TwoFaceBook Session 2

TwoFaceBook: Social Media and the Heart

Khutbah by Brother Abdelrahman Murphy

Opening

As-Salaamu Alaykum, we begin by thanking Allah, thanking God for His blessings upon us, for the blessings of health, of happiness, of the ability to see and to hear, and the ability to interact with each other in real life and on Facebook. We also send our peace and blessings upon the Prophet Muhammad (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam) who went through so much for us.

He went through so much, subhanAllah, if you read the stories of how he went through, the struggles he went through, the amount of blood, the amount of tears that he shed, because he was concerned about us. He never even met us, but he was concerned about us. And so we ask that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala send His peace and blessings upon this man who cared about us so much, Muhammad (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّم - sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam) and we ask that we can insha'Allah join him in Jannah. Ameen, Ya Rabbi, Ameen, in the next life, Ameen.

Main Khutbah

The Core Principle: Everything Affects the Heart

My talk is going to be very short, again, because we want to get to the Q&A. I have just one major concept, one principle, and then three points to make underneath that. So three insha'Allah, one principle.

This principle that we talked about during the last event, during LoveStruck, we talked about everything that enters your eyes and your ears affects your heart. Your heart. Notice something, by the way, is your heart something that is attached to your hand? Is it something that you wear on your arm, or it's on top of your head, or it's on your back? Where is it? Is it sheltered, is it protected, or is it open? It's protected. The ribcage is protecting it. It's even deep inside the cavity.

It's not like sticking out, it's not like bulging out, it's protected by bones, by muscle, by fat, by everything. Some a little more fat than others like myself, but by everything. And so this shows us when something is protected, when something is, if someone has gone to great lengths to make sure that something is not easily exposed, what does that say about that object? It's important, it's sensitive, it picks things up.

So, when something is very easily obtainable, it's not valuable. It's cheap. You can go to the dollar store and buy anything you want, it's not that expensive. But when there is something that's really expensive? A 24 karat diamond ring. Does Rogers and Holland's Jewelers, do they put it out there in the middle of the mall, in the hallway and say, okay, it's on the floor, whoever wants it, go ahead and buy it. No, they put it in the safe, they keep it locked up. If you want to look at it, you're going to have to wear gloves, the person is going to have to clean it up every time.

So, our hearts are protected physically. Allah subhana wa ta'ala within our own selves gave us a sign, that our hearts are not sticking out of our bodies, rather it's deep inside of us, protected by bones, by muscle, by fat, so that it's not easily exposed.

And in this physical sign is a spiritual sign, that our hearts as well can pick up other things, other evils, other trips of shaitan that we don't want. So, when we think about wherever we're interacting, whatever we're doing, whatever we're not doing, think about how these things affect your heart.

Because on that day, what's in your heart that day, that day where no one can see because it's so protected, on that day, that heart will open up and all of your deepest secrets will come out. And so, right now, we can live our life with our hearts nice and solid and secret and confined in that safe of our chest, but on that day, the heart is going to be open. And it's going to be you and Allah.

It's going to be me and Allah. And Allah is going to say, this was in your heart, tell me why. This was in your heart, tell me why. Some will be good and some will be bad. And we ask Allah to make our good more than our bad. Ameen.

So, everything that we interact with, people, Facebook, food, whatever it is, it affects our body and it affects our spirit.

Three Major Issues with Social Media

First Point: Fakeness and Being a Poser

Number one is fakeness. Fakeness. Being a poser. Not being real. As they say, you're not real online. You're fake. And so I would ask people, what does it mean to be fake? What does it mean when you tell me that people are fake online? And a few things came up:

1. People aren't who they are in real life. They'll say things online that they would never ever dare to say in real life.
2. People post pictures online that they would never ever post or never ever show in real life, especially to their parents.
3. People are trying to create an image of themselves. People try to make themselves on this Facebook page that they're not who they are in real life.

So for example, if they have that one favorite hat that they only wear once or that one outfit, they try to put pictures after picture after picture. Even though we can see the cameras right there, you're taking it in the bathroom mirror. Everyone's like, oh, how'd this picture get taken? Well, because the flash is right in front of you. The mirror's right there. And your bathroom is really dirty. You've got to clean it up. You might want to change that towel on the rack. It's got stains on it.

So people are saying that with these pictures and posting photos, people try to create this personality of who they are. Like some kid who's 14 who goes to a high school tries to tell everyone that he's Jay-Z because he's wearing the same clothes that Jay-Z wore that night at the concert. But in reality, your parents bought it for you because it was on sale at Kohl's.

This issue of being fake is not only spiritually degrading. Your relationship with Allah is going to suffer because you start to lie to yourself and then you start to believe these lies about who you are. But even more concerning, even more troublesome than the spiritual degradation is the psychological degradation. You begin to become someone with low confidence, low self-esteem. You don't appreciate who you are. You're not proud of who you are.

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam) was very, very, not arrogant, but proud of himself as Muslim. You know, one time, they were praying, the Muslims were praying in Dar Al-Arqam, which is like the place where the Muslims used to pray before they let everyone know that Islam was public. And this was right after Umar ibn al-Khattab, he converted.

So Umar ibn al-Khattab, he goes to the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam) he says, "Ya Rasulullah, aren't we on the truth? Isn't Islam correct?" And the Prophet says, "Yeah, it is, obviously." He goes, "So why are we still praying in this house? Why can't we go out to the Kaaba and pray in front of everyone, let them know that we're Muslim?"

And the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam) said, "Well, you know, we watch out for these reasons, these reasons." And Umar ibn al-Khattab said, "Ya Rasulullah, with all due respect and love, I think we should do this." And the Prophet said, "Okay, we'll take your advice and we'll do it."

So they marched out with the Muslims in two lines, and they went and they prayed in front of the Kaaba. And this was a historic day for the Muslims. This was the day where the Quraish realized that Umar ibn al- Khattab had become Muslim, and they were worried after that.

But you see here, this example shows the principle of being proud of who you are, not trying to hide your flaws and inconsistencies by these fake ideas and fake images, but being who you are and being proud, because Allah created you the way you are.

And Wallahi, everyone in this room, you are special seriously in your own way. There are some things that I can't do, that Abdullah can do. There are some things that Abdullah can't do, that I can do. We each have our own talents, so don't be ashamed of not being like everyone else. Be who you are.

Second Point: Bullying and Backbiting

Number two is bullying and backbiting. We're talking about legitimate bullying on Facebook. Bullying that people have come to me in my office and said, "Brother Murphy, we have this issue with kids at school and I need you to help me out with this. These kids won't leave my friend alone or these kids won't leave me alone."

And we talk about bullying and backbiting and we talk about how people, they do these things and I ask these people who are suffering, I say, "Why do you think they're making fun of you? Or why do you think they're making fun of this person?" And we've come to the realization that it's because people feel safe behind the computer screen or when they're on the go with their cell phone.

Because they know that, again, if they told that person that stuff to the real face, if I said, "Yo man, you ugly" to that person's face, he might punch me. But if I type it, I can close my laptop and go to sleep and forget about it. So, again, this ties in with being real with yourself.

Don't say things, first of all, don't make fun of people because Allah subhana wa ta'ala, this is a huge deal. I am the biggest guy in this room. Probably. Definitely the strongest. No, probably not. When people make fun of me, it hurts my feelings. When people make fun of me, it hurts my feelings. Why?

Because Allah subhana wa ta'ala says:

"O you who believe! Let not a people ridicule [another] people; perhaps they may be better than them..."

Don't make fun of people, especially if someone is better than you. Don't make fun of that person because why? Allah created us and He created our hearts and our feelings and He knows that no matter how tough you think you are, no matter how little weight or 50 cent you think you are, when someone insults you, it hurts your feelings.

And now we come to the point where a sign of brotherhood, a sign of being homies is making fun of each other. That's not a sign of brotherhood. A sign of brotherhood is that you love for that person what you love for yourself. Do you love being made fun of? No.

And so we need to watch out for this, bullying and backbiting, even to the ones that we're closest to because these things, they tear relationships apart. They don't build relationships, they break them down.

Third Point: Wasting Time and Lowering Attention

The third thing and my last point is about wasting time and underneath this concept of wasting time is the issue of lowering your attention. Your attention span gets lowered.

Funny story about this actually. This one brother comes up to me, true story, and he goes, "Yo Murphy," I was like, "What's up man?" He goes, "You know, I read this article on some magazine or whatever and he's like, I read the article and it said that people don't even read articles anymore. They just look at the titles and then they skip the article." I'm like, "Oh, that's so interesting." He's like, "Yeah, it had to do with like attention span, you know, people had no attention span."

I said, "Really? I said, you know, where was the article? Like, what did the rest of it say?" He goes, "I don't know, I didn't read it." I was like, "Yeah, I did." We both start laughing because he realized that he played right into this article. I even asked him, I was like, "What magazine was it?" And he's like, "I can't remember. I just read the title and I left."

So we need to worry about this because Facebook is becoming an enabler. Again, does it cause us to lose our attention span? No. But the way in which we use it because it's a tool. The way you use a tool can affect you, either for you or against you. Is fire a tool? What can you do with fire? Cook food, what else? Can you do bad things with fire? Yes.

The way you use a tool is the way that it's going to affect you, not the tool itself. And so Facebook, we have to watch out because how many of us we go through albums and we click picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, we don't even look at the picture. "Oh, he does that. Oh, she does that. Oh my God, that's her boyfriend. Oh my God, that's his..." How many people have been exposed on Facebook for things that we didn't know that they did?

So we need to make sure that we take time and we appreciate and we focus and don't lose our attention span as well.

And the third point that goes along with that is wasting time. There have been times where I'm telling you as myself, there have been times where I lay down to go to sleep at like 11 o'clock because I have a long day the next day. And I hear my phone buzz with Facebook, someone wrote on my wall or someone sent me a message or something.

And I open it up and I'm surfing for a little bit. I look back at my clock, it's 1 a.m. I'm like, "What the...?" Two hours. I waste so much time on it. I open it, it's like 11 p.m. I'm like, "Okay, maybe like 20 minutes, I'll look at it." All of a sudden, it's 1 a.m. I'm like, "Subhanallah, where did the time go?" Then the next day I'm tired and I'm like, "Man, if I just wouldn't have looked at the Facebook for so long," what would have happened? Be careful not to waste time. Be careful.

Think about something. The amount of time you spend with something or someone is your sign, is your proof for yourself of how much you love that thing. And so I know people who literally have told me, bragging, bragging, that "I've spent like three hours at a time on Facebook, man, chatting with my friends, posting up pictures, three hours, four hours."

Some of us might be saying, "Whoa," some of us are saying, "That's it?" So we're on this book that Mark Zuckerberg, he created, and it shows us how much we love this book that Mark Zuckerberg created. But ask yourself the question, how much time do you spend with the book of Allah?

We have so much love for this guy, Mark. But who do you want to be like? You want to be like the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam). We spend so much time reading his book, but we have to spend a lot more time reading the book of Allah.