Vicissitudes Of Fate | Meaning With MALM #27

all right now i take it we is live right just going to do a quick sound check as always make sure the volume is coming through loud and clear um let me just put this all right so in alhamdulillah

some of you awake at this godly hour shall i say allah right i thought you know amongst many topics why not the topic of the vicissitudes of faith

but how there's a rhythm to it isn't in arabic or the how time the kind of rotations of it if you like not in the physics sense although we can as well but als but in a kind of destiny sense so yeah so let's uh let's we'll do that how whilst i bring up just the slides you guys know the drill people the usual spread the love uh let me just bring up

the file for today right meanwhile you guys can click like and share and get get this out there all right so where are we uh here we're taking a look we've got right these are open and this no that's not it all right that's a much older okay closer february okay march here we are people all right

oh ah what did the date not change the date was supposed to change but anyway right people the vicissitudes of fate and we'll take a look at some of quranic ayat about that and i didn't get to cover the story of a muslim and i thought what an excellent time to cover that especially since especially since [Music]

in many ways his story reflects the vicissitudes of fate of how you know things i guess this this highs these lows these peaks and troughs and just i guess losses and winds in life and how um in one way it's it is the story of creation ultimate creation and we are just a tiny just like a tiny pixel

in this huge colossal piece of art so right let me just take a look who we have online before we get into that all right so far the island you do and it you do and it should come much love uh click here looking on point shook it and shook it and i i hope so it's like at some point you're like i don't even know what to do with this it's like just keep it short and just

yeah so mm-hmm all right what is going on i love these stories you know in these stories we find strength we find courage we find heritage we find struggles successes we find icons and and in many in many ways kind of role models i guess even though it's a different time it's a

different world i guess but still there's an individual struggle that is the archetype of struggle and we identify with that so yeah and it's a great way to get people to learn about characters and eras and certain like a historic era within islam by you acquaint yourself with certain people and it comes to life you see for me i think the stories have always been incredibly powerful and it's something that for me made it come

to life you know when i would um when i would try to learn about let's say i want to learn about a particular scholar in islam what i would do especially in the past when i used to study systematic when i was in my studies i would always like let's say i've got a book this book is by a i don't know this book is by working on arabi now i may have heard of but even arby's a huge example i mean he's a huge figure and with so much about him but sure you

could take him as an example now what i would do is i would first of all okay i've got the book this is what the book is about what about him now most arabic books um the classical islamic literature it comes nowadays with like a whole uh gateway section so this kind of it's like an orientation so before you get to the book there's an entire uh kind of a preamble this whole it's before the introduction to the book so it will say first of all

the editor will say what they why they you know brought this book back and why they thought it was a great choice and then they will go into who the author was his his story they will often go into his era in what era what political kind of things were going on during this person's time who were his teachers his students something about him what other books did he author they will kind of go into all of this and sometimes depending on some books they may even give you uh a bit about the discussion of this book who else has authored on this book so you get this huge

orientation before you've even begun the book and so and even if you didn't i'm just saying this is it's brought to you it's at your doorstep sometimes that's not the case and i would always try to find that about these people and i'll try to let them come alive for me so i'll learn about them okay what did he do when he grew up here uh and i would think in my mind what era is that and who else is alive in that time that's also huge so i might think ah so what could have

been orbeez you know he he's the okay this is the kind of time okay imam razali exists okay who else and i might think well okay all the yod exists you know ibn rushed the okay the the the grandfather you've got so i'm thinking of people and i'm kind of connecting them and so what it does is it in your mind you kind of make these maps so and also where are they in the world so i would kind of situate them in this mental map so

they are in spain okay um a worker aubry is a a an exceptional example because he is one of those few people that actually wrote journals [Laughter] he went out of his way to kind of um um you know provide like almost medieval what can we say like insta insta posts so he would write about things that are going on he would say things like oh what you know

on such and such date i was passing through baghdad and i saw this and now you've got almost 900 years later a snapshot and a window into that time and he gives fascinating stories and and he'll he'll say all sorts like he'll say things like oh um it was mo lid for example and i was in damascus and this was going on and so and he doesn't sometimes pass judgment so it's not clear from just his descriptive side where he stands on that issue and that is also

speaks volumes because he's not getting emotional because sometimes he doesn't agree with the issues but when he describes them he's describing them so pleasantly that you would think ah okay so what's his take on it but he's just so detached and just descriptive and he says amazing things i'll i'll tell you um since we we've started on a working level he has one um [Music] in one of his journals and i think some people have tried to calculate some of them but they haven't collected them all

so scattered throughout his uh his work major works he will just randomly throw in a like a a journal um you know edition so he'll just kind of just say oh and on this date of this month i did this and it may have some connection to for example the hadith is giving a commentary on and on one of them he speaks about um uh damascus so waltz he's in damascus so the thing about working in ottawa as a young man he kind of travels all around uh a huge part of the the muslim world

so he kind of goes through his father is a um like a political kind of envoy so he kind of tags along and he travels through parts of spain and and he always hears this glory from the east so it's it's amazing because you see it's how reputation i guess kind of carries off so he'd always held abul walid alberti in all who was a generation before him a generation and a half almost before him but he is um he's somebody that leaves muslim spain

goes off for over a decade to the east does all these studies he's a huge maliki he comes back to spain he's known as and they when he comes back he meets he hears of this phenomenon of ibn hazm who has kind of you know wreaked havoc on the malikiah the malikis and then he goes toe to toe with um and butt's head with ibn has them and they have all these debates unfortunately their debates are not actually documented such a shame but what is documented is that they had so

many debates and ibn hasam says that i finally kind of like he kind of concedes to having met his match he says that um nobody did stan stand in front of me because it hasn't been debating was just a phenomenon that could not be rivaled and so he says that there was nobody that could you know be a an impediment to the force i brought he says and the malikia did not produce anybody

[Laughter] he goes they didn't produce anybody that could do that until abu waleed al-baghi and he comes back and he's this uh he's a force to be reckoned with incredibly sharp and he puts ibn it's hazmat to say they in the books they don't give the debates which is such a shame but they say that they both kind of want some lost some but they it was not you know it was um it was like an it's the the

the kind of it was a force an unstoppable force that met an immovable object if you like and it this this was it the showdown so this personality always strikes all in all the andalusias that come after him and they want to be like him so they want to go off and study and even audibly gets that opportunity but he writes these things then journals as he goes off and so in damascus as i was saying he mentions that he was uh hosted in the in you know at the home of some um

i take it like some um some wealthy person that kind of saw him and invited him to some meal and he says he describes that in this person's house they had in their home they had so this large seating area and they had like a small stream like probably i'm assuming you know maybe like just half a meter in kind of width and this stream of water like a moat it kind of encircled this seating area

and it had a veil a curtain on one side and the stream obviously is coming through and then it had a curtain on the other side and the stream and and he said what what they would do is people in on the other part of the the of the house they would put dishes and food and drink and tray entrees and allow it to just come through this stream as they sat there and they would just take things as at their leisure and just kind of once they finished with them they would just put them back on the stream and the stream just

that's fantastic when you think about it this is 900 years ago and so things like this give you a portal into their world and it's amazing and we have to one of the days go through overwatch library stories because he he goes through a hell of a lot with his journey and he documents so um there's this huge story of him getting shipwrecked and they get shipwrecked near egypt i believe and um i'm not sure whether it's alexandria or wherever but they and they placed with these refugees

and he speaks of how he kind of um obviously just a nobody amongst these refugees how he sees one of these um kind of chieftains if you like of this whole area um like a somebody that playing a game of chess and we've got to cover that story sometime and he goes and he stands a few people standing by these two who are like these kind of almost like the oligarchs of that region so there's and these people are sitting

there playing chess and some people are watching and there's this refugee site not so far off and and he's wandered along and he ends up there and he starts watching and he sees that so what happens is it's a tense game and this major figure this kind of chief person he he's about to make a move and he makes a different like like he's about to move something and then he he moves i forgot we'll have to bring the i don't know if he recalls the exact piece but he makes a move in chess i know what it

speaks out like he's a kid like he's a i think he may be like 16 or something so he says ah he says he's even more intelligent like he makes a comment that he's even more strategic than you know then anyone can can believe like he makes a comment that wow you know that what a strategy and you see even the guy who moves the piece this he gets like he's thinking what has this guy seen that i haven't seen

[Laughter] so it's amazing that you see he catches the attention of this person so he's really intrigued by him and then he kind of earns his favor and that guy after the game calls him and says what did you see like what did i do what was it that was so impressive and then he explains and and see it just goes back to fate i guess how it ties into today's topic in some way in many ways that you see

something we've a skill or some knowledge or something we harbor and harness never goes to waste and here a worker living on arabi's mastery of a chess in a you know in a ruined state as a kind of refugee turns the tables for him and where he then finds this element of success whilst you know from a um a position of from a destitute position so it's it's incredible that wow and

it's all really about perspective how you see things uh shukran azerati much love for the super chat mufti salaam from h town just want to say i took the example of being steadfast in a decision uh the bit about it your mind when i don't appear shared it with a close friend yeah sometimes we need that in life and you see things are going to happen

anyway gold globe sugar and much love for the super chat you know it's like i was watching a um this kind of like a short clip on social media and somebody says well they're considering to do something in that particular case and this applies to anything but in that particular case they were talking about some kind of a degree or something a a kind of profession qualification and they said well how long is it going to take instead of

four years said you know well you know i got i ain't got four years in four years time i'll be 35 years old so you know i don't have that and the person said well you know in four years time you're going to be 35 anyway you might as well be 35 with with the direction and profession and skill in which you're progressing because people often forget that and we're all victims to this that we forget that well

god willing we're going to be that anyway we're going to be there anyway why not be there with this adage so and people um they yeah so yes we are all a part of that i guess you know um [Music] you see there's risks in everything there's you know it's incredibly hard and difficult to to do certain things sometimes it's you

don't want to do them it's easier to just be chilling it's easier to just be um you know it's it's difficult work to try to succeed in something and this applies to us all but what we forget often is it's it's even more difficult failing [Laughter] you know if you think winning's tough wait till you got to lose so that's incredibly tough

it's all it's all you know it's all kind of difficult business so people think well you know this is risky and uh i don't know maybe i should invest my time in this or invest my money in this or invest you know do this this is difficult or this is too you know too strenuous or this is too risky or this is too but then failing and losing and that's even that's that's so much more difficult but yeah may allah make it easy

right so yeah and so much studying can be done um these days online as well absolutely absolutely and i think um mostly can you do the story of ibn fahad traveled or even yeah we can do that as well someday that's an interesting one as well that that you could just watch the movie as well but uh and it's not about just you know i'm not not just talking about academic pursuits because people i'm talking about

you whatever you need self-tailored whatever you want whatever betters you a betterment progression gradual progression towards a desired goal that is success it's not so for somebody may not be about going doing a degree that may not be their thing they may want to learn a skill you know somebody may want to learn coding or want to improve on art or poetry or a language or you know

electronics or in i.t or whatever somebody might want to it's not for for some people it is academic it's like learning a degree because it's going for some people it's more and some people it's just their own thing and for some people i think this is really important it's just overcoming the obstacles of life that is such that is the ultimate success for some and i that life in itself has maybe weighed

down so heavily on certain people it's not their fault you know life can come crashing down on any one of us and it's but being able to rise from the ashes that that is enough for certain people you know this in line with today let me just

i thought in line with this always let's begin with a quote from mawlana that it's that whatever you lost through fate be certain that it saved you from pain that's an incredible and incredibly profound message from the perspective that you see once you have lost something

then what what's your narrative what's your script when you lose something in faith because we're all going to inevitably face some difficulties some more than others but we're all going to get a fair share of difficulties in life you know adults the grass is always greener people go through tragedies recently there was a very famous bollywood singer lata mangeshkar who passed away and at a very senior age i've forgotten how old she was she may have been i don't know i

think maybe 90 or at least late 80s but she was quite old and lived a an incredibly lustrous and like successful glamorous life from the perspective of fame and anybody who's somewhat is familiar with the world of bollywood has heard the name of la tamangeshkar now you could see that so there was this clip when she passed away on social media a lot of people were sharing clips and there was this clip and that somebody had asked her and they as presumably hindu they believe in reincarnation

so somebody had asked her that when you are born again who or what would you like to be born as who would you like to be born as and and this isn't about the creed i mean this isn't about just it's about the message she said that she said i wouldn't like another birth at all

and the reporter said really and she said here and she said and and if it must then not as lata mangeshkar and the reporter kind of just says come on really like you're this famous celebrity it's it's like you wouldn't want to and and she she just said that she said well the the suffering that she said has had to be only she knows in private and it's it was just

very hard-hitting that it doesn't matter who you see they will have their fishy of struggle difficulty challenges in this life so some more than others but everybody will get it nobody's exempt everybody is is on this path of suffering but it's how we see it you see the story things happen

somebody there's a tragedy befalls you there's uh something happens if you lose something you you you especially now this quote you see it's the script the meaning now this quote that whatever you lost through fate be sure that it saved you from pain now this is obviously in terms of possession in terms of maybe relationships in terms of maybe um entrepreneurial enterprises businesses this would cover all of that kind of stuff because it's your story

and it works and it makes you allows you to kind of move forward and i thought another important thing is perspective because it shapes everything you know it's like it's like that saying that uh the way i see we're all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars

you know it's like we're all lying in the gutter some of us are just like god what a starry night perspective so how you see things and i thought what an amazing uh inspiring poem allah he said

the storm was doing tawaf around my ship that around around my sorry the storm was doing around my determination allah to the onlookers they thought my ship was caught in a storm [Laughter]

dunya that this it really is perspective isn't it that when you think about it because from that perspective like you just take a look at this poem because the ship is going down i mean it's in a storm people can see it it's it's been caught in this storm it's you know it's got this this this whirlwind and it's trapped and that is how that is what it is but yet the poet is saying that oh you think this is caught in a storm no no no the storm is simply doing

of to my courage what a guy what a guy perspective and i think that's the most important message this is a message that we see time time and time again in the quran as well i want to on today's uh lesson pick up on some of that quranic guidance but yeah let's see what some of you are saying in your comments

so mufti any chance of you getting on the maliki mother bangladesh channel to teach them a thing or two about the mythic um sure i mean why not why not uh i mean i i do have i i do intend to do certain um uh things i'm just trying to think on the maliki method let's hope you know sooner than later i mean we're all human that's true suffering yeah i think this is a you know what reverend

is saying that's true suffering is inevitable it is it is indeed uh based on that let me just plug this in one second all right so you see there was something i was watching and it you see it ties

in very well to this and also we just did a book lounge meetup on monday night we reviewed the book the joy of pain now uh is very interesting discussion i love the discussion by the way the discussion was just epic if you haven't watched it do check it out it's on my channel it's called the joy of pain book lounge i think session five was it but um so incredible talking about chardon freude which is the

feeling pleasure in the misery of others and it's really interesting because right there i've got the book here actually if i can just get this there is so i do cover in the joy of pain by richard h smith shard and freud and the dark side of human nature and it's a very um it's well worth well worth reading it some of it is repetitive and definitely if you watch

the book review we discuss it um i love the way the author brings up um he's tackling this emotion this dark emotion that we as humans what what he's getting at is we have a fundamental emotion to hate and but we don't want to own up to it and maybe we see and we do see we do find pleasure in the misery of people but the question is why do we find it and he's tackling that because there's elements of

superiority maybe we see in people and when we see them suffering it brings this kind of joy to us and that in arabic is called shumata there's a word for in arabic in english there is no word it borrows the word from german schadenfreude and and people will never admit to having chardonnay seldom because it's we find it so despicable to admit to that and i've i found that such a uh so profound and he goes through examples he'll mention highlight things and just these kind of axioms these rules that we have that that we won't

admit to for example it's not enough that we succeed but others too must fail that it's not just that we succeed but others must fail [Laughter] amazing side to insane huh as in sound fluctuates between the highs and the lows and yeah and it's um and how that also ties into it's not the same as envy but it ties into and maybe a a kind of it may tie may tie into envy

um sometimes it it doesn't have to tie into envy could be about you just don't like someone or maybe somebody said something about you um or maybe there's some kind of competition rivalry between you maybe it's low level and people seek pleasure in in seeing that somebody else is now suffering yeah fascinating and and i did uh in line with that there's an another book from the essays of william hazlitt uh called um [Music]

the pleasures of hating or something like that and it's a small essay in his um i've got it here somewhere as well and he cites in that um it's incredibly fascinating he says that love with a little with a little indulgence gives way to love with a little indulgence turns to indifference or even disgust hate alone is immortal

that is so profound you know when you think about it because what he's trying to say is that what he feels and that's hazlitt that the only emotion that is is categorical and you have no doubt about it is hate because he's saying well if you love someone you can have some doubt about it and if you're you know there's different emotions you you say yeah i like it yeah i kind of like it or yeah i'm not so yeah no i do love to put you know but

if you hate someone there's no doubt [Laughter] ah incredible honestly that love with a little indulgence turns to indifference or even disgust because it's true once you love can become satiated or become um desensitized it can turn to indifference or even disgust sometimes and hate alone is immortal i thought that's so profound i did discuss in our book lounge that sometimes i feel that this

stemming from enantiodroma that there is a maybe these are love and hate maybe two sides to the same coin at a kind of deep unconscious substrate that they are maybe the same force but varying manifestations of it i wonder if you know that because it because to me because from the enantiodroma we can see that love can turn to passionate hate and

sometimes obstinate you know reckless hate can dynamically turn to you know maniacal love so yeah interesting people interesting um for the people asking what would a straight rip from meaning with mom work yeah let's let's just do that yeah i think yeah i think we need to do that

imran khan that was a fun discussion it definitely was why do we glorify romanticize our history so much say that take it say the fatima shukran shukran uh dearly appreciate the super chat question is interesting why do we glorify romanticize our history so much hmm you see i guess in some ways it could be it's like a double-edged blade that history i think

it's not just us i think us here signifies the human species because that's what it is human beings we do glorify and as they say even that nostalgia always appears so much more romantic to us that this is always this is true isn't it just if one thinks back even to themselves they may think oh yeah you know hmm my childhood yeah you know but maybe their childhood was a nightmare

but anything in hindsight always appears with a filter of a kind of romanticized nostalgia a longing surprisingly even though it may be uh horrible the great arabic poet abu atahiah he says

wow you know i learnt that poem when i was in pakistan [Laughter] studying which is what probably about well i think i learned that probably about 23 years ago so that he says that how many a day vacato minho that i had to that made me cry falama but when ser ali that when

but when i got moved on i then cried over those days that first like so many like countless days i cried because of only to later cry over that as in i lost strangely ironically somehow longed for them maybe this explains in sun's twisted inseparable relationship to

to suffering maybe it's a sado masochistic kind of uh tendency that in sun bears that they you know they they they have this love-hate relationship with pain and suffering you know in some ways you can think about it in a in a low level very low level sometimes you might have a very small nothing dangerous but like a small pain like let's say um something i don't know uh like if you touched a party like her

but then you might not so long as it's not very serious but then you might get people they themselves they they might touch it every now and then or i guess and out of a you know another further abstraction at a lower level is like an itch i'm just scratch and it gives a uh a pleasure so it's interesting this is this in sans um inseparable uh bond with kind of i don't know

sadomasochistic kind of undertones in their instincts could be um right um salaam brothers and sisters i lost my mother this week may he grant you and your family ease i mean one thing is really important to know is

that it is people when they pass from this world believe me they are in place the world that goes on it's it's a very blissful place it's not we this realm we can't truly grasp it and there's the fear of the unknown but yeah people that move on it is you we have to know that they are in a better place and as difficult as that is but we have to kind of know it you know on that note i'd like to say as well that this is more a cultural thing

and i could be and in fact you know i'm i'm putting it to you guys like because maybe i'm i don't know i could this may be uh a perspective that doesn't really resonate so i wonder what you guys feel about this i think from the element of kind of cultural appropriation and cultural sensitivities you see in english and in this culture i don't i don't know when a person has passed

i don't think like in arabic let's say it it resonates especially with because islam is in arabic and islam is kind of the fabric of the arabic speaking the arab sphere especially you know mostly everybody's muslim in the arabic speaking world and even in other languages like urdu and whatever the this kind of texture has been absorbed into the language as well and the social um psychosocial understanding that when people pass away they ask for

forgiveness now i don't know like in english i don't you see and this is where i wonder what your thoughts are on this that does it carry an adverse kind of uh reaction because you see in generally people don't in or i this is when somebody's passed away and somebody says oh you know may god forgive them it's it comes across as though they were

some kind of major perpetrator and it doesn't come across to to me when i read it as the way it does in arabic like you know like it doesn't in english it comes across as though oh why what did the person do were they some kind of a criminal or uh whereas in english to just pray for mercy for the person i would assume makes a lot more sense in the psychosocial zeitgeist of the english language so when somebody has

passed and you say something like you know may god bless her soul may god bless her afterlife may god you know may she rest in peace may she find eternal bliss make these things resonate um when i read sometimes because i've read on certain polls some things happen and people will obviously from the muslim angle some people just write oh you know may allah forgive him and and then sometimes i've even seen other people maybe especially not muslims then wonder like forgive him for what like what did the

person do before they died and it made me think as well that i don't feel the connotations carry across in english so i wonder what you guys um feel about that as well um yeah so that's i don't know that's my thought that in english it would be better to because it's always better to give the language you're using that it carries those connotations that the language is used in that way and so this is how i've seen on certain

things on social media somebody passed away and people just say oh may god forgive him or you know may god forgive her and and then a bunch of people ask like why what did they do and and they're genuinely asking because they think oh and even when i read that sentence in english it sounds like the person did some heinous crime and then died but they were kind of a good person and there's some justification so maybe they did a crime of passion or something and you're saying well you know may god forgive them this this is how it kind of sounds to me so yeah

right let me just yeah i mean so yeah yeah i mean i see yeah people yeah because i wonder so yeah i mean to me i would this is why i would advise that people say especially in english they just say blissful things which is the islamic thing to say by the way as well you could as well in islam pray for their forgiveness but it also to me

it reflects a um it reflects your attitude as well towards god like maybe this is at a subconscious level because when you see what do you zero in on subconsciously you zero in on that people are sinful and you're hopeful that god will forgive whereas if you said something like may god give them this and this you're zeroing in subconsciously on the mercy of god and not driven by this narrative of sin

so that's my thoughts yeah asking for forgiveness is so much part of yeah yeah but these are my thoughts sure um i i think it's better to tune how you see god do you or live your life thinking about sin is it like is god like an accountant that keeps account now to some people that that's the the ark that's the kind of the main

narrative that they carry across that god is keeping account and i will have to account and i will have to pray for forgiveness and i will and to me it's not that this message doesn't exist in islam that of course allah is aware but to me the central message is always of mercy and love and compassion and it's not of these things but sure if a person if that makes it better for them they this is how they want to live like god is keeping everything is about an account book like oh no i made one sin today i better make three this i better do this

it just kind of um for me robs the soul of living okay so did i miss a super chat here and much love for the super chat uh allah bless you likewise may allah bless you manak i dearly appreciate it

[Laughter] all right so do you think life is or do you think that life is ultimately sad that's a fascinating question you know i think um it is true that i heard i was watching something once of um who was it jordan peterson and i agree that he was saying that um you see one of the because he's speaking of consciousness and he said well you see one thing we can never truly doubt is pain or agony like you said well if you're

having fun you're having fun like if you're happy but you could still doubt being in a state of happiness but he said you couldn't doubt being in a in a state of suffering so if you are in a state of suffering that is certain but in a state of bliss you can always still doubt it [Laughter] this is ruining the little moments of bliss we have putting shock and doubt into it but it's fascinating because he then

said he extrapolated that maybe based on you know an abstraction of that is why most world faiths have said suffering is the default reality of existence and that's where they begin from because that ultimately locks in consciousness i thought that that's a very profound point and i would somewhat agree with that that life ultimately is a backdrop of suffering but then as in that that that's what it is it's

challenges if i if i replace the word with because suffering is the meaning you give to it but it is let's say a um it is a rocky path but your attitude is what makes it blissful and you know the way you look the way you kind of just enjoy yourself walking along this rocky path that's the difference that um

that if you can come walk over these rocks and come to me then come in he says the the path to my home is not starlit or you know it's a it's a very dark path like there's no moonlight and no lighting and it's a rocky train but if you can come through it then i thought that's uh so yes but i don't think life itself

is sad i think sad is associated with the the emotion the state of mind that you have you know it's like that going back to that poem of today that tuffan that it's the person doesn't seem sad when he's saying that but he's trapped in a storm dunyas and but it is the ship is in a storm but it was his attitude that you know he's like hell do you think this is this is style

he says this ain't a storm this is a style but you have to always admire people like that because that is you know people that can always see the the kind of they have that keep going attitude because you've got no choice one has to keep going there is no alternative right superchar sam shukran much love for the super chart is there a link between intelligence and the proclivity to the path of consciousness why is that path really taken by most islam's biggest scholars

hmm i don't know i don't think intelligence is i think the term intelligence is in that statement is um it's immaterial to the discourse i don't feel that it's um it kind of um is pro or against why did many scholars not seek the ultimate path of consciousness i think

obviously another thing is it's difficult to know what people ultimately did because you only know what they told you they did see that's another important thing maybe many more people did much more than what they told you they did because it's it's true people you know you don't want to share as well everything and people fear ramifications they fear repercussions and especially in the past you can imagine the lynch mob and um and people

some people would still do stuff like you take ibn hasem as an example now he's such a serious scholar very uh feisty and fiery and um you know just argumentative and radical in like in his opinions and um that's why i've always found him very inspiring and but then he writes this book all about the kind of psychology of love which is full of just anecdotes of i don't know discussions on categories or chapters of

love but with just stories and and he's saying these are actual events that he's either witnessed or from you know somebody's told him that he's reliable and he's writing this book after the age of 40 he says i write this after the age of 40 so don't think i'm kind of some young kid carried away and in it he's kind of telling all these love stories and he's telling some of his own love stories different women and how certain obsessions and now in many ways that was a very deering feat of ibn hasan because you see these things could and they may have as well

damaged him and as it may have caused extended some suffering onto him because people would utilize these to attack obviously with that particular book they didn't maybe because in that day and age this was a part of life that people maybe weren't that fussed about the scholars didn't really use it against him but they could have they used other things against him and they did have him attacked and his books burnt and all this kind of stuff so one has to be weary that in the past what does one say and what do they speak of and

this is why when i've been asked about for example do i think people in the past were exploring psychedelics and i think many maybe not most but many people were exploring psychedelics because nature is not new to us you know we're not the first people to see mushrooms mushrooms have been around a lot longer than us so why why would you think that people haven't been eating mushrooms like this this is like this is an example like why would you think that that see it's such a a dumb modern kind of like it's such a silly notion to assume that people before oh why would people

have eaten food that just naturally grows in nature like well of course they would have so the question is well if that's the case why weren't they talking about it they said you know amazing book i've got i've got it here somewhere i think i've put it back it's a it's a small book about study of uh psychedelics and animals so animals that get kind of they take psychedelics and you can you can watch them and they do it in nature and they do it and they alters their state of consciousness so you'll get rabbits deers you'll get chimpanzees you'll get different people and cows and and when they do it they

kind of like you can tell they've gone and then they will do it again because they want that state of consciousness again so if animals were doing it why would you think human beings weren't but then the people say why weren't they talking about it but let me ask you do you talk about everything you do as a person you don't and people won't because people probably think well you know maybe they're or maybe they don't want it to maybe they fear that if they talk about it people will just you know

kind of write them off and say that oh this is haram or this is this and this is that and maybe people use it you know this is why this book was really good to revelatory to read the joy of pain because it showed and i said in my discussion that i found it quite relieving to read that because it showed that we as human beings deep down have an urge to hate on people but we recognize socially that hating on people is a bad thing so when we're given an excuse

we will take that excuse all the way so if we have a reason so he gives examples like let's say he says he uses things like a term she borrows from someone humilitainment like humiliation entertainment humilitainment and he says shows like american idol or shows like how to catch a predator and he says that why do people go over and beyond in these shows he says well because they like he says well how to catch a predator is a prime example because all

cultures hate pedophiles so this is an absolute green light to really go all out and your hate is totally um kind of venerated and justified and even american idol as an example or britain's got talent the reason you're justified is because people will say to themselves well you know well such and such person knew they couldn't sing so they made a fool out of themselves why would you audition if you didn't know it you know when you know you you're incapable so it gives them an excuse to go all out and he cites a lot of studies like tiger woods and great people when they um you know

when they mess up and scandals or other things when people have uh serious accidents or people why do people because deep down they have this urge to hate so i wouldn't be so sure that people didn't follow a particular path although only a few openly spoke about it so that's um yeah

shroomed out go it's a it's a good book actually it's uh i normally just had it here somewhere but i must have moved and put it back in the library but so yeah it's uh it's it's it's interesting to see just animals getting all stoned out but it's not stone to be honest i don't like that word because it doesn't describe psychedelics it's more about certain substance abuse psychedelics is more about being on a altering a state of consciousness right let's take a look at today's quranic guidance

we can move on so i wanted to take a look today two verses from surah al-imran and surah uh sorry verse 140 and then just the verse before it but i really want to take a look at this verse and the verse just before it 139 will then kind of give a bit more guidance on these so this verse that we've got here that

surah al-imran verse 114 says that if you are suffering or been afflicted or subjected to a kind of wound and i feel that this although in its at one level is speaking about actual wounds but then on many other levels it's speaking about different this is from what i speak of the superposition nature of the quran that is speaking about emotional wounds speaking about

mental wounds psychological wounds financial wounds is speaking about any kind of that you have suffered eem says and you might remember the word we covered it in when we spoke about imra al-qais and he was called the the one of wounds because when he eventually wore that um from justinian the the kind of robe or the clothes they were they they were kind of um imbibed with this kind of

poisonous element that he would kind of get into the pores of the skin and eventually led to his death so and we've covered that in in a previous session you can watch it on youtube but he was called the um and and he says that um he says that um in his poem that i'd never thought that

that that it would get to the extent that i i can't even manage to stand and wear my clothes that um yes so he says you know if only the um if only the the soul would kind of die but it was uh he he's speaking about his wounds but just the word here that was just a linguistic reference

that if you have been afflicted others too have been afflicted and these days we rotate them amongst people see that if you feel like you're on top of the world and it turns around

every 24 hours there's going to be ups downs these days we rotate them between people so here now this as well being very clear okay so that it now this is not so alarming no or even though that's how it from a linguistic element you may write it in that way it doesn't mean like that

well yeah so it may become known it's not for allah to know allah already has knowledge so that it may become known and who is it that it becomes known amongst you allows you all of you to become witnesses now witnesses to what

you see you become witnesses to your own success to your failings to the failings of others but to become observant because you see you may see the tragedy of someone else we were speaking of this schadenfreude but truly you know in arabic there's a saying that assay the truly fortunate person is

somebody that you see the tragedies of others and you learn through that not circumventing having to experience them yourself because everybody learns once they experience tragedies [Laughter] the true genius and fortunate person is the one who can learn from the tragedies of others thinks yeah this is what happened to that person so i better watch out for now you see when you are a witness

to people whether it's people's successes whether it's people's suffering whether it's your own success whether it's your own suffering now what would that do let's just back that up a moment something bad happens to someone a bit of misery something good happens to someone a bit of envy yeah and people act out on envy and in fact in in that book as well he has a chapter on envy and he goes into

it and some of the studies around it for some of the psychological and sociological studies around it as well and it's interesting that you see nv and he goes into the etymology that it was on seeing this is how it's etymology because people felt that the kind of by seeing something and this an abstraction of it became like the evil eye because often the evil eye what is it it's the coveting the that lustful that jealous

that hateful spiteful eye itself it doesn't do anything but people often act out on it you see this is the problem and in many ways this when people spoke of an evil eye this is an abstraction of what they're talking about envy and then people kind of took it into other things that maybe there's actual supernatural powers and things like that and obviously that was the science of the day and age because the science of the day and age believed in extra mission not intermission of the eyes

they used to believe that the eyes emit like vision they it they didn't think that we kind of took light in they thought this is prior to all the discoveries so they felt that the light that we emit vision rays and so this is why you get a lot of scholars if not you know josie all these people who back then because this wasn't fully discovered yet even you'll get scientists speaking of western scientists i have a video on this you'll get um francis bacon and descartes and even people you'll get people speaking about extra mission of the eyes and

intermission and so people felt that that the eyes kind of shot out this what were like vision rays and this is how we saw and the because they're shooting them out anyway so you'll get scholars like ibn kayim will explain that oh well in these rays that we are shooting whilst we're looking the mali some of them contain harmful rays so this explains how you have the evil eye because you see even those scholars you see this is the the weird thing even those scholars clearly believed in a cause and effect

they didn't think of it in a super supernatural way they believed in it because it was the science of their day and age that they believed that this is how the eye works that it emits these rays and these extra mission rays and because it's omitting them it's like saying like let's say spitting now when you spit it's carrying something else so if you had a disease within and you spit now even if this the disease is within and the spit is coming from the mouth but it's carrying part of what you have the toxins

so you could spread things and they understood that this is why spitting in drinks and stuff like this was clearly prohibited because they understood it would make it go bad so when they believed that the eye omitted things so they thought well ah so if you have something bad it makes sense because as you're omitting the vision rays some of them are harmful rays it's a bit like today saying well some of the sun's rays are harmful and they fall on you and they damage your skin i mean that's at a different l dimension but i'm still giving a parallel and so it made sense to them in

accordance so they weren't believing in in a kind of uh they were believing in it because obviously they believe that look here are some texts that speak of these and the culture believed in it but also because it made sense scientifically to them because they thought that's how the human body worked obviously later it's very clear that the eye does not work with extra mission works through intermission okay and we actually take in light and we don't kind of omit anything so yeah so it's interesting so

people one way of looking at let's say the the whole thing about the evil eye is in terms of consequences so when people in the past so let's say people say oh there's a the hadith now the hadith says that the i al it is hak in terms of what in terms of the danger that it carries that the evil malicious glaze and the eye the coveting eye is truly a danger

and that is absolutely true there is nothing wrong or inaccurate about that statement it is factual that the coveting evil malicious kind of hateful glance and eye of an individual is a categorical danger because it ruins everything because it will people will it will be a danger to first of all to the person who's looking with such kind of hate because it will burn them up from within

secondly it influences behavior because people then may act out thirdly even if it doesn't influence behavior it warrants and justifies shard and freedom that let's say you couldn't let's say there was a powerful person well let's say in in the past there was some very rich or even today mega rich people [Music] multi millionaires very powerful let's say socially nobody can let's say nobody can do something to even if they're very envious of them people may look at these celebrities and

be very envious that their life is goddamn perfect why do they get this why is my life you know messed up why can't i have this why can't i even live in a decent place why do they get mansions why do they have 55 houses why do they have you know they can do this and they can do that and why quan so it causes it but people can't do anything about it but when something bad happens to them you see allah says you'll make your witness why because when something bad happens to them

you justify you gloat in that you revel in that schadenfreude you see it gives you so this evil malicious eye is always a danger in all circumstances i mean some people understood it as maybe a kind of scientific danger otherwise from an existential perspective it is it is clearly a danger from an ethical perspective it is a danger because it from a psychological

perspective it is a danger from a moral perspective it is a danger and this allah follows the verse completing me making it very clear allah does not like does not love the transgressors you know it's interesting and look how allah in in the quran and this is from the beauty of the of the quran of the scripture and we mention this in our discussion as well seldom

is the word hate used allah says either he loves or he says he does not love see so many occasions allah is mentioning just love love love love right throughout the quran even when it's something so spiteful so horrible so hateful from a people's perspective so wrongdoers evil people kuffar people rejecting god preventing people from uh accepting god people that are being harsh to orphans people that are being harsh to

poor people allah does not love those people you see it's all about that proximal zone to love being closer to it or being farther away from it seldom is it allah hates and if it is it's mentioned about a thing not about people but whenever it's people love allah does not love that in itself

is such a beautiful message you know if you're just going to take that message that in itself and then you had this was verse 140 and verse 139 we'd covered that previously but just seeing it again in line with this because 140 is nested in that because speaking of the vicissitudes the ups and down of faith allah

don't think it's always going to be a win don't think it's going to always be glory and glamour it isn't but you could still have contentment in the you can still have peace at heart and allah reminds you do not fall weak

don't be sad honestly one of the most amazing verses of the quran you know don't be sad what are you being sad over and alone you will triumph you will win

if you have faith if you carry the story and winning can look different you see this is the important lesson it can look very different it doesn't have to be a medal it doesn't have to mean a huge bank balance it doesn't have to mean assets winning sure those things are also an a dimension a permutation of winning but winning is at heart it is a state of mind you know it is that is truly winning

it's so but for that you have to carry the story you have to carry the faith in kuntum honestly this verse i would say if you can just remember whenever in life you are just maybe feeling down just if you can remember it all or even if you just remember if you can't remember that just remember

do not be sad honestly this there's nothing full stop do not be sad it's a question that do you feel life is sad don't feel life is sad if your life is thriving with look at with life with excitement with vibrance with glory it is sure the other quote if you rephrase the question do you think life is full of challenges hell yeah

from a to z from birth till death it's full of challenges all the way but it's about perspective you know don't don't be sad allah honestly i thought this is so such a powerful reminder because ultimately it's these little things that are the true anchor points for us in life cool let's move on inshaallah

right so somebody said are arrogant people are mean arrogant people deserving of hate you see i think i agree with that author richard smith that we fundamentally want to hate and i think that's a disease we carry and

where it's justified it's easier for us to exercise it like hating on mother teresa isn't see actually you know mother teresa is a good example because he just occurred to me should have occurred to me in my book discussion mother teresa spends all her life you know in servitude great woman yeah symbol nikon of giving forward of serving she got to calcutta and you know just sacrifices her life really for helping orphans and you know just all the kind of great work

that she did in the last year or years of her life i i think it was the last year of her life she wrote a letter to a i believe was it a bishop or to some uh to some church figure where in which she questions her faith but does she really believe in all this you know in this heaven and all this stuff does she really believe even in god and it's a really um it's a fascinating

kind of almost case study of how then people you see it gave somewhat of a green light to target her because we like i said are creatures that have this energy which is a strong unstoppable energy and it's i feel it can manifest as hate or maybe it can manifest as love as well at times but it's kind of enantiodroma but i think it's more it has a um a proclivity a preponderance towards

hate but we need an excuse so you take mother teresa as an example and she's this icon of sacrifice self-sacrifice but then in her final stage she questions god and that she says well well she spent all her life witnessing suffering that is it really a god and these questions are valid you know it's not so peeps some people not all but some people took it to you know took it

then as a green light to hate on her say you know wasted your life you know what a loser mother teresa ah she didn't even die a christian or she no longer believed in christianity and she is this is a fine example of people just needing an excuse because whether she was an atheist or whether she was a christian she still spent her life serving people and all of a sudden to mock her just because she questioned her faith i mean she could have questioned her faith when in

her twenties but i think it's a good what it does is it instantiates it gives us an example of how people just seek this they want to exercise this this quality say dare i say quality of hating this emotion of hating what's this about families

so people spoke badly of her yeah they did absolutely they did they did so it's uh what's this she said another husband and kids to slow her down come on what bad humor is that i mean she look she was a great woman just as anybody who spends their life psycho who sacrifices their own indulgences to serve other people but i think it was just a right example for chardon freud right people speaking of the

vicissitudes of fate i think let's introduce a personality allah right i wanted to speak last week and then we got distracted i had said i will introduce the personality of abu muslim and who was he so learning a bit about him we'll come across the um will come across certain certain other personalities okay certain names and the good thing is like i mentioned to kind of map these out maybe

research them in your own time maybe learn about them watch stuff on youtube about them to different things so in this journey of this character abu muslim we there will be people you'll hear the names of one of the the earliest um i'm

one of the earliest influences on arabic uh arabic prose or arabic what's a better way to say that how almost like sermon um like on the he's he set out the science of how to which would dictate sermon practice and things like this we'll we'll get to that uh people like that people like um ibrahim al-imam the great

grandson [Music] previously spoken about in a few stories especially the story of abu dhaba you'll have abu labasa who we've spoken about previously as well so these are some of the names that you know you'll hear being kind of bounced around and you may want to explore them at your own leisure but coming back to this individual muslim

is an incredibly fascinating individual why because he in many ways is a nobody yet while simultaneously being everybody when it came to an entire imperial change okay so a shift so you have right to understand this

we're going to have to pause our muslim he himself let's before we pause him just giving a brief introduction to him he is somebody who is of persian descent um his some people say whether his parents became muslim or not is discussed but he himself according to certain people is ends up as a slave a small boy he's kind of broad freed and he is he encounters as a young man apparently his ancestors his persian

ancestors may have been of um kind of imperial aristocracy so they may have been people of great lineage within the persian kind of sassanid empires allegedly obviously it's difficult to ascertain these things when empires have collapsed and some people claim things and you don't know whether it was real or not um but that's this this lad who grows up quite destitute incredibly formidable in character has something very you know just striking about his personality very charming charismatic um

he's incredibly eloquent in farsi but also learns arabic and is incredibly eloquent in arabic and he he ends up from this nobody not only rubbing shoulders with the elite of banila abbas the abbasid but arguably the the kind of key determinator the the kind of determining factor the kind of the the dagger in the sleeve

of the abbasid gown that enables them to topple the umayyad dynasty so this is this this person is a nobody yet everybody okay so this is why he's so fascinating so okay let's put him aside and he's he's kind of he has this meteoric rise to fame he just comes out of nowhere and suddenly he's this this icon celebrity and then as he rises he falls

so let's put him aside right somebody said reminds me of myself i sure hope so i sure hope so so let's go back to the time of year now we've we've already spoken we've got us i've got a a whole video on suleiman abdul malik and it's definitely worth watching if you haven't watched it it's it gives a lot of history in that what was happening in buddhism years time the kind of the the downhill

uh trend and then how suleiman tries to push an uphill trend and after him he puts in place ahmad ibn abdelaziz which becomes this kind of twilight phase once again in what was otherwise becoming a very dark legacy for bani omega they rule let's say about arguably um no just on no not they don't make a hundred years but near enough over 90.

so after um there's some changes you do go through you'll go through you'll go through yazid and then there'll be someone this is not the first you see this is a lazy then we go through them in that video however they eventually end up on this person known as muhammad now he's popularly known as uh they call him marwan al-himar marwan the donkey or marijuana the reason they call him jadi is because of his he had this teacher that he was

inspired by that they refer him to and ironically they don't you know when they call him and i must say i too was guilty of this i assumed it's as an insult but it's actually as an accolade it's actually as a as an element of praise [Laughter] just goes to show when people think that you can you can read into history so this must be the biggest gaslighting

they got a cha so you thought when we're calling you a donkey we were insulting you yeah we were praising you we weren't saying donkey we're saying donkey [Laughter] so it's true they say that he's called donkey as a as a praise because of his um his kind of tenacity to go on so this what erase this this is the

years we're talking maybe the final like 125 hijri that kind of time so it's almost we're talking over you know 115 years after plus after the prophet salallahu so it's in the time that people like imam abu hanifa are around it's in the time imam malik is around it's in that kind of era of the taber so marwan known as al-himar he is called this because there's a saying in arabic as well that us that somebody's more patient than a donkey

because a donkey i don't know if you've seen in in in certain countries where they utilize donkeys they actually load them with quite a load and they you know stack to make them carry quite a burden i've seen it in villages like they'll make them carry bricks and carry all this and the donkey just just trods along you know it just occasionally just chucks everything over it's not that but it has this uh this kind of tenacity to just keep trodding along and they say that was

why they were calling that's why they were calling him a donkey either that was true or this was like the biggest gaslighting event of they go haha that wasn't an insult that was an accoladia doesn't even understand the difference between praise and [Laughter] so that's like calling somebody a dog and then saying oh i meant you're like a true best friend to man that's what i meant you

know they say a dog is a man's best friend but anyway i'm not making this up this is in the books they say that by the way himar is not an insult to marwan it's actually an accolade it's a praise for him because he he he would this this meant he had the tenacity to keep going so anyway marwan before he becomes caleb he's in charge of these areas like armenia and some of the um the kind of balkan regions and stuff like this so he's had his expertise in war

but there is a huge restlessness that is rising against bani umeya and we've spoken of this previously people were upset and there was a lot of factions that were uh conspiring against them especially the the main strength against them was the shia okay because the

the kind of family of the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam being persecuted this narrative was the strongest narrative and people were fed up anyway it's not just sometimes you need something to believe in but people also give you an excuse because bunny omiyage weren't you know they they were you know they were who they were it's very obvious they were they weren't that considerate of people there was heavy taxes at times there were confiscations they were all these kind of things going on so the the kind of uh shia movement

is rising and it's it seems to garner and harness an ear in the in the far east of the muslim world so places like horizon which is modern day afghanistan and maybe parts of that region going north maybe today some parts of uh that kind of western uh central asia sorry central asia being part of it but this horizon region they seem to have a soft spot for the shia kind of movement and at the

forefront of the shia movement where obviously you had the you had uh the halloween people who were claiming that being let's say the descendants of but you also had people just generally from bani hashim the greater clan and amongst them you had people that would be the offspring of abdullah ibn abbas the young i mean an abbas the uncle of the prophet which is all the clan of hashim and remember all of hashem including ali they they are united by that cause because they're all ultimately one blood so

to them are the arch rivals so you start to see a strategic elevation a rise in the abbasids amongst this so let's say all of these are one group and those from abbas seem to have more charming characters and personalities so you have uh this personality ibrahim ibrahimovic muhammad now they call him ibrahim imam he is somebody that starts calling to towards this dawah and calling people and and he's very charming very kind of has that mysterious element to him so maya

imprisoned him they catch him he's locked up in prison but in that day and age the prisons were slightly different so people would allow people to come visit prisoners it wasn't the kind of way today we see prisons they're a lot more institutionalized and on a separate discussion one could speak about foucault you know the focolean analysis of prisons and the institutionalization in of modernity but prisons in that day and age were quite like you were locked up the person was locked up they were in this thing but people could come and go and they could

bring them food and they could do stuff and they could even spend like a whole day there they could spend several days with them like people didn't actually care it wasn't like oh who are you or what they they're just like weren't bothered indifferent to it so what happens is somebody gives a muslim

they give him some some things to take to ibrahim imam like as in like a just use him as a gopher go for this go for that he's this kind of young boy he's not very um you know it's just i've been a former slave and stuff and so ibrahimo imam sees something special in him and he asks him what's your name and then this difference is that his name was something else before and people use different uh names what ibrahim al-imam says to him is that he takes a liking to him and he renames him

he says that he gives him this name abu muslim that this is who you are and so okay and you can see that there's this clear kind of dynamic you know like a bond like this like almost a guide a sheikh and a disciple or almost like a senior warrior kind of spirit and you've got this disciple this kind of bond gets created because this muslim is all he's bringing him food every other day and he's spending time there he ends up talking to him and

ibrahim imam can see this guy is very he has a charm to him and a charisma he's obviously very he's got a strong stature he's physically has this presence he's young but he has this presence and as the days turn into months which turn into uh one or two years that there is this bond going on the da'wah of the let's say the abbasids which is actually the dawah of the hashmi in the shia it is growing stronger and stronger day by day in in the horizon region so

people ask ibrahimo imam that look we need to send someone you know we need to capitalize on it we need to send someone that can take charge and kind of uh mobilize get armies together and you know we have to like it's ripe we need to do something so he says you're right and and they so they're asking who who who will you nominate because they've got all these figures they've got you know these great people from abbasids and hashmeen and halloween and he

says says this young lad here abu muslim says i send him in charge. and you know it's incredibly fascinating this in psychology you have something known as the pygmalion effect that maybe sometimes the expectation of excellence from someone

it impacts and influences the performance of excellence in the observed so if a coach let's say a football coach or any sports coach kind of just sees for some reason has the belief of excellence in a particular young player often it happens that player rises to that excellence to match the expectation and this is called the pygmalion effect and it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy and so other muslim takes this up

and he goes and first of all there's some uh you know there's battles and he's this relentless people are shocked how ruthless this person is and he just suddenly rises to fame and the people of the region actually once he locks control of horasan they love him they absolutely love him and maybe this was some people say maybe it's because he was persian and he could speak pharisees a lot of those people spoke back then they spoke farsi and people say he was eloquent in farsi

and some people say maybe because he or he alleged to have been from the legacy of the kisras like he claimed his forefathers were the great sassanid rulers and maybe that struck all in the hearts of these people and maybe i mean or maybe it was just his stature maybe it was the fact that he was ruthless in his military campaigns and and he and he was he would where he would go to he would crush any rebellion

and this is why he became such a renowned figure so what happens the key people of the abbasid movement because remember this is all the shia movement but the abbasid seem to be taking the they seem to be at the vanguard at the front of it okay taking lead in it so he starts to rub shoulders with the top people that are there like he already knows ibrahimovic imam like

and other people these are all he's like as if he's one of them and do you know when he's going ibrahim al-imam says to him now this is interesting he says to him now speaking about that prophecy he says to him he says abu muslim he says anta minna ahlulbait and in many ways reenacting that scene where the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam is saying this to salman al-farsi that you are from us

one of our household like you to us our real family and and this is then celebrated and you can imagine what it does to how it boosts the the the spirit of this who's who's very young by by the way at this time he's just in his 20s and he's doing all these expeditions and these stories are going wild that he ibrahim al-imam has called him like from us and and so all this starts to happen he locks khorasan meanwhile ibrahimovic imam kind of

passes away people say that he's killed by the umayyads and um and and there's more turbulence going right throughout the umayyad state so what happens is at the year 131 injury the abbasids from horizon mobilize an army to move down they think the time is ripe we should attack and take over whatever we can now marwan al-himar he he realizes and he was a he was like a

strong warrior as well he thinks that okay um he hears of these armies coming from the east with black flags now this is interesting by the way because a lot of the hadith literature that people will sometimes present of these armies coming from the east with black flags at the end of time it is about the abbasids and this is why most of this it's very it seems very plausible that most of these kind of hadith are fabricated to serve the abbasids because where it mentions these people will come out of the east with black flags and they will have kunyas

in like abu something abu muslim al-khwarazani and these things were there to support that kind of cause because people really you know the power of belief the script it's phenomenal if anybody watches whether it's going to be a boxing match or sometimes you get these ufc matches and and they're having that squirrel and one of the opponents is trying to he's kind of he's doing a lot of trash talk i'm gonna do this whoa you're already dead i already you know it's like uh you

you're gonna see my uh um conor mcgregor he'll be you know he'll be saying things like uh oh i already see you know your lips already blue you're a dead man walking blah blah blah now what are they they're trying to kill the spirit because once you kill the spirit the man is just a dead man walking you see so the power of belief it is one could argue even more than half the battle

so so these armies are coming out of the east carrying black flags with kunia's like abu something okay like abu muslim abu abbas asafa all these kind of things but especially people like abu muslim because he's not even known by his name he's just known as abu muslim that's his kind of that's the name that he goes by he doesn't but that's really just a kunya but it's how he's known so marwan mobilizes an army and they move

forward and they meet at this place and there's this famous battle and we can cover that on another day called the battle of zab but it is the key determining factor that topples the entire maya dynasty and you know puts a full stop on a dynastic reign that began since the time of mahavira radhilan right down to marwan and it ends in that year at this location in in the middle east north uh northern i believe modern day iraq but

it was uh called wakatuzab now marwan goes they takes these armies and he thinks that you know what he's got a good good chance and there is a point where and this battle goes on and so many casualties and there is a point where marwan thinks he's going to win but you know i'll tell you speaking of beliefs check this out marwan himself was a um he was mixed a race so his mother was kurdish and so she and she was kind of very like fair skinned white skinned and this is

why they describe him as very kind of like white looking white skinned almost and um and see prior to marwan the other people their mothers were usually usually of arab descent or they were free women they weren't slaves marwan's mom this kurdish lady was a slave um and then i think she they freed her afterwards but she was a slave to the the you know truth his father muhammad uh who who wasn't a king but he was part of the bani maya

now there was this kind of i don't know not a rumor in the word but this kind of urban myth that the umayyads had that if a king if there was if the son of a female slave was ever to be crowned the dynasty will be toppled [Laughter] so people have um these beliefs you see and it's interesting because

they can become self-fulfilling prophecies like in pakistan if i recall correctly there was a an urban myth that when many years ago when i used to study there that there was that if eid occurred coincided with the jummah it meant that the government will be toppled

so whoever is in power will basically the seat of power will be toppled this was like a common uh i don't know if people still believe it but this is i'm talking almost two decades ago but so but i remember at the time it was like a widely held belief that if eid coincides with the jummah then the seat of power will be taken from whoever has it like this was p and people would just say oh and it would happen it's mud how these beliefs then they kind of materialize um so

yeah so there was this urban myth that if the son of a female slave was to be crowned then then then the dynasty will be toppled so they had this kind of urban myth floating now marwan al-himar fits that character so you've got to remember he's got this going on in the back of his head as well and they have this decisive battle plays out and what we'll do is maybe one day another day we'll actually concentrate on the battle as well because that's interesting

but there is a um there's it's like a sidekick to uh marwan al-himar he's just he's just a um [Music] a literary genius he's not like a politician his name was abdul hamid and he's one of the people one of the most eloquent arabs of that era and they say his dicta his kind of diction of how to write sermons is how everybody did it after him so when you want to study kitaba

like how like today it seems silly like when we say teaching kitaba people think do you mean like teaching how to write not how to write in a handwriting sense but how does one write a book how does one write a letter now this seems dumb when we say today because it's so common sense but actually there's a science to it so for example i actually recall like when i was a kid people obviously now they don't but when i was a kid people would write letters and there was a method to it like you would begin a letter

by first of all you'd explain that uh you know you you'd kind of ask like okay you know greetings i hope you're well i hope you'd ask about these people are well i hope this is well then you'd explain for example i am well this has been happening this this this then you'd have a different paragraph that would get into some of what you're saying then you're good you know it's like there was an etiquette to how to write and it's not just letters how to write books for example how do you have an introduction how do you first of all you begin by praising allah how long does this praise of allah go on for so does it is it just like

alhamdulillah or does it go on for an entire paragraph many uh uh many scholars argue that the person who set this style all into motion of how to write the first khutba in arabic in a book was abdul hamid al-khatteb that most people follow following him that wrote their books and everything were were were influenced by his methodology and prior to him nobody used to do it so it's fascinating that you that this person how influential he was

he was so um so when it came to things like this so he was like a sidekick to uh marijuana not politically but almost like a kind of like a counselor friend like he was a friend he was always with him but he wasn't like bunny omega and he wasn't from that kind of king princely class but he was just somebody that was so educated and he was always full of wisdom and he was a at convincing people he was a huge i don't know if you want to say

manipulator ain't the right word but you could imagine a a walking talking psychologist back then they say that he would write to people and he'd have them convinced just like these like his words had magic in them and for many years he was with marwan alhamar and he's with him in this battle and you know in the past they've been in many battles and when it's getting it's just dragging on and there's so many casualties what abdul hamid would do is sometimes he would write this epic

proposal which would be a truce but it would always be very graceful and it would be so convincing and compelling so what he does is he says look let me write to them so they say he has this kind of um what they wrote on these parchments yeah which was like kind of like that leathery thing and he has so much he writes so much that they had to put it like there were these huge sheets of parchment they had to put it on a camel to take it across to abu muslim

and to their camp and this is one of the most eloquent people in the world when it comes to the arabic language obviously our muslim is eloquent but we're talking in a different league this person abdul hamid al-qarti and this was to be read and remember you've got the senior kind of commanders and all that would be standing and they usually listen and he had a way with the hearts of man this abdul hamid did so he sends these parchments huge they had to take them off they're like sheets

and it's in like the most mesmerizing arabic and you know [Laughter] this is uh you know when they say abu muslim i guess that's um uh when the sword meets the pen you know when they took it off before they could even approach it abu muslim set fire to it he got some fire you know as they took it off the camel all these sheets of the most hard-hitting

heart compelling you know mind-swaying arabic that has come as a proposal they say before they could they took it off the camel abdul hamid got this torch and he just chucked it on there set fire to it and with a sword he cut off one small piece of a little parchment just a small piece just like they say just chop that off and let the rest burn and and he's told everybody stand back and he

right and he wrote on that little thing that he cut off he wrote he wrote that and handed it to the person said take it back it said that the sword has torn the lines of eloquence

and cast it aside he said the youth laith means lion he said the lions of the jungle have surrounded you on every front that maha saifu allah ladies and gentlemen was the decisive turning point in that battle it crushed the spirits you know warfare has

always been psychological more than physical that it was then just it was just moments now you can just say it was simply formalities the umayyad suffered a crushing defeat after that marwan manages to escape and abdul hamid escapes with him and marwan does say to abdul hamid you know you are so eloquent that if you go to them and switch sides they will definitely honor you because

you're just a celebrity but abdul hamid says you know he says you know it's that perspective i guess he says well when all of life has gone this way why switch at this last moment huh he says well we gotta die anyway someday and then they are they they managed to escape to egypt where they both eventually killed and what happens is there is this huge victory for the abbasids and abu labasa safar takes lead and he does and he's really vicious and

he kills so many people thousands upon thousands as he enters damascus and stuff like this but you see what follows is has now attained this kind of princely status so he starts to hope that maybe i too can become caliph and then what he starts to do is when people ask him he starts to claim that apparently his grandfather you know before how he would claim that his ancestors were from the sassanids he now starts to say no actually his like

and his kind of great grandfather was a an offspring of abdullah now bus and so he starts to kind of align himself with the abbasids and he even tries to propose for who is the aunt of uh abuja for mansoor obviously they turn it down though but this is him him telling people i'm like this and he's really tight with the current ruler which is ablabasa and what happens is there is this incident where

he himself wants obviously he wants more people of a muslim to like him and he can start to see this rivalry between him and abu jahl mansur and there's another uh you have um you within the abbasid there's some breakaways there's a lot of tension that who's going to be the next ruler and people are kind of like privately competing i know muslims kind of competing and he's getting the masses to kind of like him he's giving them gifts and he's doing stuff and remember we mentioned this before some of them were very kind of open-hearted and they would do that

so this one year abu muslim asks abu safar that can i this year lead the hajj because you see the person who leads the hajj has this seniority like people see him as an imam of the people so just as safai is about to agree mansoor asks can i lead people this year so this really gets to uh really bothers a muslim and he even says that could he find no other year to ask except this year

does hajj not happen in other years and so what happens is when they set off on the hajj kind of convoy a muslim takes a different route and beats mansoor to the hajj and starts giving all these gifts and winning the hearts and minds of people people think oh wow so when abu mansur got there he didn't get the audience that he wanted because people because really type fisted we've covered this before he's like super tight he's one of the most tight-fisted if you remember people would call him uh abu dhawanik like the person of pennies because he'd cling to the pennies and

so abu muslim has already gone and he's squandered this wealth and people are like wow so when abu mansoor gets there um um you know very few people receive him and he asks that where are the people they say oh yeah but uh yeah they know you're here but um you know of a muslim had come before and gave all these gifts and people kind of took him and went home so you can imagine this is like really hmm and what happens is on the way back

um the news comes that safar has passed away so people give the allegiance automatically to mansur um so this really annoys um of a muslim so he kind of doesn't come back in that part of iraq goes somewhere else and this then leads to this rivalry that is going on between them so at first of a muslim goes back towards harassing sides and he starts gathering some kind of an army thinking that i will fight

abu jafar al-mansoor and um abuja for at one point he kind of sends this threatening letter to him and it's amazing how although muslim is so courageous but this one threat seems to they say hit him hard said to him that look that that i swear by god no matter what corner of the earth you go to to hide in i will seek you out and hunt you like he says he kind of writes this threat to him and they say that apparently this threat for some reason

kind of shook up a muslim and then abu jaffer thinks look let's let's do psychological warfare so he sends some of his people to say that you know by the way we've softened up one sword and now he's cool with you just come with us he just wants to patch it up and he sets up this whole this scenario of betrayal so let me see if i can bring up some of these things here um so these are i should have some of the script here somewhere actually

this is a a poem just contributing to what you can see somebody said like this is somebody dissing the abbasids afterwards saying that you know it was really just a muslim who if it wasn't for his swords you guys would never have conquered what you conquered um now yeah let me just get this show you guys the script so what happens is uh just to um right to one second to bring you up to

speed first so he sends abu dhabi sends these people to win him over that look to sweet talk him tell him that i've changed my mind uh he says it's very clear so you know you gotta be don't um let him cut cotton on and when you guys come here i'm going to treat him really well but i'm going to have a cold and when i kind of click my fingers and then i want you all to march forward with your swords and kind of stab him [Laughter]

the poison chalice allah so what happens is these people go to abu muslim they meet him they are some senior figures they they they convince him that you know mansoor has kind of softened up now and he wants you to come down and a muslim says you know i don't know you know he seems like i don't know they say do this what are you talking about we give you we vouch for you

he says right he is vouching for you it's like a cha cha cha you know i see up no entry on what did the person say he said but but there's no there isn't a sign here and no entry sign he said to the copper he goes that the copper goes this is a no entry he goes but there's no sign here the copper goes i see up saina he goes i am the 93 sign

so these people are like look don't worry about it you know we're with you yard they're like look he's totally cool he's changed you know yeah he was a bit unsettled but now he's cool so they actually managed to convince him so uber muslim turns up and he comes to the royal court but when he's coming in they the the people like the guards outside start kind of manhandling him and obviously he's on his own he's not like with an army and you've got some god and he's kind of pushing him he's saying oh come this and obviously this is a huge person he's like the the

governor of horizon you know he's like by the way in his lifetime they say he contributed to the the killing of over 500 000 people i mean that over half a million this is two years and and at this stage he's probably i think about 27 28 or something he's not that old so he's being all manhandled and and he's obviously finding this insulting so he comes into abu mansour and

so right one second right okay that's better so you've got here that look a woman says to him that he asks him he says uh he's because first of all he complains about being manhandled at the door of the palace and stuff and and he says all these did they says huh i'm gonna say to them don't worry i'm gonna say to them how dare they man you know disrespect you don't they know who you are and all this and and he and check abu jafar mansoor he goes abu jafar al mansoor goes

oh i told them to to you know to obviously shake down normal guests not you you're not a normal so then he says to him i gotta ask you something he says he says that abdullah you see in the time of safar there was a point where the muslim wrote to him they were kind of acquiring there was this acquisition of certain territories and he felt that that was forbidden in islam you couldn't do it like this so he's asking him were

you trying to teach us islam by the way islam it's like were you trying to and he says he said i just thought it wasn't permissible in islam he says but when the amir al-munin wrote to me he says i realized that they obviously from the household of abbas must have a better understanding of the deen he says look

that they are a source of knowledge [Laughter] this is where the old diary is being opened up says remember when we're going to hajj why did you beat me to it he says

he says he says your excellency i didn't want both of our troops to stop at the same water reservoir because the water because when on these journeys they would stop at set designated reservoirs and he said that the water would end up being less because there's too many you know both of our troops so i thought let us go first so you guys can have ease diplomacy and diplomacy call of alimora he says

he says in that case when you came to learn of the death of abu labas why didn't you come to me you know you didn't come back here you went off and he says see he uses the same execute he says you know what it is if i came to you and i've got all these troops with me we're going to congest the streets and he says

he says i knew we will end up meeting in kufa anyway in iraq and he says this is you know prior to the hajj there was abdullah ibn ali was another abbasid he's the uncle of abu

a dhaf he had risen in rebellion as well against mansoor so check this mansoor had used up a muslim to crush him he had said can you please deal with him and he did he crushed him and when he crushed him he took obviously one of the concubines so check this now he's saying oh and you took the the concubine of abdullah ibn ali for yourself he says

he says no he says i thought people might just mistreat her so i put her in my kind of caravan and just took her for her safety political correctness political correctness he so what happens when he's talking mansur

says to him look come close hold my hand bonding all right so he's holding and he's mansur has got his hand amongst his hands and he's not letting go and he's asking him these questions he says to him okay he says tell me when you would write to me you wouldn't seem to seem to be more a bit egocentric [Laughter] enough's and he says that you and started to claim that you're the son of salih abdullah ibn abbas like you're from our lineage and you even proposed

ali you know his aunt who's abbasid you propose for her so so what muslim does you see this is diplomacy people it's obviously his hands his hand is kind of sandwiched between his hands mansur has kind of got them like this and he's kind of he's asking these questions being a bit awkward so in between of a muslim he says he says look i apologize your excellency and he kisses his hand

it is stylish every time you bring something like that up he and his hand is caught there anyway he'd say it was my mistake and then he would just kind of kiss his hand and so this is going on right then he says to him he says he says why did you head back towards horace he says

he says no look i thought maybe there was some mistaken bad blood and i thought let me go back to harassan then i'll write to you now here there used to be a leader from the abbasid that was in horazan they would call himself his name was muslim had killed him previously here he asks him

because he was like from the classics and they used to call himself why did you kill him and he says you see this is the point he gives that ex he says he says he started to disobey me so at this point abu jafar al-mansooran is holding his hand remember he says he said damn you he says you disobey me and he says and he says and people who disobey you you get killed but yet whilst you disobey me

don't you deserve to be killed and as he does that he kind of does that click or some say he kind of taps this pole or or some say may have been a clap he does that and as soon as he does that the guards come in and unleash he has these some say four or five guards waiting behind these kind of curtains they come straight in and just strike with their swords

and they continue to strike they say he obviously fell dead they sliced him into pieces and they say whilst it's happening mansoor is yelling hurry cut him up cut him up he's kind of saying these things and says and they threw him they threw him in the in the tigris river now

and you can see this is um a part of it as well and they say that just as he had done that somebody that was actually close to a muslim and was from the abbasid had come he just made it to the palace he'd heard of a muslim had come and he goes to mansoor he says listen listen muslims coming i just want you to he was trying to kind of negotiate and and abu jafar says to him too late mate and he goes what do you mean and he just kind of looks at these cut pieces in this kind of leather wrap that they have

which are like human pieces and and he says that's him and and this you see was what lies right there in front of them that not only the this waste of life but this this this young man in his late 20s was the determining force that actually crowned the abbasid dynasty how he rose just suddenly

in his late teens this meteoric rise and within a decade kind of collapsed having left in his wake also half a million corpses and the ruins of the umayyad dynasty and how he met his own demise it's such shocking stories that you see really echoing in light of that verse

and those days we rotate them amongst people and how these great mighty people crossed path whether it was going to be people of literature like abdul hamid al-khatteb whether it was people of dynasty like marwan and people like abu muslim and so intelligent as well they say that after him people of horasan were still so they had so much allegiance to him that mansoor tried to first of all um

fake a letter from his stamp that people would carry this kind of ring with the seal on it and they used his ring to feign a letter back to horasan saying look i'm gonna stay here and i'm gonna send somebody else he's gonna be in charge but as soon as it got there the the recipient said this is fake and you know why check this out the genius of abu muslim he had told his kind of deputies always in horizon you see whenever he writes a letter

and he would seal it he would only only seal half like he would like let's say this was the letter and you put the seal on he would only always tilt it so it would be half a seal but people wouldn't know this and it always told them if a full seal ever comes to you no it's not me what a genius so when they saw the full seal they said that no we don't we don't we don't believe that this this cannot be him something's wrong then then mansoor eventually had to reconquer them and and it leads to the whole thing

which he manages to eventually but this was this individual who was a nobody yet such a powerful figure and you can see here these poems as well that um that some people obviously um addressing mansoor that's

remember to justify it to the people because people did love of a muslim he justified it with this speech of his and you can see it's here as well i've put lest you to fall victim to consequences and he mentions that look he goes on to say

that uh that we basically ruled with a law that he says that he mentions that we had this rule amongst us the abbasids that any uprising would be crushed and abu muslim pledged his allegiance with this with this law and it is by that law that he got executed that those who live by the sword die by the sword and he had promised that whoever

rises against the ruler deserves to be executed so he so this was his speech to people mansours but in it you saw and you can see there that look i put a poem off me that maybe death actually has a cure itself but life there is no cure to lives

people i want to share that story with us the vicissitudes now whether you see that as a celebration or a you know travesty it is a matter of perspective um you know on one hand this person conquered what nobody before him could have he achieved what they couldn't have achieved but then on the other hand he you know met his tragedy awaiting him [Laughter] as uh as it's been said that

we often meet our fate on the path we take to avoid it so i thought i'd share that with you guys cool let's move on take a look at some of your questions i'll share the link get some of you on some calls and yeah you know there was by the way he did say just to squeeze that in at the end they say abu muslim when he heard like

the people coming out with the swords he did say to mansoor he said he said is said keep me for your enemies okay and mansoor said to him he said woman and he said who is a more deserving enemy to me than you [Laughter] but he was a legend but this is the thing you see i guess legends get cut down because it's it's

they were all in their own way kind of you know just vicious characters and where you have so many obviously the question is is there a main character who is the main character you know by the way this term sahaba it is introduced like we use it now to mean for the prophet but originally it was used to describe the companions of mansur the sahaba were not the sahaba of the prophet they were the sahaba of mansoor

so the first time this word is used it is writes there resalah describing the call sahas something of sahaba but it's not talking about the sahaba of the prophet that this word wasn't used for them at that time the people might say nabi or sachbun this word was used originally to describe the companions of the abbasid caliphs then muslims used it later to refer to the companions of the prophet i thought that's just an interesting um you know a piece of some trivia to to to know

right look at this it's true it's true two was supposed to be all right let me share the link get this out there people where's the link it is interesting i do love these stories you know i must say i was really curious that i wonder what abdul hamid al-khattev wrote in those

he he wrote prepared this whole thing that whoever reads this he's it's a done deal another muslim just sets it on fire basically the sword is mightier than the pen that's how he says it hmm

first of all shukran i see sarasota much love for the super chat why do some muslim communities uphold shame culture and honor killings does it have its root in islam or pre-islamic culture um all right so yes first of all it's we need to condemn any kind of honor attacks on a killings on a violence shame culture this is not to do nothing to do with islam but like many things people can shroud it in islamic rhetoric

so it's not difficult look a person can take the quran and use it to justify any kind of means so let's say you had all kinds of crazy sects in the past that did things like the juarez who were like the forerunners to isis they would butcher people and really ruthless they would use certain verses of the quran to try to twist it towards the meaning so it's like um they they attacked said iran and they said that all of you have become kafir and they used verses of the

quran to justify that you know you two are trying to have a truth where really only god is the true judge and so people can use the quran or use islam it's a bit like saying how bush used you know the the um the american constitution to justify his kind of his enemy combatant state and tried to uh justify it justified gitmo guantanamo bay on the back of the american constitution so

a person can use anything and twist it to say well oh i'm using it's like how putin was now before invading he used a democratic alleged democratic process to say well you know now the upper house in russia has has authorized me following our democratic process to do this so people may say this is to do this has nothing to do with islam nothing islam abhors and condemns this shame culture this kind of shaming name and shame this kind of um honor attacks all of this

it is just insecure people and it very like so so for example people will hold like what do like if you take a look at like let's say romance is demonized in some parts of the muslim world like having being in love with someone is demonized like if if you're not married yet so even if let's say the person now came to propose but it became known that oh he likes her it's like no this is now a dishonor like i mean what goddamn

millennium are you guys living in like this that that was never the case like in even in jahiliyyah arabic arabia and in islam islamic arabia in the time of the prophet these things marriage was such a natural thing it was never like this it was never like that like they marriage and love and divorces and they would have divorces and marriages straight away and they weren't tarnished there was none of a lot of this there seems to be a heightened attitude towards sexuality especially in the disney world which is not really doesn't come to us

from islam because the islamic literature seems to be much more emboldened and kind of brazen in its attitude towards sex so in fact we don't even dare translate how it's said because it's too kind of appears vulgar but in arabic it just appears normal so they treated like sex was a very natural state to them so

now in pre-islamic arabia they wouldn't have sure they would have had their own social kind of thing so maybe they look down on for example slaves so if a woman had an affair with a slave then that may have been seen or maybe they saw it as a certain because the the tribe was an inferior tribe they maybe saw that but it wasn't the fact that she was for example having this romantic affair with someone that was itself seen as like oh my god that's so so disgusting or that i mean what i'm not saying well

maybe they didn't celebrate it but they didn't they weren't it wasn't a big deal for them these things weren't how they saw it sure maybe if she you know they had other rules and and i don't believe that they had stoning um this was not from pre-islamic arabia this was from the jewish things so the arabs wouldn't have had that they would have had the lashing and stuff so they would have lashed people but they wouldn't have stoned them this was not a an arab custom mainly for things like that i'm not saying obviously people knew how to pick up stones and throw them at people they understood that but it wasn't like you go and stone somebody

for um you know having a sexual encounter that was not um generally as far as i'm aware known as an arab custom that that was something that was in the in the torah and in from the jewish customs and even the jews didn't really do it in arabia so maybe the odd jewish thing because even in the hadith the jewish people are practicing something else they're kind of blackening the faces and putting them on donkeys when they catch them doing adultery and making them go around so they're not actually doing things like the stoning and in

fact that's the way they come to the prophet saying well look in the in the famous hadith that we only judge by our book and the pro and the prophet saying well that's double standards then because your book says something else so uh because because they're saying we're going to blacken the face and put them on a donkey and i think shave his head or whatever and and then they make this statement about we only go by our scripture and and the prophet says well but that's not in your scripture you know this doing the donkey thing and doing all isn't your scripture about stoning and so this is the kind of the double standard and the hypocrisy that the

prophet is pointing out to them that you know but you guys sure but why are you claiming that you you only stick to scripture then so this is um but this whole culture is a very uh backwards nothing to do with islam and you'll see different cultures muslim cultures are very open to so many things like it's a good example contrasting something like afghanistan pakistan those areas with something like mauritania because like mauritania is going to be both ends are hyper

religious let's say or i don't know if hyper religious is the right word but both ends have religion is the strong current that permeates their entire society but yet the manifestations are so different like if you take mauritania take this relationships as an example women will throughout their lifetimes have multiple marriages and it's like a social status symbol so if a woman in fact you can go onto

youtube and watch a drama on it um i mean you can watch a documentary on it so they women will kind of in their way social their kind of shame or not shame but they'll mock a woman who's only ever had one marriage in her life like they'll be like hahaha or she's only ever had one man and they they'll be women on average will go through at least 10 marriages there's somebody that will this one lady speaking about how she's been through 40 marriages she's like really boastful that i had 40 marriages and there's things where they they will

be like the husband and wife there there was uh an incident where the husband and wife were like oh look you know they're not really getting on so she says look you know what i think and he says i think we should just divorce or whatever and she's like yeah that's great and she says do you think your friend you know i kind of is he up for marriage and then he sets her up says yeah yeah of course he is so she then marries the friend and and this is a very now you see if i describe these practices to you you're gonna like a stereotypical kind of uh profiling thing is if if i tell that to let's say people in

pakistan without describing who the culture is they're gonna picture something oh these are these lewd europeans kuffar got no value for god got no value how can a woman want to be with 20 men throughout her life how can a woman and then you tell them no this is mauritania where children memorize the quran and everybody is a habit of the quran and they do hijab and they've got masha'ikh and they're deeply rooted in maliki all they know is fair and fair can they memorize poems and they some of the best kind of uh memories that we've got in the entire arabic world and

they won't be able to like they'll be like a system malfunction like they won't be able to understand that how does that happen because to them they think like in let's say the eastern part that the sexual um sensitivity um must be which is so the these kind of insecurities that they have they don't think the insecurities they think the heightened sexual sensitivities and taboos are must be rooted in the islamic identity this is what they

assume so if you thereby the corollary that follows the logical conclusion is that if you are islamic you too must have these values embedded but if they were to find a society that was arguably more islamic than them because unlike them they actually all almost memorize the quran and they all understand arabic and they memorize maliki firk and they teach some of the greatest kind of memories on earth they they study hadith i mean this is the common people you'll hear stories of women saying well you know i won't even marry a guy who

hasn't like if the if the guy hasn't even memorized these poems on grammar and so on then what a failure it's like how people would say does he not have a degree they would say does he not know alfie you know alfie al-faytim namalik he doesn't even know that so if you tell them that these women have or this society is even more islamic but yet that their attitudes towards sex and relationships are entirely different they won't be able to fathom that because what's the alternative because they because where are you getting your sensitivities and this from because you're getting them not

then from islam you're getting them from some insecurities that you have that are kind of cultural insecurities and that nobody wants to admit to you see people feel bad saying uh this is an insecurity they justify by saying no this is a religious good act that this is you know as people say the youth you know the youth the people who don't uh they don't be jealous over their women and the youth now you hear this often amongst our salafi brethren using this term that the youth now

so the mauritanian mache all these people they're probably considering them the youth then but that said speaking of the selfie that the divorces happened just the same amongst them they they marry these women divorce them pass them around and utterly destroy the the woman by the end of the process so there is a lot of unpacking and unwrapping to do and one thing we learn is that culture

is not coming from religion if anything the religion will take the flavor of the culture that you have and i love what um had said that he gave this example i heard it years ago in his lecture series um i think it was on the four matabs where he said that islam is like a stream uh like a river and the water just takes the color of the riverbed

so that's what islam does it just kind of flows over taking the kind of reflecting the properties of its environment that it's passing through i thought that was uh epic when will you throw dr david wood under the bus i already have videos about david wood so they're quite old actually you can watch them these mauritanian women must be rich ah don't judge them that's a bit

judgmental let let people live do you think people value their cultures more than religion that's a difficult one i think people i don't think they value their culture more than religion um i think what happens is to the common see you have to understand that common people are not deep thinking people if you are somebody that has a propensity to think deeply profoundly and critically

then no you are from a tiny proportion of people you are the exception and not the norm most people are not like it doesn't mean they see people will assume binaries they'll think well oh if you're not that then you must be stupid you're not stupid like people are not stupid they in fact you know very clever and in there and they're very dexterous very skillful in their own way and they're not dumb but just because they're very dexterous and skillful and they can navigate through life like somebody could be a mechanic

and he could be really clever and he could fix things and he knows you bring him a car and he can figure it out and in fact today i had for the first time car problems and you know when it's i called a friend and he you know so skillfully it's like the gear selector wouldn't select and i was just like whoa i was just parking up and i was kind of still out and the cars just like it's just in park it doesn't it's like great i was like this is going to be fun [Laughter] it's wonderful honestly you got to laugh at these things but people you see they have great skills so

people are like this some people could you know like you you see people coding software you're like what the hell how can a person even do that but they can do it and you think this person is a genius and they are in that but that doesn't mean [Music] that they are trained in critical reflective profound thought it doesn't mean that because they could just be really good at what they do and they navigate through life and that's good enough for them so there's good enough reasoning like reasoning everyday reasoning like hmm should i buy that product should i buy this product i'm

gonna do some evaluation that kind of reasoning is good enough to get by with in life to actually think about life with a capital l to delve into an existential substrate and to think well hmm you know what does this mean and profound like like like let's say i shared this the other day that as a thought experiment if i was to say well answer like think about who am i without answering your name without answering your relationships without answering your career or qualifications or assets

that who am i think about that think about it when you're on your own sometimes that is really profound because it's not you don't know like what the hell am i then that kind of thinking at that level is incredibly rare and exceptional if you find yourself like that you are from an a tiny minority of human beings so at that level see most people are not thinking at that level so culture and stuff like this

i think they find it difficult to separate stuff because they're not thinking at the substrate level they just think so maybe a lot of things they see culture and religion as like a venn diagram and overlapping on most things and they don't think so profoundly so they so they just go with the flow and that's actually surprisingly most people

so yeah let's see so please definitely take geopolitics i won't don't know what that question means i want my iman back i went from moomin to muslim how do you recognize truth from falsehood i'll tell you what let me have i shared the link let me share the link and people can come on nora ramadan coming up any advice for new muslims oh shukran much love for the

super chat um yeah what look what i would say is that you know it is a personal the thing about ramadan is real the thing about fasting sorry is that it's truly a very personal experience nobody seeing you can even tell that you're fasting because it's a negation of action it's a cessation it's not actually enacting something so it's the absence of food and drink not so people can't tell so

this is why it's so profoundly linked to the divine and there is something about being in that state that evokes a heightened um level of consciousness or altis consciousness so yeah so i would say look see it as an opportunity see it as a a chance to to maybe reconnect maybe if you can even if people can first of all with the fast hopefully they will now become somewhat shorter

first in some parts they were like at least 16 hours plus now if they're too long there are different opinions that people some people and they're all fatwas all from ulama and you don't have to follow them but if other people follow them that's their choice you follow the one that you see fit and it's your devotion to god so one is from end to end there's one where people will give a fatwa that they can delay for example eating up until just before sunrise and then up until sunset in some places people will say that well they will time it because it's over 15

hours anything over sorry anything over i think they've said like the fatwa they give like anything like 15 16 hours something like that um [Music] the certain olimar had said you could just they could just allocate a time so for example they're just going to fast 13 13-14 hours in a day and they set the time so you get this is from allah's heart and different places so people will just set a time like let's say they start fasting at 5am and they open it or they start at 4am and they open it up let's say uh 6 p.m or something 6 30 p.m or something like this

but this is to do with the actual fast there are a variety of rulings and people it's their personal journey what they take is up to them you focus on yourself and what you're taking the other thing is it is an opportunity to remind ourselves of some discipline whilst we're doing that if we can engage in some reading if you can read the quran i would say that's amazing if you can't even if you can read you know somebody's very new maybe they can just read a line a verse a day even anything that they can acquaint themselves with and

maybe just ponder over is huge maybe if they're absolute new muslims they could take the month to maybe learn the alphabet of arabic and so by the end of the month you know that i know how to the alphabet identify the letters to join the letters to read the letters as words and to be able so you set yourself a goal that within 30 days this is done because the 30 days are going to be done anyway so why not leave it with now this new skill that would be wonderful and i would also say to people and this is to everyone you can use it maybe see it

as an opportunity a springboard to if you are a victim suffer from things like smoking cigarettes and you wanted to leave people who smoke weed and they want to leave they want to quit it but they can't people who um who do think maybe people who drink alcohol and they don't really want to maybe people who want to quit something this gives you the script which gives you the power to do it but you have to believe in yourself you

know the verse we read today alone you will triumph but in kunta but you have to believe the script you have to believe change that inner script and believe it this is the month i'm going to get this done and you can do it believe me it's willpower you underestimate human willpower when put to the test humans will always surprise you that so people think i can never quit this i can never quit weed i can never quit cigarettes i can never quit quit it

if if you this is if you want to show on some people don't want to maybe a person does something maybe a person does gambling and they want to quit that that's highly addictive this is the it's an opportunity don't think of it like like a stick you know the stick in the carrot thing see it more as like wow i've got a window here where i've got a pretext to try to do this anyway so you know what if yeah

i can get it done you know it's like yeah why not huh and try to avoid being judgmental you know because we say this and it's one of the things that you know i think ramadan is a beautiful example of where we you know we have to remember the fastest not the hadith says that anybody who just who engages in just you know gossip and backbiting and insulting people and hating on people and doing stuff and then

hadith says all they did they never fasted all they did was just starved and dehydrated that's what the hadith says that they that's not a fast because what the fast isn't like what does god get if you don't eat food it doesn't how does it help god why you not eating food if anything it helps you physically by kick-starting your immune system and stuff but how does it help god it doesn't you're just exercising restraint why are you exercising restraint what's the purpose because that is what kickstarts discipline

and the whole purpose was to create discipline it wasn't to starve what was the point of starving and so purpose was allah was teaching you that you need to be disciplined so hey here's a month try to try to inculcate some serious discipline and then let it play out for the rest of the year allah make it easy right so ah

right there you go people yes what we'll do is i've shared the link and then we'll wrap this up okay we could actually start wrapping it up actually yeah it has been an interesting day i must say

ah you know so often i see i it's the same thing i will have so many things that i need to do and then i get distracted and then i always think look we'll just start again it doesn't matter just keep yeah sugar and sugar and um right okay cool where can we join your live well i've shared the link here in the chat there you go is it not showing up there it is it's showing up now so there

it is if anybody who does want to jump on they can do if not then we'll start wrapping up um did i have a little poem or something here b whilst we're waiting for anybody who wants to you can just click the link over there and it should allow you to just join if anybody wants to join

right so dil the pain of this heart it doesn't decrease but we don't but now we don't complain you know for your sake my dear we no

he says why should we decrease the crime our crimes it's not like you're going to decrease your punishment [Laughter] ah you're drawn ilia you gotta give it to him this is an epic one of these

that i never even spoke about you know the real objectives of life says it was never my style [Laughter] you know like my heart it's just not with it anymore and the thing is and it's not even up to me you know there's many ways of interpreting that g here that my life is not even my own or my yes is not even my

own or my heart is not even my own in another poem he says but says how will life now how will life get by that i'm not feeling the love anymore like i'm not like my heart no longer feels like it's not interested in in romance or love so how how will this life now get by

i was in the gi which is a cry out really that passion that never says oh that life which never was it's so um hard-hitting people cool shall we okay shall we wrap this up then i take it

and what i could do is go catch up on a quick episode of before i sleep mm-hmm [Laughter]

okay okay right so people right let's let's wrap this up then people alright it's been quite an evening as you can see this in the words what better than the words [Music]

yeah isn't it about him that somebody said that the kalam of meer is ah and the kalam of soda is [Laughter] wrap up the story of yours listening to this saga we've lost our sleep so people it's been awesome it's been epic uh i

think some amazing discussions shard and freuda the vicissitudes of fate what that means success failure how it's a perspective how i guess the the kind of almost like one could say the default mode network of existence is at a set at suffering but really at an individual level

it is our meaning that determines whether it is suffering or whether it's contentment or whether it's joy um yes that's a profound thought and also then the quranic guidance versus 139 from verse 140 speaking of the vicissitudes of fate and strength and the inner script to the the rise and tragic fall to determination loyalty and betrayal instantiated

in the epic so guys with that let's wrap it up it's been awesome if you haven't already liked and subscribed do so and you know click the you know how to do it click the icon as well people click [Laughter] you need to like and spread the love see this is actually a good litmus test to see how people hold back oh but yeah if you want to reach out and connect instagram is always a good place to do that if you want to show some extra love you

can always head over to patreon actions speak louder than words on patreon and we do have our uh one-to-one perspective sessions with uh with patreons we also have um different we have like a monthly session and you have the discord server as well called mindscape and some people had asked me about the discord server for um the book lounge and i feel that uh that had see the book lounge we are

accepting people but it's it's through kind of interview because it requires commitment i'm only prepared to accept people who are heavily committed to reading and it's a must they have to read every month no exception right you must read the entire book and you must attend the the meeting at the end which will be live streamed there's no uh buts ifs no you know anything short of near death is inexcusable so i do have a very as you can see zero

tolerance policy i think i must have chucked off a hundred candidates if not so because it you see it's it's the lucifer effect in psychology what doctors you know um what's his name [Laughter] [Music] anyway right so what he's clearly shown in uh in the lucifer effect you see it's the one bad apple you get a few people they don't participate it rubs off on the others so people have to participate and this is why i'd rather just be very strict with people and then if people want to join it then it's awesome and epic and they

can be epic and we obviously have an excellent vibe so right now we've got a great cohort uh you know we've got like a great group of people who [Music] you know great dynamism great energy and they read we even like this months when we just six i think then maybe we had seven in between but six people really on the session quality feel excellent people participating you know when you get used to the people they carry on and it's amazing you look forward to what they're going to say so i like it and i like that and i'd rather just have commitment and quality over quantity

so yeah so that's for the book clown people were asking guys we were wrapping up chill out is uh somebody's popped on here should we should we admit this guest before we leave let me see then we've got i've got to uh bring on where's the earphones

all right let's see we've got a shahbaz khan assalamualaikum where are you calling from i'm calling from canada i'm in calgary calgary alberta that's epic all right i must say a lot of canadians do tune in there's a lot of love that resonates from canada oh yeah right back at you guys man it seems like an amazing place i have to say it is it definitely except

for the weather everything else is good that's true that's true you know he the warmth you know the warmth should be in the heart exactly what's the weather outside as long as you've got as long as you've got the warmth in your hearts that's what counts so talk to us man what's on your mind any thoughts um what would you like to share with us i was wondering um we even need to go to jannah right

sorry you froze not just the weather but you froze [Laughter] uh i don't know if you can hear me i think you i guess i think right there i think you're back i think you're reconnecting with the this happens sometimes you know some just as see shahbaz was trying to ask such an important question and the internet just canceled him say no to cancel culture people otherwise you you end up with this shall i uh do you want to add yourself again

i'll remove you and you can add yourself again and maybe that might make it a better connection so let me try to remove you um you try to join again it might be that the some for some reason that said i think even here the internet was playing up a couple for a couple of days so what a uh it's an amazing beautiful quote i searched for god and found myself i searched for myself and found god wow so

hmm here airport hypnotically amazing so true so true right okay i take it nope i think shahbaz has unfortunately i think the weather may have got the better of

so guys we did try i think with that let me just check yeah it's on okay we'll give about two more minutes and then we'll wrap this up what is i'll check the comments till then uh tell them to do right so i don't know what that's talking about mm-hmm

uh right sure guys anyway we yep i'll leave you guys with that do also uh yeah i'm hoping to get some mind traps in pretty soon they've been quite a few piled up actually and i've just had stuff going on and therefore kept postponing and so inshallah let's see we might be able to get one out tomorrow um this week has surprisingly just got a bit hectic but i guess that's that's there's always the fun in that guys take care of yourselves wherever you are

is