Transcription
[Music] Good morning. There were people [Music] [Music] [Music] as when you see [Laughter] [Music] [Music] Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Alhamdulillah. [Music] [Music]
Uh, I am actually fairly overwhelmed to be speaking about this subject. It's been something that's been on my mind for a long time. Um, the subject is, many of you already know, is the, uh, the matter of modesty, shame, and actually, more so than shame, I really want to talk about shamelessness and its consequences, the, the lack of shame.
Uh, the reason I feel like I need to be talking about this and giving it more, uh, Muslims generally across this country and maybe even all over the world need to give this subject extra attention because we're living in particularly shameless times. And I wanted to make sure that this discussion is actually comprehensive. So, what I've intended to do is over the course of the next six or seven months to turn this into somewhat of a series, and this will serve as the beginning of that series. So, this is will be the first of many discussions to come on the same subject. I wanted to deal with this with with some level of detail because I think it is something that all of us need to have an honest conversation about from many, many different angles. This is something that affects the Muslims, uh, from many, many different points of view. It has many consequences, and not having an honest, detailed, in-depth, uh, conversation about this and a heart-to-heart about this matter has several very negative consequences that we're seeing around us already.
Um, and I want to preface, you know, my conversation with something I mention often in my speeches is that I am a father of three daughters in addition to two sons. Alhamdulillah, I have sisters. And this is something that affects all of you as much as it affects me. This, this matter of, you know, shamelessness is a matter that influences and affects how the family is constituted, or how a family is even raised, and what the moral outlook of a family is. This is something very close to home. So, this is why this is something that should be given a lot of, uh, care and consideration. I pray that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives me clarity in speech, that I'm able to communicate a message to you that is beneficial and effective, and I pray that this series is a, is a benefit to myself and to the Muslims in general.
Anyhow, I wanted to start first of all with something that I've, uh, talked about in other, uh, contexts previously, but I want to reiterate it because it sets the tone for this discussion. And that is that I want all of us to be cognizant, very aware of three trends in our society. Three trends in the world in which we live, especially here in America, that we need to be aware of and and remind ourselves of before we have a healthy discussion about hayy.
The first of those trends, and I'd like, you know, remember all three of these. The first of those trends is that shamelessness and vulgarity is common and proliferating. It is all over the place. It is, there's a mass proliferation of that which is rude and shameless and vulgar and despicable. And it's common. It's as common as the air around us. It is all over this society. And it's something that you cannot ever even pretend to escape. It is there. It's in your face. It's going to be there every single day. Whether it's in the workplace, or it's on your laptop, or it's around when you're driving down the street and it's on the billboard, or it's on the radio, or it's in the speech, the kind of words people use, or the kind of thing, the way people dress, whatever it may manifest itself in, it is all around us. And it gets worse by the day, whether we realize it or not, it's getting worse and worse and worse.
Now, I want to preface this statement, you know, the standards in Islam, the teachings of Allah, they're standard, they don't change. The things that were right, and the things that were wrong, a thousand years ago are still right and still wrong. And the things that were unacceptable 1500 years ago, 400 years ago, when they were first revealed, they are still unacceptable. Those standards don't change. What was vulgar and shameless back then is still vulgar and shameless today. Of course, these things, they take different forms, right? Time changes, society changes, technology changes, and shamelessness and rudeness and vulgarity, they take different forms. What used to be a filthy word before, even in English, may not have, may have disappeared, and now there's new filthy language, right? So that changes over time, but the standards themselves are constant, they don't move.
But I'm talking about shamelessness becoming worse and worse, not even from the Islamic point of view, but from the American point of view. America was a far more modest place 100 years ago. It was a far more shameful place 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago. The standards keep on dropping. The things that you would never hear on the street in a good neighborhood in this country from non-Muslims, you wouldn't hear such language on the street. Has now become language of elementary school children. That's absolutely disgusting language. And language that many of you Muslims, the adults here, probably don't even know that vocabulary. You don't even know how bad those words are because you, they're not just, Alhamdulillah, they're not in your vocabulary. From one point of view, but they've become commonplace. So, by even the standards of the society itself, we've dropped kind of quite dramatically over, over time. It's gotten worse to worse to worse to worse to worse. And so, this is the first thing I want you to be cognizant of. It is all around us.
And just one implication of that, one consequence of that, you know, when something's all around you and you see it all the time, all the time, you know what happens to you? It becomes normal to you. Maybe the first time you see it, you're like, "I'm stuck in a lie. I can't believe these people are like that. I can't believe what I just saw. I feel horrible about this." You feel dirty inside. But when you see it the next day, and the next day, and the next year, and the next year, and it's just a part of life, then you know what? You see it and you're like, "Whatever. I've seen worse. You know, it's not a big deal to you anymore. It doesn't affect you anymore." Because what have the word, the big word used is desensitization, right? You're no longer sensitive to it. It no longer, you know, has an impact on you.
So, the first time when your heart was actually alive and iman was in your heart, and when iman is in your heart, shame is in your heart too. When your iman was alive, you saw something shameless, the heart is disturbed. But as you're, as you are more and more, you know, exposed to shamelessness, the heart starts getting harder and harder and harder and harder to the point where you see it and you're like, "That's the big deal. That's the big deal." So, these standards keep on dropping, not only from the society around us, but even in terms of our own sensitivity to it, to the point where you might even get students or young Muslims to argue. What's the big deal if I do this or that or the other? I won't specify this yet, we'll talk about them in detail later. What's the big deal? I don't see what the big deal is. I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of this. It's harmless. What do you think I am? A pervert? I'm not. You know, I don't have to be that conservative, that extreme. You know, so these kinds of things, you start justifying the stiffness of your heart too.
So, you know, later on in the series, I'll address shamelessness and a spiritual problem. You know, we can talk about the rulings and this and that of setting, but really, at the heart of it, it is a spiritual problem. It is a problem of iman itself. And the more shamelessness spreads, and the more you get used to it, the weaker your iman is getting. And when iman gets weak, not only is your sensitivity to shame affected, everything else about your life is affected because our entire life depends on our iman. Allah guides his heart. So, if the iman is wrong, where is the guidance, right? So, it affects everything. But the first problem again, that shamelessness has become widespread, and we are not sensitive to things that we used to be sensitive to. We're less and less sensitive to them, and the bar keeps on dropping.
The second thing that is commonplace in our society that I want you to be aware of: there is an extreme individualism. Individualism has taken an extreme form. It's turned into a monster. The word I just used is individualism. You know what individualism is? You're only worried about who? You're only worried about yourself. The expression we use in our language is "looking out for number one." You ever heard that before, right? All you're concerned about is yourself. Now, in a capitalist society, that's expected. You know, because the pursuit of happiness means your happiness, right? And the pursuit of opportunity means opportunities for yourself. And the open market means you go make what you can. In other words, you're looking out for yourself. But that's in the marketplace. Now, what I'm saying is from the marketplace, that attitude has left the marketplace and entered into our homes, entered into the psyche of the human being where we've become insanely self-centered. So much so, and I'm, you know, it is, we're not even talking about an Islamic standpoint, we're talking about from an American point of view. You know, in older societies across the world, being, being taking care of your family was important. Taking care of your neighborhood was important. Taking care of your culture was important. Taking care, you know, if you're walking out, there's trash on the street, even if you're not, you say, you know, "I should take care of my neighborhood." And you pick up the thing and you put it in your trash because you're worried about more than yourself. And especially the most, the strongest sense of bond people felt was the bond of family. But in our times, individualism is at an extreme. So extreme that a person, and even if they're Muslim, this happens. If a person is so obsessed with themselves that they don't care about anybody else, not even their parents, not even their siblings, not even their, their children, not even their fellow, their husband or their wife, not even other Muslims.
And just to give you a sign to why I'm talking about this individualism and a consequence of that is one of these young boys in this audience here is regularly talking to a Muslim girl, or worse. And that's the reality. I'm not going to spell it out for you. But what about you? That's that's just a fact of life. But when you do, you say, "I love her, man. I love her so much." You don't love her. You really don't. You actually, you couldn't care less for her. You think she's cute. That's all it is. You get a kick out of talking to her. You feel good about yourself. It's not about her. It's really about you. You're selfish. And if her parents find out the humiliation they will feel, and if you dump her for a little girl, or you know, she's embarrassed in her community, the things she goes through, you'll drop her like a bad habit because you don't care. All you care about is yourself. And she doesn't care about her own family and the pain she will cause them. And you don't care about your dignity. And you don't care about the fact that she's a Muslim and what you're doing is unacceptable to Allah. You don't care. You don't even care about Allah at this point. You become that individualistic.
So, these things have a manifestation of the way we think and the way we don't care about consequences. When a person says, "I don't care, man. Bring it. I don't care what happens." You know where that attitude comes from? That comes from that. I don't care about what happens in relation. I don't care about what anybody else says or thinks or feels, including my own family. Individualism is at an extreme. And so much so, we'll talk about the consequences of both of these things together. You know what the extreme form of this? We're the, we're probably the craziest society when it comes to crimes related to sexual abuse, crimes related to child molestation. These kinds of crimes, they are the extreme of individualism. I don't even care what happens to this child. That's how disgusting society becomes. They don't care. They become nothing more than animals. You know, an animal when it sees its prey, it doesn't care. What is this child going to think? I'm going to eat the parent. What are the children going to eat? It doesn't care. It's how many it's going to eat. It feels an urge, it's going to fulfill. That's the extreme form of individualism is found in animals. That's where it's found. And today, we're finding it in human beings. And that's the reality of our time. That is certainly a reality of our time. And that's certainly something that is influencing all of us to some extent. Maybe we're not the worst case of individualists, but to some extent, it's impacted all of us. We are more selfish today than we were before. We are less concerned with family and community and society and being than we were before. It's more about ourselves first.
Then there's the third trend in our society. I told you I'll talk to you about three trends. The first trend was the proliferation, the expansion of shamelessness in all, in all walks of life. The second was extreme individualism. And the third thing that I want to bring to your attention before we can have a healthy conversation about hayy and guarding our shame. The third problem is where your dignity comes from, where your respect comes from. Where does your self-sense of worth come from? If you're worth something, if you are valuable, where does your sense of value come? You see, for a, for a Muslim who understands his deen and the, the truth of that deen has entered into their heart, this is not a problem. But for the Muslim, iman has not yet entered into your hearts yet. When the iman has not entered into the heart, then there will be a problem. And I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about so you can understand it better. In high school, when I used to go to high school in the early 1800s, the, you know, when I, when I first came to high school in this country, it was an alien culture to me. And I picked up something very quickly. You know where your dignity, your respect, your props, your popular, you know where it comes from? The brand of clothes you wear and how you wear them. Comes from the kind of language you use, uh, and actually the kind of filthy language you use. The more obnoxious and outrageous and unacceptable you are in public settings, the more popular you are. And that dude's crazy, bro. You know what he says to the teacher? That guy is awesome. Everybody wants to be around the guy who's the biggest jerk, who dresses, who, who's the biggest show and the most self-indulged, self-absorbed. You know, people can't even look at this person in the eye. You know, they're full of their full. That's the most respected person. That's the one people look up to. So, when other kids come to school, they say, "I want to be like that guy. I want to be like that." Because everybody looks up to him. And on, on the side of women, your sense of worth comes from the fact that how, how many men, how many males can I get to stare at me and they can't take their eyes off of me. So, the more inappropriately I dress and the more I try to get attention for myself, the more I am worth something. My worth comes from how much attention I can get. You know, "Show what you got." That's the attitude. "Show what you got." And so, I feel important when a boy comes over to me and says, "So, uh, what's your number?" You know, "What's your name?" When he gives me that attention, it's not even about that boy. It's about, I feel good about myself. So, your sense of worth comes from where? And how would you attract the opposite gender? That's where your sense of dignity and self comes from.
Now, just to start from this third point, and I'll work my way backwards from this third point. Your sense of self, where does our sense of dignity come from in this? Where does it come from? Where do we get our, where do we draw our respect from? Why do I have respect for myself before I have respect for anybody else? I have to have respect for myself, isn't that true? Where do I get respect for myself? You know where I get it from? That Allah has given me the honor of making me from among the Muslims. That's enough for me. Allah honored me. Why do I need anybody else to give me props? Why do I need anybody else to dignify me? I have been honored by Allah himself. You know, when you graduate, you are handed a diploma from someone important, right? The dean of the school or whoever. When somebody performs bravely or honorably on the battlefield, the general gives them the medal. The janitor doesn't hand the medal. The general gives them the medal, right? Someone important gives you an honor, a certificate, a title. Even back in the day, the, you know, under kingdoms, the king or the queen will knight the soldier, right? The important figure will give a title to the other. Allah says in the Quran, says, "He's the one who named you Muslim. He inaugurated you, united you with what term? With Muslim." We've been honored by Allah. You know what that means? That we don't need honor from anyone else. To Allah alone does dignity and authority belong, and it belongs to His Messenger and those who believe. Allah has given us dignity with Islam. The Sahabah used to say, "Allah, give us dignity with Islam, and He will give us humiliation if we leave." He will give us humiliation if we leave it.
So, let me set a scene for you. Imagine a young, young man or a young woman who understands that they don't dress like anybody else because they know dignity comes from how Allah wants me to dress, because Allah has honored me. So, she puts her hijab on and she covers herself modestly, and she doesn't wear really clothes. And the boy doesn't dress like these other zombies that walk around. He's actually dressed in a modest, dignified fashion. And he doesn't gawk at women when he goes down the, the hallway, even though it's tempting. He keeps his gaze low. And when people look at him, they say, "I love this kid. I feel sorry for him." And you know what's going on in his head? "I feel sorry for these animals, man. Allah created human beings, and they're no different than animals. How they humiliated themselves." So, instead of feeling like you want to be like them, he'll actually feel sorry for them. "I wish she had respect for herself so she wouldn't have to dress like that. I wish she didn't have to take more and more of her clothes off to get some, to get acknowledgement of herself, to feel good about herself, because Allah has given us something that makes us good about ourselves already." This happens when iman enters into the heart. It's a natural consequence of it. In other words, being shameful, being modest, you know, being respect, having respect for yourself is natural when iman is deeply penetrating into the heart. And that is the first thing I want to bring to your attention.
Now, I'm going in reverse. What was the second problem that I brought to your attention? Individualism. Extreme individualism. And you know, if you have iman in your heart, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us as a consequence of this iman that you're not only concerned about yourself, who else are you concerned about? Others. And that ripple effect begins with your own family. So, I, I'll start from the humanistic point. There was this, actually happened in the case of the Prophet. This man comes and he's got urgency, you know, he says, "I want to do, I want to do something very bad." You know, and the Messenger of Allah realized, when a person comes like that to the Messenger, don't you think it's embarrassing that you were bringing it up to the Messenger? This is humiliating, right? So, the fact that he was able to step on his shame and still come to the Prophet means this guy's got some iman left, some shame in him is left. So, he gave it to the best counselor he could find, which is Allah's Messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. What counsel does he give? That's the counsel I want to give you.
Look, if you're a young man sitting in this audience and you have a relationship with a girl, you have a relationship with someone and it's inappropriate, how acceptable is it to you that your sister should be in a relationship? How acceptable is it to you for someone to be staring at your mother, at your wife, at your daughter? It is unfathomable to us. It's not something we can imagine. It's not something we would tolerate. Well, the one you have a relationship with is somebody's daughter. She's somebody's sister. She's also going to be somebody's wife. She's also going to be somebody's mother. Show some respect. If you have respect for your family, it will be easy for you to have respect for somebody else's family. But if you don't have respect for your own family, it's easy. It's easy to keep to not lower your eyes. It's easy to, to do whatever it is that you're doing. You know, it, it becomes easy. So, this, you have to fight this individualism. You have to become respectful of your own family, and then you will find respect for others.
And you know, beyond family, family is the bond of blood, isn't it? Family is what binds us together by blood. But there's a relationship Allah gave us that's even thicker than blood. What relationship is that? When we all share that with Allah, when we all share, this bond is thicker than blood. We are connected by something that is stronger than any other relationship. So, when the other is a Muslim, on top of that, you know, she is Muslim too, you know, and if, and I'm not saying it's okay with non-Muslims, don't get me wrong. The fact that you don't even have respect for the strongest of those, and she's also someone who has to stand in front of Allah, and I stand in front of Allah. I should have respect for her. If she doesn't have respect for herself, at least I should still have respect for her. If I don't have respect for her, I have respect for her old father. I have that much. Subhan Allah. Allah.
So, you know, guys come up to me sometimes, you know, they're in relationships and things, and they say, "I know. I want to break up with her, man. But I feel bad. She's going to feel bad. She's going to feel really sad." And the sister, you know, too, there's this brother. We've been talking. We're kind of in love, etc. I realize it's wrong. I want to break it up, but I don't want to break his heart. I don't know what's going to happen to him. Listen, let me tell you. You're breaking his heart and at the same time saving his heart. You're saving his iman when you're he's going to get over you. Trust me. Trust me, he'll get over you. There'll be others. But what you are saving him from is the torment. The torment of losing his entire faith. That's what you're saving him from. Subhan Allah. Show some mercy to the other. Save their faith. Let them go. Let them go. Don't think you're doing an act of cruelty. That is an act of mercy. That's an act of mercy to him and his family. If you let her go, it's an act of mercy to her and her family. Her family is sick of torture and humiliation. That's what be merciful.
So, that's the, the second is the individualism thing. Well, the only way you can combat it is to become stronger, develop a strong bond with your family. I'll be talking about all of these things in more detail later on, especially the idea, how do you fight individualism? This is something that a conversation has to be had with the youth, and at the same time, this conversation has to be had with the elders because the problem is on both sides. Parents don't know how to be parents anymore. They don't know how to raise children. They don't know how to communicate with their kids. There's a problem. Some of you haven't talked to your dad for a straight hour, failure for like a year. They don't sit down and talk to your father. Your old mother. They try to talk to you. You say, "Yeah, how was your day, man? So, where'd you go somewhere? Don't you do a good or something? I got to go." And then you text your friend, "My dad's talking to me too much today." I really, it's not normal for you to communicate with your family. How can you have a strong bond in your family if you don't even talk to each other? How's that going to happen? So, it has to have that because the situation has to be resolved from both sides. From the youth, there has to be some kind of open communication and dialogue. And usually, if you do talk for more than an hour, guess what happens? You got the guys can tell me where it is. It gets nasty, doesn't it? They start seeing what you're not doing in your life. What a loser you are, and what you could have done, you didn't do. Ah, I'm going to take this. I'm going to go outside. I'm going to take a walk, you know. So, if you have to fix that body, if you really want to combat extremism, what was the first thing I mentioned? That's what I want to wrap up now. What was the first thing I mentioned? The proliferation, the extension, the, the commonness of shamelessness. Shamelessness.
Here, I just have very simple advice for you as this introduction. Very simple advice. You have to lower, you have to, in, you have to raise the bar when it comes to your own standards of what you allow yourself to watch. It starts from that. Most of us are victims of shamelessness, not first because we went out with somebody or we went somewhere to see something bad. It started from a screen sitting at home. You saw something and you didn't change the channel, or you took a little too long to change it. You, you lowered the bar for yourself. You said to yourself, "The movie is only PG-13. It's all right. There's only got one bad scene. It's okay." Okay? Or, "I'm watching the, the playoffs or the football game. There's only a couple of bad commercials in there, but that's all right. The game's important." In other words, you lowered the barriers. You allowed yourself to see things. And also, you know, the times we live in, the father is sitting there, the sister is sitting there, the mother is sitting there, the daughter is sitting there, the wife is sitting there, and they're all looking at some exchanges. Can you imagine how low we have gotten that you don't even feel bad that you saw something like that in front of your mother, in front of your wife, in front of yourself? You don't even feel bad. That that speaks about the state of our hearts and says something about how, how bad it's become.
Now, if you want your hearts to get soft again, you got to cut the exposure. You have to, shamelessness. You have to cut it and weed it out. You have to not, you have to stop saying to yourself, "No, you know what? It's all right. It's not a big deal." Nope. You got to raise that. You have to increase your awareness of it. You know, and I'm not saying don't entertain yourself at all. I'm saying find permissible avenues. Find clean alternatives. Find clean alternatives. And it's especially hard in our times because they're throwing in nasty innuendo even in cartoons. They can't even leave Toy Story alone, right? The first Toy Story came out. It's going to be a kids movie, right? Toy Story. And I think Barbie walks by and Mr. Potato goes, "I'm a married spider. I'm a married spider." Like, "Dude, I'm trying not to look." What are they trying to hit at? "I'm trying not to cheat on my wife." Who are they teaching that to? Kids, man. What do you have to have that? You have to throw that in there. This new one that came out. I haven't seen, but I've heard there's a whole thing about Barbie and Ken, and they have to throw it in there. What is a 5-year-old going to get out of that? But they want to, the barn has dropped so much. What was unacceptable for teenagers became acceptable for 10-year-olds. And now what's unacceptable for 10-year-olds is slowly becoming acceptable for five, four-year-olds. Three-year-olds and kindergartners are being asked, "How's your Valentine? Who are you going to take out? Did you kiss her yet?" Three-year-old, four-year-olds are being asked, "Oh, it's so cute." You know, for them, this animal behavior is cute. It's cute, you know, and this is what what's being normalized in our society. It's being made commonplace in our society.
So, the, the elders, you have to be, you have to act like adults. You have to make a decision for yourself. Is this great faith worth it to you to want to cut your exposure to these things or not? You have to ask yourself that simple question. Nobody can ask that question for you. Nobody can come and check and knock on your little what you're watching on your laptop or what you have on your mobile device. Nobody can do that. You have to do that yourself. For the adults, you're having on your children, you have to have this a little bit. You have to take a little more responsibility. You have to stop letting your children watch like Spongebob Squarepants. The guy's wearing underwear. That should tell you something. There should be a little sign that goes on that this cartoon car. First of all, it's a, it's like some shine teenager anyway. And on top of that, he's wearing underwear. Why is it normalizing? It's okay to look at things in their underwear. They're already sending that message psychologically, psychologically to children. It's okay for us because it's just cartoons. This isn't back in the day when a cat was trying to kill a mouse. These aren't those days. This is something else. We have to be more sensitive. And and it begins with what you, what you let yourself see, what you let yourself watch.
And as far as this proliferation of shamelessness is concerned, I, I did tell you this is the first of a series, inshallah. The last bit I want to share with you that will become a longer discussion. But I want the thought to be in your mind before I let you know. Especially for young Muslim women and young Muslim boys, young Muslim boys, young Muslim girls, whether they're in high school or college. Listen, when you start becoming serious about the religion, you know what happens? Allah beautifies everything about Islam to you. So, you know what happens? My, my friend in Texas used the word, those oozies, those, those non-Muslim shameless whatever they are, guide them to bring to Islam, but the way they dress and whatnot, they're no longer attracted to that film. What do you start finding beautiful? All of a sudden, the sister at the MSA who wears hijab and covers properly. And you say, "Mashallah, she's such a great sister and she's pretty." So, I'm just going to, you know, send her an email about how I want to help her out with the flyers. So, if anybody asks me, I'll just say, "Hey, I learned I'm a sailor, man. Are you questioning my intention?" And then I'll let you go here another time about, you know, I just wanted to call you because we need to have a meeting about the program, ordering the food, you know, and, and so you do it under the guise of Islamic work, under the guise of Islamic work. And Shaitan is happy because there were two people that he could have that were escaping the clutches of shamelessness, and now Shaitan knew the love of Islam. They have to use it against them. And this is happening in the embassies. This is happening in, lines are being crossed, and it goes really far sometimes. It goes, it gets very bad among Muslims. Among Muslims.
So, you have to be cognizant of that. You have to be honest to yourself. You can tell yourself, "I'm no perfect man. I can handle it. I'm just, I, I'm just talking to a sister. I'm being respectful." Look, you know, and I know what thoughts run in your head. We all know. We all know how Allah created our minds. This pre-programmed, installed, you can't uninstall this one. Allah beautified for men the love and desires they have for women. It's installed on your hard drive. You can't get out of your system. It's already there. [Music] That's all there. But the number one thing Allah mentioned that was installed, the desire that was installed was that of women. So, you don't, don't try to tell me or kid yourself that no thoughts run in your mind and you never have any imaginary situations in your head. Don't kid yourself. Be honest to yourself first. If you can't be honest to yourself, this conversation is pointless. This conversation is entirely pointless.
So, uh, you know, how long? Half an hour? About half an hour, 40 minutes. Can I take 10 more minutes? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, 10 more minutes. I'm opening a can of worms. I'm acknowledging it ahead of time. I'm opening a can of worms. This is going to some be something that offends some of you, but I feel obligated to share it with you because it is killing our youth. You have youth in their 20s, in their 30s, early 30s. You have youth that, that their parents want them to be successful. So, they say, "Go to, go to college." Okay, go to college. They go to college and they're dorming in college. Or even if they're not going to communicate with college, they're spending 8 to 10 hours a day on campus. What do they see on campus? I think the guys here know what they see on campus. They see it all the time. So, they come to the parents and say, "Dad, I think I need to get married." Oh, you're kidding. I haven't graduated yet. And after you graduate, you have to go on to med school. You have to finish that, too. Another 8 years or whatever you have to do. For those 8 years, where's this boy going to be on campus? 8 to 10 hours a day. What's he going to see all around him? Barely dressed women that are throwing themselves at him just to see if they can, just to see what, just for fun, just for kicks. You think it's going to have an effect on his mind or no? Do you think his, the fact that he has no avenue, he can't talk to anybody about this, talk to his parents about this? Shame on you. Pervert can't hold it. You know, I got married when I was 37 or whatever. When I was your age, you know, the fathers forget what they were like when they were younger. Imagine you brought them here. You put them in, in the heart of shamelessness, and then you don't let them get married, something that can save them to some extent. It's not the only, it's not a solution, but it's a big part of the solution. You put them there for 12 years, 13 years. You don't think this boy is going to be uniquely, you don't think this boy is going to be addicted to pornography? Who are you kidding? You don't think so? You don't think he's going to clean out his, the cash on his laptop or on his mobile device so nobody else knows what's up? You don't think he's going to have a secret profile on Facebook? You don't think he's going to have extramarital relationships? You don't think he's going to develop other very serious psychological disorders and develop a two-phase? On the one hand, he's a good boy. He's not, listen to his parents. This, he gets good grades. And on the other hand, he's become a deacon by, by not Islamic standards, by human psychological standards, he's he's disturbed. And a lot of our children here in this audience are addicted to pornography. And that's a fact. The youth here are boys and girls. They're addicted to it. And you know, when you're addicted to something like a film, piece of filth like that, you know what happens to you? You lose all respect for women. You have no respect for them. You only see them like an animal sees a female animal. That's all you see. And when that happens for 10 years, then you let him get married. Do you think he has any respect for his wife? Do you think that addiction that's been there for 10 years is going to disappear now? It's going to go away on its own just like that? No. You just destroyed a girl's life, too. You destroyed a home because you refused to face reality. This is reality. This is America. You know, we have some of the most beautiful homes of any Muslim community in the world. We have the newest cars of any Muslim community in the world. People there are Muslims, Muslims living in the Muslim world that on Eid day they get to eat beef. They have chicken every day or or vegetables on, can they have at least they have one piece of beef? We're living in a society of abundance. We like, "Come on, I need something else." We're in a society of leftovers. We're in a society that has everything, everything at our, at our fingertips. We have it seems like everything that you build mosques like this in palaces, man. The amount of money you took to build mosques like this, and these mosques are all over America. All over America. The amount of money they take, we could build mosques like hundreds of hundreds of the money it took to build in America. We're affirmation. We have some of the highest goals of salaries. We're the most well-off. And yet our homes are broken. Our homes are broken. Our marriages are broken. Our children are broken. They're psychologically broken. I want to share this reality with you because we're not talking about it. We're not having an honest conversation with each other about this. This is something that affects all of us. We can pretend that everything's okay, or we can wake up, smell the property, and deal with it and fix it and deal with having an honest conversation about this.
How many of you men here that have teenage children, or your fathers and mothers that have teenage daughters, have talked to their kids about boys and girls? Have talked to their kids about pornography? Because you're afraid to talk to them because you're afraid of what you might find out. You're afraid. And they're afraid to talk to you because you're going to flip out. There's just, even if you guys have made mistakes, I don't want you to feel suicidal. It's okay if you made mistakes. We're all human beings. But the very point of a community is when somebody makes a mistake, when somebody falls, when somebody is engulfed in sin, they say, "Look, you're a human being. I make mistakes too. Let me help you. Let me help you." Instead of just yelling at you and telling you you're going to help, I'm here to help you. I'm here for you. I can help you through this. And if you're not going to do that for your own family, who's going to come and do that for them? How many have all this country? I go, parents come and say, "Can you talk to my son? Can you talk to my brother? Can you talk to my nephew?" Why aren't you talking to them? There's one of my, what magical words am I going to say? Maybe the way you talk to them is messed up. Maybe you need to change the way you talk to them. You know, this is a fact of life. Life. I was terrified. I was terrified. I was at the convention last night, and I was supposed to speak a late night session about shamelessness to a bunch of sisters. There was a social worker, myself, and brother. The word, amazing job. You know how many questions came from the audience about, you know, "What do you do if you've lost your virgin?" How do you make to these are all these girls? And I just wanted to not answer the question. I just wanted to sit there and cry. I got three girls. What am I going to do with their? I just wanted to sit there and cry. These are my sisters, you know. When these, when these girls have these problems, when these boys have these problems, that's not somebody else's problem. This is my family. You guys are my family because we share that one. When we lose one of our kids, that's my loss too, you know. As sad as you are, I should be equally sad, if not more sad. When this concern becomes primary, you know what happens in our communities? We stop fighting about anything else. We don't care about who's eating salah, who's the imam, how many rak'ahs they're going to pray, who's on the board, who's not on the board, because we're all worried about our children. We got a bigger problem. And when we're not worried, when we pretend this problem doesn't exist, we got other things to fight. And that's the reality in most communities. They close their eyes to the things that are happening. Most our communities across America, fights are going on inside. I think that's a fact. It's a shameful fact, but it's a fact. You know, we complain about the corrupt Muslim governments across the Atlantic. You, you guys are making governments in savings and corruption. And why? Because the real priority of saving our own children is not even a point of discussion. Not even a point of discussion. To the point where even if the youth do come to the masjid, some girl comes into the masjid without hijab on, what are you doing? The fact that she came from mid, man, just can you say Alhamdulillah she's here? Because there are a lot of clubs that are open. I know about, you know, Facebook profiles, girls wearing pajamas, she's here taking pictures at the club. That's their dream. That's a reality also, you know. So, we have to be honest. We have to be honest.
You, the young people here, you guys need to take a step back and realize the consequences of what you're doing. You're destroying your entire faith. You know, when you're not able to cry in salah anymore or make a dua to Allah and actually heal something in your heart, there's an indication the hearts have become hard. And the easiest way to harden our hearts in this time is over and over exposure to shamelessness. That's why our hearts have become hard. We have to save ourselves. We really have to. We have to make a concerted, joint effort to try and save ourselves.
This was my introduction to this series. I want to organize my thoughts more and and have, you know, the topics I have in mind in in the future of this discussion is advice to parents, detailed advice to brothers, detailed advice to sisters, advice to married couples because just because you're married doesn't mean you're not affected by shamelessness. You still are. Advice to married couples, you know, advice to parents whose children are the age that they should be getting married. Advice to parents whose children are are addicted and they found out that they're addicted to whatever, or they're in a relationship they shouldn't be. Advice to parents like that. Advice to, uh, to parents whose children have run off with a girl or run off with a boy. What do you do now? And that's a reality of our community too. We need this advice. We need to have a conversation about this. You know, what does this mean if not solutions to our problems? And these are our problems. This is what we're going through. In addition to that, I wanted to have a, uh, comprehensive, uh, study of and in the Quran, the term and and the term is shame, and like, and means looseness and obscene things. I want to have a detailed discussion of all the ayat, all the places in the videos, and just study it comprehensively. And then in the end, inshallah, and some of my colleagues contribute to certain discussions about gatherings, discussions that are related about, you know, code of dress and, uh, rulings, gatherings, and things like that. I'm not, I'm not qualified to talk about those things. Those are 15 matters. Those are four. So, I want to leave those till the end. But these other things, I want to be able to put a comprehensive discussion together. So, please do make dua for us that are able to do that and do that effectively and in a way that is beneficial to all of us immediately.
And with that, I'd like to thank all of you for listening. Uh, I hope you don't ask me loaded questions because this is a pretty loaded subject. I think the ayat I recited to you in the beginning of this talk that I didn't explain are ayah number 60. Let me tell you what ayah numbers they are because I want you to read them on your own. Yeah, these are ayah number 122 to 127. In 122 to 127, they have something to do with shamelessness. I'd like you to read them yourself. Read them yourself and study them yourself. Ayat number 122 to 127 belonging to. And you, when you first read them, you might say, "I don't know, this seems like it has nothing to do with," but it does. Read it carefully and study it in the guidance of His Book. [Music]