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Join Imam Tom Facchine as he dives into critical discussions surrounding current events, the politicization of Muslims by both US political parties, and the Islamic perspective on protests and civil disobedience. In this episode, we analyze the massive pro-Palestinian protests at the Democratic National Convention, and the US's recent $20 billion military aid package to Israel. Plus, we explore the Islamic teachings on standing up for justice and discuss practical personal development tips inspired by "Atomic Habits."
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:01Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. We're back everybody live with Yaqeen Institute. I'm your host Imam Tom Fekete, and it's a pleasure to have you with us. We took a week off last week because, you know, I need breaks too.
00:12But we missed you all and we're happy to have you with us tonight. We have a very exciting show prepared for you as always. We've got some very important current events that are going on.
00:25The political sort of race in the United States is heating up and taking shape. Somebody takes a swipe at myself and Sheikh Omar Suleiman. We'll talk about that. We'll also continue going with our books.
00:38So we've got tips here today of Surah An-Nas and of course, we've got Atomic Habits. But first, let's go to the chat and see who we have tuning in with us tonight. First one in, Ruslan. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
00:52Asks, how do I stop being angry at people? There's a lot to say. So there's like some attitudinal shifts, right? It's like how are you making sense of what you're doing in this world? And then there's sort of like techniques.
01:05And there's techniques that the Prophet ﷺ told us such as, for example, ones you might already know. Making wudu when you are, you know, making your sort of ritual purification, when you're in a state of anger.
01:17Changing your position if you're standing to sit and if you're sitting to lay down and these sorts of things. Those are sort of techniques. But there's a broader worldview that I think is really important to bring up. Why are we angry, right?
01:31Maybe and we're assuming here that what you mean is like excessively angry. Are we displeased with Allah's qadr? Are we having false expectations as to how other people will be?
01:43And I think there's something that's going to come up tonight about having realistic expectations. Not everybody in the world is your friend. People are going to disappoint you. And so you have to prepare yourself and arm yourself accordingly. What are you angry about? I think is sort of the question here.
01:56But if you realize that everything in life is just a sort of test. Allah ﷻ is throwing at you things constantly. Like He says in one ayah in Surah Al-Imran about how you're going to hear. وَلَتَسْمَعُنّ I think we're going to cover this.
02:09Actually, we will cover this ayah later. So I'll save it for then. But you're going to hear a lot of people test you, say bad things to you, say harmful things to you, right? And this is all part of what Allah wills.
02:20Okay? He needs to distinguish from decent to good and from good to better. Not that He doesn't know it already. But in order to demonstrate to you so that you don't have any argument on the Day of Judgment.
02:32So every negative thing, quote-unquote negative thing that happens to you is this type of thing. So some people, not saying it's you, Ruslan, but some people if they're overly angry or their anger is exaggerated,
02:45that might indicate perhaps sort of too high of expectations for what this dunya is. Right?
02:52وَمَا الْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا إِلَّا مَتَاعُ الْغُرُورُ This worldly life is nothing but a fleeting deception. I like the comment from Discord being after that.
03:05You can't learn to stop being angry from young Tom. He's a conservative in America. Their whole brand is senseless anger. Man, you got me pegged. I don't know what to do anymore. If you think I'm an angry conservative, you should check out the guy who we're going to show on a clip later. And...
03:19Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Driving, glad to have you with us as always. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. One of our wonderful viewers in Malaysia that I was pleased to meet. Happy to have you tuning in.
03:33Shaymus with excellent viewpoints and tidbits to add to the conversation as always. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Al-hamdu lillah. Amanda Walker, also a return viewer. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome Saliha Ahmed.
03:47Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Al-hamdu lillah. From Atlanta. I believe I recognize you as well. Sahra, I believe. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. We have a Kamal from Minnesota. The land of 10,000 lakes. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
04:01Magical Girls. Hans just prayed Fajr. May Allah accept. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. We just prayed Maghrib here in our part of the world. So that shows you how this ummah covers every inch of this earth. Zahir Younis says,
04:14Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. My dearest brothers and sisters in Islam, and then I know you popped a question in later. You said, did anyone read this disgusting article about the Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman
04:26has called on Israel to carry out a full blockade of Gaza that includes cutting off food, water, medical supplies. Imam Tom, what are your thoughts about this article? It was on Middle East Eye. How can we cope with such barbaric statements like this?
04:39This gets to my point to Ruslan about expectations. This doesn't surprise me. I don't know why it surprises anybody at this point. This stuff has been stated, not just constantly for the last 10 months, this has been stated for the last seven decades.
04:52Now, whether we had access to it or not, whether we knew it was being stated or not, that's a different issue. But when you understand, you go through the Qur'an, you see how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala divides different people into different sort of categories. We shouldn't be surprised by this sort of thing.
05:06We should expect that from people who swear to be our sort of mortal enemies for no good reason, except that we say that our Lord is Allah. And so the question is not what's our attitude towards them, but what are we doing?
05:20That's what they're doing. Their methodology and mandate is clear. They know exactly what they're up to. What are we doing? What are we doing to prepare, to build power, to help our brothers and sisters,
05:33both in our own backyards and across the world, and to contribute to the societies that we exist in and to make them better and more just places? Good. Dan Wolf. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Who else? Nope.
05:46Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Nope brings up a comment here later. I saw them scroll to it. I wanted to again ask you to bring the lack of captions for the deaf or hard of hearing on your videos up to your team. Jazakallah khair. Okay, nope.
06:00I know nothing about technology. Zero. So I'm going to, this is my bringing it up to the team because I know that the team is watching. Guys, can we figure out captions? Can we figure out this sort of thing?
06:12We've got way smarter people than me that are capable of doing that. Or if it's a YouTube thing, I don't know if YouTube does that for you or whether that's something on our end. Either way, guys in the studio are going to follow up on that.
06:25Thank you very much. What else do we have? Safina Koser. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Ameen. Beautiful du'a. Thank you. Ya Allah, make our ummah strong in Your deen and give us strength to follow Your deen properly.
06:39Wonderful. Sara. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. What else we got? Dion from Canada. Wa'alaikum assalam. Oh, from Canada. There we go. It's Rick Rashid. Wa'alaikum assalam.
06:53Welcome to the program. Random thoughts. Wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Yes. A Qadri says, "I was so upset seeing that poor hijabi getting hit over the head with a 'We Love Joe' banner."
07:06Wallahi, wallahi, wallahi. If there wasn't a better visual symbol of American politics right now than a hijabi getting hit over the head with a "We Love Joe" sign.
07:19Many of you have seen this on social media. CAIR said that they're going to try to press charges. This is not just any hijabi. This is Nadia Ahmed. We had her on this program back in, I believe, the spring,
07:32if not the winter, as a guest. So she is somebody who's very accomplished. Someone who is a delegate for the Democratic Party. And she has demonstrated great courage
07:44and at great risk to her own sort of, in this case, health and also safety, and also to her position and to her professional life. She has been constantly outspoken when it comes to Palestine.
07:58And she deserves a ton of credit for that. So she was the person on the receiving end of that act of aggression and that assault. And we ask Allah to deal with it fairly.
08:077M88M, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
08:20Seamus, I'm not sure which comment you're talking about getting removed. Amina Kasupovich, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh from Bosnia. Inshallah, inshallah, I hope to visit Bosnia this year. Hopefully in May.
08:34That will be a first for me, hopefully. Amir Nourideen, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh from Minnesota. Minnesota in the house. I lived in Minnesota for a time. Some people know, some people don't. Sidi Nouriaty Studio, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh
08:46from LA. I'll be in LA at the end of November. Last week in November, inshallah. Nusayb Qasim from Worcester. Wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. You have a new imam who is a good friend of mine.
08:59So exciting times for Worcester. I'm going to have to, I think, pay you guys a visit. Adi, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh from Iceland. Allahu Akbar. We've got Iceland in the house. Sara says, "Critiques of Yunus." The interim leader of Bangladesh, secular
09:13Nobel laureate and the like. So is Bangladesh not going the right way? Well, Sara always brings up great I think you're the MVP, Sara, for questions on this program. And we've talked a lot two weeks ago when we last had our program about Bangladeshi politics.
09:27And obviously I'm not an expert. However, I do know people in the diaspora and people in Bangladesh itself that are sort of educating me and trying to give me the lowdown. I think it depends on your perspective at this point. One perspective is incrementalism.
09:41And that perspective is basically saying that if you go too fast, if you go too fast, then you provide an easy pretext for somebody to destabilize you, intervene, military coup, etc.
09:55They point to Egypt as an example. That's one school of thought. The second school of thought is what you're sort of saying. It's like, hey, wait a second, this ruler is secular and they aren't really so much of a break from the past. Perhaps, perhaps. So this is not satisfactory.
10:09Allah knows best what's going to happen. This is a very, very sensitive time. There's another video that Imam Omar Suleiman put out about addressing the situation in Bangladesh and addressing the people of Bangladesh saying that, don't let your
10:23revolution be hijacked. And certainly, normally how these things happen is that there's this sort of gray period where different factions are sort of tussling for power and trying to outmaneuver one another. And this is a very, very critical moment in Bangladeshi history and we ask Allah to protect
10:37everybody there and to make the Muslims, and we talked about this issue two weeks ago, to make the Muslims a means of everybody there being protected. Because this is one of the Hindutva sort of let's say
10:51tropes, that the Muslims, having Muslims in power, having Islamic governance is somehow going to endanger the non-Muslims. And yet we've seen time and time again Muslims sticking their neck out to try to defend Hindu temples, to defend religious minorities.
11:05Maya Rehab, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Ahlan wa sahlan. Nis Amira, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, from Malaysia. Salamat datang. Rahma Baloch from Durham, North Carolina. Trying to find a way to get to Durham, inshallah. Wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
11:19Juju S. from Orange County, California. Wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Mohamed Mihajazi, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, from Houston. Excellent. Inshallah ta'ala we'll be in Houston. Oh boy, I don't know. When am I going to be in Houston?
11:33We definitely have something in Houston. And if someone can figure out my calendar for me, then... I think it might be the first weekend of September, if I'm not mistaken. Houston's a lovely city.
11:47I really enjoyed my last time there. Uh, Ashik. I remember, let's see, wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. It's Ashik from Bangladesh. What's cooking? Nothing's in the kitchen right now except a mocha pot. Uh, Tory J. wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
12:01Seamus. Yeah, that's true. Seamus brings up a good point. Most leaders now are secular. I think the question is, like, purely secular or like secular front, trying to incrementally push things, like, in the same way, maybe like an Erdogan or
12:15something like that, Imran Khan, or whether they're secular through and through. You know what I mean? Pestify, from Maldives. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah. Good to have you back with us. You're a regular. We appreciate you.
12:29Is there any way to know which week's podcast would be scheduled or not? Yes. Once the Yaqeen schedulers talk to my scheduler and they get on the same page. Um, next week we'll be off. I'll be traveling again, and
12:43then I'm gonna be with my nose to the grind and I'm not gonna be traveling for a while. So we're gonna be off next week, but then starting the beginning of September, we're gonna be going hardcore. Okay, let's see.
12:57Anas Ashmila Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah. What is the meaning of being a man? Allahu Akbar. Coming with the hard questions. Has that to do with protecting others? 100%. Men are the ones that stand
13:11in between the world and chaos. 100%. And that is a burden that weighs on your back and mine. And we have to take that extremely seriously. That we are the protectors of the weak. We are the protectors of the poor. We are the protectors of our women
13:25folk. We're the protectors of the children, of the elderly. That is what being a man means. And we have an increased responsibility in front of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala as protectors. I do not read,
13:39I believe that's Amharic, but I would love to learn. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah from Ethiopia. Glad to have you with us. What can teenagers do to support Gaza other than protesting? It's a big topic, but I think in general,
13:53we need to be more creative in our thinking about tactics and what we're doing. I'm doing a lot of workshops and talks on my travels about this particular issue. That we can't just do the thing that's closest in reach such as protests and rallies and demonstrations.
14:07There might be situations in which they're called for. But there's a lot more that we can be doing looking for opportunities. And those are sort of site-specific questions. Some things are going to have to do with education. I think all teenagers can participate in education when it comes
14:21to educating their teachers and their principals and their superintendents and sort of especially because they're all in schools, working at the school level to sort of get visibility. A lot of people don't realize how many Muslims, how many Palestinians, how many Arabs there are in these schools.
14:35And then to look for local opportunities. And opportunities might be a positive thing that you can do or the removal of a harmful thing or a harmful person in some cases. Good morning, Kara Ayad from Australia. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah.
14:49The guys I met in Australia excuse me, the guys I met in Malaysia that were from Australia were very, very keen on me coming. So inshallah, hopefully I think 2025 it's going to look like. Rawazitama Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah. How do you
15:03protect yourself from being a victim of treachery in Muslim community? The believer is not stung through the same hole twice. Okay. That being said, Muslims were victims of treachery. So you're not going to be able to if that's what Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala has
15:17willed for you, you're not going to be able to avoid it. He wants you to learn from it. However, you take as much precaution as you can. Sayfullah Muhtashim Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah. May Allah accept, may Allah accept. I am
15:31just a wretched sinner just like everybody else. I have tons of shortcomings and failures and faults. But we hope that the little bit of good that we do, that Allah gives us tawfiq to do, that he accepts it. Okay. Yep. 100%
15:45agree with you, Sada. Juju says, I think CAIR action started a PAC. That's true. Whether it's similar to AIPAC or not that remains to be seen. Depends on what your definition and understanding of AIPAC is as well. It's through ActBlue so I think Democratic candidates are being
15:59helped. Do you think this will be an effective strategy? Yes and no. I mean like it's, we definitely have a gaping need for a community grassroots political action committee that is devoting 24/7, 365
16:13attention to electoral politics. We're in the learning phase, right? We're gonna fail a lot. So I'm not gonna comment. I know Basim al-Kerra. I know, you know, the people I've talked with him personally who are running this. I wish them success.
16:27There's gonna be a lot of mistakes in the beginning. The people I know behind it, I assume to be sincere. From what I know, they're sincere. That doesn't make them ma'sum. That doesn't make them sort of infallible. We'll see what
16:41happens. But whatever it is, we have to learn quickly. I've mentioned in other spaces such as my interview with Dr. Salman Butt in Islam 21c my ideas about sort of political strategy in the PAC space. So you can go see more details there.
16:55Yusra Adam. Wa alaikum assalam. From London. Jolly old London. It's the first time you're catching me live. I'm so happy to have you with us. London is a lovely city. Totally surprised me. I didn't have negative expectations. I just didn't have any expectations. It was a very
17:09livable, walkable city. I enjoyed my time there. Han. Wa alaikum assalam. Genuine question. How are we as a citizen supposed to behave towards our own government? Especially when our government is not good. You change it, habibi. The Prophet
17:23sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, if you see an evil, you change it with your hand. And then you look at all the options you have for changing with your hand, and you pick the one that has the most benefit and the least amount of harm. Thankfully, in the United States of America,
17:37we do have political processes that are, if you squint, look democratic, right? So that you actually can sort of have a say. If you organize yourself, if you organize your money, you organize your message, you organize your people, you organize your action, you can affect things.
17:51This is something that Muslim community has dropped the ball on in the last 20 years since 9/11. However, we're waking up. And so we have a potential, and this is what I say, Muslims in America have a potential to change the harmful foreign policy of the United States
18:05of America. The United States of America has foreign policy going back to at least the 1950s that is not just harmful to Muslims the world over, but is also harmful to the American people. It also puts Americans in jeopardy because it makes the rest of the world basically hate our guts.
18:19Right? So the most important thing that we can do, I believe, as Muslims, is to do what we can to change the foreign policy of the United States of America, and that's an example of something that you can do within your country. Pebbles222 says, I'm struggling with expectations of this world
18:33mostly because I'm starting to feel like I hate this world. You're on the right road, and I don't know how I'm supposed to live hating everything. Well, you have to relate with Allah, not with the dunya. Okay? You're halfway there. The Prophet ﷺ said that
18:47the dunya is mal'una, mal'una ma feeha. That the world is cursed and cursed is everything that's in it, except dhikrullah, except for the remembrance of Allah. Right? And there's some narrations that add like what's tied to it, or teaching, or...
18:59knowledge or things like that. But the general idea is that, as said in another hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, the world is a prison for the believers and the world is jannah, is paradise for the disbelievers.
19:14And so if you don't feel like a prisoner, you're doing something wrong. Perhaps, and Allah knows best. Don't mean to, you know, cast stones there. Okay, what else do we have? We've got Nazira Begum. Wa'alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. From India, Bangalore.
19:29Happy to have you with us. Thank you so much for tuning in. Sarah asked, do you think that those Muslim intellectuals who do discussions and talks and such won't have much effect if they don't follow through with actions and projects? Yes, but I'll say this, Sarah, to be a little bit more nuanced. We need connectivity between the different types of people.
19:44Some people, it's better that they don't do actions. That they don't have the stomach for it or the courage for it or the savvy for it. Okay? Some people are actually better off in the ivory tower. However, they must have an interface with the people who are on the ground.
19:58And Al-Raghib Al-Isfahani says this in his book al-Dhari'a Ila Makarim al-Shari'ah. When he talks about the different stations of the 'ulama. Like there is the qadi and there's the sheikhs, the 'alims. And there is the khatib.
20:11And you actually need an interface between; they need to swap notes. They need to have opportunities to come together and coordinate action. So that the khatib can take that amazing stuff that the 'alim is working on. But maybe he's not the most eloquent speaker.
20:26Maybe he can't get on TikTok. Right? And then they take it and then they popularize it. Right? So we need coordination between those different spheres. We don't necessarily need everybody to do everything.
20:42Nazira Begum says, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala free the Palestinians. Ameen. Excellent. Yeah, A. Khadri brings up a good point of that guy with the "We Love Joe" hitting her from behind like a coward. And then when he was confronted, stopping immediately.
20:57Yeah, that was very cowardly behavior. And we know what Islam says about men protecting women. Alhamdulillah, I believe it was a Muslim brother there protecting sister Nadia. But look at the cowardly, unmanly behavior of the perpetrator of that crime.
21:13Panji, from Indonesia. Selamat datang. Welcome. Ameen. Bay Area in the house. Okay. Did he? The area.
21:26Abdullah says regarding the live closed captioning, we will look into it. Inshallah. As YouTube does not support live captioning at this time. Ah, see, I knew it wasn't our guys. I knew it had to be YouTube. Come on, YouTube. What are you guys doing? From Bangkok, Thailand.
21:42Happy to have you with us. I had good friends of mine that were neighbors in Medina that were students of knowledge from Thailand. Mariam Maimon, from Phoenix, Arizona. I believe I'll be in Phoenix in October. Inshallah. Seamus.
21:57Comment was on this day. Oh, he's trying to get me in trouble, Seamus. Assad killed 1,400 civilians with sarin gas. Exactly the same as Ahli massacre in Gaza. Blamed the rebels and committed the same crime hundreds of times throughout the war. Absolutely.
22:12Absolutely. And our sense of justice is not partial. Our sense of justice is not partial.
22:18Nor do we fall for the Cold War dichotomy of supporting some dictators because they're the enemy of our enemies. That doesn't fly either. And be very suspicious of people, to be frank.
22:31Be very suspicious of people who do such a thing. Okay. What about Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Please reach out to us. I would love to. Shoot me an email. [email protected]. Let's make it happen. Ameen. Ameen. A Hong.
22:46Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa'alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam. Wa alaikum assalam.
23:23Wa alaikum assalam.
23:53Wa alaikum assalam.
24:23Wa alaikum assalam.
24:59 want to see Islam win. They want the Muslims to win. Those are the people that we need to be drawing in and shoring up differences, finding out how to work along. Then with Islamophobia
25:13worldwide, and people know that I'm not a big fan of the word Islamophobia. It doesn't really do justice to what's going on. I think that the fight against Zionism as a political ideology is probably
25:25the most important front in that battle, because Zionism uses quote unquote Islamophobia as its primary discourse to criminalize being Muslim and to criminalize Islam. That's just facts.
25:38We're doing many, many things at once when we are advocating for Palestine. Abu Hasib Malik, wa alaikum assalam. Rafatullah from New Jersey, but traveling in Ohio now. Ameen. Ameen, ya Rabb. Free Al-Aqsa, 100%.
25:51Manzahir Yunus coming with the questions. Hot and fast. How should individual Muslims balance their response between active engagement and spiritual alliance? Unite both. Tawheed. Make them the same thing. Seamus.
26:04Learn your religion so you don't lose your religion. Being pulled into quid pro quo activism and compromise for Palestine, 100%. I agree. Abu Hong, our friend from Tokyo. How can I help and be a support, be a support, a Muslim faith friend who has issues with their
26:18iman and are distancing themselves from Islam? Well, that's a big question and there's nuance to it depending on what's the reason, right? Like I just said for the other person that asked about converts, people have a multitude of reasons why they drift from Islam.
26:32Some of it is emotional, some of it is social, some of it's intellectual, some of it's ideological. So you have to, and this goes with politics too. Everything we're talking about, you have to study the problem. Sometimes we rush into action before we properly study the problem.
26:47Study the problem properly first. What is the proper action to do will become clear once you correctly study the problem. Good question though.
26:59Yeah, Seamus brings up the idea about, you know, politicians, elected politicians versus the deep state, but even that's contested territory, Seamus. So one of the things that I was going over with some lawyers is how the process of designating
27:12different groups as terrorist organizations is something that does not, it's the responsibility of someone who's not an elected official, okay? Like you said, it's sort of deep state. It's someone who, it's put on the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of
27:25the Secretary of State, I should say. And that person is a cabinet member. They're not somebody who's elected. So even jockeying to get these sorts of things migrating back towards the legislative branch
27:36where people are actually sort of accountable, much more accountable than somebody who's just appointed by the president, that would be a win, right? So this is something that is being contested. May Allah bless the people of Bangladesh.
27:52One of the people who has been a tremendous help to me in understanding the situation in Bangladesh, thank you so much for all that you do. May Allah make you successful. Ashik, I want to know, is there any Islamic teachings or methodology to fight procrastination and burnout?
28:05Yeah, I think we'll talk about it in Atomic Habits, though it's not Islamic-Islamic in the sense that it's not attributed by Ibn Taymiyyah, right? But it jives with Islam. Latisha Muhammad, wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh from Trinidad. Masha'Allah. Welcome from Trinidad.
28:21Amina XO, wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Mustafa Imam, what is the reason behind our Muslim rulers oppressing us? The ones that oppress us have sold out Islam, I mean, and sold out the Muslims.
28:32They either do it out of fear for the dunya or love of the dunya. So may Allah guide them, forgive them, or free us from them. Sara Mulan, wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh from Mauritius. Good to have you back. Yaas, wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
28:47Please answer the anger question. I think I did. More specifically, how to deal with seeing injustice all around. Yeah, well, here's the thing. Al-Raghib al-Isfahani talks about this in his book that I mentioned previously, Al-Dhariah ila makarim al-shari'ah. Anger is good, guys.
29:01Okay, anger—we're not like liberals where we think that, you know, anger is a bad emotion and we just have to make sure that we're never angry. No, anger can be a good emotion. Allah created it in you.
29:15However, it's not supposed to stay the way it is, nor is it supposed to go to extremes. It is supposed to drive you to justice, right? Allah created the phenomenon, the possibility of anger in you
29:28so that you would develop it and achieve justice by it. If you see oppression and you're not angry, especially as a man, something is wrong with you. You are not properly calibrated. You are not properly constituted.
29:42So this is something that needs to be nurtured, developed, focused, and applied. Okay, not undisciplined, right? Neither the extreme of not ever being angry at anything, nor the extreme of being a tyrant, right, and being angry at everything.
29:57No, you're angry at injustice, that's good. We shouldn't love injustice. Injustice, excuse me, we shouldn't love injustice. Injustice should make us angry. But then you have to develop it, focus it, and apply it properly.
30:10Well done, well done. We got Toronto in the house, Ms. Hamda Ibrahim. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi. Laura is back from Al-Maghrib, Deen Al-Maghrib. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Qadir al-Abbas alaik. Hope you're well.
30:26Hope there's lots of Moroccan tea in your present and your future. Seamus says, Israeli lobby is so powerful they get curriculums in Gulf states. Yeah, they're powerful, but they're not as powerful as they want you to think they are.
30:40That's one of the things that we see time and time again, that the Israeli lobby, they pick battles that are easy to win, and then they project power, making you think that they're more powerful than they are. That's honestly a tactic we could learn from.
31:04Very good. Here we go. What else we got? Yacoub Ali, wa alaikum assalam, from Orlando. Very nice. Livingston, New Jersey. Wa alaikum assalam, Zamin. Welcome to the program.
31:19I hear you, Juju. That's not bad. That's not bad, Juju, 100%. You should feel comfort. So many people in the last 10 months have said, wow, I used to have this doubt, like how could there be so much punishment? And now I get it.
31:35Now I get why there's hellfire. Now I get why there's eternal damnation, because this amount of evil that we've seen the last 10 months demonstrates exactly what it's there for.
31:50Okay. Bangladesh being hit by severe floods. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala aid the people of Bangladesh and protect them. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. The Giga Hut from Malaysia, with love. Terima kasih, right back at you. I bet.
32:05I bet, Laura. Well, drink one for me, insha'Allah. All right. So we've got a big program, plenty of stuff to get through. We're going to transition to current events. I'll check in with the chat along the way, and especially between segments.
32:18First up in the news today, we've got a $20 billion approval, or a $20 billion military aid package that has been approved by the US government, and specifically the president.
32:33Part of which, a lot of it is going to Israel. Now, this is significant for several reasons. Firstly, let me go into some of the details.
32:42The president, Joe Biden, signed into law on Wednesday $95 billion of war aid. Okay, so the total is $95 billion. $20 of that's going to Israel. The rest for Ukraine and Taiwan.
32:55And also has a provision that would force the social media site TikTok to either be sold or be banned in the United States, which demonstrates that the war is not just... First of all, it demonstrates the globalist intentions of both the neoliberals and the
33:10neoconservatives, right? A lot of people don't realize that there's a war going on, like an ideological war within the left and within the right, within the Republican Party and within the Democratic Party. You've got neoliberals and neoconservatives.
33:22And both of them believe in sort of globalist ambitions, that the United States should be having these military bases everywhere, intervening in all these countries, supporting and spending billions and billions of dollars for warfare in far-flung places, while we can't
33:37even get jobs over here in the United States. This is a way of doing things. And there's other groups on the right and the left that don't believe in that vision for various reasons.
33:46But the interesting thing about highlighting TikTok within this warfare package is the implication and the admission that propaganda is part of this war, right?
34:01The $95 billion spent, and the inclusion of something against TikTok there, that the United States government very much understands propaganda and the information
34:13war and censorship of free media as a major part of their war effort, right? That they do not want people on TikTok having unrestricted algorithms or algorithms that
34:26show them the truth as it really is, or coming across people in Gaza who are going to give you the reality on the ground and not Zionist propaganda. They don't want that. And so there's a situation here, and this is one of the differences between 2024 and
34:392016 or 2008 or other previous sort of iterations of this, you know, of the aggression in Palestine is that now you've got different media outlets.
34:51I think Trump was just on with a podcast with Theo Von. That's the second podcast he's done. This didn't exist eight years ago where a presidential candidate would go on a podcast,
35:03right, with some upstart person who's not heavily curated, heavily sort of scrubbed of any sort of, you know, like the legacy media is dying. And we're going to look at a little bit of legacy media in a bit, on Fox News in particular.
35:17But the generations that trust the legacy media and that watch sort of the old traditional mainstream media definitely has a shelf life. It definitely is not going to last forever.
35:29That the new way is through social media. And the US government thinks that, realizes that it's such a threat to its globalist ambitions that it wants to control it.
35:41So a bunch of things are part of the package to Israel, in particular, 50 F-15 fighter jets, right? All of this to demonstrate the two-facedness and the hypocrisy.
35:54And what we say is speaking out of both sides of your mouth, that the Democratic regime currently in power has given lip service at various points to
36:07the suffering of the people of Gaza and the suffering of people of Palestine as they send billions and billions of dollars of military aid abroad to commit the crimes, right? So this is just appeasement. This is just lip service.
36:20And this is a false neutrality. The United States is trying to present itself. The government is trying to present itself as this neutral broker. That's, oh, there's a ceasefire. Blinken's in the Middle East again, trying to get a ceasefire.
36:34Oh, he came back empty-handed again. Well, gee, I wonder why. You just spent $20 billion arming Israel to the teeth, and you can't get a deal done. No wonder. You're not a good faith actor.
36:48You actually have a horse in this fight. You're supporting one side versus the other. And so you're not a diplomat. You're not actually bringing anything good to the region. We have a quote here by Biden that stresses sort of the real face of the American administration or regime.
37:02My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad. Yep. And that is very on brand for him. Now, what's the takeaway for all this as Muslims? We've got several ayahs from the Qur'an that address this directly.
37:16But one that struck me in particular, Allah says in Surah Al-Anfal, إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا يُنفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمْ لِيَسُدُّوا عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ Right?
37:27So that the, surely that I don't like the translation, disbelievers will say the people who, the deniers, the people who have denied, they spend their wealth to prevent people from the way of Allah.
37:37فَسَيُنفِقُونَهَا ثُمَّ تَكُونُ عَلَيْهِمْ حَسْرَةً ثُمَّ يُغْلَبُونَ وَالَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا إِلَى جَهَنَّمَ يُحْشَرُونَ Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says, they will continue to spend and spend and spend.
37:51Haven't we seen this? Mushahed, right? This is something they're currently doing. They will continue to spend and spend and spend. And then there's going to come a day where they will regret it. And then after that, they will be defeated. And the deniers of the truth will eventually be driven into Hell.
38:06لا إله إلا الله صَدَقَ اللَّهُ الْعَظِيمُ Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala tells the truth. That people who spend their money in falsehood, spend their money in oppression, it's not going to last forever. You're going to have your time.
38:20God tried you. Allah tried you with this opportunity to have wealth. And what did you do with it? We've seen the images. We've seen the videos. Kids blown to bits. Horrifying, horrifying images and videos. Every day for the last 10 months,
38:33this is what you did with the wealth that God gave to you. You're going to have to answer for it on the Day of Judgment. And even your time of power on earth is going to be short. Transitioning to our second point now.
38:47So, we've got the Democratic National Convention which is happening. For those of you who don't know, this is sort of like a political tradition in the United States. It was actually sort of something invented in the 1800s in order to get more buy-in from people.
39:01As opposed to just like naming the ticket. Here's the president. Here's the vice president. To sort of come together and involve more people in the selection of the ticket. Who's going to be the president or the vice president
39:12that goes on to face the election in November. So, just by the Qadr of Allah, the Democratic National Convention, so the convention that will appoint,
39:25that has announced the formal ticket of Harris and Walz, happens to be taking place in Chicago this year. Now, if you don't know anything about Chicago, the second city of the United States, the second largest city,
39:38Chicago has one of the, if not the biggest population of Palestinians in the United States of America. There are parts of Chicago called Little Palestine.
39:49And so, this was a really interesting opportunity, let's say, for the Palestinian Americans, the Palestinian diaspora,
39:59the Muslims and other allies to announce their rage and displeasure with the Democratic administration and their attitudes and their policies towards Gaza and Palestine. So, a lot of stuff has been going down.
40:13A ton of protests. Some of the biggest protests that we've seen all year. Protesters are calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, obviously. They're highlighting the devastating impact on Palestine.
40:25And they are expected to be some of the largest protests ever seen for this particular cause. Okay, anybody who's around, if you happen to have some free time,
40:37they're centered around Union Square Park or Union Park on the near west side. The main protest activities were planned for today. Additional events are happening throughout the convention. We've seen even some of the people were referencing in the chat
40:49the unfurling of a banner saying basically, no aid, no military aid to Israel. Stop arming Israel. And this was seen as such a threat that the cowardly man
41:01behind our sister Nadia Ahmed started hitting her on the head with his "We Love Biden" sign. La ilaha illallah. So, it runs from the 19th to the 22nd of August. So, it's got one day left.
41:12And there have been events going all throughout. Now, on the inside of the convention, the Democratic Party is trying to portray this sort of united front, rah, rah, rally behind our ticket. We're going to get them.
41:26We're going to beat Trump. Trump's the bad guy, etc. But the protests have been a thorn in their side, demonstrating that they are not united and that their base
41:37and even the broader population is not happy with the policy of the current administration or the Democratic Party towards Palestine and Gaza. And so, it was reminding, when we're thinking about these protests,
41:51one of the most appropriate ayahs of the Qur'an, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala said, some people could wonder, it's like, well, are these people just vandalists or are they troublemakers or are they rabble-rousers? I don't know. I was accused of being a conservative at the beginning of this program.
42:04But I go to lots of protests. I don't know how unclassifiable, I guess. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala said, كُنتُمْ خَيْرَ أُمَّةٍ أُخْرِجَتْ لِلنَّاسِ تَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَتَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنْكَرِ وَتُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala said,
42:17you were or you are the best community ever raised out of humanity or also for humanity. Both translations are correct. Why? What makes us the best ummah?
42:28You encourage the good or, in another translation, command the good. You establish good in your societies and you forbid or prevent evil from happening. So the Prophet (ﷺ) said, if you see evil,
42:42if any one of you sees evil, then you change it with your hand. And if you can't, meaning you don't have the power to do that, then at least you speak out. And if you can't do that, then at least you hate it in your heart. And he said that is the weakest form of faith.
42:55That this idea of protesting in general, it's not khuruj, it's not revolt, it's not doing anything that's explicitly illegal or violent
43:08or anything that's problematic. That even within our own tradition, that this is one of the ways, one of the tactics of demonstrating, at the very least, that we hate this thing in our heart. Yes, we are accountable in front of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala
43:21for demonstrating that we hate this thing that the United States government is doing to Palestine. We hate it and we will speak out against it. And if it is possible, we will change it by our hand as well.
43:34It's essential that we keep up pressure on our elected officials. They can't be allowed to sleep peacefully. They can't be allowed to continue with business as usual. That the US foreign policy is something
43:47that not just commits objective moral harm across the world, it also endangers Americans. It also makes people hate us and actually makes people want to act out against us. And this is despite, now,
44:01what are people doing in response to these protests? Well, rather than take a moment of introspection and soul-searching and wondering, gee, I wonder what all these people are upset about.
44:13What we find is that both on the left and the right, or if you prefer, in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, we see the same sort of fear tactics. That they are trying to scare us into silence and acquiescence.
44:26They are trying to scare us to stay home and to not say anything, to let them continue with their slaughter and all of the money that they make off of their slaughter. Now, the form of the scare tactics is a little bit different.
44:40The Democrats are threatening us with Trump. They say, well, you have to vote for Harris even if she isn't going to do anything different from President Biden vis-à-vis Palestine or Gaza. You have to vote for her, otherwise you'll get Trump
44:54and that'll be the end of democracy. And the Republicans are doing the same thing, just a little bit differently. They're saying that if all these people who are protesting, they're all terrorists or they're all foreign agents and they're using the language of post-9/11,
45:07they're using the language of the war on terror to try to intimidate and silence people. And that brings us to that angry conservative that I promised that we would show you. We've got a hit piece that was written
45:19and then this person was invited on Fox News to talk about these protests. And his big conclusion is that we are all basically foreign agents.
45:32Let's roll the clip and see what we got.
45:57Exactly what your research showed. Sure. So we looked at every group that we could find that is publicly involved in these protests and altogether we found over 150, almost 160 of the groups
46:10are actually extremist groups. And by extremist, what I mean is they are groups that support Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization or they support acts of terrorism like the October 7th attacks
46:23or they support a revolution in the United States for the sake of communism or anarchism. So really extreme stuff. And within that group, what we found is that
46:34they are tied to or supportive of at least nine hostile foreign governments, governments that don't like the United States like Iran, China, Russia,
46:45even North Korea, and they also support or are tied to almost 20 different foreign terrorist organizations. So this is an extreme bunch. So to be clear, what you're saying is some of our major enemies,
46:59North Korea, Iran, China, they could be funding, I should say, these groups either directly or indirectly. They may not even need to.
47:13He knows he can't say that. This group of loyalists, this really big network that we've really drawn out at Capital Research Center, that they might just be able to operate on their own. I don't even know if they have to get orders because they're going to act on behalf of these governments
47:27and these foreign terrorist organizations anyway. But in fact, within that overall network, there's a few groups that formed a coalition to specifically disrupt and try to shut down the convention.
47:41And one of the groups, SAMADOU, that's in that coalition is directly tied to an Iran-backed communist terrorist group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
47:53I mean, the leader of it is also part of the leadership of that terrorist group. So direct terrorist ties there to those that are trying to shut this thing down.
48:04At the end of the day, I do not imagine all or, quite frankly, any of these protesters and the groups that they are aligned with are going to be voting for Donald J. Trump. So what is their ultimate goal in protesting the DNC?
48:20This is a mafia-style shakedown. What they are saying to the Democrats is, well, first of all, they're lying. They're saying, we are a part of your base. We've been your loyal voters. They haven't been.
48:33Most of them have hated the Democrats because they're so... You can mute me. Yeah, we can shut it there.
48:47So as you see, lots of great stuff. Brilliant, brilliant man. I'd like to see his SAC score. Unhinged conspiracy talk from Ryan Morrow,
49:00which last name seems to be also Italian-American, that basically just absolutely casting out accusations left and right, which you can do in the United States.
49:12Apparently, you can't really do anything, unfortunately, legally, if someone accuses you of being a terrorist or being part of a terrorist group. There's really nothing you can do about that. And now this individual had a write-up
49:26that his report is sort of being based off of where he names myself, he names Omar Suleiman, he names other people, as basically being these big evil people, terrorist sympathizers,
49:40the normal sort of post-9/11 war on terror thing. Now, I did some digging. I went down the rabbit hole on this guy. And there's some interesting stuff that I dug up. So his whole thing that he works right now for,
49:54what's it called? The Capital Research Center, America's investigative think tank. That's a really nice neutral-sounding title for a not very neutral Islamophobic think tank.
50:06Now, before the Capital Research Center, this individual, Ryan Morrow, he worked for the Clarion Project. The Clarion Project is founded by a Canadian-Israeli.
50:19And as you can imagine, they do a lot of pro-Zionist stuff, and they also do a lot of anti-Islamic stuff. The Clarion Project has put out books. They were founded in 2006,
50:33so right in the heat of the grift, right after 9/11, where the grift is going strong, where all these sorts of fake experts can pop up. And this individual passes himself off as some sort of expert in Islam
50:46or Islamic extremism, quote-unquote. So the Clarion Project had released books such as Obsession, Radical Islam's War Against the West, and another book called The Third Jihad, Radical Islam's Vision for America, etc.
51:00Now, if you dig even deeper, it's really interesting that they, let's say they incorporate or they make sure that they use certain sellouts that claim to be Muslims
51:14as part of their organization, so that nobody can... It's like plausible deniability. Nobody can say that they're anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic if they have their one token Muslim guy
51:25who is outspokenly pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian, and that's exactly what they do. However, their track record is very, very dirty and very, very filthy.
51:37And actually, they're also tied to the Clarion Project and other groups, and this particular individual, Ryan Morrow, is tied to the training of police officers across the country
51:51in these, quote-unquote, counter-extremist measures where he spews his anti-Islamic nonsense. The same types of conferences where Israeli intelligence collaborates
52:05to militarize our own police forces, and there's articles written about that. If you don't know, then I recommend that you educate yourself. One of these such conferences, I was surprised to read this article
52:18written April 27, 2016, took place in my old stomping grounds up near Utica in Verona, New York. Eight hundred police officers attended
52:29this New York Tactical Officers Association conference, and there were dozens of workshops where they were trained in Israeli martial arts. Subhan'Allah, I wonder why.
52:42And on the last day of the conference, Ryan Morrow, this individual, a national security analyst, lectures about terrorism for six hours. And you can imagine the sorts of things that he says.
52:54So this is all very, very cookie-cutter, okay? And this is very, very, you know, some of the people in the comments were asking about, well, people are going to say this, and people say that. How do we deal with all the Islamophobia? I mean, I'm a firm believer
53:08that we have to deal with it head on. We know that people are going to attempt to portray us as foreign agents. That's a common tactic across the world, and especially the United States government since the 1920s. That anybody that they disagreed with,
53:22whether it was communists or socialists, or in the anti-war movement of the 1960s, right, or in the post-9/11 world, anybody that they sort of disagreed with, you know, the common sort of tactic
53:33is to try to find mythical relations between people from the United States, United States citizens, United States people, Muslims especially now, and organizations abroad.
53:46Without going into sort of the dubious sort of circumstances and processes by which the United States government decides that certain groups are terrorists and others aren't, right? Like I find it very, very rich
54:00that we talk about, or that Ryan Morrow talks about some events, right? And we know that, oh, maybe I'll leave that there. Let's just say that the governments that the United States supports
54:13in a very, very parallel world could very well be considered state sponsors of terror, right? The United States has this designation. It's an official designation, state sponsors of terror. And there's no sensible reason
54:26why Israel's not on it. The only reason is because of politics, because the U.S. considers Israel an ally for some stupid reason. So this is what we're looking at. This type of thing, we need to be prepared. We're going to be called foreign agents.
54:40They're going to say that we have ties to foreign countries or foreign groups, that we're part of this group, we're part of that group, all of which is nonsense. But it's all intended to silence us. When you see your name on a dossier or being doxxed, or you see your name,
54:54or God forbid, you're dragged in front of Congress one day in one of these witch hunts. This is meant to intimidate you and to silence you so that they can keep on making money from their wars and their brutality. And so I personally think
55:07that we have to face this head on, that we're not going to get through it unless we get through all of it. Basically, again, changing the foreign policy of the United States, getting money out of politics, doing these sorts of things that's going to take the oxygen away
55:20from the entire Islamophobia industry, the entire sort of Zionist industry, and all its related tentacles. Now, the takeaway from this, and this is another ayah I said I would bring up, what Allah ﷻ says in the Qur'an,
55:34how do you prepare yourself for hearing these things? Maybe you see yourself, Canary Mission puts out something against you, puts a dossier together about you. Maybe one of these groups, they put together a doxxing truck and they put your name and your personal information out there.
55:48Allah ﷻ already told us towards the end of Surah Al-'Imran, لَتُبْلَوُنَّ فِي أَمْوَالِكُمْ وَأَنفُسِكُمْ وَلَتَسْمَعُنَّ مِنَ الَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْكِتَابَ مِنْ قَبْلِكُمْ وَمِنَ الَّذِينَ أَشْرَكُوا أَذًى
56:01أَذًى كَثِيرًا وَإِن تَصْبِرُوا وَتَتَّقُوا فَإِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ مِنْ عَزْمِ الْأُمُورِ You're going to, if you're a true believer, you will certainly be tested in your wealth and in yourselves, meaning loss of money, loss of job, being doxxed,
56:15yeah, totally possible. Or even harm to yourself. You might get bopped over the head by somebody with a "We Love Biden" sign, or worse. And you will certainly hear many hurtful words, accusations, harm from those
56:28who are given the Scripture before you, Christians and Jews, and from many people who worship idols. But, if you are patient and mindful of Allah ﷻ, then that is a resolve to aspire to. So hang tight, insha'Allah,
56:41and Allah's aid will come. Let's circle back to the chat. I'm sure we had a lot of comments on this. And then we have an interesting article from the Yaqeen Institute to highlight,
56:53and then we'll get into tafsir and our book. Shameless. It says, richest of the enemies of Muslims put their money to fight Islam. Richest Muslims give their money to these same people as investments. Allah!
57:07Well, I don't see the lie, Seamus. I don't see the lie, unfortunately. Yaqub Ali. Yes, we all have pain. Asbun'Allah wa ni'ma l-wakeel. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum, Ash 2020. From New Hampshire. Beautiful state.
57:20Umar al-Dasher. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. I miss you too, akhi. South Jersey represent. Good to hear from you, bro. It has been a lifetime, insha'Allah. I'll make it down to Jersey soon and visit you and your lovely family. May Allah protect you.
57:32Naaz. All the billions of dollars and they still can't defeat the resistance. Ooh, yep. 100%. So a lot of times power is about projection, right? We're invincible. We're invincible. We're invincible.
57:43You ain't that invincible, right? Actually look at what's happening. Lara says, Reds is a new Palestinian startup rival for TikTok, which started this week. That's good to know, Lara. Thank you very much. I did not know that.
57:55Muhad Adlan. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. May Allah give you bountiful blessings. Ameen, ameen, ameen, ya Rabb. Shameless drop in ayahs. Thank you.
58:05Amina. Oh, Trump's Twitch streaming with Sneako of all people. Yeah, I mean, what a world we live in. Subhan'Allah. Hopefully meeting at San Sara.
58:16Katie Aladeen or Qadi, maybe Aladeen. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum from Maryland. Nazia Zubeiri. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum from Dallas. Insha'Allah, I'll be in Dallas next month and the following as well.
58:30Breton Zater. Awesome username. Wa'alaikum as-salamu alaykum. No worries. Happy that you were there at the DNC protest. And with a username like Breton Zater, I would expect you to be at the protest.
58:42Excellent. I bet it was crowded. AOC praising Biden was hilarious, but we see what these people are made of. Their true colors always show.
58:53Oh, the Democrats are the best at tone-shaming. Qadri. Yeah, the Obamas at the top of the chain there.
59:04Juju Meisner is about Trump and ceasefire, etc. Listen, we've seen that Israel doesn't want a ceasefire at all. That they have no interest in a ceasefire. They're literally just gaslighting even the United States, but especially every other group.
59:17They've demonstrated absolutely nothing to indicate that they are serious about a ceasefire. Yes, Alhamdulillah, Laura, I agree. And Faal is super important. Listen, the times that we're living in since the last 10 months.
59:31Al-Imran, An-Nisa, Al-Ma'idah, and Al-Faal, and At-Tawbah. Read them like subhan'Allah. You see, wow, verses that you've been reading. You've heard it before, but you see them in a different light now.
59:47Ameen, all the du'as going on. Let's see.
59:58Awsat asks why we don't have a strong united Muslim organization. Because we're asleep. Awsat. Because we thought, we believe in America, right?
01:00:11The opening scene from The Godfather. We thought as long as we would pay money to relief and charity organizations, and we would just be good Americans, and we would be quiet, that people would leave us alone.
01:00:25No, it's not true. Evil doesn't rest. So we have to have a little bit more courage and do more bold action than that. We have to actually challenge those people who are trying to criminalize us and make us unsafe.
01:00:44Yeah, Salahuddin, exactly. Expert on extremist groups. How many experts on extremist groups? I want to see. Where did you get your degree in?
01:00:58Extremist studies? Right? Did they fly you to different parts of the Middle East for four years? Did you do a study abroad? I don't know. Where? How do you get that credential?
01:01:12Anybody can show up and decide and claim themselves as an expert on extremist groups? Masha'Allah. It's like where's that meme of the Always Sunny guy with the board? Conspiracy.
01:01:26Good point, Seamus. Extremist is that Republican version of Khadij. It's like the Oprah meme. You're an extremist. You're an extremist. Everybody's an extremist.
01:01:37Wa'alaikum Assalam, Saeed Farah.
01:01:53Yeah, exactly. Salahuddin says, Imam Thomas, Italian descent, mafia links found. There you go. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. A lot of people talking in the chat about gray zone, about people who are being paid
01:02:06by Iran, those sorts of things. And yeah, I mean, hey, look, these people aren't us. Right? So this is part of the tactic to lump everyone in. Like the fact that he would lump in like extreme leftists, right?
01:02:16With like communists and anarchists, with Muslims, with like all these different groups. Very, very disparate groups. Right? It's just what he considers as people he doesn't like.
01:02:27And so they're all of a sudden enemies of America and they're extremists. Yeah. Being tied to, with ties to.
01:02:41I want to see. And it was interesting how, you know, this Ryan Mauro guy, he knows that he can't say that we're getting direct money because then we would be able to say, no, let's go into the books. Let's hit, you know, we got receipts. There's nothing there, folks.
01:02:55But he knows that he can't say that. And that's why it was so interesting that the interviewer actually like, so you're saying that like people were getting funded. Well, no, they don't even need to be. They're just acting in the same way as North Korea or whatever.
01:03:09Well, North Korea eats Cheerios for breakfast and I eat Cheerios for breakfast. Does that mean I'm taking orders from North Korea or acting in their interests? Like, give me a break. Right? But this is how little proof they have and how they're just going off of this sort of,
01:03:21you know, collective suspicion and this sort of witch hunt to try to silence people. Yes. And exactly. AQADRI, the same accusations against Bissan by Zionists. They try to punish people. They try to punish people and silence people.
01:03:34And they hope to go after people that they think they can win with. They don't touch people that they know they're going to lose. They try to go after people that they think they can win with to intimidate and silence
01:03:43the rest of us.
01:03:59Yeah, I wonder. Seamus says Krav Maga pseudo martial art. I wonder which country they stole that martial art from. Like the hummus and the grape leaves that are really Palestinian.
01:04:19Random Thought says, It's essential to intensify our du'a to Allah for non-Muslims. I agree. Stop making religion a profession. Maybe. We must follow the Sunnah of the Prophet. Sure. And the companions who didn't take money for teaching the Qur'an.
01:04:32That's a fiqh issue and that's tied to maslaha. Right. There are situations. There are situations in which if paying people and professionalizing a field is going to
01:04:44lead to the success of that field, then it is a good thing. However, your concern is real. But I think that your concern can be decoupled from just monetary compensation. We don't want it to be fake. We don't want celebrity shaykh culture and this sort of nonsense.
01:04:58Right. But if professionalizing it and compensating properly is going to help it, if it can be done in an autonomous way where it's not under the control of the donor class or things like that, then la ba's.
01:05:10And this is a fiqh discussion that many people have had before us. Ashok brings up a video circulating about Vladimir Putin kissing the Qur'an. Yeah, Putin plays both sides.
01:05:24Believe that. Putin is like Obama in the sense that he understands the best way to control, the best way to fight Islam is to control it. That's why he has his Mufti of Dagestan, you know, passing fatwa against niqab and things
01:05:38like that. Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh from Baltimore, Maryland.
01:05:55People asking some very incriminating questions here. I'm going to dodge some of them. Pebbles 222 asked about Mehdi Hassan.
01:06:09I'm not going to take this platform to do it, but you can check my interview with Saman Butt on Islam21c. Check out. Here we go. I'll just say this. Check out Rifat al-Arair. Look at what he said about Mehdi Hassan.
01:06:22If you want to see Norman Finkelstein, see what he has said about Mehdi Hassan.
01:06:33Yes, exactly, and Mariam brings up a good point. There's the same tactic Arab countries are using against the Muslim Brotherhood: baseless vilification, exaggerated fear-mongering.
01:06:43That's the tactic that Gulf nations such as the UAE are using in America to try to lobby with Republicans to get the Muslim Brotherhood designated a terrorist organization, which is ridiculous, right?
01:06:56That's why one of the first things that Israel said after October 7th was ISIS equals Hamas because they're trying to tie Hamas to ISIS and the entire, by Hamas, the entire
01:07:07Palestinian resistance to ISIS, and then tying them to the Muslim Brotherhood so that they can basically conflate all of those things as one. And if you just even have a basic understanding of the region, understand that those are very, very different groups, okay,
01:07:21and that they are extremely different in their goals and their tactics and their ideologies and everything like that, right? But the whole thing depends upon painting them all with the same brush in order to criminalize them.
01:07:33AF, I can't give exact prescriptive guidance on the election, but if you think that one
01:07:52of them is less evil than the other, then I don't know what you're looking at. Well, Sam, I like him. So that seems like the Muslims in the USA want to back Trump if he'll at least talk about a ceasefire.
01:08:04Not my read of the situation, but I feel like we need to move from the two-party system. There's no doubt that this stranglehold of the two-party system on American politics is a limiting factor. I don't see Muslims lining up behind Trump. That's just not my experience.
01:08:18Like I think that people are very conflicted. A lot of people I know were talking about voting third party. Probably the majority of people I know, I can't tell you what to do. That's not Yaqeen Institute sort of platform. That's not a thing to do on this platform.
01:08:32But just describing to you what I see and from the people I know, most people are talking about third party. Most people are not talking about any of the two main parties. Sam, Ahad asked a good question.
01:08:45Why can't we have our own social network? Yeah, we need to. We need a long-term plan. Sad to hear, Bella.
01:09:02Good question, Bella. How can we expect support from others when there's so much division in our own community? I'll just qualify that by saying not all division is bad. Okay, some division has to happen. You don't want to have unity with the hypocrites.
01:09:15Okay, but yeah, that is true that we need to clean up our own house at the same time as reaching out to others. Good point, Mariam.
01:09:27SubhanAllah, this tactic has been used by disbelievers and mentioned in the Qur'an. Fir'awn called the Prophet Musa, 'alayhi assalam, a sorcerer, right? And claimed that he was the teacher of... I love that.
01:09:37The moment when in Surah Ash-Shu'ara when the magicians accept Islam and Fir'awn says, Musa's got to be your teacher, right? This crazy conspiracy theory, right? It is a very old tactic.
01:09:55I don't know that I agree with Muhammad Yasser Hajji Noor at this point. It's far better to not vote. I don't agree with that. I think that voting, especially if you're not voting for the two parties, like it would
01:10:08register as a protest vote, which is perhaps something, but that's for to be debated in another forum. And Mariam, thank you.
01:10:22'Alayhi assalam, I'm from Kuwait. Glad that you're catching us live. Kuwait's a wonderful place with wonderful people.
01:10:32Trying to get to the end of the comments before we turn to our call to action. We've got a really, really excellent article in Yaqeen Institute penned by the indomitable
01:10:46if we could bring up maybe the asset or the link where Dr. Oweimer has written an article. Everybody should read it. If you're tuning in, please read it. Speaking Truth to Power: Islamic Rules for Protest, Civil Disobedience and Encampments
01:11:00for Gaza. Very, very important piece. I'm just going to read to you real quick the main subheadings. Okay, so one of the subheadings is that all of this, what we do fits under enjoining good and forbidding evil. That's the frame that we're going with.
01:11:14We're fulfilling a collective obligation to defend Muslims. That's super important. We're also, it's essential that we maintain Islamic etiquette and avoid anything that's haram. Easier said than done, but it's going to require us to get our own house together and build
01:11:28our own sort of spaces. Number four, building intentional alliances. I wrote more about that on my blog piece. And recognize your right to oppose injustice. This is your divine right.
01:11:42And ultimately, we'll put our trust in Allah to deliver the results. We're only responsible for the best action that we possibly can.
01:11:55Let's see what we got. Sarah asks, haven't the Gulf rulers been funding anti-Islam, Muslim laws in Western nations? Yes, they have. Especially the UAE.
01:12:08Atika Rahman, bonjour, wa alaikum assalam, astaghfirullah, sto bani, grazie. Grazie mille, as we say. Welcome to the program. Good to have you back, one of our return viewers. You made it to the end.
01:12:22Congratulations, alhamdulillah. Very good. All right, so let's move on. So we've got our call to action. Go ahead and read that article. It's a very important piece.
01:12:32And if you haven't already read my article about intersectionality and the Gaza protest, then also read that as well. It's sort of articulating the sort of political philosophy that we need for this time, and a guidance for how to act. Now let's transition to tafsir.
01:12:46We've got Surat An-Nas. Last time we did Surat Al-Fatihah. And the unique word was, well, there are several unique words. One of them was al-maghdoub, and we talked about it. Today, we are going with Surat An-Nas, and we're going to ask you, get ready, get ready.
01:13:00What is a word in Surat An-Nas? Don't hold it up yet, guys. Don't put the poll up yet. But what is a word in Surat An-Nas that is unique? Or start thinking about what are the unique words in Surat An-Nas that don't occur in any other surah in the Qur'an.
01:13:14Right? So Surat An-Nas, the final surah in the Qur'an. أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
01:13:22قل أعوذ برب الناس ملك الناس إله الناس من شر الوسواس خلاس الناس
01:13:31الذي يوسوس في صدور الناس من الجنة والناس That's it. It's short. It's sweet. It's to the point. What word in there? We have now the option, guys.
01:13:44Let's go over what it means. Okay? Do we have the translation up or we don't have that? That's cool. Say, قل أعوذ برب الناس
01:13:54Say, I seek refuge in the Lord of the people, ملك الناس, owner or controller or sovereign of the people, إله الناس, the God or the deity of the people من شر الوسواس خناس
01:14:06from the evil of the whispering, خناس And there's a couple of different ways we could translate that. The one who retracts, the one who sort of hides away. This sort of imagery.
01:14:17He kind of makes his mischief and he runs away and he goes hiding back in the shadows. Okay? الذي يوسوس في صدور الناس The one who whispers into the hearts of people من الجنة والناس
01:14:29from among the jinn and among the people. So, let's bring up, guys. We've got in the studio. What do we have? What are the options here? We've got multiple choice.
01:14:41No, we just have the answers. Okay, we don't have multiple choice. We're good. Alright, so give me your answers.
01:14:49What is the word in Arabic that is unique to the surah that doesn't come in any other surah? There's a few. So, there are multiple right answers.
01:14:58People going in. وسواس, that is correct. That is correct. الخناس, that is correct. That is correct. وسوس, that is correct. That is correct.
01:15:12صدور, no. صدور appears in other ayat. خناس, yes. Yup. Whispering. صدور, no. صدور appears in other ayat. خناس, yes. Yup. Whispering.
01:16:22 ...a laqab, giving a nickname to Shaytan, to Iblis himself. And as we said that the meaning of this word, sort of indicating one who hides away or slinks away or basically, right, again, causes the mischief and then runs, that this is one of the main points of the surah because it indicates to us the method and mechanism by which Shaytan leads us astray. Okay? There's a couple really interesting connections between this surah and what we're doing in Atomic Habits.
01:16:36We talk about bad habits and some of the bad habits that we have might be sinful habits. And why do these sinful habits keep on coming to us? Because Shaytan, by whispering, by being someone who basically does it and then leaves,
01:16:48he basically just points out to us. He makes us notice the possibility of committing a sin and notice a justification for why it might not be that big of a deal. Right?
01:17:01He shows us the cues, if we want to use the language of Atomic Habits. He's doing a process of naming. Okay? And then he whispers to you the justification that it might not be that bad if you do it. You have a reason. Everything has a maslaha, right?
01:17:15There's always a maslaha, a reason to do it. We can always justify. I'm just doing da'wah, right? I'm just, you know, I'm doing what everybody else is doing, right? It's not like I'm doing this. That would be way worse.
01:17:28There's always a justification. Shaytan is ready to give you that justification. And then he'll retreat and watch from a distance as everything blows up in your face. Okay?
01:17:39So this is the method that Shaytan operates by. And so it becomes really important to link it up with what we're about to talk about in Atomic Habits
01:17:48when it comes to how to minimize our bad habits and how to disrupt them and how to break them and admitting that some of our bad habits are also sinful habits.
01:18:05Asha asks a question. By listening to your recitation, am I ever able to pray salah behind you? Pray that Allah grant this wish of mine. We have to be in each other's sight. If you want to pray behind me, you've got to be with me. You can't, like, pray.
01:18:17You can't, like, play the video at minute 1:33 or whatever and then, like, use it in your salah. No, you can't do that. Okay? Very good. Okay, so many people were right on when it came to guessing.
01:18:31Very good. We will continue to do this. So next time, not next week, but the following week, we will talk about Surah Al-Falaq. There are some interesting, unique words in that as well.
01:18:46Excellent. Well stated, Bella. I appreciate that. Yes, Watermelon also brought up another one, my favorite. I'm not doing obligation X because other people who do obligation X are doing bad deed Y. You know?
01:19:00Why should I do? Yeah, Subhan'Allah. The tricks will always have a reason. Shaitan always gives us an excuse. But with that said, let's transition to our final segment for the night, and that's our personal development segment. We've been going through the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
01:19:14Very, very useful book for Muslims. Coincides almost one to one with some of the things that we have to do in Islam,
01:19:21and it really helps us with trying to get into maximizing our good habits and minimizing our bad habits.
01:19:35Favorite reciters? I'll get to that. That's a good question. I mean, I'll get to it at the end of this one, okay? This one is all about self-control. The title of the next chapter is The Secret to Self-Control, and he brings up some wild statistics, okay? So he talks about drug addiction.
01:19:48I know some of the people that were watching previous episodes wanted to talk about drug addiction. Well, this is where he gets into it in the chapter on The Secret to Self-Control. He brings up a case study of the Vietnam War,
01:19:59and when American soldiers were abroad in Vietnam fighting the unjust war there, that a whopping 35% of U.S. servicemen tried heroin while they were there.
01:20:13That's crazy. And of those people who were there, 20% of the soldiers were addicted to heroin. 20%. That's one out of every five soldiers in the U.S. military fighting in Vietnam
01:20:27was addicted to heroin. That's mind-blowing. Now, even more mind-blowing than that,
01:20:35what percent of them used heroin within one year of returning to the United States? That's the open-ended question. What do you think? The answer will surprise you, perhaps shock you.
01:20:49Only 5% of those people who were basically addicted, they were heroin addicts, over in Vietnam, when they came back, only 5% used heroin within the first year of being back.
01:21:03That's nuts. Why is it nuts? It challenges a lot of our assumptions about addiction and addictive behavior and how they work. In our culture, in the United States of America,
01:21:14we definitely tend to see addiction and drug use as a moral failing, and it is a moral failing. Let's not be unclear about that.
01:21:23However, what this study showed is that there's a lot more going on than just willpower. It shows you the power of context, the power of environment, and the power of cues.
01:21:36Now, let's flip these sorts of things. What are the numbers, do you think, of people who get addicted to heroin in their own homes,
01:21:48in their own homeland, where they live, in their residence? What do you think if people go through a program to try to quit heroin? We're going to stick with heroin so that we minimize the variables.
01:21:59What percentage of people who go through these programs relapse within a year? 90%. The numbers are almost flipped entirely.
01:22:11People who get addicted to heroin in their residences, like where they live, they can go through a program, they go home, 90% of them are using heroin again within a year.
01:22:25The people who are abroad in a totally different environment, who are addicted to heroin, they come back, change everything about their lives, only 5% used heroin within one year.
01:22:36Think about it. That's the point that the author is making when it comes to the secret to self-control. Ah, you're jumping the gun, Watermelon. We're going to talk about it.
01:22:50What's the point here? The point is that unhealthy behavior, yes, there is a dimension to it that is about self-control. There's a dimension to it about moral weakness.
01:23:02There's a dimension to it that is moral choice. However, there is another dimension to it that has to do with a disciplined environment. He talks about the difference between a disciplined person.
01:23:17We are used to thinking about things in terms of disciplined people, that there are disciplined people and undisciplined people, and disciplined people just have all the willpower in the world,
01:23:27and they can just face any temptation, and they're successful. They're successful at resisting that temptation,
01:23:34versus this idea that really successful people create disciplined environments for themselves. They create environments where there is no temptation, or where there's very, very, very little temptation,
01:23:47so they don't have the chance to have a failure of willpower. That's a really, really interesting proposition. That's the proposition of the author. Basically, he says that the people who seem that we, you and I, look at as the most disciplined
01:24:01are the people who spend the least amount of time around temptation, and triggers, and cues that would lead to negative behaviors. Exactly like Bread and Za'atar said,
01:24:15this reminds me, the first thing that came to mind was the hadith of the 99 men, or the hadith of the person that killed 99 men. He was a person who had murdered 99 people. He went to a monk. He asked, will God forgive me?
01:24:29The monk said, no way. He killed the monk, and he made it an even 100. Then he went to a sheikh, and he said, I killed 100 guys. I killed 100 people. Can I be forgiven? Will Allah forgive me? He said, yes, but you have to change your location.
01:24:43You got to get out of your situation where you're at, and you need to go. You know the rest of the hadith. He died on the way, but Allah made it so that because of his intention, and his effort that he expended, Allah forgave him,
01:24:56even though he didn't even make it to the place where he was at. This is exactly what the author is talking about. That Islam recognizes that we want to not just build disciplined people,
01:25:09we also want to build disciplined environments. Sometimes the key to building a disciplined person is actually to build a disciplined environment. That the person who is the most successful
01:25:21is the person who spends the least amount of time around temptation, which is also borne out in other sort of ayat and examples in our tradition. Allah said in Surah Al-Isra, وَلَا تَقْرَبُوا الزِّنَاءَ
01:25:34Don't even come close to illicit sexual intercourse. Don't even get close to it. Because if you get close to it, there's a likelihood that you're going to fall into it. And so you need taqwa. You need this sort of... Taqwa literally means sort of like a wiqayah,
01:25:48it's like a protective barrier. You need to put enough of a barrier in between yourself and that haram thing that you're not going to get in a tempting situation. And then you look like an alpha male or a sigma male, whatever the kids are saying these days.
01:26:02You look like some big boss, like this person with amazing willpower, it's just that you don't have any temptation. You have a situation in which you have no temptation. Other examples, the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ talking about doubtful matters.
01:26:15The halal is clear and the haram is clear. And in between them are, mushtabihāt, the things that are doubtful. And then he says that the example of a believer is like somebody who is,
01:26:30somebody who's grazing their flock around the himmah. The himmah is like the pastures, right? The king's pastures. If you graze your flock on the edge of that pasture, it's just a matter of time before one gets in.
01:26:44And then you're guilty of doing something haram. That somebody who has taqwa, wiqaya, is going to put a barrier in between themselves and the haram, they're not going to be in a tempting situation. They're not going to put themselves into temptation
01:26:58so that they will fail. And this is exactly what Ashiq is talking about: your procrastination environment. Environment. So you can break a habit. One of his points in one of his quotes is that anybody can break a habit,
01:27:11but it's much harder to forget the habit. That habit lives on in your mind, and this is what the Shaitan plays with, with his whisperings, right? And so the key to stopping bad habits is to make them invisible. Just like the key to good habits is to make them visible and increase visibility.
01:27:25The key to breaking bad habits, and especially sinful habits, is to make them invisible. Reduce your exposure, remove cues, and make sure that you spend the least amount of time in temptation as possible.
01:27:39Now I'm going to go into the comments, and I'm going to hit everybody's questions and comments, but I want you to think about this and state your intention. Our homework for the next two weeks, because we're coming back in two weeks, is to think about one bad habit that you have
01:27:53that you want to eliminate, and how you are going to structure your environment. How are you going to make it invisible? How are you going to make the cues that trigger that habit invisible so that you are going to break this habit?
01:28:06And if it's very private, obviously you don't have to share, but any sharing will be encouraging to the jama'ah. Let's go to the comments, and then after we do that, we will wrap it up.
01:28:17Somebody asked me about my favorite reciters. I'm definitely partial to the reciters of Medina.
01:28:28So the old heads like Muhammad Ayub and Ali Jaber, from the young guys, Bu'i Jan and Ahmed Tarib Hamid, those are definitely my favorites.
01:28:42From Mecca, I like Bandar Balila a lot. And from the Egyptians, I'd say Al-Minshawi. Al-Minshawi is probably my favorite from the Egyptian reciters.
01:28:54Oh, can't forget from Bahrain, Anas, what's his name? Al-Omari or something like that? He's special, mashallah. I really, really like to listen to him.
01:29:08All right, what do we got in the comments? Very good.
01:29:21People swapping tips, I appreciate that. It's interesting also to see sort of the different things that we excel at and the different things that we struggle with. Your struggle as somebody who's not a reciter,
01:29:34and the different things that we struggle with. Your struggle is somebody else's triumph. Somebody else's triumph is your struggle. This happens.
01:29:47Interesting reflection, Amina, very interesting about the different change of environments. Sometimes home is too comfortable, definitely. That's why people go on these retreats, right? And we always say at retreats, you gotta go home and you gotta stay,
01:30:01you gotta keep the changes. But there's some wishful thinking going on there because you really need to change your environment when you get home.
01:30:13Ricardo Arrocho, wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome, bienvenido. What is that, Puerto Rican flag? I'm trying to see what your profile pic is.
01:30:33 I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is.
01:30:47 I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is. I'm trying to see what your profile pic is.
01:31:03 I'm trying to see what your profile pic is.
01:31:24 I'm having a hard time, Ashik, understanding what you're saying.
01:31:36 I can't even complete my 1000 sayyids al-istighfar. Too much coffee, I guess, when I made that. Maybe when you made that intention, I'm guessing you're saying. So I tweak it to 500 in Pomodoro style. I don't know what Pomodoro style is. Pomodoro means tomato in Italian.
01:31:49 I'm not sure what you mean by that. Mehmed Karim asks, what's hypocritical? I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that.
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01:32:31 I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that.
01:32:45I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that.
01:32:59I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that.
01:33:13I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not sure what you mean by that. That's what Pomodoro means, Amina.
01:33:25Working for 25 minutes, five-minute break, repeat? Wow, I had no idea. Well, I benefited from you all. Thank you for that. Yeah, Watermelon, I hear you.
01:33:38Working from home, getting outside is very important. Yeah, Abdullah keeps on wanting me to try decaf and I don't understand the point. Like, what would be the purpose of trying decaf coffee?
01:33:50I'd be like, you know, I don't know. Okay, interesting.
01:34:03People informing me about Pomodoro. That was a totally new thing. I thought you all learned Italian for a second. We're just going to talk about pasta Pomodoro or, you know, whatever.
01:34:16All right, good stuff, everybody. Well, I appreciate everybody sharing, especially those who made themselves vulnerable to something that they're going to try to break. Jeez, what's something? What's a habit that I'm going to try to break?
01:34:27I think I need to definitely be better about phone usage during work hours. So I'm going to just take that as my challenge. For the next two weeks, I'm going to leave my phone out of the room in blocks of, let's say, three hours, okay?
01:34:41And I'll report back after that. Yes, Qadi Al-Adeen, as we did in the beginning of the program, definitely du'a for Bangladesh, 100%. Ruqya Dariya asks, salah between Maghrib and Isha—is it considered Qiyam al-Layl?
01:34:55Yes, Layl begins with Maghrib. Sam Ahad says, Mahdi Hassan, I went camping in Wales. I hear Wales is beautiful.
01:35:05Wa'alaykum as-salam, Hussain Hassan from Buffalo. Masha'Allah. Welcome.
01:35:15Atika asks, what do you eat polenta with? Butter. You can do olive oil.
01:35:23You can also do a sort of tomato-based sauce, but mostly in northern Italian cuisine, it's more like butter-heavy. Butter and oil heavy, more so than tomato-heavy.
01:35:39May Allah preserve everybody that tunes in to the program and everybody who watches it thereafter. Wa'alaykum as-salam. We got people coming in the door just as we're about to leave.
01:35:49We're going to sign off before I have to give any more salams. Thank you, everybody. Until two weeks' time. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. See you next time. As-salamu alaykum.
