 We're witnessing really in many ways the decline and fall of a great civilization, because as the poet said, umamun akhlaquma baqiyat inhumu dahabat akhlaquhum dahabu. Nations are only the morality that they have, and when their morality goes, the nations go with it. So it's very important for those of us, whether you're Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, that we hold on to those values, because the Qur'an talks about a group called Ulu Baqiyah in Surat Hud. Allah SWT says, had there not been more Ulu Baqiyah, would that there were more people of the remnants? And in the tafsirs they say that the Ulu Baqiyah are the people that hold on to the virtues of a civilization in its rise, when it's in its decline. Those are the Ulu Baqiyah. They hold on to the things that made a place great, like integrity, honesty, chastity, loyalty, love of one's country, love of the nation, from the faith. So love your country is part of faith. You want good for your country. When it's bad, you want to remind that it's bad. When it's good, you want to encourage its goodness. So may Allah SWT restore you jadid, because we're not people that look forward to destruction, we're people that love to see flourishing, human flourishing. One of the most important things in being in a body is taking care of the body. All of us are embodied souls. So we are literally inside Allah SWT. God has created the human being as an embodied creature. So we live inside bodies. And these bodies are trusts, they're sacred trusts that are given to us. And that's why we're told to take care of them. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said that your body has a right over you. The right of the body is that you take care of the body. You eat well, you sleep well, and you exercise. One of the most important things in pre-modern cultures was having a martial spirit. And that was partly because there was so much violence in the pre-modern world. Now the violence still exists, but it's usually done through technology. In the past, violence was done with spears and swords. Men met on battlefields, fought wars, territory. We live in a country that even before the Europeans got here, there were many, many tribal conflicts and fights. And the people that lived here had to learn to defend themselves, to protect themselves. And this is part of the Islamic tradition because the martial spirit is very important. When the country's invading, you need people that have the courage to defend it. It's very interesting that what we're seeing now in some places when the Afghan people were defending their country from two invasions, in the first invasion we considered them heroes. But in the second invasion they suddenly became terrorists. Because defending your country against people is a God-given right. Every human being has the right to defend themselves and to defend their country. Our Prophet, peace be upon him, said, Whoever fights and dies defending his property is a martyr. Whoever fights and dies defending his life is a martyr. Whoever fights and dies defending his family is a martyr. That self-defense is a human right. And we live unfortunately in a world that is often aggressive and violent. And so the martial spirit is something, this culture now talks about toxic masculinity, as if it's an overdose of masculinity. But the reality of it, what they term toxic masculinity is actually deficient masculinity. It's a loss of virtue. It's a loss of chivalry. It's a loss of the true male nature, which is to defend what's right, to honor women, to defend children, to defend the hearth and home. These are really important qualities. In our tradition our Prophet, peace be upon him, was a statesman. He was a prophet. He was a statesman. He was a general. He was a father, a benefactor. He was the greatest anthropologist. He fed over 400,000 homeless people in his life. I did an estimate of how many meals he did based on the average feeding 70 people twice a day. He fed over 400,000 people. That's a Sunnah of our Prophet, taking care of homeless people, taking care of the downtrodden. Our Prophet, peace be upon him, was also a martial artist and his art was grappling. All of the Quraish, which is the tribe he came from, were known for grappling and for sprinting and for archery and for horseback riding. In fact, Ibn Abbas said none of the other Arabs could defeat the Quraish in grappling. Nobody wrestled with the Quraish except he defeated them. The Prophet Muhammad met the greatest wrestler of the Quraish and he was considered the greatest wrestler on the Arabian peninsula. His name was Rukhana Ibn Yazid. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said to him, do you want to wrestle with me? To see who's stronger, Allah or Laat and Uzza. And so he said, Sar'a'ini. The Prophet, peace be upon him, threw him, Sar'a'ahu. And then he said, he immediately jumped up and he said, Udya Muhammad, do that again. Now people that study martial arts will know that he wanted to learn the technique because that was the first time he'd ever been thrown. Imam Asyuti wrote a very interesting book called Al-Musara'a il al-Musara'a. Hastening to grappling or hastening to wrestling. And he talks about the importance of learning how to wrestle and this is something all of the Muslims did in Mecca and Medina. They learned how to defend themselves. And not just the men but also the women. And we have great warrior women, Nusaybah, Bint Ka'ab, Safiyah, Bint Abd al-Muttalib, the aunt of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We have Nusaybah also, Khawla bint al-Azwar, great warrior. In fact she would wear a veil, a turban with a veil, and they thought that she was a man fighting. Even Khadir bin Walid initially thought it was a man fighting with them. Safiyah, when she saw that the archers, Nusaybah, when she saw that the archers had fled the battlefield immediately went to the Prophet's eyes and she was taking care, she was nursing the wounded. She went to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and she said she began to defend him. She was wounded 13 times in that defense. So people can encourage a kind of effeminate nature but in the end this will backfire on any people because the world is always going to have its problems. And so self-defense is a very important quality that we have to inculcate in young people but also the warrior spirit, like the great Japanese tradition of the Bushido. That was a book that I just gave Khabib training the samurai mind by Dr. Cleary who wrote that about the Bushido spirit. It's a translation of a Japanese text and part of the Bushido spirit was to purify the soul. That martial arts is learning how to fight the other but there's a spiritual martial arts which is mujahada of the nafs of fighting the ego. And every true martial artist knows and if ego gets them they said that the Qawish were never defeated by anybody. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam people in wrestling it said to the point where they gave up drinking Zemzem because that was a sacred water for them. In other words they became arrogant about their prowess and this happens to people. They become arrogant when they become too militarily powerful. They become arrogant. One of the great painen masters of China a minister asked him what destroys a nation and he said too many successful wars and the man didn't understand that and he said how could too many successful wars destroy a nation? And he said because the wars will weaken their people and the rulers become haughty and arrogant and you never have a weakened people with haughty and arrogant rulers except they will perish. Our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam encouraged but he never he encouraged training and and he would tell his people to train but he never desired to meet an enemy on the battlefield. And in al-Bukhari he said he never desired to meet an enemy never desired to meet an enemy but if you have to meet them then be brave then be brave. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he would grappling was the way that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would determine if a young person was ready to be part of his army when they were defending their homeland Medina which was aggressed upon several times. He would actually have them wrestle and he would watch them and determine if they were ready. So grappling was the the art that determined their their ability to be part of the army. His own two sons grandson Hassan and Hussein he had them he was watching them wrestle and he said he a Hassan he a Hassan come on Hassan and Fatima the mother looked at the Prophet said do you prefer Hassan he said no but I hear Jibril saying come on Hussein the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was a great martial spirit but always for the good and he always wanted the best for all people. He's a mercy according to our tradition the Quran says in surah al-Anbiya wa ma'a ar-salnaka illa rahmatallil al-anamin we have only sent you as a mercy to all the worlds so it's a great blessing to have a warrior spirit like Habib in the Muslim community Muslims have been thrown to the ground all over the world we have a lot of places where they've been battered upon by armies that have much superior forces and unfortunately there's a lot of suffering the great Afran people a great scholarly people with a great tradition have been broken and suffering greatly the Libyan people and other people with a great warrior spirit alman muhtar they've also been suffering the Yemeni people the great people suffering the Palestinians who historically were very peaceful people Palestinians have a very peaceful tradition there's over 3 000 travel logs written in the 19th century about visiting Palestine by Europeans not one of them mentions violence or civil strife between the religious communities Palestinians were never known for that a kind of belligerence the Iraqis another people of great learning so much of our science mathematics comes out of Iraq fallen on hard times so there's it's it's not surprising that people that they feel uplifted when they see Habib throw down people that trash talk our religion and and feel like shouting out Allahu Akbar I was thinking about trash talking him until I watched him fight Conor McGregor then I changed my mind so my because we're irish my sons are half mexican half irish but because we're irish one of my sons actually was a Conor McGregor fan until he saw that a muslim was going to fight him and then he switched sides and that's proof that faith trumps clan and that's one of the powers of our religion is that we give up nationalism for something greater which is the spirit so I wouldn't dare trash talk Habib I actually just gave him a hug and I felt like I was hugging a rod of iron so he actually squeezed me to check me out and so I'm gonna go home and start lifting some weights so next time I see him so anyway alhamdulillah it's a great blessing to be here I really hope that people take these words to heart that we need to really encourage especially our young people so many young kids now are just playing these ridiculous games wasting their life we see so many overweight young people now when I was young you never saw overweight young people it was very rare but now there's so many overweight young people which is very unhealthy and over time it gets worse and worse so it's really important to have your kids train I had my boys go to a Korean up to the black belt the older ones because I really believe in that and when I was younger a lot of us were very influenced by the great martial artist Bruce Lee and so a lot of young people from my generation who shows you how old I am from my generation you know everybody was suddenly wanting to learn martial arts and that's what a martial spirit does really restores that desire especially in young men to learn how to defend themselves but then to to honor that knowledge and never to abuse that knowledge to be truly of the martial spirit which is as Jalaluddin Oromi said sometimes we pick up the sword to take the sword out of the hands of madmen and that's the essence of our tradition our prophet was not a belligerent person he did not like war he loved peace and after every prayer that he prayed the five prayers a day he said oh Allah you are peace and you love peace and peace comes from you and goes back to you may you cause us to live in peace so it's a great blessing to live in peace but as a wise man said if you want to live in peace always be prepared for war and that's why the Quran says unfortunately that translation the following you'll often see to terrorize your enemies it doesn't mean to terrorize it says be strong and prepare for war so that you deter your enemies from wanting to destroy you or to fight you and if you look at the latin word deter it's from day terroray out of fear they don't want to fight you because they're afraid of you and in a world which is often dog eat dog it's very important for people to have some fear in their hearts about addressing on others so may god put the fear of god in the hearts of the wrongdoers and the way that he does that is by making the rightdoers the saudi hun the worthy ones the righteous that righteous band of brothers strong so that people fear to aggress upon them a lot of criminals out there and there needs to be people to counter that and you take your sides in this world you're either on the side of righteousness or you're on the other side there's no neutral ground in this world so choose your side but choose well because there are consequences we're all on the doors of infinity