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Why You Can’t Escape Organized Religion | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine
Israel is Losing - and They Know It | Imam Tom Live

Israel is Losing - and They Know It | Imam Tom Live

How to Fight the Israeli Backlash | Imam Tom Live

How to Fight the Israeli Backlash | Imam Tom Live

On the Gaza Ceasefire | Imam Tom Live

On the Gaza Ceasefire | Imam Tom Live

Courage in the Face of Israeli Censorship | Imam Tom Live

Courage in the Face of Israeli Censorship | Imam Tom Live

How To Become A Strong Muslim Leader | Imam Tom Live

How To Become A Strong Muslim Leader | Imam Tom Live

How to Develop Better Habits | Imam Tom Live

How to Develop Better Habits | Imam Tom Live

Does Protesting Work? | Imam Tom Live

Does Protesting Work? | Imam Tom Live

Michigan Mosques Say NO! | Imam Tom Live

Michigan Mosques Say NO! | Imam Tom Live

Musk's Take, Columbia's Skunk Surprise, Islamic Unity, and India's Ram Revelation | Imam Tom Live

Musk's Take, Columbia's Skunk Surprise, Islamic Unity, and India's Ram Revelation | Imam Tom Live

The Lives of Imams, Hate Crime in Texas, Israeli Humiliation, Ceasefire Resolutions | Imam Tom Live

The Lives of Imams, Hate Crime in Texas, Israeli Humiliation, Ceasefire Resolutions | Imam Tom Live

Israel Bombs Rafah During Superbowl, that Biden Tweet, and Constructive Conversations | Imam Tom Live

Israel Bombs Rafah During Superbowl, that Biden Tweet, and Constructive Conversations | Imam Tom Live

What Will Ramadan be Like in Rafah? A Conversation About Sha'aban and Leadership | Imam Tom Live

What Will Ramadan be Like in Rafah? A Conversation About Sha'aban and Leadership | Imam Tom Live

Unveiling Truths: Aaron Bushnell, NYT's Agenda, & Stopping Military Aid to Israel | Imam Tom Live

Unveiling Truths: Aaron Bushnell, NYT's Agenda, & Stopping Military Aid to Israel | Imam Tom Live

Biryani Diplomacy: The Illusion of Political Influence & the "Flour Massacre" | Imam Tom Live

Biryani Diplomacy: The Illusion of Political Influence & the "Flour Massacre" | Imam Tom Live

Live Revolution: The West Rallies for Gaza | Imam Tom Live

Live Revolution: The West Rallies for Gaza | Imam Tom Live

University Raids, Fake Negotiations, Holocaust Remembrance? | Imam Tom Live

University Raids, Fake Negotiations, Holocaust Remembrance? | Imam Tom Live

Do Influencers Owe their Followers Advocacy? | Imam Tom Live

Do Influencers Owe their Followers Advocacy? | Imam Tom Live

Israel's Ceasefire Rejection, Nurse Fired for Gaza, and the Law of Sacrifice | Imam Tom Live

Israel's Ceasefire Rejection, Nurse Fired for Gaza, and the Law of Sacrifice | Imam Tom Live

Muslim Influencers Profiting from Apartheid | Imam Tom Live

Muslim Influencers Profiting from Apartheid | Imam Tom Live

The Real Guise of 'Islamophobia' | Imam Tom Live

The Real Guise of 'Islamophobia' | Imam Tom Live

What France & UK's Electoral results mean for Muslims | Imam Tom Live

What France & UK's Electoral results mean for Muslims | Imam Tom Live

No Limits: Israel’s Growing Atrocities and Global Indifference | Imam Tom Live

No Limits: Israel’s Growing Atrocities and Global Indifference | Imam Tom Live

Falsehood is Bound to Vanish | Imam Tom Live

Falsehood is Bound to Vanish | Imam Tom Live

Hypocrisy at the DNC | Imam Tom Live

Hypocrisy at the DNC | Imam Tom Live

Empowering Student Activism | Imam Tom Live

Empowering Student Activism | Imam Tom Live

Remembering Aysenur's Courage | Imam Tom Live

Remembering Aysenur's Courage | Imam Tom Live

Muslim Votes Swing 2024 | Imam Tom Live

Muslim Votes Swing 2024 | Imam Tom Live

All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation | Imam Tom Live

All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation | Imam Tom Live

Oct 7th Changed Everything | Imam Tom Live

Oct 7th Changed Everything | Imam Tom Live

Allah Will Ask: What Did You Do With Your Freedom? | Imam Tom Live

Allah Will Ask: What Did You Do With Your Freedom? | Imam Tom Live

Surah Al-Kawthar & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Live

Surah Al-Kawthar & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Live

Atomic Habits: Why Most Quit Early | Imam Tom Weekly

Atomic Habits: Why Most Quit Early | Imam Tom Weekly

Surah An-Nas & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Surah An-Nas & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Why You Can't Resist Cravings (and How to Take Back Control) | Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Why You Can't Resist Cravings (and How to Take Back Control) | Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Surah Al-Ikhlas & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Surah Al-Ikhlas & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Surah Al-Masad & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Surah Al-Masad & Atomic Habits | Imam Tom Weekly

Why Reps Matter More than Time | Imam Tom Weekly

Why Reps Matter More than Time | Imam Tom Weekly

What Does Trump's Second Term Mean for Muslims? | Imam Tom Weekly

What Does Trump's Second Term Mean for Muslims? | Imam Tom Weekly

The Islamic Cure for Overconsumption | Imam Tom Weekly

The Islamic Cure for Overconsumption | Imam Tom Weekly

Doomscrolling is Rewiring Your Brain | Imam Tom Weekly

Doomscrolling is Rewiring Your Brain | Imam Tom Weekly

Trump Wants to Take Over Gaza | Imam Tom Weekly

Trump Wants to Take Over Gaza | Imam Tom Weekly

Will Celebrity Muslims Save Us? | Imam Tom Weekly

Will Celebrity Muslims Save Us? | Imam Tom Weekly

Why Don't Muslims Just Leave? | Imam Tom Weekly

Why Don't Muslims Just Leave? | Imam Tom Weekly

When Did Ramadan Become a Festival | Imam Tom Weekly

When Did Ramadan Become a Festival | Imam Tom Weekly

Muslims Are a People of Principle | Imam Tom Weekly

Muslims Are a People of Principle | Imam Tom Weekly

The Dark Truth About Secularism | Imam Tom Weekly

The Dark Truth About Secularism | Imam Tom Weekly

The Secret Cost of Individualism | Imam Tom Weekly

The Secret Cost of Individualism | Imam Tom Weekly

How Islamic History Was Frozen and Forgotten | Imam Tom Weekly

How Islamic History Was Frozen and Forgotten | Imam Tom Weekly

The Ummah or the Nation? | Imam Tom Weekly

The Ummah or the Nation? | Imam Tom Weekly

Debunking the 'Islamic Dilemma' | Imam Tom Weekly

Debunking the 'Islamic Dilemma' | Imam Tom Weekly

How Music Impacts Your Brain | Imam Tom Weekly

How Music Impacts Your Brain | Imam Tom Weekly

Malcolm X's Legacy We Forgot About | Imam Tom Weekly

Malcolm X's Legacy We Forgot About | Imam Tom Weekly

Hajj is the Great Equalizer | Imam Tom Facchine

Hajj is the Great Equalizer | Imam Tom Facchine

The Multi-Million Dollar War on Islam | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

The Multi-Million Dollar War on Islam | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

How Islam Completed what Christianity Began | Imam Tom Facchine

How Islam Completed what Christianity Began | Imam Tom Facchine

Why the Islamic Calendar Matters | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Why the Islamic Calendar Matters | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How Colonialism Hijacked the Muslim World | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

How Colonialism Hijacked the Muslim World | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

What Activism Is Missing Today | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What Activism Is Missing Today | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How to Stop Chasing Validation | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How to Stop Chasing Validation | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Representation Isn’t Working. Here’s Why. | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Representation Isn’t Working. Here’s Why. | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Is This Da’wah or Entertainment? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Is This Da’wah or Entertainment? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Islam Isn’t Just Therapy | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Islam Isn’t Just Therapy | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

The Hidden Bias in Every History Book | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

The Hidden Bias in Every History Book | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

How Your Victim Mindset is Destroying You | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How Your Victim Mindset is Destroying You | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Modesty Is More Than What You Wear | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Modesty Is More Than What You Wear | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Will Recognition Help Palestine? | Snapshots by Imam Tom Facchine

Will Recognition Help Palestine? | Snapshots by Imam Tom Facchine

Israel’s Link to U.S. Anti-Terror Policy | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Israel’s Link to U.S. Anti-Terror Policy | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Living Up to the Prophet’s ﷺ Final Speech | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Living Up to the Prophet’s ﷺ Final Speech | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How Should We View Gaza’s Celebrity Support? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How Should We View Gaza’s Celebrity Support? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How to Stop Falling for Fake Mahdis | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How to Stop Falling for Fake Mahdis | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Columbus Wasn't Just After Gold – He Wanted Jerusalem | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Columbus Wasn't Just After Gold – He Wanted Jerusalem | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Why Some Scholars Critique Resistance | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Why Some Scholars Critique Resistance | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Why You Can’t Escape Organized Religion | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine
Playing

Why You Can’t Escape Organized Religion | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Kings Chased Thrones. He ﷺ Chased This Instead | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Kings Chased Thrones. He ﷺ Chased This Instead | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What Islam Reveals About Socialism and Capitalism | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

What Islam Reveals About Socialism and Capitalism | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

What Real Masculinity Looks Like | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What Real Masculinity Looks Like | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Amazon's Kill System & the Network Behind Sami's Detention | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Amazon's Kill System & the Network Behind Sami's Detention | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

The Truth About AI’s Intelligence | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

The Truth About AI’s Intelligence | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What the Qur’an Says About Christianity | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What the Qur’an Says About Christianity | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How Does the Qur’an View the Bible? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How Does the Qur’an View the Bible? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What ‘Allahu Akbar’ Really Means (And Why It Scares Them) | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What ‘Allahu Akbar’ Really Means (And Why It Scares Them) | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Debunking the Myth of the ‘Oppressed Muslim Woman’ | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Debunking the Myth of the ‘Oppressed Muslim Woman’ | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Why Not Every Seat is One Worth Taking | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

Why Not Every Seat is One Worth Taking | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

What Sharia Law Actually Means | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

What Sharia Law Actually Means | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Does Islam Actually Oppose Science? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Does Islam Actually Oppose Science? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How ‘Taqiyya’ Became an Islamophobic Talking Point | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

How ‘Taqiyya’ Became an Islamophobic Talking Point | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Who's Your Real Enemy? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Who's Your Real Enemy? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

The Promise and Paradox of the Islamic Republic | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 1 |  Imam Tom Facchine

The Promise and Paradox of the Islamic Republic | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 1 | Imam Tom Facchine

Iran vs. Saudi Arabia: Who Represents the Ummah? | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 2 |  Imam Tom Facchine

Iran vs. Saudi Arabia: Who Represents the Ummah? | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 2 | Imam Tom Facchine

Should We Show Solidarity with Iran? | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 3 |  Imam Tom Facchine

Should We Show Solidarity with Iran? | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 3 | Imam Tom Facchine

Unforgettable Stories From Hajj | Imam Tom x Shaykh Elshinawy

Unforgettable Stories From Hajj | Imam Tom x Shaykh Elshinawy

Imam Tom Live

Why You Can’t Escape Organized Religion | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

Trauma might have led them away from the idea of organized religion, but what happens when you dig deeper into that rejection? Do they actually have an issue with the structure of religion, or is there something deeper at play?

Imam Tom challenges the idea that it’s possible to navigate spirituality without guidance and presents questions to understand what’s most important when choosing faith.

This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
Some people say that they're spiritual but not religious. They say that organized religion is not really for them. This is a very appealing thought, but if you take
two seconds to think about it, it falls apart completely. And it shows us that there's something very important and true going on, but it's not what you think. So when people critique organized religion, they usually have had a
negative previous experience with one of the quote-unquote organized religions. And we'll talk about the problematic nature of that term in a second. Meaning that maybe you were a Christian, maybe you were a Jew, maybe you were something
else, and you had a negative experience and then that made you run away from it. I mean, I can relate. That was my experience of Christianity as well. Now for me, that set me on a path of discovery that led me to something
greater. But for a while, my idea was that all religions must be like the religion that I had experience with. That's the first mistake. All religions are not the same. There are differences. Some of them are actually better than
others, and better in the sense that they're more comprehensive, better in the sense that they're more intact, and they're more preserved, and that they're more authentic. And so there's really a very, very key question here is that the
person who says that they're spiritual but not religious, they're someone who has sensed something true, but they have misdiagnosed it. The thing that they sense is true is that there is some religious or spiritual malpractice going
on. They're able to feel and to sense that there's something off, that something is not authentic, that something is not right. However, the conclusion that they come to that, oh, all religion must be like this, or
organized religion. Whenever you mix human beings and religion, we hear this a lot. Human beings and religion don't mix. I'll figure out my spirituality myself. Which brings us to the second point is that there is no space in which
religious ideas are not organized. There's not like organized religion over here and what, disorganized religion over there. No, that's not how it works. You're really just talking about who is organizing your religion for you. If you
belong to a religion, then you are not the only person that's in control. There are other people, whether they're good or bad people, that's a separate question, but there's other people that have taken part in the shaping of your religious
practice and experience. If you are spiritual but not religious, or you're against organized religion, you're really just organizing your own religion. Right? You like meditation, you like yoga, you burn some incense sticks, whatever it
is, you're the one that's now picking and choosing. You're in the driver's seat. But the larger point here is that there's always going to be some organization of religion, whether it's you doing it exclusively or whether it's someone else
doing it. And if you have distrust of other people organizing your religion for you, why is it that you trust yourself to do it on your own? Don't you think that human beings can be misled?
Don't you think that human beings can be deluded? Don't you think that even things that you feel are right and true and good, you could potentially be very, very wrong about them? Right? We need a third party audit. You need a personal trainer in the gym.
You don't just go into the gym, start lifting weights and say, you know what? I think that's good enough. No, you need someone outside of yourself to give you a standard and to tell you, are you doing good enough or can you be doing more? Or are you doing too much? Right? This is important and it applies to religion as well.
And so what really is the heart of the matter is whether the religion is authentic or not. That if you're upset about other people having organized your religious
ideas or your religious experience for you, it's not necessarily that just anybody else was involved. It was if people interfered and meddled and changed what was actually a divine
revelation. Because in Islam, yes, there are people involved. There are people that recorded the hadith. There are people that recorded the Qur'an. There are people who authenticated them, people who read all of it and then extracted from it the essential things that you have to know, the creed and etc.,
etc. But what really matters is not whether people did that or not. It's whether they were faithful or not and whether that message actually reflects divine instruction or not.
So whenever religion, quote unquote, or that instruction departs from what is authentic divine guidance, that's what you're feeling and that's what's going to
be a problem. But your job is to, rather than try to be the master over all religion for yourself and be the one in the driver's seat selecting, making your personal playlist, I call this the playlistification of faith.
That's not your job. Your job is merely to find out which, if any, of these claimants to religion and religiosity and to represent the divine message, which of them are authentic? How would you be able to tell whether they're authentic?
That's rather what you should be concerned with rather than trying to take on everything yourself.