The Fiqh Of Facebook And The Tafsir Of Twitter
Date:
Channel: Abdul Nasir Jangda
File Size: 28.38MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speakers warn against false accusations and discuss the benefits of avoiding "monster" behavior. They stress the importance of valuing one's time and privacy, and provide examples of Facebook's use of social media. They also emphasize the need for diversity in media, including the importance of valuing privacy and privacy concerns in public settings. The speakers emphasize the need for diversity in media, audience, and how it affects overall media landscape.AI Generated Transcript ©
Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala rasulillah
salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.
Alright,
so this looks like the naptime session. All right, where a lot of the people are just taking a nap, they're taking it easy, but no problem we shall love. Those of you who have shown up that session, may Allah bless you and reward you. And what we're going to do is we're going to try to make the most out of this session.
Because personally, when I saw this session on the schedule of events, this is the session that I was most excited about.
or one of the sessions I was most excited about, because it addresses something that is so practical to our daily lives. The other discussions are just as important, talking about issues of spirituality, talking about how to reflect on, you know, our relationship with Allah, that's very important. But this is taking it into a more practical realm. This is talking about something that has become not just a daily, but has become literally a repeated part of the daily life of the average Muslim. And that is social media on a broader level. I know the title mentions Facebook, it mentions Twitter, but it's talking about social media in general means of communicating online,
whether it be through G chat, whether it be even through other social media outlets, that are maybe not as popular as Facebook and Twitter, but are nevertheless out there and their means of communication like Tumblr, or there's tons of other things. There's these text messaging apps like glue bed, you know, in different different ways. We're learning to communicate with mass amounts of people in a very short, quick, manageable
amount of time. And also, in short, little messages, we're communicating with people now. And so this is like any other form of communication, where we're going to have to learn how to manage this properly in view of our faith in view of what our Deen Islam teaches us about it. So when talking about social media, and I'm gonna kind of group it together in terms of all of it, Facebook will be kind of what's mentioned a little more predominantly, just simply because that applies to the vast majority of people. I mean, for the most part, Facebook is, I mean, what you know, the statistics go, it's like a country of its own right? If it was a country, it'd be like, I don't know what the
statistic is, like, I don't know, one of the 10 biggest countries in the world, or whatever. So that that's what applies to the masses. So that'll be a little more a little bit more at the forefront of this discussion here today. But nevertheless, keep in mind, this is talking about all types of communication, interaction, social media outlets, online, that are available to us. So let's go ahead and talk about what are some of the key issues at hand? I know the description defined described a few very specific things that seemed like gender relations was the overlying,
you know, concern there. I'm going to kind of differ from that just a little bit. I'll come back to that later on. But I'd like to take the discussion in a broader, more general sense. I'd like to address the fundamental values, or, rather, the key things to avoid or to look out for when engaging in this type of communication online, regardless of whether you're having that communication with, you know, even family members, personal friends of the same gender. All right, so it's just your other friends, which is permissible for you to communicate with them. And then eventually, then we'll go on to talking about, well, how does it work in terms of inter gender relations, but first,
I'd like to talk about the basic principles or values that need to be in place. So when we take a look at how social media is used, and again, Facebook is primarily the scene for this, we have what I have listed here,
I would say,
four major issues.
I have four major issues. And the first amongst them is
social media. It's allowed people to start living in existence, that is not their own true existence. All right, for to put in more simpler terms. It's basically people are being more fake online today than they have ever been in the past before. You know, and being a poser or being fake or acting like someone that you're not. That's something that's always been a problem. And that's something that's always been addressed by psychologists by educators, and by hopefully also by spiritual leaders of different faith based communities. But the reason why it's a key and critical issue, online and through social
Media is because the online realm allows you to manifest a fake identity for yourself, unlike anything ever before.
I mean, because other forms of communication, first of all, it was person to person. All right, or later on, we had verbal vocal communication. But this is a completely distant, artificial form of communication, through text through words, through pictures through links, right through attachments, and etc, etc, comments and statuses and updates and light. And so this is such an existence such an artificial form of communication, that you can completely create, manifest and push out there a completely fake identity.
You can be acting like the complete opposite person than what you really are.
And I know this just sounds somewhat trivial, because so what if I'm acting like, you know, I play on my high school football team, when, in reality I don't like I mean, what's the big tragedy about that? Right, I'll get to that in just a minute. Um, first, I want you to grasp the very, like, just a really, really ugly silence.
where somebody could be posing, somebody could be talking to 1000s of people online, communicating with them at a very intimate private level,
pretending to be a 16 year old female when it's really a 16 year old dude.
All right. And
you made me laugh. Shame on you. All right. So.
But I mean, I'm trying to keep this serious, because what I'm talking about right now is a real serious issue. I want you to I want you to grasp the dangerousness and the danger and the severity of the issue. Actually, this is really nasty stuff, this is really dangerous stuff. You do not want to be dealing with this. And this outlet provides that opportunity. And then you might sit here and think but what type of a sick perverted individual want to do something like that. But that's the exact thing, that's the point, fine, you're a decent person, you're not going to do something like that. But this entire realm, this entire media, this is this outlet, This tool allows facilitate,
enable somebody to do it,
who might be just that messed up.
And so you need to kind of grasp the severity of the issue. So that's, that's how severe the issue could be. But now let's take it down to a more psychological level. Now, I want to address where you act, you are acting like someone that you're not, you're posting a picture of a car that's parked in your neighbor's driveway talking about how you just bought this brand new car. All right, and you're taking pictures of a classroom that you have, saying that it's you.
Right, and you're creating this fake identity, what you need to understand is that over time, what it ends up doing to you.
Over time, it erodes your confidence in who you are.
Because now you're getting all these lights, and you're getting all these updates and all these comments and all these Oh, you know, Wow, that's awesome. And that's cool. And for the sisters, I don't know what the fascination is wrong. Oh, God, you're so beautiful. Right?
Like 86 comments, every single person has said the same exact thing. OMG You're so beautiful. Like I don't I mean, at least be creative with your words, I don't know. So it's making us dumb as well. And so, but what ends up happening is now you're getting all this praise, and you're getting all this approval and you're being validated and you feel nice getting these compliments. But over time, you start to realize that that person online is getting those compliments, not me.
And so you become more and more ashamed of who you are.
And you start to find so much comfort, so much satisfaction, so much gratification in the big version of you, that you yourself as a human being continue to receive further and further and further into the darkness is of your room behind that screen.
And now you're solely exclusively living online.
And again, if that if you hearing that shocks you and makes you go but what, what kind of sicko would that happen to
their actual cases and people like that out there? This is not far fetched at all. This is going on very, very actively and a lot more frequently than you would realize that you would then you would you would believe.
And so that's what starts to happen and that's a detriment to you. And that's a detriment to who you are.
And so, I wanted to first talk about in a more sympathetic tone.
Don't be fake. Why? Because you're only hurting yourself when you do it. You know
I'll even go as far as saying this even though deceiving people is wrong, it's wrong. Notice I didn't say Facebook's how long they said, deceiving people.
All right, deceiving people lying to people is it's not permissible. It's not allowed. It makes you a deceitful, it makes you a dishonest human being. It's not right. But I'm not going to go there first. First, what I want you to understand is the harm that you are causing to yourself. When you do that, you're hurting yourself, you're harming yourself, you're gonna be worse off for it a few months, a few years down the road. And you cannot sit here and confidently tell me that the damage will be reversible. Because you don't know that.
You don't know that you can guarantee me that.
You know, so many people are so blessed that they have good families, and they belong to good communities. And even though they begin to become sick, psychologically and emotionally in this way, but they have family and friends and community that pulls them out of this ditch that they keep dropping themselves into.
And, you know, they're able to have people around them in terms of family and friends. They're even able to facilitate their communities able to facilitate for them to even get married, and find a partner in life, that they can find true satisfaction that they can be appreciated for, for who they truly, truly are. But they become so sick emotionally and psychologically, that they sabotage themselves. They drive their family members away, they ruin their marriages, you will not believe how many cases I have dealt with.
Where there was a decent young man who married a young woman who became sick psychologically and emotionally, living a fake life online. And he says, I want to love this woman. And I want to appreciate her and I want to, I want I want to, I want to make her feel comfortable in who she is. But she won't allow me to.
She She continues to live this fake life online when I'm willing to show her the world. I'll give her whatever type of satisfaction compliment whatever she needs.
And it ended up falling apart that marriage, I dealt with it in the vice versa, where women are coming in crying.
I will devote my life to making him happy.
But he is so addicted to living this fake life online, that he has completely just shut me out.
And they sabotage themselves and they end up alone and they end up and miserable.
And they and while they are sick and I do think they need help. But I can't help but warn you right here right now that it started off with just a little like,
not even like let's call it something else. A little twisting of the truth.
A little twisting of the truth.
Right, just a little bit here in just a little bit there.
And it just escalated from there. Because remember, evil of this nature lies especially.
They only escalate the only get worse, they get stickier.
It gets stickier and stickier and stickier
until it completely just latches onto you and you can't rip it off anymore.
You don't want you put tape or some strong adhesive on your skin on your body.
And then you rip it off. How painful is it when you rip it off?
Right? It hurts. Especially for us dude, right? But the hair and stuff. manly men, right? So it hurts. It's painful for anyone.
But Subhanallah what I want you to think about is this, you ripped it off and it was painful. It was excruciating. Alright, and you scream
like a little girl. Well, that's alright. I said like a little girl. Alright, so and, but even after that taper that a decent came off Is there something left? It leaves that residue behind, doesn't it and you scratch out it with your nails till your skin turns red, till you're almost bleeding and that stuff just won't come off. You put soap and you're scrubbing it and then you go read online. Right and it tells you put baby oil and you're doing and doing. It just drives you crazy getting that off. That's what lies are like.
That's what lies are like, but this is scratching. This is damaging. This is irritating your skin that is damaging, that is irritating. And that is scratching away at your soul at your psychological well being and your emotional well being. So don't think you're just going to turn around and recover one day, you're just going to shut it down.
Shut down the profile. doesn't work that way. doesn't work that way. Trust me doesn't work that way. All right. So that's the first thing I wanted to talk about. So after giving a more sympathetic view of it, now that insha Allah, and we're gonna, we're gonna basically have a personal dilemma. We're going to expect it
Things of all the brothers and sisters here today right now that let's just say that you have an adult with this type of behavior. Now I'm going to give you a little bit of the Islamic warning about why not to indulge in this type of behavior where you create a fake identity for yourself at at any level in any realm.
And a big reason figurado karate Allahu Allah Abra radi Allahu anhu a very knowledgeable blessing Companion of the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him. He says, follow, interview somebody who send them the Messenger of Allah peace and blessings be upon him. He said, that you mentioned the nasty omen of the Yama tear in the light.
You will find from the most evil of people on the day of judgment in the eyes of Allah in the sight of Allah to be that person, who was the one who was the person with two faces, who possess two faces, that you will find a person to be from amongst the ranks of the most evil people in the eyes in the sight of a law on the Day of Judgment, the person who possessed two different faces No, see somebody's face to face. Right? That's what it's talking about.
And let the Yachty we have a letting it have hula be watching, we're happy to be with you.
He is that person who comes to this group of people with this face. But when he goes to that group of people, he comes with that face.
And that starts off by first with a certain segment of people whether it be my family or my close friends, I'm still me. And then when I go online that I become completely somebody else. But it gets worse from there on then it starts becoming multiple profiles. Then I have one profile that's I guess a one profile that's like that.
Then there's the real person is completely gone. You can forget about that, through a person completely is gone. There is some scholars in this inauthentic narration from the multimatic in Bukhari and Muslim etc many of the books are funny, but then the scholars the add some commentary, what does it mean to have two faces? What is this talking about? What is this referring to? And half hydrolysed Rahim Allah He says that emammal proved to be he says, In the Magana village he shall shall nurse me Allah Hallo, Hallo Manasa he says that the reason why the prophets Allah says that the person with two faces is from the worst type of people is because his condition is like the
condition of the hypocrites.
So when he goes and sits with the disbelievers says, Yeah, you know, we got to go get that. And then when it comes in since with the Muslim days, like yeah, Muslims Yay, yeah.
Right. So he's playing this game. And you do you have any level of sympathy for that person that plays Muslims like in this manner? Of course not. This is a hypocrite. This is the category of people that Allah says in the Quran will be in the deepest, darkest pits of the firewall. Well, he says that the person with two faces is not too different from that person. Because he's again creating a fake identity for himself in Bilbao Playmobil, Kevin motilin, facade Venus, because this, this person has completely embody evil and lying. He is an embodiment of evil and lying and falsely, his complete existence is based on lies, and he interjects Evil Within people, he creates chaos and
corruption between people.
So this is the first thing that I want us to take into consideration
is that the first principle I want you to have in place is to make a commitment to yourself to never resort to being fake at any level.
Because you will harm yourself, you will harm yourself in this world psychologically and emotionally, like I mentioned, and you will sabotage yourself in the long run in this world, by eventually sabotaging all the personal relationships in your life, and even your professional life.
But then, more importantly, in the Hereafter, you will be counted by Allah among the ranks of the most horrible evil people under the judgement.
And I'm pretty sure we can all agree it's not worth the trouble.
All right, the second principle in place, or the second thing to watch out for, is wasting time
wasting time.
But I want you to understand is
I talked about this earlier today,
the boundaries of a biodiversity.
And I knew that I was going to give this talk later. And that's why I really stressed on that point.
By broadening your boundaries of what is about
anything you do, in order to abstain from evil, or abstaining from wrong, and when you do even fun or enjoyable things with a consciousness a cognizance of what is right and what is wrong and implementation of that.
That is living your life living a life of worship.
But then there are certain activities, and everything is permissible within moderation.
You don't Islam, and I'm going to get a little bit into a higher discussion here more philosophical discussion on Islamic law, because I want you to understand this, because of the Islamic lifestyle. And because it's viewed, because we live in very, very progressive liberal times today. Islam as you Islam is viewed as a extremely conservative, tough religion to practice, right? That's typically how it's viewed by people. But I want you to understand how Islam is extremely balanced, and actually extremely accommodating. There is nothing, you know, in Islam, everything is permissible.
And there are just certain very, very small restrictions put into place.
But the general rule is that things are permissible. And just a few things have been made it permissible, that's it. In the realm of food, everything is permissible.
What's the one food unanimously that's impermissible?
And
that's it.
Other than that, it's all good.
Within drinks, right? Water and juices or milk and whatever else there might be, what is the only one singular type of drink that is impermissible than alcohol, anything intoxicating. Outside of that,
right, we talked about intergender, relationships,
Islam, out of the most out of the ancient religions, Islam is the most flexible in terms of relations between a man and a woman.
It is the most flexible, it just has a one restriction in place. And what is our researcher called? It's called marriage.
It's called marriage.
And then after that, there's nothing that limits that interaction between the husband and the wife.
It doesn't restrict that relationship, it doesn't stop them from it from getting to come together and become like one singular unit to become a family become a home, it doesn't stop them from
making money.
Very, very limited restriction.
Again, those same items that were mentioned before about being impermissible. And on top of that, you add the element of usury or interest,
outside of money to do business, do what you got to do.
And the list goes on and on and on. Your time is yours. We just got to pray five times a day.
And I give lots of talks about prayers. There's a class I teach about prayer. But I'm going to talk very on a very general level here. All right, no misunderstandings.
If you just basically offer your father, the obligatory part of your prayer, you don't need more than 30 minutes in the day to pray five times a day. I'm talking about the person starting out. I don't want somebody sitting here who's an intermediate, intermediate or advanced. person in terms of their practice, have some say, What are you talking about?
shortcutting prayer Shame on you? No, no, I'm talking at a very general basic level. All right, five minutes of prayer, 25 minutes, 30 minutes to round it off, you are done in a date, that is 23 and a half hours for you to do what you want.
That is that that is the philosophy that Islam is based on permissibility permissibility.
So in terms of your time, it's for you to enjoy.
But like we all like to be productive, we all like to be efficient, we all like to be able to be the best version of ourselves possible. We have to make sure that we don't indulge in wasting our time that we grow, that we increase that we get better.
And there's an eye on the part that is very, very key in terms of this discussion from me knowing the 23rd surah in the Quran, where Allah subhanaw taala describing
the success and the qualities that lead to the success of the believers.
Allah says, well, Lavina humani lovely model,
that the true believers, the ones that are guaranteed success, are those people that they especially go out. They make an extra special effort to abstain from indulging in completely useless level doesn't mean useless based on somebody's definition versus somebody else's definition. None of those things are debatable, right. So what I consider, you know, useful activity. A very productive rather like socket might say that that's useless brother. Right? You could do so much more better stuff with your time.
No, no, I'm talking about completely, totally useless activity. They make an extra special effort to build it that way doesn't even bring me any emotional benefit, any psychological benefit, any personal benefit, even though things are included, lovely, something that just has no benefit to you as a human being, I'm not talking spiritually, even as a human being, it doesn't have any benefit to your health.
playing ball has benefits for your health, right? at the least, if nothing else, and then brotherhood and sisterhood and all those things are all bonuses, but at least it's good for your health.
That doesn't benefit that much.
and
engaging in social media, again, particularly Facebook, because that's the core at the core of the discussion.
For the basic level of communicating with friends that you made at the MSA central zone conference. They live in another state 300 miles away. And you just keep in touch Salaam How are things going this is odd, how would you test go chill over, whatever, that's fine.
Because there was a like minded person that you met, that is concerned about their Deen and you're concerned about your deen and it helps you practice your deen talking to that person. That's a benefit. But I'm talking about the useless indulgence.
Where it's hours on top of hours on top of hours on top of hours.
That's where it starts to become a problem.
And
I'm going to give you a couple of quotations of classical scholars. The reason why I'm doing this is I typically when I talk about these topics and subjects, there are a few videos online about me talking about some of these topics. I like to keep the discourse very, very general.
But because there are some, maybe some more advanced level students sitting here in terms of their knowledge or their practice, I want to be able to give you some food for thought as well. And even the basic students, the one who's engaging in this discussion for the very first time.
I want you I want to show you that there is there are higher levels later on, and that you can strive to be an even more productive and better person.
Abdullah Mubarak Rahim Allah is a great scholar from the history of Asana. he narrates his Kitab of Zulu, his book on asceticism.
He says hassanal, bustling Rama, who is a great scholar of this, Omar, he said, I saw those people describing the people that came before them. The people of the early times and Hassan al Gosselin was Italian, which means that he was somebody who in person got to meet Sahaba. So when he's describing the righteous, pious people that I got to see in my time, he's basically describing the companions of the family of the Prophet peace of blessings be upon him. So these are remarkable people that you want to get to know about. Now, like I was talking about earlier, these are those heroes that you want to look up to. He says, I saw those people, and how they were more careful
about their time than they learn about their did hums and their dinars. We need their money. They were more concerned about their time that they worry about their dollar bills.
Just like you will shop for a deal.
Right? You want to buy a backpack, you want to buy a pair of shoes. You want to buy a laptop computer.
Right. But you know, a friend that works at the footlocker and you have a friend who works at the Apple store, and you saw a deal online on Amazon for that same backpack. And you know, you can get it for 20% off.
And your parents told you you got to buy this stuff with your own money.
Are you Are you not going to go for that 20% off? Everybody?
Yes. All right. That's why I did that your own money. Because then even young people are very responsible about money. All right.
You'll go for them.
But so just like you're trying to save that extra 30 bucks at 40 bucks at 100 $200.
Because it's your valuable money that you've been saving for so long.
They used to be even more careful about their time.
be even more efficient about your time being more concerned about managing your time.
So I got I got 45 minutes, I got an hour and a half.
Now what I could do is I could crawl up into a corner in my room. I could lay down on my bed, but some iPhone and Facebook time.
Everybody Leave me alone. nobody talked to me.
And then when you're on your Facebook and you're doing your thing, or you're you know retweeting people who have private profiles, but then you click 14 tweet, and you take off the quotation marks and you put it in front of it. I have a friend who has a private profile. I still do that to his tweets. All right. So when you when you're busy with your thing, whatever it is, alright. Or you're a hipster and you're updating your Tumblr. All right?
So you're doing your thing.
What happens when, like your mom calls you?
Not sure?
Why. God?
Right? I mean,
and then you just even like first treat yourself.
Man, can you get a little bit of time?
Like she just interrupted to majorly productive activity?
Right?
It's not like you open the door. I was like I was praying.
I won't be ironic about that is that what did align this was will tell us about that.
That if your mother was calling you and you were offering, like, voluntary prayer, what's your first obligation?
Right? So behind Allah Subhana Allah, I'm sitting here beside him for odd. I my mom calls me.
Right, and it's like,
outrage. And the Prophet said,
there's a there's a priority here, buddy.
Your mom comes first. Go around later, give you self righteousness, right where it belongs. your back pocket. Right.
And if that's the rule about reciting for honor, making bigger than what about Facebook? Yeah.
I mean, it's food for thought. Right. So that's the wasting money value time. Like I said, an earlier session today, many young people, so hon Allah.
I give a football on this.
I mean, and Dr. Acuff addressed it earlier today. Did you see what happened in Egypt two months ago? Did you see what happened in Egypt two months ago? Yes, you know, everybody, I gotta know, because I don't know man. rebeccablack can keep you so busy, you might not even notice what's going on in Egypt. Right? It's Friday.
So anyways,
did you see what happened in Egypt, you know, who was the driving force behind changing the last 40 years of a country's history?
They were young people.
They were young people.
Yeah, and they did use Facebook for that.
Not Not for, and I'm gonna get to that later. I'll talk about that in a little bit. But what I really want you to think about do young people who did that
I didn't have the narration in front of me. And I had full intention to find it in the book of Hadith is from the Muslim, the bazaar, to more rare book of heavy, were talks about there were 20 youth in Medina, at the time of the Prophet. And these guys were like the process of his crew,
you only talk about a crew, you know, when you see a chef or a locally, mom who's very influential, and he does a lot of work in the community. And he's got those four or five guys that he always depends on. And there's four or five guys that are his, that, that are his guys, whenever there's like we need to have a class or we need to do a basketball tournament, or we need to have a picnic for the community. Those are those four or five guys, or even four or five sisters for that matter, that immediately mobilize themselves. Right. And they just go in they they get it done. The process of them had 20 young people in Medina.
And they were the lightforce, they were the lifeblood of all the activity that used to go on in Medina, young people
as which you all are capable of.
So you got to learn to value your time and what you're doing with it. And I didn't want to go there. And I personally enjoyed a lot more when half of the reason
you know touches on a topic like this just because of how he touches on it very in a very epic fashion. He's probably somewhere destroying a sound system somewhere else right now. All right, and
but I want you to make one little comparison in your head. Just do the math in your head, every person individually privately, it's a private matter. But you need to hold yourself accountable. I want you to compare the amount of time you spend every day on Facebook, versus the amount of time you spent talking to a lot.
And that includes everything reading on making bigger and even performing so long. accumulate the amount of time on a daily basis, you talk to a lot and compare that to the amount of time you spend on Facebook. And that's all of a gauge you'll ever meet. As long as the amount of time you spend talking to a lot will be more than the amount of time you spend on Facebook.
I can't guarantee this. This is not based on any hobbies or any idea that I have. But I'm just kind of putting myself out there.
I'd be willing to say you'll be alright. You'll be over
So just take that into consideration about your time.
And I wanted to give one little example about the nature of time. And the fleeting nature of time. This is an example my teacher gave me a long time ago, a long, long time ago,
when telling us to be very practical about our time, because, you know, we used to get obsessed with our own things when we were young, I was just telling some of the young brothers outside, I'm a lot older than you guys a lot older. So I mean, Facebook didn't even exist, right when I was when I was your age. And so there are other things that we would become obsessed with. That would start off again, with a basic, pretty innocent premise. And then it would get out of control.
And my teacher gave me this example, early on, I was a student, student, a very student of knowledge. And he said, the first thing you're gonna have to learn how to do if you're gonna succeed, and being a student of knowledge, you're gonna have to learn how to manage your time. And he took, you know, he took an ice cube.
He took an ice cube, burning scorching heat of summer. And he placed it on the desk in front of us, like the desk between us, you place it on his desk.
And he said, That's time.
He said, I just want you to sit there and stare at.
And we watched it literally melt away seconds.
And he said, is that good for anything? And after it melted away in the water was on the desk. Now it's all dirty and stuff, too, because it picked up all the dust and the dirt from the desk, said, is that good for anything? Now? He said, No. He said, it's even good for you to take a straw and sip that water. I was like, No, it's not good for anything. He said, exactly.
And in the burning scorching heat of summer, you take some tap water, and you put that same ice cube in here. Is it productive? Is it helpful. Now, it's an extremely. So that's time. It's a resource, but it's what you make of it. It's how you utilize it how you apply it. So either it will melt away right in front of you, and you have nothing to show for it afterwards.
Or you drop it in some water you put in something productive,
and it'll benefit you.
It'll benefit you. And that's what I want you to remember here.
The next point that I wanted to make here about
social media and this online form of communication.
And that is another major problem.
In this whole area. This whole realm is the exposing of one's own sins.
As you see the conversation becoming more and more severe. It went from being fake, where you harm yourself primarily.
Right, then went to wasting of time,
where you start to take away the benefit that you could provide to even the community
to now exposing your sentence, which is actively spreading evil within society. Allah subhanaw taala
should surah Noor ionomer 19 Allah subhanaw taala says in the Latina Buddha, and Toshi alpha
fillers in the AMA, that most definitely those people who love to spread evil, rather spread shamelessness.
They love to spread shamelessness amongst the believing people.
Love Huma manfredonia, laughter, exclusively reserved for them is a very, is an extremely painful punishment, both in this life and in the Hereafter. Well, level yaalon want to know, because Allah knows, if you don't know, Allah knows the severity of this crime, and you don't fully realize it. Allah knows what's waiting for you on the flip side, and you don't realize it.
And so this is what just about one of the worst things that a person can indulgent is not only does it don't do wrong, not only does this person commit wrong, but then they make it a point they make it their objective, they make it their agenda to go and spread this throughout the community and spread this in society. And this is a common problem now, is this a means of bragging, this is a means of showing off
of how much on the edge you live,
how dangerous you are, how adventurous you are. Right?
And this is becoming a problem because then it becomes competitive. And everyone's trying to one up the other person.
And the last parallel On the flip side, he tells us in the webbing we
but rather loves those people who purified themselves internally and externally, who keep themselves not just internally pure, but even externally. They purify themselves and they keep a clean presence. That doesn't just mean washing your body or do we do it means how you present yourself how you put yourself out there and society and community that includes that as well. The Prophet sallallahu Sallam is reported to have said
All of my oma will be forgiven. Meaning forgiveness is open to every single person except for those who sin openly.
Because they're not just committing the crime, but there's, there's literally throwing it.
They're bragging about in front of the last power time.
They're being rebellious on top of that. And he said, it is a part of sinning openly, when a man does something at night, then the following morning with Allah has concealed his sin.
He says, Hey, Hey, you, hey, guy, oh, so and so.
I did such and such last night.
And that's a prophet SAW some explaining that in his terms, in our terms, you might have committed a sin. Or even worse, you didn't even commit that sin. And then you somehow find it necessary to go online and to post the status or to post a picture saying, Look what I did.
When all night long, the process of them says his Lord had concealed him. And the next morning, he uncovers what Allah had concealed.
There's nobody worse than that person.
I gave a similar talk to this. And I told this story at that time. And this is a story that again, I was, I read in a book very early on in my studies, and it deeply affected me. And it's like this one story, you know, something, there are lots of things that you read lots of narrations that you come across. But usually there's a few that just really, really affect you. They're always there in your head. This was one of those particular narrations because it not only gave me a sense of accountability and responsibility, it also
was such a powerful lesson, how merciful and how loving Allah is.
Allah who's a great scholar of our history.
He has a very famous book about pious and righteous people, in that he hasn't mentioned the story that he delivers.
He says that during the time of Mussolini, Salah when he was a messenger at that time,
the people went to him and complained that we have a severe drought, and we can't deal with it anymore. We need you to ask a lot what we need to do in order to solve this drought. To get rain and blessing and mercy from Allah. The instruction came that lead the people
and there was literally 70,000 people. Take all the people outside of the town outside of their city, into an open field and gather out there together under the burning scorching heat of the sun
at the time of noon, and go out there and bring women bring children being elderly people bring disabled people bring everybody and you beg and plead and you cry and you ask Allah to shower you with His mercy.
And you seek Allah's forgiveness, because sins are what hold back the mercy of the blessings of Allah asked for less forgiveness out there humble yourself before allowed there. And they go out there and they cry and they beg and they eat and they cry and they ask for forgiveness.
And they go on and on and on and on and on and they've had to go out what why won't the rain come? Why won't allow mercy on us.
He
prays to Allah subhana wa tada and Allah subhanho wa Taala says,
or Moosa,
there's one guy who's left.
There's one guy who's, who's been disobeying me consistently, he's been committing one sin consistently for 40 years.
Like on a daily basis, and this guy hasn't asked me for forgiveness yet.
And waiting on him.
It's all held up because
musalla turns around and says, everybody, there's one person
is one person who's holding this entire thing up.
Now, when he says that, that one person in the crowd, he thinks to himself,
that's me.
But then immediately thinks he says, All alone.
I'll ask for forgiveness. I apologize. I beg for forgiveness. I just want this much. Don't embarrass me in front of everyone. Don't let the word out that it was me. I can't take that level of embarrassment. I've learned my lesson. Point taken. But just don't embarrass me.
He just thinks this themselves and starts pouring rain.
starts pouring rain.
Everyone's like, oh, what happened?
What happened? I thought there was one person.
He said Moosa, not only did that person repent to me, as soon as you made the announcement, but his repentance and he's returned back to me was so beloved to me. That this rain is just because of him now. This rain is because of my
For him, my mercy for him my compassion for him. Now musala synopsis of harmala that's gonna be a really interesting person.
That's going to be a remarkable human being, like I need to meet this person how he went from there to there like that.
Well tell me
tell me who he is.
Allah subhanaw taala responded to musante salaam saying,
and this is it
that almost
when he was still sinful and he hadn't repented to me, I didn't tell you who he was I didn't expose him Why would I do it now that is becoming near and dear close to me again.
This is how Allah protects us. This is how Allah heighten hydrogens, Hydra faults and our shortcomings. Subhan Allah and I now think about the egregiousness the series is the heinousness of going out there
and exposing that for ourselves. inexcusable in excusable.
That's a religious perspective on this.
Either when like I told you once, before I gave this talk, I gave a practical perspective on this as well. And the practical perspective is this.
I gave the same exact example.
If you have a boil,
or a rash, for like an open wound,
on your shoulder,
or on your back,
it is the nastiest grossest fussiest thing. Any human being has ever grown up, has ever had him grow on him, whatever. You get my point. All right. It's like a living breathing thing now.
Right? It's gross, it's nasty.
You have it, it's a medical condition. You're dealing with it.
While you have that here on your arm or your shoulder?
Are you going to decide to wear something sleeveless? And go everybody check it out?
Say hi. Right.
Are you going to do that?
No, you're gonna go long sleeve. Even though it's up here, you're gonna go long sleeve.
Right? Somebody's gonna come up from Japan. Hey, brother.
Right? Can I get away?
Why? Because you're ashamed of me.
The bolos in the rashes and the pus that's on our soul is a lot more ugly is a lot more disgusting and a lot more embarrassing than what's on our physical body.
And yet, we go around just displaying and showing it.
We need to think about that.
The last and the final major point I wanted to talk about here.
And this has now it's been a constant escalation of issues. This is the final straw.
This is where if it's reached this point for you, I'm going to be very stern and serious with you. You need a serious self evaluation and a self assessment.
All right, and that is invading other's privacy.
When you become sick in your soul, your heart becomes black and to the point where you go around invading other people's privacy online.
That's when things have reached beyond just things have gotten too far. Now it's time to really sit down and figure out go take a long, hard look in the mirror. And see if you like the type of person you've become.
Who clicks and clicks and clicks and clicks and clicks.
And waits for the day that Facebook changes something in security settings, privacy settings, so you can pounce.
And you can see those pictures on choosing this online and you're saying that oh my god, right?
Like what's what's what's wrong with us?
You don't and again, I'm going to give you the spiritual perspective. And then I'll give you the practical perspective, the spiritual perspective. A lot tells us in
England
again, the surah number 24 surah Nusrah is number 27 or you will believe do not enter into homes later Will you take them that are not your houses. Don't enter into a house that is not your house had that the standing issue until you first seek permission. What to suddenly wanna hear and you give salam to the inhabitants of the people living inside the house. You know what that means? Anyways, oh, yeah, we give Salaam because we're Muslims, right? No, no, there's more practical purposes to this. That just because one member of that house will give you permission like come on in.
Right at the doorstep. At the doorway. You're still supposed to say a Solomonic
to let everybody else in that house known
that somebody who is not
From this private households, private families about to enter into a private space
so that they can respect their privacy and you can learn to respect their privacy.
You know, when we walk into a room or a door even, I'm not talking about like, personal bedrooms even, right? Because that's very serious issues. The Quran even talks about that. Right? that children should learn not to bargain to their parents bedrooms. Yes, siblings should not be barging into each other's bedrooms, talks about this.
Right. But rather, even like a classroom,
or like a meeting room, when you walk in,
excuse me.
Some type of decency.
The Quran is telling us we need to have this about us. And the prophets, Allah tells us something really severe. Because the process was very particular about respecting people's privacy. He tells us in an authentic, hygienic, authentic narration that if any person peeks at you, without your permission,
meaning there's a there's your blinds are open, or there's a hole in the wall, or there's a crack in the door, and somebody come and he's peeking in at you without your permission. You've seen you're like, Wait a second, what's that?
Right. And you see something
and you poke him with the stick and injuries. I mean, you say,
bam, got yourself, right. And you end up poking that person through that hole that they're picking at you, you poke them, and you literally puncture their eye.
Right, and I've heard I, all that stuff, you can be held accountable for that. At the least you would have to pay a penalty, maybe spend a couple of days in jail. If you just if you walked up to somebody just randomly in the street and just punched them out. Right? The judge would be like, Can you give me let me give you one right? Now you won't do that. Right? But he would find you he put you in jail for a couple of days. He tell you you need to learn your lesson Sonny can be acting like this. But this person was peeking at you he took a stick and you literally punctured their eye. The profits a lot. He said him said you will not be blamed.
Islamic law is in place, you will not be held accountable in the court of law.
You know why? Because the second you started invading this person's privacy, you for you, you for wins your own rights.
You gave up your own rights. Because you decided to act below a human being you decided to act like an animal. So that's what you get treated like you make yourself insignificant and lack of lacking respect and decency. So that's what we're gonna treat you like you did this to yourself.
And so that's something to think about. What is the dignity? What is the honor? What is the distinction of the person who goes around sneaking on people looking into people's private conversations their private lives? There's no, there's no honoring a person like that.
And I told you I was gonna be harsh about this subject because we need to be we laugh at all. The Facebook stalker.
No, it's a funny.
I'll speak for the sisters. All right, I'm not condoning. I'm not condemning. I'm speaking just again, I'm talking about reality here. Okay. agree disagree that your business, I'm talking reality, many of our sisters, and I have a mother and I have a sister and I have a wife and I have two daughters. So this I think is very personal. Many of our sisters who practice a job or decency or dress modestly, right, and they might have pictures of themselves, maybe without their hijab or their full covering or whatever it may be, that they just share with their family members that are only available to their female friends or family members. Again, I'm not here to get in a discussion
with you, whether that's even permissible or not. I'm talking about the reality of the situation. And when we go creeping and when we go stalking, when we go looking into that you are violating the honor of a Muslim system. Shame on you.
You are violating the honor of a Muslim sister. And that's something very, very serious that you need to think about. And you know,
she has asked me in the earlier talk was talking to us to about fornication, adultery and Zina and these horrible things. And that same principle applies here. Would you like it? If somebody did that to your mother? Would you like it? Or somebody did that to your wife to your sister to your daughter?
Would you like it? Now you wouldn't
do that to somebody else's mom, mother, daughter, wife, sister.
It's unacceptable. And so we have to be cognizant of these things. All right.
Before my moderator, freaks out.
All right, kicks me off the stage. All right.
I wanted to kind of wrap things up here.
And I wanted to talk after I wanted to take the serious issues. First, these principles in place, please hold on to these principles firmly.
All right, now wanted to talk to you about a couple of pieces of advice, and then some encouragement, I'll probably borrow an extra five minutes of your time. All right, the extra couple of pieces of advice that I had for you, was the purpose of Facebook was to facilitate
communication. It's destroyed communication.
I want you to take out the time to have a meaningful conversation. I do not want you please, I do not want you to comment on somebody's status, who is here with you at the conference? Please don't do that. All right, that just wasted an hour with your people. All right. What I want you to do is I want you to go talk to that person.
I want you to communicate with people I want you to talk, I want you to interact. I want you to converse, have communication. It's healthy for you be a real live human being. All right, communicate. The second thing is, and this is something actually my friend, Brother muise. He, I was talking to him about this subject when I gave the first talk I gave a few months ago about Facebook. And I asked him, you know, what's one real key point you could tell me about?
And he told me this, and it's some highlights amazing. He said, sometimes we get so involved with just making our presence felt on Facebook, that even when we do really cool things that are amazing things that we have great experiences with in real life. It's only for the purpose of putting it on Facebook. So the whole purpose of going out on the lake was we got to get the right picture right here, guys, come on. profile picture, right. It's like, No, no, no, you're out there witnessing Allah's magnificence as a creator. Go enjoy yourself. Who gives a crap about Facebook? Right? Go enjoy yourself, man. Go Live it up. Go have an experience going experience something you're young
people. You don't live anymore.
You don't live anymore. Go Live. Go have fun. Go do something cool. Right? And don't worry about whether you ended up posting it on Facebook or not. Don't worried you got the perfect big ears. Nobody cares.
They're laughing a little inside joke. Nobody cares. All right.
So remember that. Those were a couple of practical pieces of advice I wanted to give you you're leaving this. And then finally here comes the motivation.
Notice in this for this entire hour that I've been ranting and screaming and yelling. I have not one said that Facebook is haraam wrong, impermissible bad, evil nun or I pointed out actions that people commit on Facebook that are wrong.
Driving a car is permissible. driving drunk, horrible.
It's that same car, it's the same road, it's the same hands. It's the same feed the same eyes. But something wrong was interjected into it? It's a tool. It's how you use it.
Amazing things have been done through Facebook. You know how many millions hundreds of millions of dollars over these last few national natural disasters? He's catastrophes? How many hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised on Facebook to help people in those situations.
You know, how much knowledge of Islam you know Subhanallah there's a there's a group of brothers we know personally, they run a Facebook page and a YouTube channel called for on weekly.
Yeah, Mashallah. And, and they make lots of videos, and I've had the opportunity to work with them and make a few videos for them. The brother who actually shoots the videos, edits the videos and uploads them. There's about three four brothers in the project, but the brother that does that part of it and kind of manages the online part of it. He sent me a text message yesterday,
I recorded a video about forgiveness, how forgiving Allah is. And he said he was contacted by a person recently, who was pretty soon going to be live here not too far from who was going to be coming to the machine to meet him in person and learn more. He was contacted by a person recently who said he watched the video of forgiveness on Facebook, and then ended up accepting Islam because of
that happens. And that's just one little tiny story. There are millions of such stories. People have learned people have benefited immensely. You know, we do all types of these activities. This event was marketed on Facebook.
And all these other academic or Islamic or educational programs that we do on market on Facebook, we had a local event locally event in Dallas when yours Chicago natives, brother, Brian Murphy, he runs a huge department out there. So he did a he did a youth event,
talking about relationships and dating and all of these things. And there was not a single flyer or poster that was printed for the event. It was
only and only and only on Facebook 1000 people showed up physically at the event 400 people watch that event online.
That was Facebook. So a lot of great things happen through Facebook as well. It's just how you utilize that tool. So I want you to, I'm not asking you to give it up. But I'm asking you to practice a level of responsibility with it.
be productive with it, go and do something amazing with it.
Going show people that what an amazing thing. Like the guy who probably, you know, started the like if a Muslim went and started some fundraising campaign to help the earthquake victims of tsunami victims on Facebook, and then they're raising millions of dollars. Think about how much how much reward that person just earned.
Amazing remarkable. So go and do something amazing. You can utilize this tool for that as well. And Charla,
I really, really want to thank you for your patience. And for you guys paying attention and sitting here and listening. I really honestly do appreciate it very, very much. May of last month, it was all the ability to be responsible and to be dignified. That's what matters. Respect yourself. May Allah give us all the ability to respect ourselves when conducting ourselves not just in person or physically but even online.