 So Dr. Awad will start us off with an introduction to loneliness where she will discuss the rise of loneliness, the impact of such and the importance of human connection as well as a mental health toolkit. And then alhamdulillah we are honored to be joined by Sheikh Awadullah Evans who will discuss the protective factors from Islam, maintaining and strengthening relations with family. And again, blessed to have Sheikh Ramadhan Sur join us as well for our Maristan Ramadan campaign. We will also have Amal the poet join us when she will provide us with a piece of spoken word. And then we have Sheikh Hamariam Amir Masha Allah she will be talking to us about protective factors as well and how important it is to maintain and strengthen the relationships we have with our friends. And then we will also have Sheikh Hamariam discuss how to make friends as an adult. And then we will have Sheikh Ramadhan Masha Allah join our stage again and discuss how to protect our community from loneliness and reach out to others. And alhamdulillah at the very end we are blessed to have a panel and it'll be more like a fireside chat on the topic for today which is again navigating loneliness and we'll have everybody join us. So ladies and gentlemen please welcome Executive Director and Co-Founder of Maristan, Dr. Rania Awad. So many thanks for all of you who are joining us today on this 23rd day of Ramadan. May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala accept from all of us our Ramadan our fasting and our prayer our du'as and our charity. Masha Allah today insha Allah I'm going to talk to you about a discussion on loneliness and I'll speak directly to the mental health impacts because insha Allah later in the program will also talk about the Islamic and communal aspects of this as well. The reason we decided to really talk about loneliness is because it is something that all people feel at some point in their life subhanAllah. Some may say that mental health isn't something that they deal with but the reality loneliness as a subset of things that people deal with as part of their mental health is something we all actually deal with. A definition of mental health from the loneliness from a mental health background is that it is a gap between the level of connectedness that we feel versus what we actually want and it's very different actually from social isolation. Social isolation is a lot more about your contacts and how many you have. So you can have a lot of contacts but not actually feel lonely or the opposite can be true with again it's a subjective feeling of loneliness. Some people feel content to be alone and others actually really do need the companionship of others. There are three kinds of loneliness that we discuss in the mental health field. One is emotional loneliness. A person longs for a close confidant, a confidant, an intimate partner, you know kind of a mutual trust or bond and this may happen with friends or maybe a marital bond. There's a second form of loneliness which is social and that is when people long for quality friendships and support. In our Dean we would call this a good Suhba, a Suhba Salihah. And thirdly collective loneliness and this means basically network. You can have people all around you, you can have family, you can have friends but maybe you don't have a larger network of people that share your interests and your purpose, sense of purpose in life. Basically safe spaces that you can exist within. So today inshallah we're going to talk a little bit about the rise of loneliness. In fact many people would think this is because of the pandemic but it's not just because of the pandemic. It turns out that a Harvard report on loneliness that was published in 2018 right before the pandemic showed that in America we have reached an all-time high for loneliness. Would nearly half of the people in that study reporting always feeling alone. And the paradox is this is a period of time in our history where we are more connected than ever by social media, phones, Zoom and so on. Yet loneliness is on the rise. And so what happens then if you can imagine that's where we were before the pandemic and you enter into the pandemic with social isolation and other aspects of the pandemic that then really becomes more like a pressure cooker right, a pressure pop. So the question might come up why do we feel lonely? And on the mental health side of the discussion we would say you know it's very much influenced by our social norms versus our individual needs. And this is why there needs to be a balance shift kind of between different cultures, understanding that collectivist cultures tend to not feel quite as lonely as individualistic cultures. And here in the West in the US this really is an individualistic culture by and large. And we also have to understand that loneliness has a very clear public health crisis to it. Like there's an element of concern here because the research is showing that it is on the same scale. Imagine this loneliness is on the same scale as the opiate epidemic or obesity. In fact, some studies are showing that a person who smokes 15 cigarettes a day can have the same levels of heightened health risks as the one who is lonely. There is other research showing that there are more adults experiencing loneliness than have diabetes. So you see SubhanAllah when we talk about the impacts of something like this you can see why we chose this as a topic especially now that we are just past that two-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic. And as I really kind of sum up a little bit here and kind of thinking about what is the benefit of really thinking about how to solve this issue of loneliness, one of it is our natural fitra, the way Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala created our primordial instincts which is to connect to be amongst people. And we know that people who are connected to each other actually live longer and potentially happier and healthier lives. There's a lot of evidence to show that when there's social support that people have they're able to actually maintain both physical health and mental health. And so I'll just very quickly give us a couple of tips, basically five steps like a toolkit of how to help loneliness from a mental health perspective. And then I'm very excited to have Sheikh Abedullah join us to talk about how to do this from a Islamic perspective inshaAllah. So here's tip number one. In the research about loneliness of how to combat this and how to navigate it, one of the most interesting ones that stood out to me was getting out in nature. I love the SubhanAllah because there's something about feeling grounded that's very helpful. Something about the greenery and our spiritual teachers would say this to touch a tree, a leaf, something that's real, because when you're in this virtual bubble all the time it's hard to keep track of what's real and what isn't. And because our organization is called madistan and it really is modeling itself after the traditional Islamic holistic healing centers of the past, they had a greenery everywhere. And this was a very purposeful thing to really help us feel better. Number two, some people say that they rather not have a big circle of friends or that they're an introvert or they have social anxiety, let's say. Number two is help another person in some way. This really does combat loneliness because even though you don't have to be directly connected to them or stuck to them, what happens is if you are doing something with a sense of purpose, of service to someone else, that feeling of loneliness starts to actually dissipate. And this comes even from research in medical understanding and absolutely jives with our spiritual understanding Islamically as well. Number three, make time for the arts. Now I know people might think this is an interesting one, but the Harvard Medical School has a project called the Unlonely Project. And what they found is when they had people who were feeling lonely work in arts, everything from poetry to pottery, and today we'll have a little poetry for you, inshallah. They felt that this space of the arts actually was purposeful and it made them feel surprisingly connected, even if they were physically alone. So try that out, inshallah, make space for that just like making space for nature. Number four, reach out to people you know for no reason at all. And that means it's really easy to get caught up in this concept that we have to have a reason to call or text someone. But actually some researchers that looked at loneliness specifically said that if you reach out to people, even for no good reason at all, you start to feel that you're not as lonely anymore. An example of this is if you take a photo on your phone and you just send it off to anybody in your contact list and just use it to get a conversation started, right? Look at this cool picture I took, right? It's a tool for connection. All of these modern devices we have, social media and phones, if we use them intentionally to share moments of our experiences authentically, then we start to feel a lot more connected. And lastly, tell people when you do feel lonely. You'll be surprised how many people actually do care. And they actually do respond out and say, give you some beautiful messages and remember that you are never actually as alone as you feel. There are billions of people in this world and so many of them have experienced loneliness as well. And it's a temporary thing that will pass. The sun will set, the sun will rise, you'll meet new people, you'll lose people, you'll meet more people. It's the kind of cycle of life. And so I'm reminded by the Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in which Sayyidina Abu Bakr Siddique is worried about how the enemies are coming after them and they're hiding alone, isolated in this cave, worried for their lives. And he asks the Prophet or tells the Prophet if they were just to look down at their feet, they would see Sayyidina Abu Bakr and Sayyidina Muhammad and Sayyidina Abu Bakr hiding in the cave. And he reassures them and he says, what do you think of two people who the third of them is Allah? And then we have the verse in the Qur'an that reiterates this where Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tells the Prophet to tell Sayyidina Abu Bakr and remind him, Inna Allaha Ma'ana, Allah is with us always. And with this insha'Allah is a good segue insha'Allah to Shaykh Abedullah who's going to talk to us more about the Islamic response to loneliness. Please welcome scholar-in-residence and executive director of Alam, Shaykh Abedullah Evans. Be it virtually in your presence this afternoon. These are blessed last 10 nights of Ramadan. And this is a blessed endeavor, you know, thinking about ways to serve our community and to contribute to healing, especially those issues that don't get spoken about as much as maybe some other issues. Loneliness is one such issue. And when you think about kind of the supreme remedy for loneliness, it is to recognize that God is with us. As Dr. Rani have beautifully mentioned the story of the cave and the Prophet alaihi sallam and Sayyidina Abu Bakr. But Allah says in the Qur'an, wa hua ma'akum aina maa kuntum that God is with you wherever you are. This does not obviate our need for good company, but this is a reminder that the supreme companionship, the supreme maia that the Muslim is trying to deepen and to accentuate and to enhance is that that witness with God. And that's why I was thinking in preparation for today that it is ironic or perhaps poetic, you know, shout out to the poet that we're talking about loneliness at a time when some Muslims are engaging in self-imposed, not loneliness, but they're deepening that witness or that companionship or that connection with God, which we're always enjoying that. We're always experiencing that. So that's the first thing. And it's, you know, cleaning up those receptors so that we feel that witness, that maia. You know, the second thing is recognizing that in other than a few very specific instances, the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, who is our exemplar, is our role model, is our lived example of what it means to be a centered, balanced, whole human being, he always preferred good company to loneliness, or he always chose good company over solitude. Even if, you know, he was given to tahannoth or he was given to solitude, God made him choose good company, that the Prophet, peace be upon him, said famously, that this Islamic religion, this faith of ours is not a religion of monasticism. It is not a religion of self-imposed loneliness or a complete separation or divorce with the world. Rather, it is a relationship of deep affection. There are bonds of deep community. The Prophet, peace be upon him, was somebody deeply ensconced in the world around him. He was a neighbor. He was a relative. He was a husband. He was a parent. He was a leader. He was a confidant. He was a friend. So I think, you know, the first thing we look at is that there is no God but Allah, and Allah is always with us. The second thing is that if we are following the example of the Prophet, peace be upon him, we should know that his lived example is one of excelling in your relationships with other people. It is not a spiritual cultivation that takes place outside of the context of relationships. And the third thing is that we need each other. There's a verse in the Qur'an where God speaks to the Prophet, peace be upon him, and he says, that it is God that helped you with his aid. It is God who granted you his support and the support of the believers. Don't forget the role that people play in your life. I don't care how singularly spiritual you regard yourself as or how, you know, apart from people and maybe some of us sacredize inappropriately might I add, this ideal of being singular and, you know, we've seen all of these biopics about the hero's journey and it's always a lonely journey. The Prophet, peace be upon him, had us had. He had companions and they were together for life's highs, for life's lows, for life's travails, for life's triumphs. They cultivated a deep bond of togetherness and it was that that they relied on in addition to relying on God. So that verse very significant because from a theological perspective, one could say, if God helped the Prophet with his help, why does God need to mention the believers? In fact, the believers, they are, you know, essentially a means of God helping the Prophet but it is to remind us of the significant role that we play in each other's lives. So those three things I think are sufficient in the small amount of time I've been allotted that we remember that God is always with us and that even now, as people are doing it at Dicav, it is not a self-imposed loneliness. It is deepening, it is paying attention to that relationship with God so that we strengthen it and it is what poise us. It is what carries us, even when perhaps there is, you know, separation from people that we also love. The second thing that I mentioned is the lived example of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that, you know, his is a very public spirituality. It is a very public religiosity. It is a really, it is a religiosity that excels in human connection, human relationship. And then thirdly, that we need each other. Don't allow ourselves to be deceived into what I think is a very toxic culture of self-reliance and we need each other. We need each other for support. We need each other for love. We need each other for validation. We need each other for comfort. We need each other for even just mutual enjoyment. Enjoyment is not full when it is solitary. So those are a few of the Islamic protections that come to mind when I think about loneliness. Please welcome poet Amal Kassir. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. That is also the title of my very first piece. Today, I ask the angels to visit you in this greeting. A divine appointment of God's salams here at Maristans Healing Journey. Let's invite Allah's light into the brushing of our shoulders. Let us set our intentions right. Let's make the ummah's noor grow bolder. When I cast you a salam, wrap it in rahmah and send it back. A peace be upon you. It is better than a shirt from off a back. A salam from a Muslim? That's a gift from the heavens. And you never know, it could have been sent down from the seven. May God's peace be upon you. May the noor of a noor shine down on you. May the angels twirl around you if you knew it would astound you, what is packaged in our peace. This is a greeting that sets the spirits free. And I don't know about you, but the world outside does not necessarily scream peace. And yet the barakah of this greeting can turn our usra into ease. You would not believe me if I told you a salam wa alaykum saved a life. You would not believe me if I told you it had the power to ease a Muslim strife. Sometimes it's a salam in the streets to remind you that you are not alone. And sometimes it's a salam to someone in need to remind you your mouth is a home. It is a sign of the end times when we pretend not to know one another. Like a family full of strangers, no sense of sister or brother. But this umma is equipped with a vocabulary to carry each other's sorrows, to ensure God's blessings are all widespread, to ensure people spread peace tomorrow. So let's turn our mouths into gardens, orchards full of trees, from which we give to our umma all this. And the salam wa alaykum that you give me. Salam wa alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh to the beautiful audience all over the United States all over the world. My name is Amal and my name is Hope in Arabic. I am so, so honored to be here with this beautiful organization who I believe with my heart that the impact of this work is going to last far beyond this moment today and perhaps far beyond our lifetimes as well. May Allah make it victorious and may our pockets just overflow to represent what it means to us. The poem that I have prepared for you all today is one that was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of what I would call my own personal year of sadness. And I think like many of us, the isolation that took place commanded us to sit inside with ourselves. And in the midst of that isolation, I ended up getting to know a whole different community. And that was a community that was inside of me. One that I thought was just demons and darkness, but I ended up learning otherwise. Bismillah, here we go. And now please welcome the founder of the Kariah app, Shekha Mariam Amir. Bismillah. When I moved to a different city, Subhanallah, I didn't have any new friends and I had left everyone that I had known since I was a young child. When I moved there, I got the news that my grandfather, may Allah have so much mercy on him and all of our loved ones who passed away was very sick. And Subhanallah, he passed away. May Allah have so much mercy on him. I miss him and my loved one so much. And I know many of you do miss the people that you have lost. And when we're going through that type of grief, sometimes we don't know how to reach out to someone and ask for emotional support. And I moved back to my city. I mean, I went back to the city that I had just moved to. And a friend of mine who I considered very close called a few weeks later. I hadn't heard from her when I had just lost my loved one. And I was a little bit hurt that she hadn't called, even though we had known each other for many, many years. Subhanallah, when she called me, she didn't say anything about my grandpa. And I didn't feel comfortable saying anything about him. May Allah have so much mercy on him and all our loved ones. And so I started to feel a little bit of resentment in addition to the hurt that I already felt. And she said to me, what's going on? I feel like we're strangers. And I shared with her, you didn't even say anything about my grandpa, Rahimahullah. When she heard this, she said to me, you're always so strong. You're just always so strong. I didn't think you needed any emotional support. And that's when I realized that this was a friend of mine who had seen me go through many difficulties throughout college. And I never complained. I never complain is not the right word. I never shared that with her. I never talked to her about what I was going through. She would tell me what she was going through. But I just didn't tell her why. Because I had kept hearing that the highest level of iman is the person that doesn't complain. It's the person that doesn't talk to anyone else about their pain. It's the person that only goes to Allah to talk to him about what they are going through. And so because I had heard that so many times, I just didn't talk to my friends about anything that I was going through thinking that's the highest level of iman. And what they interpreted that to me, including this friend was, I just didn't need to talk about anything I was going through. I realized that I actually wasn't being vulnerable with my friends. Because I thought the only place I should be vulnerable is with Allah. And that's true. There's a special type of vulnerability with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But also Allah created us in communities for a reason. And this is what my friend told me. Allah didn't create us to be by ourselves all alone. He created us to be in communities so that we can support one another. Look at how the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam would talk to Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu. When Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu saw the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam praying so hard, so intensely before the battle of Badr, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam was comforted by his friend Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu. He was given hope by his friend Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu. And so even the most righteous of the righteous, they had friendships. And that experience allowed me to realize that maybe I had been isolating myself so much, thinking it was righteousness. But really I wasn't allowing other people to get to know me. And because of that, I wasn't allowing one of my biggest needs to be met. And that is sisterhood. That is the deep feeling of someone caring about you and calling to see if you're okay after a loved one passes away. Studies have shown that for a stranger to become an acquaintance, to become a friend, it takes 50 hours. For that friendship to deepen, it takes another 40 hours. And for you to become really, really close friends, it takes 200 hours of spending time together. It makes sense. The more that you spend time with someone, the more that you're going to get to know them and the more comfortable that you may feel being able to express your own self to them. Oftentimes when we look at reading the Quran or we look at a sport or we look at a new hobby, we know it's going to take us many hours until we actually reach a place where we feel proficient, where we feel maybe we are not necessarily even an expert, but we know what we're doing. Why are relationships different? Why wouldn't it take work to be able to cultivate that type of relationship that we're seeking in our lives? And as we're navigating this feeling of loneliness in adulthood especially as we navigate that process when we are going through being students in college or high school and then working or becoming a mother or a father or whatever that may look like or moving to a new city, sometimes it can be really daunting to try to make a new friend. But there are four steps that inshallah we can do ourselves to help create that. The very first one is making dua. Ask Allah SWT for Suhba Salihah. This is a dua that we can make in these last ten nights of Ramadan for ourselves for our loved ones. Allahumma o Allah, ruzukani. Bless me. Provide me. This is a rizq. Provide me with Suhba Salihah. Bless me with righteous companions. Bless me with good solid companions. And many people ask, do these companions need to be Muslim? They do not. It is okay of course to be friends with those who are not Muslim. Are these people going to bring you closer to Allah? Are these people going to value your religious commitment? Are they going to honor the boundaries and limits that you place and can you help teach them about the beauty of Islam as well? So learning to cultivate that relationship first begins with making dua and making the intention that inshallah you can also be a blessing in the lives of the people that are around you. Secondly, steady your heart. There may be times where you make plans. I remember this once, a group of friends of mine made a plan to meet. We hadn't met in two or three years. I was so excited. I couldn't wait to meet them. I had planned it. I had asked for help to do certain things. My husband was taking the kids. I couldn't wait to go meet with my friends an hour before we're supposed to meet up. One of them texted and said she didn't finish folding her laundry. So she couldn't come. Another one texted and said she hadn't taken a shower yet. So she wasn't available. Another one said that someone had surprised her out of town. So okay, that makes sense. I was so hurt that your reasons for not being able to meet after all this time was you haven't folded your laundry or taken a shower. I was so hurt that the next time they said they want to meet up, I just refused. I was not engaged in this conversation only for my hopes to be dashed again. But you know what happened when I didn't respond? Other people didn't respond either. And that kept happening until finally I asked Allah to help me and I asked for His forgiveness and guidance. And Alhamdulillah, I responded and I said I'm committed to coming no matter what. Alhamdulillah, other people did too. And Alhamdulillah, we re-cultivated this friendship that we really, really had missed. Thirdly, do an activity, especially with someone new. Maybe it's axe throwing. Maybe it's bowling. Maybe it's going and doing groceries together. Sometimes the effort of working at the same time helps build that bond, especially particular experiences. Maybe you've been camping or maybe you've been to Umrah. Maybe you've had a very deep connection with someone in a moment of pain or hardship. And you have a very particular friendship with that person, even if you don't speak very often. Build that relationship by doing work together. And finally, don't forget, put in the time, 200 hours for you to build a strong relationship. Invest in a relationship, make the intention that it's worshiped. And may Allah accept it as worship and help you build that community for yourself and your loved ones. Please welcome Poet Amal Kassir. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. This is a piece of Luit and Lath Ramadan. The devil is shackled yet the voices are still here. There's still demons in my dungeons. They are whispers in my ears. Let me tell you about these spirits. I thought the monsters to save the least. Fear, loathing, shame, sorrow, living wounds, bearing teeth. They kept my nefs so lonely. So I hid with them for years. Abandoned all community. I thought at best I'd disappear. But I knew I had to free myself. So I set out to find a home. In a world beyond this broken, to sit by God, to find his throne. And I took my demons to the mountains, tried to sacrifice them on four peaks. Then one night, in lonely question, resurrected, they came to me. They said, Amal, you cannot kill us. You must convert us to your Dean. You can't race us. You must face us. You must see what's been unseen. The more you run, the more we grow. We'll grow like pests inside your heart, begging you to pay attention. You will not heal as we take part. I could not bear it all my monsters. They were asking me to know them. Was this some kind of joke all I've ever known was to woe them? But then I listened closely. And I could hear them speak. I heard them mumbling. They said, O Allah, don't let us sink. We are gasping. We are gulping. One moment, hopeful, then despairing. We want to try to end this life. We feel our soul is up in terror. So like Ishaq, I took their knife. I told them hope is truly daring. Every day is a new life, like the waves all reappearing. All these monsters inside of me, they just needed some attention. Turns out these monsters inside of me also needed Allah's affection. My Lord, you are mercy. All we seek is the light you bring. Help us heal our wounds and demons. Let us make it through to spring. Invite us to the halakas with those who know our pain. Show us all your barakah. Send your Rahmah down like rain. This world is all collapsing. But my monsters have repented. I was lost, but now I'm found by these feelings God had sent me. My brothers and my sisters, when it seems the end is near, hug the heartache and the monsters. Pray to God, he's a Samir. Stop running from your monsters. Heal them, set them free. Invite them with the butterflies into the garden under this tree. All this burden, all this broken, it expands the chest inside. If our hearts were not cracked open, where else would faith reside? So let your knees buckle and let your tears fall. Exhaust the angel on your shoulder so even he can't write at all. My name is Emel, and my name is Hope. Always keep friendship and community inside of your dua. And I treat my mother in there too. Hi, Mama, I love you. Salamu alaikum, warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu. To transition to a discussion with all of the speakers, inshallah. We have Sheikh Abidullah Evans joining us again and Sheikh Maria Mamir and Sheikh Rami, as you see here. Alhamdulillah. And Emel the poet, inshallah, we're going to have some discussions about really everything we talked about. Really everything we talked about here to sum this up, because we've been talking about loneliness. We have been talking about how actually to combat this, both in a mental health perspective, in a Islamic perspective, in our social perspectives, inshallah. And so I have a couple of questions, hopefully for the speakers. And we hope this will be a really exciting segment for everybody to really hear everybody discussing this together, inshallah. Sheikh Abidullah, I'm going to start with you, inshallah. And ask you a little bit about protective factors towards loneliness. And ask you specifically about families. Talk to us, please, about relationships with families and how to really, you know, have that Get better, inshallah, strengthen those relationships. You know, whenever I think about family, a quote always comes to mind that if you find that you're disillusioned with anything You should ask yourself, why did I have any illusions about this to begin with? You know, family is difficult. Family is a great source of enjoyment. Family is a great source of validation. It's a great source of love, a great source of affection. But family can also be a great source of challenge, a great source of trial, a great source of tribulation. One of my teachers, when I was at Azhar, he said, if you look at the way family is described in the Qur'an, You find a lot of very challenging situations. I mean, right from the very beginning, there's Cain and Abel, Habib and Khabib. And then there's Ibrahim and his father. There's Noah and his son. There's Yaqub or Jacob and his sons. There's Yusuf and his brothers. Moussa and his stepfather. There's Lulz and his wife, Asya and her husband. My point here is that the test of family and reaching out to family is not because family is supposed to be perfect. Right? Relationships are not sustained through perfection, but rather forgiveness. So I think, you know, the Prophet, peace be upon him, gave us a direct order. When he said, Seal al-Arham, you know, reach out to your relatives, right? Be in relationship with your relatives. And it's not contingent upon their being unproblematic or their being perfect or their being easy or their being enjoyable. It's just them belonging to us. Now, of course, if there is something huge like there's been some abuse or something like that, we're not talking. We're talking about, you know, the small, sometimes trivial, you know, issues that keep us separate from our families. We really have to find a way of transcending those, getting past those. And I'll say one last thing and maybe move from this question to someone that can offer a more enlightening response. As you get older, and I learned this from Dr. Omar Farouq Abdullah, you know, he said to me, you know, as you get older, you will inevitably notice people's weaknesses. You will notice their shortcomings. You will notice their flaws, especially people close to you. If God blesses you, you will see those shortcomings. You will see those flaws. You will see those weaknesses through a prism of mercy. So when you think about your relatives, you think about your uncle, you think about your aunts, you think about mom, you think about dad, you think about your siblings, don't judge them. Think about the burdens that they carry and then marvel at the fact that they carry them as they do and forgive them and know that you too are in need of forgiveness. I have not been perfect as a nephew. I haven't been perfect as an uncle. I haven't been perfect as a brother. I haven't been perfect as a husband or son. And so why would my expectation of anyone else be perfection? Right? So retell to your relatives and embrace them in the fullness of their humanity, even if that means you get an opportunity to practice the sunnah of forgiving them. Masha'Allah. And Allah knows best. That's beautiful. Shalom. Jehub-e-Dallah, I just want to thank you so much for mentioning the nuances of relationships because sometimes when we talk about Islam and building relationships and maintaining those connections, we don't recognize those circumstances where someone is experiencing abuse or something else that's much greater than the little trivial things that keep people apart. And that narrative pushes so many people into difficult situations or even toxic relationships thinking Islam wants me to do this and can bring greater harm to themselves or their families. So may Allah bless you from bringing nuance to this and bless Maristan for the healing work that they do for families and helping them process the trauma that comes with it. Jehub-e-Dallah, I wonder if you had a thought on this. I know you've done a lot of work on, you know, you've been translating a book called Dhir-e-Ranwali Day and Her Righteousness to Parents. And I wonder how you, you know, you counseled a lot of people on topic like this over the years. Yeah. And thank you, Jehub-e-Dallah. I've benefited immensely. I mean, some of the insight that you shared, especially about the families in the Qur'an, you never heard about it before. So may Allah bless you and bless your sheikh who shared that with you and may Allah bless his family and your family. This is the month of the Qur'an and I always love trying to get more understanding of the Qur'an. And what I experienced in Mauritania is that the whole Mahdara turns to the Qur'an recitation, tafsir, understanding and learning more about it. So may Allah bless you and bless your teacher. While I was in Mauritania during Ramadan, one of the things that one of my teachers encouraged me to do was study the books of Sheikh Mohammed Maudud, which it's a series of books that really focus on the lesser known lessons of the sunnah that he saw were pervasive in the society that people were not studying. So they would study more, they would study grammar, they would study logic, they would study fiqh, they would study all these sciences, but they're not studying the purification of the heart or the prohibitions of the tongue or the rites of parents. And so he wrote these short books and they were really impactful to me and helped me during my Ramadan journey of purification that we go through. When I started studying the Birol Walidane book, I said, wow, I need to translate this, I want to teach this to people. And when I came back, it was the year 2000, right after Y2K. I did a quick translation, I did some lessons. It had amazing impact. People, after I taught that very short lesson and maybe a two or an a half hour seminar, one person came up to me and he said, and he had just walked through the Musallah area where I was teaching and he was going to leave, but he started listening. Something caught his ear and he leaned up against the door and I thought he was just going to leave after 10 or 15 minutes. He leaned there for two hours and he listened to everything. He came up to me afterwards and he said, he said, he said, you know, thank you for that lesson. I haven't spoken to my father in 16 years. And I didn't know what to say. And he said, I didn't actually didn't know what to respond. And he said, I think it's time I give him a call. And that was from that work of Sheikh Mohammed Mouloud. And I kept hearing stories like that over and over, people not talking to their parents living in the same house for six months, they wouldn't speak to their parents. And that book changed them. So I translated, I put it up commentary, I taught it online. I taught so many people. The one consistent question that I have gotten at the end of that book when they're presented with all of our tradition about respect of parents and honor of parents in the Quran and the stories, the tafsir and the hadith, the one question that I get is, what about if my parents abused me? What if my parents were toxic? What if my parents were narcissists? What if my parents, I just, I, I, you know, and one man came up to me and it's not thank me for the course, but then he stood there and peers rolling down his eyes. He said, I can't be around my dad. And so there's deep trauma, there's deep hurt sheikh. I'm ready to law mentioned this alluded to. He said, you know, about, he said, we're talking about the, you know, the general, you know, family issues that are more light, but sometimes there can be deep trauma. And so what I, what I encourage everyone to learn is, yes, we learn the rights of parents and we learn with the optimum. But then we realize, what if I need to learn healthy boundaries in how to deal with them? What if I need to be able to heal from my trauma? That's where work like Maristan really comes into play where you have clinicians who are working as, as, as, as, as on the same team with people who have that religious expertise and they can, they can help this person navigate this very, very difficult terrain of how do I respect my parents and protect my own mental health? Well being, how do I, how do I heal from the trauma while at the same time fulfilling the rights of parents? And I'll end on this Sister Sinead O'Connor, she became Muslim a few years ago and you can see, you know, she was very vocal about her Islam. May Allah protect her and bless her and bless her family. And she just went through a very, a tragedy of losing her son by suicide and may Allah ease her pain. She became Muslim. She took the name Shohadah over the martyrs of Ireland that she saw as martyrs in that, in that struggle for independence. And my mom's side of the family is Irish. So that I have that connection. And I was really happy when she became Muslim, just for herself, but also for my people. And, and so she has a video on Dr. Phil, where she talks about her trauma with her mother, who was extremely, extremely abusive. But she talked about how she eventually became to terms with that. I encourage you to watch that video because it really juxtaposes both of that thing, the deep hurt, well along with noticing that connection that Allah has given to us through them. Thank you so much, Shahrami. And it's, these are difficult topics. And I want to say here, just pause for a second for everyone listening, you know, the work that we do at Madistan, which is meant to be a, you know, therapeutic, holistic, healing sessions and therapy. We're raising funds literally for people to be able to seek out support for the small things and the large things, for the everyday things and the very traumatic things that happen in our lives, SubhanAllah. And all of these, as we know as Muslims, are tests from Allah, SubhanAllah, but he calls on us to seek out cures and help. And that's really important. It's part of our Islamic duty to actually seek out that kind of help. And this is what we're offering today, insha'Allah. And I just want to say this very quickly. I want to go to Sheikh Maryam Nesta to ask her a question. But I want to tell you all, because people will ask, can we seek out therapy at Madistan? Yes, it is open, it is ready. If you are in the state of California, please do reach out. infoatmaristan.org, if you need to have any sessions, if any of this conversation here is triggering you in anywhere or reminding you that this is something you'd like to actually reach out for help for. And if you are not in the state of California, if you go to our website on the resources tab, and we'll put all this in the chat, there are directories of all these different Muslim mental health clinicians across the country and even globally that you can put in where you are located, hopefully find someone near you. Now, Sheikh Maryam, you talk to us so beautifully in the lecture about friendship and as another form of really helping and healing our isolation and our loneliness. And you talk so beautifully about how to really deepen that. And I wonder if we can hear from you a little bit more about deepening that particularly as adults. Especially as adults, it can be difficult for us to navigate meeting new people and being vulnerable with individuals. And I think one of the ways that we can actually help our own selves in building these relationships is by lightheartedly having these conversations where we can ask questions that help other people realize that we want to get to know them beyond how's the weather and how's Ramadan going in a very general way. Researchers talk about working and building relationships through asking specific types of questions. So for example, getting together when you're going out to eat and instead of saying, let's say it's someone recent and acquaintance you've recently met, instead of asking something like, oh, how are the kids, which is an important question, of course, but something like, tell me about your most embarrassing moment or share with me the last time you cried or tell me about a hope that you have for your future. And these questions might seem very intense for someone that you've just met, but at the same time, it also points to someone wanting to get to know you beyond a very surface level interaction. And it can also help if you're willing to share first. And of course, you should make sure that the person you're talking to wants to actually interact in this engagement. But you can begin by saying, let me tell you the answer to that for me and then ask them. And also being able to hype one another up is sometimes really important. Sometimes even when it's a recent friend, a recent acquaintance, that hype up helps you to feel like you can feel comfortable around this person in a way that allows you to also accept their advice when they're ready to share it. So I'll end by sharing this story. I was recently talking to a new friend that I feel so grateful to have. I remember when I first met her, like a few months ago, we were literally like, are we, are we actually friends? Did we make a friendship? We were so excited about it, even though we've only spoken a few times. And she was telling me about how this Ramadan, she just feels like she hasn't been able to focus in her worship. And I was like, I know I've had the same problem. And she's like, yeah, you know, my mind is with the kids and with this and with that and my health. And so she's talking about all these things and I'm like, oh, you got to take care of your health. No, no, no, you're taking care of your kids. And then I'm telling her my things. And she's like, no, but you're doing this and you're doing this. And we're just, yeah, no, we're trying so hard on them a lot. And we both looked at each other and we're like, we need to try harder. But the point was in the beginning, it was like, no, we're here, we're here, we got this. And then, oh, no, we're going to support each other and trying even harder. And sometimes getting to that outcome, take some time of building each other up to be able to know we're safe for one another. And we're not going to let each other do this alone. We're going to get to a point where we can support one another through this, even if it's just asking, are you hitting your goal? How's it going? And even just knowing I'm not alone, my normal dawn hasn't been as good as I wanted it to be. And neither has hers. And that doesn't make either of us terrible believers. It means we're struggling. And that we're not done. And that we can keep going in Charlotte and try to achieve our goals in Charlotte even more. That's kind of a lot. I would love to just echo off with us, Chico Merriam. And just like that conversation you had with your friend, just like, are we friends? Is this actually happening? And how necessary it has been in my personal journey too, to have that conversation like, yo, this is a struggle. I want a friendship. What do you want out of the friendship? What do I want out of the friendship? And there's this vulnerability there. And always with vulnerability, it requires courage. But and over time, the trust building and putting the marbles in the jars, as Brené Brown talks about in that process. And I had this realization with a new friend of mine as well, who I made during Ramadan. She really feels like an answer to some of the lot. But we were talking about Rasulullah Sallallahu Ala and our orphan prophet, May Allah make us make us like him, Ya Rabb. And how did not have his siblings, he did not have his family, he had his friends, he had a Sahaba. And that there's so much richness in these beautiful relationships that we have. And to add this more deliberate intentionality of what do we want together in this friendship. I have found so many more fulfilling relationships than this, instead of just kind of like, being like awkward, like eighth wheel, or ninth wheel, I guess, and we're using the semi truck metaphor, not really knowing how to fit and how to squeeze into these conversations. It's so valuable to have these meaningful conversations with our friends and try to embody this community of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So beautiful. And I really hope everyone's, this, I know it's, I know it's resonating with me. I hope it's resonating with everybody here. I want to say in kind of wrapping up this section of our discussion and I, we could talk, this group, I could talk to you all forever. I want to mention that there's a couple of questions that came through the chat and I appreciate that very much. And there's one in particular, I wonder if, you know, if our scholars here can speak to a little bit, inshallah, you know, we talked a little bit about part of this healing process is on how to set what I'll interpret it as healthy boundaries. Right. And people hear that word boundaries. And they think this is kind of a Western thing. It doesn't belong to us Muslims when in reality, you know, it actually is in fact part of our tradition. And so I want inshallah for us to talk just a little bit about that because this question comes up about boundaries. And particularly the questions asking about when people meddle in your life and they act like the judge, jury and executioner and end up causing more kind of fitness or difficulty. And so I wonder if each of us can actually say something kind of to this point. And, you know, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. You know, whenever I hear about boundaries, I never, I never deem it kind of a Western intrusion into our Islamic tradition. I think about trying to do good in a sustainable way. It's trying to, you know, خير الأموري عند الله أدوامها وإنقالة that the best deeds in the sight of God are those that are performed with the most consistency, even if they're small. So if I know that, you know, there's a certain level of interaction with an individual that will probably descend into toxicity, it will probably descend into something unwanted, something undesirable, then setting that boundary is not because I want to keep them at arm's length, but I want to maintain the goodness, the sweetness in the relationship. You know, we need to have boundaries so that we don't go into areas that we don't, we don't need to be. So whenever I think about boundaries, I just think about it like, you know, if I engage someone and we, you know, cross a boundary, that engagement will become regrettable to me. That engagement will become lamentable to me. And then over time, I will probably end up avoiding that person or not wanting to be in the company of that person. But if we set healthy boundaries, we can sustain our relationship and we can grow it. You know, so I think about, you know, setting boundaries like planting, you know, seeds that, you know, I have a regiment according to which I water them and give them sunlight and give them plant food so that they can grow and eventually fruitify. You know, so it's not, it's not like boundaries. Oh, I don't, you know, I'm, I'm exiting you out of my life. No, I'm trying to determine how we can deal with each other on the basis of sustained goodness. And when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't learn that he grew tired of anyone's company, nor did anyone grow tired of his company, right? Because they had very good boundaries. And when a boundary was crossed, right, I'm thinking about the Wilema of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he married Safiyyah. Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam sent down revelation, by that I'm too fantastic after you eat, you know, after you eat me, because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam had such hishmah or such ihdishan that he wouldn't, he wouldn't tell them that you're crossing a line and overstaying your welcome. So God told them, don't overstay your welcome. This to me is a great example, a quranic example of setting a boundary, so that we can have a relationship of sustained goodness. And Allah knows best. I'm wondering if the other folks would like to just kind of give us another couple lines here on this topic. InshaAllah as we close this section out. Yeah, I'd like, you know, Shankar Badullah, when you were speaking about how when you when you heard about boundaries, it didn't make you feel like this is a Western tradition. And that's a really important point because there's still a lot of people who when they hear the term mental health or mental health illness or education, they're like, oh, this is from outside of our tradition. And what I found, even though I'm not a mental health professional, although I'm married to one, and I sometimes joke that I should start a group, you know, support group for those who are married to mental health professionals, as we get plenty of free advice. But I've just done a lot of reading, you know, on various topics, you know, and some training that I've used in my coaching and my work with with with prisoners and life coaching and you know, and helping them get through things. But I've noticed so many similarities, you know, so when we see terms in some of these traditions, we can say, oh, that's that's this, you know, in our tradition or that's this. So when they talk about boundaries, we have an understanding hudud, Allah talks about the hudud of Allah. He talks about the Hima, the sacred precinct of Allah and don't come close to it. And we also know that every believer has it has it has a Hima around them and has a sanctity just like the just like Mecca and Medina and puts all have sanctuaries, the believer has a sanctuary, and it has to be protected. And so we have to build that up on the spiritual side and then on the mental health side with people recognizing that to say, okay, how do I how do I build that up? And then like you said that it doesn't mean that we cut people off, we still have to engage in people. But we know who we're going to keep close. And we're going to have like, Sheikh Maryam was saying, you know, you're my friend, I'm your friend, you know, you know, who that's going to be. And you know who the person that you're just going to say at the Eid prayer, Salam aleikum, you know, from far away, but kind of like, yeah, let's just stay on that side next to the bouncy houses. I'm going to go over here and get some slushies or something. We know how to do that. And then during those times where we need to speak, you know, that's what like you mentioned the Quran and how Allah, you know, sent revelation, he's teaching his Prophet, Salallahu alaykum, how to establish boundaries and healthy boundaries or how to speak in front of him when they raise their voices in front of him. Or when people would say things to the Prophet, he was he was not antagonistic towards people and what he said, but he was direct. In addition to like you said, he had that that that modesty that prevented him. So sometimes we need other people to help us draw those boundaries. And that's where the beauty of the modistan is. And what modistan is doing is that it's bringing that those two traditions, you know, looking at what the modern mental health tradition has done, because the Muslims were never, you know, shy about taking from other traditions and seeing what mesh is with our tradition. Masha'Allah. I can't thank you enough for saying that. And that really is what's inspiring us. As we said earlier, when people ask what does modistan even mean, we explain that it's the traditional healing centers of the Muslims. Bimar is the ill person and Stan is the place of and be modest and where these holistic healing treatment centers, the first in human history to have mental health or psychiatric wards, the Muslims were the first at this. Like you said, we weren't shy from learning and then adding upon. And I just want to say folks are benefiting from this, if they feel like, whoa, this is amazing to learn about boundaries and how Islamically to put this together. If this is helpful to you, I want to tell you that modistan every single month has healing circles and educational circles on mental health, Islamic psychology and Islam that are free and that are open to everyone. You don't have to be in therapy to benefit from those. There's the clinic that we're hoping to launch with actual professional mental health therapy and care. But then there's also these healing sessions that are monthly and free and open to everybody. And I hope that topics like this, because this is exactly the kind of thing we address there that you come and actually join us. Yerub al-Alamin, we come before you in these blessed last 10 days of Ramadan, beseeching you for your mercy Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, we know that we might be the least deserving of your mercy, but we are the most in need of Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, your name is El-A'afu. You are the partner and you love Al-A'afu. You love the part, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, if there's any member of our assembly this afternoon that is dealing with sadness or depression or loneliness, we ask that you give them suhba saliha, that you give them good company. And you allow them to take solicity in your remembrance, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, we ask that you support this effort, that you support this initiative with special aid from yourself, because these are people that are trying to restore Islam to a place of dignity and prominence in the modern world, Yerub al-Alamin. Making our community a place of light, a place of love, a place of relief, a place of support for people who need it, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, I pray that you reward Dr. Rania and the entire team at Maristan for such a beautiful project that is done seeking your face and your face exclusively, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, we ask you for the choices, blessings, and these last 10 days of Ramadan, and that you grant this effort baraka, and that you grant this effort baraka, that you grant this effort baraka, so that it will exceed even the wildest hopes and dreams of its creators and all of its beneficiaries, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin.