 It's all welcome everybody. It's a pleasure for joining. Feel free to move closer if you like. I'm subbing for Czech Rami. So I wanted to just share some thoughts. I noticed that there's a lot of discussion these days about spiritual abuse. And I'm seeing that show up in my Facebook feed a lot and online. I don't know if you guys have been hearing about this term lately. No, yes, no, a little bit. Yeah. And so I actually had a really bad experience myself with the Muslim organization, which I consider a cult. Looking back at it, I feel like it was a cult. But at the time, I obviously didn't think that. But I wanted to just share that. I learned a lot of things in that process. It was a very traumatic experience, very difficult experience. But I wanted to share it because I learned a lot from it. In about three years or so have passed two or three years now. And so even though it was difficult, but like I said, I think I learned a lot from it. So I just wanted to share some of those things. So I'll start with, before I get into the lessons, I'll start with just give you an overview of how things happen, like what happened, basically. About 13, 14 years ago, roughly, I was much more inclined to political Islam. There are certain Muslim groups that are very politically inclined. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I was more involved with those types of things. And anyway, I was married at that time, no kids. And my wife and I, and we lived in Northern California here locally, my wife and I decided to go to Syria to study Arabic for a couple of years. We cut it short because we found out my wife was expecting with our first baby, alhamdulillah. So we came back after a year. But in that one year that we were in Damascus, so that one year in Damascus, although it was very beneficial, we were there to study Arabic. But along the way, I studied with some local scholars about the saw-wolf. So I became very interested. I liked it. And so I just had that in my mind that this is something good. So my wife and I, like I said, we came back to California. And the political Muslim group that I was very involved with, they started to have internal problems, just fighting amongst each other and things like that. Not fist fights, just disagreements and things like that. So that was going on. And that was making me a little bit confused about what to do. Meanwhile, like I said, I had this understanding now about the saw-wolf. So I started to kind of look that route, like look for something in that space. I ended up learning about a sheikh in a, I won't get into the details because it doesn't really matter. But I found out about a sheikh. He lives overseas. But his, so now I'm going to get into a little bit of the technical terms because it's important for the story to make sense. He has a Khalifa, meaning a representative. Are you very familiar with that term or that idea? Like you have a sheikh and that sheikh has tons of students. But then he also has Khulefa representatives around the world who represent that sheikh. And then most usually the marines, the students, they work with the various Khulefa. So anyway, I learned about a particular sheikh. And I just fell in love with him. And the first time I met him, I just felt like he just changed my life. And I was ecstatic. I was like, I can't even believe I met a person like this. I'm just super happy. And so then I got more and more interested. Then I found out that even though he's overseas, he has a Khalifa in Chicago. So then I started keeping in touch with the Khalifa in Chicago. So as is probably obvious, I met him as well. And I also was very impressed with him. And so things started to kind of, I just kind of got more and more into it until I reached a point that I decided, OK, I'm going to give a beya, I'm going to go ahead and go all the way and give a beya. Are you guys familiar with that term, beya? The idea that you have a sheikh and then you're kind of pledging allegiance to that sheikh in a sense. And anyway, so I did that. And then for, oh, OK, so let me back up a little bit. So then, so things were going well. I was learning a lot. I felt like I could concentrate in my prayers. And I felt like spiritually more uplifted. Now, around that same time, again in California, we lived in actually, no, sorry, by that time we had moved to Southern California. We were in Orange County. And then we found out that my wife was expecting our, by that time, our third baby. So we had two kids by that point. And then she was pregnant with the third baby. Unfortunately, we found out that that baby had a genetic disorder. So still in the womb, she's six months pregnant. Find out baby has a genetic disorder, trisomy 13, if you guys know the term. And it was just devastating for us. I mean, it just completely just turned our world upside down. Because that's a very serious condition. Usually they tell you those babies are not even born alive, typically. So it was devastating for us. Now, the sheikh from overseas and the Khalifa in Chicago, they were very helpful. They helped us get through it. Erwal, the Khalifa, mainly interacted with us. And he was super helpful. And then he talked us through how to deal with it, our emotions, and all those things. So it was very powerful. It had a really big effect on us. So anyway, unfortunately, sadly, the baby was born. We named him Habib. Rahmanullah, he passed away, though, after about 19 days. So through that whole process, like I said, they helped us. And so the point of all that was that I became very close to the Khalifa because of that experience. Now, at this point, I was like, wow, these guys are amazing. And these guys, they changed my life. They know what they're doing. Everything's wonderful. Why don't we just go move to Chicago and be with them? So my wife, and I had been badgering her, she finally agreed. So about maybe a year later, we moved to Chicago. So we were with that Khalifa and very close to him. We ended up staying in Chicago for a total of 11 years, actually. And so the first nine years were, from my perspective, at that time, were great. Because what it meant was, everything's going wonderful. I'm not fighting with my wife, because if there's any problems, we just go to the sheikh and he tells us what to do it. We just do it. If I had any to ask advice about work or job or anything like that, I ask him. He tells me what to do, I do it. So no effort, no thinking, pretty much on my part. Literally almost anything. To the point, I used to ask him what kind of haircut to get, what kind of car to buy. I'm not joking. So for me, it was just perfect. I don't even have to do anything. I just, everything's great. So anyway, things like I said are going along. We were there for nine years. So we have three kids, alhamdulillah. So after the baby that passed away, we had another baby. So three children. And then the two older children did their hips in Chicago, alhamdulillah. Maybe I talked about one time here, I don't know if you guys remember it. Yeah, it was a while ago. But anyway, so all that happened over there in Chicago. But then nine years in our world, like again, turned really upside down this time. We found out suddenly through just friends who were connected to this group that the main sheikh overseas, he had been accused of some very inappropriate behavior or interactions with women. Now for us, it was devastating at that time. Now this is really sad, but I know since then there have been lots of reports of these kinds of things. So people are not quite as shocked anymore, I guess, which is really sad, right? But at that time for us, it wasn't that way. This was in, I can't remember what year now, 2016 or something, I think. And this was not super common at that time. And so for me, it tore me apart because my mindset was that this sheikh or these people, I'm the luckiest person in the world because I have them in my life. After the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam these are the best people in the world for me to interact with. And they really had built up this kind of culture with us, with the students. And so when I learned of these things, it was totally devastating because I thought, how is this possible? How can it be that this person who's helped me focus in my prayers, helped me read Quran, helped me do all these things? And then that person turns out like this, rotten, it doesn't make sense. So I did some digging, I did some investigating and I found out that I couldn't get definite proof on all the allegations, but certain things I did. I got, I directly talked to some of the people involved and I was just blown away. So that was devastating for me. Now, that was the sheikh overseas, the main sheikh, right? So meanwhile, there's a Khalifa as well. So I'm interacting with the Khalifa. I'm like, what's going on? What is this about? And he won't deal with it, basically. He's trying to like cover it up and he's trying to make excuses and whatever those types of things were going on. And then I was even further confused because I was like, it's bad enough he did that but now on top of that, why isn't anybody dealing with it? Why isn't anybody addressing this problem and fixing it? And so I just got, I got to the, basically I got to the point in that phase, I would go to bed every night and I would just, I would just, I wouldn't actually pray for death, but I would feel like I wish I was dead. I would rather be dead because, you know, in that state, I know it sounds crazy. It sounds really weird, but, you know, at that point in my life, that was everything for me. That was my world. Everything revolved around that, right? They have this saying that, you know, when you're with your sheikh, you should be like a, like a dead, like, you know, when you watch the dead body, may it, you do a whistle, they use that metaphor and say you should be like that with your sheikh, let your sheikh do whatever, because, you know, you're dirty and your sheikh has to clean you up, so just let the sheikh do whatever. So that's kind of the mindset, you know? And so when, you know, going from that mindset to all of a sudden like questioning everything, and I'll be really blunt with you. I reached a point where I said, you know what? If this is Islam, I don't want to be Muslim. If this is what Islam is, then I don't want to be Muslim. Why should I be Muslim? And sadly, there were, there were out of this whole specific mess I'm talking about, there were people that left Islam in the process, because as word got out that this happened, you know, people reacted in different ways. Alhamdulillah, I thought about it though and I realized, no, it's not, I mean, Islam is correct and I need to follow Islam, but you know, but these people are messed up and this whole, this whole construct is problematic because what I realized was that they had, they had trained me in such a way that I thought they became kind of like my proof of Islam. They became the proof of Islam rather than, and because Islam doesn't need them as a proof, Islam is valid. You know, anybody can look at the signs of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. Anybody can use their aqa, anybody can read the Quran and understand this is really from Allah, you know? And the fact that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he's really the messenger of Allah, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So anyway, that's the background. After that point, I decided that I need to get out of Chicago because I was just surrounded by the students, the rest of the marines in the group and it was just driving me nuts because a lot of them were just in denial. They couldn't really fully understand like or even accept what was happening properly. So I was having a hard time. Anyway, so then, alhamdulillah, ended up getting a job opportunity here. I talked to my wife and then my kids as well. And then we came out here. Now, one of the main reasons I wanted to bring this story up in this context, you know, in the men's aqa is that as the father, as the leader of the family, this was easily one of the most difficult things I had to deal with. Probably, you know, the baby dying, that's emotionally difficult, but this was way more complicated and difficult in a different way because my kids were dead against moving. We had raised them with that sheikh, with that Khalifa. We had raised them in that community. Their life also was that whole, you know, called spiritual community there. And so for them and then the children from that community were their best friends who they grew up with. So they were very upset. They did not understand why, you know, we had to get out of there and leave. So that was one of the lessons was actually that, you know, as the leader of the family of the father, sometimes you have to make really tough decisions, right? It's hard. It's hard watching your kids crying and bawling and saying, you're ruining our lives. You know, you're messing us up. And, you know, just that kind of thing, it hurts a lot. And it wasn't just one or two days. It lasted for a long time. You know, and then you just, as a father, you have to say, I know I'm hurting you. I know I'm messing you up, but I have to do this. That's the right thing to do. And the long run is the right thing to do. Yeah, you're gonna be messed up for a little while. It's gonna hurt you for a little while, but this is a situation we're in. We just have to do the right thing. You know, so that anyway, so that's one of the main reasons I'm bringing this up. So anyway, I went ahead and then I told that the local Khalifa, I said, I'm done. This whole thing is not okay. I realized that this whole idea of submitting to a sheikh, it's not appropriate. You know, they use this term submit to the sheikh and they qualify. No, we're not talking about, it's not like submitting to a law. It's different and stuff. But you know what happens in reality? I've seen, even though everybody says that, they act like they actually are really literally submitting to the sheikh and I've seen them in my own eyes. You know, like they have, I'll give you an example. That same sheikh who was overseas, he added in one of his books that if you ever see, if you ever see your sheikh doing something, I think I forget the exact wording, but basically it's that if you see your sheikh doing something harm with a woman, you should distrust your own eyes and assume that the sheikh is innocent. Can you imagine that? That's the level of submission that they expect. And then when this whole mess was going on, another Khalifa, another Khalifa had, and it's still online, I believe, he had a, he has, there's audio recording of a lecture he gave, again, about this whole topic. And he tells this very disturbing story about a sheikh who tells his student, you should go visit a brothel, sorry, I was saying this in the Majid, but you should go to a place like that. And then the student is very confused, but he said, no, I should listen to my sheikh and he goes. And then it's a very complicated story. And in the end of it, something good happens to him. And the moral of that story, which of course is not valid at all, the moral of the story was like, even if something seems wrong, but your sheikh tells you to do it, do it because there's some wisdom behind it. So you can see how there's some manipulation going on. They're just doing these mind games to make you think that no matter what the sheikh is doing, no matter what the sheikh is saying, you just submit and do it, right? So that's another extremely important lesson is, well, any human being, but especially as fathers, as men, we have to use our brains, we have to use our uncle, it's not okay. That whole phase I went through, maybe at that time in my life, that's what I needed, but that whole phase of just like, oh, you just tell me what to do, I'll do it. I'm not gonna do any thinking. And I won't lie to you, it was very comfortable, it was really fun because I could just, I didn't have to worry about anything. I would just go to the sheikh, do you tell me what to do and I would do it. It's really hard to make decisions on your own. It's difficult to do the research on your own. It's difficult to go and talk to the right people and think through problems and analyze them and then make a decision you still don't know if it's 100%, right? You just do the best you can do, right? But that's reality, that's how real life actually is. We have to be able to do that. And some people are, I get, some people are not at that level. Some people, everybody has different circumstances and maybe they can't do that. So I'm not here to force anybody to do anything or not do anything, but that's just what I've seen in my life, that at some point, as again, as men, as adults, as fathers, you have to just grow up and say, hey, I'm gonna have to do these difficult things because that's just life and that's something that we have to learn to do. So I'm just gonna quickly go through some of these lessons and then I wanna over up for question and comment because I realized that this is controversial and there might be people with other opinions or views and I would love to hear that. I'd love for it to be a discussion and not be like, I'm trying to force this on anybody. Oh, another huge lesson was just simply that everything happens according to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala's will. And I can tell you now, I don't have any regrets about what happened. Everything that happened happened the way Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala wanted it to happen. Because if it didn't happen, I wouldn't have learned all these lessons. There's no way I could have learned this from a book. If somebody just told me, hey, Yusuf, guess what? You can't submit to a sheikh. Like it wouldn't have made sense to me. I had to experience it. But when I experienced it, then I realized what it means to actually be in submission to a person out of the below. Oh, this is another huge thing. So if you're studying with, this is general advice. If you're studying with anybody, don't let them cut you off from other people. So because one of the first things these guys did when I became their student, one of the very first things was they basically advise us not to study with anyone other than them. Don't read news. Don't listen to things. Don't go to a website or nothing other than those shifts. And their excuse was that, we don't want you to get confused. There's a lot to learn and you won't be able to focus. And it made sense at the time. We were like, okay, cool. But what I didn't realize was that it was basically ended up being a mind control thing. Because we took it as, the students took it as, as if it's haram to even listen to another person. So what ends up happening is all your information is coming from the floor. Now he's not holding a gun to anybody's head and saying, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna watch you all the time. They don't need to. Because this, this, this relationship is so powerful. It's so manipulative that you basically, you don't have to do any of those things and you can control people, right? And so, so that's just the lesson was that don't let people control you by, by controlling your information sources. You know, you make your own decisions about who you should study from or not study, study under. We talked about that. Don't, you know, nobody's above the law, right? But I'll just, just to emphasize that was one of the themes of this whole, the whole mess that happened was the sense of like, no, the sheikh is basically above the law. They would say, they would use these funny terms, right? We know that, we know that the prophets are masum, right? Everybody understands that prophets are masum. They don't commit sin. Everybody agrees on that. So what they would do is they would do a play on that. They would say, we're not masum, we're not prophets, we're not masum, but we are mahfu. That's how they would phase it. Allah protects us from doing sin. Because we reach such a high spiritual state, we just, we don't sin. It's like, you know, once you grow out of that phase, you can't go back. It's like, they would give this example, that, you know, if there's a child and once a child becomes an adult, the adult can't go back and become a child again. And our crazy thinking, we would believe it. Oh yeah, that's really deep, mashallah. You know, when reality is just complete farce, nobody's above the law. Because now, with that paradigm, you think, oh, it's not possible for the sheikh to commit a sin. And then when he does it, then your whole life falls apart, right? So we shouldn't accept that in the first place. And then the last lesson I wanted to share, and then inshallah, we'll open it up for Q&A and comments, is that life is not black and white. Life is not black and white. You know, like I said, these are people, they did do a lot of stuff for us. They did some really great stuff. That's why we were so in love with them. That's why we basically, or I was totally like, yeah, I'm ready to submit. You know, they did that. But the reality is they also did some really wrong things. And so good people do bad things sometimes. And bad people do good things sometimes. And that's, again, that's reality. That's tough. You know, when you're young, it's easy getting my young political days, not again, not to bash political grove. They have their own, whatever they're doing. That's fine. But for me, I know when I look back, it was easy because you'd read in the paper, Muslims are getting killed, slaughtered, and you'd get all worked up and you just think everything's good and evil. And you know, everything's very black and white. And you think everything's so clear cut, but that's not real life. Real life is not super clear cut. That's why, why was it that, you know, in the early, just go back to the Sahabah or they allow on them, just look at their history. They had to deal with some very, very tough decisions. Things were not clear cut, but it was because they dealt with them. And it was only through that that we actually learned how to deal with those things. Otherwise we would be completely confused, you know. And so that this is part of growing up. That's just part of, you know, maturity that you realize that there are some things that you have to make tough decisions. Like I said, that is a simple example. I got my kids crying in front of me, saying you're ruining our lives, you're messing us up. And then me saying, what do I do? I have to get out of this situation. This is wrong. We have to do the right thing. So anyway, so that's what I wanted to share. Just a few lessons in the story. And so I would love to hear from you guys or hear your advice or your comments. Please, you know, go ahead. Yes? There's a commercial sharing, brother. Way out there. Make a mistake. Does it mean we throw everything we learn from them away? I don't suppose it's gonna be different but in a normal way to say it. How do you? Yeah, let me repeat your question for the mic. So I think your question was that the way I presented it was very black and white. And if the scholar messes up or the chef messes up, I assume, then you just, in my case, I just completely left. And what do you do if a scholar messes up? Do you kind of like throw the baby out with the bathwater kind of thing, right? Okay, so I don't think I'm qualified to answer that question. I can just tell you how I handled it. That was specific for my situation. But my feeling is that, no, you should not do that. You should, I think, and probably in most cases, you'll find that you have really good people. Again, good people, they do some bad things. They mess some things up. And honestly, even with the Khalifa in Chicago, I still think he's a good person. I just think he didn't handle it the right way. My beef is that this whole idea of submitting to the sheikh and creating this relationship, that's what I have a problem with. I honestly still think he's a good person and he really did give great advice the whole time I was learning from him. I got a lot of really good advice. So no, me personally, because there's all this history and baggage, I can't go to him anymore. That's me personally, though. But if somebody else went to him and got advice, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Does that make sense? Yeah, what else? Why? Oh, yeah. Yeah, let me repeat the question. That's a great question. The question was, why do people still follow the sheikh? You mean like after they found out that he does all these things? Yeah, so it's very interesting actually. So I don't know, I can't claim to know, but I can tell you what I've seen. So I think in this specific case, people broke up into two groups, two camps. One camp said, and this is all over, mainly overseas, by the way, one camp said you did something wrong. Your whole job was to uphold the sharia and to follow the sunnah, you didn't do that, you screwed up and we're out of here. You're basically a fake sheikh. And they just left him. Roughly half, which is a half the people about. The other half though, they basically said this whole thing is a conspiracy. They use all those excuses like I said that the sheikh is above the law basically. If even if you think, that's why I gave that example of if you in the book, that's what it says in the book. If you see the sheikh doing something wrong, you should assume that your eyes are messed up, but that the sheikh is not doing something wrong. So they have all these mental, mind control things going on where they convinced themselves that the sheikh actually is still pure and innocent and that everything should go on as normal. And they just think that the other people are wrong for believing these accusations. I don't know, you don't look satisfied, but that's kind of what I observed. Any questions? Can I tell you in private? I don't think it's appropriate to do it in this context. I'm happy to talk to you in private though about it. He's all over the internet by the way, if you... Anyway, I'll talk in private. Yeah, I mean, one of the interesting things that happened was that a very prominent scholar, again overseas from the same country, issued a fatwa against him. And so you know what they did? The reaction was there was an attempt on that scholar's life. That's the kind of stuff they do. And I was looking actually on the, have you guys heard of this website in sheikh's clothing? Have you seen that? Yeah, it's really interesting. And it's actually all about these kind of situations. And he says in one of his articles, the brother for the website, he says a lot of times, this is unfortunately a common thing where they actually act, they're like mafia. You come out openly against them. They will do like physical stuff, you know? And so I'll tell you another interesting thing. When this whole thing happened, some of the people in the group, because I started becoming very vocal about it, right? Some of the people in the group came to me and said, use of stop, because every single person who's been vocally has said anything openly against the sheikh, some kind of black magic has been done on them. They've had some kind of calamity in their life, right? So these are all fear tactics, you know? And that's why I did this. In fact, I did a post on Facebook, very explicit. I named names, everything. And then the first thing, not the first, one of the first things I heard from people was like, oh, have you got any death threats yet? Because that's how these guys operate. You know, but my personal stance is like, I don't care, like this is, you know, the right thing to do is to warn people. Because I, you know why I do it, why I share this stuff, one of the main reasons is, I almost lost my mind in the process. Because this whole mess that happened, I literally almost lost my mind, and I don't think anybody should have to go through that. Anyway, it's a way longer answer than you. You have spent so many years with them, what did you find, what was their ultimate objective? Is there any, just to gain their follow-up more and more, okay, some financial benefit or what? Yeah, that's really interesting. I've thought a lot about that myself. Again, I can't, you know, I don't know for sure. I can just tell you what I've seen. The pattern is typically, excuse me, you know, these are men who have a lot of clout, usually married, in fact, I think in every case, married. Now they have all these women who are their students, but by the way, a lot of the inappropriate stuff that's happening was with the wives of their students, male students, their own male students are married, right? Those wives, if you can imagine, I mean, it's really weird. But again, it's a power thing. I think that's my take on it. That it's just like a power thing, they can do it, they can get away with it, so they do it. You know, the way they would set it up is they would say, they would somehow justify the fact that the women could meet with the sheikh in private. So then they have, the woman goes in, married woman goes in in private with the sheikh. They seal the door, they lock it, and then they put a bunch of hadmins. A lot of times these people have tons of hadmins, like people who want to serve them basically. They put them as guards outside the door. So men can't even, first of all, there's women, so they're very strict about segregation. So men, like a random person, man, can't even get near there in the first place. There's hadmins and then the door's locked, right? So that's kind of the situation. Anyway, that's going on. There's a ton of financial abuses going on. There's this whole thing about, they're collecting money to do some kind of Islamic project, and then they would take cash, right? And then there's no accountability whatsoever about how the money's being spent. So they're definitely getting financial benefit from it. And I think ultimately it's, that's my opinion that it's just power. They just can do it, so they do it. I don't know. Does anybody else know? Has anybody else looked into this stuff? Yeah, I don't know. That's kind of what I take. Do you have any ideas? Yeah, yeah. Cool, was there a question here? No. Yeah, yeah, all the time? Yeah, tell me why you're asking that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's what boggles the mind. Shariahs and the shariahs and the shariahs and all day long, that's what it is, you know? And we were- You can see the hypocrisy, that teaching one thing is a big benefit. So it's exactly, it's completely weird, right? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And let me add to that. Muftis, they have Mufti students under them. And again, I don't want to name names, but literally some of the top mothers in the world, world-renowned, well-established madades, Muftis, and they support them and somehow justify this stuff. And so actually I didn't mention it. I had written that as well as one of the lessons that you should never think that you're so smart or so spiritually, you can't fall for these things. I saw in my own eyes, people very educated, smart people, when you, you know, by the time you get to that state that you're so attached to a person, you can justify anything. Yeah, it's shocking. I'll develop protectives. Was that too heavy for you guys? I was really debating should I even talk about this or not, but I thought maybe it's appropriate. No? Should I apologize? I was quite a bit in other world countries. Really? Yeah, tell us. Yeah. You've heard of this before? Yeah. Oh, Subhanallah. So in Pakistan, for example, there are lots of examples of that. Subhanallah. You know, the whole practice of going to a madar and having this kind of thing going on here. Yeah. Really? Wow, that's shocking. Yeah, the brother was saying that this practice is very common in certain places overseas, right? Subhanallah. I mean, I think one has to be awfully careful that even if I fall asleep, I'll be fine. For sure. And of course, Sharia is one of everything. Exactly. If you see anything that the sheikh is completely Sharia, you should not fall asleep. There you go. Similarly, just like a city or a smaller country or a state or a shallows and they're that sort of rubbish area. Absolutely. No, no, no, no. I hope I didn't give that impression. If I did, let me clarify. Yeah, I definitely don't mean that all of anybody is bad. I mean that this mindset of submitting to another person, that's what I'm criticizing. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and honestly, I'm 46 years old now and I've seen political groups and spiritual groups and all kinds of things. And I'm OK with everybody. I don't really care what your label is, you're Muslim. But on the flip side, I also don't care if you have a certain label and you're doing something wrong. If it's wrong, it's wrong, regardless of your label. Yeah. No, for sure. What else? I don't know if any sisters were listening or not, but if the sisters have questions or comments, let us know. OK. I'm done. All right. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. Is it better to not have those kind of groups or have groups? So I'm not qualified to answer that. OK, sorry. Let me repeat your question. So the brother is asking, eventually, is it better to have those groups or to not have those groups, right? By those groups, you mean like Sufi groups or Sheikh groups? I don't label them whatever it is. OK. Yeah, what do you mean? If it's my impression of it, it's basically a call. That's what I was in, for sure, yeah. And then my opinion, again, is nothing of that kind of group. Sure. So from the way this guy did it, eventually, you don't know what's going to come out of it. So many people probably mind it. So much attachment to it. Yeah. So it's something done there. Yeah. That's what allows it to continue naturally. Sure. And now I know maybe they think it might be good to learn being loved carefully. Like I said, at this time of the age, there are so many avenues to learn from. Yep. Not to just do it bad. I mean, it's good to do bad, to learn, but not fully submit and follow whatever is being told. And what the body said is sad that, you know that Sharia, there is a love, but there are certain. But if that kind of group develops, sometimes Sharia is going to be set aside at certain times. Yeah. I would think of it not like it only in RV. Any group with that kind of followers? Exactly. It's not good to try that, sir. Yeah. Yeah, so I'll try to summarize that. Little girl, you're basically saying that those kind of groups that lead you towards work, it could ultimately lead to setting the Sharia aside. That would be dangerous in which they should be stopped and prevented. Right? Yeah. So I'll tell you an interesting thing. And so as I mentioned earlier, oh my god, it's 9 o'clock. You guys have to go. I don't want to keep anybody here. I'll just say really quick, I saw a documentary about cults. And it was not a Muslim cult. It was like a Buddhist cult, maybe, or some other religion. And these guys were in Hollywood. They were based out of Hollywood. And it was just like as opposite as you can get to Islamic culture, basically. But when I watched the documentary, they used the exact same tactics that I had experienced, which is that they take you to a retreat, and they have this whole thing about what, well, in my group is called Nisbah, they call it connection to Allah, and so only the sheikh knows who's connected, who's not connected, how do you do it, how do you not do it. And so basically they caught this whole imaginary world, and only the sheikh can control it. And so then the same thing in the documentary, the guy that did the same thing, and he has the power to decide who's quote unquote connected or not. And then they come to this retreat, and he's like, yeah, you're ready, OK. And then he'll do some little hocus pocus, and then they'll be rolling around on the ground, and oh my god, I'm connected now. And I'm not joking, exactly the same kind of thing happened with the group I was in. They would have big bath ceremonies, get it right together, oh, now you don't get Nisbah yet, but you do. And then they're, oh my god, I felt it come from here, and it went there, and bounce around my body. So it's just interesting, right? Like, those things are common. Yes? Yeah. Yeah, so before I answer that, if anybody needs to go if they're like, they need to get their kids or please feel free to head out, no problem. So the brother's asking about, did I get into this based on Tsoov, and what is my take on Tsoov, basically, and was I following Tsoov, I think, exactly what you're asking? Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, thank you for asking that. So no, I think, in my opinion, I don't think anybody can deny Tsoov, I mean, that's this part of, that's from the Quran, there's no way around it. Because I understand it's just simply the process of purification and doing those things that you need to do to purify yourself. My experience was that there are people that exploit that and use that feeling that people have who want to do Tsoov, because yeah, the answer to your question is that is what I was looking for. That's literally why I joined. I thought, these guys are gonna help me get purified so that I can get closer to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's what I was looking for. And then, but then there's all this other baggage came with it. So that's what I have a problem with. But no, in my opinion, Tsoov is just like, it's part of Islam, I don't even know how you can get around it. Maybe that label bothers people, that's okay, labels, you don't have to use that label. But it's in the Quran to purify, right? Sure. Sure, yeah. So I don't have a sheikh, but I still try to do my zikr, I still try to do, well, we call it Maraqabah, I still find that beneficial, I still do that. I still have a routine of reciting Quran. So a lot of the stuff they gave me was useful. So I don't wanna, again, who was saying, throwing the baby out of the bathwater, I think that a lot of the things they gave me were useful, so I try to keep those things. But at this point in my life though, I'm not comfortable taking a sheikh. I know I have very close friends who do it, brother right there said, he still does that. So I think everybody has to decide for themselves. But for me personally, no, I don't have a sheikh right now. So last question. Yeah, yeah. I guess, you've been now based on your knowledge, and what's your family doing now? You need to consider yourself, other than with yourself, although you're not connected to anything. Yeah, if I'm with the soul, so the brother's asking me, do I consider myself with the soul, right? I'm not sure exactly what you mean, do you just mean somebody practicing the soul? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah, sure. All right, I think we should probably wrap up Jazakalakkar. Thank you. And yeah, if anybody has specific questions, just see me privately in Chalapag. Jazakalakkar, Salam Krupal.