talking about. DK Larusa, Afuan, thank you for tuning in. And I'm glad that you found it informative and interesting. I try my best. It's late night. I'm a morning person. I'm not a late night person. So I'm actually not very articulate at this hour. Sometimes I lose my train of thoughts, my train of thought and mush my words, but we do the best we can. And we ask that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala figures us for our shortcomings. I'm giving Namira one more chance to clarify herself before signing off. I'm not sure what you're talking about. Which lecture? Just tell me where you're at, Namira. I'll tell you when I'm coming to your area. Radio silence. Well, that's fine. Inshallah, hopefully some of those who are viewing in the US can catch me at some of the events that we're doing,
though I'm not really up and running again until September. All the kinds of lectures for Tao and Islamic education purposes. All over the place, Namira. It depends on where you're at. So I go to Dallas often. I go to other places. Inshallah, I think for the rest of the year, I'll make it to LA, and I will be in Chicago, inshallah, and I will be in, I think I'm going to Boston. I'm not 100% sure. I have to check back on that. And I'll be going to, I mentioned Dallas, Arizona. I'll be in Arizona. So stay tuned. I'll try to mention that as the weeks unfold. So thank you everybody for your wonderful attention and for your questions. I'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you for your attention, participation, and your ihsan. And may Allah accept our efforts and heal the ummah and grant victory to the righteous. BarakAllahu feekum. Until next time, salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi.
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