Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for choosing to give me your attention for 30 minutes of your finite lives. I'm going to try and tell you about monads and how we can uncover them by refactoring our Ruby code. Some of the ideas in this talk might be unfamiliar to some of you, so before we get stuck into the details, I'd like to warm our brains up with something simple. People always use analogies to explain monads. I don't think it really helps, so there'll be no burritos or spacesuits or elephants in this talk. Thank you. But I do want to talk about some related ideas, not analogies, but just related ideas that will put your brain into a receptive state for the stuff I actually want to say. I'm going to start our warm-up with a rhetorical question. What's a stack? Well, it's a kind of value with certain operations. Those operations are called push, pop, top, and empty. I'm talking about an immutable stack here, so push and pop don't mutate it, they just return a new one. You have to use top if you want to know what the top element is. We also need a class method called empty, which creates an empty stack to get us started. For a value to qualify as a stack, its operations have to follow certain rules. The rules just say that the operations do what you intuitively expect. When you push a value onto a stack, that becomes the top value. Pushing then popping is a no-op. An empty stack is empty, and a stack with something pushed onto it isn't empty. We can implement those stack operations however we like. Here's a class called array stack that implements the operations in a particular way. It stores the stack contents as an array of values, push adds a value onto the front of the array, and pop removes the array's first item. This class called linked list stack implements the same operations but in a different way. It stores the top element and a pointer to the rest of the stack, so top and pop are just attributes and push stores its value in a new stack instance pointing at the old one. We can use those stack operations without knowing how they're implemented. If we make an empty array stack and push two values onto it and then pop one of them and ask for the top value, we get the result we expect. If we do the same thing with a linked list stack, it works in exactly the same way. We can define more operations in terms of the old ones. For example, here's a method called size that recursively calculates the size of a stack by counting how many times it has to be popped until it becomes empty. As long as the stack has got working implementations of the empty and pop methods, we can implement the size method on top of them. It doesn't matter what stack implementation we use, the size method always works the same. An empty array stack has size zero. If we push two values onto it, its size is two. An empty linked list stack has size zero. If we push two values onto that, its size is two. So what do we mean by stack? It's really a specification. An implementation of a stack provides certain operations that follow certain rules. There are two benefits to that. Firstly, those operations provide a common interface across many possible implementations. And secondly, they allow us to build shared functionality like that size method that works with any implementation. So here's another question. What's a collection, at least in Ruby, what is a collection? Well, it's a kind of value with certain operations, actually just one operation called each. And that operation follows certain rules, actually just one rule, which is that each calls a block with a value zero or more times in immediate sequence. That's it. We can implement that each operation however we want to. Here's a hard coded collection whose each method literally calls a block with one then with two all the way up to five. Here's a generated collection whose each method calculates those values dynamically inside a loop and calls a block with each one. We can use that each operation without knowing how it's been implemented. From the outside, hard coded collection and generated collection both behave like a collection of the numbers from one to five. We can define more collection operations on top of the one operation we already have. Here's a method called select that takes a block, then calls each and accumulates all the values that make the block return true. So as long as a collection has a working implementation of each, we can implement select on top of it. It works the same for both implementations. Of course, in Ruby, we have a module called innumerable that already has select and count and map and inject and tons of other helpful stuff that all sits on top of this one each method. So what do we mean by collection? Again, it's really just a specification. An implementation of a collection provides an operation that follows a rule. And again, we get two benefits from that. Firstly, that each method gives us a common interface across many possible implementations of collections. And secondly, it allows us to build shared functionality like that select method that works with any implementation. So what name do we give these things? Are they design patterns or interfaces or APIs or duck types? All those words are kind of appropriate and they all overlap to an extent. The concept of a stack or a collection sits in the middle of all of them. In my opinion, the most specific and therefore the most accurate term is abstract data type. That literally means a kind of value which has certain operations that follow certain rules. So stacks and collections are actually abstract concepts, but they're abstract in a good way. The abstractions give us power and we expect programmers to understand them. Nobody talks about stacks in hushed tones. They're just simple and useful. Okay, so that's enough priming of your brain. Let's do some refactoring. First, I'd like to look at some code that has to deal with nils. Imagine we have a project management application with different kinds of models. Each project has a person who created it. Each person has an address. Each address has a country. Each country has a capital city. And each city has weather information which we'll just assume is a string. Let's say that in our user interface, we want to display the weather next to each project for some reason. That involves traversing all of those associations. Here's a method that does that. Maybe you'd write a Rails view helper that looks like this. There are lots of reasons not to write code like this, but there are also good reasons to do it. And anyway, people will always write code like this no matter what we say. So if we make a city which has sunny weather and a country which has that city as its capital and an address in that country and a person with that address and a project created by that person, we can pass that project into weather four and it works fine. But if we make a bad project, for example, one that has an address with no country, then weather four blows up. Now, Tony Hoar invented nil in 1965 and he now calls it his billion-dollar mistake, which he says has probably caused a billion dollars' worth of pain and damage. And this is exactly the sort of thing he's talking about. Well, there may be a mistake, but Ruby has nils, so we're stuck with them. To make our weather four method tolerate nils, we're going to have to explicitly check for them. So we need to introduce local variables to hold every intermediate result. And then we need to check each intermediate result before we try to call a method on it. And while we're at it, we might as well include the possibility that the project itself is nil. Now, this is becoming a bit of a pyramid of doom. You can see the code is drifting over to the right. But luckily, this code works the same if we flatten it. This code works, but it's pretty clumsy. And it's hard to remember to do something like this every time we might possibly have nils to deal with. Fortunately, Rails has got a solution to this problem. Rails actually act of support. Monkey patches object a nil class with a method called try, which delegates to a public send if the object is not nil and returns nil otherwise. When every object has a try method, instead of doing these nil checks ourselves, we can let try do it for us. Now we're back to just chaining method calls together so we can take the local variables out again like that. I'll just make that bigger. This is as good as it gets right now. It's better than the version with unless nil all over the place anyway. But can we do any better? Well, monkey patching definitely has its place. But monkey patching every single object in the system isn't great, is it? This is kind of a code smell, I think. Let's try not doing it. Okay. Try is gone now. You can all relax. When we want to add a method to an object, the good object-oriented programming solution is to use decoration, which is where you noninvasively add functionality to one object by wrapping it up inside another object. So let's make a decorator class optional whose instances have a single attribute called value. Instances of this class just wrap up another value. I can make a new one containing a value like the string hello and then take hello out again later. If the value I put in happens to be nil, I get nil out later. So now instead of putting the try method on the object class, let's put it on the optional class. If the value attribute is nil, it will just return nil, otherwise it will send the appropriate message to the underlying object. Now we can call try on the decorator and it will call the method on the underlying object as long as it's not nil. If the value inside the optional is nil, try will just return nil. So instead of calling try on the actual project object and then on the actual person object and so on, we can write the method like this. We decorate project with an optional object and call try on that. Then we decorate the result which might be nil and call try again. Then we decorate the result and call try on it and so on. At the end, we pull the value out and return it. It's unwieldy, but at least we're not monkey patching every object in the system anymore. There's another smell here which is that the try method does too much. We actually just wanted to refactor away the nil check, but try also sends the value a message. What if we wanted to use the value in some other way when it's not nil? The try method is over-specialized. It's got too much responsibility. So instead of hard coding the else clause here, let's allow the caller to supply a block that controls what happens next. Now we can pass a block to try and do whatever we want with the underlying value. We can still send it a message or we could use it as an argument in a method call or print it out or whatever. This ability to take a block is actually a little used feature of ActiveSupports try method as well. Now, instead of calling try with a message name and having to remember that it's going to send that message to the underlying object, we call it with a block. Inside the block, we send the message ourselves and decorate the result in an optional. We could do anything else that we wanted with the value like print out a log message or whatever. That works fine when there aren't any nils, but unfortunately we've broken it when nils are involved because we're returning nil when the block doesn't run. That's easy to fix. Instead of returning a raw nil here, we'll decorate it with an optional first. And now it works in both cases. But there's a new smell. I don't think that try is a great name anymore for this method because we changed it to do something more general than or at least something different from the main use case of its namesake in active support. Let's rename it to and then because it really just says start with this decorated value and then do some arbitrary thing with it as long as it's not nil. Here's the new version of our method which calls and then instead of try. And because we're just chaining and then calls, we can get rid of the local variables. This is verbose, but it's quite nice. We decorate the possibly nil project in an optional object, then safely traverse all the associations and then pull the possibly nil value out again at the end. So, okay. How's our refactoring going? Well, we might not be monkey patching anything and it's conceptually clean, but there's a huge final smell which is that nobody wants to write code like this. In theory, it might be better than active support's try method, but in practice it's clearly worse. But we can add some syntactic sugar to fix that. Here's a definition of method missing for optional. It uses and then to delegate any message to the underlying value whenever it's not nil. Now we can replace all of this and then optional.new with just normal message sense and let method missing take care of the details. So I'll just reformat that. There we go. This is actually really good. You can see very clearly that we wrap up the possibly nil project into an optional, then safely do our chain of methods, then pull the possibly nil weather out of an optional at the end. To recap, this is the whole thing. An object which stores a value that might be nil and a method called and then which encapsulates the nil check logic. We added some sugar on top by writing method missing and if you were doing this in production code you should remember to write respond to as well. I'd like to very briefly point out that we only need to do the decorating and undecorating for compatibility with the rest of the system. If the rest of the system passed in an optional and expected us to return one, we wouldn't even need to do that. And then we wouldn't need to remember to check for nil at all. We could write the method the way we did in the first place and it would just work. Imagine that. All right. That refactoring was very detailed. We're going to do two more but we'll have to skip the detail to save some time. Let's refactor some code that has to handle multiple results. Imagine we have a content management app with different kinds of models. There are several blogs. Each blog has many categories. Each category has many posts. Each post has many comments which for the sake of simplicity are just strings. Let's say that we want to fetch all the words from all the comments within certain blogs for some reason. That involves traversing all these associations. Here's a method that does that. At each level we map over a collection and traverse the association for each object inside it. When we reach each comment we split it on whitespace to get its words. We have to use flat map here because we want a flattened array of words not a nested one. So if we make a couple of blogs which each have a couple of categories which contain some posts which have some comments which contain some words and you can see that this accurately represents the usual level of discourse for blog comments. The words in method can pull all of the words out. We're not worried about de-tuplicating them or anything we just want the raw words. But this method has got a bit of a pyramid of doom going on plus it's hard to distinguish between the co-doing actual work and the boiler plate of dealing with multiple values. We can clean that up by introducing this class many which decorates a collection of values. Like optional it has an and then method that takes a block but this time it calls the block for every value in the collection and flattens the results together. We can replace all the calls to flat map with instances of many and calls to and then and that allows us to flatten this pyramid and if I reformat the code a little we get this. Again this is pretty clear but we can add some syntactic sugar by defining method missing. This is exactly the same as optionals method missing except it's calling many.new instead of optional.new. That lets us replace all of the and then many.new calls with just simple message sends. This is very nice. We put the blog posts into a many object traverse all of the associations then take the values out at the end and again if the rest of the system could deal with instances of many we could just expect one and return one to recap here's the class we just made. For our third quick refactoring we're going to tackle writing asynchronous code. Now I'd like to know who the most influential Rubyist is. Let's find out once and for all. We'll find out by using the github API to find the person who's made the most commits on the most popular Ruby project. When you make an HTTP get request to the github API route you get back some JSON that looks more or less like this. Among other things this gives a URI template for finding out information about any organization here. Now we know what URL to use to get information about the Ruby organization. When we make a request to this URL we get some JSON that contains the URL we can use to get a list of all of the Ruby organization's repositories. So we fetch the list of repositories which includes information about how many watches each repository has. From that we can see which repository has the most watchers which turns out to be the main Ruby repositories you might expect and we can get the URL for repository's representation in the github API. When we fetch that repository's information we find another URL that tells us where to get its list of contributors. So then we can load the list of contributors to the main Ruby repository which includes information about how many commits each contributor has made. We pick the one with the most commits, a user called Nobu, and finally fetch information about Nobu from the URL in the contributor list. It turns out that Nobu Yoshi Nakada has made the most commits on the most popular Ruby project. Thanks a lot, Nobu Yoshi. But that was quite exhausting, so let's write some code to do it for us. Let's assume we already have this get JSON method. It'll asynchronously make an HTTP get request, parse the JSON response into a Ruby hash or array, and then call a callback with the data. Or you can imagine a single threaded non-blocking event machine equivalent to this if you like. So to do what we just did, we have to get the URI templates from the GitHub API root, then fill in the template with the name of the Ruby organization, then get the organization data, then find the URL for the list of its repositories, then get the list of its repositories, then find the URL of the repository with the most watchers, then get the information on that repository, then find the URL for the list of its contributors, then get the list of its contributors, then find the URL for the list, then get the information on that user, and then print out their real name and user name. So this code works, but it's drifting to the right again. It's hard to understand and to maintain deeply nested code like this, but we can't flatten it because of the nested callbacks. Very briefly, the solution is to make an eventually class that decorates a block. The idea is that the block computes a value that might take a while to create. The run method runs the block with a callback for it to call when the value is available. We don't have time for the details, but here's an and then method that we can use to add extra asynchronous processing to the value produced by an eventually. This is more complicated than the and then methods we saw earlier, but it achieves the same thing. All of the detail is really just about how to wire up the callbacks correctly. So we can rewrite this code by putting each logical part into its own method. The code that gets all the URL templates from github can go into a method called get github api URLs. This returns an eventually which decorates a block which will eventually call its success callback with the result of fetching and parsing. We can use this as an example of how we can do this. We can use this as an example of how we can do this. We can use this as an example of how we can process callback with the result of fetching and parsing the JSON. So we can replace the line at the top with get github api URLs. And then the next bit of code that fetches the data for the Ruby organization can go in a method called get org. This returns an eventually object too. So we can replace the next bit of code with a call to get org and then the next piece of code that gets all of the Ruby organization's repositories can go in a method and then we can call it. And so on for the rest of it. I'll just clean that up. Now that we're just creating eventually objects at each step, we don't need to call and then on each one immediately. We can let each object be returned from its enclosing block before we call and then on it. So basically that means we can flatten this to get this. I'll just reformat that. This is much nicer than what we had before. So we're going to do this and we're going to do this in a way that's connected in its own method and the parts are connected together in a clean way. This might be a familiar pattern to some of you. It's similar to promises or futures or deferreds that you might have seen in JavaScript or in Event Machine. So to recap there's the whole eventually class. Okay. So what was the point of all that? You've now seen three types of monads. The first type of monad is an abstract data type. It calls it with information from the decorated object. That's a value that could be nil or multiple values or a value that arrives asynchronously. All three of these things, optional, many and eventually are implementations of monads. I think the most useful way to think of a monad is as an abstract data type like operations and then is the operation we've already seen. The other operation is a class method called from value. We haven't seen it yet but it's very simple. It just takes a value and calls the constructor to make an instance of the monad in the right way. And that abstracts away the detail of exactly how to call the constructor with a simple value which is different for each monad. In addition to those operations in order to qualify as a monad the main rule is that and then must call a block with a value zero or more times at some point. That's a much weaker guarantee than we saw for each in collections. It doesn't say whether the block will be called at all or how many times or when. Another rule is that the and then method must return an instance of the same monad and that's what makes the and then method chainable. The and then implementation in eventually and many already explicitly makes an instance of the same monad. Optional just trusts the block to do it. We could have enforced that if we wanted to. We could say raise unless result is an optional. And the third rule is that and then and from value don't mess with the value and that just means that when you construct a monad with from value you're guaranteed to get the same value out again with and then. For optional that only applies to non-nil values but you should only call them non-nil object. The big benefit of monads is that they give us a common interface which allows us to do one thing, connect together a sequence of operations. The and then method really means do the next thing. But the way it does the next thing depends on which monad you use. For optional it only does the next thing if the value isn't nil. For many it does the next thing many times for each value. And for eventually it only does the next thing once the value becomes available. And as you might imagine there are plenty of other monads with different behaviors. Like the size method for stacks or the select method for collections we can define new functionality that sits on top of the common monad interface and use it when dealing with any monad. For example we can write a method called within. Within is like sugar on top of and then. Instead of expecting the block to return a monad it expects it to return a single value and then automatically decorates it again with from value so you don't have to. Because within hides the implementation specific business of putting a value back inside the monad you can use it to write code that works with any monad. For example here's a method that takes some monad that is containing raw JSON representing a GitHub user and then it uses the within method to parse that JSON and then assemble a string containing their real name and GitHub login all within whatever the original monad was. So that means if we feed in an optional JSON string into this method then we get an optional description as the result and we know how to get a value out of that if we need to. If we pass in an optional containing nil then our method doesn't blow up because the optional monad won't let description from even try to parse the JSON it just immediately returns nil. If we make a many object containing multiple raw JSON strings then description from will return many descriptions and we can extract the actual strings ourselves if we want to. And finally if we make an object that will eventually return JSON by asynchronously fetching it from GitHub over the network then description from returns an eventual description and we have to run that with a callback to get the value out eventually. It's extremely useful to be able to write one method like this and have it work with any monad and that's possible because of the common interface provided by and then and from value and the operations we can build on top of them. Like stacks and collections monads are abstract concepts but they're abstract in a good way. The abstractions give us power as programmers we should understand them we shouldn't talk about monads in hush tones they're simple and they're useful. Now to be clear I'm not saying that you should immediately refactor all your Rails applications to use monads. I'm just using Ruby as a tool to explain an interesting idea about programming not giving you a best practice for all of your Ruby code. However, it's good to know about techniques like this and in some cases by applying the power of monads wisely we can untangle nested callbacks make parts of our code more reusable and generally make our programs better. If you want to play with the monad implementations from this talk I've also packaged them up as a gem for some reason. That's all I wanted to say. Thanks very much.


As-salamu alaikum, I'm gonna start with because I remember the question I got before my session by the time the my beautiful teachers all Get theirs. So the question was if I remember very well is how do you get education as a woman? Islamic education as a woman and add to it the usual question of balance I'm a wife. I'm a mother. I am a working person. I have my in-laws Or I have my parents, you know, this is all reality very few of us Here is like, you know, it's only you or maybe you and your husband. So what do you go? Where do you start? anything you make it a Goal and a priority With Allah's help it will work, but you also have to be realistic Meaning I am not the 18 year old in college studying Islamic studies. I am not Right where I have my 16 hours study from day to morning till evening. No So you put your priorities what will make you in peace live in peace is when you learn that everything you do in your home and At work as long as it's halal and pleasing to Allah with the right intention is your act of worship Don't look at cooking to your children as I'm wasting my time. I need to be on my sadjada. You didn't get it Because Allah said you need to take care of your children and we need to eat However, having said that I'm not gonna spend three hours cooking because I'm gonna get tired so you need to be efficient put your priorities and As time changes You will see more and more time for example, I always wanted to memorize the Quran But I was a resident in OBGYN. I did literally 16 to 18 hours a day Good luck. I Absolutely, but I know I wanted and I know Allah will give it to me Ali Iqeen and I know he will open the opportunity So the first thing I did once I finished my residency started the journey half an hour a day take put as what you need to do including taking care of yourself of course and 20 minutes of a study and what is a study? There is a passive and there's active. You know this way Passive you're listening to lectures now. This is passive. You don't put much effort. You're listening to a YouTube. It's good But this is not what will really make you learn you need to sit down and open that book that you don't like Tell me about it, right? And then you have to highlight everything that you don't understand and you have to go and read again and again And it's a journey It doesn't happen. It's there's no Burger King meal In Islamic education. That's how I call it Yeah, I always say this.  Then you come in pick up the Quran is in your heart Doesn't work this way Well, I wish it would be very easy. That's why Allah said will a dina jahad and fina It will take time time time and subar, right as as the Imam Abu Hanifa It's beautiful statement. He said about his student. I think it was the Muhammad the shaybani The meaning he was giving a fatwa and he was there and the fatwa was not right There at the answer and he was not giving him yet the permission to give the fatwa So he said to him you want to be a grape and you have not even yet a Small green hussarum the small baby Grape meaning it takes time And and this will make you all very happy if I die And this is what I said to myself when I started the journey if I'm gonna die Allah knows if he gave me life I'll continue and he will reward me as if I finished Don't give up be organized. Don't waste your time Woman woman Don't waste your time kitchen Anything I can do in 30 minutes. Don't do it in 35. You're wasting your time Anything is not necessarily don't do it Focus put Allah and Jannah in front of you and see wonders will happen be So the question was about we heard a lot of female companions and how things quote should be and our reality is different How do we get to the place where? We're actually supposed to get subhan Allah first of all trout and don't try to do it alone Like you're not the only one that's going through this inshallah we can do it together Slow consistent steady kindness builds community like Mashallah. We were talking about the Rahmah Foundation for 10 years every Thursday night Friday night. Sorry my bad Friday night. I just moved here in my defense Every week like I remember in my community, we had a 10-year halakah every week that little drop one drop at a time Eventually it breaks through the rock Subhan Allah, so that's one thing but the other thing just talking because we mentioned about talking Sorry having more than one person doing it together. Do you guys know that I am the Quran that says to female witnesses For years, and I was like yellow, but why I never quite understood it until I was sitting on the board of the masjid And every time the men would get into like a big ego fight of who's more manly They didn't care that I was sitting there when we're figuring things out and we just need to get stuff done We were just getting stuff done But it turned into an ego fight.  This is a situation where she's far more likely to get dismissed If people are fighting over the money and it's a big deal And they were supposed to write it down because that what that is telling you and they didn't write it down and now They're bringing these witnesses and there's one woman and there's one man or like do women know anything about money anyway, right? We all know this we've all been in meetings where you're like, let's get lunch and then Bob says let's get lunch And he's like great idea Bob And if you say I said let's get lunch you'd be like, okay, but don't be petty really late like who cares about getting the credit, right? But then you have a second woman that's literally there to echo what you said the women in the Obama administration used to do this They called it echoing so it's a keenest my friend. Sikina says, let's get lunch. I immediately respond say Sikina just said let's get lunch Whether I agree with it or not. That's not the point The point is I'm literally lifting up my sister's voice and we keep doing this Come in fit and clean it how often has a small group changed something big also Run about to get in theater like overcome a larger group But also the reality is the vast majority of people want a healthy community where their Families can thrive where their children can thrive. It's usually just one person. That's yelling louder than everyone else We don't have to yell at people then anyways Organize yourselves Just just I loved what she said but those of you because many of you came says we listened to you on Tuesday Tuesday program started 2007 woman in the masjid only one of them was me and See where you are exactly. I loved it persistent drop by drop Don't give up and and don't forget the most important factor Allah will help you if your intention is pure Wonders will come well since we're talking about Taking things one step at a time I'll use this question. I'll take this question next inshallah, which is about Exactly the same kind of thing. Let's say that there was an ideal in Muslim State in 2020 But let's just say right theoretically What would a woman be able to do to be the state? Head or the finance minister All right, I used to remember earlier I shared about as she thought right she thought that out of wea who was the first finance minister in Islam, okay? Now the question here is what would it take what would it take for such a thing happened now? This could be a whole lecture in itself, but what else does the question say it says how is it possible for her to have such a high position and Responsibility while having Islamic responsibilities like taking care of children and I realized I didn't tell you in her biography She's a long biography speaking of long biographies inshallah. I didn't share with you That in fact that she was married In fact, she married twice and that she did have children and was a mother as well People want to know these details because they matter Right and because it adds Multiple layers to who she is and how what the question is asking here. How do you balance this? Okay, let's let's finish the question then I'll come to this It said if I understood you correctly that woman should ask help from her husband and her family But if she's neglecting her Islamic responsibility issue with neglecting her Islamic responsibilities and taking such a high-level position It depends now I'm not talking about she found talking in general You're asking me in the current time and age if a person takes a high-level position of leadership Does it automatically mean that she is neglecting?  All right, that's I'm telling you this current era is one that says you go girl Whatever you're doing You go girl. No, you don't go In the eyes of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala always Sometimes yes, and sometimes no Because people can applaud you all they want But ultimately is what is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala see when he looks at you? This is where the circles of priorities that I was talking about matter. This is why I spent so much time talking about it Because if the book that the Saddam Maria was quoting about the woman the hadith about woman, right? That was banned in Saudi Arabia subhanallah in other places. I imagine too that just quotes the Sahih hadith of Bukhari and Muslim He says and they're very accurately the author. He says if She Can't eat if she masters her circles of priorities There are no issues with her working in any other of those fields of those circles There's no issue and This depends on each and every person because some people are excellent multi-tax Taskers out excellent at multitasking and others are pretty terrible at it Some people are terrible like multitaskers, but they have a lot of hands helping them Right, it really depends Subhanallah, so if a person is taking a high level of responsibility and leadership It doesn't automatically mean that she's neglecting her family It may be that subhanallah Allah gifted her with the ability to be very organized or the ability to have lots of help Because any person you look at and you say whoa, how does she do it? Never ask that question because never that person doing it alone There's always a whole team of people to allow that leader to do what they're doing if they really are a balanced leader Does that make sense and when they are not balanced, which are is the case actually of many of our leaders You start seeing it crop up. You see the house is falling apart You see the kids are off doing I don't know what you see the spouse is upset with this You see this crumbling here and that crumbling there and you see all kinds of mismanagement Not just in a person person's personal life But also mismanagement of the community's time and the community's money and the community's efforts and all kinds of stuff It all goes together subhanallah. So anyhow, I invite us inshallah to take inspiration from our role models And I asked the question in the lecture and ask it again. Do we question the wisdom of Sayyidina Omar? For putting Shifa Al-Adawiya as the Minister of Finance Would any man or woman today question the wisdom of Omar? He knew she was married. He knew she had children and he knew that she was a v-master of the Fiqh of finances and The master of the person who can go into the souq and say out with you You don't know how to do this business transaction properly and out with you. You are scamming people He knew who chose Why are we questioning this shall we get inspiration from that thought of the call see how capable we are?  He is beauty and then it's kind of a conflict or a conflicting message that we shouldn't emphasize our beauty So how can we balance that and as my slides as I referenced in the slides the point of you know be focusing or You know the pursuit of beautification should really be about the inward, right? We want to focus on inward beautification and that doesn't mean of course that we don't take care of our exterior The provisionalism was known if you study his theater for always looking the best even though he had very little He took great care to present himself in the most beautiful way that you know meant Oiling using oil using perfume always having you know again just the best Presentation hygiene of course where did we learn how to do all these things was from his Sunnah so all of that is to say that yes, we're permitted to Spend time beautifying ourselves and even within our marriages we should write this should be a balanced reciprocated thing between both the husband and the wife However, if that's all you do or that's your primary focus and you place so much of your value on Beautification this is where there's a problem and in this society This is the toxic messaging that we're getting as women that you have to be a certain size Your hair has to look a certain way your skin has to look a certain way your eye color You should be at the gym every day and you see a lot of women I was telling them actually the other day my son and I drove to the supermarket early because we had to get milk and it was after fudger and You know we had prayed and then we stayed awake So when we left to go get milk it was still, you know dark outside relatively so somewhat And so I just I saw a bunch of people in the street running There were a lot of activity at this time right so very blessed time fudger But you could see that a lot of the people were up doing what? They were out there Focusing on right the exterior so they were doing their exercise and then I saw one guy he was Putting something in the trunk of his car and when he came out he looked like he had just come from the gym You know he just kind of had that gym look you look sweaty red Okay, so I was like he must have just come from the gym and I said subhanAllah and I told my son I said, you know it's amazing that so many people will wake up really early in the morning to go to the gym They will go out of their way to go to the gym They'll wake up from their sleep to do that they'll wake up from their sleep right to Straighten their hair for one to two hours.  I totally forgot now. They're flattering. Thank you They're flattering ready and they get their makeup ready. Yeah, of course shower and do all that But there's all this beautification, but they won't pray. They don't pray to Allah. They don't they just don't pray So this is where we have it backwards So the point again is we are permitted to beautify ourselves But priority has to be inward beautification character development making sure we're ridding ourselves of the diseases of the heart Making sure we're learning and studying the seer of the process and the son of the process I'm implementing that being people who embody as much as we are able to The the Quranic, you know the Quran in our in our words in our actions. That's real beautification so I Hope that's clear Yes Okay, so now I go So one there's quite a few questions and so one of them was so we're asking also about In what ways can sisters help the African-American community? And African-American Muslims something that ask a question and I think that the first piece is this really self-education You know about learning But the history the gaining knowledge and things like that so that it can help to change the Narrative that had been given to us whether it's in schools or society wherever we got the narrative from our own families It's all to the narrative and that comes with With retraining ourselves first and the other piece too is that begin to change the way that we may look at our sisters our African-American sisters like them and and and look at that in terms of Positive aspects that we are contributors to Islam. We're contributors to our community more so Then we may have thought before so that part is really important And there was another question about the social justice aspect of it, and I think there's one piece around really Also being mindful of yourself and your health with really getting into the social Justice movement and things like that and helping within the African-American community is being mindful because that I was speaking with someone earlier Who came to me to speak before it can be really draining When really looking at a lot of those the pressures and the negatives that happen and so we focus on focus on Islam focus on Allah Muhammad Islam and ours in our in our health And knowing that we can't do it all, you know to pace ourselves So I will hand it over to someone else and then I'll come back around to me to answer some of the other questions Thank you. I'm the level of me The question is our Local mischief three of them all run by the same board don't offer any support for sisters events They don't allow us to use the musallas or conference rooms to hold women's gatherings What do you advise? How can we facilitate such gatherings with such a big pushback? Many of us have experienced this and others. Thank you. I'm CC and that is the solution. Masha'Allah Hamd Allah we see that we see the market difference of being able to have You know going to the masjid and reciting Quran together having your children grow up in the masjid It's a very different experience for our children to be able to see their mothers coming and learning and you know Knowing other women my husband was telling me that one of his favorite memories of being a kid Is just going with his mom and running around the masjid and just Experiencing the masjid in that way and that's very interesting because a lot of us You know we're in the women's section and we see children running around and we're like we can't concentrate on the prayer Because there's so much noise and so there's all these different aspects of you know womanhood that that converge into this one space and When we don't feel like we even have the opportunity to experience that space with our other sisters Of course, that's very hurtful and when you've already spoken to the board and you've already written letters And you've already sent emails and you've gone to the board meeting and you've spoken to the e-mail and nothing is changing I would recommend two things and I know that the scholars here have way better suggestions Insha'Allah they can give advice but the first is Don't let go of your connection to the masjid even though you have pain And that's been really a journey for myself, and I know many other women who You know we need to separate the difference between this is the house of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and I come here to worship Allah And this is my my my space of connecting with other Believers and helping my family connect with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and then any negative experience I may have that's where I go into my sajdah in my sujood I go to Allah and I ask him to help heal me and help heal my community and of course therapy is very helpful Especially if you can work with the Muslim therapist Marastan is here who can help you process why those things are so hurtful sometimes So one on a personal level don't let go of your connection with the masjid if the masjid is open to women Don't let go of it. The second thing is they might be open in the prayer hall But that doesn't mean that they are open to you having social gatherings or religious gatherings And if you want to hold your halakha in the masjid, but they're not opening the doors for you I would recommend two things one find an alternative space It can be your own home a sister that I know and In Santa Clara holds open halakha in her backyard. You know, she publicizes it People know her address and women come all the way from Berkeley I think some of the women here even come all the way from Berkeley just to be able to Be with other women and a woman's backyard and that speaks to you know It's panel how committed women are to seeking knowledge and being in spaces of worship So one is finding alternative spaces But the second is you have power in your masjid your you yourself are a donator or maybe someone you know is and you can Speak with them and say, you know, I would like to donate this amount to the masjid But it's contingent on women being able to have religious classes in the masjid So you put that pressure on the board from a financial space that you know, the masjid is for all of us Myself my children are not going to be able to learn if you are literally saying we cannot have Quran halakha in the masjid So we are not going to be giving this money here instead We're gonna rent a room in a you know random facility to be able to have our own halakha So either this money goes to the masjid and you allow us to work worship in the masjid or we're gonna rent out a room In an office space, excuse me And we're gonna give that money to an office space so that we can feel safe where we worship Together without feeling like we are not welcome You have power to do that and you have the resources to be able to do that when you you Think critically about the ways that you do matter You are necessary for the masjid even if you don't feel like you are even if you're made to feel like you're not and How can you help them realize that and at the end of the day? They may never realize that and that's when you go back to point one That you still go back to the masjid and you pray for the healing of yourself and your community And maybe it's time to find a different masjid in your locality where you do still have that connection, but in a different place So I think This question is a tough one. So I'm giving you a warning And it's very practical and it's very common. So I'm gonna read it. So I give it do right. How do we as woman? especially getting married young and questioning both cultural and religious understanding of Islam Navigate the definition of Awama That usually is explained as quote-unquote wife has to be obedient in turn for financial support from husband and That's that's the extent of the role What is the way we as women should understand this role? Men play and what does it look like to obey as a wife? This needs a whole next No, I didn't mean this this is gonna be the next one because we agreed that we're gonna tackle every sensitive issue Because if we are not gonna be talking about it, who else is gonna talk about it, right? And we need to in general This is very difficult. There's a couple of things in Islam and I'm saying this as a woman. It's very difficult on the woman What is the second one? Very difficult. You don't see it in this country because it's not allowed polygamy Yeah, and I was in Saudi. This was a huge issue Because it's very hard for the woman. So Come to reality number one. You need to understand what is Qawama and What is the requirement for Qawama? In general when I shared with you the story of Sayyidah Aisha, right? How did she respond? And there's nobody stronger than Sayyidah Aisha She only if you really read her biography, right? She stood up for her right. She speaks her mind She acted as a wife. She was jealous. She planned. You all know this, right? They met a Harima maa harama maa halal laulak, right? How did she respond? Was she an obedient wife? Answer me No, or yes Yes, was she weak? Was she submissive and let them say whatever they say? What can I do? You know, he pays for me What did she do? Turn to Allah. This is what we are missing. I Need to understand what is Qawama. I need to understand where does Qawama apply? Does Allah expect me to be the obedient wife? Yes to certain extent. It's not an open invitation Otherwise Allah knows our ability and our limitation and marriage will be honestly almost impossible But is it also exactly what you just said open invitation? No for everything. This is your mind If you know the 50-50 rule You don't know the 50-50. I'm not gonna say it in public So we don't want to go to the extremes Now you should probably know it's you shouldn't be the extreme. He does this I does this If he doesn't do it, I'm not doing it. That's not that's not gonna work What the hadith I had actually in my mind, but the time didn't allow it That's the Hadith of Rasul A.S. And you translated as the following the women are but partners of the of the men So here you go. What does it will take if I am gonna give him the Qawama? Because Allah told me provided he is qualified to do the Qawama The 50-50 the joint account is not a Qawama Be my father Allah who by them you need to read the Quran the Qawama is because he spent on her There's no 50-50. There is no joint account if you are the richest woman. It's your money If that's how it is in your home, then yes You obey him as long as there's no disobedience to Allah As long as there's no abuse It's it's not a yes and no right away You know the culture is telling us no and this we think it's not as yes, and that's where the conflict You need to learn and need to be patient and need to navigate and you need to put your mind the goal After pleasing Allah, can I save this marriage? Can I be this woman? We need to have a lot of talk about marriage before they get married then the and I'm sure to run out Aranya knows this the percentage of divorce in the Muslim community is getting very close to the non-muslim It's 47% I Had a woman came to my house knocked on the door Gave me the invitation and says please make du'a. So of course I'm making this it please make do I they stay married Well, I was like Subhan Allah. So Qawama Has a requirement from the man has a requirement from the woman is not do or don't the other one What does Allah expect from us us as obedient wives? Toward the husband Qawam because we want to please Allah but that usually gets dressed up in a cultural baggage which is so true and I'd like to understand the actual Expectation to not feel guilty. This is definitely gonna be our next Yeah, because this is a long subject. So inshallah Allah allows make du'a So Allah Subhan Allah allows this to happen. This by the way was started in November in a simple conversation And she said really I said sure And here we are Subhan Allah and may Allah reward you for all coming because you made it reality Jazakum Allah here. So inshallah next time we'll tackle another she is by the way we have to Acknowledge she was the one who wrote the descriptions It was beautiful descriptions really really I mean we talked about the subject, but exactly You know the best the better they equal so may Allah reward So there was a question about Just books in terms of like learning about women. There's the women around the prophets I said I'm there's a if you want something that's deeply philosophical the Tao of Islam the source book on no shoot the Tao of Islam it's Discussing a lot of the Sufi ideas of like what is womanhood mean am I a woman in my soul a lot of those discussions? She actually wrote it from an Eastern perspective because The Western perspective was apparently too difficult to work with where she was saying like I would go through all of these Discussions on like you have to understand the Islamic ethos for you to understand how and why these rulings come about and It was so difficult that she's like I have to come I have to literally cross the ocean come from an Eastern perspective to be able to explain it But I do want to say a lot and I'm so grateful for female teachers We have just as many female teachers in our communities as we do men we just don't value their scholarship in the same way We don't have a lack of this and this is on every subject like I learned about like structural racism because I asked aunties in the Western I Went to my aunties and I said I know I'm at like also when you make a mistake and someone schools you thank you Thank them for the free education Because I didn't I didn't know things. I didn't actually for a good chunk of my life. I didn't live in America I had no idea and Then I would like me other sisters don't know this come to the Halapa Please teach us because how are we gonna support each other if we don't know each other and We don't value the scholarship that we have. I just I know I'm tangenting, but there was a discussion on polygamy. I Think it's important for us to make sure that we are putting it again within within its context The Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam married a number of women after the battle of the hood They lost seven percent of their male population in a day This was a devastating day and the stories about the battle of the hood It's very difficult to get through them with without just sobbing The companions children all the law and home would come out and call for their fathers and cry when they didn't hear a response They knew what happened. So the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam started marrying a series of widows When you look at a community that's under attack because you're living in peace You don't judge a community that's living under attack Communities at war I differ from communities at peace And I want to say this because polygamy in in in America is far more common within the black community than it is in the immigrant community Because one in four black men between the ages of 18 and 28 is in prison or on parole This is a community under attack and this isn't to say it's a blanket statement. Not every woman Is willing to live with it some women regardless of their backgrounds in Yemen It's actually very common like my my sister-in-law's neighbor was trying to find her husband his second wife She's like I might as well like her and I was this is the craziest thing I've heard in my life Different cultures do different things the women in Makkah were willing to accept that the women Medina weren't The Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam never ensided insulted the women of Medina by taking more than one white from Medina It wasn't a part of their culture And all of that is fine We don't I just want to make sure that we're not judging a community at war that is under attack The same way that we would judge a community in a place of peace If Allah's gifted you something and Hamdulillah don't look at your sister. That's in a different situation be like Oh, but I'm better ask her what that experience is like. She might enjoy her marriage far more than you ever dreamt of And I've talked to some of these sisters It's like your sounds so amazing and Hamdulillah. May Allah bless you Just like my head Thank you Alright, ma'sha'Allah this question Hamdulillah. There's so there's so many questions and so many beautiful questions How on earth are we going to do these this all before matter, but I have no idea So we're going to do our best. We're gonna consolidate take another round of one more round. Maybe before matter comes in It's tiny dot CC backslash Reimagined questions Excellent your neighbor has a hamdulillah. All right Hamdulillah this question here reads Some of the woman that were mentioned today as examples can be viewed as anomalies. Okay, I love this because as soon as I read it I was like, ah, I knew somebody was gonna ask this. I knew somebody was going to say. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know But those are the greats Does this actually apply to me? So the question goes or That they were women who were present in the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Which is also a very common thing that people say But they were sahabi yet. Who are we? Okay, hang on And we are not debating that they are the best of generations. This is clear from the hadith. However Or that it continues or they were sahabi ideas Okay, you got that or they were so special and better in us better than us that they are at a different level that we will never reach How do we talk about this? I'll tell you exactly how we talk about this the reason we decided in this or at least in my talk I decided to bring examples of the Prophet's wife and Examples of the sahabi act was specifically because the topic itself Had to do with the concept of my topic was stay at home Do women shouldn't women stay at home? And I was giving examples because people are going to say is there proof in the Prophet's era that woman did more Then stay at home. I said well who better than the very woman of the Prophet's era So Lallahu Alaihi Wasallam and his very wives Ridwan and Lallahi Alaihun to actually explain But that does not mean that in all Of Muslim history that there weren't so many examples sisters You have to hear these stories and understand that they were so many of them Yeah, you be quit us to where these are not anomalies They are not and I'll tell you and this is why I'm so happy to say that because anytime I get to share about Damascus I love it because for me for me I Had to be the honor of being able to see this in real life People who are present. I don't know who was in the holocaust on Friday night a couple weeks ago I got so frustrated it's one out the sisters in the but with the questions that people ask about where are the female Scholars and I would explain and explain and finally I just said you know what I turn off my Green screen behind me and there was my bookshelf Right and I just pointed at my bookshelf and I said you see these shelves over here You see these shelves behind me There were rows and rows and rows of books and I said every single one of these is a modern currently living or Just recently deceased female scholar You want fit you want hadith you want the qira out of Quran you want to shoot you want seerah You want it to everything? It's all right there on the shelf out and they were all wanted to mass in one place one country What if we added to it all the countries of the world? That's about a lot of what you said was so true. We may not know the woman scholars Because sometimes they're the auntie who is in the community who you learn structural racism from and nobody calls her doctor It was stada blah blah With honorific titles, but she has more knowledge on that topic than anyone else Right and then what about all of our teachers that actually have knowledge and either we don't know them simply the gems the hidden gems of our community or They don't have a platform Which is what Rahmah foundation is a platform from all the women of status to speak from a Whole they don't have a whole organization backing them or massage it opening their doors to them or that's simply We are so used to just like the question about the Quran apps and listening to men who read a put and beautiful Recitations. We're so accustomed to listening to a man reciting put and we've never even heard a woman recite put and Subhanallah, right? And so let me just tell you this. These are not anomalies back to the question What I saw subhanallah was a beautiful story of balance a story of woman who Had if Allah blessed them with a spouse were married and from those who are married up Allah bless them with children were mothers But every single one of them without exception whether she was a wife or not whether she was with or divorced whether She was single or never married whether she had children 10 of them were one They had one thing in common always They were dedicated to the knowledge of Islam They learned their Islam These women it doesn't matter the primary level was they all have memorized the Quran Three single last one of them had ejaz and put in and then there are those who went further up and memorized a hadith And eventually got ejaz is in the all the books of hadith and those who became the 10 10 of Quran right and on and on and on subhanallah and we're not talking in the ones are 10 20s or 30s anomalies We're talking in the hundreds. It was a whole movement. It was beautiful. It still is these are currently living people Though they may not all be in Damascus today make to out for Syria and all of the countries of the Muslim world and the world By extension the reason I'm sharing this with you sisters is because we tend to think of anomalies Let me tell you after I came back from studying Syria one of the trips back I had actually spent so much time studying with woman teachers and at a young age. I was a teenager when I first started I went to my first mixed Yeah, and he mixed as in like that like a woman one one side and then around the other side program It was a month-long intensive dean program And I was like, huh, this is interesting There were all male teachers actually quite a funny story They were all middle teachers there wasn't a single woman teacher and I'm like, yeah I don't know. Anyway, I had never really heard too many male teachers speak whatever So each one was getting up and giving his lecture each one was giving up give us lecture And after like a day's worth of this this shows you how naive and kind of silly I was still very young. I'm sitting in the front row. The problem is I'm sitting in the front row And I listened to each of them each of them each of them Okay, how else we have a whole day worth of male teachers speaking beautiful teachers Masha'Allah and finally I turn around to the sister sitting on the side of me and sister sitting on the side and I said, huh How strange they're all men And I said, you know They're not so bad They're just not as good as the woman teachers And the sisters sitting next to him will not forget the look on their faces They looked at me like what planet did you just come off of? That you know more woman teachers and scholars that is the weird anomaly that the male ones are speaking And that was my reality All the women were teachers all the teachers that we had were women Scholars scholars. Alhamdulillah. Allah allowed me to keep going back to Damascus I did study with the men and the sheikhs well of Damascus beautiful. Masha'Allah But something special about that to where you can take a young kid and put her in a program and go Strange male teachers Shala right right I had a friend a very similar sort of tangent here But she had lived all her life overseas and so her hockey team Was all women all girls in the Muslim country when she moved to Canada They went to their first like official hockey game And so you know that when you have the mascot and you're everyone's playing you can't see if they're a male or woman a Man or a woman and so eventually took their helmets off and she goes Then Same reaction It depends what you saw it depends what you grew up with it depends what you were able Allah gave you the ability to see sisters These examples are not anomalies. They are more ubiquitous than we think and they Absolutely can and should and will be you and your daughters inshallah ta'ala And so there was another question that came into the the chat that asked about the Exam that I talked about the licensing exam and so this one sort of up just it's a long one just to ask about The the question is is raised basically about Racism and how I saw the lens of it when looking at I'm Repairing the question because it's a really long one and about what you know if white people read the question It said oh, it's exemplifying white people and they feel horrible about that on the exam as well And so the the writer talked about It's better to think about Basically about but I think empower African-American community comes from a place to talk about great things That that have done a focus on the positive mental shift alongside strategically fighting against racism And so basically I think the people what I'm surmising from this is really focusing on The positives that happen within the African-American community versus did the struggles in the pain We need both Okay, so we have to acknowledge the pain and the torture that happened in this country For over 400 years. That's a real thing There is still suffering that comes because of enslavement and the torture that happened in this country for African-American people and Realize that those people were Muslim Many of them that came over, you know that were forced into enslavement were also Muslims So we're reverting back so it's not necessarily looking at the negatives of it I think we need to look at both And look at the positives and the powerful achievements that has happened and hasn't happened like unlike hidden figures We talked about some folks that saw that movie about the strength of women And even like the sister was just speaking about many of the scholars many of the scholars with that did a lot of the writing to Also come from African countries as written in the language of Wolof, you know and spoken in the language of Wolof So we look at both I think both is important And and that we sit with ourselves and are with our own souls About hearing and learning things that are painful and wanting it to go away and move past it That goes back to what we talked about with race and neutrality and that adds to another question that came in there And about cultural humility was another question that came in their cultural humility is the piece about you know being humbled and learning what it is that we don't know and And moving ourselves to learn more and be humbled about that. So we need both Yes, there is the positive and the beautiful parts about African-American history And there is also the pain that is happening right now today Because if we if we are blind to it then it adds to that piece about race and color blindness And that becomes detrimental and very painful Whereas folks become also supporters of the oppression rather than those who are fighting against it So it's it's a combination of open. I think I answered three questions in one Thank you, so I had Again, we apologize for not being able to get to all the questions There's so many that I wish I could answer but we just don't have time So I'm gonna choose this one that I really think I can speak on because it relates to An experience that I actually lived through so the question is we understand that one can still have Ostentation right which is Ria it's a disease of the heart where you show off Right here. You're performing basically in order for it to be seen That we can have ostentation when people purposely go out of their way to not look boastful Do you still have ostentation if you go out of your way to not look too good around certain people? An example is where basically wearing a mask around men or purposely dress and purposely dress with not the best attire Around certain people out of fear of judgment or being seen by them So the question again that I'm hearing here is is it still Ria if you're trying to basically, you know Kind of tone down your dress So as not to attract Or to appear a certain way right to whether it's men or other people and So I feel like this question I just again can speak to it because many many years ago before I even knew what the term ostentation was Which is like a it's a mouthful of a word or Ria we I hadn't studied the diseases of the heart I absolutely had it. I just didn't know I had it But a big part of my focus was on the outward and so Wearing a certain clothes to not be perceived You know as as attractive or or just to look intimidating was absolutely my game I went out of the house with the agenda to intimidate people to look scary to not be judged You know for for for any physicality or anything else and to send a message a strong message And I thought that that was you know something pious I actually believed that it was an act of piety to do that and I've told the story before But I don't know how many of you have heard it So I'll just quickly tell it because I think it for me It was a life-changing moment for me and it just made me it helped me to shift focus But I've told the story so if you've heard it you can leave if you want I don't want to anyhow. I was this was many years ago And so as I mentioned I used to dress like all Kind of military style in a way head-to-toe black and I would walk around With like a grimace and just like not be very pleasant because I wanted to intimidate people so I was at the airport waiting for a ride and this You know, I'm just sitting there people watching waiting for my ride dressed again head-to-toe like that and a Woman she parks her car right across the street I mean on the you know in the in the where all the cars are coming and she parked her car And then she got out of her car and she's wearing a tank top and shorts and she's a you know, white I mean, I'm assuming white American woman, but she She was dressed very scantily and I just immediately just judged her and had a lot of negative thoughts Let's just say Completely judged her and this happened to me She closed the trunk of her car and she looked right in my direction as if she was piercing through my soul and You know, you make eye contact with somebody who you're just judging, you know That's not comfortable if you've ever done that before but she did that and then she walked directly towards me And so as she's walking towards me my heart is like, you know because I'm like what is this is kind of strange Why is she coming towards me? Well, lucky she did that she came and she stood in her tank top in short shorts And I'm sitting there and she she put her head down and she said said I want a go Last words I ever thought I would hear from someone dressed like that and she had so much humility I actually she had her head to hand the low the whole time pretty much was talking to me She's like, I know I'm dressed so inappropriately, but I am Muslim and I want to raise my son Muslim and I saw you and I thought it was like a sign from God that I come and talk to you because I want a book. She's like I need resources for my son So she's saying all this stuff and I'm just sitting there like completely floored at what just happened because I know the internal dialogue I was having in my head and of course Allah knows what I was thinking and he sent this woman to me He sent her to me to teach me a very very serious lesson that day Which is who do you think you are right? You're walking around as though you are the personification of my faith and you judge people and you think you're better than people and that's who I was for a really long time and That day I learned the lesson. I am nobody because that woman I am sure was was far better than I was in that moment and I had to sit with that It was like a I say it was it was like a punch to the gut It was but it was a huge awakening for me that my focus was on the wrong thing I was focused on the outward. So Riyah is a disease of the heart Where in both cases where you do something to be seen or you don't do something to not be seen It is Riyah because the focus is on people Our focus has to be on Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala We don't act for for to be seen or to not be seen to be judged to not be judged to be Accepted to not be accepted. That is not the state of the believer because people can't benefit you and they can't harm you Everything is from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So the believer understands that and that's why if you're going to dress a certain way Do it for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Don't factor in people Do it for the sake of Allah and he will give you Taufiq insha'Allah Jazakum Allah wa khirin. I just wanted to share since we only have one minute I will have time to answer the I won't have time to answer the actual question So instead I'd like to share something SubhanAllah when we're talking about the you know legacy of our Amazing and incredible African-American brothers and sisters I want you to know that we have an international Dubei Qur'an competition where every country of the world comes and competes And we've had three winners from the United States and all of them are African-American SubhanAllah we have Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar in spaces of Quran which is where I do so much research and Women reciting Quran Masha'Allah on the act that we have coming out inshallah We have women Quran reciter so many from Nigeria from Cameroon from Guinea Masha'Allah from the Gambia and Masha'Allah Their recitations are not just beautiful recitations. They're also reciting Qira at so you're gonna hear recitations You've never heard before and you don't understand and I'm gonna have just play one of them for you Insha'Allah as we end just to give you a glimpse of the depth of knowledge Because this isn't just oh I go to the message and I memorize it from hearing someone the level of this knowledge is so powerful And those of us who are not black we have so much that we owe our brothers and sisters our brothers And so how you so beautifully spoke to this may Allah bless you to recognize the fact that we who those of us Who are not black the privilege that we have and also to recognize that the reason we have so much privilege is because of the sacrifices and That the pain of our brothers and sisters from the african-american community But the scholarship that we have from so much of east and west Africa is just so powerful in our In our in our history So I want to end because subhan Allah listening to this it will inshallah blow you away This shecha Zainab Zailani. She is a like Masha'Allah Hafidah with so much constantly a constant winner of Competitions and I want you to hear something different than you may have heard before I just Masha'Allah there are so many of them. I need to get to her. Bismillah Dr. Amina in one minute. Can you explain what just happened because she's connecting the two surahs? Sorry I just that I was sucked into the rest I'm doing that. I'm sorry. I'm actually out of practice for my but Masha'Allah like at the beginning of the surah What she was doing is Imala. So like the Jaa Or Jaa They're all different reciters Sorry I've been that one. Okay. Actually, do you want to answer? Bismillah, Rahman, Raheem, As-salatu wa-salaamu ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa-ala ala alihi wa-sahbihi wa-sannim Masha'Allah so different types of recitations. So Some of the recitations they have Imala and They don't say they the word with Fatiha the way we say it in hafs So in hafs we say Jaa But Ibn Zekwan says Jaa So he makes the Imala. So this is one of the one of the ways that differ between the Qiraat and Subhanallah, there are so many differences and Imam Shaatibi, radiya Allah, Collected all the differences in the Quran all the and he calls it haruf So when you say harf, it means that it's read differently from one reciter to another Sometimes they agree on certain ones. Sometimes they differ Some reciters say annais And some of them make ful-ishba' for the med they would say ila jaa Six Some of them say four. So it depends. It's a whole science and Masha'Allah The more you learn about the Quran, the more you think that you know nothing and Actually, this is about all the sciences of Islam Subhanallah No, some of the reciters For example, Hamza radiya Allah on consider the Quran as a whole. So he doesn't read the best man Some of them do six different ways or five different ways How to connect the surahs? So for example, I'm gonna answer this in a little bit of detail Let's take Walla Dallin Bismillahirrahmanirrahim alif laami So some of them would the first rule is to separate the three Positions they say walla Dallin Bismillahirrahmanirrahim Alif laam you separate Then what you do is you connect Bismillahirrahmanirrahim to the beginning of the next Bismillahirrahmanirrahimi alif laami Longer me But you never connect When when you start the Quran you never connect out of the language and tone regime to Bismillahirrahmanirrahim So that the one who doesn't know the Quran would not think that Bismillahirrahmanirrahim is the end of the first surah So and then you can connect all of them together and some some reciters also do sect between the two ayahs Walla Dallin Bismillahirrahmanirrahim Actually the sect without Bismillah That's wrong. Let's connect them together Walla Dallin So different ways of reciting Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Thank you so much Anthony Hap and And speaking of and this is a wonderful note to end on I still need this one, but a wonderful note to end on as we wrap up our conference inshallah is that The recitation the ten recitations of Quran Honestly, it's something that is a science that we need to continue on so if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala if anybody here actually has worked on Their Quran worked on their heads worked on their tajweed Keep on working with the 10 thirat and if this I mean we kept to keep on putting the bar pretty pretty high Mashallah to keep on attaining it I just want to end with saying one of the wonderful modern like current day I say modern. I'm in current day. Mashallah Woman scholars that I am very blessed Mashallah to be aware of and to know of and actually study from her books is Somebody by the name of Anse Samarit Asha who's written an amazing Multiple volumes on the 10 thirat where she takes every single verse of the Quran and Breaks down each and every one of the 10 thirat and tells you the differences And then they say that there isn't actually a book So many of her books are so unique that there isn't actually a book quite like this that many people have been able to Move from their hips of Quran to learning the 10 thirat because they were able to follow her method She's also the same person. Mashallah. She's memorized all the books of hadith and has books an amazing book where she actually puts in All it is is like for those who memorize all the hadith Imagine you're just memorized the hadith which is in itself an amazing feat You also memorize the anana, which is like on so-and-so on so-and-so on so-and-so, right? Call her a soul of Allah salam the Senate exactly and she has these like shortcuts, which are all pictorial Little picture shortcuts of how do you memorize all of the hadith and who was in the Senate? Of the Sahih of the hadith I mean it is phenomenal Mashallah and many many books there is a book that is translated of hers under the title gatherings of illumination by dr. Feryal Salam who translated the book and it's a book of Dua So since we're entering into Ramadan This is one you can go online onto Amazon and actually order it and it's a beautiful book where she brings together the Quranic Duas and your hadith duas of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam and other duas and actually there's Other compilations like this, but this one is done by a woman masha'Allah and it's a very beautiful compilation of duas So it adds to that to your library inshallah. I end this inshallah with more inspirations And by the way, she also ran the entire hadith school for women in Damascus. Masha'Allah. I mean, this is beautiful I met one more thing. I keep keep keep on talking about her She had students that would come from all over the world and I met Masha'Allah our sheikh who gave us the Ijaz Iain Quran and Tajweed Rahimahullah He would have certain people who were given permission to give full Ijazah because usually what you do in the ministry of Syria of the For the Quran is you have to go to the person with the shortest senate And there's only so many of them and they were all men and Most of them wouldn't take on woman teacher women students and subhanallah Sometime maybe was in the 70s or 80s or so some of our teachers were able to finally ask and Agree and convince actually went to the youngest of the five of the Quran of Sham And he said no, I don't teach women. They went to the next oldest. I don't teach Well, they thought the youngest one would be more modern. No, no, no, no, no, no until they get to the eldest of them And subhanallah our teachers upon all the one we're blessed to receive Ijazah from took on students and Hundreds I'm talking about in the hundreds and then into the thousands of women who received Ijazah Quran from Syria And then the Quran Ijazah of Syria is the strongest and the strictest So people would come from all over even after they finished put on elsewhere to get the one from Syria This teacher asked the summer that I'm telling you about She had full permission to give the full Ijazah on her own Like that's how strong her Quran was and I met much I will never forget this one of the housemates I was on one of my last trips was somebody from Turkey and she finished that day her Ijazah Quran she went to go get tested and they gave you this beautiful Role certificate of your Ijazah Quran with the whole Senate and who the teacher was who the Sheikh was and who the teacher was and She was so excited not only because she received the Ijazah But she said look look on the very corner. It tells you what number, you know because they issue, right? Certificate endowment based certificates with numbers Which number are you and these are the thousands and thousands of these Ijazahs Mashallah hers said number one Because hers was the very first given from Ansa Samar herself from the woman teacher Hasha Allah beautiful beautiful. I hope to inspire you these are all Currently living amongst us women scholars male bless them and us and I'm telling you Whether it's a sister from Turkey or whether it's myself or whether it's all of us I think all of us would agree or all of you. We're just ordinary people folks We're ordinary people that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allowed for and blessed and you and Us inshallah can be extraordinary in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's eyes would you make the commitment? Make the intention and the door start opening Subhanallah and then be community and sisters for each other inshallah with that I'm going to end and we'll have our maghrib prayer together There are a couple of housekeeping announcements to us I'll say after our ending here Was sallallahu ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam I want to thank all for your time and your attention today. Thank you. And everybody who is online welcome And we're so happy to have you please continue joining the rahmah foundation and the Jannah institutes Programming all throughout the week in the months and with that my dear sisters will close inshallah With our dua Inna Meenah I'm in a Allah I'm in a Hamdan You know you can I'm In a I'm In a I'm In a I'm In a I'm In a I'm In a Ina An I'll I'll In a I'm In a I leading habihi tasliman kathirah Rabbana arzukna attiba'a sunnatih Rabbana arzukna attiba'a sunnatih Rabbana te arzukna attiba'a sunnatih Rabbana laatuaakhidna inna siyna aw-akhta'ina Rabbana wala tahmila layna isram kama hamilta huwala ladzeena manqablina Rabbana wala tuhammilna ma'la taqta lana biha wa'afu'ana wa'afi'lnana wa'rahmna anta maulana faansurna And may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon our master Muhammad and his family and his companions.


I'm Darren Marlar and this is a Weird Darkness Bonus Byte. From the New York Post, Mom Who Gave Daughters 15 and 5 Melatonin Gummies Before Fatally Shooting Them Gets 78 Years by Alyssa Guzman.  Veronica Youngblood was handed down the hefty sentence after the former sex worker was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of felony firearm use in March. Youngblood shot her daughters Sharon Castro 15 and Brooklyn Youngblood 5 in their beds in their McLean apartment after drugging them with melatonin gummies in August of 2018. Brooklyn, who died at the scene, was shot once in the head, while Sharon was struck once in the back and once in the chest and later died at the hospital. The teen was able to call 911 after being shot to inform the dispatcher that her mom had pulled the trigger. Jurors who heard Sharon's call during the two-week trial were so traumatized by it, they asked if they could receive therapy.  As her teenage daughter's lay dying, she called her ex-husband Ron Youngblood to tell him she hated him and she had shot their children. He had originally planned to move to Missouri with the girls, but agreed to just take Brooklyn at his ex's behest. Youngblood bought the handgun she used to take her daughter's lives nine days before the disturbing slayings. The mom of two who grew up in Argentina called herself a good mother at her sentencing, saying, "...something happened in her brain. I don't know how to explain it, something exploded in my mind," she said via a translator during a 30-minute speech about her girls and the hardships she faced while raising them. Youngblood presented an insanity defense at trial claiming she heard voices, but it was rejected.  Defense lawyers asked that the two sentences run concurrently, which would have reduced the sentence from 78 years to 42 years, which Fairfax County Circuit Judge Randy Bellows nixed. Mothers and fathers have many responsibilities, he said, but none is more grave than keeping their children safe. Tragically, their mother became the instrument of their death. And kudos to the judge for nixing the idea of doing concurrent sentences. This woman needs to be in prison for as long as humanly possible. Probably longer than that. Find the link to the original story in the show notes, and find more strange or disturbing news in the Weird News & Blog at WeirdDarkness.com.


OPEC reportedly agreeing to cut production for another nine months, let's bring in Mike Lowengard, VP of Investment Strategy at E-Trade. So Mike, this was widely expected, but the worry is that these cuts aren't really going to do much for prices because the first round of OPEC cuts back in December didn't really move the needle. What do you think? Well, the previous cuts established an unofficial floor at $50, and the news that cuts will be extended for the next nine months, we would expect that that floor would continue. All right, and just before these OPEC cuts, OPEC was producing 31.9 million barrels a day, which is about the same level as November 2015. So yes, these are cuts, but they're still producing an incredible amount of oil every day. They really are, and they're trying to strike the right balance. The challenge is that they have to remain competitive. They want to address the supply issue that's facing the global supply of oil right now, but they also need to combat the production in the U.S. We've seen productivity increase by U.S. oil companies, and that's putting more pressure on OPEC as well. I mean, you can largely say the U.S. is to blame for this drop in oil prices over the past couple of years. We're seeing West Texas intermediate at about $51 a barrel right now. I mean, how do you see that range going over the next coming months? Well, investors can expect to see a rangebound trading within oil, but that floor is likely to continue. While they may not have been as deep as some market participants were hoping for, we think they're going to continue to keep maintaining that similar level. All right. Now, in terms of the market reaction to all this, we're now over 2,400 in the S&P 500. So what is your investment thesis right now? Well, investors are taking all this news and stride. OPEC is just one piece of news that investors are digesting, and they've been resilient. They're staying committed to equities, and they're still seeking out opportunities, both in the U.S. but also abroad as well. All right. Mike Lohengart, we'll leave it there. Thanks so much for coming back with us. Thanks, Scott. All right. I'm Scott Gamm, and you're watching The Street.