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Can I be Spiritual Without Religion? with Imam Tom Facchine | DoubleTake S4 E3
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When people choose to follow a religion, they are often looking for feelings of peace, contentment, and connection to a higher power. This feeling of spirituality is central to the life of a Muslim, but some may feel like it’s not necessary to follow a religion in order to experience it. They might consider themselves spiritual, but not religious.
Do sentiments like this help people come closer to God? Can a person be spiritual without being religious? What does an Islamic approach to spirituality look like?
Mohamad Zaoud explores these questions and more with Imam Tom Facchine, a fellow at Yaqeen and the Imam of Utica Masjid in New York.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullah. When people choose to follow a religion, they're often looking for a feeling of peace, contentment, and a connection to a higher power. This feeling of spirituality is central to the life of a Muslim, but some may feel like it's not necessary to follow a religion in order to experience it. They might consider themselves spiritual but not necessarily religious. Do sentiments like this help people become closer to God? Can a person be spiritual without necessarily being religious? And what does an Islamic approach to spirituality look like? Welcome to a new episode of Double Take, a podcast by Yaqeen Institute about the questions and ideas around Islam and Muslims that give us pause. Remember to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. If you want to share feedback with the team or join our new email newsletter, check out the links in the show notes. I'm Muhammad Zahed and today we're discussing if a person can be spiritual without being religious. And with me is Imam Tom Fekini. Imam Tom is the Imam of Utica Masjid in New York. He obtained a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from Vassar College, where he embraced Islam in his senior year. After studying Arabic independently, he was accepted to the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, where he obtained an associate's degree in classical Arabic and a bachelor's degree in comparative Islamic law. He is a passionate advocate and instructor for Muslim youth, founding multiple youth groups and conducting various after-school programs. Enjoy the episode. Imam Tom, Salam alaikum and welcome to Double Take. Wa alaikum salam, Rafatullah. Thank you so much for having me. Jazakallah khair. This season, we've done episodes about God's existence and about
Islam being the true path. But I know some people might hear these conversations and still, they may not feel compelled to follow a religion, let alone our religion. Let's say I have a relative who doesn't identify as religious. They don't pray, they don't read the Quran, they don't do outward acts or rituals of worship, but they're kind, they give charity, they help the sick, and they take care of friends and family. They believe in a higher being, but they feel like they're fine where they're at, and they don't need to follow the specific rules of a religion. They might say that they're spiritual, but not religious. So my first question Sheikh, can a person be spiritual, but not necessarily religious? Yeah, that's a great question or a great set of questions and it really does capture something of kind of like the ethos of our time. And I think to kind of address it, I think we need to take a step back and everybody needs to ask themselves two questions. One, what are the stakes involved here? Like can we afford to get this wrong? And then the second question is, how equipped am I or how qualified or able am I to be able to figure this out on my own? Or do I need a little bit of help? Because the importance of the first aspect of it, what are the stakes involved? You know, let's compare it to an investment. Like let's say that I'm going to take a thousand out of my earnings or two thousand or whatever it is, and I'm going to put it somewhere. Okay. Let's say I don't look at it for a month or for two months. Maybe I can have a feeling like I'm fine where I'm at, right? But then what if at the end of years, you've put maybe every month you've put money into this thing and then you turn around and you look at it and everything's gone. Or even worse than that, not everything's gone, you actually owe
money. Maybe you're in the red, right? Or even maybe you did benefit a little bit, but you come to find out that after 10, 15, 20 years, that if you had done a little bit, you know, differently, then you could have had a much higher return. Right? So there are certain things where it's like you're, if you're putting your energy into it anyway, and this is something that isn't just talking about like how it's affecting our quality of life here on earth, but we're kind of assuming that it's going to affect possibly, or has the potential to affect our quality of life after we die. Right? Then it, the stakes are pretty high. Right? So we don't want to necessarily be so cavalier about it to just say, well, I feel like I'm fine where I'm at. You know, you would want to do your due diligence. You would want to have the requisite amount of care and precaution, not too much. I mean, we don't want to be paranoid, but there's, there's two extremes, right? You would want to have the requisite and sensible and reasonable amount of caution, to be able to say, yes, I'm confident, you know, I'm putting enough forward and I'm putting enough in. The second aspect of it, you know, if we're talking about, can I do it alone? Right? Is this something that I can figure out on my own? And I think the investment is also another useful analogy here, right? It's like, how much do you know about finance? Right? How much, how much do you know about the stock market? Myself personally, I don't know that much. Right? So if I'm going to go on Robin hood or this app or that app and put my money in, it's going to be pretty much shooting at the hip. I'm going to be kind of going in blind as opposed to if I take a short course or I take a masterclass, or if I just, you know, hire somebody who's somebody who's been in the market for years and years and years who can tell me, it's like, okay, 90% of first-time investors, these are the mistakes they make. Okay. This is what the market's doing now. This is where it's going and et cetera, et cetera. So again, because the stakes are, the stakes are fairly high, right? We're talking about our afterlife or potentially our afterlife. I think that everybody
owes it to themself, not just to take precaution and try to, you know, be upon some certainty, but also to ask for help also to get some sort of external audit, right? Because we have to recognize we have a, a conflict of interest here. If I tell myself I'm fine where I'm at, you know, it would be really, really nice if I could believe that I'm fine where I'm at, because that means I don't really have to do anything more. But just like with any relationship, whether it's the relationship with your spouse or the relationship with your kids or, or, you know, any other friendship that you might have, you might need a third party to come in and be like, Hey, look, you know, you're not pulling your weight or, Hey, look, you know, you, there's more that you could be doing or all this effort that you're putting forward. Okay. It's effort. It's good, but it needs to be tweaked in this way or in that. So I think just with those two sorts of things, I think we can say that we owe it to ourselves to, to both, you know, take the precautions and also to enlist outside help. And where's, where's that outside help? That outside help is from the one who created our soul in the first place, right? We, we like, you know, it's a popular and sort of appealing phrase. I'm spiritual, but not religious. Who created the spirit? Who knows it the best, right? It's Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. And so if you believe that, then wouldn't you want to look into what the creator of that spirit told us we have to do for that spirit, right? So I think everybody owes it to themselves to sort of undergo that sort of process of investigation. Shaf, there's a couple of things going on here. On one side, we're taught that Allah is the most merciful. It's something that we, we recite every day. And I think many people will say, they've heard the verses in the Quran where Allah is, is the one who's the ultimate mercy, ultimately merciful, but also he cares about what's in the heart. And I hear that a lot from people in my circle, from friends, from family members that Allah knows what's in my heart.
Therefore, you know, I'm okay where I'm at. There's that whole dynamic of a kind of, it's actually a positive assumption of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. And at the same time, there's also a whole wave of people over the last, say, 10 years, I have a lot of friends in the Middle East, who've kind of given up on, on the restrictions of Islam. And they're kind of just being, they just want to, they just want to have a relationship with Allah in their own way. So do you see that sentiment where you're at in your circles? And how would you respond? Oh, yeah, sure, definitely. And I think I knew the language that you use really captures it. And also as something that we can meditate on, right? Allah knows what's in my heart. Well, that's very true. Of course, Allah knows what's in your heart. But do you know what's in your heart? Right? How accurate is your own assessment of what's in your heart? Allah actually draws our attention to this in the Quran when it comes to Surah Al-Imran, he's kind of confronting the Christians, because we can look at the Christians as kind of like a typology, right? Like a very, very typical example. They say how much they love God all the time, right? Love, love, love. And you know, like, but Allah challenges them, he says, if you love Allah, then follow me. So we see within that sort of phrase, there's, okay, that's great, you've got the effort. If you feel like you love Allah, you feel like you have this relationship, that's half the battle, right? But the other side of it is having that love register, right? Having that love be accepted by the one that you're offering it to and anybody who's been in a romantic relationship can really, can really relate to this, because you might be putting out so much effort to prove to someone that you care to prove to somebody that you, you love them, right? But it's a different language. Yeah, exactly. They might have a different love language entirely. I might buy flowers like every single day for my wife. Well, guess what, if my wife is allergic to flowers, then that's not, I'm actually not flattering her,
she's actually being bothered by my effort and my, and my expense. So that's the thing. It's not about necessarily what's in my heart, we can, we can believe that Allah knows what's in our heart, and that our hearts are pure and that we mean well, right? But again, are we going to that extra mile? Are we going that extra mile to be sure that the way that we're expressing our love, and the way that we're expressing our care, and the way that we're trying to have this relationship is the way that Allah wants us to try to have a relationship is the type of effort Allah wants to see from us and as the type of things that are going to actually register and be accepted by Allah as sort of valid indications of that, of that love. Fair enough. Where do you feel this whole sentiment comes from? The whole idea that I can be spiritual, but I don't necessarily need to follow cross the T's dot the I's of a particular religion, let alone Islam, which to many is seen as very restrictive. Right? Yeah, I mean, I think I view most things as like push and pull, right? So you've got some forces in the world that are kind of pushing people away, and then others that are pulling them, then pulling them in, right? And so if you if you look at the push factors, I think definitely one of the most common things that people cite is negative experiences with religious people or self proclaimed religious people. And those might be Imams, or they might be religious leaders. They might just be like your front rowers in the masjid, right? They might just be like somebody that is in your family that again, self understands as somebody who is super religious and dots those I's and cross those T's. And yeah, so panel, you know, I was I was leading a tour group for Omra once, and we had these older ladies that were from Morocco, they were in their 60s and 70s. And me and my friends, we were students in Medina at the time, and we just really just focused on having them have like a positive experience. We all touched the Kaaba together. And we, you know,
did these things, they had the best experience. And the comment they gave at the end, it touched my heart so much, but it also hurt because they said, you know, we wish when we were growing up, we had Imams like you guys. And so oh, it hurt because like, yeah, it felt good that like, we were kind of like giving them that TLC that kind of nurtured their faith. But I could just see like flashing in front of my eyes, all of the different, you know, interactions and encounters that they must have had with Imams and scholars or just, you know, again, self proclaimed, religious people who just made it hard, who just, you know, adopted sort of an attitude of sternness or adopted an attitude of not being charitable and these sorts of things. And it's a type of emotional trauma. I mean, you come to associate, especially if it happens when you're a young person, you come to associate that with the Masjid, you come to associate that with scholarship or that with the Masjid or with Islam entirely. And that's a really, really unfortunate thing. So there's those sorts of push factors, and they're, they're really common. But I think there are, there are also pull factors, right? There's different sort of societal and ideological trends that are kind of also creating these sensibilities, right within us, like, and one of these tracts or one of these vectors comes from living in a Christian space or a post Christian space, whether it's Europe or Australia or North America, the United States, you know, a lot of folks are coming in and kind of the whole atmosphere is shaped by people's experience of Christianity, and their responses to it, right? So that comes with the opposition of faith and reason, faith and science, you had the inquisitions, you had burning people at the stake, you had the dogma from the church telling people what to believe and not to believe, and, you know, inquisitions for the heretics and all those sorts of things. So we've got, we're still living in the, in the, in the wake of that sort of
activity, right? And people, their experiences of religion and their sensibilities towards religion, and especially what we hear, organized religion, right? That's what they're going off of. And so when we're operating in this space, that's kind of got these things in the air, we can sort of be drawn into it. And even if that's not our history, even if that's not our history as Muslims, writ large, we can kind of get sucked into seeing and looking at our own faith with these sorts of categories and these sorts of sensibilities. Because that's what everybody around us has kind of experienced. If you were to rank them, Sheikh, if you were to say these are the two biggest push and pull factors that are driving people away from organized religion, to kind of, I don't know, I don't know what spirituality looks like without religion. Is it the yoga classes? What is it that people are gravitating to, to get that sense of spirituality? Definitely. Well, I think one thing that might be sort of capturing the mood is that a lot of people, you know, they're going with the spiritual but not religious, they're going with sort of against organized religion. And they're not sort of aware that they're now the ones that are organizing their religion, right? There's not any space where religion is not organized, it just has to do with who's doing the organizing. And I think that people are gravitating towards affirmation in a way that tilts past balance, right? Because I think that there's two extremes, right? There almost always is. On one hand, you have the extreme of challenge, right? And confrontation. Okay. And on the other extreme, you have affirmation. And I think that a healthy religious practice is a good mix of both. If you have only the extreme of affirmation, then how are you supposed to grow, right? You have everybody telling you that everything that you are and everything
that you do is already fine. You don't need to change anything. And obviously, that's just kind of based in the ego and based off, you know, it's very sweet to want to hear. But at the end of the day, it's not going to make you into a better person. And that's not going to push you to be better. You know, you couldn't have that attitude with a personal trainer at the gym, right? You wouldn't want a personal trainer that's going to be like, you know what, the amount of the amount of weight you can bench press or the amount of sit ups that you can do is just fine. And you know, you can be there for the rest of your life. And it's great. Now you want to see progress, right? On the other hand, right? It can't be all confrontation, anything that's just complete challenge and all challenge and people get discouraged. They feel like, well, I can't do anything right. So why should I even bother? And so I feel like healthy sort of religiosity is hitting that sweet spot right between, you know, balancing challenge and balancing affirmation. And having that just like, you know, all these sorts of analogies are very useful with the gym, you know, having that personal trainer, that something that voice that's outside of yourself, that's able to give you frank, honest feedback, but also know you well enough to be able to soften the blow and motivate you in a really meaningful way. You know, coaches are amazing at this, because coaches right away can pick up on who needs to be motivated by encouragement. You know, the World Cup is going on right now, right? Australia is still in it, right? Australia is still in it. Only just hanging by a thread, hanging by a thread. Okay. But coaches, even soccer coaches, they're really good at this, they know, and they'll comment on certain players, where certain players, they need to be challenged, you need to call them out, you need to get angry with them, because it touches something inside of them, that pushes that gets the best out of them. And then there's other players that are very fragile, and they need confidence. And so you need to build them up and encourage them and try to make them believe. And if they believe that they can do it themselves, then they're going to get their best performance. So religion is very, very similar. So we need to be balanced between challenge and affirmation. And we also need
somebody outside of ourselves, or some something outside of ourselves that's going to get the best out of us. So you're saying, I guess, there's a relationship with us and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and that in order to be truly spiritual, in order to be God conscious, we need to know what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala loves, what he dislikes, and there's like a prescribed path to that. Before I jump into Islamic spirituality, and what spirituality looks like in an Islamic context, help me understand within my circle, what are the sentiments that I need to be aware of? Where you know what, is there a statement? Is there a kind of a vibe that I'm supposed to be kind of conscious of? That leads someone towards, you know, being spiritual, but not necessarily religious? Yeah, there's a few. I think one of them is an overstatement or an over-emphasis on identity. A really fascinating aspect of the Quran, especially Surat al-Baqarah, is kind of this path that the people of the book are on, you know, Bani Israel and the Christians after them. And they go through this thing that's really interesting, where they have a covenant with Allah, right? They have like an agreement, like a contract. And they go through this process of turning it into an identity, okay? So what does that mean? That means that their sort of privileged status is not anymore based off of what they do and how they perform, but now based on who they are, right? This is their claim in the Quran, right? It's like, we are his most beloved, just simply due to who we are. And then obviously you have Bani Israel saying, listen, the fire is never going to touch us, or if it touches us, it's only going to touch us for a day, or things like that. And so Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is calling them out again about this, right? It's like, you
can't do that, right? You can't turn it just into an identity. This is something that has to be constantly renewed. Every day you wake up, this is, you know, Islam, you know, linguistically, it's not a verb, but I like to say Islam is a verb, meaning that it's something that it has to be done. It's not just about your identity. It's so much more than an identity. So one of the trajectories that I see is people, and people completely, I come from a good place, and they say we need to work on our Muslim identity and strengthening our Muslim identity. Yes, that's true. But Islam is also much more than an identity. And if we get stuck in just thinking of it as an identity, then it can actually be a trap and be kind of static. Because then it's like, well, I'm a Muslim, and I think that I'm doing fine, what I'm doing is enough. And I don't really see the need to necessarily push myself in this way, or that. And who are you to tell me? And who are you to tell me that I should be doing anything more than I'm already doing? Right? I was gonna say I lived my whole life in Australia, except a period of eight years where I lived in the Middle East. And in all honesty, I felt more God conscious in Australia. And mainly because when I was in the Middle East, I didn't really have to fight for the outward actions, you know, the Adhan would go off, you know, all the prayer areas and even the malls were available. Halal food, you didn't have to worry about. So that process that you're mentioning that verb, the constant effort is what I felt led me to being a bit more God conscious than when I didn't have my back against the wall, and I lowered my guard, I guess. So there I was definitely Islamic. But here, I was playing a bit more of an Islamic role subconsciously.
Yeah, I think a lot of people have that experience. And I've talked to tons of people who have the same sort of thing, right? A lot of people say, I didn't become religious until I traveled to a non Muslim land, and look at the paradox. So that's one sort of vector, I think, to be aware of. And another is kind of like on the vector or the trajectory of being very, very anti clerical. Right? And what I mean by that is extremely disparaging of religious authorities and things like that. Now, there's a certain degree of skepticism that's healthy, right? I mean, and there's Imams and scholars out there that are fake and phony and misrepresent the religion. And, you know, yeah, of course. But that doesn't mean that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and then say that every single one of them is just a fraud. And, you know, or it's just, it's just the patriarchy, and they just, you know, are interpreting things according to their ideology or just interpreting things according to their sort of identity markers, right? They're, they're kind of we do this move where they're bound by sort of the class that they represent, and they don't represent me. And so I'm not going to take them seriously. I think that's another trajectory. delegitimizing any sort of expertise at all, making it seem like somebody who, you know, doesn't know anything about the Quran or the Sunnah or Arabic or whatever, is as qualified to kind of, you know, speak on behalf of or extract rulings from or talk about sort of the finer points of these things compared to the more general things. of these things compared to somebody who's been doing it their whole lives and is kind of qualified to do so. And the last thing I think the last trajectory that I will mention for the sake of time is, is an overemphasis on esotericism. So esotericism, as opposed to exotericism, it has to do with the inside and the hidden, right? And we kind of talked about this already. Some esotericism is great, right? Like, you have to feel it, right? You can't, we don't want just people just going through the rituals, like machines, that would be horrible.
And probably it would honestly be hypocrisy. But at the same time, we don't want to go to the other extreme, where we're just talking about the only thing that matters is how I feel inside, even if I have a can of beer in my hand, right? It's like, so there has to be both inside and outside, there has to be both the feeling and the meaning and the passion and intention, and then also the outward conformity, you know, things that Allah has communicated that he wants to see from us. So those are sort of the, I guess, three main trajectories that I kind of identify as maybe red flags or things to be aware of. Fair enough. So then from an Islamic perspective, spirituality, I guess there's two general paths you can take. There's the path of being very spiritual, and I see those circles across, they're in Masajid, they're in kind of little pockets and corners within our community. And there's a huge emphasis on spirituality. And then there are other kind of circles that pull you towards more the rituals, the religious acts of our religion. And sometimes we find ourselves in between the two. But I do find them as two very distinct paths. How do I strike the balance? So what does a spiritual group lack from not putting that emphasis on religiosity, and then vice versa? That's a fantastic question. And it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy of the times that we live in that those two poles exist, because they really are two complementary halves, right? Each side needs the other. Because true spirituality is a type of union, right?
Which lots of people talk about, but what type of union is it? It's a union of your will with Allah's will. What does that mean? It means like what was said in the Hadith that when you become close to Allah, you see things the way Allah wants you to see them, right? You are registering things, you're experiencing things the way that Allah wants you to experience them, right? If you see something that is hateful to Allah, it's also hateful to you. If you see something that's beloved to Allah, then it's beloved to you. That's what we're all after, right? And so how do we get there? You need both, right? You need both of these paths. You need to have the inner, right? To have the inner awe and reverence and caution and contentment and equanimity and these sorts of things. But without praying five times a day or adhering to the Sharia or staying away from the prohibitions in Islam, that's a tragedy. Just as much as it's a tragedy to have just the outer trappings, the shell, the conformity without the reverence and without the awe and without the passion and the love. So, you know, we live in every era has its own struggle and test and trial. And I think one of the main tests of our era is to bring those two halves back together and to try to find a way to unite not just the people in those two camps, but also within our own individual selves, the practice that balances between those two sorts of ethos.
So if I was to say the ideal path in terms of Islamic spirituality, and I'm trying to convince, say, my 10 year old daughter or whatever on, you know what, this is the path of Islamic spirituality and without it, you miss out on a whole bunch of things. What is my daughter missing out on if she doesn't follow a prescribed path of spirituality? And is it that prescribed is my other question. Yeah, I mean, so there's this kind of ethos of like, well, we could reinvent the wheel, right? You could go back and try by trial and error to figure out everything on your own. Or you could benefit from the experience of others. And we need to ask ourselves, I think, would we apply that logic to other things in our lives, right? If it comes to, you know, even building technologies, we want to build a house, or like we said, investments, money, you know, these sorts of things, medicine, right? How to treat certain ills? And are we going to go back to square one and rebuild from the very beginning acting like, you know what, let's question absolutely everything. Is germ theory even real? Is you know, like, contagion even like a thing, like all these sorts of things we could, if we wanted to, we could, is it the best use of our time and energy? Probably not. Right. And so it behooves us to benefit from the experience of others, and the paths that have been well trod before, while understanding that yeah, there can be checks and balances. You don't necessarily just believe in every single chap that comes along the way or puts on a turban and proclaims himself sort of like to have some sort of path or program, right? There needs to be some sort of tautiq or some sort of vetting. Right? But yeah, I would say that like, when it comes to, you know, saving time and benefiting from others, and there's humility in that too.
There's humility in not having to do everything again, yourself to kind of take the advice from those who have gone before you. Imam Tom, I wanted to ask a question on behalf of myself and my family. We were raised with an emphasis on rules, eat a certain way, dress a certain way, make sure you pray, and all the rituals or most of the rituals of Islam that are common were kind of emphasized in our household. But listening to you now, and looking into spirituality as a whole and being part of a society that talks about spirituality, let's say I want to start my spiritual journey Islamically, properly. What does that look like? I think one of the things as a really useful place for people to start is with service, and also things that nobody knows about. Okay, so I mean, that's the trick with people who have been kind of brought up on, we can say like, a little bit of formalism, right? They're used to doing these sorts of things. There's usually a lot of kind of social pressure, expectation that you're going to wear a hijab, pray five times a day, and do these sorts of things. Okay, but what about when no one's there to watch? What about when no one knows what you're doing? Okay, so and this is something scholars have talked about for hundreds of years about having some sort of worship that absolutely nobody knows that you do whatsoever. You know, some of the famous scholars, you know, they would even like recite Quran at night by candlelight. Okay, and then when their family was coming to wake them up for Fajr, they would blow out the candle so that they would think they were they were asleep, just to keep a secret from everybody else. You know, spending time with the poor, spending time with the homeless.
This is something that's really, really hard for people today, especially I don't know how Australia is, but at least in North America, we have very segregated housing. So if you're in the suburbs, you have a comfortable life, you usually live far away from poverty, you don't even have to see it necessarily. So doing those sorts of things that really grinds the soul down a little bit humbles you. And that, you know, you can actually say, you know, that it's likely that I did this for Allah alone, not to please anybody, not because it's what I've always been doing, not because you know, I feel expectation or pressure from outside. And even better, if it's something that goes against like your your material interests, even better if it's something that's extremely hard for you. Like, let's take for example, you know, somebody who anybody who studies anybody who's sort of academic or intellectual, one of the hardest things is not getting into an argument. Right, even with somebody who clearly knows less than you or is clearly wrong. Because we you know, the nefs wants to defend and defend the self and to prove somebody wrong, there's a little bit of ego involved and one upman, okay, somebody corrects you in public. You say, Okay, thank you very much. I'll think about that. Right? Or somebody asked you a question. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. There was a famous scholar back in the day, again, hundreds of years ago, he was a Hadith scholar, okay. And one of his students, his young students, you know, went up to him and told him, it's like, I've heard of the, you know, I just got this, like narration, this, you know, chain of this Hadith, and let me tell it to you. Okay, well, the Sheikh, not only knew this Hadith already, but he actually was in the chain of narrating that Hadith. And the student was ignorant, so they didn't know. But the teacher, what did he do? He listened as if it was the first time he had heard it. Right. And so that is humility. And that shows that you're really doing things for Allah subhana wa ta'ala. It goes against what the ego wants, it goes against what the nefs wants. Right?
You know, people who, you know, if your paycheck is tight, right before payday, yeah, that's the time to give charity. It's crazy, right? But it's those are the things that mean the most when it comes to starting your spiritual path. And if you can find other people that are kind of like, you know, wingmen, right for your spiritual quest, or buddies that you can kind of team up with and help each other to do these things, then that's even better. On the ritual side, I think it's very easy to just pick up a book or speak to a Sheikh about certain rules. And, you know, you could probably research these days, even online on certain websites and, and learn about the different rules of how to pray, and kind of the conditions of zakat and whatnot. But on the spiritual side, it's I'm assuming it's a huge open field, like, where do I start? And, and what's how do I choose kind of that? That trajectory? Yes, that's extremely important. I this is just an idiosyncratic opinion of mine, and you can take it or leave it. But I think that things have to be in person, I really do believe in the human connection. You look at whether it's an academic sort of relationship, or even if it's a spiritual relationship, you know, you have somebody who's on the other side of the world, and you talk to them on the phone once a month, or whatever, they're not going to have the same involvement in your life for the same sort of intimate awareness of where you're going. awareness of where you're at, as somebody who is in your neighborhood and knows you, obviously, not everybody lives in a neighborhood where they have those sorts of resources available, but a lot of us also haven't really even looked, right. And so I think going around and seeing what's out there, visiting different masajid, seeing who's there. And, you know, for a person who's getting into things, you can't really know that the whole purpose is that you're trying to find somebody who's in a better off situation further along the path than you.
So how would you even be able to evaluate that person, whether it's in spirituality, or, or it's an even Islamic knowledge, cracks me up all the time, people say, Oh, he's so strong and thick. You don't know what it is to be strong and thick. So how are you saying that the shaykh is strong and thick, right? But but what do we have, we have a halaq, you can tell somebody by their character. And that's the most important thing that the layman has to be able to, to judge and to vet and to try to because you could have the most knowledgeable person in the world. And if they have poor character, it's best not even to study with them. Because if you pick up that poor character, and if you have if you learn every single thing that they have to teach, how are you going to be sure that that's actually going to benefit you in the afterlife, maybe it's actually going to hurt you, maybe you'll be like one of those people in the hadith that they actually studied just for their ego, and they taught just so people would talk about them and build their reputation and these sorts of things. So, you know, character is the most important thing you see somebody how they interact with others, you know, you go out to dinner with them, and you see how they treat the waiter, you go to some place and you see how they treat the janitor, right? treating people who are vulnerable and below you and people that nobody has any business sort of like, you know, nobody has any self interest in in treating in a good way, you pay attention and you see how these people treat the lowly treat the vulnerable, treat the people that everybody else has kind of forgotten. about and abandoned. And if you see somebody that has good character, then you try to attach yourself to that person and learn what you can from them. JazakAllah khair. Look, it's it's not, it's not that easy. And I know from my own journey that finding the right person to pull you to that kind of spiritual path is is not easy. And actually, what scares me Imam Tom honestly is sometimes it's those bad experiences like you follow that path.
And then the whole kind of institution or that whole kind of environment crumbles and that happened a couple of times in Sydney and a couple of other places I know of as well. So on one side, I do want to follow someone. And I do want someone to pull me in that kind of spiritual direction. But at the same time, I don't want to put my eggs in that basket. Just in case, you know, because if that crumbles, then then a lot, a lot goes down with it. Definitely. And everybody needs to be cautious. I would not ever recommend that anybody just, you know, again, take like the first self proclaimed peer or whatever, you know, that offers himself up or puts himself in front of the people. You know, you can tell a lot about people when they're challenged or when they're contradicted, or when someone kind of is aggressive towards them. And I've, you know, we're not going to name names here. But I've been on some insider conversations with students or former students of people who were very big, you know, and known for their spirituality. And then you hear stories about how, yeah, it's like when this person, it's all actually about the image, right? So some people are very, very careful with how they curate an image of themselves and surround themselves with like the yes men and yes, women and people that are very, very subservient. But then if anybody challenges them on anything or checks them on anything, they actually are very irritated and very sort of have a very bad attitude. Right? So those sorts of things are very, very revealing, right? And you should pay attention to those things. They're not just, you know, we, you know, has his limits, right? You don't just keep on giving somebody excuses until the until, you know, you can't think of anything, you have to be cautious, and you have to use requisite precautions, just like we were saying earlier, requisite precaution with your whole spiritual journey, and your whole sort of like regimen of what practices you're going to do.
But you also have to have requisite precaution for who you're going to attach yourself to. And so you have to pay attention to see for these cracks and these fissures. And if you see something that is obviously against sort of Islamic character and ethics, and it slips out from a person, then know that maybe that person isn't the right person you should be attaching yourself to. So Shaykh, I want to move away from the Islamic circles to kind of a neighborhood with non Muslims, non Muslim colleagues, neighbors, friends. And some of these people, maybe they read Rumi, maybe they they're interested in kind of the whole spiritual path. Sure, an interpretation of it. And, and so we're in a conversation, we talk about the spiritual pathway, we want to be closer to, you know, to God, even if it's a if it's a non Muslim who's actually practicing. What is it that I have, and that my religion has, that other religions don't have? I know it's a tough question, but I'd love to understand it. No, definitely. I think it comes back to something we mentioned earlier on, which has to do with the degree of certainty that we're on solid ground. Okay. Because at the end of the day, everybody can sort of, they can participate in this sort of project of conjecture, right, as to what is going to be pleasing to Allah, what is going to be pleasing to the Creator? What are the expressions of gratitude that he's going to register as an expression of gratitude, I can stand out in the sun, you know, for four hours a day and say, Well, this is my expression of gratitude, it might mean nothing to Allah. Right.
And that's a side putting aside whether he judge me by my intention or whatever. But that doesn't get around the fact that he has revealed in the Quran, his own words, you know, exactly what he's looking for, what are the expressions of gratitude and love and what does it look like? Okay, so again, it's a matter of how certain do we want to be? Is this thing important enough to us that we're going to try to be as certain as we can? Is it something that we're going to be as certain as reasonably possible about those, what we're going to put our effort into, how we're going to use our time, how we're going to put ourselves forward? Or is it something that we're just super, super casual about, you know, yeah, you know, it's good enough. Right? I think that the the MISA or the, you know, the the thing that Islam has over any other system, is that we can say that we have very, very solid ground, with which we are basing our ideas of what practices, what beliefs, what attitudes, what virtues are actually going to be registered by Allah subhana wa ta'ala, the Creator, as as virtues, as praise, as good deeds, as these sorts of things. And anything else outside of that, you're kind of in doubtful territory, maybe you're 50% right, maybe you're 30%, right, maybe you're 70%, you don't really know. Right? So if we take it as a super casual thing, like, you know, we're talking about who's going to win the World Cup match on Saturday, then okay, you don't need to study all the names of the players and what the coach is going to do. And you know, all those sorts of things. But if we're talking about our, you know, potential afterlife, right, or eternity, or something like that, then it stands to reason that we would want to be a little bit more certain and precautious about that sort of exercise. JazakAllah khair. Sheikh, I'm going to leave it at that. That was a beautiful response, and a very succinct one. So I'll use that usually I ask about a question on behalf of my nine year old niece, but I'm going to make her listen to that last answer. JazakAllah khair.
Ameen wa a'alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu. I'm going to change gears here. And we're going to ask a series of rapid fire questions. You only have a couple of seconds to answer them. We're going to start with a very, very easy one. You lived in Medina. So I think I know the answer. Who's your favorite qarah or reciter of the Quran? Muhammad Ayub. Muhammad Ayub, definitely. What's the last book that you were reading? The last book I was reading is Powers of the Secular Modern. It's a collection of essays responding to the work of Talal Asad within anthropology, and then he responds to them and things like that. That was the last book I was reading. Also reading Themes of the Quran by Fazlur Rahman. Your dream breakfast? Nasi Lemak. If you could have dinner with one living person, who would it be? One living person? Probably be my Sheikh, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Shamqaiti in Medina. InshAllah. And if it was someone who passed away and it's not the Prophet, who would it be? Not the Prophet? Probably Umar. Probably Umar or Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr because of how he kept the ummah together after the passing of the Prophet, and Umar due to his siyasa. I mean, I'm a politics guy in political theory and his siyasa is just incredible. The sort of things that he developed to put the Muslims on a path to success are just absolutely astounding. I didn't know you're a politics guy. Normally I don't ask this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. If you were to bring two people in a room and you were to mediate, who would those two people be?
I'm not going to say names, but anybody who has a beef or a disagreement in the English speaking Dawah scene, North America, Europe, whatever, I believe that if we were to get in the same room face to face and talk to each other as men and as people of the sunnah and people who love the Quran and people who love Islam, I feel like our commonalities are way greater than our differences. I really do believe that we would be able to achieve a mutual understanding and appreciation for each other. You regularly release videos on social media and I'd like to know from an Islamic point of view, because there's a whole heap with YouTube Shorts, TikTok, there's a whole heap of Islamic channels out there. What in your mind makes an ideal Islamic video in a TikTok world and a YouTube Shorts world? Yeah, that's a good point and a very good question. And I think that it has to be discursively disruptive. And here's the jargon coming back. What I mean by that is you need to dislodge people from their normal sensibilities and associations, and you need to do it in a very, very short amount of time. So you don't always have time for nuance and you don't always have time to be exhaustive. You need to be taking into account how people are hearing something, how people are associating with something, and you need to find that chink in their armor to dislodge that association, to pave the way, to pave the ground for opening up for a new association and a new way of understanding. Imam Tom, Jazakallah Khair. Thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed on Double Take and Inshallah this is the first of many episodes. Insha Allah Ta'ala. Barak Allahu Fikm. Thank you so much.
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