Welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It's the 16th meeting of 2015. Can I ask you to set any electronic devices to flight mode or switch off, please? I'd like to start with introductions. We are supported at the table by the clerkin and research staff, official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room by the security office. My name is Margaret McCulloch, and I am the committee's convener. Members will now introduce themselves and turn starting here on my right. Good morning, Sandra White MSP for Glasgow Kelvin, Deputy convener. Good morning, John Finne MSP Highlands and Isles. Good morning, Annabelle Goldie MSP, West of Scotland. Good morning, Drew Smith, Member for Glasgow. Good morning, Krushan, our MSP for the office. John Mason MSP for Glasgow Sheddleston. The first agenda item today is the decision on taking business in private. You are asked to agree consideration of a draft report on your inquiry into age and social isolation at item 4 in private. Are we all agreed? You are also asked to agree consideration of the work programme at item 5 in private. Are we all agreed? Yes. Agenda item 2 is to hear evidence from the Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment on an affirmative instrument, namely the Qualifying Civil Partnership Modification Scotland Order 2015 draft. The instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before provisions may come into force. Following this evidence taken, the committee will be invited to consider a motion to approve the instrument under agenda item 3. I welcome the minister and his accompanying officials and can I invite the minister to make any opening remarks, please? Thank you, convener, and it's a pleasure to be here. I should say back here at the Equal Opportunities Committee to outline what the draft order is doing and to ask the committee to recommend it. From the outset, just for clarity, I want to be clear that the order and the consultation announced to some fanfare two days ago covered two separate issues. The order is about allowing persons in the same sex civil partnership registered out with Scotland to marry here. The consultation is about the future of civil partnerships in Scotland generally. Any legislation following that consultation would be some way off and could not happen in this session of Parliament. The draft order amends the definition of qualifying civil partnership in the Marriage and Civil Partnership Scotland Act 2014. This amendment means that couples in a civil partnership registered in England and Wales or Northern Ireland and couples in a civil partnership registered in an overseas jurisdiction can, if they wish, change their relationship to marriage in Scotland through having a marriage ceremony. The draft order also provides under Scots law the couples are to be treated as married from the date when they first registered their relationship or, if later, from 5 December 2005. The reason for that reference is that it is when same sex relationships were first given legal recognition in Scotland through the Civil Partnership Act 2004. We have also laid a separate SSI, not subject to parliamentary procedure, which makes minor changes to the marriage notice form to reflect that in future couples in a same sex civil partnership registered out with Scotland will be able to marry. The stage 1 report by the committee on the then bill recommended that there should be provision so that couples in a civil partnership registered out with Scotland could change their relationship into marriage here in Scotland. There was then a vigorous debate at stage 2 in the committee on amendments. I took part in that, as I recall, with the Government amendment eventually being accepted. I entirely accept that it has taken the Government as longer to lay the draft order than we would like. Last year we were busy implementing a range of components of the 2014 act so that in particular the first same sex marriages could take place in Scotland in 2014. This year we have carried out two consultations on the provision now in front of you. The first consultation was on the general principles and the second in line with section 9 of the 2014 act was on a draft of the order that is in front of you. As the policy note indicates, we then took a number of steps following these consultations, preparing guidance for registrars, preparing guidance for couples and dealing with these transitional issues. The order forms part of our continuing work more widely to implement the 2014 act. Other work to implement the act includes the consultation that I referred to. Our plan to consult on qualifying requirements for religious and belief bodies that they have to meet before they can solemnise marriage or register civil partnership. That will require very careful and close consultation with religious and belief bodies in particular. We are continuing to work with the equality network and the Scottish Transgender Alliance on regulations about the registration of marriages and civil partnerships following gender recognition. We are preparing an order on alternative evidence such as hormonal treatment to be accepted by the gender recognition panel in cases where a person transitioned to an acquired gender some time ago and is seeking recognition thereof. The Government also promised to consider further the issue of the age at which people can obtain gender recognition and we are still considering this. Any changes here would definitely require primary legislation. A key issue is ensuring sufficient support is available for young people in this situation. The equality network and Scottish Transgender Alliance also have an equal recognition campaign covering a wide range of areas of which this is one. The Government will consider what response we should make to that campaign, including on that question of the age at which gender recognition can be obtained. In conclusion, this order helps further the implementation of the 2014 act. It is a further step towards equality, in line with what the committee wished at stage 2. I invite the committee to recommend that the order be approved. Thank you, minister, for that information. Would any of the members like to ask the minister a question? John Mason? Thank you, convener. Minister, you can clarify. As I understand it, if a civil partnership in Scotland is to be changed into a marriage there are two potential routes. There is the marriage ceremony or there is the administrative process. If a civil partnership is from overseas then it has to be a marriage ceremony and cannot be the administrative process. Can you explain why that is the case? The administrative process takes advantage of the access that we have under the registers at the moment that the couple have already been verified under Scots law and have gone through the processes involved. That initial check would have ensured closeness of relationship and included check that it was a true relationship. That is not something that we have ready access to and certainly not rapid access to if the relationship was entered into abroad. On consideration we have felt that the longer timescales, the greater scrutiny of the process is more appropriate here and will nonetheless allow people in Scotland who have come from abroad to undergo, to change their civil partnership into marriage. The ceremonial route can be rather limited. There is no requirement to splash out on a great wedding in a castle but it nonetheless provides those safeguards more adequately. I accept that the marriage ceremony could be quite simple but would there be a cost difference in that? Can I refer to an official on the costs? You can have a civil marriage ceremony in Scotland for £125 that is more expensive than the administrative route for changing civil partnership to a marriage. At the moment those are free for the first year, after the first year there will be £30. That includes any checks that have to be done and the closeness of relationship and things that ministers talked about? Yes, as the minister said, those checks will have been done when the couple entered the civil partnership because of the provisions about are you too closely related applied to civil partnerships as well as they applied to marriage. Whereas there is more work for a registrar to do when they are confronted with a couple who they have not dealt with before in terms of checking, do these people know what they are doing, are they over age, are they both in a position to get married? There is not another marriage somewhere else or something like that. The registrar does need to go through a number of checks like that to ensure that people are eligible to marry in Scotland. Okay, thank you. Any other member like to ask a question? Christian, then Annabelle. Thank you for coming in. Yes, we are all welcome of course because some of us did vote for the amendment and it is quite welcome out there as fast as you can hear it. But I would like to know about the numbers of couples who may wish to take it up. Do you think the uptake will be quite slow? Have you got any idea of numbers? Any financial implications about the numbers? It's hard to tell exactly because we don't have a register of everybody who's entered into a relationship abroad and is now living in Scotland. We're not a database state. We do know, however, that there have been particular couples that have been in regular contact with campaigning organisations and with the Scottish Government to highlight this anomaly. There is clearly a category of individuals here that we want to provide the opportunity to. This may well be taken up by a relatively small number of people, but when you look at the alternative, which is those couples divorcing or dissolving their civil partnership in Scots law with all of that entails so that they can marry or going to a home jurisdiction and exchanging, which may not even be possible because many of their home jurisdictions may not offer same-sex marriage. By home jurisdiction, I mean the jurisdiction where they took out the relationship they may well now consider Scotland to be their home. When you consider all of that, there is an injustice here that just needs to be dealt with and an equality that needs to be delivered. Annabelle? Minister, this is less a specific question, more a general observation and drafting. I'm clear about the policy intention and I rely on the advice of our clerk and also the contribution from the delegated legislation committee of this Parliament to keep us right. If I look at the face of this instrument, in all honesty, I haven't a clue by looking at the face of this instrument if it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's a question about general draftsmanship. Is this really the only way we can draft a statutory instrument by a whole series of references to existing statutes and simply substituting or deleting provisions? I think we're getting into a very wide question there about draftsmanship. I could be uncharitable and point to the Scotland Act 1998, a piece of legislation that everybody in this Parliament is very familiar with and which now resembles its original version in a lot of parts only tangentially having had things bolted into it. There's always a point where legislation that has been amended so often then gets revisited and gets consolidated with a new act, but this is fairly common and the habit is to be able to provide the act as it is in force and to be able to provide that online. So, while the order that implements the changes may be quite complicated, I think we've both served on the subordinate legislation committee at various points to appreciate the complexity of that. Well, thankfully, Minister, I've never served on it. You've never? Why I'm probably still in a degree of relative sanity today. Well, there we go. My apologies for that slight on your character if you took it as such. I certainly did spend some time on the subordinate legislation committee and I appreciate that issue. But this is an order that makes some changes and that will then be reflected in the legislation as amended and presented that way. We do have a programme of work with the Scottish Law Commission looking at possible candidates to consolidate legislation. I had a meeting with them along with colleagues a couple of weeks ago, not about the marriage act, but about a different area of family law. We can certainly add perhaps the Marriage Scotland Act to the list of areas that the Scottish Law Commission might want to look at for consolidation legislation in due course. I'm sure the convener of the Justice Committee will be thrilled to hear that when she does. But if we do think about the entire process of this, the Marriage and Civil Partnership 2014 act in itself was largely, indeed, possibly entirely an amendment of the Marriage Scotland Act of 1977, as indeed have many other changes been since then. It is simply the nature of our statute-based system. I thank the minister for his tolerance. Thank you, Annabelle. Anyone else have any other questions? No? Can I just ask a very quick question as well for those individuals whose civil partnership was conducted outwith Scotland and in those countries where the marriage is not recognized abroad? Those individuals are going through the marriage ceremony here. Is that identified and highlighted to individuals that, although they are married and recognised in Scotland, it may not be recognised in their own home country? Yes. This is one of the big concerns about having this option. Indeed, any aspect of cross-border family law that you can move from one country to another and a relationship that you entered into in one country can be not recognised, can be recognised differently. For example, the French PACs, if you undertake that while in France as a same-sex couple, you will gain one set of rights. If you then come to the United Kingdom, it is recognised as a civil partnership, which actually has greater rights despite you having entered into one area. So anytime there is a cross-border movement in this field, it creates complications. Our approach has been to prepare that guidance note for couples, which stresses very much the importance of establishing what the implications are going to be in the jurisdictions that they have concern about. It also highlights the possibility of them taking legal advice on it, because it is going to be very complicated between certain jurisdictions. If, however, people have moved from another jurisdiction and tend to spend the rest of their life in Scotland, it is eminently straightforward and highly desirable. Based on what we have heard from those couples, where there is that fluidity between countries, there are complications just as there are in any cross-border movement, especially in same-sex marriage, which is recognised in a variable way. The guidance that will go to couples and the extra advice to registers in their handbook to ensure that they can advise couples as well. There is an element here of we can provide the information and there may be individuals who could take more note of it, but we are doing everything we can to make sure that is underlined with them, because we do not want anybody to find themselves in that situation accidentally. Agenda item 3 calls for the committee to formally consider and recommend approval of the motion, namely S4M-14271- that the Equal Opportunities Committee recommends that the Qualifying Civil Partnership Modification Scotland Order 2015 draft be approved. I would like to invite the minister to speak and move the motion S4M-14271. I think I've already spoken in favour, so I'll happily move the motion in my name. Okay, thank you. Any members of any comments? No? Okay. The question is that motion S4M-14271 and the name of Mark will be approved. Are we all agreed? Yes. That concludes consideration of the affirmative instrument. We will report the outcome of our consideration to the Parliament. Thank you minister for your participation and thank you colleagues as well. That concludes the public part of today's meeting. Our next meeting will take place in Thursday 1 October. I will now suspend the meeting for the committee to move into private session. Thank you.


Well, hi there, I'm Sandy Olak and I tried something a little different for today's video. I tried painting a Bob Ross in watercolor. Well, it is Earth Day and I thought that would be a good day to do a landscape painting. So I decided to do the Bob Ross challenge, at least what I'm calling the Bob Ross challenge. I don't know if it's a thing, but I did see somebody do a Bob Ross challenge to paint a Bob Ross painting in frosting. Yes, like the frosting you put on cakes, they did that in frosting. And if they could do it in frosting, I can do it in watercolor, right? Well, I quickly discovered, I've never tried following his directions on a painting. I quickly discovered you can't actually follow pretty much anything he says when you're painting in watercolor, because Bob paints in oils and he'll tell you just paint that whole sky blue and then go in with white paint to add your clouds.  You have to know a little bit about how you want to do your color blending. Do you want to drop wet into wet colors, like I just dropped that purple into the green? Or do you want to have harder edges to things? There's a lot of different decisions to make in watercolor that don't even affect oil painters at all. And that is one of the things that I love about watercolor because I'm learning a ton just by playing with it. And this painting is a great example of my playtime. I just start going for it and I don't really have a great explanation for a lot of what I'm doing in this painting because I'm just I'm just putting paint down. One of the things I decided to try to challenge myself just for fun was to paint with this flat brush. I've never done a full painting with this, and I'll switch to another brush here and there for some of the details. But it was an interesting challenge to see if I could paint a little bit more with these sort of flat lines, because that reminded me of what Bob does, because he paints with flat brushes or with a knife at various times to create textures. And I thought maybe this flat brush would accomplish that for me. But one of the things that I did discover here was if I want to do more of these big paintings, I really need some big brushes. So I did, after this video, invest in some very big and very expensive brushes. You don't have to get the big expensive brushes. I generally, in all my tutorials here on YouTube, I'm using my smaller silver brushes. And when I say smaller, like now 12 feels tiny to me because I'm using big honkin brushes for fine art paintings now. But you don't need big, giant brushes and they're also very expensive. So don't follow me unless you're really interested in investing seriously in your art. But something that I did recently, which I'm going to invite you to go look at it if you're interested, I have had only one place that I tracked any of my painting, my progress over these last five years, which was throwing all of my paintings into a cabinet in my studio.  But like it's just a pile of paintings. And every once in a while, I go through it and I pull out a painting or two to frame and to put in my church because we do a show at my church. And it's an excuse to make myself frame things. So I don't have just a stack of paintings in a drawer, but that's the only time I look at them. So I have no overall sense of where I've come from and where I've gone to. And what I decided to do was to take nice pictures of everything. Nice, you know, clear, sharp ones and get the color adjustment right and everything. And then I posted them all on a page on my blog. So I can look at these and as I add more paintings to them, I can look and see, OK, this one looks a lot like that one. And and I can get an overall sense of what are the colors that I'm drawn to? What are the styles I'm drawn to? And did I do this painting and I feel good about it? Did I do that painting and feel not so good about it? And when I can see them all as small pictures on the page together, it's really interesting to start to assess a little bit of my growth and the changes that have happened in my watercolor since I first started. Now, I didn't post all the really terrible paintings on there because I do a lot of really awful paintings that just go straight into the recycle bin. And don't come haunting my house to steal things out of the recycle bin. But I do a lot of bad paintings and I have talked to lots of teachers who said, yes, they do lots of bad paintings, too. And they'll paint a second painting on the back and then they toss it in the trash and they get all the bad paintings out of them so that then they can move on to the good things. Because I mean, even this really famous teacher that I have, he literally says that out of all the paintings he does, and he paints every single day, all the paintings he does in a year, he might come out with six good ones by the end of the year. And this is a man who sells paintings for many, many, many, like thousands and thousands of dollars and stuff. So he sells paint. I asked him about this recently. Like, do you sell the ones that are like the ones you consider not good? And he actually does. So he's got a show coming up in Moscow that he has to paint things for. And I was like, well, wow, that's like some pressure. To have these spectacular paintings for this big show. And he's like, you know, I'll do my best. I'll give him what I've got at the time. And then there you go. And I've thought, you know, I only like to show things when I'm proud of what that thing is. So it's really just an interesting mental place to think at what level I would have to be at before I frame or not frame something or put it in a show or not put it in show. And I'm only at the point where I'm thinking about that. I'm not entering shows at this point. I will probably eventually, but it's just been interesting to post all that stuff together. So if you have a blog or if you have a Flickr account or something, just post all your paintings there so you can watch your progress. And if you get to the point where some of your early ones are really trashy, then go delete those if you want, or at least put them in an archive folder or something, but keep track of your progress and see how you improve over time. Because the more you paint, the better you'll get. And if you can look at your body of work all at once, then there might be a style that will start to come forth. I haven't seen like a real style that's me come forth yet. Aside from, I seem to like to spray a lot. So I like drippy things. So I have a feeling that will be a big part of it. I don't think I'm going to do my hyper realism as part of my watercolor style, even though I can do that. I can do a lot of different styles because I've studied a lot under different people. But I'm trying to figure out what is expressive of me and the kinds of things that I like to paint, the kinds of things I'm good at, and what would a style be if there were such a style for me as Sandy Olnock? Not that I can't do other things, but what would be my signature style? I have that in spades and Copic markers. Like you can look at my work and know immediately that's mine. It's just not coming forth quite yet in watercolor. And I know it takes a long time, so I'm willing to put in the time and learn all of that. And occasionally I will show you a fine art piece here on YouTube. So if you're interested in watching that kind of thing, you're welcome to see those videos as well. And that is just about it for today. This painting is just about finished. I did do this one a second time, and I will have a video of that on my social media today, a little speed video of it. It wasn't as good as this one, didn't come out as good I think as this one did, but I painted it on canvas instead of on cold press paper like this one is. And painting on canvas was a whole different experience as well. And I have some things on my blog that I wrote up about the difference between painting on these different surfaces, things I learned from this painting. So this one is Bob's oil painting, the one that I painted from a little bit. I made my trees a little more natural, my colors a little more natural. He made his trees very regular, and I kind of liked mine to feel more like a natural forest.  And it came out again very differently. The paint drips a lot on these. It just kind of slides off. You could actually wash it off and start all over again on a canvas covered with a watercolor ground. So anyway, that's about it for today. Happy Earth Day. I hope you can get a chance to get out and paint something or at least go to your studio and paint a beautiful scene of Mother Earth. And I will see you again in the next video. Take care. Bye-bye.


I think we'll start this out with an example of what the Helmholtz chain is going to have to eat. Yeah, I wonder if I'm alive. You're grabbed by the function of a bullet lighter, right? Yeah, at least you're alive. Well, in order to understand that, you definitely have to. So what's that level? So now I can no longer get to my bookers. All right, folks. On the way back to the car to find a new location for the next shoot, we realized we forgot we... Okay, that's not a royal we. I was flipping through the book, going, hey, what do we need to still cover? I'm like, whoops, we forgot two of the most important ones about punishment. Here's your last punishment video. Or maybe not the last one.  It's kind of chilly out here today if you can't tell. Anyway, so two other issues with regard to punishment that I think are probably a bit more serious and maybe deserve fewer jokes. One is the emotional reactions and aggressiveness, right? So you can create some pretty strong emotional reactions when you start to use punishment. It's not a kind procedure. People aren't going to be like, oh, thank you for punishing me. It's not something that people really enjoy to experience. When done effectively, it's perversive. That's the point. Imagine what type of reactions you're going to get to that. We can have anger, disappointment, sadness, all of them, right? There's tons of things that can happen. And all of these things, when you're working with somebody or working with an animal, they can damage your rapport, right? So you've really got to watch out. And we all know about how the value of rapport when we're working with people or with non-human animals for that matter. So watch out for those emotional reactions, right? They can be really, really over the top. They can be top. So again, it's just one of those things about I'm not really super excited about the use of punishment because there are all these pitfalls. We've got two videos on pitfalls now. Let's see what else. Let's see the aggression. So people can tend to aggress. I talked about that in the previous video where we talk about modeling, right? But aggression is something that's a very clear effect that happens when you punish it. It happens with non-humans too. You punish them, they tend to punish something else so they get violent or whatever the case may be. So again, something else we don't really want. And then the other piece here, let's see, we had the aggression, the emotional reactions, and what was the last one? As I've said before, you become a discriminated punisher, right? So you become an SDP, a discriminative stimulus for punishment, which is going to create a whole bunch of an escape and avoidance behavior. Why? Because if you can avoid a punisher, so if you can avoid a positive punisher, that's a situation of negative reinforcement, right? Escape and avoidance is negative reinforcement. So if I avoid the punishment or if I do something to avoid punishment, then that behavior is going to be reinforced negatively by definition.  So kids will do it all the time. They'll lie to avoid a punisher. It happens with all of us. Let's see what else. It may turn to drugs and other alcohol and other drugs in order to just avoid some of the experiences and just escape some of the problems in that life. So I think one of the key things again, every time, every video, if you're going to be using punishment, you better be using reinforcement. I don't even want you to think of it as an option. It's like, okay, fine. You're going to get rid of this behavior. That's all well and good. Punishment's a useful tool.  And I mean a lot of it. Make it thick. Make it easy for them to learn what to do and then reinforce the heck out of it because that's the only way you're going to keep, I don't know, kind of keep society rolling if you will. It's a positive sort of environment. If we teach rather than a negative sort of, and I'm thinking kind of the emotional terms are positive, it's a negative sort of environment if we just constantly try to suppress people and keep them down. Give them the skills about what to do. Teach people how to be successful in this world.  I think that's finally it on the pitfalls of punishment. There might be another punishment video on examples of punishment, but we'll see. Come on, Cooper, let's go for a ride.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with Layton Sports Garage. I've been 22. Penini Chronicles, football hobby, six box break, number 34. Pick your team style. Read off the list of our names and our teams. Got Andrew T. Bengels, Brian S. Saintson Eagles, Chris F. Lyons, D. W. Falcons, Zekiel M. Texans, Giants, Bucks, Jason L. Steelers, Jim G. Packers, Joel M. Ravens, Keith B. Commanders, Patriots, Matt S. Niners, Matt J. Vikings, Michael L. Chiefs, Dolphins, Nathan B. Colts, Paul T. Bills, Reed M. Cowboys, Ricky B. Panthers, Rory C. Titans, Russell P. Charger, Seahawks, TJW, Broncos, Tyler B. Bears, Tyler W. Cardinals, Browns, Raiders, Rams, Tyler O. Jetson, Will Z. Jags. Good luck, everybody. Here we go. We are sold out on Chronicles basketball, number 14. Thank you all. That'll be going after this. That'll be the last break of the night, guys. That is a Tyquan Thorin. Nice. Timeless Treasures to 99. Jersey Auto. Green, K. Von Tibbeto to 49. Garrett Wilson. I have no energy to deal with that guy. I can't even acknowledge you. There's 49 Rashad White, Bresaul, Prism Black, Pickett, Chronicles, Rookie, Corralz, Mirror White. There's a Sauce Gardener. Nice. Warwick 25. Three-color patch for the Jets. Nice one there. Jets. A Nick Chubb to 99. Rock Purdy and Sauce Gardener. Pickett, Luminance. Joe Baroto to 199. Johan Dotson. Having Austin. Bresaul. Plates and Patches. Rookie Jersey Autograph going to the Jets. Nice one there. New York. Trayvon Walker-Silver. Kyle Hamilton and Skye Moore. Silver Herbo. Olave and Tariq Wollin. Malik Willis-Silver Dynagon as Wandaille Robinson and Brock Purdy. That's an auto.  McBride, Michael Pittman for 199. Just be like Jake and just go on to baseballreference.com and cheat. That's what Jake does. Oh yeah, he told me he did. There's 50 Johan Dotson, Red Auto for the Commanders. Cheater. Silver Brian Robinson Jr. Desmond Ritter and Jalen Hurts. Nobody who, no person that doesn't need help gets the answers like Jake does. Derek Stingley Jr. to 49. There's Trayvon Walker to 25. Look at him. One of them. Ritter. Yeah, okay. Sure. Dude's been alive like 10 years and he knows guys from like 40. Damien Pierce to 149. Christian Watson and base. I know Jake literally just celebrated his 13th birthday. Garrett Wilson, Plates and Patches to 240. Just got races. It's the Purdy. 15 of 99 Jersey number, Mahomes. Kway Walker and Desmond Ritter. There we go. There's his new name, baby Jake. There's Justin Herbert, Chronicles Batch to 25 for the Chargers. Jake, do you hear your new nickname? George Pickens and Kway Walker in Hutchinson. George Pickens, silhouette to 99. Rookie Jersey Auto. Nice one there, Steelers. Prism Black, Silver and Mahomes. Sauce Gardner and Matt Corral. Jake, thoughts on your new nickname? Drake London, T-Law. Jersey Card to 199. Jags, Taekwondo to 49. Brady, Prism Black and Barclay. Gervonta Williams to 25. Broncos, Bresaul and base. I think he started crying. Yeah, he probably is. Sobbing into his teddy bear on his bed. Farm boy or baby? There's Sauce Gardner, Silver, Prism Black Auto for the Jets. Jets killing it right now. Blue Garrett Wilson again to 25. K-Bond Tivito and Malik Willis. Throwing me off a building. Picket. Silver Damien Pierce. Hutch and Kenneth Walker. What do I feel like Nate McLeod played for the Royals? I've played for the Pirates. I don't remember if he played for the Royals. Maybe not. Do like Jake does, just Google it. Just go to a baseball reference, search it. Jake just types in who played for the Royals and Pirates. There's Jacob Eason. Rookie variation, Yellow Plate for the Colts. Jameson Williams, Orange to 10. Nice, six of 10. Carl Aftis and base. There's CD Lam, Jersey Card to 199. Damien Pierce to 199. Drake London and Saquon. Silver Devon Lloyd. Kenneth Pickett, Kenneth Walker. Probably. Ooh, Brian O'Rackpo. That's sick to 25 for the Commanders. It's a 25. Sam Howell. He's Googling Highway. I convince people I don't Google these answers. That's what he's Googling right now. Got him all right. Got him all right. And I got 1,000 Sam. Sam Howell, the 25. Nice one there for the Commanders. Rookie Auto, Garrett Wilson. Sam Howell again and Matt Corral. Okay, got him all right again. I'm just starting liking baseball. The old Google. Justin Herbert to 149. They'll never know. Drake London and Breesaw. I know we're onto you, Jake. Come on, Jake. We got him all right now. Oh, he is. No, Vaughn does not believe you. Vaughn even said old Googly. He just texted me and said, I don't believe Jake. Yeah, exactly. I saw that text. Farm boy, baby Jake. He is one. Ooh, the human joystick. Dante Hall, Invincible Auto. Ooh, Orange Dynagon, Sam Howell. 275. Hey, look guys, I got him all right. Hey, look at this. 1,000 percent. Nobody in the world got it but me. Derek Henry to 25 for the Titans. Jake London and John Dodson. Not even baseball knew this guy. I had to add it. I googled it. Chris Olave, Essentials Autographs for the Saints. Nice one there. No. Oh, Shane. I ain't leaving nobody alone. I'm over it right now. Everybody is guilty. Who is this? Saints. I'm over it. Right now is not the time. There's James Cook to 35, Luminance. Jay Moe and Justin Herbert. Baby Jake Sheeves. That's it. He was eating one show the other day. I walked over and he like turned his phone away. It's a Google. He said, hey Google, what team played? Press got to 199. Caught him. There's the 199. Don't look at my phone. Don't look at my phone. I'm doing it back with weird right now. Gotta get them all right. Sauce Carter, Tevin Lloyd and Traylon Birks. I'm the smartest 10-year-old there is. Big dip. That was it. Yeah, he was like, oh, they got me. I'm out of here. Gotta make a quick getaway. Mommy? Pick it, rookie. He's Googling right now. Bree Saul, Silver Guy. I'm out of here. Jordan Davis and Adam Johnson. I'm out of here. They're home to me. Chris Olave. There is the 25. Malik Willis. Nice one there for the Titans. Silver Cave Antibiotic. Chris Olave and Malik Willis. We're in the same building as both of them. Garrett Willis in a 49. Here's Sean and Traylon Birks. That's why I won't do the American Brig because I know Jake Sheets. Sticks all the phone out of it. Yeah, that's why I wasn't gonna do it, man. Damien Pierce. It's been hundreds and hundreds. To 99, Kenny Pickett. Can't do better than Google. Two packs to go, guys. Thanks again for getting this filled up. Justin Herbert. Nice one there. Photogenic Jersey to 199. A Justin Herbert again to 199. Drake London and Mahomes. Hutch rookie. Auto to 49. Great Iron Kings for the Lions. Red Jack Jones for the Patriots to 99. Jameson Williams and Brock Purdy. Do a quick recap here, guys. Pretty solid case again. Half case. We had Justin Herbert back Prescott. CD Land. Jacob Eason plate. Trevor Lawrence. Justin Herbert 25. Garrett Wilson. Sauce Gardner to 25. Patch. Eden Hutchinson. Malik Willis. Chris Olave. Dante Hall. Sam Howell. Brian Aracpo. Sauce Gardner. George Pickens. Derek Stingley Jr. Johan Dotson. Brie Saul. And Tyquan Thornton. How to do it for the break, guys. Thanks again for the fill. Up next, our last break of the day.


Not just dieting is extremely important, but I do take my supplements here just as much So I'm clearly going to go through what my entire stack was Leading up to world in the last 12 weeks of my preparation. So guys my choice of protein was an isolated protein I immediately switch over from oxyway to isopet from EHB labs purely because it's a fast-absorbing protein You must absorb it within your first intake I usually add about 25 grams of protein with my first meal, 100 grams of oats in the morning Which was my lifesaver that I had and then also had a scoop of protein after my training session Then my first few weeks I stuck to RPMAX, which is a pre-stimulated pre-workout and PSI, which is a non-stimulated pre-workout, but also a vascular later I actually stuck with the PSI straight through my entire 12 weeks because it gave me intense pumps And then I switch over from my RPMAX about 8 to 6 weeks out and went on to The number one fat burner in the world, oxy-street.  It speeds up your metabolism It also helps with recovery and promote optimal health and brain function. So very very good product then Also now in my last two weeks I added the anti-bladed H2 drops Which obviously help your body to get rid of excess water and it just pulls that skin much tighter Especially when you lean and just a much better look. Amazing product This goes without saying vitamins and minerals extremely important. This helps keeps your immune system healthy especially when you're Training so much and most of you died during a deficit your immune system struggles So it's important to to help just keep your immune system strong Key element to have in your stack. And then last but not least Glutamine. Now glutamine I use about Twice a day. I'll have one just after training and before I go to bed Algutamine obviously speeds up your recovery, especially during prep when you train high intensity But this is a product that attack straight throughout the year Remember the faster you recover the faster you build. So yeah, and that is my stack for my whole 12 week prep up to WF will temperatures


Hey coach, what's up? This is Coach Ben from buildmysportsbiz.com and today I'm going to go on a little rant. So I've gotten so many questions about this over the past couple years and I want to make a video that addresses this once and for all. So the number one problem I see that coaches have faced over the last four or five years since I've been helping coaches with their business is once they start training players, they don't have a system in place that collects money and they don't have a system in place where they can start to predict the income that's going to come in to their business month after month. This is why that's happening. So number one, a lot of coaches out there are caught up with just doing what everybody else does. I would tell you right now, I wouldn't be shooting this video. I wouldn't have been able to help any coaches with their business if I did what everybody else does because when you do what everybody else does, you're going to get mediocre results and you always need to look to do the opposite of what everybody else does. For example, when I started training players back in 2009, 2010, I knew that all coaches out there that were in my industry were all getting paid by cash or checks and unfortunately, when I started, I did things for free. So I wasn't trying to like make a killing straight away. I just wanted to build confidence. I wanted to get results with kids. I wanted to get social proof that, you know, these players that I was training were getting great results. And I built my business from the ground up. But I made the mistake early on of getting caught up with what other people were doing. I saw that my competitor who was he had a massive business like he was doing like around $250,000 a year. And I thought like, wow, whatever this guy is doing, I need to try to copy that. Because obviously it's working. And I remember like I would I would stalk his business, like for at least six months, I went out to his sessions, went out to see how he was collecting money. He was getting cash and checks. I was like, man, I need to do that. All right, it's working for him. I need to do it. And when I started doing it, I was like, wow, this sucks. There's a lot of people who aren't paying me right now. There's a lot of people who pay me they don't they're not paying enough. Like for example, when I started charging parents to have their kids come train with me for private training or group training, people would always bring like $5 less or $10 less. And I was too nice of a guy to be like, no, like you need to pay, right? And that's because I had a fundamental problem with my business. It was the setup. I did not have a system in place where automatically parents were being charged for my monthly program or a six month program or a yearly program, parents could pay as they come.  Because there was a time I'll never forget this. I just moved out on my own. I had 14 clients who I was training. At that time, I was making like right around $2,000 a month. For me, I was like super happy with that. That was way more money than I needed. I wasn't in any student loans or I didn't have any debt. I live very comfortably without amount of money. I lived in like a $350 a month apartment, my bills were very low. And that amount of money, I was like, I couldn't believe it, right? But that money wasn't consistent.  I thought, oh wow, this is awesome. I have that many clients. They should be paying me this every month. As long as they just come to the sessions, like I'm in a container to get paid that. And I got a little, I would say complacent with how things were going. And I wasn't really that aggressive trying to get new players anymore. Because I was just content. I was like, man, I'm chilling. If I have this amount of kids, I'm good, right? And very quickly, like literally within the matter of a week, every single one of those players, like missed a session. So they all like I didn't get paid for those sessions, right? And then a lot of those players, their parents just ended up they couldn't do the training program anymore. So I lost like all these people, right? And here I was trying to pay rent, trying to take care of myself. And I didn't have a consistent system that was bringing in money every month. And I'm telling you, this problem is plaguing trainers all over the world, right? That are trying to do private training. They're trying to do group training. They're trying to do camps and clinics. Like our whole business that that I run right now, it's 100% automated by online payments and having everything structured to the point where we only attract committed parents that are going to go through our system. If they don't go through our system, they will not be customers. I will never do business with them, right? And that's the way I've really understood how to build a successful business is by having systems in place, right? So if you don't have systems in place, I will tell you what happened to me is going to happen to you, you'll lose people, you'll be stressed. And there's nothing worse than running this business and being stressed at the same time. That's going to rub off in all your sessions. Parents will sniff that out. Kids will sniff that out.  It's not going to be good. And so what you want to do is you want to have a healthy business that needs to be a priority for you. If you're already a great trainer, that's awesome. Okay, if you're a great trainer and your business is unhealthy and there's problems and you keep putting band-aids on it, that your business is going to fall apart, right? Which is why I'm making this video. It's important that I share this with you because I personally experience it. I've talked to so many coaches out there who have gone through our programs in the past, who have never had those systems in place. And now that those systems are in place, they're making between like $5,000 and $10,000 a month on autopilot. And that is because now they have a predictable way of making money. They have rules in place. They have expectations with parents. They have contracts. They have legal stuff. Like these are things that real businesses have. And that's why, like I've said this from day one, since I started helping coaches, the ones who have like legit businesses set up, they are going to be completely separating themselves from those who are running amateur businesses. And when I see somebody who's getting paid cash or checks, like that's fine, right? But that is not going to be the thing that's going to help you succeed, right? And that's because everybody else says it that way. Like all of my competitors, for the most part, like who like someone wants to try to copy what I'm doing now with soccer training, like they've started transitional online, but they still have a lot of loopholes. So they're trying to figure out how I do that. Like you want to be the person that is running your business like a businessman or a business woman. And you have to have that on lockdown. And if you do, you will succeed.  And that's just the reality. And that's why like you need to implement that straight away. And if you need help setting that up, I'm going to be taking on 10 coaches. Alright, and this is going to be over the next three months, I'm going to be personally helping 10 coaches with their business. So if you want to apply and get my one on one help, and you want me to help you with the systems, and basically what I'm going to be doing is I'm picking apart my entire business that I have here, where we are training players on a monthly basis, we have players that are committed to six months or 12 months. At a time, I am going to dissect everything that I've done, and I'm going to give it to you. And I'm going to have you implement it so where you can literally copy and paste what we do so you can build your own successful business, and no matter what sport you're in. So if you are interested in that, if you want to be a part of that group, again, I'm taking 10 coaches, I expect a ton of coaches that are going to show interest in this. I have an application process to this very simple. You simply just go to my website, build my sports biz.com, you click on that. At the top of the page, there is a big blue button that says call coach Ben. When you apply for that, we're going to chat over the phone, see if you're the right fit for the program. I would love to help you out. But like I said, I'm only going to take 10 coaches. This is going to be a three month commitment, where I'm going to show you everything, everything behind the scenes, how I'm getting new players, how you can get new players, how to market yourself, how to target the right people, and really look to implement everything that I've done in my business into yours. And my whole goal with this is to show you everything. Like I have nothing to hide. I'm the type of person who's going to be very committed to helping those who are committed to themselves, right? So if you are ready for that, and you want my personal online help, go ahead, click on that link, build my sports biz.com. Click that blue button at the top of the homepage, take it from there. And I will look to talk to you probably within the next 24 to 48 hours about this opportunity. So I'm super pumped to help you out. That's it for the video, guys. Make sure if you are new here, click the subscribe button, hit the thumbs up button and comment below if you have any questions about this video or any questions about your business. I'd love to help out. All right, I'll see you later.


One of the quick tips that I learned recently was from Steven Robels who does the Apple Insider podcast. He posted this one to Twitter and it blew me away. You know, when you are in messages on the iPhone, we have reactions to those messages and you can press and hold on the message and it shows you the reactions on the top of the message, above the message I should say, and then a menu of things below the message to, you know, for various things reply and that sort of thing. And that that's great, but you have to press and hold and wait a beat for that to all change in the user interface. If you just want to pull up the reactions, you can double tap the message and the reactions bubble appears immediately and you can choose one very, very quickly.


Alhamdulillah Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has blessed us tremendously. We live in dunya wee times because the everything we're experiencing is the nature of the dunya and as a Muslim ummah everything we're experiencing is the nature of the way Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala test and tries his ummah. So a lot of times you might talk to some friends that aren't Muslims particularly if they're Christian. Apologize to any Christians here in advance. There's nothing offensive. So they might say to you if Islam is the truth then why are you Muslims having so much trial and tribulation. So a lot of people they get Muslims get you know edgy. But you know what you say? If Allah loves the people you test them. If he doesn't love a people he doesn't test them. So Alhamdulillah This ummah is a recipient of mercy. It's torment is in the world not in the Akhirah. There's a story. It depends on who narrates it. I think if Qadi Umar narrated it it would be Qadi Iyal who was a great scholar of the Maqrib, the western lands. And if someone from Sham or Philistine relates it is Imna Hajj al-Asqinani. But for the story goes that so I'm giving the Shammi version. This man running. The Imna Hajj al-Asqinani was on a nice horse. He had the nice Ulamat robes. And he was in the souq and there was a Jewish man who was selling oil to people. So back then you didn't have nice neat biology. So you're scooping it out and pouring it into whatever vessel they brought. And so he's getting oil on him and all the dust in the souq is slime and dust mixed with the oil. So he's a mess. And so he looks at Imna Hajj al-Rahimullah. And he says your prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he might not have said Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He said that the world is a prison for the believer and it's a paradise for those who lack belief or who have arrogantly rejected it, Kathir. And so he said what sort of prison are you in when you have this beautiful horse and this nice regalia? And what sort of paradise am I in that I'm this messy wretch? And Imna Hajj said to him, he said that the bliss and the blessings and the delights that I will experience and paradise inshallah make what I'm in the state I'm in now look like I'm in a prison and a dungeon.  And so the story goes the man took shahad on the spot. So all things are relative, you know, brothers and sisters and fellas things certainly having a very difficult situation. But we have to look at it through the lens of how we're tested. So they're tested and we're tested. They're tested with deprivation, no water, no sanitation, no electricity for large periods of time, no internet, no security, no food, two great blessings we're mentioning earlier outside when Allah says so let them worship the Lord of this sacred house who has fed them and driven hunger away from them and has made them secure against fear. And so they're being challenged in terms of there's no food, there's no security. And the challenge for them is patience. And we're being tested with abundance. We have too much food. That's why you go to the supermarket, there's a whole section for antacids. And you have all sorts of gym plans, looking for the ultimate gym plan to lose weight. And all sorts of diet plans, you have the keto diet and the paleo diet and this diet and that diet. And you have Weight Watchers Anonymous and you have Noom and Zoom and Zoom, that's something else, which you have Noom and you have all these plans to lose weight. You have all these gym plans, all these antacids. Why? Because we have too much food. We have, they have no houses, like what 70% of all the residences in northern Gaza has been bombed and it's not much better in southern Khan Yunus and Rafa. Like 30% of the people have been killed in southern Gaza where the people are told to go to. So they don't have houses, we have too much house. The Prophet could barely stand up in this house. We don't want to buy the house if it doesn't have a cathedral ceiling. So if we live in a cathedral, Sinai will pass on that one. The ceiling is too low. The ceiling is only as high as the masjid here, we want it even higher. Too much food, too much house. We turn the tap on, we have water. If the water doesn't come out, we'll inundate the water company will cause. My water's not working. They don't have taps. If there is a tap, there is no running water. If there were running water, it's dirty because they bombed the sewage treatment plants. They learned that from us, the United States. You know, we bombed the sewage treatment plants in Iraq knowing that it would create waterborne diseases. The stratagem of war, knowing that disproportionate number of those affected by the waterborne disease will be children. And so we killed as of 1998. And so the second war was 2001, 2003. So that's another, so Madeline Albright famously said, do you think killing half a million children was worth it? You said, yes, it was without blinking an eye. So that means that's halfway through the regime. You go to 2003, a million children died for nothing. Why? Because if the strategy of killing all those people and including all those children worked, we wouldn't have to invade and occupy Iraq. So it didn't, those kids died for nothing. That's what we did. So like Joe Biden is not new. He says, you know, no ceasefire. Israel has a right to defend herself. As if, you know, murdering innocent people is self-defense along with Stalin. But in any case, their test is the test of patience. Our test is the test of thankfulness, gratitude. Their test is sabr. Our test is shukr. And Allah says, if we pass the test, He'll give us more. If you give thanks, I will give you even more. But their reward is greater. The reward of sabr is the only action mentioned in Quran as having an unlimited reward. The patient ones will be given their reward with no numerical limits. Uncountable reward, uncountable reward. So look what their test is. Surely, we're going to test you. So we'll get ours sooner or later. But it's emphatic. So if you have lam al qasim before a present tense verb and nun taqid, or lam, at the beginning, then this is lam al qasim, what taqdeer, wallahi, wallahi, I swear by Allah, we're going to test you with something of fear. So the umma isn't going to experience fear to a total extent that overwhelms us. So there's fear in Palestine, there's not fear in America. People might get a little nervous, people looking at them funny. They heard a story of someone over here in Pennsylvania, his sister's job was snatched. But generally, you're not going around in fear. But so shame. Something of fear. Well, hope. I find hope when you are in hunger. So there's definitely hunger in Palestine right now. There's some other places. But generally, Muslims have ample food to eat. Look at various parts of the umma. Good food to all of the great cuisines are Muslim. The Persian, the Turkish, the Levant, Palestine, Lebanon, all the great cuisines. Southeast Asia, Tika chicken was Tika, chicken, Musallar, the son, Biryani, Samosa, Shawarma. All these other great cuisines are Muslim. Peking duck is a Muslim dish in China, where our housemate and college was Chinese Muslim. His family is living in Burma. His uncle had a Chinese Muslim restaurant in Queens, New York. We used to go there. We got educated. Peking duck. So it was the most famous dish in China. Peking duck. Peking duck is a Muslim dish. So Muslims are eating good, generally. There's some hunger starvation here and there. And virtually every case is due to political factors, not due to environmental factors like drought, famine. It's pichet. Pichet and menakho ful jua. So in Gaza right now, people are tested with fear. No safe place to go. Even the hospital is being bombed.  And everyone in the hospital, foreign doctors and nurses, Palestinians, there's nothing here. There's terrorists. Here they are. All their faces are blacked out. You know, you get blurry face. You're the terrorist. They're all blurry faced. They're all light hands, no brown, like there's no tan skin Palestinians. They're all Europeans.  So they're terrorists.   And the Manchurian candidate repeats, there are terrorists and even a nurse testified and they're chopping the heads off babies. And the next day the White House puts out, well, he didn't really see that. Just Mossad just told him to say that. So he said it because he's the Manchurian candidate, Joe Biden. Don't trip over the stairs. I don't know what I'm going to tell you. I don't know how to have mercy on all of us. May Allah guide Joe Biden. May du'a for Joe Biden's guidance. Allahumma ahdi, Joe Biden, wa qayrihim, qayrihim, minha'u la'im, mujrimim. Amin. The Prophet prayed for Omar and Abu Jahl. They're worse than Joe Biden. They were trying to kill the Prophet. And he prayed for their guidance. You shouldn't hesitate. It's better to have them guided than to stay where they are and with the mentality they have, right? Allah guide them all. Amin. So our test is shukr. And the bad news is very few of my servants are truly thankful. Very few of my servants are truly thankful. You want to gauge our thankfulness for the food that we have that they don't have in Gaza? See how much we throw away when we have our dinners? See how the dumpster fills up with food? Is that shukr? Is that empathy with our brothers and sisters? Very few of my servants are truly thankful. So our challenge is to increase our shukr. The Palestinians are very patient people. They've been through this before. This is the worst. They've been through it. They've been through it outside of Phyllis. They've been through it in Sabran Shatila. They've been through it in Beirut in 1982, 18,000 dead between the Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. 30,000 wounded. And they haven't given up. They're struggling for freedom. They haven't given up. Some of you might have seen Ha'aretz. If you want to know what's going on in Israel, you're not unfortunate. You're not going to get it from the New York Times in the East and the San Francisco Chronicle in the West. Read Ha'aretz, the Israeli paper. The leading Israeli. You get it. You get a discussion, debate that you're not going to find here. You get information. You're never going to get here. So there was an article in Ha'aretz where the the author said, Israel's through. He's Israel's through because these Palestinians are so tough and they're not going anywhere. And I'm paraphrasing and our efforts to eliminating them, we've destroyed every moral principle that Judaism stands for. And this is supposed to be a Jewish state. He said, this state is run by neo-Naxis. This is Israeli paper. He said, the neo-Naxis are running this state. And he didn't say Allah. Like God has placed us against these people and they're so tough that we're not going to get rid of them. So he said, you might as well move to San Francisco, London or Paris. Just leave. Definitely cleanse Israel. He didn't say that. But that's the implication of what he said. It's just leave because it's done. Well, if there's no morality, there's no state. Ahmad Shalqi. So a nation in the human nations are none other than the moral morals that support them. And when their morals go, they will soon follow. And he's saying the moral morality of Israel is gone. Therefore, the state is gone. And so it's just a question of time before the physical apparatus of the state just collapses. There's no foundation. So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala bless us in our struggle to be, to be, to show gratitude, to be thankful for the blessings we enjoy. One aspect of shukr is they say as shukrum in Jins and ni'ma that thankfulness, gratitude is categorical to the blessing. So we found that we now find you an orphan and we gave you shelter. And we found you straying and we're guiding you. You didn't know the scripture. We blessed you with the scripture. You didn't know the details of faith. We taught you the details of the faith. And we found you impoverished and we reached you. So the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he was an orphan. He was poor, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He loved the poor. And Allah reached him, reached him with the wealth of Khadija and the wealth of Abu Bakr and the wealth of Uthman and the wealth of Abdur Rahman and Auf. Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Therefore, watch your gratitude as shukrum in Jins and ni'ma. As for the orphan, don't push the orphan away harshly. As for one whose circumstances lead them to ask of you, don't reject them. Because we enriched you. We took your view when you were an orphan. And these blessings of knowledge that we gave you and insight into the fundamental nature of the human being. Proclaim it. Teach it to others. Speak about it. Don't hide it. And so, one of our challenges is how do we share the wealth that Allah Ta'ala has blessed us with. Sooner or later, there's going to be an opportunity to get food and water and things. And to us. Are we going to be generous? Are we going to share the wealth that Allah's blessed us with? Share the food that Allah's blessed us with? Allah, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is testing us. And he says, in terms of shukr, very few of my servants are truly thankful. And Allah makes all of us amongst those who are thankful. And then Allah says, if we can do that, He will increase us. Just as He increased those in Philistine in their faith through the tribulations. This is a powerful maqam. The Palestinians don't have anyone but Allah. The surrounding Arab countries aren't going to help us. United States definitely isn't going to help us. The European Union isn't going to help us. African nations have their own struggles with European and American and Chinese and Russian imperialism. The Asian states aren't going to help us. So who do we have? Allah. Allah suffices us what an excellent one to give our affair to. And look how Allah is working. You've seen unprecedented support for Palestine. Hence the desperate measure of those who would work to continue to occupy and oppress the people of Palestine. Unprecedented. These mobilizations for Palestine. Shutting down highways. You never saw that in the past. Shutting down highways. You never saw the level of support from the Jewish community. They shut down Grand Central Station. 30,000 Jews. Not in my name. Now you're not going to do this in the name of my Judaism. In the name of the Holocaust. You're not going to do it. Talk over Congress. Where is that coming from? Allah. Allah controls the forces of the heavens and the earth. This MSNBC, for all the liberalness, when it comes to war, they blow the trumpet louder than anyone else. Because they're owned by G, a major war contractor. G's model, we bring good things to life.  You see the commentary, commentator, you would, is this America? There's African American lady. I don't know her name. I don't follow it like that. But like, is this Nigeria? This America? You know, what are the Palestinians supposed to do? Turn over Hamas? Hamas is the government. So, and they have the guns. You just turn them over. You know, just going on and on, point by point. You never heard that before. All these people looking at the resilience of the Palestinians coming to Islam. I've never seen anything like it. Maybe you have, I haven't. There's a young lady, Megan Rice, the TikToker. She looks at the Palestinian resilience and says, where's that coming from? Oh, the Muslim. Let me read the Koran. It gets deeper and deeper in Koran and puts up her website and gets 5,000 people reading Koran with her. Well, aren't Muslims? A couple days ago, she took Shahada. Another TikTok Jewish young lady took Shahada at Tetleaf in Chicago at the hand of Dr. Ali Dia. Dia. All over. I know someone in the middle of, I won't say the city, middle of nowhere in America. There's a lot of people taking Shahada and a masjid and the Imam is telling them to bear witness that Jesus is a messenger of Allah and not the son of God. Is that right? Because I thought it was just Shahada's land. Hello, Muhammad Rasulullah. So she's concerned, sir, and is the Imam giving all these people the Shahada properly? Because so many people are coming. When young man called me, someone directed him to me. I want to be Muslim. He took his Shahada two years ago in Virginia. Someone else called me like, are you near Stanford, Connecticut? There's a young man in Stanford wants to take Shahada, like all over this country. Like, where's that coming from? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So a lot of Muslims, some, not some despairing, depressed, don't be depressed. The people killed there, they're all martyrs. I get confused because of East Coast, West Coast. It's like big in Tupac. But do you have the easy pass here or the fast track? Fast track. All those people being killed, they got, they're in the fast track lane, straight to Jinnah. The lady, he said, no record. We out there in the traffic jam, trying to get in the right lane. This lane closed on us. Now we got to go over there and that was backed up. And there's zoom, zoom, zoom straight into Jinnah. So we don't secularize your thought process. If you secularize your thought process, you'll start all these people killed unjustly. This is the dunya. That's all you have. You might end up thinking like that. But if you consider this dunya is nothing compared to that. Like what is, what is the dunya? A dunya is one of the early Salaf, said it beautifully. A dunya sa'a. Like sa'a is in an hour. Sa'a could be a moment. He said, Darabahu famaata ala sa'atihi. He hit him and he dropped dead on Nisb'a, ala sa'atihi. A dunya sa'a, this world is just a moment. Faj'alha ta'a. Feel that moment with the obedience of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'a. I mentioned this before. Some of you might have heard it. If you took even that sa'a 100 years, which would be about as long as people usually live in this 100, 300, 400 years old. And if you put it on a line, and that line started with, let's say, the creation of Adam, at least. And then it extended to the rest of eternity. What would those 100 years look like? You wouldn't even be able to detect it. It would be so minute. From Adam ala salam to eternity. What is your 100 years, 80, 90 years? It's nothing. It's nothing. And so what's important isn't how we leave this world. That's important. But what's really important is, oh, let me rephrase that. How you leave is important. But how much time you spend here is not important. But how the time you're going to spend for the rest of eternity, that's what's important.  Allah has prepared for His righteous servants and paradise that which no eye has ever seen in terms of His beauty. That which no ear has ever heard in terms of His beauty, and that which no human heart has ever even imagined. And then that's forever for eternity. If our minds are secularized, we don't appreciate Shahada, martyrdom. And these tribulations, Allah says, one reason He sends it is so He'll take martyrs. So, if some hardship defeats weakness, set back on the path of Allah, and if some hardship defeats weakness, set back on the path of Allah, so if some hardship defeats weakness, set back, has afflicted you, you should know that the other people were similarly afflicted. When the Jews were weak, what did they go through? They went through some very difficult times. You said, we're weak now, they're powerful, influential, true. But they were not always the way they are, and we were not always the way we are. So Allah alternates these fortunes in order that He will show. Allah will show which of you believe and to take from your ranks martyrs. And so if it's always easy, it's easy to believe. It's always good, no challenge, always strong and mighty. When we were like that, do we fulfill the rights over us to humanity? Do we make down with the way we should? Do we approach the international slave trade the way that we should?  It was shut down in some regions. We, the Soviet Union, the ideal resistance, Muslim resistance to the slave trade, Muslims resisted. But as an ummah, did we resist the way we should, or were we facilitating it? Did we give down with the way we should? Or were we content just to keep it to ourselves? We have a Yom ul-Qiyamah. We'll see. So the Jews were weak. When they were weak, they went through probably far worse than what we went through. The Holocaust is real. There was no Muslim Holocaust. We've had some hard times, but what they went through, there were some difficulties. The ethnic cleansing of places like Macedonia with the Bosnians went through twice. The oppressive oppression and the suppression of Islam under the mental dynasty, a lot of Muslims perished. But in such a small area, like in such a small period of time, six million, you want to read about it from very objective British researcher, three volumes, the Third Reich, the coming of the Third Reich, the Third Reich at war, and the demise of the Third Reich. It's voluminous. Every time I go to the local library and try to read a little bit, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable what humans can do. And the tragedy of the Zionists is that they're doing exactly what Hitler did. So Allah tests us. It's like the bald man, the blind man, the bald man, and the leper. Allah cured them all. And two of them, oh, I was always like this, and all this wealth I got, I inherited, caviar and non-cavier, caviar, non-cavier, generation after generation.  And only one of them, you know, this is from Allah, take whatever you want. Bismillah. So, you know, those people, the Netanyahu and Ben-Govir of the world, once you guys, poor and weak and downtrodden, wasn't a tyrant brutalizing you. So shouldn't you be more compassionate and understanding? There's Hamas, though. Hamas was in there in 1947, 48, when you killed 10,000 Palestinians, destroyed 500 villages, 70 documented massacres, who knows how many undocumented, like the one at the area I seen. There was no Hamas when you did that. Hamas was in there in 1982, when you bombed, but I root for a month straight, killed 18,000 people, wounded 30,000. There was no Hamas. So is it Hamas or is it your lack of gratitude? Thank Allah that he saved us. And we said never again, except in Gaza, except in Beirut, Shukr, category two, the blessing. Allah saved you, Allah was merciful. How are you going to do? Allah make us amongst the shakity, may Allah make us amongst the aqilat, amongst the few. Allah give us tofiq, give us tofiq. May Allah bless us. You know, Nude, we who have been a nest, this one is going to be strong again. It might be sooner than we think. How are we going to do it? We're going to be revengeful. No, now we're strong. Let's get the Jews. Are we going to be prophetic? Prophet could have taken his revenge. He could have taken his revenge for Hamza, radiallahu anhu. He could have taken his revenge for Musa ibn Umayyah, radiallahu anhu. He could have taken his revenge for the first Shahidah in this Ummah Sumayyah. He could have taken revenge for Adiyas. He could have taken revenge for Qabab ibn Arat. He could have taken his revenge. All those Muslims killed by the Quraysh. But he could have taken his revenge against the people of Ta'ath to bring the mountains up and down and wipe them out.  I was sent to teach people. I was sent to save people. He could have taken his revenge against Khalid, Khalid rolling up in Medina. That's like the leader of the bloods rolling up into the headquarters of the crypts. What are you doing here? You make a phone call right quick. You rolled up in here. You're not rolling out. Khalid rolled up in Medina. Khalid, what took you so long to come to your senses? We follow a prophet and it's going to be our shukr that leads to the increase that we can't even fathom. It's going to be our moral integrity. It's going to be remembering how it was when we were weak and forming how we treat others who might be our enemies when they're weak. That's what's going to bring people to Islam. That's what's going to bring people to Islam. So I'm allowed to bless the people in Palestine to continue to be patient, to continue to earn those great, great rewards that Allah has promised the patient, to continue to inspire people with their patience. May Allah bless us to be thankful and to do our part to uplift those and be the voice of those who are left to be patient or left without a voice or left without a helper, left without anyone to assist. O Allah, our Lord delivers us from this town whose people are oppressors. Men, women, and children who cry out our Lord, make from us for yourself, from yourself one who will protect us and make for us from yourself one who will help us. May Allah bless us to be amongst the protectors and amongst the helpers. May Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, bless our sisters to be steadfast. That's a sign of Islam in the land that you see hijabs. May Allah bless those banners and indicators of Islam to fly with dignity in the wind, and to represent the dignity that Allah intends for a human being. Allah intends for us to cut and mark ourselves up. If you have tattoos, it's good. You convert it to Islam. Maybe you're born Muslim. You went off the rails a little bit. It's okay. I'm not trying to hate on anyone. But that's not from our tradition. That's not from our way. So if that's your state, don't get any more. And the ones you have, may Allah bless you to have overcome whatever led you in that state, to do that to your body, to have piercings all over. Women pierce their ears, not their noses and eyelids and tongues.  That's from the is of the human that the Muslim represents. Like beautiful clothing that ripped up jeans and all. What's the dignity in that? I'm amazed at the ripped up chain phenomenon. You know what's amazing about it?  You had the authentic genuine article and you went and bought some fake ones. You had the genuine article for free. That's amazing. No, Allah bless us to be dignified. If you have ripped up jeans, it's cool. We're not trying to hate on anybody. It's all right, but don't try to encourage others while you work out a few things. We're making duha for you that you work it out. It's cool. We're not trying to hate on anybody. But I just can't understand it. Ajeeb. So may Allah bless us to have that dignity. May Allah bless us to appreciate this deem. Why are people coming to it? You probably feel silly if you're like, I don't know if I'm Muslim anymore. You can't even say it right anymore. You know, it's a Muslim. You're trying to sound like the people taking it from you. I don't know if I'm Muslim anymore. Then half America coming into Islam. You sitting there looking all silly. Then too arrogant and proud to come back and admit you made a mistake. Yeah, I kind of messed up. Make sure you did. How do you feel? Be proud.  And who's going to receive all these people? I believe there's going to be mass conversion. Because it's been foretold by the awliyat. They foretold it. And Muhammed Ibn al-Rawass, the great Rifa'i sheikhs, at the end of the 18th century, when America was just forming. At the end of time, when the nations of the west are at the peak of their power. And they're at the height of their opposition to Islam. Allah is going to blow over those lands. The Muhammed Dayik breezes. And nafahat al-Muhammediyyah. And they're going to touch, it's going to touch the hearts of the people. And you're going to see someone who yesterday was the most intense enemy of Islam. Today be awli. Be a saint. We've seen a Javan van Covernment. Gerd Wilder is white-hand man. So you know some even know a story of Pashtay. Get his book. Sell on Amazon. The evil empire. If you have a local bookstore in Kanora, there is even better. But he's going to write the book that finishes Islam in Europe. He's a member of probably one of the most virulent anti-Muslim parties in Europe. He starts researching. This isn't what they were teaching me. Goes digs a little deeper. Then he made the fatal mistake. You know what the fatal mistake was? Nah. He had a list of questions and he sent them to Abdul Hakim Murah. Game over. And then he becomes Muslim. You see a man who yesterday was amongst the most bitter enemies of Islam. Tomorrow be a saint. And you'll see the people entering to Islam in crowds. And all of this will be a gift to Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. This was Sidi Urawah said. And so we have our part to play. We have to prepare ourselves to receive these people, to teach them, to show them the beauty of Islam. We have to be wise. We have to be dignified. When the Megan Rice sister puts her website up. She has 5,000 people reading the Quran. Here come the Muslims. Someone said, oh those aren't Muslims there. Nah, we got some Muslims like this. Shia's aren't real Muslims. Be careful. Sunnis aren't real Muslims. Be double careful. Sufis aren't real Muslims. They're Muqtadi'un. Muqtadi'un. Be careful. The Wahhabis are. All this garbage come into 5,000 people who try to just find Islam. And that shows it's from Allah. Because despite all of that nonsense, this just took Shahada. Anyway. So when Allah wants something, say be and it is. So don't get depressed. Don't get depressed. Don't get downtrodden. Oh we're so helpless. We're so hopeless. Look what's happening Gaza. They're all Shahi. Don't worry about them. Palestinians are going to be fine. Insha'Allah ta'ala. They're going to be fine. How are we going to be? How are we going to be? Ash-Shuhadaa, who comes? Let's stop with this. The martyrs are 5. There are other categories. These 5 mentioned in one sound hadith. Ash-Shuhadaa and Khamsa. Al-Mat'uun. One who dies in the plague in Ta'a'uun. Al-Mat'uun. One who will map toun. One who dies of severe stomach problems. People dying in Gaza. Diarrhea.  Diarrhea, typhoid, dysentery, etc. Al-Mat'uun. Al-Ghariq. One who drowns. Sahib al-Hadmi. One who dies in a demolished structure. All the people dying in demolished homes and hospitals. Ash-Shuhadaa. Wa shahidu fi sabilillah. One who dies defending the faith. So Ash-Shuhadaa. So Ash-Shuhadaa. Ash-Shuhadaa. Who's our state? So don't be depressed. Allah has created all of this. You think you're into paradise and there's not yet come to you? The likes of those who preceded you? They encountered every disease and natural calamities and disasters. And they were shaken. And to the messenger, now Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, one of the earlier messengers, and the believers with him, they said, When is the help of Allah coming? Al-Anna nasr allahi qareeb. The help of Allah is near. Do people think they'll be left alone merely saying we believe and not be tested? I believe. I'm Muslim. How are you going to be when the tests come? We tested those who preceded them and ordered that Allah would show which of them are truthful and which of them are liars. So are we truthful? What are we truthful about? Say, oh Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and then we read it. Say, and then we read it. So we say it. Say, surely my prayer, my sacrifice, my living, my dying are all for Allah, the Lord of all the worlds. And with this I've been commanded. I'm the first to submit as a Muslim. Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Who are all among these Umkah? Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, our prophet was the first of this Umkah to submit as a Muslim. Are we truthful or are we liars? We should ask ourselves in those private conversations conversations that we have with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, who look in the mirror, my truthful and my liar, is everything for Allah to the best of my ability. Allah give us tawfiq. Allah bless our brothers and sisters in Palestine. Allah bless our brothers and sisters here and in every corner of this earth. Bismillahir rahmanir rahim. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma ya Allah ta'if. Allahumma Allahumma ba'arik ala haadhi hl jaliya, haadhi hl jamaa. Haad ta'ibaa yalla, ba'arik ala haim fi ta'amahim, mo sharaabihim, mo bayutihim, mo awlārihim, mo benātihim, mo āmālihim, mo isgālihim, mo nashatātihim yalla. Allahumma ba'arik ala haadhi hl umma tl muhammadiyya yalla. Wa man ʿarādah khayran li haadihil umma tl muhammadiyyati fa wa thakhu ila kulli khayr. Wa man ʿarādah sharra laha walil muslimīna fa khudhu ʿakhdah ʿazīz al-muqatadir wa ja'al tadmīrum tadbīrum tadmīrum tadmīrum.   Istajibdu aana ya Allah, istajibdu aana ya Allah.  Istajib lana ya Allah, la qad qult wa qulqal haqq, ya Allah. Far'ooni astajib lakum. Fa n'ahna da'uqa ya Allah. Faha n'ahna waqifuna an nababika ya Allah. An nabab khairika ya Allah. An nabab an nabab judika ya Allah. An nabab faddika ya Allah. An nabab rahmatika ya Allah. Wa sakhaika ya Allah. Wa karamika ya Allah. Fa la taruddana khaibina ya Allah. Balwuddana ghanimina salimina aaminina ya Allah.  Far'rjan ahlina fi falastin. An eqhwanina wa qawatina. Wa fi ghayrihi min al-boldan ya Allah. Fi kashmir wa fi sudan fi libiya fi l-hind. Fi afganistan fi l-iraq. Fi sudan fi l-habasha fi irritria. Fi tunishya fi libiya ya Allah. Fi najir ya Allah. Fi sanaghali ya Allah. Fi ghanbya ya Allah. Fi kulli makhan ya Allah. Fi uruba ya Allah. Fi faransa ya Allah. Hunafi haathal palat ya Allah. Al-ardu ardu kya ya Allah. Wa al-ibad, ibad kya ya Allah. Wa al-quwata wa l-hawla. La hawla wa la quwata illa bi kya ya Allah. Fi nasaluka bi hawlika wa quwatika. An tukhaffif an eqhwanina wa qawatina. Al-muslimina wa al-muslimati fi falafi fi falastin. An ta maulana fa al-nsfurnal al-qawmin kathireen. Bi hurmatil bi barakat al-Qur'an al-Azim. Wa bi hurmatin. Ma'n ar-stattahu ar-rahmata l-alameen. Sayyidina wa habibina wa qurrati a'yunina. Muhammed, sallallahu alayhi wa alihi wa sahbihi wa salim tashneeman kathira. Subhana rabbika rabbal azzati amma yaqsifoon. Wa salaman al-alil mursaleen. Wa alhamdulillahi rabbal al-alameen. Al-Fatiha.