Ep. 76 - Friday Night Live with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

Transcript Details

Event Name: Ep. 76 - Friday Night Live with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
Transcription Date:Transcription Modified Date: 4/25/2022
Transcript Version: 1


Transcript Text

t's what that reform
i i'm not calling for no one's calling for a reform i want to take this out of context but that self-reform is needed
so much in our society because of this distraction and this delusion that we're
living in and may allah give us that and this that's why having these discourses with people like yusuf it not only does
it make you think twice it puts it challenged your trajectory where are you going what are you doing with this
knowledge how much have you contemplated about this and in in everything you said requires a pen
and pages to be written it just so much that could be in a delve into but
you were saying something i don't want to cut you um you know we did this whole conversation started with the like
um the idea of the foundation is of course the love for the prophet now i remember once you mentioned this and
you're probably thinking what's wrong with you you're always coding me i'm not doing it intentionally it's just that you know growing up we we
we uh i never knew urdu and never in arabic growing up so we we read a lot of your speeches and you mentioned one
thing long time ago and i i kept on thinking about it and i i think when i i was just i just went
from pakistan for 40 days with 22 people from from michigan and we came back
you can tell by his big turban so and i i spoke about you to shaykh jamil you were talking there and we
spoke while we were there and i was while i was sitting in the turkey airport while we're doing like we were
reading a book together with other people and there was extensive hadith and narrations about
like loving each other for the sake of allah one after the other like so much and it struck to me that why is
why is there so so much emphasis on loving each other so much and your your
words echoed in my ear that today we have lost the capacity of even
loving that's why we can't even love the prophet so if we have a hard time loving the one
in front of us who's doing good for us who's taking care of us who's like the person right in front of you so how can
you love someone in in his absence which is a prophet sallam so you're if once
you start loving people around you that do good for you and that are nice to you and then you start loving them you start
caring for them autumn what's slowly going to happen is your love for the prophet will increase and it goes from
malam and that's what i started thinking that that's why there's so much i read a
statement and i could not understand like the
essence of muhammad love by imam he says is that it does not increase with
someone doing good to you nor does it increase if someone gives you a cold shoulder because you've
reached that essence of love now it doesn't work yeah and that's very important that you point that out about
essence because the prophet saw i said the reason he's
because he saw the essence of things he didn't see
uh he wasn't lost as most people are
in al hakuma which could one of the meanings of that
i mean obviously the mini cathode and things like that but one of the meanings is that takathor this
multiplicity has you bedazzled oh my god
nothing will lead you on more than your own delusion
so people wh when they don't see the essence of things
that they they're caught in the the outward illusion of it if they listen to
the dictates of iblis then they become deluded about them so it moves from an illusion to a
delusion and and and iblis is called the raror
right allah tells us not to be deluded by the deluder
because he will delude you and one of the things he'll delude you about is about human beings
he'll convince you that not only you're bad but human beings are bad
that he'll create one of the things now about this whole thing about racism
you know that people are just racists people aren't racist
people people to tell to say that is is to create despair in people
well yeah and it's not true uh in fact people many many people
have fought against uh tribalism the prophesizer came to take
these things out of the world to get to the essence of things and so when you see each human being
as as a creation of allah you begin to love that creation of god and you can
even love the most odious of god's creation in in a way that
that enables you to see the gift and the light
of allah in that creation that allah has created it so everything
has a purpose even the worst of people on this planet have a purpose there's nothing allah didn't create
anything without purpose and so once you see that that everything has purpose everything has meaning
it becomes an enriching experience and it doesn't limit you and that's why you can even handle people abusing you
and it's not like we we're not masochists if we can if we can prevent people from abusing us we should and
that's why self-defense is is it not only a islamic right it's a fundamental human right
but if you're in a situation where somebody's abusing you
the people that really are with god know that this is a tribulation from god
i mean one of my favorite chapters in in the quran is surat ibrahim wow
that chapter every time i read come to that chapter you know on just moving
through the quran i get excited every time because i love that chapter there's just
so that in that chapter you know i had this kind of realization of the the perfection of that chapter
in a way that i hadn't realized in other parts of the quran but i really saw
and same with also which was to i don't know how you you know do
you read with the lunar moon do you read with the lunar calendar no
in morocco they have this nice tradition where you read uh based on the lunar calendar so you
begin the khatam on the first day of the lunar month so you always know what jews you're in
you know what day it is subhanallah so like tonight's the 18th night because
it's it's the 18th of june we are we even us the bundy's going calculation mode now
i know i'm disappointed with you i'm not going to have you holding that
flag by yourself we're going to be right by you well i you know i call that like people like imam neo bandies
ask you did you really read it did you really read it no sign on amazon i didn't even read it
because i asked one imam i won't say who it is because you'd know him um because he was saying no no
calculations and i said did you read my book he said yeah yeah i read your book i said you really did you read it he
said yeah about six months later he called me up we need to talk to isna i said what he
said they need to stop calculation i said why are you saying he's i just finished
i have a funny story about a book of yours so like one of us once you know one like so-called internet student we
knew him like you know he just learns online the google guy so he gave a khutbah somewhere and he was he
basically wrote down your khutba and he was basically saying what you said right that's interesting
that's dangerous you could get kicked off the stage or loved by many okay so no so it's fine if you do that but you
know you recommended a book in that in that speech so he basically coded you and
he's not saying your name he said yes i read this book and it's an amazing book and you guys should read this book right
so one person who is a friend of mine he says he's a professor at this at this university he says i go
up to him i say man i'm amazed that you you're a young man and you you've come across this book he didn't the kid
didn't realize that the book you're referencing was a college textbook not just a regular book so so he said
so he said um so you know what do you like about the book so is it because he's saying i read this book and he said
oh yeah it's a good book and he says do you you know it's a textbook right it's not a book have you even seen this
book before and he says no no i haven't seen it but you know i've heard so he said why are you saying this in your khutbah so she comes up you know i'm
sure people are just there's no copywriting in deen but i think they should at least acknowledge that someone
else is saying i read this book and you should read this book so the same thing with the lunar book of yours uh my
brother my brother he has he knows the titles of all books and the in the offering
which brother my old approach is allah he knows the title yeah he knows the title of the author
and the color he has this book i have this book right here from good to great by carly i actually had that yeah
all right so he's doing that and i'm reading this
so i'm glad you guys are reading uh those are important things
what do you think we only read the sahabah you know
is a great little work you know i've always felt it should be um re-type said and published properly because it's you
should do it you should do it you know every once in a while i actually look at that book and there's the hadith in there are so
beautiful there's so many wonderful treasures in that book you know you should because you know yeah i don't
know if you guys know this but dr winter myself and i think dr omar abdullah
farooq as well we all i first went through gemma table you
know we went out with them and and i benefited a lot and that how many days did you go i you know
i never did like the the four months
[Music] that book is a wonderful book you know
you know i mean i think it's been so long most people probably don't even know the entire story i know it's late
uh i think sometimes ago oh yeah becoming muslim
three hours back i know but [Music] don't hold them too long
uh but if it was up to us we would have you for the next forever right um but just a few rapid fire questions
because she was rubbing his eyes he's probably tired of us he's like you guys these brothers are on here for too long and i'm talking too much but you
already answered the first one my question will be the favorite no i i mean i my favorite suit is
whichever one i'm reading
you know what i was going to say about it is that is that one of the most powerful verses
in there is about moses telling them
know when he reminds them about and then it says that you know that faraon
what he did to them you know uh
you know it's it's it's a reminder that that was not pharaoh
that was a tribulation from your lord wow and and people forget that you know
that they just forget everything's from god
even pharaoh people just forget that
it becomes easier to deal with when you have that understanding then you don't become blameword like you don't start
blaming god for situations then you start looking at each situation as a learning process it's a learning exactly
and it's all from god and and once you see that that's why the prophesies him he was always in that
mode you know he was in that mode
of just seeing everything as from his lord
all of the tribute and that's why you know my favorite do i was the alpha when he comes out
and says that amazing dua you know in a manta kiluni
i do need to get you know that dua is painful if you start
that dwarf it's an incredible dua and but but he said you know in them
you know as long as you're not upset with me i don't mind if you if you want to send these people to torture me and
punish me i if it's from you and and that's hajja
when she says to ibrahim when when he's leaving her in the middle of the desert
abandoning like in modern terms it would be like a husband abandoning his wife
and child in in in the middle of the desert and she asked him is this from your lord
and he says yes then she she she's she she it's good
i mean this session has been way too overwhelming for me i'm enjoying this so much i don't if you ask me i will have
you all night shahamsa and and alhamdulillah we have you as as a scholar mentor and leader for our
community exactly we do want we do want we do want jocamza to accept an invite again next
time or else i don't think he is because we took so long so let's just ask all the questions now
oh no
few moments before he leaves just to tell us about um hey how zetuna came about and what is the next what is what
is his one of my personal questions is what's your next ambition what's your next uh
you know plan or is what's the next plan for your college well i i mean obviously
you all are running an academy so you know that you know funds are very important so
just an endowment is really important so in terms of my role as president i'm hoping
in whatever time i have left in that position you know to secure a good endowment for
the college and then we have projects there that we're working on but my my real interest is in creating
a k-12 curriculum for muslim schools wow because
the the muslim schools are generally substandard
um and i think we have an immense opportunity i i was saying back in the 90s that i
don't consider permissible to send uh muslim children to non-muslim schools
and and that's not that's imam malik said that uh yusuf nepahani has a fatwa 100 years ago
about uh
can't remember what he called it um but now with the critical theory
with neo-marxist ideas that have completely infiltrated
um education even at the lower levels so they're getting these things now in
in middle school in high school and certainly in college so if muslims go
through uh college they're going to come out thinking socialism is the answer to all
the world's problems uh and we have many scholars wrote against socialism
uh in the muslim world a hundred years ago i have a book um
like i'm gonna ask you come to just grab a book one by one just relax okay don't say too much
i know that's the only book you got on your bookshelf right now brother ben i'll pull up books right in the left got books in my pocket
islam for the socialism wow this is actually a really good
little book but it's uh it was published by in in lahore by muhammad al-sharaf but it's by mirza
muhammad hussain and you know he it's really good
i i i mean i read this pretty thoroughly you know a couple of times there
you can see you underlined the whole book yeah i know i i i gave it a good read but but it's a
it's a very useful little book because it shows you how when these ideas showed up how muslims looked at them
when was this book written he wrote it in
first published 1947. wow so he's got the human situation war on
wage slavery private ownership and social welfare balance society economics and religion the golden calf
and then uh you know it's very interesting
right here so so you definitely read the first 500 500 years of debt
that book i have that yeah how was that that's an important book i
mean my you know yeah you know
that these are my economic books okay so here's here's uh the first five yeah
you're gonna have to slow down on us oh there's no yeah
but then i'm sure you never read it you just heard the title somewhere and you just asked this is good book here thomas soul
basic economics how about how about islam and economics
in the west do you have something on that uh this is all uh this is all islam and
economics this whole shelf subhanallah yeah
yeah and then that's all marxism and anyway
so how do you build it how do you build the the appetite you can read more and more like how does that happen you just you
start reading and you well i mean i have i have certain interests so economics is one of my interests
uh law obviously philosophy ethics
moral philosophy is very important political philosophy is important medicines and interests of mine
and mathematics is an interest so those are those that are you mentioned all the subjects you you didn't leave
them it's like saying
it's like it's like asking michael jordan what's your weakness no no i you know i mean some of the
things i'm a real dilettante in them but they interest me and
and then other things i think you know i've done serious education i mean i have a
lot of books on education an education if we're part of schools and trying to learn like yourself what would be one
book you would tell us to read uh no christine is really good the uh matthew
no christine on the islamic origins of western education a very good book
um also george much to see the rise of colleges very important
and then there's some really good books on liberal arts one of the most important ones i think
is mark van doren's book called liberal education um there's uh
there's a good book that the mormons published on islamic treatises on education wow so you you all can read
arabic so muhammad muhammad ibn sahnun's book is very important on education tarbito subian is really
important and i think that's been translated into english as well
obviously on education there there's a good book on the his uh rosalie's theory of
education which uh brings out all because he wrote he never he didn't
write anything specific but he has a lot of educational theory throughout his
works so there's a lot to gain there
um and and he really understood i mean he has some really good advice
about
doesn't have time for tv he doesn't watch movies and he doesn't do you play golf check you know i i
my dad was a my dad was on the columbia university golf team so my dad was a great golfer and my dad
actually i got i got golf lessons when i was young um
and and i was actually a very good golfer but when i became muslim i i gave
up golfing about i played about four times a lot of
muslims golf um and and uh so i have played about four or five times since i
became muslim and i was always surprised that i actually did pretty relatively
well because i you know i learned it very young and i was a good golfer when i was in high
school so what is your what is your interest outside of like the maba like the the um are the
things that are like like hobbies and stuff like that because i mean i'm sure like we are we're into sports so we
spend a lot of time playing ice hockey and playing basketball and it takes away from what we're doing but it goes i mean
they're really good sports um i like uh i mean i obviously
probably my biggest but i walk i try to walk every day
so and i go for long walks um you can think a lot when you're
walking uh and i listen to uh i listen to a lot of
pictures is
i think we we have to thank sheikh for the time that he's taken out so much time he's taken out of his
precious schedule um a scholar
i i think we just yeah froze you know what i tell us directly that you took all my evening yeah i want
to share just um just this link right here that um zetuna
the team um very nicely put together for us may a lot of reward mr aisha subhan the vice president of
zeitung for um putting this together and setting it up for us and i think i've been in contact with her for one year um
just trying to um have to join us uh and they wanted they they they i asked them if rather than
asking all the details about zetuna and the great work they're doing we rather just join a call with the team
and they can explain to us on a separate call so we've shared a link and this link pretty much
summarizes and will be a live session with the zeitung team where they will talk about their institution and the
details of what they do and how they run their college and the difference the differences between their curriculum and all other curriculums
that are out there right now um i will be on the call myself and i'm encouraging everyone to join the call we
have one 13 1400 people watching right now uh please try to join the cause a free uh session that they're that
they're they're going to have in regards to zaytuna curriculum uh also bijan before we leave i really wanted just to
share this video i was really i really enjoyed this video um that's a tuna made and i want to share this if we have a
second just to watch one of their uh trailers on what they do
hamza is back okay we can yeah sorry i'll show the trailer later i
apologize may allah bless all of you and increase
you and protect your organization shall we give you lots of openings
again we apologize if anything we took you beyond the time really apologize you know when you have all three of us
on one screen and you have yourself you're like you are our teacher so whenever our teacher comes we just just
send so many questions his way uh and so i if there was any disrespect in that we do apologize but it was an honor for us
to have you with us insha'allah we'll see you in person soon and it would be an honor for you for us if you can
actually visit our campus and and see our students inshallah one day as well
if you can share the video
is there audio to this yeah i believe so i believe the audience
shared through stream yard so i'm actually gonna copy the link and uh put it here so inshallah everyone
can um if you haven't got a chance to go to zaytuna's youtube page or their facebook page go ahead please check it out
inshallah i put the link on the bottom and you can just definitely just press the link watch the video
join uh the the zoom call that i shared that link above as well in charlotte i
think people will really benefit from it and uh you will enjoy what daytona is doing inshallah hopefully in the future
we can have more future uh you know sessions which you come to yourself and perhaps you know collaborations with zatuna if allah
i just got to say one thing but then like all those like when you start throwing those book names out there you
stop writing because and i think you already read all those books like you already got them down i have narrowed them down things one of
the things i learned is that when an elder speaking is not to write because
because you want to give the respect respect and i wanted to write i have i have a i have a pad right here
and you know i i i you know i could take the notes jesus not to make him feel like you're not
listening to him yeah because i didn't want to look down and write when sheikh was speaking so this stuff
but i gotta tell you something but alhamdulillah like you know like it's we were you made him
laugh you know that's i got i gotta give it to you about that you know you i wasn't trying to make you laugh it was just
not such a such an honor to have him on on
our on our mistake page and and you know getting to know him at a personal level him getting up and showing
his library was a highlight for me you know i don't think he would do that for someone
the thing is like you know people i mean of course when we were growing up for ourselves like people that were like
holy knowledgeable they're like they're like untouchables it's hard to know who they
are you just want to move away from them and like oh this is hard to get you know i think what you guys i'm not saying
but what we have done is like we made knowledge more accessible and like people like shakham yusuf
i'll tell you something all these guys are watching today like i mean if you aspire to get anything in
life like if it's if it's if it's a sincere approach and you're doing for the sake of allah
make things easy for you you know we always wanted to um benefit from see him talk to i mean it seemed like
it's going to be something you know when we were growing up impossible like we're hearing him from an audio tape or like a
cd no we're not that
um i think literally i've never been so persistent and stubborn for a speaker in my life like she comes to
yusuf and i i appreciate that she was able to handle my stubbornness and persistence and throughout the one year
or actually more than one year uh i'll reward her bless her bless her team really inshallah hope is the beginning
of uh of something i'm not saying we're gonna have them on more often but allah allows the beginning of something more
that we're able to have them on more and more and until then shall we bless
joining us in person on tuesday like i know um khabib is a great mma fighter
ufc champion but you know he's a champion he's a he's a great icon but like for for us students of knowledge we
we really benefit from people like shahamsa and you know these scholars much more people healthy keep him healthy like
his life in his health but when you said that you remind me of habib so i'm sure the link over here we have online seats
available wherever you're watching please join us insha'allah it's only a few days away uh and sean tuesday please
make dua for the event and that goes smooth uh
people benefit from that event as well and if you're in michigan i think maybe a few 50 60 seats are left uh inshallah
you're able to join bring your family your friends um we want to show khabib
also our institution our our attendees our students inshallah allow him to keep
coming back again and again too if possible allah bless you all um
i can't thank you enough for organizing uh the collaboration with
all the audience that joined us tonight bless you guys all except all your duas and increase you in knowledge and in
action and save us from the trials of this world and also once before before we leave inshallah the link that we shared about
the um anyone wants to share with your family and friends feel free to share it with
other people as well i just shared the link for the tuesday program it's
khabib michelle please check it out and share with your family and friends