Muslim or American Caught in the Middle - Youth Session

Muslim or American? Caught in the Middle - Youth Session with Mufti Hussain Kamani

Opening and Introduction to Quranic Guidance

Allah in the Quran offers us some very important examples and principles. Absolutely important. The Quran itself states its mission where Allah says:

That this book is for guidance but it can only offer guidance to the one who's searching for that guidance.

Two Types of People: Learning from Experience vs Learning from Guidance

So there are two types of people that you'll find in life. There are those people who wish to figure out everything themselves. Now, the downside to this sort of personality and attitude is that you end up wasting so much of your time falling into the same traps making the same mistakes people before you made.

So you get tea and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna make tea myself. Rather than watching a tutorial or asking your mom and dad or reading up some recipe on how to make tea you start getting cold water and mixing cold tea leaf and you realize that nothing's coming out of it. Because tea, in order for it to be made, you have to... you gotta heat the water.

Then you can cool it down if you want iced tea but you cannot extract that flavor, that effect of the tea from the tea leaf unless you heat the water first. Now you'll waste 20 minutes of your time sitting there thinking that somehow this tea is gonna transfuse into the water but it's not gonna work. So the first way you can figure out to do things is just do it on your own and make mistakes along the way be heartbroken along the way feel isolated and lonely along the way feel like you wasted your life along the way and then realize that, man, I should have listened to those who are telling me how to do it right in the first place.

Or what you can do is instead of doing it your own way first and then regretting wasting time and effort and your resources what you do is you ask someone else who's done it before you how do I do this thing? What's the most effective way for me to do this? You know, I'm about to do a science project you did the science project last year how did you prepare yourself for this project? What were things that you did? Were there any books that you read, any materials that you purchased? You know, how did you utilize your time in this project? When you have a guide who's done something before you and that

person walks you through it you'll be able to do that thing so much more effectively this is a reality this is what the Quran actually does for us.

The Quran as Life's Guide: Avoiding Common Pitfalls

The Quran saves us time and saves us our lives instead of wasting our time doing zina and then realizing ten generations later what the harms of zina are. Allah tells us from the get-go, don't do zina. You do zina, you'll have children without parents they won't have a family structure they will grow up as broken people they will have emotional problems, psychological problems it'll take two to three generations to correct it again so save all of two, three generations of being wasted stick to nikah, stick to marriage stay away from zina do you guys understand this?

Someone says, let me consume alcohol let me get involved with drugs and it feels good. This morning I was reading about, when I woke up I was reading about the hashish culture in Afghanistan but there is a very serious warning. Allah for free not only for free but Allah very passionately, with a lot of love, with a lot of concern He's saying to mankind:

Do they not ponder over what the Quran is saying or are their hearts locked? Is there a lock on their heart? Why aren't they paying attention?

The Three Phases of Human Life According to Surah Al-Hadeed

Allah is saying that if you pay attention to this Quran that I wanted to share with you today the first one deals with this issue at hand and the issue is that Allah is telling us, the youth and the adults that before you flush your life away before you waste your life doing nonsense in surah Al-Hadeed Allah says let me tell you what the typical life of a human being looks like and how it's a way to waste your life how it's what you shouldn't be doing. Allah in this verse he says:

More or less states that human beings go through three phases in life every child, middle-aged person and adult we all go through how many phases? Three phases and each of these phases have two sections two sub-sections to them. This commentary that I give of this verse is offered by both the famous Pakistani Mufassir Mufti Shafi Uthmani in his Ma'arif Al-Quran and it's also offered by the famous Persian [scholar].

Phase One: Play and Entertainment لعب ولهو

Three phases the human being goes through and each of these phases have two sub-sections so the first phase is what Allah calls لَعِبٌ وَلَهْوٌ the second one is زِينَةٌ وَتَفَاخُرٌ بَيْنَكُمْ the third is وَتَكَاثُرٌ فِي الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَوْلَادِ

Sections to it the first section to phase number one is لَعِبٌ the second section to phase number one is لَهْو. If you were to check a dictionary or your translation you would find that these words almost have the same meaning and what do they mean? Playing, entertaining yourself enjoying yourself you know it's having fun but if you look at them more carefully linguistically what you notice is that there is a big difference between these two words. Imam Fakhr Al-Din Al-Razi says لَعِبٌ refers to that play which has no meaning and لَهْو refers to a play which has a purpose and meaning behind it.

So you ask a three year old kid who's playing with his jack in the box that why do you sit here and crank this thing down and then press the button it jumps up you say hoo hoo ha ha you close it you do it again how what motivates you to do this for one hour straight? Like what's what's your purpose behind this game? What are you getting out of this? Are you building your muscle here? Are you developing your instincts by the way? It jumps at you what entertains you? For this kid who's three years old what's his purpose behind the toy? There's no purpose I just like it that's it I enjoy it I like it ha ha and they do it again ha ha like they like doing it that's it.

This kid and the interesting thing Mufti Shafi Uthmani states that for each phase in life this kid who's three years old and he's playing with his jack in the box he enjoys doing it so much there's nothing in the world that's more desirable to him than his jack in the box and not only that he believes this is where Mufti Shafi's observation is so valuable so practical he says this kid thinks at this point in his life that he's figured out the secret to the world as you'll learn the human being constantly thinks in every phase of the life they think they've figured it out and then he says that same child who's playing with the jack in the box when he's three years old playing with it the second thing is that everyone else he looks at in the world he thinks they're wasting their time they're all fools and idiots.

This three year old kid looks at his mom and is like God knows what's wrong with this lady right she's always cooking she's always stressed she's always angry always ironing and cleaning her life must be so miserable he looks at his brother who's playing ball all day what a miserable kid he looks at his dad who's working all day what a miserable man looks at his sister who's putting on makeup what a miserable clown looks at his brother who's running outside and you know trying to get in shape and he's lifting weights what a miserable slave like he's looking at all these people and thinks what a miserable bunch and he's it's as if in his heart he wishes that he can broadcast to the world how much joy he experiences by doing his jack in the box.

Personal Story: Video Game Addiction

Then he says what happens is naturally you graduate from part one of phase one to part two of phase one and this is now لَهْو this is now where this kid is playing basketball for nine hours straight when he's 13 years old and you ask this kid why do you play so much ball and he says because I want to be the MVP I want to own the court I want people to respect me when I fake them I want them to fall in submission like that's what I want to be I want them to crack break their ankles when I when I step aside

that's what I want the world to do like this person really wants to own they have command now he says when you when you reach this stage now the purpose of playing there's a purpose to it okay it's you know it's about fame it's about prestige it's about your physique there are other factors that are now playing in.

Now this kid who's been playing basketball for seven hours straight he comes home and his mom says to him hey you know why don't you go play with your brother he's playing with the jack in the box and he says to his mom that kid's wasting his time he doesn't realize that that was his toy ten years ago ten years ago whose toy was it it was his toy if you're from a desi family your parents do not buy you new toys you get hand me downs you don't get new underwear you don't get new shirt you don't get new shoes you don't get new thobes all of the clothes you wear they belong to your older brother or if you're if you're from a super immigrant family maybe your older cousin at some point was wearing this maybe even your dad at some point so it's all hand me downs.

He doesn't realize doesn't appreciate that that same toy that the kid is playing with that he looks at now and is saying he's wasting his time who was doing this ten years ago he was doing that ten years ago and this is where Mufti Shafi Othmani says so the first reality of life is that depending on which phase you're in you believe that you figured it out and the second reality is as you progress when you look back at your life you feel like you wasted a lot of time you realize you actually didn't figure it out your nafs was just playing a game with you your nafs was telling you that you're temporary luxury was actually eternal luxury but then you realize that it's not eternal luxury.

There's nothing in this world that's eternal other than the connection that a human being establishes with Allah.

There's nothing else that matters other than your deeds because those are actually lasting, otherwise every action game you play comes to an end. You can play I mean you shouldn't play GTA but I was going to say you could play GTA but you can play any game you want to you're playing a video game when you finish off all the tasks in the game and you finish off all the campaigns and you've collected all the collectibles at the end of the game that's the end of it that's the end of the life of that game there's nothing else that game can offer you now what else are you going to do? You're not going to get $10 out of the CD slot you just take the game pass it on to someone else and move on with your life.

So this second person this person who's in the second phase of life when he reflects on his life retrospectively he begins to realize that gosh I wasted a lot of time and any wise mature person would do this I'm hoping that every person sitting here every individual I don't care how old you are I hope every person sitting here looks at their life retrospectively in the past and says hey man two years ago I could have been more productive I could have done things better and I think you begin to notice how much

more productive you could have been how much more you could have accomplished with your life every three to four years because there's a bigger gap in who you are you grow a lot every three to four years every three to four years you grow a lot every seven years you grow massively so when you look back at your life you should notice the difference.

[Personal gaming addiction story with parents and Sega Genesis - detailed narrative about the consequences of gaming addiction and the lesson learned about Bilal radiallahu anhu's dedication]

There is this phase in life where it's all about playing and playing and playing and my dad you know what he used to always say to me when I was young he used to say to me Hussain you're wasting your life with video games and when I heard him when I was young I used to get angry at him I was like dad leave me alone I like gaming but was he true or not was what he's saying right or not tell me guys absolutely right there was no question about it because those video games did not impact my life at all being good at fortnite is not going to make you a pilot being good at fortnite will get you no skill it'll get you no money and whatever money you're talking about maybe if I get involved with some fortnite tournament and I school everyone and I get like a crazy kill rate you know what's going to come out of it you're going to get 100 bucks pat on your back your name printed on some website you can do that yourself go on facebook and open an account your name will be there you know some recognition there's a million things that you can do to get recognition.

I was once in New York and this young kid it was iftar time I was at a family friend's house we were about to have iftar there was a kid sitting on the ottoman and he was sleeping before iftar time must have been exhausted he wakes up from his sleep the adhan is going off everyone's getting ready to take their dates and eat he comes to me and says Mufti Kamani there's something really important I need to talk to you about and I said to him I'm about to make my fast he said no this is right now must have been 13 years old so I said ok I pulled away from the table and I went to him I said what's going on he said I saw a dream that I was doing jihad that I had a gun in my hand and I was fighting against the world I was like you've been playing too much modern warfare there's no dream no inspiration you shouldn't know jihad you've been playing modern warfare you guys know modern warfare yeah it's a video game shooting video game you've been playing this way too long you know and this is what happens to these kids they begin to believe that you know what I'm the savior of the world because I can do it with my xbox controller I can do it with my PS controller so guess what I can do it for the rest of the world.

Phase Two: Beauty and Competition (زينة وتفاخر بينكم)

Allah is telling us you will waste a big part of your life playing games and then you'll graduate from there hopefully and move on to the next phase which is about beauty and how many folks in our community waste their life just shopping to look more beautiful and again I'm going to be very clear in case someone didn't hear me Islam is not against being beautiful in Islam it's something recommended it's encouraged

that you should look good you should dress good but it shouldn't be an obsession where you lose touch with yourself your spirituality.

Then you transition from phase two from part one to part two and part two is the where you're no longer just happy with looking good now it's all about competing with other people so there's a person that looks good they figured out their haircut figured out their shoe style figured out their faux game their shirt game their pants whatever it is that they enjoy wearing their accessories they figured it all out but now they look at the person next to them and what do they say that person has better than I have and they spend the next 20 15 years of their life competing with other people that person has a house in a better neighborhood than mine that person has a better car than mine that person has a better pair of shoes than I do and this is where name brands come in it's all about a name brand right now.

Supreme what a con what an absolute con a North Face coat or jacket goes for how much guys? A good one a Supreme dude not North Face yeah the collab that's what I'm coming to okay so you have a normal North Face coat that might run like 150-200 bucks you add Supreme on there that exact same material exact same fabric exact same style you just add a red logo and throw Supreme on there it turns into $1500 it goes from $200 to $1500 because duniya mein gadho ke kami nahi hai (there's no shortage of donkeys in the world) this is why the value of it goes from $200 to $1500 because we have no lack of donkeys in the world everyone is stupid everyone is dumb we've become slaves to name brand and it's all about prestige and personality nothing to do with quality.

Phase Three: Wealth and Family Accumulation )تكاثر في الأموال والأولاد

He then says what happens as you graduate from phase one to phase two phase one was all about play and unfortunately many of our folks don't graduate from phase one they continue to play games even when they're forty years old and their wives are complaining that my husband still watches you know NFL on Sunday as if he's going into l'tikaf and the rest of the family has to act like they don't exist on Sundays.

Now you enter into the second phase of life and the second phase of life he says is now about زينة وتفاخر بينكم phase one phase two part one is about beautifying yourself now the sixteen year old kid begins to notice that hey I need to actually figure out what my haircut is it's time to go and google it's time to go on YouTube and find out what my haircut is what's my shoe style what's my spectacle my glass style my glasses what kind of style is that what's my shirt style and they start figuring out what their beauty is what does my hijab look like what's my I know everyone else has a hijab style but what's my hijab game what's my abaya game going to look like so everyone now they start figuring out زينة it's all about their beauty and so much of our life is wasted in beautifying the body.

Now keep in mind being beautiful is not a bad thing I want to make this very clear it's actually praiseworthy but you have to understand the context of what Allah is calling زينة is in a perspective where you're neglecting other things in life you're obsessed with one reality you feel like everyone else is

a failure and you are indulging more than you should be do you guys understand like every parent will tell you my kids play video games much more than they should be are there any parents here who can say that confidently no.

The Reality Check: What Truly Matters

The third phase of life is what Allah refers to as تَكَاثُرُ فِي الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَوْلَادِ all you want to do is increase your wealth even more get richer and richer and richer and increase your family it all becomes about money and family but what happens in life as you remember guys is that every time you progress what do you notice when you look back at life what do you think I wasted so much time every time you look back in life depending on where you are what you want in life right now you always believe what what do you believe I figured it out whichever phase you're in if you're 60 years old what do you believe I figured it out when you're 40 years old what do you believe I figured it out when you're 80 years old what do you believe I figured it out when you're 18 years old when you're 8 years old when you're 2 years old every single person on this spectrum believes I figured it out but the truth is they've just been taken on a rollercoaster by Shaytan.

And what they realize is as this old man is sitting with his son on one Sunday afternoon having coffee with him the cup falls from his hand he begins to feel a pain in his chest he falls to the side his heart is thumping his son's calling 911 the ambulance arrives they load him on a stretcher they're taking him to the hospital they're taking him into surgery he holds his son's hand and he says to his son that today I transition from this world to the Akhira and as I die I want you to know that I've just wasted my entire life because that's not why Allah created me it wasn't for money it wasn't for a house it wasn't for college it wasn't for marriage none of this stuff these were all extras in life the main reason Allah created me was to connect with Him.

The Fundamental Truth About Life's Purpose

This is the truth this is the reality that every Muslim must understand young or old and this is a very fundamental point every Muslim young or old you must realize that Allah in the Quran teaches you how to spend your life now we're not telling you not to have fun enjoy yourself everything has to happen within its limits everything must happen within its boundaries you wanna go play video games go do it just limit yourself it shouldn't consume you you wanna do your MCAT you wanna go to med school do it but it can't come at the cost of you not growing spiritually.

When someone tells me that I didn't pray salah during my period of preparing for my MCAT I have pity on them how sad is it that there was an examination in the world that was so important for you that you were preoccupied to even do sajdah in front of Allah you're telling me that you missed salah you missed a fard your obligation to Allah because you were playing a game because you were playing basketball because you were watching a movie I don't have a problem with you playing a video game I don't have a

problem with you playing basketball I don't have a problem with you going to the movies you wanna do that stuff that's your choice I'm not sure if I would do it but if you wanna do it go knock yourself out what I do have a problem with is you not understanding your priorities in life.

Luqman's Wisdom: The Only Constant Relationship

I'm gonna share one thing and with this I'll close Luqman the wise the one referenced in the Quran he said to his son that my dear son if you take everything from this world but the love of Allah you've taken nothing from this world if you take everything from the world if you are the best basketball player you play hockey the best your football game is impeccable you know you are amazing at pool you're really good at table tennis you're amazing at fruit ninja like you're really good you're at a competitive level okay you're really good at so many things you can make a mean protein shake you're very good at making beds right.

You know I bring this bed example because how sad it is they were talking about this in that BBC documentary of the Uyghur Muslims do you guys see it anyone see it with the cameras in and they said that we train these people for four weeks how to make beds Astaghfirullah it's a joke it's a big joke may Allah relieve them people relieve those people from dhulm and allow them to return back to their homes anyway what were we saying yes if you believe the purpose of your life lies in these distractions you've missed it.

He's saying to his son that if you've accomplished everything of this world but not the love of Allah then you've taken nothing but if the only thing you end up taking from this world is the love of Allah and everything else doesn't work out you've taken everything if you're young or old try to understand this that I have a responsibility of building a relationship with Allah friends will come and go hobbies will come and go fads will come and go they'll change style you know everything changes in the world the only constant in your life is your relationship with Allah.

That Allah is with you when you're two years old that Allah is with you when you're twelve years old that Allah will be with you the day you're getting married when you're 22 years old that Allah will be with you when you're buying your first home at 32 years old that Allah will be with you when you're burying your mother at 42 years old that Allah will be with you when your son is graduating at the age of 52 years old that Allah will be with you when you're going for your heart surgery at 62 years old that Allah will be with you when you're being lowered into your grave at 72 years old he's not going anywhere.

Everything will leave you. Everything will. As you're being lowered into your grave, your heart will cry as your mother and father lower you, begging them to not leave. But the truth is they will leave. You will hear their footsteps walk away.

(Bukhari hadith 6514)

Nabi said: "Three things follow the deceased: his family, his wealth, and his deeds. Two things return back. His wealth and family return back. And only one thing remains with you in the grave. What's that one thing? Your good deeds. That's all that remains with you."

The Questions That Matter

Allah will not ask you in the grave about your finesse shot in soccer. He's not going to ask you about that. Allah is going to ask you:

"Who is your Lord? What is your religion? Tell me who this man is that I sent to you as a prophet." This is what Allah is going to ask you about.

On the Day of Judgment, Allah isn't going to ask you you know, how many kills did you get in Fortnite? Allah is going to ask you:

(Tirmidhi hadith 2417)

"Tell me about your life. How did you spend your youth? How did you spend your life? Where did you earn your wealth from? Where did you spend your wealth? Tell me these things."

So appreciate and understand that building that relationship with Allah is very meaningful.

Closing Message: Finding Your Life's Purpose

I'm out of time, right? Yeah, four minutes left. We'll stop here. I had one more thought but I'll leave that maybe for another time, maybe for another gathering.

We pray that Allah grants barakah. He accepts, He empowers our youth. And for the youth sitting here, I want you to learn.

If there's one thing that you can take back from today's lecture in a sentence, learn to appreciate mature and proper perspective of your life. What are you living for? Create a perspective. What's the purpose in my life? Can I change something? Can I change the state of slavery in today's world? Modern-day slavery.

Can I liberate people from their ills and their harms? Can I empower women and empower youth in our community? What can I do? Either you can waste your life doing nothing or you can really do a lot. You can do a lot. I pray that Allah blesses us with perspective and himmah and guidance and encouragement.

. وصلى الله تعالى على سيدنا محمد السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته