# Muslim Votes Swing 2024 | Imam Tom Live

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Imam Tom Live
**Published:** 2024-09-18
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/uI6pGJPN5Pk
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/muslim-votes-swing-2024-imam-tom-live
**Topics:** Culture, Family & Community, Politics & Practical Theology, Social Justice

## Description
We talk about a recent IG post that critiques Imam Tom's article, discussing intersectionality and Palestine solidarity, and why leftist causes fail.

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Okay, let's get to it. You guys have a lot of good questions and comments. Let's get through them before we move on to the current events. Trying to start from the top here. All right now, Sirah Ba, all the way back. Sirah Ba says, Assalamu Alaikum, will Shuyukh in North America issue fatwas about the permissibility or impermissibility of

**[0:20]** assisting oppressors in their dhulm against Muslims, in this case voting for blue or red genocide parties? Wallahi Sirah, I really wish they would and I am trying behind closed doors to try to appeal to some of the scholars and the fatwa bodies that we have here to take a stance

**[0:38]** on the elections and that's something that a lot of people don't want to touch. Now if you're a 501c3, that means if you're categorized as a charity organization in the United States, there are certain things that you can and cannot do when it comes to telling people who to vote or who to not vote for, but I think that there's a way that we can talk about it without talking about it and

**[0:57]** I haven't succeeded yet, but I am attempting to try to make some moves on that front. So pray for my success, please. So here Una says, boycotting leaders and systems that perpetuate the suffering of our ummah is a powerful form of protest. I 100% agree. Just as we refuse to support companies that contribute to injustice,

**[1:14]** we must also critically assess the leaders we endorse through our votes. Very, very well said. Now Layla, I'm so happy. Layla Kouzias, pardon me if I'm mispronouncing that, I really appreciate this comment. She says, I'm Syrian, feeling betrayed by many, even Muslim, organizing chats. If I raise a question on Stein's stance on Russia and Assad, people flip out at me.

**[1:35]** How to combat destructive black-white good versus evil thinking. Wallahi, I dealt with this two days ago. It was the last thing. I broke my rules, guys, for those of you following the atomic habits. I brought my phone to bed and the last text I sent at night was responding to this issue because we had Syrians in the chat

**[1:53]** that are feeling queasy about Stein. And I did say, it's like, listen, and we had other people, people that are going hard for Stein, that were saying, well, maybe you guys are just, you know, supporting the Democrats or you're trying to pull something funny or you're trying to stop our momentum or you're an op, all these sorts of things.

**[2:11]** And I tried to say, Layla, I said exactly what you're trying to say, that if our Syrian brothers and sisters can't bring themselves to vote for Stein, I completely understand that. That is something I could never find it in myself to blame somebody for.

**[2:26]** And they have a right to do that. I do personally think that voting, let's see, this is the Yaqeen program, I can't say this, but so, you know, if you follow me off of Yaqeen program, you know what I think, okay, about what is the most strategic move for the Muslims. And I've said it's not because of Stein.

**[2:45]** It's not because of who it is. In fact, I don't trust any of the politicians that are running for the president of the United States. I don't, I don't. I think that people who think that any of them are saviors are, they're deluding themselves a little bit. However,

**[3:01]** there are other reasons and there's other calculus to why it would make sense for the Muslim community to, first of all, punish one of the parties that is incumbent. Second, to attempt to create enough leverage on an existing well-established third party such that they might control their agenda,

**[3:21]** their campaign, and even in the future, their candidates that they run. There's a strategic interest in that. There's a strategic interest in the Muslims eroding the stranglehold of the two major parties, the two-party system, quote-unquote, on American politics. Those are all strategic interests. But if somebody,

**[3:38]** especially someone from the Syrian community says, I can't bring myself to vote for this person, I completely respect that. And we have a duty to not cast doubt on their intentions by dismissing that. I think that that's insensitive and I think that that's wrong.

**[3:53]** That we recognize that this is one of the problems of the anti-imperialist left, the secular, the secularists. A lot of the anti-imperialist left, they think in very antagonistic terms, meaning that many of them have sympathy for the butcher Assad and for Putin and for Russia and for all these others

**[4:14]** because simply because they're anti-Western. Okay, and even there's some Muslims and Muslim da'is with YouTube channels, right, who have book clubs on books they don't understand. And if you understand who I'm talking about, then you understand.

**[4:30]** That have a similar sort of thing. Their whole shtick is anti-Westernism to the point where they're not willing to be just. Okay, that is black and white thinking, that is just oppositional thinking, it's antagonistic thinking. That is not the thinking that we're encouraged to have as a Muslim.

**[4:47]** What does Allah ﷻ say in the Qur'an? He says it twice. يَا أَيُّهَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا۟ He said, establish, be just and establish justice, even if it's against yourselves. Right, so we have this thing where again as Malcolm X said very powerfully in English, we're for the truth no matter who says it.

**[5:03]** Okay, that we, but and we're, the converse of that is true as well. We have to call out falsehood wherever we see it, even if it's from one of our own. We are not going to make the same mistake as Musa (ﷺ) before he was a prophet. Okay, so no disrespect to Musa, but when he was called into a fight

**[5:21]** and there were two people in the fight and one of them was someone from his tribe and the other was someone from another tribe, the tribe of Fir'aun, and he assumed that he's jumping in the fight on the side of his tribesmen. And he assumed that that was the right thing to do. And he soon found out that it was his own guy from his own side from his own tribe that was wrong.

**[5:40]** And so he had a moral decision to make, he made tawbah to Allah ﷻ and he asked forgiveness and he asked for guidance because the nature of this mistake was this sort of tribalistic antagonistic thinking. It's not my tribe versus your tribe in the sense that not everything America does is good,

**[5:56]** not everything that America does is evil, not everything that the West does is good, not everything that the West does is evil. We have nuance. We have our own miqyas and mi'yar. We have our own metrics given to us by divine revelation in which we're able to hold the actions of all the world up to a mirror and say that's right, that's wrong, that's right, that's wrong.

**[6:15]** And we don't have a problem if that doesn't put us in a comfortable category that somebody else has prefabricated for us. And we have to make sure that we keep that nuance because if we don't then we're going to end up in situations like you find yourself in where we're now alienating our own people,

**[6:31]** our own brothers and sisters, our Syrian brothers and sisters, especially in this case. Why? To play some sort of tribalism or some sort of group think. So we have to, I see this as part of political maturity, that we have to mature beyond this sort of like,

**[6:49]** we're not rooting for sports teams. This isn't like Liverpool versus Manchester United, right? We're not like just my team no matter what. We have to actually care about what is true. And when someone from our own is in the right, we support it because it's in the right, not because they're from our own team.

**[7:08]** And if something from our own team is in the wrong, then we call it out because it's wrong and vice versa. So I'm really, really happy that you, I mean, I'm not happy, but I'm grateful that you brought that up. Okay. Let's see. Okay. So Zahir Yunus is dropping facts. Let's see what else we got. What were some other questions that came up?

**[7:27]** Okay, so Rashida said you all need to check out the Green Party and vote green. Okay, bismillah. I'm just going to let that sit there. Y'all can marinate on that. Jamila said, when are Muslim leaders and men in general will be held accountable for not upholding their oaths to Allah, saying they will fight in the cause of Allah for the oppressed and the weak?

**[7:45]** Allahu Akbar. I mean, I think I agree with you Jamila in general. However, I would add the caveat to those who are in the United States of America and the Western nations that are arming Israel and that are actively participating. They're not just, you know, just cheering it on. They're actively participating in the genocide in Gaza.

**[8:03]** Our duty here, the most effective thing that we can do, is to change the foreign policy of the nations in which we live. We have the ability to do that. We have the money to do that. We just have to be organized enough and smart enough to do that and that will do the greatest good.

**[8:19]** What else do we have? Yes, very good. I'm very happy that biryani diplomacy is in the vocabulary now. We're gonna, we gotta make it viral guys. We gotta make it viral. So Jamila continues,

**[8:35]** saying that Biden isn't Muslim, nor did he make an oath to Allah to fighting and protecting the Muslims. Yeah, so why should we expect? And I agree with that. I agree with that Jamila. A lot of us, we, we, we, we have these unrealistic expectations. Like, like these people are moral exemplars.

**[8:50]** Our system is not set up to select the most moral and righteous among us. And we're going to talk about this actually in a bit, when it comes to our leaders. Our leaders are not moral and righteous and that sham of a hearing that happened earlier today, which we will also show a clip of in a bit, inshallah ta'ala, also demonstrated that the people who are in charge of our nations are not the most moral and righteous people.

**[9:10]** So we have to temper what we expect from them and build a counter power that's able to influence them in other ways, other than pleading and begging in this sort of humiliating way. Peace from America. Should we vote? I believe yes. I believe that you should. I do not see voting as impermissible.

**[9:28]** I do not, and I will have a forthcoming blog entry on this for Yaqeen Institute. All the arguments against voting, um, from an Islamic perspective, I do not consider, I have not seen them, I do not see them to be sound. I think they're too categorical, that voting is a political technology.

**[9:44]** It actually has an usul in the way in which Abdur Rahman Ibn Auf, he polled the people of Medina to see who, who he should put his tie-breaking vote towards when he was part of the council to appoint, whether it was Uthman or Ali, to be the

**[10:01]** khalifah after Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, right? So there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with it that you can't excise out. The people who are saying that this is like, you know, basically 'aqeedah, that when you vote you're saying that you love someone's law more than Allah's law. I don't buy that for a second.

**[10:21]** Um, so I think that it is prudent. Not in every situation. I'm not one of these people who is on the other extreme saying, you know, you have to, it's wajib to vote, it's the only thing that, no, but I think that it's permissible inshallah ta'ala and Allah knows best. So yes, um, so Dikeh Laroussa had said, so happy to have learned from us. Okay, you're going to talk about,

**[10:41]** oh, yeah, we already said that. Yes, we will. That's going to be part of our current affairs program. So that's coming up in just a bit. What else do we have? Yeah, so Seamus also brings up the point that we're talking about about Syria and he's talking about the online space.

**[10:57]** So he's saying pro-Palestinian figures online are, you say mostly Assadists. I see it maybe like a 50-50 split. Some of the big channels are, some of the big channels are propped up by Russians during the Syrian war. Unfortunately, non-Arab Muslims who didn't follow events are affected. I was too during mid-teen years. Yes, those are valid points.

**[11:15]** Okay, very good. So question, is it permissible to vote? Very good. So question, it's me, Sahil. If a man's wife passes away, does the marriage break? Can he still touch his wife? I'm assuming that you're talking about, you know, literal touching for purposes of washing one's body. In that case,

**[11:35]** yes, that, you know, you are able to wash the body of your wife after she passes away. This is something that even the Prophet (ﷺ) did. So that is perfectly fine.

**[11:50]** Yes, Atta'at Tarim, we're going to talk about Lebanon, as we said. Anyone have any actual questions? What are we to do? Sakina Hassan says, okay, we have to get over the idea that we support somebody unconditionally or that we support somebody and then that they will do something for us in return.

**[12:10]** That's not how politics works. You have to hold on to something that somebody else wants or be able to deliver a credible political threat, such as making someone lose an election, and then wait for them to come to you and negotiate. And if they don't come to you to negotiate,

**[12:26]** then you actually have to follow through on either punishing them politically or withholding that thing that they need so that they suffer and make them suffer politically until they come to you and then you're ready to negotiate. But this whole idea that you're going to negotiate or get anything

**[12:42]** just from doing favors for them. No, that's humiliation. That's not anything. What else we got?

**[12:58]** Let's see. We've got some people, more people came in. Wadi al-Saddam, everybody just came in. Rochester, Minnesota in the house. All right. Okay, we just addressed that gratitude. Wadi al-Saddam, what are we to do? Feel like voting for independent may be a win for Trump and voting for Harris gives me heartburn.

**[13:18]** Well, you know what? I told this to somebody in Houston the other week. I said, first of all, your vote doesn't decide who's the president. I got news for you. You ever hear of the electoral college, right? The electoral college decides who the president is and we've seen in past elections that when push comes to shove, the electoral college can go against the popular vote in a close race.

**[13:35]** So that almost frees you up to sort of vote your conscience and not worry about it too much because you don't really have the ability to call the shots like that. They made sure of that.

**[13:52]** Yeah, so Mohammed Abu Ramadan asks, you mentioned on the MBF podcast that you don't trust Jill Stein. Can you expand on that? Well, yeah, I mean Jill Stein has mentioned particular troubling rhetoric on the Muslim Brotherhood and Syria and she's parroted some sort of war on terror discourse. Now,

**[14:09]** she has people in her corner and I do know some inside information as to some of the people who are advising her where she's trying to learn. But is it out of the her own conscience, you know, or is it sort of politically expedient because her success in this election is extremely dependent upon Muslim Arab voters?

**[14:31]** I can't answer that question. Only Allah knows that question. But let's just say I'm not, I don't trust that person in the sense that I don't trust politicians in general, right? That most politicians, they know which way the wind is blowing and if it works for them, they will blow in that way, so to speak. Now, that doesn't mean

**[14:49]** that we can't use that for us, right? As I said before, if you look at all three political parties, look at Republican, Democrat, and Green, which one is most indebted to the Muslim vote? Okay. I mean, the Democrats stand to lose big in November if they completely continue to ignore us and not give us anything.

**[15:10]** But the Green Party is extremely dependent on our vote. And so what opportunities does that open up in order to negotiate what's on their platform, what's on their campaign, what are the policies that they want to run, or who's going to run on their ticket in 2028? You understand? That's how it works.

**[15:27]** Yeah, we're going to talk about exploding pagers. May Allah bless you, Ppen12. May Allah protect us all. At the end of the day, Allah is in control. Allah is in control.

**[15:43]** And we do not fear the blame of the blamer. And we do not fear the blame of the blamer. We do what we have to do and we speak the truth. Many who have gone before us have paid the ultimate price and we have to pay the ultimate price. Many who have gone before us have paid the ultimate price. Aisha Noor has paid the ultimate price for speaking the truth.

**[16:01]** It's written. It's already written. Whether we're going to have to pay that price or something less than that, we don't know. Okay, our Muslim children says, Have you been tracking the discourse online about halal,

**[16:18]** UK Muslims and US Muslims are going at it as they are wont to do, Omar. I'm not sure if Yaqeen has discussed this previously. I'm not a hundred percent if they have discussed this previously or not, but I will say this, when it comes to the US and the UK beefing, you know, the US and the UK are very different scenarios.

**[16:37]** You know, the UK has much more of a dense sort of critical mass of Muslims that keeps cultural gravity a lot more and it's a smaller place. So what are y'all like 10% of the population in the UK, something like that. Whereas the population is not only smaller in the United States, but we're also very spread out. The United States is an enormous place.

**[16:58]** In addition to other factors. So the dynamics are different. This isn't an excuse for anything. But what I'm trying to draw attention to is that rather than beef back and forth and the UK Muslims acting like they're on a high horse and the US Muslims acting like they're enlightened,

**[17:13]** which is honestly sometimes what it boils down to, we have to look for how we can benefit each other. I really believe in squashing this beef and trying to benefit each other. Now, one of the videos that I saw, I think it was a TikTok video that somebody showed me, because I'm not on TikTok, that somebody showed me was one of the British sisters

**[17:33]** demonstrating how it has become a cultural force within the UK, that the Biryani halal meat is something that even non-Muslims go after. And I think that that was a really interesting point. And I think that sometimes in the US we think a little bit too

**[17:48]** individualistically and not enough civilizationally, that if you want to, and you know, Dr. Suhail Hanif has made comments similar to this in some of the talks I've been with him, where he said that if you ask a faqih about eating pork,

**[18:04]** they'll explain to you the situations in which it's permissible to eat pork. So they'll say, you know, yes, if you're in the desert and you're starving and there's nothing else to eat and you don't like it and you only eat what you need, then it's permissible. Okay? That's what we call bare minimum fiqh. And that's the job. That's his job. He's not, you know, doing anything wrong.

**[18:22]** However, he's not necessarily telling you how do you avoid a situation where you have to eat pork in the first place? How do you make sure that you have enough provisions when you go out into the desert? How do you make sure that, you know, you don't end up in a situation where you might have to compromise your principles? So we need that dimension to the situation. That's one thing that the UK I think can benefit from the US is that

**[18:41]** the Companions didn't operate on bare minimum permissibility when it came to fiqh. Check exactly, check exactly how the Companions reacted when the hijab came down, when the amr or the command for women to cover themselves with hijab came down. Women grabbed pieces of

**[18:59]** cloth here and there and they cut them up and they covered themselves the best. They didn't wanna be like Bani Isra'il, right? They didn't wanna be like, oh, what color is the cow? Oh, well, what type of cow? Oh, well, how old does the cow have to be? They were like, 100%, let me grab whatever I can and put it on as best I can.

**[19:16]** And that's why to this day, there's a disagreement between the fuqaha. Is it required, niqab or not? Is to cover your face something that is extra and praiseworthy or is it something that is merely, or is it something that is actually required of everybody?

**[19:31]** Why don't we know the answer to that question? We don't know the answer to that question because the Companions weren't concerned about the bare minimum. They wanted to do as much as they could. And so we have to be super careful, especially us in the US where we don't have as much cultural force as the Muslims in the UK.

**[19:46]** We have to be very, yes, we can find ways out, right? We can find, I don't wanna call them here, but we can find a rukhsah, a rukhsah, right? We can find exceptions. We can find dispensations. We can find sort of leniency,

**[20:02]** but is leniency the best way for a civilizational project? Is leniency the best intergenerational plan? Are we also taking care at the same time to account for this fact that we need to do as much as we can? And so if there's an option, everybody,

**[20:18]** when it comes to halal meat, you should be eating the best you can. If you have an option, you go into a store between eating meat that was raised locally by a Muslim farmer and it was slaughtered in a way that you know is permissible versus some even like halal stamped meat

**[20:34]** from New Zealand or Brazil or whatever, you should no doubt, if you have the financial means, you should no doubt go with the first one. That's just like no brainer, let alone Chick-fil-A and whatever the Christians are doing. Is it permissible?

**[20:49]** That's not relevant. That's not what I'm saying. It's not relevant whether it's permissible or not, that that's always gonna be a matter of difference of opinion. But what's the best thing that you can do and why aren't you doing the best for Allah? Why aren't you putting your best into Allah? And we know this logic when we talk about going to the gym,

**[21:05]** right, like for the guys. If you go to the gym, I shouldn't say just for the guys. I'm sure a lot of ladies go to the gym too, inshallah. When you go to the gym, you can put in your least amount of effort, but what are the gains that you're gonna get out of it? All of your exercises, your reps, like your even, like whatever, you can put very, very little,

**[21:23]** the bare minimum and say that you did it, okay? But is that a way to get healthy? Is that a way to make gains in the gym? No, it's not. So why would we treat our deen like that? Why would we treat our, you know, our meat and our food and things like that? Exactly. That's not, that's not, doesn't work like that.

**[21:43]** Layla, I'm glad to hear that we, we experienced a similar thing there. So Layla follows up the exact reaction I got. Why don't you go vote for Kamala, aren't you just a DNC apologist. Yeah, yeah, no, this is so fun. This is, this is a zam, right?

**[21:59]** There's no, there's no evidence to this. Wa alaikum assalam, Mariam from Kuwait, welcome. 100% Valerie, I really, really appreciate your comment. What makes me so outraged is that we are seeing a hate crime happen in a hate crime hearing.

**[22:14]** Wallahi, it was disgusting. And we're gonna talk about it in just a minute. Let me see if there's any other comments, concerns or questions in the, okay, so Layla follows up. I've been behind organizing for third party since day one,

**[22:30]** but downplaying the trauma of Syrians or even becoming an apologist is disgusting. I mean, Alhamdulillah, the greatest compliment you could have given me is that you feel seen by that. I'm glad that you mentioned this and I'm glad that you feel seen and I'm 100% with you on this.

**[22:48]** Mozamma, that's a really interesting question. Does the same reasoning about Syrians, not supporting Stein apply to African-American Muslims who are supporting the Dems? It's just another strategy, correct? It depends. There are situations in which that logic I could imagine it working. However, I think it's a little bit different

**[23:05]** and many of the situations on the ground are not like that. Okay, and what I mean is that, what is Harris gonna do for black America? Seriously, like she made her bones being top cop

**[23:21]** in California, very, very, tough on crime sort of tack that she was trying to push, very harmful to the African-American community in California, right? What's the perceived, so you see the difference here, right?

**[23:36]** She knows that she has to play up to that particular thing in order to get support, but what's the ROI on that, right? What are you actually getting in return? If there's a local situation, I think that logic works much more at the local level, like the city and the state level where,

**[23:52]** like in Philadelphia, for example, where many of the African-American community, they're very, very invested in the Democratic Party and that's what sort of is part of the machinery in Philadelphia. However, when you go to the national level, I don't see Harris being so good necessarily for,

**[24:10]** and I could be completely ignorant about this. And if I am, like I said, there are situations in which I think it's true, but I think that we have to separate that out from people who are just careerists, okay? Just after their own appointments, that's a different thing than saying

**[24:25]** that the entire African-American community is gonna benefit more from Harris and that we're not willing to break rank to vote for a third party. That's one thing. And my career, I've got this position, I've got this, whatever, that's a different thing. So if we're able to make that distinction and introduce that nuance, then okay,

**[24:40]** like I can see situations in which that also holds true in that scenario as well. What else we got, what else we got? Noceba asks, I'm a little embarrassed about my ignorance with this, but what happens if a whole demographic of people all across the US decides not to vote, does it matter?

**[24:57]** I'm glad you asked that Noceba. This is actually my number one example that I bring up to demonstrate to you and to anybody else that consent of the governed is a myth. It's a myth that John Locke invented in order to justify the rise of the liberal nation state.

**[25:15]** Sounds like a great idea, but if all of America stayed home and didn't vote, do you think the government's going anywhere? Like seriously, do you think they're just gonna quit and say, well, I guess we lost the popular mandate, I guess we gotta go home now. No, they're gonna hold on to their power. They're gonna hold on to their power.

**[25:30]** So that's a very important element to the argument about is voting permissible or not? Because some of the critiques of voting being permissible imply that if you didn't vote, then the system would collapse or that somehow democracy would fall.

**[25:47]** No, it's not going anywhere at all. Let's see what we got. So Abdullah says, are you excited to eat Dallas USA halal and not UK halal? Asking for a friend. UK halal is delicious.

**[26:05]** And I try to eat the best I can wherever I go. And I feel like that's what we should be doing. Juju says, I feel like Imam leaders are not discouraging Muslims from working in companies complicit in war crimes like Raytheon. I know working and living is inherently

**[26:22]** in the US may be harmful to people. I 100% agree with you, Juju. And I do know religious leaders who do, but we have to be real here. Very few, unfortunately. And this is a problem. Let's call a spade a spade. In the da'wah sphere, you see the different types of talks

**[26:39]** that bring in the big conferences and the big shaykhs and the big things. How often do we see instructions about not working for Lockheed Martin, not working for Raytheon, not working for BlackRock, not working for these companies that are, yeah,

**[26:57]** that are literally killing our brothers and sisters abroad. I think that not enough attention is going towards that. And I feel like a whole lot more attention should be going towards that. And yes, Zaheer, Yunus, I agree. Recent behavior of members of Congress

**[27:12]** highlights a profound need for leaders who genuinely care about justice and human dignity. Righteous rule, we're going to talk about that. Righteous rule. Sire Ba says, how to deal with family members who are planning to vote team blue.

**[27:28]** Wallahi, it's heartbreaking. I mean, the thing that I, it depends on the person because people are motivated by different things, but I always ask people, how much do you value Palestinian blood? That's just not my thing. I mean, I think about Hind

**[27:44]** when I'm going to go into that voting booth. I think about Sidra when I'm going into that voting booth. I'm thinking about Khawla Nabhan's granddaughter when I'm going into that voting booth. And that's all I need. So Furry Finance asks,

**[28:05]** many people have solidarity with Palestine. What is the Islamic view of building a coalition or big tent with other groups to achieve Palestinian liberation like Ibn Khaldun's 'asabiyyah? Well, a couple of things to unpack there. One, the terminology used is not our Islamic terminology. We don't accept that because people have desires

**[28:23]** and people are not their desires. So if you have desires, romantic desires, sexual desires to the same sex, that doesn't make you a person with those desires. If you were born a woman and think that you should be a man, that doesn't make you a person with those desires, not in Islam.

**[28:39]** That you actually, the reason that we have our desires is to struggle against them. And that goes for any desire, whether your desire is to cheat on your spouse or to commit zina, any type of zina, or to steal or to backbite or to gossip or to envy or anything.

**[28:55]** So your desires are one thing and you are another thing. So we have to make sure that that's not lost sight of. Secondly, there is no one Islamic view, the Islamic view, because this is a muhdathat al-umur. This is something that is new. This is a new issue, all right?

**[29:10]** It's not something that we have direct guidance from Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) where he said, look, in 2024, there's gonna be these groups and there's gonna be this issue and you have to ally with this group or that group or that group. So we are extending and extrapolating Islamic guidance

**[29:26]** in this terrain, which means that it is a zanni matter. It is something that is somewhat speculative. It's not completely speculative. Like this is a reasoned argument and it's, what's the word for it? Educated sort of arguments or educated reasoned arguments, but we don't have the level of certainty

**[29:42]** to say that this is the Islamic view on it. Now getting to the spirit of your question, I've addressed this in an article for Yaqeen Institute called something like intersectionality in the movement for Gaza or the encampment movement, something like that. I think that we have to really consider

**[30:01]** how historical change happens and how power is built. I think that it's been a liberal notion, this idea of the big tent, the ultimate coalition of all of the aggrieved and minority groups, which is going to overthrow whatever system of oppression

**[30:17]** or all of the systems of oppression and different people will disagree about that. I'm skeptical of that, I'll be honest. I don't see that as how history changes. I think that history is changed by a small, dedicated group of very impactful people

**[30:33]** that are disciplined, hopefully that are righteous. I think that that's how the movement of Islam came about. I didn't see it necessarily as a coalition of aggrieved sort of members of society. I saw it more as a consolidation or coalescence on values.

**[30:51]** And it's definitely sure that we don't share the same values as some of the people that many people would hope that we would group up with in coalition work. So that's my sort of thing. I think that the Muslims have prioritized,

**[31:07]** and you'll see this in the piece that I wrote, you'll see that the Muslims in the West have prioritized so-called allies at the expense of shoring up Muslim mobilization. I think that's a mistake. I think that we are very, very underutilized.

**[31:24]** Our own communities are underutilized. And that once we get our own house in order, that we can make a huge impact, even before we enter into coalitions with other people. Wa alaikum assalam, I'm not seeing your question.

**[31:40]** Yeah, so you can email your question or you can send it in. I apologize, I'm not ma'sum. I do make mistakes. So I'm not intentionally skipping anyone's questions.

**[31:59]** Okay, what is this? Atlanta Hafeez says, Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Everyone is focusing on the presidential election. It's very important to also focus on senators and reps. We need to assess their policies and work at the local level also. 100% agree with you.

**[32:15]** Nobody likes to do the local stuff, even though that's where most of our work needs to be done, especially when it comes to running our own people. However, I do think that we can use the unprecedented amount of attention on the presidential race to hopefully convert it into more sustainable, perennial,

**[32:32]** or we should say annual, continuous work, persistent work on the local level as well. What do we do in December? I think is gonna be really key. To once the federal stage has settled to start to look for opportunities

**[32:48]** at the local level, 100%. Good point, and Khadri, let's see what we got. Fiona asks, how do we get out of this mindset that the world itself will inevitably be corrupt,

**[33:04]** even shown by the guaranteed minor signs of the Day of Judgment, saying the world leaders will be corrupt? Yes, so that's sort of a fatalism and a defeatism that I also agree that we should not fall into, or we should be careful to fall into, because the hadith of Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ)

**[33:19]** who said that even if the Day of Judgment were to be established and you have a sapling in your hand, your duty is to plant the sapling. That is your responsibility. Our duty to act never goes away, even if all the major signs are upon us, which they're not. And many of the minor signs have happened,

**[33:35]** but many of the minor signs also haven't happened, right? So sometimes we use the eschatological language as an escape and as an excuse to not do anything. And I disagree with that. So here, Eunice asks, can you please clarify this,

**[33:52]** Assalam alaikum, if you're voting in Western elections like the US, how should one assess if voting aligns with Islamic values and promotes justice? It's a big question. I mean, but you have to look at things, first of all, if you're doing tahrij fiqhi, you're going to sort of like analyze first, is the default, what's the default ruling? Is the default ruling that voting is permissible

**[34:09]** or impermissible? That establishes where the burden of proof lies. My perspective is that the default ruling is that voting is permissible until there is something that enters into it that proves that it is impermissible. Why? Because this is not a tawqifi or ta'abbudi matter.

**[34:25]** This is something that has to do with maslaha. It's not an expression of 'aqidah. It's not an expression that we prefer the shariah other than the Shariah of Allah or anything like this. It is simply, you know, it is a tool and tools can be used for good

**[34:40]** and tools can be used for evil. Now that's the details where you have to get into whether it becomes specifically permissible or impermissible in a certain scenario or not.

**[34:55]** Soraya Asmi, Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Yep. Yes, the uncommitted movement. Acha. Soraya. 100%, the uncommitted movement is a perfect example of people following political winds.

**[35:11]** I will tell you, okay, I'll tell you something controversial and something that's half a secret, some inside info, okay? There are many, many leaders in the Muslim community right now that the only thing holding them back

**[35:27]** from telling you to vote for a genocider is the fact that the mass of Muslims won't take it and won't tolerate it right now. And I'll leave you with that. So some people know which way the wind's blowing.

**[35:43]** I mean, Jess, I mean. Anna Eaton says, would love for you to connect with Imam John. Yes, we talk on WhatsApp actually, Imam John and I. He invited me to come down,

**[35:59]** but the schedule unfortunately is already booked up until January. So unfortunately we couldn't make it happen, but hopefully sometime in the future. Noreen from Pelham, New York. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Oh, I'm glad that you made that comment.

**[36:15]** I really appreciate that. We have much to share and learn and lean into and become collectively more aligned. I totally agree. I think that the U.S. and the U.K. Muslims stand to benefit so much from each other rather than just take pride in dumping on one another.

**[36:31]** Not to say that we shouldn't hold each other accountable. But with adab, right? We have rules for that.

**[36:47]** Sara says, do you know if Imran Siddiqui and Hossam Ailouche are involved in M-Gage PAC? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. You're going to have to ask them yourself. SoCal folks will know. Yeah, I agree with you, Valerie. I agree.

**[37:03]** Let's see. Yeah, 100% Seamus. Seamus brings up a great point. What we eat might even have a spiritual effect. Imam Ahmad said, the hearts find comfort and are softened by eating halal. And we have the example of Imam al-Manawi. Like seriously, if we, Imam al-Manawi, when he moved to a place

**[37:18]** that was away from his own family farm, he would refuse to eat the food except for what his father sent him. Like he was that scrupulous. And look at us now. Juju brings up a good point about the convenience versus inconvenience. Yes, most of what we do in America,

**[37:36]** they teach us to choose based off of, off of convenience. And if you choose what's based off of convenience, you're going to have a very, very, you know, very, very precarious set of practices that you're doing.

**[37:52]** Tamiz gave his fatwa. He says voting is haram. Masha'Allah. Here comes the big Shaykh. Thank you. Samiha says the Black Americans act. Activists I follow have been showing support towards third parties and Kamala has been polling low among younger Black Americans, less than Biden and Hillary. Yeah, and there is data that we're going to release soon with Yaqeen Institute that shows that among Black Muslim voters as well, Harris polls very poorly, unfavorably.

**[38:17]** Like, so sometimes people attempt to speak for an entire community and they put themselves up as we are the spokesman for this community or that community, when in reality, the reality might be a little bit different. MFB says, if we don't vote for Harris, what is the possibility that Trump will win? And would it be worse for him to win? Yeah, I mean, he's pretty, that pretty much almost guarantees that he will win.

**[38:40]** Would it be worse for him to win? I mean, this is all speculative. Like there are scenarios in which it's worse. There are scenarios in which it's better. We don't know. And Mubeen Vaid has a really good, um, Substack article about this. He has a Substack called Occasional Reflections where he plays out a couple of scenarios. It's not always true that the most aggressive and belligerent person results in a worse situation.

**[39:03]** Sometimes, and we've seen this in the last 11 months, that when an arrogant leader overplays their hand, it can actually create more blowback and more opposition than if somebody who smiles in your face. And that's not a clear, you know, it's, it's not clear one way or the other. No one has a crystal ball, so to speak. No one knows the future. Um, but those things are, it's not, this type of forecasting is not straightforward.

**[39:27]** Anybody who's saying it's going to be worse, it's going to be better. This is not a straightforward thing to get into. And anybody who portrays it as a straightforward thing is lying to you. Clyde Donovan says, what's your opinion on the lesser of two evils argument? It's not a good one. I understand that voting third party is a good long-term play. I know voting blue wouldn't magically fix everything, but what can we do?

**[39:48]** I think, as I said before, that we have to look long-term and stop being, um, threatened by the carrot or the stick right in front of us, that the Muslims have a strategic interest in reforming campaign finance to take away the power of AIPAC and Israeli lobby. We have a strategic interest in breaking the two-party monopoly, right? That gives us horrible, horrible, horrible choices. Um, and we need to, our votes need to reflect that strategy.

**[40:13]** So J L asks a question, based on your info, who do the Palestinians and other victims of oppression within the Ummah want us to vote for? Well, here, I'm going to say two things. One, Jay, is that it's not that simple because you will find the Palestinian people or oppressed people with all sorts of different opinions.

**[40:35]** Some of those opinions are good and some of them are bad. There are people who are oppressed who have bad opinions, right? That this doesn't make you sacred. This is one of the things that we've gotten from leftist politics. That is not true. Okay. That you can be oppressed and be horribly wrong. Okay. About stuff. Um, so that's one. Number two is that I would encourage you to look at the, uh, the late Rifaat Al-Arir and what he said about it.

**[40:59]** Okay. Rahimahullah. Sa'ada. Cause he had some of the most insightful, uh, opinions before he was martyred. I agree with MB that election day needs to be absolutely, absolutely has to be understood as a referendum on Palestine.

**[41:15]** We can't let any other issue take center stage. Al-Barakah publication says, why aren't Muslim politicians rising up? I'll say which ones, uh, make your own party and contest for elections. Yeah. I think that that's where we're headed. I think that that's where we're headed, but we're not there to be frank.

**[41:33]** If you were to look at the average or the pool of Muslim politicians that we have, you wouldn't expect that type of behavior from them. We need a whole new class of people, a whole new way of approaching this thing.

**[41:55]** Okay. Yeah. Sa'ada you are late. Better late than never. We're still on questions. Uh, Salam, the email, the, just ask your question here. I just don't see your question. Yes, that is true. Ahmad Chaudry. Israeli lobby has also bought local representatives. They're up and down.

**[42:23]** Sally cyber. What do you mean? So now I'm off to law. Who am I voting for? Justice wants to know. Am I allowed to say that on the Afghan program? Who am I voting for? I mean, you also know who I'm voting for already. Yeah. Sa'ada. Sa'ada says regarding Jill Stein, I've seen Syrians say that she's a BDS and that it would be foolish for Muslims to vote for her. I've seen Syrians say both. There are Syrians that have said that she's a BDS. There's Syrians who say that that's not true, that she was misinformed and she's retracted and she's learning.

**[42:57]** Um, you know, so again, you can't like fetishize what Syrians say because there's, they're going to be all over the place. Okay. But there are concerns. And if Syrian Syrians and Syrian Americans have, um, second thoughts and hesitation about voting for her because of her history, then that's, that's not cool. You know, that's understandable. Totally. A hundred percent.

**[43:19]** Sergio says, what is the halal way to vote in US? I'm a new Muslim. I don't know who to vote for in line with the faith. Well, it's not a straightforward question, Sergio. First of all, welcome to the faith from your brother in Islam. Also a convert. It's not so straightforward. Ask your heart, ask Allah to guide you and do, don't be persuaded by these sort of like non-Islamic arguments, like lesser of two evils or what if this, or what if that, try to vote your conscience, try to do the best that you can.

**[43:48]** Ooh, ooh. Soraya says, agree with the brother in Georgia. No peace, no peace is also about supporting all our pro-ceasefire allies, state reps and senators, e.g. Yes, we're naming names. Okay. We'll leave that there. We'll leave that there.

**[44:18]** Javi's telling me to come to Australia. Yeah, I know it's been in the works for a while. Insha'Allah. A. Caldori says, and now you see these Muslim leaders like Keith Ellison coming out to defend Kamala and attack Stein a hundred percent. Yep. They're tap dancing.

**[44:38]** Yeah, I'm going to disagree with that justice of justice says, I say, Muslims just sit back and watch the West fall. They are destroying themselves. Okay, Habibi. But like, if I'm a convert and we've got converts all up and down on this program in this chat, I mean, where are we going to go?

**[44:56]** Habibi, right. We're from here. The Arab world doesn't give citizenship. Okay. It's like, you know, this is dichotomous thinking. I see that this is Da'wah. And I'm glad that you brought this up because this has to do with the Hijra conversation. A lot of people too, they go right to, oh, time for Hijra, time for Hijra.

**[45:13]** Y'all know that that's only one opinion from the ulama, right? When you talk about the classical fiqh on whether to make Hijra or not. Some of the madhabs, they advocated for, yes, like you, when it becomes sort of negative or whatever, you pick up and you leave, assuming that you have some place to go, which is not the reality of converts.

**[45:35]** But the other, the other is the Shafi'i and the Hanafi, right? Would say that, no, you are ribat. What you're doing is Da'wah and ribat. And you actually have a duty to stay and to try your best and to make the best out of it. So it's not, it's not a, it's not a clear thing.

**[45:52]** Watermelon asks, did Imam Tom celebrate Mawlid? Oh man, watermelon, you're trying to get me in trouble. Listen, if you want to know, if you want to know a balanced position on the Mawlid and all of what it could mean, because here's the thing, guys, we get triggered, we get triggered by names and terminologies. Somebody says Mawlid, they understand one thing. Some, another person says Mawlid, they understand another thing. Okay. You have to get into the substance of what you're referring to.

**[46:32]** If I handed you this cup and I said, here, drink this water, but it's actually khamr. It's actually alcohol. Then it doesn't matter what I call it. It's haram. Okay. Now, if I hand you this cup and there's water inside of it, I say, here, take a swig of this whiskey. And you look inside and it's water. Did the fact that I call it whiskey make it haram? No, it's permissible. So we have to get past labels and look at the reality of things, the substance of things. Okay.

**[47:01]** And if you want the most balanced and thorough opinion on the Mawlid, you can go to the Mauritanian Shaykh, Ad-Dudu. He has a very, very clear tafsil. Shaykh Ad-Dudu has a very, very clear tafsil about all the things that would make it haram and all the things that would make it maybe not haram. So you should look into that.

**[47:25]** Okay. I do agree, though, Fiona, that one of the, I mean, there's no doubt that historically the Mawlid was started as a response to the Christians and how they celebrate the birth of 'Isa, alayhi assalam.

**[47:43]** Right. So that's, especially for converts, that can be a very uncomfortable thing. Like we just left that. All right. I was like, now you want us to celebrate that. Victorious Triscilla, welcome back to the program.

**[47:59]** Okay. Masha'Allah. We've got a lot of good conversation. We've been in this an hour, folks. We haven't even gotten the main course. Seamus asks, are you familiar with Jan Islam's work on politics and Islam?

**[48:17]** Nope. Not familiar. Oh, wait a second. He's on Twitter, correct? I've heard of him, but I know I'm not familiar. Not familiar. I agree. T-O-P-E-N-T. We should be able to say majority of us are employed by Muslims.

**[48:35]** That's power right there. 100%. We need to stop this mentality that we're just going to be employees. We need to start running things, right? Employing our own. That's power. 100%. Val Farrujia says, if it's Italian pronunciation, I'm going Farrujia.

**[48:58]** I'm a new Muslim and I want to wear hijab, but I live in a tiny community and will be considered an example of a Muslim woman to many uneducated people. Should I do that anyway? I don't know what to do. I mean, listen, I mean, what's the bad? I don't see the bad part here. I was expecting to say, but you're going to be threatened or you're going to

**[49:15]** have physical harm that you're running into. The fact that you're an example of a Muslim woman to many uneducated people might be the start of a lot of khair, might be the start of a lot of good. That they need to see Val, I'm assuming is short for maybe Valerie or something like that. They need to see that Tom and Valerie are Muslims, not just Mohammed and

**[49:32]** Fatima and Hind, with all due respect to them. That they need to see that Islam is not just some sort of foreign force, that it's also something that belongs here. In your community.

**[49:54]** Sa'ada says, do you see Muslims in the West going away from identity politics or getting immersed in it even more? I see a crucial opportunity here, Sa'ada, because we've been burnt by identity politics so much. And we have started to see, especially on the Palestinian issue, how identity politics are used against us.

**[50:10]** So I wanted to throw what Soraya said in conversation with that. Because just because you have a representative who's a Palestinian and has a hijab and is a Muslim, it doesn't guarantee anything. Right? Qaroon, guys, remember, remember who was Qaroon in Surat Al-Qasas?

**[50:26]** It was the first cousin of Musa, alayhi assalam. Ibn Kathir says it in his tafsir. Or as they say, all skin folk ain't kin folk. The people can check all the boxes on your identity politics. It's about are they for the truth or not? We have seen situations in which a non-Muslim, a kafir, is actually more

**[50:45]** on the side of truth than some of the Muslims or the Muslim representatives or some of the people who put them forth, put themselves forth, rather. So we need to be very careful not to get duped by the identity politics. We need to pay attention to the substance of the thing.

**[51:08]** Yeah, 100%. So Zinfinite brings up a good point.

**[51:24]** We live in a day and age where our scholars are making sodomy permissible. Alhamdulillah, I'd say that that's a bit of exaggeration. That's still seen as way outside the mainstream. There have been a couple people that have tried to do it, but they're not considered part of the mainstream whatsoever.

**[51:39]** But the general sort of gist is true, that people will try to make permissible anything. So if your attitude towards society is only to find a way to make it permissible, you're going to end up with no deen very, very soon.

**[52:01]** Hey, here we go. E salute famille. I really appreciate this. Don't celebrate Mawlid if you think it's bid'ah. Celebrate Mawlid if you think it's not. Just don't push your opinion on others. Move on. There is a bigger issue to deal with instead of the Mawlid.

**[52:16]** Yes, it is khilaf sa'ir. That's the fancy term for it within fiqh, that it is a valid difference of opinion. And so if it's a valid difference of opinion, you have perfect license to act on what opinion you think is correct,

**[52:31]** but you don't have to force the rest of the Ummah to follow your opinion. I agree, Sa'ada. I would rather Western hegemony fall and that the Western governments focus on their own nation

**[52:48]** and help improve the lives of their own people. And this is what the people who are the neocons and the neoliberals don't understand, who thinks that people like me are just like anti-American or this or that. No, I want the US government to just take care of its own territory. I don't want military bases all over the world.

**[53:04]** I don't want the United States interfering in elections in Muslim countries. I don't want the United States taking out foreign leaders through CIA coups and stuff like that. I want the United States government to focus on its own people. Right? That's not a crazy thing or an unjust thing to ask.

**[53:27]** Appreciate all the conversation, everybody. Masha'Allah, we got a lot of good stuff flying around. Sa'ada, good point. Differences of opinion from what I've heard and the ones who do it.

**[53:43]** Praise the Prophet, alayhi assalam, in a halal way, like nasheed, sirah, du'a, etc. No free mixing, no musical instruments. Exactly. No dancing. That's what I mean when we have to go into the substance of a thing. Because if someone says Mawlid and they think the worst possible thing that they've ever seen called Mawlid,

**[54:01]** with dancing and musical instruments and free mixing and all this other stuff, they're like, whoa, that's very extreme. But if it's something that is, yeah, a bunch of dudes in the masjid just singing the nasheeds and learning about the sirah of the Prophet, alayhi assalam,

**[54:16]** is that really that bad? Right? So we have to understand. Well, there's quite a lot going on. Here we go. We're talking about all the hard stuff.

**[54:34]** You're welcome, Val. Hopefully it was beneficial. Courtney G's up in here. Masha'Allah. Eh Qadri, that's true. That's true, Eh Qadri. That's true, Eh Qadri. You're right about that, about the attack on Jill Stein.

**[55:05]** I'm starting to think we might not get through all these comments. Which is a welcomed barrier to break.

**[55:24]** All right, Bismillah. Yeah, let's switch it up here. Let's go to our current events. We got a lot of stuff to get through. It's already a packed show, and you guys are making it poppin', which I appreciate in the chat. First up, we said we were going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. We've got exploding pagers. La ilaha illallah.

**[55:40]** Okay, so what happened was just yesterday, hundreds of pagers that were used by Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously all across Lebanon. They killed at least 12 people, injuring over 3,000. And another round happening today.

**[55:55]** They were in Beirut, in southern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, lots of different places. Now, there were not just fighters that were affected by this. There were innocent children. This was something that was major.

**[56:10]** Imagine all the people who carry around these devices, and all of a sudden, they explode on you. Now, exactly what was going on, it was later uncovered that Israel basically intercepted these shipments, that they knew that this was the type of device that they used, and they planted explosives. Because there was a lot of panic at first about, well, do they really have the ability to hack into your phones?

**[56:30]** Can they make my phone explode? Can they make your phone explode? Right? It's like that's pretty scary to think. But this is also sort of a trend, and it links up with our second topic, which is about the perception of power is more powerful than even your actual power sometimes.

**[56:50]** So, of course, Israel would like people to think that it can hack into any one of your phones and make it explode whenever it wanted to. Now, on the flip side of this, what happened earlier on the week, let's go to it guys. The Houthis from Yemen launched a hypersonic missile, okay, traveled

**[57:10]** over 2,000 kilometers, that's over 1,000 miles, in just 11 minutes to target a military position in occupied Palestine, and it hit. So this is wild because if you know anything about how Israel's projected power rests on

**[57:26]** part of its sense of invincibility, okay, the Iron Dome, and this, that, and the third, and you've got U.S. battleships off shore, sort of with Tomahawk missiles and with other things that are ready to intercept. So Israel really relies on this perception of you can't touch it, that no matter what

**[57:47]** you do, like when Iran tried to fire missiles at Israel, you've got Jordan sending up missiles, and you've got other, all the nations around it that have normalized with it, working to defend it, this idea of being untouchable. So this is a very, very old tactic of Israel, trying to both, in the one sense with the

**[58:06]** pagers, trying to seem like they can strike anywhere, anyone, at any time, and on the other hand seeming like they are untouchable. And these perceptions that they have sought to create are sort of the basis of their perceived power. Now what's significant about the Houthi action is that similar to other actions, it demonstrates

**[58:28]** that that's just the perception, that in fact that Israel is much more vulnerable than it would like other people to believe, obviously, because if people believed it was vulnerable, then they would be more willing to attack it, or to defend themselves in many scenarios.

**[58:43]** And so we see how there's always this chess match going on, there's always this chess match going on, and this is something that we actually get from our own tradition when it comes to power and the perception of power. Recall that after the Battle of Uhud, Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), the first thing that

**[59:01]** he did, even though they had suffered many casualties and were not in a state of soundness, or of health, or of comfort, he ordered them to rally and he ordered them to march. He ordered them to march onto, and to pursue the enemy into the desert, even though they

**[59:19]** technically might have, some people say they lost Uhud, some people say it was a draw. Either way, it's very counterintuitive to imagine that you would then go after the same enemy that you almost lost to or almost were defeated by. But he did it because he wanted to ensure that they did not come back.

**[59:35]** So it was a bluff. Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), he pursued them in the desert so that they would think that he had reinforcements. And he brought fresh legs and that they were going to now fight them again. And sure enough, this is exactly what happened. The Quraysh stopped outside of the city, outside of Medina.

**[59:54]** And they said, wait a second, why are we retreating? We could have gone back and finished the job. And then their scouts detected that the Muslims were actually coming after them. And they said, whoa, wait a second, Muhammad has reinforcements. Let's go back to Mecca. Let's retreat all the way.

**[1:00:10]** So that was the idea about the perception of power, that the perception of power is often more important than real power itself. And that this is something Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) understood perfectly and something that is always being negotiated and jockeyed around in the unfolding conflicts that are going

**[1:00:28]** on in the Middle East. The second thing we have, or the third thing we have, former President Donald Trump, there was an assassination attempt against him this past week.

**[1:00:43]** A lot of speculation as to the person who was the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh. He had a rifle equipped with a scope. He was found with it and he had been lurking in the area for about 12 hours before one of the Secret Service agents found him.

**[1:00:59]** Now, why is this weird? Because Trump was actually not planning on being there that day, that he decided to go golfing and it was very last minute. So people are wondering now about security. Is this something that is, there's someone on the inside giving information.

**[1:01:14]** This is something that is very, very unsettling for many people. But one of the things that I'd like to highlight here is that living in a time of perhaps unprecedented political violence in the United States, and we could argue that point, you could argue that it's not unprecedented, but certainly it's not typical to see presidential candidates

**[1:01:35]** having their lives threatened with this regularity. And we have to, and Trump was very, very explicit when he blamed the Democratic Party and especially sitting president Joe Biden for using incendiary rhetoric that would maybe inspire people to

**[1:01:54]** try to do such a thing. And it's definitely true that we see rhetoric from both sides that is very, very easily relates to violence. And that there has been an increase in this type of political violence that either side,

**[1:02:11]** when you undermine the rules, when you undermine the legitimacy of the other side, you create the possibility for violence and things spinning out of control. Right? And this is a huge problem. This is a huge problem when it comes to governance and rulership that is not done by righteous

**[1:02:32]** people that if you want, perhaps even more important, we could debate that. Then the system, the system is important. We won't say that, but also important is the morality of the people who make up that system.

**[1:02:47]** That when the righteous rule, when the righteous have power, everything in the world is taken care of at least to the best of our abilities. However, when the wicked run the world, when the wicked are in power, everybody suffers. And this is something that Allah (ﷻ) actually references in the Qur'an.

**[1:03:05]** If we can bring it up guys in Surah Al-Hajj, I believe, right? Okay. To the end of the verse, he says, وَلَوْ لَا دَفْعُ اللَّهِ النَّاسَ بَعْضَهُمْ بِبَعْضٍ لَهُدِّمَتْ صَوَامِعُ وَبِيَعٌ وَصَلَوَاتٌ وَمَسَاجِدُ يُذْكَرُ

**[1:03:21]** فِيهَا اسْمُ اللَّهِ كَثِيرًا Okay. So we see that this is a really, really important point, but that's okay. That we see that this is a really critical point that the righteous have a mandate to

**[1:03:36]** rule. The righteous have a mandate to organize society and to lead. Somebody has to lead at the end of the day. And if the righteous people don't lead, then it's going to be left to everybody else.

**[1:03:51]** Moving on. What else we got? We have another individual setting themselves on fire outside of an Israeli consulate, this time in Boston. Matt Nelson, September 11th, no less, on the anniversary of September 11th attacks outside

**[1:04:10]** of the Israeli consulate, he set himself on fire because of Israel's actions in Gaza and the US support for that war. He was burned over 70% of his body. He was rushed to the hospital. This is the third self-immolation in this past year.

**[1:04:26]** Now let's just skip, guys. Let's skip over his clip, but let's go to how the portrayals from the news differ. Okay, very good.

**[1:04:44]** So we see that this is getting a little bit of coverage, but not really very much coverage. Let's move on. Let's keep going. We've got also this past week, the ministry of health in Gaza has just published a 649

**[1:05:01]** page document with the name, age, gender, and ID number of every Palestinian killed in Gaza from October 7th to October 31st. And that info has for over 34 out of 40,000. The first 14 pages are just those that are ages aged zero under one years old.

**[1:05:21]** So unfortunately we see, but not surprisingly, and this is going to run us into our later sort of coverage of the disgraceful hearing that happened this morning where Palestinians having to prove that they deserve to live, having to prove that they deserve to live

**[1:05:40]** in their own land, and they even have to prove that they were murdered. The Palestinians being systematically dehumanized, ignored and erased at every single opportunity and stage. Now before we get to covering that hearing, we have some polling that's come in in the

**[1:05:56]** last week. We'll skip to that folks. Jill Stein is ahead when it comes to polling, Muslim American voters. We had numbers come in from CAIR, numbers come in from Pew. We've got numbers come in also from Yafina Studio as well that we haven't published yet. Right.

**[1:06:11]** But they're all saying the same thing, that Stein is polling better than Harris within the Muslim American community. And that's a big deal. It's a big enough deal that the Democrats are starting to panic. We've seen the attacks on Jill Stein and third party in general start to escalate, whether

**[1:06:28]** it's from the progressive left or the quote unquote progressive left, such as AOC and the squad. We've seen Keith Ellison. We've seen local people, local representatives or state representatives all attack third parties and specifically Jill Stein. We even saw Mehdi Hassan the other day, who gave an interview, Jill Stein and her running

**[1:06:51]** mate Butch Ware and hammer Jill Stein on the Syria issue and on Russia, which in and of itself is not a problem. But Mehdi, if you have a big problem with war criminals, then why would you suggest that we vote for a war criminal?

**[1:07:07]** How do you compare those two things? If you are against someone who supports a war criminal, why are you calling for the Muslims to vote for a war criminal? Because Harris is a war criminal. This happened on her watch as well. And Trump, probably sure, put him in there too.

**[1:07:25]** So don't act like you care about supporting war criminals when you yourself are not ready to use that term for Biden or for Harris. And we remember that Mehdi Hassan did not abandon Joe Biden as the presidential nominee

**[1:07:40]** for the next election until his debate. The loss of Palestinian life was not enough for him. Anyway, we digress. So we see projections for the third party vote share and especially in Michigan. Listen, the numbers are very clear.

**[1:07:55]** Harris has nine scenarios in which she wins. She has nine pathways to getting the electoral college votes that she needs to win. Six out of those nine scenarios involve Michigan. Michigan is by far the most crucial state in the upcoming election.

**[1:08:11]** Don't let anyone tell you any different, though the other states are important as well. But she is getting walloped in Michigan when it comes to support. That the share of the vote that Muslims are tired of it. Muslims are tired of having to choose the lesser of two evils. We're tired of being told, well, if you don't vote for me, then you're going to have someone

**[1:08:29]** worse over here. We're tired of the fear politics. We're tired of the cynicism. We're tired of the fakeness. Muslims are tired of being lied to. They're tired of being ignored. The Democratic Party has just marched on with its policies as normal and acted as if we're stupid enough to think that just once in a while saying, oh, we're so sorry for all these

**[1:08:48]** tragic deaths. So we wonder how they're happening. I wonder who could be supporting these tragic deaths or causing them to happen. As if we're stupid. So we're seeing that this is definitely showing up in the polling data. Michigan, to a less extent Arizona, but even Arizona, she's pulling well.

**[1:09:05]** Pennsylvania, she's pulling well. So this is a big deal. The other numbers we have from CAIR, let's say that shows that Stein is leading Harris in three key swing states in Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Her lead is the biggest in Wisconsin and then in Michigan, but also significant in Arizona.

**[1:09:25]** Nationally, it seems to be a tie. If you average out all the states, it's 29 percent, 29 percent between Harris and Stein, which shows a significant development.

**[1:09:41]** 16.5 percent of Muslim voters are polled as being undecided, which is also significant. That 16 percent has to make up its mind and decide what it's going to do. Trying to run through the numbers here.

**[1:09:57]** So the main takeaway is that Muslims are fed up. We're fed up with the bad options that are given to us. We're fed up voting for people that we despise. We're fed up not voting on principle. And this election very much is about Gaza. As the Yaqeen data will show when we come out with it, Muslims in America are voting

**[1:10:16]** on the Gaza issue and they are voting informed by the Gaza issue. Next thing we have. All right. We've got Biden and Harris statements on Ayşanur Ezgi Ege, which are very disappointing and very belated.

**[1:10:31]** OK, the martyr that we discussed last week, Turkish-American from Seattle area. Now, we finally saw some very, very belated words from the president, but we see a lot

**[1:10:50]** of hedging and a lot of relying on Israel to investigate itself, as it always has. Biden said specifically that he thought that there was like a ricochet or something like this, which is completely contradicting the firsthand eyewitness accounts of what happened

**[1:11:05]** on that day when she was martyred. And there's calls for accountability, very belated calls for accountability. And Israel must do more. Israel must do more. Yeah, Habibi. Yeah, Shaykh Biden. You're the one giving them the weapons. You're the one giving them the bullets.

**[1:11:21]** You're the one sending them everything. What are you talking about? They need to do more. You need to do more. You need to do more to cut off the funding, to cut off the military support for a quote unquote ally that has demonstrated that it has no hesitation whatsoever to gun down Americans

**[1:11:39]** or anybody else to destroy the entire world. To destroy the entire world just to pursue its own agenda. Right. The absolute worst ally you could ask for just to use a real politic sort of lens for a second.

**[1:11:55]** Okay. Well, that being said, we have some different. Do we have anything else on? Yes. Okay. Did the U.S. forces challenge Israel's account of the U.S. activist killing? Big surprise there. Did Israel look at this? Mashallah. Did Israeli forces kill American Turkish activist Ayşanur Ege intentionally?

**[1:12:13]** Okay. First of all, you're making her foreign. All right. By doing that. And second of all, as a question, there's no doubt. There's no doubt. Very good. What else we got? Is that all we have on this? We ready to go to the trial?

**[1:12:29]** I call it a trial because it was a trial. It's supposed to be a hearing. All right, let's go. So we've got this absolute travesty, miscarriage of justice this morning. And as I mentioned, you know, so Imam Omar Suleiman and I were texting back and forth while it was going on because

**[1:12:47]** he was there. Yeah, he was there. And it was absolutely despicable, the sorts of things that went down. Let's take a look and listen. You support Hezbollah, don't you?

**[1:13:02]** Again, I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing, Senator. You have Arab American constituents that you represent in your great state. I understand that. But my time is limited and I apologize, but is that a yes or a no?

**[1:13:19]** Yes or no question to do I support Hezbollah? The answer is I don't support violence, whether it's Hezbollah, Hamas or any other entity that invokes it. You can't bring yourself to say no, can you? No, I can say no. I can say yes. What I can say is the line of questioning. Do you support or oppose Iran and their hatred of Jews?

**[1:13:38]** Again, I'm going to emphasize Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, none of them is going to this discussion. You can't bring yourself to say no. Sir, I don't support. It's real simple. Excuse me. I'm going to if I may. As a Muslim woman, as a Muslim woman, sir, I'm going to tell you I do not support Iran.

**[1:13:54]** But what I will tell you is that this conversation. I'm running out of time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You called our decision to cut funding. You called our decision to cut funds. Well, first, what's the United Nations Relief and Works Agency?

**[1:14:13]** It's UNRWA, which is the institution that exists to provide services and aid to the nearly six million Palestinian refugees. And you called our decision to cut funding for them, quote, an incredible moral failure,

**[1:14:29]** That is absolutely correct. But again, I would suggest that conversation is about foreign policy. And we did that because nine UNRWA staff members were fired for actually helping Hamas on October 7th. Isn't that the case? I don't believe that that's correct.

**[1:14:46]** Let me ask you one more time. You support Hamas, don't you? You support UNRWA and Hamas, don't you? Sir. I think it's exceptionally disappointing that you're looking at an Arab American witness

**[1:15:02]** before you and saying you support Hamas. You know what's disappointing to me? I do not support Hamas. You can't bring yourself to say you don't support Hamas. You can't bring yourself to say you don't support UNRWA. You don't support Hamas. You don't support Hezbollah. I was very clear in my support for UNRWA. You don't support Hezbollah. I oppose.

**[1:15:17]** You should hide your head in a bag. So absolutely ridiculous scene. And in the crowd was the mother of Wadiyah, the six year old boy who was stabbed 27 times

**[1:15:34]** and murdered in an obvious hate crime. But this individual, this Shaytan knows exactly what he's doing. This Kennedy and the sister who was responding to him was probably a little bit too polite.

**[1:15:49]** But what should have been said to him is how much did AIPAC pay you to say this? How much did AIPAC pay you to ask these questions? That he knew exactly what he was doing. It didn't matter how much she said to disavow this group and disavow that group,

**[1:16:05]** she is always going to be criminalized and securitized because this person, look at that face, that person is a person that is bought by a foreign entity. And it's always the people that are bought by foreign entities that are accusing you of being under the influence

**[1:16:20]** of a foreign entity. Every accusation is a confession as we've learned the last 11 months. And absolute travesty, a travesty, when we look at all of the hand-wringing that has been going on about supposed antisemitism

**[1:16:36]** going on college campuses across the United States, when this antisemitism, I'm only putting it in quotes because we're talking about protesting in support of Palestine, which is being conflated with antisemitism, in which Jews themselves are participating.

**[1:16:55]** And this is dealt with with every sense of gravity and graveness and seriousness when it comes before the Congress. And yet when the shoe is on the other foot, we see how things go down. That it is not an exaggeration to say

**[1:17:10]** that the United States government to a large extent is occupied by foreign interests, is occupied by Israeli interests, and that those interests buy American politicians and they produce situations like this.

**[1:17:28]** And if the American people think that it's only going to be the Muslims that are going to catch the brunt of this, then in time, I think it will show that it will be more than that. Very, very upsetting.

**[1:17:47]** Let's take a second and go through the comments real quick. I know you've had a lot to say. And then we'll circle back to our next segment here.

**[1:18:02]** Sada asks, what do you think of the slow turn to perceiving China as an ally, especially among Muslim countries when what they're doing when it comes to injustice to the Uyghurs? That's a very important question and a very, very important thing to keep in mind. A lot of people, and this goes back to our idea

**[1:18:18]** about letting the West fall, et cetera, et cetera, which is quixotic. I think you guys are being simplistic when you're talking in those terms. And Sami Hamdi has said this in his talks as well. It's not logically sound to assume that a fall of Western hegemony

**[1:18:35]** automatically results in better situations for the Muslims. There are scenarios in which it's worse. There are scenarios in which it's the same, but different. There are scenarios in which it's better. Rather than allow yourself to go down this sort of escapist thinking and think that, oh, well, we just have to watch

**[1:18:52]** as this falls and then we'll be ascendant or whatever. No, it's not. You have to always look for what you can do and your opportunities to build power. That is 100% true. So there's no guarantee whatsoever that China would be a better ally or a better protector, a better hegemon

**[1:19:09]** than the United States. In fact, they might be worse. We don't know, right? So all of that needs to be taken into account when we're making political calculus and decisions.

**[1:19:38]** Let's see what else we got. A lot of people, a lot of good comments. Okay, let's see what else we got. Salmon roll. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome back.

**[1:20:01]** Mariam asks, why the assassination attempts now? Somebody is trying to utilize the instability and chaos in the political scene for ulterior motives. Muslims must align and unite now more than ever. Definitely seems that there's some major, major, major shifts are happening.

**[1:20:16]** And we really, really need to get our act together. If we don't, it's really gonna be a problem. 100% AQadri, if Stein didn't have momentum, the Dems wouldn't be panicking.

**[1:20:31]** You know that you hurt them when they start to address you and attack you, which is why I was happy to see myself on the Israeli post. I mean, sorry, the New York Post. And Valerie, you're 100% right. That was literally, as Imam Omar Suleiman

**[1:20:46]** pointed out in his interview, it was an act of hate speech that was happening at a hearing on hate speech. Subhan'Allah. But we shouldn't be too surprised. We shouldn't be too surprised because Zionism and other forces have created the dispensability and the killability

**[1:21:05]** of and the inhumanity of Muslims and Arabs in order to make the Zionist project possible and the sort of American Empire project when it comes to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq possible, that the bearded guy with a turban

**[1:21:20]** is not considered fully human. You pick up that rock and you say Allahu Akbar and you're not considered fully human. All of a sudden, you become eligible to get droned out of existence by huge weapons and bombs and state-of-the-art sort of weaponry, that that is enough to disqualify you from humanity

**[1:21:39]** in this particular time in which we live. And that's what we're up against. Interconnected Revert, which is a funny username, says, seems like a matter of time before nations come together to retaliate against Israel,

**[1:21:56]** at which point USA will send our young men and women to go do their dirty work. Well, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see about that, I guess. There are situations in which you could imagine that happening, and then there are situations

**[1:22:12]** which you can't. Rhonda Blackston is 100% right. I'm glad you said that, because Kamala stated she would support Israel. Yeah, I mean, she told us who she is.

**[1:22:28]** Saud 100% right, tired of proving we're not terrorists. The idea of a terrorist, Saud, was invented for us, not for anybody else. People point out this all the time. Why don't white Christians or Christian nationalists or this group or the KKK, why isn't the KKK a terrorist group?

**[1:22:44]** Because the idea of terrorism was invented. The word was coined to make you and me seem like criminals and dangerous and violent. That's it, period, right? And so that's what's there. As long as that's going to be the way the law works, we need to find a way to dismantle that thinking

**[1:23:02]** and that language and that law. Okay. Mariam asks, why are some Muslims so attached to the Democratic Party? Victory isn't linked to personalities, but value. Whoever is not willing to carry our demands

**[1:23:17]** is simply replaceable. Last sentence is very powerful, I appreciate that. I think there's a lot of reasons. Some people, it's a conflict of interest. They have their careers or their organizations or even their nonprofits are tied into the Democratic Party's sort of funnel and tentacles of funding.

**[1:23:33]** That definitely exists. Other people are just duped. They really believe that those few breadcrumbs that they throw to us once in a while, that make us think that they actually care about us or that they actually want to see us succeed or represented, or they're under the delusion that

**[1:23:50]** if we just get enough representation on the inside, that somehow it's going to change. Yeah, a hundred percent, Rhonda. Twice criminalized, Black and Muslim.

**[1:24:06]** Yeah, no, Al-Qadri, you can definitely tell the tenor in which people approach an interview, right? Who gets the kid gloves and who gets the teeth? A hundred percent. Yeah.

**[1:24:33]** May Allah help you. Baarak Allahu feek. Baarak Allahu feek. May Allah bless you. Yeah. I do agree with that, Juju. I do think Democrats underestimate

**[1:24:49]** the Muslims' connection to the Ummah. They think that we only think, they didn't think that Gaza and Palestine would be this big of a deal to us. They underestimated that. They definitely, I think, underestimated that.

**[1:25:09]** Yeah, that's the thing. Al-Qadri points out, someone said, Kamala saying we need a deal, but can't make it happen. Makes it seem like she and the U.S. are weak and can't get the government of 7 million to do what they want. No, that's a hundred percent false. They don't want to stop funding Israel

**[1:25:25]** because it's a racket. Like, funding Israel, all of the tech, all of the computer chips, all of the weapons, it's a racket. And it's a very lucrative racket for the people who are in on it, right? And so there's this like, oh man, we wish that they would stop. You're the ones that get to decide

**[1:25:42]** whether they stop or not. Just stop sending the weapons. Yeah, we were all angry, Valerie, a hundred percent.

**[1:26:01]** It was like listening to a Piers Morgan. It was like Piers Morgan was, was there. Now, Valerie brings up an interesting point. He should be accountable for his hate speech.

**[1:26:16]** I agree, but one of the problems that we run into and that we face in the Muslim American community, and this is a real issue that we have to think our way through, is that when we strengthen the vehicle of hate speech, we know that that vehicle has been hijacked and used by Zionists.

**[1:26:31]** They're trying to conflate criticism of Israel with hate speech and antisemitism. And so whenever we strengthen a particular vehicle or a legal discourse or something like that, we have to consider also the ways in which it can be used against us, which is unfortunate that we have to think that way,

**[1:26:50]** but it's reality. Yes, MB, a hundred percent. Compare that to how they, the same way they question the leaders of the universities.

**[1:27:05]** But they will be questioned by Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, if that gives us a little bit of solace. Imagine them being questioned by Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, with fire under their feet.

**[1:27:28]** We know Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, told us something very important, and we can bring this up, guys. Do we have the ayah? Yes, we do. Sidi Fatiha. Welcome to the program. Good to have you back. Brings up a good point. Anything that is on camera,

**[1:27:43]** it's only used for public opinion. So it's a show, right? He knows. He's not really looking for a real response. This applies to both sides. Answering the question doesn't matter anymore. He's not listening. He's performing, okay? He's performing. I a hundred percent agree with that. All right, go for it.

**[1:27:59]** Sorry about that, guys. So Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, says in the Qur'an, it's Surah Ali 'Imran. La tubtalawunna fee amwalikum wa anfusikum wa latasma'unna mina allatheena ootul kitaaba min qablikum wa mina allatheena ashraqu adhan kathira

**[1:28:15]** You will certainly be tested in your possessions and yourselves. And you will surely hear from those who have been given the scripture before you and from those who associate others with Allah, abuse, much abuse. You will hear lots of abuse from them. And what we just heard was abuse. Make no mistake. wa in tasbiru wa tattaqoo fa inna dhalika min azmi al-umur

**[1:28:33]** But if you are patient and fear Allah, then it will be, this will be something of determination. Alhamdulillah. That it will take determination to do it, and it will increase us in determination.

**[1:28:49]** Yes, a hundred percent, they are bullies. Attica. Buongiorno. Sto bene, grazie. That's true, Musa. Musa Blue says, Black Americans have faced this racist treatment for years. That's true, a hundred percent.

**[1:29:22]** I like that we got trolls that shows that we're making gains. Alhamdulillah. Okay, Jane Da Silva. Because somebody asked me this earlier, that there's a website by Code Pink that lists how much each person gets accepted from AIPAC.

**[1:29:39]** That's useful. That is useful. Somebody's saying that, no, let's just leave it down there. It's not even worth it. There is nothing in history, in human history, like the chattel slavery

**[1:29:54]** of the North Atlantic slave trade. There's nothing. So, I mean, if you talk about slavery in Islam or slavery as practiced in Arabia, you shouldn't call it the same word. It's something entirely different. The chattel slavery that was practiced in the United States, in the Americas,

**[1:30:09]** was one of the most inhuman things that was ever practiced on any group of people in the history of humanity. And you can tell a tree by its fruits. You can tell a tree by its fruits. Okay, first of all, the slavery was racialized, which wasn't how it happened in other places,

**[1:30:26]** especially in Arabia. Second of all, the slavery that was practiced in the Americas was slavery that sought to be perpetual slavery. It was turning people into cattle. It was attempting to separate people

**[1:30:44]** from their traditions, their culture. They purposely put people in different tribes and groups so that they didn't have any common language. They couldn't speak anything. They cut off all relationships to their homeland, to their culture, to their identity, to their language, to their families.

**[1:31:00]** And so they attempted to break people psychologically and breed them like cattle. That was North American or Western Hemisphere or American slavery. If you look into Islam, you look into who were the governors and who were the leaders who were at the top of society.

**[1:31:19]** A great many of them were freed slaves or the children of freed slaves. So those are two very, very different institutions. And they shouldn't be conflated.

**[1:31:34]** I agree, Sira. Muslims need to move and vote as a block and our fuqaha can help us push that in direction. May Allah accept and help me. May Allah help me. I'm trying guys. You guys gotta keep me in your du'a, please.

**[1:31:57]** Yeah. Yeah, so Sara Chavez, thank you for bringing the point of terrorism and xenophobia

**[1:32:13]** being intentionally linked when it comes to Islam. Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City in 1995 and the word terrorism was weaponized in 1995. Terrorism, I mean, even legally, like I've reviewed it with lawyers, okay? Seriously, like on the books, in the law. There's one little clause about domestic terrorism,

**[1:32:30]** but legally domestic terrorism doesn't really exist. Really terrorism under US law is you have some sort of you're acting in cahoots or inspired by a foreign terrorist organization. That is legally how they treat it. And so they very much, it's very, very much given to us,

**[1:32:47]** even by Zionist movements, even back to the 70s, in order to criminalize the PLO first and then later movements after that, and to criminalize anybody who supports them or would even think of supporting them. And then later it was used for other groups.

**[1:33:04]** Everything has a history. Yeah, Neutrino, you got a point there, 100%. Juju also agree, 100%. We're growing up, Juju.

**[1:33:20]** We're realizing that being liked does not keep us safe. Being liked does not keep you safe.

**[1:33:42]** Yeah, Catherine Martin brings up an interesting point. She said, get rid of all the guns, tanks, et cetera, go back to bows and arrows. I bet there'll be more compromise between countries. I mean, that's interesting. Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) said that before the end of the world, it's gonna go back to that.

**[1:33:57]** We don't know. They say like World War III will be fought, whatever World War III will be fought with, World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones or swords and shields and stuff like that. And that seems to confirm or to conform to prophetic guidance as well.

**[1:34:13]** There's definitely something about the limit of violence when it was a weapon that you had from your hand versus something that you can press a button and just wipe out entire villages. That's crazy.

**[1:34:31]** Sada says, wouldn't servant or servitude be a better term? Yes, it would. We shouldn't really call it the same thing.

**[1:34:48]** Good stuff. Allahu Akbar. I made it to the end of the comments. Never thought that would happen. Good problems, people. Good problems. Let's move on. So we've already reacted to what we're gonna react to. Let's go to Tafsir. Tafsir, explanation of the Qur'an. Going through the short surahs from the back to the front. Today we have Surah Al-Masad.

**[1:35:04]** And Masad is a translation of a twisted rope fiber. Okay, there's a pun that Allah makes. Okay, so after ...

**[1:35:38]** Okay, so do we have? Yes. ...

**[1:35:56]** Lots unpacked there. Abu Lahab was one of the uncles of Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) who knew that Islam was the truth, but rejected it because it was against his worldly interests. And he said this word, ...

**[1:36:12]** Basically curse, sending a curse to Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). And these words were revealed straight away, on the spot to Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) to answer. Say so, and Allah is making different,

**[1:36:28]** making different puns actually. Like so far you heard, you know, that this is rhyming. So he uses rhyme and he also makes different puns here. So he plays this name, Abu Lahab. Lahab used to mean, or Abu Lahab, it means like, Lahab is a flame. And similar to how maybe in contemporary colloquial English,

**[1:36:46]** we would say that someone is hot, right? They're attractive, they're beautiful. That this was something that meant that he was an attractive person. But Allah flips it and basically says that he's gonna end up in a flame, right? Meaning the flame of fire, of hellfire. So he uses that against it.

**[1:37:02]** And then he also mentions his wife as well, which is a carrier of firewood. It was an expression to indicate that she was someone who carried tales and spread lies and slander against Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). And that he then makes another pun and says that there's going to be a twisted rope around her neck

**[1:37:19]** on the day of judgment. Now, they used to have ropes carry firewood and that you would wear it around your neck. And Mas'ud rhymes with everything else in the surah. But the imagery of having a twisted fiber rope

**[1:37:35]** around your neck in a strangling way, not in a way where you're just carrying firewood, but in a strangling way on the day of judgment is pretty intense, is pretty intense. So what's the unique word that we have in this particular surah?

**[1:37:51]** What do we got? Yeah, the ultimate clapback, Abdullah. All right, numbers are in.

**[1:38:08]** A little bit less from last week, but it's all right. 73% of you are right. Say tabbat is the unique word. This word only occurs in the surah because remember one of the linguistic miracles of the Quran is that every single one of the 114 chapters has at least one word

**[1:38:23]** that is completely unique to it. That doesn't happen anywhere else in the Quran. So tabbat is that word in this particular surah. The other examples, we had agna, 17%, no. And then naran, 8%.

**[1:38:39]** No, definitely not naran. So the idea of tabbat is that Abu Lahab would not just quietly disagree, but that he would try to, very, very similar to how you all pointed out that with this trial,

**[1:38:56]** I think that Fatihah pointed out that with the trial or the hearing, everything's performative. People are just performing in front of cameras. They're just trying to get the sound bites and they're trying to be blustery and things like that. They're not actually having a conversation with each other. They're performing for other people.

**[1:39:11]** And that's what Abu Lahab was doing. Rather than just say, go home and disagree by himself, he made a big show out of it. And he tried to say in a very public way to influence everybody else around to say, curse be to you, Muhammad, and to try to throw shade at him

**[1:39:27]** and to try to basically discredit him. Now, the interesting thing about this ayah is that, and this verse, sorry, this chapter is that it's very, very short. And Allah tells him what's going to happen to him,

**[1:39:42]** that he's going to end up in the hellfire forever, for eternity, because of his rejection of the truth, his knowing rejection of the truth. Now, if Abu Lahab wanted to prove the Quran wrong, all he had to do was say, Ash-shahadu an la ilaha illallah,

**[1:39:58]** wa ash-shahadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah. All he had to do was embrace Islam, accept Islam, become a Muslim. And he would have proved the Quran wrong, but he was so arrogant that he couldn't even bring himself to do that.

**[1:40:13]** And this is an important point when it comes to the nature of kufr. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says in the Quran, bal lilladhina kafaru fee takdheeb, bal lilladhina kafaru yukadhibun. That the nature of kufr is this type of arrogant refusal. A lot of people, I don't necessarily particularly like the translation as just unbelief.

**[1:40:31]** I don't think that, or disbelief, that's a little bit too weak, right? Like kufr is like, it's the cover. Like you're arrogantly rejecting, you're a denier, right? It's not even like, well, I need to think about it. No, it's like, you know it's true and you reject it.

**[1:40:52]** Good stuff. Run through the comments real quick, and then we'll do our last segment. Make sure that you keep those questions coming. If you have any questions about the Quran, I've got some people who are new converts, some people that are just interested in Islam. You know, you're free to answer,

**[1:41:07]** or free to ask anything. We've got one more segment to tonight's show on personal development. We've been going through the book, Atomic Habits, and then we're gonna sign off for tonight, inshallah. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, Abdullah F.

**[1:41:30]** Yes, it's true, Sada. Abu Lahab's wife did use to cover the path of Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) with thorns, which also ties in with the imagery of her punishment. Watermelons dropping Lupe Fiasco lines, masha'Allah.

**[1:41:47]** A match made in heaven set the fires in hell. Very nice. Yes, I'm glad that you said that, Watermelon, because I do follow that sort of stuff, just a bit. Just a bit. His recent deviance in kufr aside, I appreciate that you said that.

**[1:42:04]** I know, when I first learned that he was Muslim, it was kind of exciting, but then, unfortunately. It's Catherine, so welcome. You're totally welcome to guess. We can tell that you're new. Like, it was in Arabic, so no worries about it.

**[1:42:21]** You're perfectly free to guess and do whatever you want. Like, we're just happy to have you along with us. Kathy Stone Street, wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, Abdullah. Yes, Valerie, can you imagine getting called out constantly, every day, every day,

**[1:42:38]** until the Day of Judgment, subhanallah. How would he prove the Quran wrong by accepting Islam? Because Allah said that he was going to be in hellfire forever.

**[1:42:54]** If he accepted Islam, then he would not be in hellfire forever. G Dude asks, what motivated Abu Lahab to be so vehemently against the Prophet? Was it his worldly desires? Yeah, it was against his interests. It was a conflict of interest. He wanted to keep the gravy train rolling.

**[1:43:10]** Idol worship was big business. And dedication to your tribalism, right? Dedication to your tribe. You're admitting, basically, that your tribe was wrong about something, which is sort of difficult.

**[1:43:30]** Sada Chavez asks, I grew up with a sort of secular sense of Islam. However, I feel now in my adulthood that my knowledge is severely lacking, and I'm wondering if I should take shahada and begin my journey anew. Bismillah. You know, if you're making salah, which I hope you're at least making some,

**[1:43:45]** if you're able to make salah, you're taking the shahada in your salah. So there's that as well in your prayers. You got it, Catherine. We're here for you.

**[1:44:05]** Yes, that's correct, Shahab Khan. Kufr, kathara, means to cover something up. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala uses the term kuffar in the Quran with two valences. One of the meanings is farmers. Right, you'll see that ayah.

**[1:44:20]** But then also it means the plural of kafir, which is someone who rejects Islam. The meaning of covering, yeah. It's like you know in your heart that it's true, but you cover that up for various reasons.

**[1:44:38]** All right, very good. All right, so let's roll. Let's go back to our last segment for today and wrap it up for the night. We've been going for two hours. Allahu Akbar. But that's a credit to you all. So personal development, we've been talking about the book, Atomic Habits. We've been going through it chapter by chapter. And today we are in the chapter

**[1:44:53]** about making it unattractive. So if you know James Clear, he breaks down sort of the four laws of making it unattractive. So he's talking about the four laws of making it unattractive. He breaks down sort of the four laws of habit forming

**[1:45:09]** or habit formation. Make it obvious was number one. And number two is make it attractive. Now every law has its corollary or its opposite, which is true. So your good habits, you have to make them obvious in order for them to be successful. Meaning the cues that are gonna trigger

**[1:45:25]** you're doing that habit. And so if there's bad habits that you have, you have to do the opposite. You have to make them unobvious. You have to hide them. You have to make them invisible, okay? Now, the second law was make it attractive. And we talked previously about trying to make your,

**[1:45:40]** trying to make your good habits attractive so that you'll want to do them. We talked about tying it to things that you want to do, right, the things that you need to do, balancing them and tying them to the things that you want to do. Temptation stacking was one of the words that was used, right? Like every time I watch TV,

**[1:45:57]** I'm gonna do pushups during the commercial breaks or whatever. So you're tying the things that you need to do to the things that you want to do. Okay, but now we're gonna talk in this chapter about the opposite or the implication of this law, which is to, which is to make your bad habits unattractive, okay?

**[1:46:16]** So how do you go about making your bad habits unattractive? One of the things that, oh, we had homework too. All right, so I'm gonna ask you about the homework and then I'll keep going and then I'll see what you guys said in the chat. So before,

**[1:46:32]** before we had asked you, one of the things that he mentioned before was leveraging social peer pressure, basically. If you want to be good at something, you should surround yourself with other people that are good at that thing. If you want to be good at Arabic, let's say, or you want to be good at Quran,

**[1:46:48]** or you want to be good at anything, then you should make friends with people who are like that and spend time with them and you will eventually have a much easier time becoming that as well. So your job was to spend more time with the people who you wanted to be more like.

**[1:47:03]** And I had a very easy time doing that because I was recently hanging out with Shaykh Mohammed Shinawi and other people and people who I respect a lot and look up to. And so that was easy for me, but how was it for you? What was the thing that you wanted to be more like? And were you able to even connect with one person

**[1:47:19]** who had that quality or that skill? That's what I want to hear from you in the chat. Now, as I explained, that today is about making your bad habits unattractive. And he starts pointing out by why we have bad habits in the first place. And this is really key and I think it's really also empowering

**[1:47:36]** that everything that you do has an underlying motive. Whether it's a good habit or a bad habit, there's an underlying reason why you're doing it. And your current habits are not always the best way of addressing the problem that you're facing

**[1:47:52]** or the reason, the motive that you have to do that thing in the first place. For example, okay, let's say that you want to unwind. At the end of a day, you had a stressful day at work or whatever, or with family, whatever's going on. You want to relax. There's multiple things that you can do to relax.

**[1:48:09]** You can listen to Quran. You can take a shower. You can work out. You can go for a walk. You can spend time in nature. You can scroll on your phone, okay? Scrolling on your phone is what a lot of people reach for because it's convenient because it's right there.

**[1:48:25]** But is it the best way to address that underlying motivation of wanting to relax? It's probably not the best way, okay? So you have a craving or a sense that something is missing or even better, you want to change the way that you feel. Most habits are about wanting to change the way

**[1:48:42]** that you feel, but you have to realize that the action that you are doing, the action that you're doing is not necessarily the best way of having it done, okay? And so then you actually start to look at yourself and like, whoa, boy, okay, well,

**[1:48:57]** I'm scrolling through the phone because in this moment, I feel lonely. In this moment, I feel like I want some human interaction. I feel like I want to unwind. What's a better way of unwinding? What's a better way of having human interaction? What's a better way of doing these sorts of things?

**[1:49:15]** So going through these sorts of motivations is really important and can be empowering. And you can actually start to pay attention and look at your habits and say, huh, well, I do have this underlying feeling. I have to address that. I can't just stop the habit. I'm going to feel a bad way.

**[1:49:30]** No, I want to address the underlying feeling. I want to feel different, but I need to take control of the decision and the habit that I'm choosing to achieve that change of feeling. And I need to choose a positive one. I need to choose a constructive one. I need to choose a better one

**[1:49:45]** than the one that I'm currently doing. And he has a real quick aside that I think is relevant. I actually want to bring up where he says that. A lot of people think that emotions cloud your decision-making and he says that's not true. And I agree with that. I think that's a really super important part. I think that post-Enlightenment Western values

**[1:50:02]** look at emotions negatively. Oh, you're just being emotional. Oh, he's in his feelings, right? But feelings are actually really critical. Emotions are essential to making decisions. There's no possible scenario

**[1:50:18]** in which you can put your emotions aside. And they've actually done studies on people, right? Well, they've observed people who had some sort of brain injury that incapacitated the parts of their brain that are responsible for emotion.

**[1:50:35]** And you know what the consequences of a person who loses that part of their brain? They can't make decisions. Isn't that crazy? They can't feel happy. They don't feel sad. They don't feel angry. They don't feel anything. They'll look at a decision and they'll sit there for hours and not be able to decide what to do.

**[1:50:53]** I was surprised by that. So rather than emotions getting in the way of our decisions, you actually really need your emotions to make decisions in the first place. Okay, so that's why he's going with the whole move. Well, we don't necessarily want to get rid of the emotions. We just want to observe and pay attention.

**[1:51:08]** You have this emotion, you feel lonely. You're choosing to do X action or habit to change the fact that you feel lonely. So you're scrolling social media. Let's think about a more positive and constructive and rewarding activity. And one that's actually going to more successfully deal

**[1:51:24]** with the fact that you feel lonely. Joining a club, joining an activity, going to the masjid, like whatever it is. So then the next thing he says, we'll end with this. Okay, so he says, one of the things that you can do because sometimes your good habits are hard. Okay, so let's imagine the same scenario.

**[1:51:40]** You're feeling lonely. You can A, choose to scroll through your phone, Instagram or whatever. Or you could B, get off your, you know what, and go to the masjid and go to a class. Which one's easier to do?

**[1:51:57]** It's easier to scroll your phone, 100%. It's hard to, okay, you got to find your keys. You got to get in the car. You make sure gas is in the car. You got to go and do all this other stuff. Oh, so-and-so is going to be there. I don't really get along with them. All these reasons that stop us from going.

**[1:52:13]** So how do you get over that? That's how he ends the chapter. He basically says that you have to trick your brain to learn to enjoy the hard habits. So if going to the masjid is hard compared to scrolling your phone, but you know it's the right thing to do,

**[1:52:29]** then you've got to figure out a way to trick your brain into liking it. And there's a few different techniques he gives. One of them is the language that you use in your internal speech for how you talk about it. So instead of, for example, oh, I got to go to the masjid.

**[1:52:45]** I have to go. No, I get to go to the masjid. I get to go to the masjid every day, every week, every whatever. Focus on what you're gaining. You can even say it out loud. I'm going to the masjid so that I can stop feeling so lonely. Or I'm going to the masjid so I can build positive relationships

**[1:53:01]** with the brothers and the sisters. Now, what if you feel nervous? What if you're going to the masjid, we have people who are converts here or people who are interested in Islam and they're nervous to go to the masjid. And that's the reason that's holding you back. Well, he suggests what a lot of professional athletes do,

**[1:53:19]** which is the pregame motivation ritual, right? Is that a lot of athletes, yeah, they get nervous as well. When you step up to the plate, when you're about to go to bat, bases are loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth, World Series, game seven, that's a nervous situation.

**[1:53:37]** You're taking your free throw, game seven, series is tied, three-three, one second left on the clock. You are in a very, very nerve-wracking situation. What's going to save you in that situation? To do your habit the way that you want it to unfold,

**[1:53:52]** to have a ritual, a ritual that motivates you. And you can tell yourself and reframe that. You're just getting excited and that you're using your adrenaline rush to power you through this thing. So there's whatever you can do. You can psych yourself up, you know.

**[1:54:08]** Anybody who works out goes to the gym. You probably are very familiar with this. You sometimes you have to psych yourself up. Sometimes it's in the Qur'an or it's something that you listen to, part of the Qur'an. Sometimes it's a certain YouTube video. Sometimes it's something that makes you angry, right? If you want to look at what's going on or the particular sort of

**[1:54:25]** hate that's directed at Islam or the people of Islam or things like that, motivates you to go to the gym and pump that iron. Right, then you can use that as your ritual. So your homework for this week is to develop a motivation ritual for yourself. So identify one hard habit,

**[1:54:42]** the right thing to do, but you know, you're lazy to do it. It's inconvenient to do. And develop a motivation ritual that's going to help you to do it. You saw the child's asset is this John weekly? Yes it is. Yes it is. How did it other the algorithm got you sometimes?

**[1:55:01]** Sometimes it works for you. Sometimes against you. Yes, it's weekly Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern Time as our studio. Guru Abdullah pointed out. ABCC asks, is it

**[1:55:17]** okay, not to ask for hidayah for transgressors, especially nowadays? Nobody's forcing you to ask for hidayah for the transgressors. If you do, it's fine, but that doesn't preclude struggling against them.

**[1:55:33]** Juju asked, can kufr be translated also to willful ignorance or stubbornness? Yeah, I think so. I mean, that kind of covers more stubbornness or obstinance, but willful ignorance, yeah, or criminal neglect even, depending on the situation and something right on that. They say that

**[1:55:49]** there's different types of kufr and things like that. Excellent, Juju, glad that you are excellent. Look at that. So Juju's doing the last homework. So here we go. And he wanted to be good at Tajweed, so he started to go take a Tajweed class and the students are really good.

**[1:56:10]** I guarantee you, Juju, inshallah, if you stick with it, you're gonna be good at Tajweed. Allah bless it. Mariam says one of my goals was to advance my level in Spanish. Hey, I have that goal too, Mariam. So I made a language exchange partner and I am making effort to talk to her regularly in order to practice language. Man,

**[1:56:29]** yeah, I need to do that. Ashok says I might have to see her talks with brother Paul again about restating Orientalism. Yeah, I owe him. I owe him a later, a recent episode. Good.

**[1:56:46]** Samiha says don't know if this counts, but I want to be well-read and reflective of what I read. So I've been watching Vlogging Theology to be more like Paul Williams. I think that's a great recommendation. We all could stand to be a bit more like Paul Williams. That's a good, that's good. I think that counts, Samiha.

**[1:57:01]** Apple Pie asks, I want to know how to start studying in a structured and systematic way. Where should I start from and what should I study on a daily basis from both the Qur'an, the seerah, hadith, and the Prophet? There's curricula, Habib. There's curricula if you read Arabic. There are some in Arabic. I don't know of any in English. Sorry, but in Arabic, websites like Taqween

**[1:57:19]** will give you every single thing you need to know about the Qur'an and the seerah, hadith. So I think that's a good recommendation. But in Arabic, websites like Taqween will give you every single discipline, every single text, madhab, this, that, the third,

**[1:57:37]** subdivisions, you'll be good, right? It's in Arabic though. Fatiha says I want to be more like mom. So I spend more time with her every point. That's amazing. May Allah bless you and your mother and your family.

**[1:57:56]** You Abdullah was traveling alone. So did not do the homework. Disappointed, Abdullah, but I tried to listen to more interviews and lectures from the people. Okay, so that's something.

**[1:58:16]** Apple Pie asks, and how to stay consistent with Islamic learning in the long term? The key to that is to take a sustainable load. You never want to move backwards, and that's actually something that James Clear gets to later in the book about taking it one step at a time, not rushing.

**[1:58:31]** The person who's the most successful is the person who's the last one standing. The one who doesn't stop moving and doesn't stop going forward. You don't have to run, you can crawl, but don't stop going forward. You

**[1:58:55]** Hey, Khadri says the Alhamdulillah, anytime I start feeling down about anything, I try to say the Alhamdulillah out loud, my sister. Mashallah. Mashallah, models. That's so well for me, very thankful for her. I'm gonna may Allah bless you both. That's awesome. Great tip, by the way. We learned earlier in this book just enunciating it out loud is a very, very helpful technique.

**[1:59:31]** Kathy says I wanted to begin reading more Qur'an. So I started a goal of a juz a day. That's mashallah, ambitious, inshallah. I'm pretty much keeping up with my goal, inshallah. All right, and if you ever get to a point where it's become too much, rather than quit the goal entirely, maybe break it up, okay?

**[1:59:54]** Abdullah F says some good habits: reading Qur'an, exercise, martial arts, spending time with family. Good. Try your best, Catherine. Just try your best. There we go, no leaving the house after 8 p.m. That's a good, that's a good one.

**[2:00:10]** Good technique for success. We talked about, I think last week or the week before, about not putting yourself in tempting situations. That that was one of the most important things for people. People who have good habits aren't they don't have more willpower than other people. They just spend less time in tempting situations. I find that very profound.

**[2:00:33]** You Right, like a qawwali about prayer we use all the time: I have to go quick, pray, stop for salah. May Allah forgive us. I get to go pray. I get to take time out of my day to connect with Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala.

**[2:00:50]** Taala. Sada, I'm not, I'm actually not a baseball person, believe it or not, but I have, I play and have played plenty of sports. So I'm familiar with most of them except for curling. I have no idea how that works. And cricket, I apologize to our subcontinent brothers and sisters. The only thing I know about cricket is from Lagaan.

**[2:01:12]** Juju, that's amazing. I love that you mentioned that. Thank you so much for mentioning that. I went to the masjid for Tajweed, and then when I walked in, I slipped and fell. That is incredible because you persisted beyond that. That was like Shaitan's last attempt to try to stop you—the shame or humiliation or embarrassment or whatever.

**[2:01:30]** That's great, and yet testing your sincerity. And I've definitely, man, I've had a lot of, I've had a lot of experiences like that, literal and figurative. Mashallah, excellent stuff. Props to

**[2:01:46]** Shaykh Othman. Phillies fans in the house. Oh, that's gonna get wild in here. Sada Calm down Sada Okay, let's go let's go what else do we have Uh, what will happen if I skip my espresso for a day I'll get a headache

**[2:02:05]** Yeah So I make sure to not skip We persevere, okay Amina is also starting Spanish. All right What a sweater

**[2:02:22]** Okay, he salute a family says our Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) said we should learn to be good at in swimming archery and horseback Riding I'm not good in any of these Bismillah. Let's go Let's let's start an archery club or go to your local archery range or horseback riding Those are take a swimming class. These are things you can do

**[2:02:38]** These are things you can do Sada aims to go on the hike on the weekend, Bismillah You

**[2:02:56]** Mariam says I think the flaw in the author's claim here Is this focus on pleasure and displeasure as in pleasure must be present for us to successfully build a habit? Yeah, I don't I think that you've got your honor something there Perhaps it's more like a realist take if we want to be charitable and say that

**[2:03:13]** You're probably going to be more successful at Establishing that habit if it's pleasurable You're right, though. You're right though. He's definitely not coming. I mean he is a person of faith He's a very strong Christian, but he's definitely not coming at it from our worldview. So there's always going to be little

**[2:03:28]** divergences Yeah, that's a great point big bang bro Allah is asking us to come and to talk to him so we get to pray a lot like fajr

**[2:03:46]** Okay, watermelon says goal was to spend more time outside Now making du'a for the time to do so awesome now doing so several times a week. Excellent. Good job Glad to hear you having success with that Do you have a recommended list of books? I've got a million books I could recommend

**[2:04:04]** Okay, so Juju says I started I started to make one of my habits unattractive I used to gossip a lot because I ruminate a lot and vent That's interesting. I started reading Surah Al-Huma during prayers. Oh Awesome. I'm working with a therapist to stop ruminating. That's great

**[2:04:22]** That is excellent. Good for you You

**[2:04:38]** So need to ask a difficult question I have a question to ask it's okay What are you in Islam in a relationship with abusive parents according to Allah? Okay So first of all Allah didn't talk about abusive parents in the Qur'an explicitly So, you know again sometimes we need to get away from simplistic answers what's like the Islamic thing to do the only Islamic thing to do like sometimes you have to extend or

**[2:04:57]** extrapolate or apply general principles and some of the principles that Allah put down the Qur'an with it comes the parents is Goodness to them but not disobeying Allah To please them. Okay and a certain sort of

**[2:05:12]** Distance if they are attacking Islam or anti-Islamic or something like that, okay So we also have to clarify what we mean by abuse do we mean words do we mean physical violence do we mean other stuff right if you have the ability to

**[2:05:28]** Distance yourself and get under a different roof and be independent then there are situations in Which that is called for and warranted and not un-Islamic however to know The specifics of your situation you should talk to someone in person Specific fatwa like that are best handled by people in person that are able to know your specific situation

**[2:05:50]** Big baller Brandon a baby. I mean Allah bless you, man ABCC says can you suggest a book in English on the seerah of Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ)? Yeah. I mean there's several I mean If you're more into the academic sort of

**[2:06:09]** How am I gonna put this if you're more if you care very much about the authenticity and the accuracy of all the information That's presented you want a more academic text. Then the Sealed Nectar is probably one of the best available in English If you're looking for more of a like thematic reflection on

**[2:06:25]** Some of the elements of the seerah then In the Footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) by Tariq Ramadan is good And there's others when the moon split is As good as it's very basic, right if you're just looking for like exposure familiarity with like sort of the main things that happen

**[2:06:41]** Okay so There's lots Zad Academy is nice money. I'm familiar with them and their teachers

**[2:06:57]** I'm the Leela Mjo, Wa alaikum assalam from Melbourne Intention for 2025 Mjo inshallah Yeah Abdullah you're not even here to give me the decaf I don't know what you want man

**[2:07:16]** All right. Thanks for joining us Catherine Appreciate it may Allah bless you. Thanks you thank you for joining us. Hopefully. See you again Apple pie ask in Islam can male and female work together in the corporate sector or should there be segregation? What do you mean work together? You mean like in the same office alone?

**[2:07:35]** Okay, don't do it If we're talking about they're on opposite ends of the hall, that's a different issue, right So there's there's details need to be parsed out here is One of the people have to do it. Okay Yeah, I know I mean, oh we do the same thing we do the same thing I mean my name's Sam are should say from Canada

**[2:07:54]** I know a second Al-Fatihah yes Martin Lings. Okay for seerah. Okay. Very good Martin Lings is Good, but there are some things you should check out my paper on perennialism Martin Lings was at the very least affected by perennialism. If not a perennialist himself. I know that's

**[2:08:14]** unfortunate But you can check my article on your clean Institute for sort of He slips it in there once in a while. It's not too it's not it's not very explicit like in his other works like What is it? Ancient beliefs modern superstitions and things like that

**[2:08:36]** G screenable is studying Mandarin may Allah bless you G screenable is studying Mandarin may Allah bless you. All right, cool. I'll bless you in that Elias you missed the homework go back and listen to it

**[2:09:01]** May Allah bless you I called it that's very sensitive of you. Yeah, I mean I try to I try to be in the Very good. Oh, I've reached the end Alhamdulillah. All right, may Allah bless you all I had a Very nice time tonight. I think this is the longest one we've ever done So keep it up if you keep on getting more and more interaction

**[2:09:19]** We're gonna have to stop paying attention to every single comment, but we're not we're not there yet So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye

**[2:09:35]** But in the meantime until that what happens may Allah bless all of you and it's great to connect with you once a week And we ask Allah for forgiveness and for our shortcomings and inshallah. We will catch you next week Subhanallah all of them have to catch everyone like that and to stop for a quick to relate till next time

## Other Episodes in "Imam Tom Live"
- [The Promise and Paradox of the Islamic Republic | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 2 |  Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/irans-political-system-explained-deep-dive-iran-ep-2-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Sunnis vs. Shias | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 1 | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/sunnis-vs-shias-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Who's Your Real Enemy? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/who-is-your-real-enemy-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How ‘Taqiyya’ Became an Islamophobic Talking Point | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-taqiyya-became-an-islamophobic-talking-point-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Does Islam Actually Oppose Science? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/does-islam-actually-oppose-science-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What Sharia Law Actually Means | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-sharia-law-actually-means-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Why Not Every Seat is One Worth Taking | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-not-every-seat-is-one-worth-taking-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Debunking the Myth of the ‘Oppressed Muslim Woman’ | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/debunking-the-myth-of-the-oppressed-muslim-woman-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What ‘Allahu Akbar’ Really Means (And Why It Scares Them) | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-allahu-akbar-really-means-and-why-it-scares-them-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How Does the Qur’an View the Bible? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-does-the-quran-view-the-bible-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What the Qur’an Says About Christianity | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-the-quran-says-about-christianity-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [The Truth About AI’s Intelligence | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-truth-about-ai-intelligence-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Amazon's Kill System & the Network Behind Sami's Detention | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/amazons-kill-system-and-the-network-behind-samis-detention-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What Real Masculinity Looks Like | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-real-masculinity-looks-like-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [What Islam Reveals About Socialism and Capitalism | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-islam-reveals-about-socialism-and-capitalism-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Kings Chased Thrones. He ﷺ Chased This Instead | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/kings-chased-thrones-he-chased-this-instead-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Why You Can’t Escape Organized Religion | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-you-cant-escape-organized-religion-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Why Some Scholars Critique Resistance | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-some-scholars-critique-resistance-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Columbus Wasn't Just After Gold – He Wanted Jerusalem | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/columbus-wasnt-just-after-gold-he-wanted-jerusalem-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How to Stop Falling for Fake Mahdis | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-to-stop-falling-for-fake-mahdis-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How Should We View Gaza’s Celebrity Support? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/gaza-celebrity-support-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Living Up to the Prophet’s ﷺ Final Speech | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-last-sermon-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Israel’s Link to U.S. Anti-Terror Policy | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/israels-links-to-us-anti-terror-policy-focal-point.md)
- [Will Recognition Help Palestine? | Snapshots by Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/will-recognition-help-palestine-snapshots-by-imam-tom.md)
- [Modesty Is More Than What You Wear | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/modesty-is-more-than-what-you-wear-snapshots.md)
- [How Your Victim Mindset is Destroying You | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-your-victim-mindset-is-destroying-you-snapshots-with-imam-tom.md)
- [The Hidden Bias in Every History Book | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-hidden-bias-in-every-history-book-focal-point.md)
- [Islam Isn’t Just Therapy | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/islam-isnt-just-therapy-snapshot.md)
- [Is This Da’wah or Entertainment? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/is-this-dawah-or-entertainment-snapshots.md)
- [Representation Isn’t Working. Here’s Why. | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/representation-isnt-working-heres-why-focal-point.md)
- [How to Stop Chasing Validation | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-to-stop-chasing-validation-snapshots-imam-tom.md)
- [What Activism Is Missing Today | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-activism-is-missing-today-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How Colonialism Hijacked the Muslim World | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-colonialism-hijacked-the-muslim-wor-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Why the Islamic Calendar Matters | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-the-islamic-calendar-matters-snapshots-wit-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [How Islam Completed what Christianity Began | Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-islam-completed-what-christianity-began-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [The Multi-Million Dollar War on Islam | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-multi-million-dollar-war-on-islam-focal-point-with-imam-tom-facchine.md)
- [Hajj is the Great Equalizer | Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/hajj-is-the-great-equalizer-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Malcolm X's Legacy We Forgot About | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/malcolm-xs-legacy-we-forgot-about-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [How Music Impacts Your Brain | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-music-impacts-your-brain-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Debunking the 'Islamic Dilemma' | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/debunking-the-islamic-dilemma-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [The Ummah or the Nation? | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-ummah-or-the-natio-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [How Islamic History Was Frozen and Forgotten | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-islamic-history-was-frozen-and-forgotten-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [The Secret Cost of Individualism | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-secret-cost-of-individualism-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [The Dark Truth About Secularism | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-dark-truth-about-secularism-focal-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Muslims Are a People of Principle | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/muslims-are-a-people-of-principle-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [When Did Ramadan Become a Festival | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/when-did-ramadan-become-a-festival-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Why Don't Muslims Just Leave? | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-dont-muslims-just-leave-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Will Celebrity Muslims Save Us? | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/will-celebrity-muslims-save-us-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Trump Wants to Take Over Gaza | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/trump-wants-to-take-over-gaza-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Doomscrolling is Rewiring Your Brain | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/doomscrolling-is-rewiring-your-brain-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [The Islamic Cure for Overconsumption | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-islamic-cure-for-overconsumption-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [What Does Trump's Second Term Mean for Muslims? | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-does-trumps-second-term-mean-for-muslims-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Why Reps Matter More than Time | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-reps-matter-more-than-time-atomic-habits-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Surah Al-Masad & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/surah-al-masad-atomic-habits-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Surah Al-Ikhlas & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/surah-al-ikhlas-and-atomic-habits-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Why You Can't Resist Cravings (and How to Take Back Control) | Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-you-cant-resist-cravings-and-how-to-take-back-control-atomic-habits-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Surah An-Nas & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/surah-an-nas-and-atomic-habits-imam-tom-weekly.md)
- [Atomic Habits: Why Most Quit Early | Imam Tom Weekly](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/atomic-habits-why-most-quit-early-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Surah Al-Kawthar & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/surah-al-kawthar-and-atomic-habi-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Allah Will Ask: What Did You Do With Your Freedom? | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/allah-will-ask-what-did-you-do-with-your-freedom-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Oct 7th Changed Everything | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/oct-7th-changed-everything-imam-tom-live.md)
- [All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/all-praise-be-to-allah-in-every-situation-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Remembering Aysenur's Courage | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/remembering-aysenurs-courage-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Empowering Student Activism | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/empowering-student-activism-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Hypocrisy at the DNC | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/hypocrisy-at-the-dnc-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Falsehood is Bound to Vanish | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/america-unraveling-political-violence-imam-tom-live-2.md)
- [No Limits: Israel’s Growing Atrocities and Global Indifference | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/no-limits-israels-growing-atrocities-and-global-indifference-imam-tom-live.md)
- [What France & UK's Electoral results mean for Muslims | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-frances-and-uks-electoral-results-mean-for-muslims-imam-tom-live.md)
- [The Real Guise of 'Islamophobia' | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-real-guise-of-islamophobia-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Muslim Influencers Profiting from Apartheid | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/muslim-influencers-profiting-from-apartheid-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Israel's Ceasefire Rejection, Nurse Fired for Gaza, and the Law of Sacrifice | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/israels-ceasefire-rejection-nurse-fired-for-gaza-and-the-law-of-sacrifice-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Do Influencers Owe their Followers Advocacy? | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/do-influencers-owe-their-followers-advocacy-imam-tom-live.md)
- [University Raids, Fake Negotiations, Holocaust Remembrance? | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/university-raids-fake-negotiations-holocaust-remembrance-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Live Revolution: The West Rallies for Gaza | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/live-revolution-the-west-rallies-for-gaza-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Biryani Diplomacy: The Illusion of Political Influence & the "Flour Massacre" | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/biryani-diplomacy-the-illusion-of-political-influence-and-the-flour-massacre-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Unveiling Truths: Aaron Bushnell, NYT's Agenda, & Stopping Military Aid to Israel | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/unveiling-truths-aaron-bushnell-nyts-agenda-and-stopping-military-aid-to-israel-imam-tom-live.md)
- [What Will Ramadan be Like in Rafah? A Conversation About Sha'aban and Leadership | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-will-ramadan-be-like-in-rafah-a-conversation-about-shaaban-and-leadership-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Israel Bombs Rafah During Superbowl, that Biden Tweet, and Constructive Conversations | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/israel-bombs-rafah-during-superbowl-that-biden-tweet-and-constructive-conversations-imam-tom-live.md)
- [The Lives of Imams, Hate Crime in Texas, Israeli Humiliation, Ceasefire Resolutions | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-lives-of-imams-hate-crimes-in-texas-israeli-humiliation-ceasefire-resolutions-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Musk's Take, Columbia's Skunk Surprise, Islamic Unity, and India's Ram Revelation | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/musks-take-columbias-snake-surprise-islamic-unity-and-indias-ram-revelation-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Michigan Mosques Say NO! | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/michigan-mosques-say-no-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Does Protesting Work? | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/does-protesting-wok-imam-tom-live.md)
- [How to Develop Better Habits | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-to-develop-better-habits-imam-tom-live.md)
- [How To Become A Strong Muslim Leader | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-to-become-a-strong-muslim-leader-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Courage in the Face of Israeli Censorship | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/courage-in-the-face-of-israeli-censorship-imam-tom-live.md)
- [On the Gaza Ceasefire | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/on-the-gaza-ceasefire-imam-tom-live.md)
- [How to Fight the Israeli Backlash | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/how-to-fight-the-israeli-backlash-imam-tom-live.md)
- [Israel is Losing - and They Know It | Imam Tom Live](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/israel-is-losing-and-they-know-it-imam-tom-live.md)