<DUA>
First of all, it's it's a very bizarre experience that I think a lot of us are having here in the United States of late. I think the social disintegration that's happening so rapidly and as things begin to unravel. Even a lot of people that I know: Immigrants are talking about, maybe going back to places they came from. Which don't look that appetizing either. Now in a lot of areas but one of the things about Muslim countries even when things break down, people really do recognize the word brother and sister. Like that word actually means something in many many places around the world.
I've experienced the beauty of that word, not so much as its articulated, but the real lived experience of somebody treating you like a brother or like a sister. You know, I was thinking a lot about United against poverty I actually think it would be better if we were united against wealth. Because I've actually lived in the poorest countries in the world, I mean literally the porest.
I was in Nigeria, Mali, I was in Mauritania. I lived in a place in Mauritania where the rich people had all of their possessions in one box and the poor people didn't have a box. I mean really and my own teacher Mrabit al Hajj, may Allah preserve him, he was actually considered relatively wealthy because he had a few cows that were milked every day and that's where they drank their milk. The milk in ??? is organic milk, it's not pasteurized homogenized it's not 1% or zero fat. It's right out of the utter.
What I noted about living in the poorest places and I lived in a shantytown, I mean a complete open sewage; The houses were made out of Chinese tea boxes literally that were dissembled from tea boxes and that's how they made their houses.
I lived with a man at al-Maquri from the Masuman Clan. His little Hut was made out of tea cartons and these were some of the richest people I have ever known. They were rich in community, they were rich in culture. There were people that could quote the greatest Arabic poetry ever written.. Most of them memorized the Quran by heart and for entertainment they would discuss grammatical points. These were really rich people they were not impoverished unless you want to identify poverty as material poverty and I'm not really against material poverty but I'm very much against cultural and spiritual poverty because I think what's happening in this country is we are the most
culturally and spiritually impoverished nation in the world. The fact that the number one best-selling novel right now is a pornographic novel of no literary merit (Editor: 50 Shades og Gret) according to the critics that have read it but this is what's happening in America. Every airport I've been to has a whole row of these novels just lined up for people just to devour them off the shelves. That is poverty
it's poverty not to of if you're from
this culture it's poverty not to have
ever read Melville so that when some of
my Chris Hedges can tell you about the
Pequod or a Habs quest you don't have
any cultural references to know what
that means despite the fact that even
the poorest Americans a hundred years
ago had very often read that book
because literature is not the property
of the wealthy historically literature
as has actually been the property of the
most impoverished people some of the
greatest writers were impoverished
people read the life of Edgar Allan Poe
somebody constantly in debt a drug
addict
dealing with the despair of living in
the United States at that time and a lot
of his literature is about that those
aspects Dostoevsky read about their
lives and yet they produce this great
body of literature because they were not
culturally impoverished they may have
been materially impoverished but they
were not culturally impoverished one of
the most celebrated authors one of the
most celebrated artists in Western true
mission is Van Gogh and he was a
completely impoverished person supported
by his brother never sold a painting
during his own life time another very
tortured person but somebody who had a
richness of vision that people are still
entranced by his paintings so I think
that a lot of what's happening in this
country is actually from Liguria it's
actually from luxurious to be one of the
seven deadly sins
that's the Latin term for for lust
Luxuria you know gluttony and lust that
we're a surfeited culture we're we're
too full there's too much when people
talk about the 99 and the 1% we're 5
percent of the world's population and
we're devouring most of the world's
natural resources the average American
is in the 5 percent the other part of
the world is the other 95 percent so
when we're talking about the 1 percent
and the 99 percent some of the people in
that 1% are drug dealers in inner cities
really so the whole dichotomy zation is
this desire to kind of split the world
into good people and evil people to me
as a false dialectic that I think as
Muslims we should reject we should
reject it there are wretched demonic
people amongst the poor and there are
decent angelic people amongst the
wealthy and the Prophet Allah Saddam had
poor people with him and he had wealthy
people and without the wealthy people he
could not have done what he did for the
poor people but he transformed the
motives of the wealthy he transformed
their motives he didn't create a class
warfare he didn't make the poor people
hate the wealthy people are the wealthy
people feel contempt for the poor people
no he gave us a different criterion to
judge people we were talking earlier
today about
intellectual arrogance because you see
so many people in academia that are
filled with intellectual arrogance a
sense of their inherent superiority
because if you learn even a little bit
you quickly see how far ahead you are
from a lot of people out there and that
can lead to a type of contempt because
you have some kind of intellectual
training that other people do because
you can work things out quicker than
other people can work out because you
know these references and other people
don't know these references but the
reality of it is is that Islam put a
different criterion for excellence than
intellectual excellence it's spiritual
excellence it's being a human being and
that is open to the poorest of the poor
and the richest of the rich and that's
what separates people so that street
sweeper that janitor might have more
humanity ounce per ounce than that PhD
professor at Yale University
he might have better character more
moral integrity he might be a better
father a better Civic member of society
because the real judge of people in
Islam is a judge of character it's not
anything else the prophets iliza time
standard was a standard of character and
he said in fact the standard of that
standard was how you treat your women
because he said that a man is judged by
how he treats his women cradle come
herecome Leah honey he wanna Hadouken
really the best of you are the best to
their women folk or their families and
I'm the best of you to my women folk so
he was letting us know right there what
the standard of judgment how you judge a
person because you've got all these
people out there giving all of their
declarations and proclamations and
telling you what's right and what's
wrong and they go home and they treat
their wife like dirt they treat their
children as if their subjects of Pharaoh
so the whole stratification if you're
talking about good and evil give me a
break
because it's all the way down this whole
crises this globe this global crises
that started here in this country was
about greed it was greed on Main Street
and greed on Wall Street all those
people that went in and lied on their
applications about how much they were
making because they wanted to get that
house for what they didn't even
understand what what type of mortgage
they were getting they didn't know that
it was going to balloon in a few years
they didn't care they just saw an
opportunity to get some property and
maybe it'll it'll rise in price and in a
few years I'll flip it pay off my debt
and make some money it was greed greed
on Main Street and greed on Wall Street
and that's why Islam doesn't talk about
the wealthy and the poor it talks about
character it talks about the moral
character of people and how you
transform people you know I was asked to
talk just about the Islamic economic
system in relation to the Western
economic system or this modern system of
capitalism you can't even compare the
two there's no comparison our system is
based on real well a bi-metal economy in
which money actually has intrinsic value
people say gold doesn't have intrinsic
value then why do people kill for it and
the only reason they kill for paper
dollars that don't have intrinsic value
is because they think that it has
intrinsic value but all you have to do
is put a fire to it you'll see how
valuable it is you put fire to gold and
you'll see how valuable it is because
gold is indestructible gold doesn't
corrode silver doesn't corrode they
don't oxidize the gold coins that were
minted by Caesar you can go down to a
store you're probably here in Stanford
and buy one of them if you have enough
money because it's still around this
whole Dajjal exsist 'm fooling people
into thinking that worthless paper has
any intrinsic value fractional reserve
banking Abraham Lincoln when he needed
to fund the war
he wanted to borrow money so he asked
the bankers and they told him well it's
going to be on this interest rate so he
said to hell with it
in the Constitution we can print money
so he printed up greenbacks
that's how he paid for the war they were
non interest greenbacks that were
printed by the US government
then why today are we borrowing money
from a private bank and paying them
interest and the interest now represents
25% of the national debt because the
bankers run the situation they wrote the
laws they wrote the laws and people
don't know this because they're no
longer educated and if you want to know
why it's getting so bad out there it's a
very plain and simple because we have
ignorant people we have an ignorant
population and when you have ignorant
populations then you need more and more
draconian measures for social control
and this is the history of the world you
just read about it in your history books
and you'll see the same tactics are used
to control ignorant people educated
people are the dangerous ones it's not
ignorant people you can control ignorant
people seriously they're not hard to
control bread and circus is one way
that's it that's the old-fashioned way
now it's at MTV and McDonald's that's
just a modern version of Penn at Circus
that's what the Romans used but it's the
same game you look at what they're
devouring on there look at look at the
cultural impoverishment of this society
you know people aren't hungry in this
society they're starving to death
they're starving to death and they're
starving to death even though they're
overeating the reason that they have to
eat more and more is because there's no
nutrients in the food so you're
wondering why they're all getting bigger
and bigger out there because the more
they eat the hungrier they feel they're
not satiated all you have to do come to
California and we'll give them a real
meal like brown rice and tofu and you'll
see how quick they're hungry they're
really they won't be hung
if you eat a real meal you go and eat
the Indians eat dal you don't see fat
Indians down in those villages because
they eat doll they eat real food
they're eating real bread that they
cooked with their own hands chapatis
they're eating chapatis and they're
eating dal and and they're there they
have better nutrition than all these
people out here they have better
nutrition but when you go up into that
1% you know what they're eating they're
eating dal and handmade chapatis really
they're eating the same stuff the
poorest people are eating in in a lot of
these countries go to Malaysia and you
see how poor people eat they're eating
real vegetables that they grew
Pakistanis in this country I know a lot
of you know this your grandmother's when
they got here the first thing they did
was went in the backyard and started a
garden they grow their own tomatoes to
put in their curries because that's just
the way they did it in this country used
to have what we called Victory Gardens
in World War two they told people to
grow your own gardens now people don't
even know what a vegetable is the
closest thing they get to it is a french
fries really or pizza it's because it's
got some red under there I think that's
from a vegetable serious they don't know
what vegetables are most kids now in the
schools can't identify a lot of the
vegetables they can't they've actually
done these tests then they don't know
what a turnip is or a Brussels sprout
let alone a collard green see some
people are old enough to know collard
greens right because people went out and
picked them because they couldn't afford
to go down to the store people were
resourceful this country was a country
of resourceful people there's all these
people looking for jobs people used to
make jobs they didn't look for jobs they
made jobs now people have been so dumbed
down and so convinced that they can't do
anything that only if they get this job
and then they go in is all humiliation
even Halden said the two most
humiliating ways of gaining a livelihood
are employment and treasure hunting
that's what he said
in Mankato employment and treasure
hunting in this country employment was
only just to learn how to do something
you became like a journeyman carpenter
and then when you finished the seven
years you were free to open your own
business that's the way it worked
you started a store to you you worked in
a store to see how it ran and then you
went and opened your own shop that's
what people did my great-grandfather
started at the bottom in a newspaper but
by his 50s he owned three newspapers
because that's the way America was it
was about entrepreneurial tradition of
people elevating people not everybody
was in that that's acknowledged but even
if you look in the black communities in
the south you look what they did
creating their own schools lawyers came
out of those schools some of the best
schools now today are still out of those
schools you look at people like Dubois
look at the level of education that they
had you know read what his books are
considered classics today so there were
people even from the most oppressed
communities that still rose above those
circumstances and empowered other people
to do the same the Islamic economic
system is based on justice now justice
even if you read Aristotle 2,500 years
ago almost if you read his book he has a
book number five in his ethics book on
justice and he talks about recta fitori
justice and distributive justice the
idea that you have to have some justice
in distribution you know what these
people say in this cut redistribution of
wealth that's socialism that's communism
that's socialism and communism when it
goes to the poor people but when it goes
to the rich people it's called a bailout
that's just
distribution of wealth it's just going
the other way and this is the type of
Orwellian culture that we are in but
people haven't read Orwell so how do
they know if you if you don't know
Orwell you're not going to know how to
use the adjective Orwellian and if
somebody uses it you don't know what
they're talking about
Orwellian is that like Orson Welles you
know if they know Orson Welles because
even good films they don't know about
any more like Citizen Kane right Siri
then people don't know that now they
know about like dumb and dumber you know
seriously I mean I saw a really you