MSA National - Continental Conferenceapos;12- Torchbearers: Creating Positive Changes

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Event Name: MSA National - Continental Conferenceapos;12- Torchbearers: Creating Positive Changes
Transcription Date:Transcription Modified Date: 5/24/2019
Transcript Version: 1


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spinda five minutes left is that I don't

mind I swear to god this Mina Rahman al

Rahim was sought out to a ser amada say

Mohammed why daddy will slap you was

said I'm Disney mincha tiara what I how

would our apple with a level da da da da

da hamdillah first of all it's always

amazing for me to see all of the youth

that we have in this community we have

all over the United States and those of

us who travel around the United States

we see this and it's it's very inspiring

because I see so much dignity in in our

young Muslims in a time when human

dignity is being challenged just the

whole concept of kurama what we're

seeing everywhere is the degradation of

culture culture is being degraded there

there if if anybody knows one of my

favorite playwrights is George Bernard

Shaw he wrote a play called Pygmalion

and in that play he he has a character

who's the father of Eliza Doolittle and

this character is basically so he's a

rogue he's outrageous he comes to to try

to make some money off the fact that his

daughter he finds out is in the house of

a gentleman which at that time in that

period in England was considered

scandalous but he tries to make some

money out of it and his his the

character in the play Higgins who's her

teacher allocution teacher says don't

you have any morals and he says I can't

afford them governor in other words i'm

too poor to have morals but the play as

it goes on higgins rights to a ethicist

in america and mentions that the that

the greatest moral ethicists that he's

met is this case

character doolittle and so he puts him

in his will and he ends up inheriting

all this money and he said it's very

unfortunate because you've made me a

gentleman in other words you forced me

to be good and even though he's mocking

all of these bushwa values in the play

it there was a time when poor people

aspired to be like the educated people

they wanted to be gentlemen they tried

to speak proper English many many

characters in literature are actually

parodies of this idea of people aspiring

to be educated or appear educated what's

happened now is the inversion of this

aspect you actually have people now that

pretend to be poor we have middle-class

youth now that actually pretend to be

homeless in this culture really they go

out it's kind of a trend to go out and

and they wear rags you buy jeans now

with holes in them and you pay more

money for good genes people when I was

growing up the people at war that had

tattoos you had to be there was only

three possibilities to have a tattoo you

were a prostitute you were in a gang or

you were in certain branches of the

military and always noncommissioned that

was it there was no other reason so if

you saw tattoo you immediately

identified one of those three categories

now everybody has tattoos in California

which is a very bad sign because what

happens in California usually happens

everywhere else it used to be 20 30

years later now because of the texting

era it happens much faster the trends

that we're seeing in California are very

disturbing so the Muslim youth today

represent to me an important barrier in

essence between this collapse it's like

preventing a group of us because the

Quran talks about always a group of

people there should always be a group

that represents this high oh that calls

to this good and if that group is a

lemonade

in a society then there's no reason for

that society to exist anymore and either

they perish or they're destroyed one or

the other but this is what happens in

human societies they collapse and

societies do collapse so the idea of

being a torch bearer is very interesting

because light carrying light and

carrying fire because fire is one of the

foundational myths that we have of fire

being really the beginning of human

civilization in fact we have a character

in Greek mythology that was punished by

the gods for bringing fire to human

beings so this idea of fire is a really

interesting concept a torchbearer one of

the words in arabic for fire is also the

same related to the same word word for

youth shabaab if you talk about fire

when it really becomes inflamed you say

ship baton all that the fire entered

into a cheb right state so the Shabab

are they are the people with fire

they've got fire but that fire you see

the nature of fire is that it is the

most beneficial element that we have out

there after air but it's also the most

destructive fire is a very destructive

element so if you don't learn to control

that fire and this is what humans do

with fire they learn to control it but

fire can get out of control and in that

way the fire of your youth is something

that has to be controlled because if it

gets out of control it will either

destroy you or it will destroy others it

can destroy families families are torn

apart because of the fire of youth

really they're destroyed and so it's

really important that you recognize I'm

talking to the young people here that

you recognize that God has given you

this fire in fact faha dino rossi in his

tafseer hawaii mentions in the

introduction that god

put a fire so great in the heart of the

human being that he had to put the lungs

as a Fanning system for the fire of the

heart and so he said that the lungs were

actually a Fanning system to keep the

fire of the heart cooled it cools and

that's why it's interesting that as we

get hotter we begin to breathe faster

right not to flan the fame have to fan

the flames but actually to cool the fire

to cool it down but the point that he

made about this fire that God put in the

hearts of human beings he said that fire

was to come to know God that it's an

energy in the human being that wants to

know why he or she is here and then once

you know why you're here how do you act

how do you behave these are the great

issues that our prophets came to talk

about and so as you think about your

role in your position here in the United

States I would argue that first and

foremost you should be exemplars

exemplars of human dignity because

people recognize dignity it's a very

hard word to define but it's something

that when you see it you recognize it we

are an oma that was dignified in the way

that we walked muslims walked in a

dignified manner the prophet saw i sem

had a very specific type of gate that's

described he had a gate that was a gate

that indicated that he was a serious man

he wasn't somebody that meandered he

wasn't somebody that walked without

intention he walked as if he was on a

declining slope and it was hard to keep

up with him because he was a very

determined person if he was called he

would stop and he would give his whole

body because the Provencal item was a

present human being he was always

present he was never absent with people

if he looked or spoke to a person he

gave them their whole being in fact in

the hadith it said about his death that

if anybody sends him a Salaam

Allah returns his soul to him and he

will return that salam to that person

Imam su Li said that what this means is

that his intense is still rock in the

barzakh this complete drowning in the

Divine Presence is turned towards the

creation because the prophet saw and

that's the meaning of the the rudder Roy

the returning of the soul because the

prophets all I said so it's not going

back and forth like alive and dead no it

means that he turns towards his creation

in that moment now if people say you

know if people are doing that all the

time how is that possible like we're all

saying a Ottawa said I want a

quieres o de la this is my color hola

how Coe cutlery this is people that have

a worldly view of things a worldly view

of things they're trapped in the

dimensions of this realm that we're in

which is a very limited realm it's

called dunya once you leave the dunya

you enter in a completely different

realm let me give you an example we have

computers today that monitor all of our

phone calls if you go to a bank and you

and you swipe your card they'll they'll

get approved or disapproved immediately

that same computer database is doing

this for millions of transactions in

every instant this is a computer that a

human being created and so we don't have

you know a lord that can create a heart

that can do all of that the Provos

license heart can't do all of that he

can't be getting all those incoming

messages and responding to them

instantaneously this is materialism and

people are trapped in materialism we

know that all modelled Yolanda one of

his miracles is that he used a the first

cell phone he was in Medina and he was

on the mimbar and he said yes sorry

Ethel geben Satya was his commander in

Persia and they were in a battle and

they're worthy they needed a place to

take refuge to and a no ma Xiao de doubt

on the mimbar yeah sorry Ethel Javad and

then they turned and he heard the

is in Persia this is a recorded miracle

people say oh you know this is they

don't believe in miracles anymore the

whole Islam is a miracle this whole

thing is a miracle and there's miracles

everywhere you don't believe in miracles

it's hold thing intimate this is a

miracle how do I talk into these little

things and and my voice has hurt all

over the place how is that possible the

whole thing's a miracle and you can

explain the whole technology to me and

it takes your your voice and it

amplifies the boy you can explain all

that to me it doesn't it doesn't

diminish the miraculous nature of the

world that we're in miracles all over

you know David Hume didn't have the

ability to see that that's his problem

it's not my problem you know really we

believe in miracles what pretended

oleate kurama woman in FFM be then

kodama this is our teaching this was the

op-ed of the muslim assert the miracles

of the saints and anybody that rejects

them reject him I believe in miracles so

the Prophet ICM he was he came not only

to teach us about other worldly Affairs

he gave us to teach us about worldly

affairs and at the center of this is the

idea of dignity the Prophet SAW son was

was the most dignified of human beings

and anything that diminished his dignity

or his model he rejected it this is why

Imam Shafi said out of the Aloha know if

I thought that drinking water would

diminish my dignity one iota I would

have left drinking water this is how

concerned they were about dignity so the

prophets lies him he dressed in a

dignified manner and he encouraged

people to dress in a dignified manner

we're living in a time of degraded dress

people literally look first of all

they're wearing underwear in public when

I was a kid t-shirts were considered

underwear that's how old I am I don't

have a problem with it but I'm just

letting you know t-shirts were

considered underwear when I see people

in a t-shirt I see somebody in underwear

it's not the way that we should be

encouraging our youth to dress

we now you know this this the way the

women are dressing today la Llorona poet

la halle allow him in le liya in Nyala

here are your own even in the 1950s it

would have been considered outrageous at

the turn of the century people would

have heart attacks on the street if they

if they if you took somebody from the

19th century Victorian England and you

put them teletransported them through

time and put them out on a street in

Washington DC in 2012 they would

literally either pass out or they would

have a heart attack because they could

not believe that what they were seeing

was actually happening and that these

people they would they would assume

immediately that they were primitive

people probably like savages and I liked

what Tolkien awad the Yemeni most many

of you saw her remark about wearing the

hijab the woman who won the Nobel Prize

when she was asked about her hijab she

she said I don't see this as a

reactionary thing on the contrary I see

it as an evolutionary thing because

according to your sciences we started

out naked and we evolved into dress and

so the more naked people are the less

evolved they are that was her argument

and I think that's a very solid argument

so you have to really think about

dressing in a more dignified manner and

not accepting this degraded culture if

you look at Muslims anywhere in human

history you look at the clothes that

they wore and you will see that they

were dignified clothes they always wore

dignified both and clothes are not

insignificant they're not insignificant

are women al hamdulillah you see one of

the bizarre things about modern Muslims

is you'll see this woman dressed in

nutrition in fact the lady came up to me

The Diamonds honest a lady came out to

me we were in Turkey and an American

came up to me and she was the mother of

a Muslim convert and she said it's so

nice to see the Turkish men and women

who dress in a congruous way like the

women Turkish women dress very the

Muslim women there who are modest they

dress in a very conservative modest

weight but it's very fashionable at the

same time so they look like they're part

of the modern world but they're also

they look like they're maintaining the

tradition because you have you have

something that needs to maintain but can

be changed in its in its form but its

essence has to say the same so modesty

is the essence how you display that that

is a that can be relegated to time and

place but she said but what I find

really strange is when I see these

Muslim women dressed in their

traditional garb but with them are these

Muslim man that look like they're comic

book characters right so you'll go at

Disney World you know you'll have some

guy from a Muslim country I won't say

which ones but you have some guy from US

country his wife like in a black garment

and he's there with it with a t-shirt

you know that says something like I've

been there done that it just looks a

little inking gruis like what's she

doing in a black bag and you're wearing

you know Ben or I'm was stupid right I

mean this is a problem like the the

absurdity of our modern age so that's

very important also another aspect is

food our prophet saw I centum came to

teach food we should represent the best

of our tradition we should be eating

less we should not if you look outside

people are turning into balloons really

they could get jobs advertising Goodyear

blimps you know that advertise because

they're so why'd they could have all of

the corporate logos on one body it's a

bad sign when you have a culture that's

turning into Goodyear blimps I'm serious

it's a really serious problem in this

country in fact one of these czars

recently said the greatest threat to

America is no longer the Qaeda it's the

Big Mac because we're literally turning

into the most obese nation

the planet but it's not just here

because this food is being exported all

over the world so now you go to the Gulf

states and you've got over forty seventy

percent of these people now are being

afflicted with diabetes and diabetes is

a disease of a civilization it's not

unnatural disease you shouldn't get type

2 diabetes it's purely a disease of diet

it's what you're eating it can be

prevented and it is controllable I would

recommend for you I'm not espousing in

any way a vegan diet but I would

recommend for you watching the the the

documentary called forks over knives or

read the china study or read forks over

knives and see what they're doing now

the cutting edge doctors in this country

first and foremost the cutting edge

doctors are recommending for obese and

diabetic people to walk 10,000 steps

that's about a Omaha if you do ombro

you'll find out it's about 10,000 steps

the human body is designed to work at

its optimal level if it