 As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi Mashallah, good to be at service. The topic tonight is on Hajj and the importance of Ibrahim alaihi salam, one of our role models, one of our greatest prophets, one of our paragons of virtue, and these sort of, you know, the earball or the lessons we can draw from what we are told about Ibrahim alaihi salam in the Quran. Ibrahim alaihi salam, as I said, is one of the greatest human beings in the history of the human race. He's considered to be from the Ulul Azam min al-Rusul, the five most exalted human beings. So who are these five? Anyone know? I know there's a lot of kids here. He takes some Sunday school. Who are the five greatest prophets? Who knows? This is for the kids. It's family night. Any kids know? Mashallah. Yes, the greatest. What was the last one? Nuh good, yes. So to go in chronological order, the prophet Nuh alaihi salam, who is considered the first Rasul, he received the shari'ah, the first shari'ah. And then we have the prophet Ibrahim alaihi salam. By the way, the word Noah, or Nuh, Nuhak in Hebrew, it means rest. That God gave rest to the earth from the kufr, the infidelity that had thrived upon the earth. And then Ibrahim, does anyone know what the name Ibrahim means? Maybe your name is Ibrahim. You should know what your name means. Any Ibrahims here? Ibrahim. What does your name mean? Your parents ever tell you? That's good. You just obey your parents blindly. Now just do it. Just make taqlid a fifth, but not a vaqidah. So anyone know? Ibrahim. So there's a verse in the Quran here. This is at the end of Surah al-Hajj. And of course the Hajj is a commemoration of the rights that were established by Ibrahim alaihi salam. And this verse actually gives us a clue as to what his name means. So the Hajj is sort of our, I don't know, origin story that we believe as Muslims that Ibrahim alaihi salam he traveled to the Meccan valley and this is where he sort of dropped off his wife, Haigar, Hajj, and Ismail alaihi salam. And then the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi salam is a descendant of Ismail alaihi salam. And nobody really disputes this, you know, from Ahleed Kitab. Nowadays there's a lot of revisionism happening. You know what revisionism means? These are sort of people that want to make a name for themselves in different studies, usually historical studies. So they'll say really crazy things so they can get like a professorship somewhere. You know, so they'll say for example, there's this guy, the actual Qibla was Petra, not Mecca. Okay? Or they'll say, yeah, the, what is it? A bunch of crazy. The Quran wasn't, wasn't written in the 7th century. It's from the 8th century. There's no evidence of this, right? But they have to say, you know, say something like that. But basically everyone agrees, sort of a general consensus, we can say, amongst historians and people of faith, that is to say, the sort of greater sort of Abrahamic tradition, if we can call it that, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam is a descendant of Ismail alaihi salam. And so the Hajj has its origins in Ibrahim alaihi salam. So this ayah says, So strive in the, in the, in the path of Allah SWT as you ought to strive. Okay? So this word jihad in this context means to really struggle and strive because this world is a world of tribulation. That's the nature of the dunya. We have to know the nature of this world. As Muslims were not meant to be too comfortable in this world. So if there's a little bit of unease, that's okay. That's completely normal. Right? A dunya sijnul mu'min, there's a hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi salam, that the world is the prison of the believer. Right? That the believer in the dunya should feel a type of constriction. This is completely normal. This is healthy. Spiritually this is healthy to feel this type of constriction. Right? So, So keep striving, engage in mujahada. So there are certain things that happen during our lives, right, that we should have a proper response to. We should be principled people. You know what it means to be principled? Does anyone know any of the youngsters here? If I told you, you should be a person of principle. What am I talking about? Okay, anyone. Adults too. Yes, sir? You should be what? Very good. Yeah. This is what Sidi Faridun was saying earlier today, is that we recognize there are hudud, there are parameters, that we don't transgress these hudud. Right? We stand for something. To be principled means you actually stand for something. You believe in something. So one of the struggles of the modern world, right, this kind of post-modern world order that we're living in now, which is now all-pervading. It's infiltrated every major institution, whether it's colleges, universities, whether it's the media, workplaces, is that there is no ultimate truth. There's no such thing as ultimate truth, or is to say capital T, truth. Everyone has their own truth. So it's true for you, may not be true for me. Right? So this type of relativism. So not only theological relativism, it doesn't matter what you believe, who cares, but moral relativism. You can do anything you want, nothing really matters. You can make your own reality. It's called existentialism. We don't have essence. There's no such thing as human nature. Existence precedes essence. This is sort of one of the mantras of modern existentialist philosophers. There's no right way to be a human. There's no such thing as human nature. So you can define what a human being is. Right? So whatever you are, just accept yourself and live your truth. This is what's happening in the modern world right now. And I'm telling you, it's making people miserable. And in the Anglosphere, which is the English-speaking world, there's new studies done on this by the World Health Organization. They found that people living in the Anglosphere, the English-speaking world, which tends to be more wealthy, more technology, there's a lot more people that suffer from mental illness in the English-speaking world than any other places in the world. So it's not based on technology and wealth. It's what's happening in the Anglosphere. It's this type of philosophy that's pervading things. That's making people, young people, even question who they are. That's destroying definitions. People can't define things anymore. What's a human being? What's a man? What's a woman? What's beauty? What's virtue? People can't define things anymore. And what does the word definition mean? That finish, right? Towards a limit, towards a hadd. Even in Arabic, the word for definition is al-hadd. That there's a parameter, there's hudud. But if you remove those hudud, then words can mean whatever you want. And you can make your own reality. So there's this type of philosophical existentialism. I believe I can do whatever I want. I can make my own reality. And then there's going to be a type of like real practical existentialism where people just, you know, they stop getting married because they can just live in the virtual world and own a virtual house and have virtual children, right? One of the tenets of the modern world that is some sort of modern religion, whatever you want to call it, the liberal world order, the postmodern world order, is that basically if we can do it, we should do it. Technology is king. Whatever is latest must be greatest. Whatever is latest must be greatest. Right? And if I feel like, if I feel like something is just wrong, then I must be right. If I feel it, everything's based on feelings, right? So they'll say things like, you know two years ago I used to use this certain word and now I don't use it anymore because I'm woke now. I've come to a type of enlightenment, right? That was two years ago. I was so crazy back then, two years ago. They'll say, oh, in the 1950s, women in America, you know, they were so crazy. What were they doing? Look at their doing. They're, you know, looking after a home. Isn't that crazy? You know? I had a conversation with one of these people and I said, there's a hadith that says, the best generation is the generation of the prophet, and she said, what was that, 1400 years ago? Oh my God! 1400 years, because they believe whatever is latest is greatest, right? So what's latest? Well, we should not own property. We should eat bugs. We should live in pods. We should not get married. We should try to upload our consciousness into a cloud and then download it into a robot so we can live forever. This is what people are talking about. We can own houses in virtual reality. Okay? Good luck with that world. It's a strange new world, right? Here's a book by, what's this first thing? It's left in this Truman. How do you recommend it? It's called Strange New World. So check it out. The Quran is telling us that we have to strive in this world. This world is a world of mujahada. Wajahiru fillahi haqqa jihadi. Again, this is verse 78, He has chosen you, Allah SWT, that He has chosen us and has not imposed any type of difficulties in the religion. This religion is not difficult, right? This is a simple religion and it appeals to different walks of life, right? So, this is our theology in a nutshell. And a simple better one can understand this very clearly. And then you'll have a double Ph.D. write a dissertation on this one surah. The Quran appeals to every human being. It's a simple religion. The Prophet SAW said, What is illicit and illicit or what is permitted and impermissible are both clear, right? The Quran is clear. It's a clear text. Let's not muddy the waters. Again, if you want a professorship, you can say the Quran advocates a certain lifestyle. And here's how I'll deal with these verses. And they start going into these ayat and taking out and extracting weird definitions of words, ignoring contexts, and ignoring wholesale other verses. There's one of these professors, right? Who says basically, Muslim professor, she said that if the Quran says something you don't like, just say no to the text. Just say no, right? It's called radical hermeneutics. If you take an Islam 101 class in 2023 at any public university, what do you think these kids are going to learn? Five pillars, six articles of faith? Hadith and Jibril? No. They're going to learn something called radical hermeneutics on day one. How do I twist and turn the Quran to be in line with my feelings rather than the other way around? I have to put myself in line with the Quran. This is called Mojahada. But these things are lost on modern people. We have theological virtues like humility Humility is a good virtue. But for modern people, a lot of modern people, humility is something that's a weakness. You should not be humble. Gratitude for us is a great virtue, theological virtue, to be grateful. But our young people, unfortunately, they're in a culture where they're always constantly taught to self-victimize. I'm a victim, lowest me. And so, why should I be grateful? And according to the Quran, the opposite of shukr is kufr. فَذْكُرُونِ أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَشْكُرُولِ وَذَا تَكْفُرُونِ So there's this parallelism in this ayah. This is very common in Semitic rhetoric in the rhetoric of the Quran. I want to get too technical. A lot of children here. But basically, according to this ayah, the shukr of gratitude is kufr, is disbelief. But if you're taught that you're a constant victim and the world is out to get you, because of your intersectional identity, you're brown and you're overweight and you're ugly and all these different things, oh, woe is to me. Somebody owes me something. The fact that you're a Muslim in the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ, that should engender in us a type of gratitude that is off the charts. We should be basking in the glory of that reality just by itself. We have no idea the gift that Allah SWT has given us. So this is important. And He has chosen you and has not imposed in you any difficulties in the religion. Like I said, the religion is clear. There are some religions where you have to be reborn again to go to some sort of afterlife that's good. You have to be reborn over and over and over again. There are some religions that you can't even get a grasp of what they're teaching. What is this? Is this some sort of philosophy? Is this an enigma? What's going on here? There are some religions that, within the religion itself, are schools of thought that are contradictory. How do you harmonize these things? So this religion is not difficult. So going back to what I mentioned earlier about the name of Ibrahim A.S. that Allah SWT says here that this is the millah, this is the religion, al-Islam is the religion of Ibrahim A.S. The millah of Ibrahim A.S. is the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad SAW. So when I talk about the greater Abrahamic tradition, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, that's not the millah of Ibrahim A.S. Our religion, al-Islam, that was brought by the Prophet Muhammad SAW, this is the millah of Ibrahim A.S. That's not to say that these other religions don't contain truth. Certainly there's truth in Judaism, there's truth in Christianity. But if we're familiar with the Quran, and again the Quran is very clear on these things. The Prophet SAW is called al-Bayna in the Quran. Al-Bayna means the clear evidence. So we are the millah of Ibrahim A.S. and this millah is being attacked by the sort of current zeitgeist, the current spirit of the age. So this is something we should understand. It is the millah of your father Ibrahim A.S. So this is the meaning of Abraham. The meaning is the father of nations. Abraham, Abba, right? So here, Allah SWT is not just speaking to the Arabs that are Muslim. Yes, Ibrahim A.S. is their progenitor. In other words, their descendants. But the millah of Ibrahim, in reality, is anyone who follows Ibrahim A.S. Another way to translate father is patriarch. You're ruling father. Ibrahim A.S. is the patriarch of this religion. He called you Muslims in the past and in this in the Quran. So it is our belief that all of the prophets were Muslim in the sense that they submitted to Allah SWT the terms like Jew and Christian, these are terms that are innovated. Isa A.S. would not have called himself Christian. Musa A.S. would not have called himself a Jew. So these are Muslim prophets. But Islam was perfected with the coming of the Prophet Muhammad SAW. Liakun al-Rasul alaikum shaheedan alaikum in order that the messenger might be a witness upon you. So the Prophet SAW is our role model. So the guidance we take from him, SAW, is sure guidance. It is a definitive proof of our religion. So anything that contradicts what he brought us, we reject. The Quran says, take whatever he brings you and reject. Ignore whatever he prohibits you. Liakun al-Shuhada al-Nas and that you, in order for you to be examples for humanity. So the Prophet SAW is our role model and the role of the Muslim, what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to be role models for humanity. So people should look to us for guidance and we are becoming slowly the last bastion of traditional religion. And people are starting to take notice and people are converting to Islam. A lot of people are converting to Islam these days because they've noticed that this current culture, this strange new world that we're going into, people, you know, we talk about red lines. A red line for a lot of these people is their children. So if their children in kindergarten or first grade are being told strange things, that's a red line for the vast, vast majority of human beings. So they're going to start looking elsewhere. And it's interesting, I don't know if you've heard about this but there's a city in Michigan called Hamtramke, Hamtramke? Hamtramek, Hamtramek, Michigan, you heard of this city? You probably haven't heard of it because the mainstream media probably buried the story. But this city in Michigan, which is near Detroit, has a majority Muslim city council and they voted just recently, like a week ago, two weeks ago, to ban all rainbow flags on every government building. And now Christians, and this is a blue state, there's 70% Democrats. In this state, it was a unanimous vote. You know, the flag is a symbol of conquest. When you've conquered something, you raise your flag. Apparently there's a flag on the moon of America. Conquered the moon. That's what it is. That's what the flag means. That's why it's on government buildings. We've conquered these lands. This is our government. So for these people that are, for these, you know, the other people in this city, American democracy basically betrayed them because you have Muslims coming into the country and this is how they voted. But then during the vote they made this huge spectacle. I won't tell you what they did. I'm pretty shameful just to basically anger the Muslims that were there. So in reality, our only ally is Allah and his messenger and the believers. And this is the lesson we take from cities like this, where you have, maybe you have Muslims allying themselves with, you know, different sort of groups that there's this perceived perception of victimization, of oppression, and then one group comes in the power and next thing you know, that allyship has broken. Why? Because I'll tell you, we have nothing very, very little in common with this certain group of people, the alphabet people, the circus, whatever you want to call them. We are in completely different wavelengths. So people are discovering Islam and that's where the Muslim comes in, that we should be people of principle, shuhada' ala al-nas, were role models, witnesses over humanity to give people that alternative fa'aqimu s-salah wa'aatu al-zaka'a. So establish the prayer that's very important that we're praying, a salatu ʿimād al-dīn, the prayer is the pillar of the religion, We need to establish the prayer, Allah SWT is telling us and it's amazing these ayat in the Qur'an, you really see the miracle of the Qur'an, why is the Qur'an harping on this issue of Ibrahim A.S., because Ibrahim A.S. is always going to stay relevant and he is the patriarch, you hear people today, modern people, down with the patriarchy, who's the patriarch? Ibrahim A.S., that's what they mean, traditional religion and traditional religion nowadays, the epitome of traditional religion is Islam, what the Prophet SAW brought us, you know, so we have to realize this. So we need to establish the prayer and give charity and hold fast to Allah SWT. That means hold tightly as hard as you can, hold on as tightly as you can to Allah, what does it mean? Hold on tightly to Allah means to the guidance, the Qur'an and the sunnah, alright, and don't be afraid of people. I gave a presentation in Canada and there was a young man there and he said, I'm going to tell you something and he said this in front of everybody, he said, I don't think even his parents knew, he said that my teacher, I think he was maybe in fifth grade, he said my teacher took us to a movie called Buzz Lightyear and there's a scene in this movie, I don't know if you've seen the movie, don't watch it, let's just say it's very disturbing and that's the other thing, that's how they get you, right? So you watched, remember the toy story came out in 1996, you probably saw it when you were younger and then you had kids and you think, hey kids, let's watch this movie, it's a good one, it's toy story, it's about toys, it's for kids, toy story, what's wrong with that? Nothing, let's watch it, if you watch it, you know what, there's a sequel to this, Toy Story 2, let's watch that one, great, Toy Story 3, it's amazing, beautiful, and a few years go by, hey kids, there's a prequel called Buzz Lightyear and they've got you, why can't we watch this one, daddy? Well, we can't, why not? We watched all the other ones, my dad's a hypocrite, they've got you, it's over, anyway, so he said my teacher took us out to watch this movie and my teacher told the whole class, don't tell your parents that we went out and watched this movie, you know, there's another student, same gathering, he said, I think he was in high school, he said there was an assignment where we had to watch a certain movie that's completely haram and we had to write an essay about it, so I didn't want to do it, but my teacher said if you don't do it, you're gonna get an F, right, and then he said, he didn't really say it, but basically he hinted that he was too scared to tell his parents that he didn't want to do this, so he went and did it, so that's the other thing, his parents, you know, it's not all about grades, okay, so once in a while you have to take one for the team, stand up straight, be principled, I promise you your child will be okay if they get a few Fs on assignments that they don't want to do, that are haram, you know, we should be understanding, the child didn't want to do it, but it seemed like he was being pressured by his teacher and parents to do this assignment, anyway. So Allah is our Mola, Allah is our master, when an excellent master, when an excellent helper, so that's the end of Surat Al-Hajj, right, telling us that we are the Millah of Ibrahim A.S., like I said, many, many verses in the Quran, the Quran is good until the end of time, alright, many, many Ayat like this, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tells us We will never ever be satisfied with you until you follow their form of religion, alright? If you were to follow in here, it's second masculine singular, so Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is speaking directly to the Prophet Muhammad SAW, but by extension to the Ummah, if you were to follow their Ahwa, what is Hawa? If you were to follow their feelings and desires and inclinations, whatever they might be, if you follow their desires, now that after knowledge has come to you, then you will find either helper nor protector against Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Allah is telling us very plainly, alright, so these Ayat are clear, they're never going to be pleased with us, they're never going to have ridah with us, that doesn't mean that, you know, we have bad adab with Jews and Christians or atheists, no, we have good adab, the Prophet SAW had good adab with everybody, but he was a principled man, but just recently I attended an interview with dialogue at MCC and, you know, interfaith dialogue to the Muslim speaker, he had a rabbi, rabbi who was an atheist, atheist rabbi, you know, jumbo shrimp, four-sided triangle, stupid Iranian, it's an oxymoron, it doesn't make any sense, sorry, I'm Iranian, that's why I said that last one, but this is what's happening, she's, I don't believe in any gods, oh, you're a rabbi, yeah, Ajeeb. I would think that, anyway, I mean, breaking the first couple of commandments of the Dekalaw doesn't seem like a good rabbi, but anyway, I think I'll stop talking at this point, maybe take some questions, I've spoken for about a half an hour, any questions or comments, inshallah? Nothing? Yes, sir? Yeah, father of nations, the father of nations, yes, yeah, so it's interesting, we have, there's two groups of sort of woke people, one group is going to, wants to try to syncretize all of these major religions, so they're trying to start a religion called Abrahamiyah, which is basically an amalgamation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, right, and a lot of Muslims are falling for these tricks, there's another group that is completely trying to eradicate everything to do with Abraham, the first group tends to believe in God, right, but are not really committed to a tradition, the second group tend to be atheists, either way Ibrahim A.S. is totally under attack in our modern world, and the Prophet peace be upon him, he is upon the millah, we're told this explicitly in the Qur'an, right, so indeed the closest of Ibrahim A.S. are those who have it to follow Ibrahim, like this prophet, the Prophet peace be upon him, and those who believe the Sahaba and the Ummah of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, so he's a progenitor of many nations, but the guidance that was brought by the Prophet S.A.W. is a recapturing a restoration of that true millah, and this is the millah that's being attacked in our modern world, yes. Is there a way to be part of the society, and I'll give you a data point, like the school my kids went to, now they have the flag you mentioned? Oh, everywhere, it's everywhere, so how do you explain that, how do you rationalize that with your kids, so any thoughts I'd appreciate? Yeah, I mean separation is always an option, maybe even Hijrah is an option, isolation, there are Jewish communities in New York that don't even speak English, they just speak Hebrew and Yiddish, they live in America, they don't have internet on their phones, right, that's obviously sort of an extreme example. You have Christians living in the middle of the country called the Amish, you know some of them don't speak English, just German, Pennsylvania, Dutch, they reject all technology, they have horse and buggies, they don't even have zippers, I think zippers are good, I don't think zippers are a bit out by the way, I think they got that one wrong, but that's an option that Jews and Christians in this country have exercised, now you might say well like I can't do that, well you know it's up to the individual person, I think we have to be honest with ourselves, it's difficult to be honest with yourself, but to preserve the tradition we have to watch over the children, so if you have a dual income family, maybe one of the parents should think about educating the child in the house, homeschooling the child, you're not going to make as much money, but what's your Akhira worth, you know, if you can sort of avoid public schools I would do it at all costs, you know some parents maybe can start a co-op or like I said homeschooling is an option because it's all pervading now, it's poisonous and it's everywhere and like I said many times, most times probably children won't even tell their parents what's happening in school because they're told explicitly by their teachers not to tell your parents, so you know we have to make drastic changes in some cases and we're all the same boat, not like anyone's immune to this, but education is the key, I think educating your children in our theology in the liberal arts is very important, the tribune, you know people don't study these things, so they're persuaded oftentimes by sophistry, so in other words sophistry is basically speech that just kind of sounds good, right, so you know you want to be tolerant don't you, have tolerance, be kind, coexistence, the same people who spout these these mantras tend to be the most intolerant of people, right, which is ironic, so you know it's a difficult situation, but you know when that happened in that city and I can't even pronounce the name in Michigan, you have all these Christians in red states going why are we such cowards, you have these Muslims that came over to the Middle East and they go on the city council and they voted to get rid of this flag and they did it, why can't we do that, why are we such cowards, it was really interesting, why don't we stand up for ourselves, how come these Muslims have this istiqama because the guidance is clear, right, so Allah SWT, you know Islam will prevail, but Muslims come in and out, but Islam will stay, you know, so nobody is safe, don't think for a second I'm safe, I'm good enough, it'll be okay, we have to be in a constant state of mujahada and constantly in a state of trying to purify our intentions, purify the nafs, the lower self, because you know tribulations are coming up, it's going to become difficult, there's going to be tests of iman in the next decade, two decades with the rise of technology, AI, things like this, there's, you know, further divides, you know, people don't want to get married anymore, people, you know, a lot of young people think, a lot of men think women are the enemy and vice versa, it's very strange, even from when I was, you know, in the 90s, it's completely different, even five, six years ago, it's a completely different world, the culture has changed so rapidly, what's going to be like in 10, 15, 20 years, so certainly, you know, take measures to to safeguard the deen, whatever that might be, yeah, I mean, you should, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam, he said al-khalil al-maru al-khalili, that a person is upon the religion of their friends, so, you know, I have a lot of non-Muslim acquaintances and kind of, you know, kind of congenial, sort of light friendships, but I'm not really close with, you know, these people, you know, I'm not going to leave my kid at their house for a birthday party, you know, so, you know, we can be friendly with people, we can have sort of light relationships, but, you know, who you embrace as a friend, you should be very, very discriminatory, you should discriminate, yes, I said it, discriminate between people, I tell people, I practice discrimination and they say, oh, how do you, I'm also a sexist, by the way, I treat men and women differently, yeah, of course I do, you know, so they want to label us with their own definitions, they want to use their own terms on us and for us to submit to them, like this one guy, he said to me, you're a cis male, so what does that mean, you don't know what cis means, no, I don't accept that word, in fact to me, that word is a slur, a heterosexual slur, you've offended me, oh, I didn't mean to offend to play their own game against them, but we have a worldview and we should be proud of that worldview and it suffices us, because for us, you know, the Akhira takes priority over the dunya, like I said, this dunya, dunya literally means the low world, it's fleeting, it's temporary, it's not worth selling out, right, so I would just answer your question, be especially discriminatory even amongst our own community, that's part of living in the dunya, very difficult, yes sir, advice for the children, children, if you go to a public school and your teacher is saying to do something that you don't feel comfortable with doing, you can tell your teacher, I don't feel comfortable, and don't let the teacher force you into doing anything that you don't feel comfortable with, and you should come home and tell your parents about it, it's very important that you communicate to parents, to your parents, your parents, even though sometimes it doesn't seem like it, they only want what's good for you, I promise you, okay, I promise you, they only want what's good for you, so even something like, you know, I want, okay, yesterday I wanted a cookie for dessert, and my mom said no, isn't that good for me, my mom said no, it's good because cookies are unhealthy, maybe you had a cookie earlier, so two cookies are very unhealthy, so at the end of the day, your parents know exactly what they're doing, okay, so that should be your your opinion of your parents, trust your parents, okay, respect your teachers, but it may, it might be that your teacher does not really know what's good for you as a person, like your mother or father, so don't feel like you're forced into doing anything, and if something does happen, if somebody asks you a weird question or something like that, you should go home and tell your parents about that, anyway, I had a few examples come into my head, but I'm not going to say them, maybe later, the thing is, I would let children be children, you know, it's going to happen organically, you know, I would try to preserve a child's innocence as much as possible, right, and eventually I think a child will come to the parent at some point and say, I heard this or I saw this, what does this mean, and then we can explain it to them, but being sort of, you know, being sort of proactive in the sense that explaining something to a child that is inappropriate for them at a certain age, maybe, you know, some children are more precocious and, you know, they're sort of more, they can deal with certain things like that, you know your child well, you can be the judge of that, but make sure that, you know, we're not introducing them to things that is inappropriate for them, try to preserve your child's innocence as much as possible, and what's happening in public schools is exactly the opposite of that, I mean kindergarten, children in kindergarten, isolating the boys, who feels like a girl today, and the first time the children are asked, it's their fitra, and they're just like that, what, what is this insane person saying right now, that's the initial reaction of a five-year-old child from fitra, come on, you can tell us, you ever play dress up and wear your sister's clothes, that's what they're being asked, and then eventually what about you, you do it and they feel pressure, you do it, right, yeah, how about you, yeah, all right, it's all manipulation, there was someone who came into a musket years ago, and I said, I quoted a hadith, you know, one of these, these wokeies, came into the musket, and I said, I said, there's a hadith that says, there's a hadith that says, discipline your children upon three things, the love of your prophet, and the love of the family of the prophet, and upon the reading of the Quran, so discipline your children, teach your children to love the prophet, and this person raised their hand in the back, they're wokey, and they said, I don't know if it was a man or woman, that's why I say today, I guess it was a man, I couldn't tell, honestly, he said, isn't that manipulative, aren't you being manipulative, so what's what's manipulative, you're teaching a child to love someone, that's what, what does manipulation mean, the word manipulation comes from maness, which means hand, so manipulating something means to mold something with your hand, and of course, children need to be molded by their parents, because the intellect is lacking with children, they need to be manipulated, so the question is, whose manipulation is in the child's best interest, your manipulation, which you're asking children at five years old, which you're asking them to believe in, or what I'm doing, let's have a discussion, no I don't have a discussion, they don't have a discussion, as soon as you say something like, is it really a good idea to give children hormone therapy at 10 years old, how dare you, there's no discussion, it's just how dare you, they don't want to talk, they don't want a reason, it used to be, you should tolerate us, just tolerate us, so, ok, we'll tolerate, and then it was, you should accept us, you know, give us a nod, you don't have to join the parade, but give us the thumbs up from a distance, and now it's, if you don't join our parade, and celebrate us, then you're a bigot, and you're this, and you're that, and that's what happened, and so a lot of Muslims in the West are thinking, I don't want to be called a bigot, so maybe we should think about joining these people somehow, and supporting them, you know, but it's a mistake, there's only one life, you know, what about Allah's opinion, the only opinion that matters is the opinion of Allah, so don't fear the men, don't fear the men, don't fear humanity, don't fear mankind, fear Allah swt, why are these other religions selling out, because they fear people, they fear human beings, they're being afraid, they're afraid of losing tax exemption status, they're afraid of losing dunya, they're afraid of being canceled on social media, so they sell out their principles and lose their akhirah, and then they try to justify it, no it's ok, this verse means this, this verse means that, forget about this verse, sweep this verse under the rug over here, don't look at this, nothing to see here, yes sir, yeah definitely, I mean, we're really not right or left, maybe sort of right of center, because we are more conservative, you know, we believe in tradition, traditional family values, you know, we believe in truth with a capital T, we believe in traditional morality, so those are things that we have in common with with conservatives, right, that doesn't necessarily make us republicans, you know, so like one time I give a talk somewhere and I mentioned these things and somebody said, so you support Trump, huh, so why would you say that, because I said I'm against abortion, so that's that's that's your, let me talk about a non-secretary argument, right, so no, we're neither right nor left, and you have, and people are becoming extreme in this religion, I mean even the center is crumbling and it's all in reaction to each other, so you have now you have the extreme woke left, right, that wants to basically destroy everything that's traditional, destroy every type of hierarchy, just level humanity, start all over again, you have these like young people shaking their fists at thousands of years of tradition, thinking they know better, right, and then you have now the extreme sort of MAGA on the other side, you have this side saying we need to have gay mosques over here, the extreme they're saying no more mosques, we don't fit in neither camp, you know, your only ally is Allah and his messenger and the believers, that's it, and people come in and out of the religion, Allah and his messenger, when the Sahaba returned from Burkut, there was a monafeq in Medina who said, the people are gathering against you, so be afraid of them, right, she's like right now, the people of the nas, are gathering against us, attacking our tradition, attacking our religion, attacking our morality, attacking our theology, attacking our children, crossing these red lines, what did the Sahaba say according to the Quran? Allah, when ni'mal wakih, it only increased their iman when they heard that and they said Allah is sufficient for us, he is the best disposer of affairs, so that level of iman, any questions over here? Yes, repeat what? Repeat the Hajj? Oh briefly, you mean the topic of my lunch? Can I never talk about? Yes, yes, so yes, the Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam and the Hajj is pilgrimage to Mecca, masha'Allah, if you can make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the prices are pretty crazy, but if Allah SWT gives you tawfiq and we should intend it every year, even if you don't think, because you never know, there are people that up until like the day before, they're thinking and somebody sponsors them the next day they're on a plane, so it's something that we should do, if we can afford to do so once in our life, to make Hajj, to visit the Ka'bah in Mecca and the Prophet SAW said whoever makes the Hajj and is accepted from Allah SWT, then it is as if he was born anew from his mother's womb, meaning all of his sins are forgiven, like a newborn baby, no more sins. And it's a beautiful right, they rarely show it on television in the west because they know it's a very powerful image, you would think a gathering of two million people from all over the world would be front page news, no, it's nothing, they never show it, and there's reasons for that and if we can manage to visit the Prophet SAW in Medina and give our salams to the Prophet SAW, this is a beautiful thing to do, make ziyarah of the Prophet SAW, so that's what it is, that's what the Hajj is and the Hajj as we said the Ka'bah was actually built, the foundations according to the Ulama scholars, the foundations of the Ka'bah were laid down by the Prophet Adam SAW, the first human being, and then the walls initially were raised by Ibrahim SAW and Ismail SAW, who are two prophets, these are ancestors of the Prophet Muhammad SAW, and so we make tawaf around the baytullah, the Ka'bah is also the baytullah, the house of Gath, we make circumambulations, this is the sunnah of Ibrahim SAW, and even Salban al-Israel were told, also visited Mecca during the times of Dawood AS, there seems to be a reference to the Ka'bah in the book of Psalms, and then there's different rites that we perform during the Hajj, like the stoning of the shaytan, which is when shaytan came to Ibrahim SAW and told him not to go through with what Allah commanded him, and he picked up seven stones and threw them at the shaytan. To remind us also, shaytan is an enemy, innahu lakum adoo mubeen, and we talk about shaytan nowadays, people start going, oh, do you believe in satan? Are you kidding me? In this day and age, and a Muslim one time said this to me, in this day and age brother, he said, bro, have you read the Quran? Of course, okay, now he did. How many times? 15 times, 20 times, innahu lakum adoo mubeen, he is a clear enemy to you, shaytan. And now we live in a time when shaytan is openly worshiped, openly praised, they had satan con, they have a conference celebrating satan in Boston just like a month ago, they're claiming it's the largest gathering of satanists in history of the world. What was the opening act if somebody got up there and started tearing up the Bible? This book advocates misogyny, homophobism, and patriarchy, and blah blah blah, slavery, tear it up. And a lot of these ideas, the Bible is a book that promotes traditional theology, morality, objective truth, those things are found in the Quran. Do you think they like the Quran? Of course not. But what do these satanists actually believe? Many of them are atheists, they don't actually believe in satan. So many of them actually, they call themselves satanists, but satan is more like a symbol. He's not a real person. What does satan symbolize? The worship of the nafs. This is what they say. Worship of the Hawa. And this is a very, very common form of idolatry nowadays. Everybody worships something. We don't buy into atheism. There's no such thing as an atheist. The Quran doesn't entertain atheism. Somebody, everyone worships something. Have you seen the one who takes his Hawa as his God? That's his God. He worships his Hawa. So that's what it is. So even like, you know, movies and things like that, these things have to be screened now. I mean, I highly recommend before your child watches a G rated movie that you watch it beforehand. This is how we have to live now. Because there's saloonal messages, there's things in the background. I saw this movie recently. There was this thing in the background. And the children are like, hey, what's wrong? There's a cartoon. What's wrong with this cartoon? Come on. My dad is so strict. We have to explain these things to people. Explain things, you know, these things in a calm manner with adab and try to impart upon the child the importance of the dangers of these types of things. Basically anything Disney you have to be careful. Yes. Yeah, 120 Baqara. Yeah, it's funny what Ali is telling us. The reality is the situation. You know, so the lesson is to have uprightness in the religion. Be upright as you have been commanded. And don't worry about, you know, like I said, about the feelings of people. Don't try to intentionally hurt people's feelings. But the opinion of Allah every single time is more important than anyone's feelings. Say, I believe in Allah and be upright. Istiqamum. Stand up straight. And don't be afraid of people who reproach you. Don't be afraid. If you turn away from this religion, Allah will bring a new people that He loves and they love Him lowly with the believers, but having strictness against hostile unbelievers. Being principle, the unbelievers see them as having a type of dignity. And they're not afraid of those who reproach them for their religion. So the Arama say this, of course, in their tafseer of this ayah, why do these people leave the religion based on this ayah? Because they didn't have the proper love of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's why He loves them and they love Him. And then why are they not afraid of those who approach them? Because they have rational arguments. They have academic sophistication. They can defend their religion with clarity, with coherence, right? This idea again of the trivium. What is the trivium? Teach your children these three arts. They're called the liberal arts. But liberal, I don't mean left wing. Liberal meaning the freeing arts. They free your mind. What are they? Logic. How do you think properly? Grammar. How do you speak properly and write properly and rhetoric? How are you persuasive? The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was the most eloquent of human beings. He never made grammatical errors and he was the clearest thinking human being. He was a master of these arts. Otherwise it's sophistry. It's just persuasion for the sake of persuasion because I feel this. This is what I feel. And if you don't feel it, then you're canceled. But what about Allah canceling you? We don't want to be canceled by Allah, right? Because that's the real cancellation. There's no coming back from that cancellation. You know, if, if, uh, what are these? I don't even think right now. Facebook, no. Instagram cancels you. Maybe they'll let you back, right? After you do your penance and your repentances and, uh, and your groveling and, but if we get canceled by Allah, we're in trouble. So, but the thing about Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is he is a tawab, which means he is constantly willing to forgive us if we make tawba, right? So being a state of tawba. But if, you know, if you're, if you're not recognizing that what you're doing is simple, then you'll never make tawba. And this, again, is something that the modern culture is teaching children that you need to just accept who you are. And nothing you're doing is really wrong because there's no objective, there's no objective truth and falsehood. Nothing you're doing is really wrong in reality. It's actually wrong. So there's no need to make tawba. And if you cut off tawba, then we're in trouble. Last question. That's time. Well, yes. Yes. The question is, do I know about the, about Prophet Ibrahim alaihi s-salam sacrificing Ismail alaihi s-salam? Yeah. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was testing Ibrahim alaihi s-salam. Allah did not want Ibrahim to actually sacrifice his son, right? So the test was to see if Ibrahim alaihi s-salam is willing to put Allah above and everything even above his children because the person loves their children more than anything, more than themselves, right? So he passed the test. When Allah said, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told Ibrahim to stop, he says, you've already been true to your vision. You've already fulfilled your vision. In other words, the intention of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was not to actually have him sacrifice his child, but be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, to demonstrate his love for Allah greater than anything, anything else. That's the lesson we take from the story. You know, Christians take a different lesson. But we don't take that lesson. Yeah. So I mean, traditionally it's, it's, it's very similar to our understanding that Ibrahim alaihi s-salam, he is the father of the tradition. He is sort of the quintessential monotheist, right? A pteragon of virtue. But I mean, it depends on, nowadays it depends on what, and it's hard to find a traditional Christian anywhere now. I work in Berkeley. I talk to Christians in Berkeley. They believe in things that would have them anathematized from the church. I mean, you have the Pope saying things that are very strange, which according to many Catholics, I mean, he said things that are cool for according to many Catholics, this is a Pope. So who knows what they, you know, I mean, there was somebody who told me earlier that, and I've heard this before from modern rabbis, that Ibrahim teaches us that we can debate with God, that we don't have to listen to, we can debate with them. And we can ask God, you know, what do you mean by that? No, I'm not going to do that. So this is, this is sort of the lesson that some, some of the, the modern rabbis are taking and teaching their congregations about the story of Ibrahim alaihi s-salam. And then Christians sort of see Abraham as more like typological, like what he's doing with Isaac is more sort of foreshadowing of what's going to happen with Isa alaihi s-salam and things like that. But traditionally it was, it was, and I think this is true to a certain extent as well, is that they see him as the father of the tradition and a virtuous monotheist, a true monotheist. And the Quran is very explicit about that. Well, it's a moment of time. Except the hajj of those who are coming back from the Holy lands. Please keep us in your prayers.