Okay, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Allahumma salli wa sallim, ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala Ali wa sahibi ajma'in. So, the subject is the prophetic model of teaching. How did the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, how did he teach? And now some people, they might ask a question, well, why do I need to do? Why do I need to know this? I'm not a teacher. And the argument that I would make is that if you're Muslim, by default you're a teacher. And the reason is, is because the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, Convey from me, convey, you know, transmit from me, even if it is just one verse from the Qur'an. And it doesn't necessarily mean that a person has to be a scholar. That's another thing. Sometimes, and I hear this a lot, people say, well, I'm hesitant to teach because I'm not a scholar. In that prophetic command where he says, Convey from me, even if it's just one ayah, because maybe a person who hears it will have more understanding than you. Maybe the person who hears it will have more understanding than you. So what happened in the first generations is anybody who heard the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and they collected a hadith, they memorized it, then they would preserve it. And people would go out to look for those people. They would travel far distances, they would say, I heard that you have a hadith of the Messenger of Allah preserved. Do you have it? And they said, yes. So that began the process of collection of hadith. The hadith collectors then they would put it together and they say, this is an authentic narration with an authentic chain of transmitters and so forth. Here it is. But we might not understand the full implications of what this hadith has in it. And so then that's the job of the Fouqaha, the jurists, the Mujtahideen to look at the hadith and then to say, oh, this is what this means. So that process of transmitting, even if you don't understand the full meaning of it, just go ahead and transmit it. Does that make sense? So even if you maybe don't understand the full meaning of a certain ayah or a certain surah, if you have a chance to convey it to another person, just convey it. You don't have to give necessarily your opinion or the rulings, just go ahead and convey it. In that process of conveying though, we have to make sure that we're following the prophetic model of that conveying. Because, well, let me just back up a little bit. If we agree that we have to convey and we can say that that conveying is a form of teachers, then in that moment of conveying, we all become teachers in that capacity. And so when we do that, then we also want to make sure that our method of conveying the sunnah of the messenger of Allah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, that it's also according to his sunnah. And I'll give you a quote that I learned from one of my students, one of the students through Tlaibah Foundation, where we teach people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, they're either in prison now or formerly in prison. So, well, Stath Amin, Amin Anderson, and he's been in prison for 28 years now. He should be getting out this November. He became Muslim while in prison. And he converted to Islam. He started studying. He knows Arabic. He can read texts in Arabic. He's translated Arabic into English texts. And he's written commentaries on books. Mashallah, phenomenal student and teacher. And we were discussing something about how sometimes people try to push Islam on other people and they end up pushing them away. They push Islam on people and they end up pushing them away. And so he said this quote that really stuck with me, that truth without compassion is cruelty. Truth without compassion is cruelty. So in other words, just because we adhere to this notion as Muslims that, yes, we speak the truth, even if it's bitter, we speak the truth against the oppressors. We speak the truth. We speak the truth. We speak the truth. At the same time, we can't always speak the truth without understanding what is that person going through? What is their state at that moment? Because if I go ahead and give too much at one time, or I give it in the wrong context, it might actually end up hurting that person. And I'll give you an example. Erik Kareemah, radiAllahu anhu, one of the Sahaba, one of the companions of the Prophet. Who is his father? Who is Erik Kareemah's father? I think somebody said it over here. Abu Jahl, right? His father was Abu Jahl. Now you can imagine, imagine your father is Abu Jahl. Imagine Trump's son, you know, or let's not just pick on Trump, Obama, because Obama killed more Muslims than Trump. Bush, right? What if Obama's, one of Obama's daughters became Muslim and came into the masjid? You know, like how would people, maybe not him, maybe Bush, or you know, just, just think of somebody, Bush, the Bush Junior and Senior, one of their children becomes Muslim. And we all know how many Muslims died at their hands. How would people look at them because of, you know, in relation to their fathers? Many people might accept them, but would there be something like that people might hold in their hearts? So obviously, at the time of the Sahaba, they knew Abu Jahl and what he did. I mean, he killed the first person, right? Who did he kill? Sumaya, radiallahu anha. So the first martyr in Islam was a woman, Sumaya, and her husband, Yasser, and who killed them was Abu Jahl. So the first blood that was, we're not the first blood that was shed, but the first person who died for Islam was Sumaya, the first person who killed him, her was Abu Jahl. And we know all of the other things that Abu Jahl did. His son, Ikrima, becomes Muslim. Well, some of the Sahaba started saying things about, you know, his father to him, and it really bothered him. And he came to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and he complained about that. He said, they're saying things to me about my father. Like, wow, what's wrong with your father? Kind of of a thing. And so the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, he said, Do not harm or bother or annoy the Muslims because of their non-Muslim relatives. So here's a situation where somebody might go and say, up to Ikrima and say, your father is one of the main Khufar of Quraish. Is that true? Is that a true statement? Your father has really, really hurt the Muslims. Is that a true statement?  Is that a true statement? All these statements are true. But if somebody came to Ikrima and said those things, would it really hurt him? So that's truth without compassion is cruelty. So we have to know what to say, when to say it, how to say it, who to say it to, and all of those things. So that's why it's important for us to understand how did the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam teach other people? How did he convey the message? And this, in this, is the sunnah of the sunnah. The sunnah of the sunnah. So there are sunnah, there are traditions of the Prophet, Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And there is a tradition, there's a sunnah to implement the sunnah. I'll give you another example. Eating dates. Is eating dates sunnah? What if somebody just grabbed a handful of dates and stuffed them in their mouth? Did they follow the sunnah of the sunnah? So that's a good way, like a good example to remember. Yes, eating dates is sunnah, but there is a sunnah to that sunnah. And to be able to fully implement that sunnah, we want to implement it in the prophetic way. So in the same way, when we convey the message of the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, when we convey the Qur'an, we want to do it in the prophetic model of teaching. So a little bit about this seminar and the packet that inshallah hopefully you'll all get into your hands once we can get those books here and everybody who's registered can get one of them. The years ago, one of the things that I noticed in sometimes how people teach, and again, I don't mean like a teacher in a formal environment of instructing. I'm just talking about how Muslims convey the Deen and how sometimes that sunnah of conveying is lost, even on myself. Like okay, I can mention it, but am I conveying the sunnah in the way that as close as I can get it to the Prophet's way, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So in the genre of literature about teaching and learning, there's a lot of books about edab of the student. Have you heard that topic or seen a book on that? Edab of the student, the etiquette of the student. One of the most famous texts in that is Zarnoji's book. It's called Ta'alim al-Muta'alim, Tariq al-Ta'alim. Teaching the student the method of learning. It was written about 500 Hijrah, so almost a thousand years ago, and it's one of the books that we use in our correspondence course with the prisoners. It was one of the first books that we taught them that before even teaching the sunnah, we're going to say, okay, let's teach you how to be a student. And this is Zarnoji's text, who's over a thousand years ago. And then after that, there's been a lot of books that were written on the edab of the student. Has anybody ever heard or either in a book or an article or a speech about the edab of the teacher? Anybody ever heard something like that? The edab of the teacher. So I started asking myself this question, why is that? Why do we have so much literature and emphasis on edab of the student? Edab of the student? Edab of the student? But the other way around, it's not there. Well, it is there. It's just not as common. And one of the reasons why is because, and I'll switch over to the parent-child interaction, if we talk about hadith or ayahs that talk about respect of children towards the parents, which do we find more? Respect of children to the parents or respect of parents to the children? Children to the parents. I teach a book also that we use it in our course and it's available for purchase online. I translated it. I don't have it. It's with another book distributor. It's called The Rights of Parents. And it's a phenomenal book written by Sheikh Mohammed Molloud. And in the book, he brings all of the ayahs of the Quran and discusses them, all of the hadith about rights of parents, stories of the early generations, the set-up. And then at the end, he has a section on the rights of children and how the parents should be. Now, the interesting thing is to watch when I've taught this to children in school settings and we spend weeks or maybe even a month or two going through rights of parents, rights of parents, rights of parents, right? And they're always asking, what about the rights of children? What about the rights of children? Like, it's coming. We're going to get to it. It's the next to last lesson. We get to it. And it's just three lines. And they're like, that's all we get. And in the, in the, in the, in the, uh, in the, the shahr'ah, in the, in the commentary, it says, well, one of the wisdoms in the shari'ah is that if Allah has already placed within us a natural inclination, there's not necessarily a lot of shari'ah rules about it. So I'll give you an example. Is drinking poison haram, poisonous material? Is it haram? Have you ever heard a hadith that says drinking poison is haram? This is what you get. This, you don't get it, right? But alcohol, we do have that, right? So why is there all of this, these eyes of the Quran about alcohol and hadith about alcohol and punishments for the one who makes it and drinks it and so on and sells it and so forth? But there's nothing about poison. Well, the ulama said, because Allah has placed within us a natural inclination that's, that away from poison that it's called al-wazir al-shari'i and al-wazir al-tab'i basically the shari'ah preventative and the natural preventative. So if Allah has already placed within us a natural preventative, there's not much need for all of this literature, hadith and eyes and so forth. It's there, if somebody says, well, what's the hukum of it? What's the ruling of drinking poison? It's harmful to your health and therefore it's haram. But we don't, you don't, have you ever heard a khutba that says don't drink poison? Right? Even kids will get it. So that's bad. That's dangerous. But because human beings do incline towards alcohol, there's all, there's this literature about it because we don't have a natural deterrence from alcohol. Then there's this shari'ah literature that acts as that deterrence. Does that make sense? So you'll see this theme within, within the shari'ah when you look at it holistically, that if there is a lot of illiterature about something, it's telling us about ourselves. That because we don't have that naturally within us and we might incline towards it, there's going to be these shari'ah injunctions, the shari'ah rulings, commands, reminders, ayahs, hadith. Does that make sense? And so in the parent-child relationship, who is more likely, just naturally, to do everything in their will and everything in their power to care for the other person? Who is the one who's going to run after the other person? Who's the one that's going to stay up at night? And doesn't need a khutba on the rights of children, right? That's the parent. Parents naturally are going to rush towards taking care of their children, whereas children don't necessarily always have that. And when I say children, I could mean adult children as well. So it's not just like under 18. We're all children of, of, of, of, we have parents. And so we owe those rights to our parents, whatever age they are. And so just, I took a moment to, to explain that. Does that all make sense? That the, the, the, the sharia injunctions, the natural, the parent-child relationship. So similarly, what should be the case is that the teacher should be like the parent in this situation. And the child, and the, and the student is like the child. So just like children need to hear these ayes and these hadith about respecting the parents and honoring the parents, students generally would be more likely to not respect the teacher. And so they need to hear this eddab. What I've seen though is that there's a lot of times where teachers do not respect the, the, the student. And it's not, it's not a one-for-one similarity. Like I, I feel between parents and children. So I think that it's more likely that a parent is going to respect the rights of their children than a teacher is going to respect the rights of their students. And so for that reason, I started looking, I said, okay, where, where can we find this in, in our literature? So I found there was three books, one of them, which is the basis for this, for this, this book. It's by Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuda. Has anybody ever heard of him? A great hadith scholar of the recent, of the last century, Rahimullah. He passed away in, I believe, like 97 or maybe 94 late, sometimes in the, somewhere in the 90s. He began a series of lectures about the, the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, his method of teaching. And by the end of all of these lectures, he had collected 168 hadith that each of them he could find something in there that shows how did the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, teach? And then he took those 168 hadith and he made them into 40 different subjects. So like that 40 hadith type of genre of idea of, here's 40 different ideas. Each one has about four, three to four supporting hadith. And so you get all of these hadith. I took that structure and I made it into a smaller outline that could be used by parents, by teachers, by in any learning community. And that's what this packet in this seminar is. Again, for those who came in late, we were supposed to have this packet here available for you so that while we're going through this, you could have it in your hands. Unfortunately, there was a mix-up and it's not available. We'll try to get that to you as long as you had signed up. We'll make sure to get that to you. So the basic one, it's called Rasul al-Muallim, the Prophet Teacher. It's available online as a translation called Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the perfect teacher. So if you have your phone, you can look it up. I believe it's available on Amazon. I would highly, highly, highly encourage everybody to purchase that book. Before that, you can just read through this and we're going to go through as much as we can tonight. You can read through it. It'll give you a general idea of the structure of all of the subjects. That book, Muhammad the Perfect Teacher, will be like a longer exposition of these topics. That was one area. The other one is, it's an older book, Eddab al-ilm wa al-Muallim wa al-Muallim by Sheikh Abdul Basit al-Amlawi. It's not available in English. In English, the section of the eddab of the teacher is just a small section, but I included all of the relevant points from that. And then thirdly, a book called The Etiquette for Teachers and Students by, it's a collection of speeches from Moulana Ashraf Ali Tanwi, the great Indian scholar, Hakim al-Ummah from the last century. Who, if you're not familiar with him or his works, I highly, highly encourage you to read his works. Actually, both of those scholars from the last century, Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Huda and Moulana Ashraf Ali Tanwi. So it's based on that, plus some other things that I've thought were beneficial. Again, the reason why I did this was because I saw that sometimes in the process of teaching, the teachers forget why they're teaching it and how it should be transmitted. This is another very important point that sometimes we build up models of education, whether in our homes, like with our children, in our schools, in our massages, the haraqahs, in our institutions, in our schools, at the larger level, at the university levels, the azharahs of the world and Qaraweeen and all of the other major institutions. So think of educational model as what happens in the home, how do you teach Islam to your children, to your community, the haraqahs, the schools, the Islamic schools, the afterschool programs, the mekta programs, whatever it might be, all of those educational institutions that we build up, some have been going for years, some for decades, some for hundreds of years. One of the things that I found is that sometimes, and again, I'm not critical of the entire system and we're not saying we're going away, but sometimes we need a tune-up. Just like our car might be running great, the system is fine, but then something builds up in it that's not supposed to be there and we need to remove it. And I'm going to give you an example of that. And so when we look at these institutions that have been built up for a long time, for a purpose, to convey Islam, right? That's what we want to do for our children and our masajid and our haraqahs in our institutions. We're conveying Islam. We're conveying the sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But in that process, are we following the sunnah of conveying it? Are we conveying it like he would convey it? To give you an example, there was, so there's a hadith, you may be familiar with it, where a man came to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and he said, I'm poor, I need money. And so the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam asked him, he said, do you have anything in your house, anything of value? And for anybody who knows this story, do you know what he brought? A pot. He said, I have a pot, just like a clay pot. And you can imagine in those early simple societies, simple utensils, like this, we might get it at a, at a, like this, this metal thing, we might get it at a, a dollar store right now, just because of mass production and globalization and so forth. But in earlier days, that would have been something that might be passed down a few generations. In fact, one of my teachers, my, the Mauritanians who came here, one of my Mauritanian teachers who came to the US, somebody asked him, what's the most interesting thing you saw in the Bay Area? Imagine, he went from like a village in the deserts to the San Francisco Bay Area and you know what? The most out of everything that he saw, and they in the, as in between teaching and class, they took him to various things. You know what? He found like the most interesting thing, disposable cups. He's like, I just don't understand it. And I've lived in Mauritania for almost five years and I've seen those pots, those wooden pots, the metal pots, and they're passed down and they're used for years and years and years. Like the idea of throw away stuff, it doesn't exist. Well now it does because of globalization, globalization and modernization, but that's what stood out for him. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam asked him, do you have anything of value? He brought a pot. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam took the pot to the masjid and he auctioned it off. And he said, who will give me something for this? One dirham, then somebody, he said no more, somebody said two dirhams. He sold it for that. He said, does anyone have an axe head? Like the metal part of the axe? Somebody said, yes, he said, oh, I'll buy that from you right now. He said, now he told the person get a piece of wood because as long as you have that axe head, you can just fix any type of wood to it. He put the wood, he said, go chop wood in the mountains and you can imagine in Mecca, how many trees are there out there? Right? You're going to have to really work to chop wood and to bring wood, people cook on fires and then sell that wood. Sometime later, he asked him how he's doing and he said he's doing well. He's self-sufficient. So you can see what's going on in that hadith, right? The man was needy. He didn't just give him a handout. He basically, like the saying that's attributed to Isa A.S., instead of giving a man a fish, you teach him how to fish and in this situation, teach him how to chop firewood. Well, fast forward, almost 1400 years later, a friend of mine from the UK, he said, somebody came to ask for help from the Mecca.  Is that, did he convey the hadith? He conveyed one portion of it, but did he convey it in the way that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam conveyed it? He didn't. So that's where, that's where sometimes like, okay, you have a, you have that, you've preserved this hadith, you've preserved this idea in whatever institution in your community or so forth, you have that. Somebody comes in, you're like, here you go, go chop some wood. And so, you haven't preserved the sunnah of the sunnah in that way. Another more recent example that comes to mind, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, he said he was talking with somebody from a certain Muslim country, where they've really, I mean, almost every Muslim country has really perfected teaching kids to memorize the Quran, right? What didn't you say? Like you could go to pretty much any Muslim country, put your child into one of those systems of memorizing the Quran, and in a certain time, you know, the other end of the factory, you're going to get your child who's memorized the Quran, right? But in that interim process of conveying the book of Allah, could there have been some damage that's done? Right? There's documentaries online. You can look it on the line. Look up this Al-Jazeera documentary where they went undercover in some Quran schools and just the horrendous things that happened. So now they're conveying the Deen, but are they conveying it the way the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, conveyed it to his Sahaba and his Sahaba conveyed it and so forth. So my friend was speaking to this person and the person asked him, so have you put your child into a Quran school? He said no. And he said, oh, how old is she? He said, whatever, she was over five. He's like, oh, that's it, too late. Over five, that's it. Because in their system, they've perfected a way that if you really want to get like perfection of the memorization of the Quran, you start at four and a half or five years old and then, you know, by whatever age they give that to you. His response, he's like, so you're saying that after five, there's no hope for memorizing the Quran? He said, what about the Sahaba? Right? Because most of the Sahaba, if they memorize the Quran, did they do it as children or adults? Adults. So in that, and I told the brother, I said, you know, what you did is basically what I'm trying to convey with this seminar, this educational seminar, that you put a check and balance into that system. Does that make sense? So that person's coming out of this long hundreds, hundreds, centuries old methodology, this system, that was built up to convey the sunnah. But in that process, he might have just lost one aspect of it. And so, because now, whatever, over a thousand years later, now they're like, nope, the only way to do it, we only accept them if they're four and a half or five years old. Well, what about the Sahaba? So when you go back to the original source, that helps bring a check and balance to this system that you've built up to convey what they convey to us. Does that make sense? Okay. So that's why, when we look at how the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, taught, and as we go through some of these examples, think about, this is what I want you to do. Think about situations where either you've conveyed something to somebody else, taught something to somebody else, or somebody taught it to you and some of these elements were present.  I had a teacher and he or she did that. They really did that and it really like resonated with me. And if you're okay sharing that, when we go to the section of questions and Q and A and discussion, please share that. Or if somebody, it was a fail, like a success or a fail, like look, that person really didn't do that point and it was just, it did not land well, it ended up hurting more.  I've never experienced that, either the lack of it or the presence of it, but I know a good way to do this. So that's what I want you to be thinking about as you're listening is like, okay, practical implementation of what we're talking about. So without further ado, I'm going to just jump right in. So I began by saying that every single one of us is a teacher by default. If you're a Muslim, you're a teacher, because if we're a Muslim and we have to convey the sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, we're a teacher. So that's why it's important to learn this. More importantly, because the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he himself was a teacher, the more we know about his teaching methods, the more we understand about him and the more we get closer to him, the more understanding that we develop, the more love we will have for him by studying his sunnah, by studying his shamail, things he did, or he said, or observed other people, other people doing. So that's why, you know, that's just a response if somebody says, well, why should I be learning about this? Say, well, you want to know about your Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, more. And Allah says about him, who والذي بعث في المينا رسولا منهم يطلوا عليهم آياته ويزكيهم that Allah is the one who sent amongst the unlettered people, the Arabs, an apostle from amongst themselves to recite to them his signs, يطلوا عليهم to recite the signs ويزكيهم and to purify them, to purify their qualities and their characters and to teach them ويعلّمهم الكتابة والحكمة and teach them the book and wisdom. And so if Allah is saying that this is who the Prophet is, he's going to recite to you the Qur'an, he's going to purify you and he's going to teach you the book ويعلّمهم then that makes him a teacher. And so if we if we see that one of his one of his qualities that Allah is addressing him as and describing him as as a teacher, then we know he's a teacher. In another story or hadith the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came out from his rooms. You know his rooms were like imagine if so where's the qiblah here? That way well it's it's in a corner so let's just imagine let's say the qiblah is this way okay? Where are his rooms? Right over there. So just and this room is actually not much bigger than the original masjid. It's probably maybe double it or even like just a half of it. So imagine this is the original masjid. So if you came into the original masjid it's about this wide. Would you say this about 90 to 30 meters long? Yeah. Anyway, we can we can do the that we know the we know the dimensions. But it's about this size. Maybe a little bit farther out that. So imagine you walk into the masjid where you would see the Rasul A.S. coming out is right through that door right there. There was like multiple doors to his rooms. That's where they were. They were stuck to the to the masjid. So just imagine that the blessing of the Sahaba being able to come into the masjid and they just wait and the doors were just cloth. So he pushed the cloth away and there he is Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam walking out and if his door was there and the memba was over here he would say that between his his house and the memba is what? Arolda a garden from the gardens of paradise and some of the ulama said because he said that that that actual place will be lifted up when this dunya perishes and placed into jannah as a garden. Like it's literally going to be a garden in the gardens of paradise. Others say no it's metaphorical that during this dunya it's like a garden of the gardens of paradise ultimately Allahu A'lam but it's a very very special place. So once the messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam emerged from one of his rooms one of the hujurat and one of the surahs of the Qur'an is Surat al-Hujrat that's talking about those rooms. He saw two groups of people two halakat he came to the first group and he asked them what they were doing and they said they were reciting Qur'an and supplicating doing dua and he walked past them and then he asked the second halakah what are you doing and they said we are engaged in learning and teaching we're teaching the book of Allah you know talking about the ahkam and talking about theology just like a a halakah of ta'alim of ilm so the first one is a halakah of ibadah was a halakah of worship and the second one was a halakah of ta'alim he sat down with the the halakah of learning and he said both are doing good but I was only sent as a teacher and so he sat with those who were who were teaching and studying inama in arabic means yufid al-hasr it means only so that's why it will be translated like not just verily I was sent as a teacher inama burithu muallima verily I was I was sent as a teacher I was only sent as a teacher but again he's he's affirming both of theirs but he's sitting with the group of learning so we know that he himself described himself as a teacher okay so one of the first things that they mentioned about the method of teaching is that the sunnah is to be gentle with the seekers of knowledge to be gentle and that's sometimes something we forget because of how how important and valuable we know this dean to be and we want to convey it and sometimes in that fervor that we have to convey it we forget people are people they have feelings they have emotions and if we if we if we shove it down their throats they're not going to like it and one of the examples they say is that everybody loves food right if you say there's an event and free food right it's going to be packed there's a sir in there's a secret in that one of the first things the foundations of medina right when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam came to medina we can look at that like for when we study american history it's like okay when they landed on Plymouth Rock and maybe made some some announcements or we hold these truths to be self-evident right okay we're laying out what does it mean to be what we're trying to do in this project called america well in medina what were the first three orders when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam came in the beginning of the masjid but then when he told the people what to do fshu salam spread salam al-taim al-ta'am feed food and then and then sleep at night thank you jazak allahu akbar and sleep at sorry pray during the night when people are asleep so spread salam social services right or just just social just not social services the food is social services but this is just just making people feel welcome and happy and bring bring joy to the hearts of believers one of the hadith says that the greatest the greatest thing you can do after you fulfill your obligations so imagine your five prayers and your hajj and your zakat and your ramadan the greatest thing to bring joy to the heart of a believer to bring joy to the heart of a believer so that's why one of the ulema ibn al-hajj in his book al-madkhal says when you walk to the masjid one of the many intentions that you can have is not just to pray just to say you know if i see a muslim smile ask them how they're doing bring some joy to their heart just think about that if you've ever met somebody at the masjid and you just took some time to speak with them they're like you made my day so much better or maybe it was you that your day got made so much better by the other person that's a part of our deen as well so that's ufshu salam spreading peace and spreading salam feeding people and then and then ibadah not forgetting that that's an important part of our general abudiyah our general worship is to is to worship so feeding is is very important and there's a secret in it would anybody like food shoved down their throat nobody so again going back to that idea that truth without compassion is cruelty honoring a person without compassion is cruelty shoving the food down their throat they're not nobody's going to like it throwing it in their face nobody's going to like it so you can take the most valuable thing the quran and the sunnah of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and if we deliver it in a way that like is not honoring the person then they could actually be repulsed by it and imam al ghazali mentions this he said there are many people in this dunya who are not going to accept islam because of the interaction of muslims with them because of the interaction of muslims with them and there's a dua in the quran where we ask Allah to say don't make us a tribulation for the disbelievers and the biggest tribulation would them not be would them to not accept islam so we don't want to be in that situation so one of the the secrets to do that is to be gentle with the seekers of knowledge and the the hadith that sheikh abdul fatah abu ghudda mentions here is the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam gave choices to his wives and he said Allah neither sent me as a person who causes difficulty to others nor did he send me as one who desires hardship and difficulty in other words i'm not i didn't bring this dean to make life hard for people and i don't want to make them hard imam al razali says this is a proof that a teacher should subtly reprimand the student so when you reprimand somebody try your best sometimes explicit reprimands are are needed and we also find that in the sunnah but generally the default is subtle reminders to the person because what it does for the listener is it allows them to keep their dignity it allows them to like preserve the dignity because if we're always if there's always reprimand then a person can lose their their self-worth their self their integrity so to subtly reprimand the student and to not resort to direct or explicit reprimanding and to use kindness without scolding and then he says explicit reprimand destroys the veil of awe meaning this heba this the the veil of awe or heba is basically the that feeling that you have for another person to maintain the decorum and the interaction to maintain that etiquette and the interaction like right now everybody is masha'Allah and jazakum la khair i'm honored that you're silently listening to me as i present this but what happens if there's a heckler right and what happened in that person's life to get them him or her to that point where they are okay with heckling they've lost that heba for this maqam when you go to the masjid for juma everybody has that heba of the maqam of the khatib and the juma and the prohibition of speaking and so forth and so everybody listens silently to the khutbah have you ever been in a khutbah where somebody like heckles the khatib anybody ever been in one it's rare but it happens right right here happened yeah okay it happens and so what happens in that situation is that the heba that respect that respectful dignity that the person have the respecting the sanctity and the dignity of that person or that maqam or that station has been removed and so what imam al-ghazali is saying here is that if there's too much reprimand of the students too much explicit reprimand and too much degrading them you will destroy the heba that that person has for you because eventually they'll be like you know what I respected you as my teacher but I'm done I'm fed up and and I guarantee you once that that heba is lost it's almost impossible to bring it back and I know some of you are shaking your heads because you know situations where where that heba has been destroyed between two people between friends teacher student maybe a spouse parent and a child but once it's destroyed it's like it's almost like a ba'a an allegiance that that person gives to you and says in this you know the understanding is I'm going to respect you as long as you you know maintain your your respect of me once that ba'a is done it's like the khawarij they're out there it's like I'm not going back I learned my lesson I got burned and I'm not going back so it can have a lot of negative impact there was another hadith that's mentioned and you might be familiar it's a hadith in imam muslim that a man came into the masjid and he sneezed and when he sneezed oh sorry a man came into the masjid who was not familiar with all the rules so he's praying in the masjid of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam somebody else sneezes and so during the prayer he says yarr hamukullah now we know right you generally you're supposed to say yarr hamukullah but do you say it in the prayer no because we have this balance we know that the sunnah is to say yarr hamukullah but there's a sunnah to that sunnah which is in the prayer you don't do it so then he says faramanil qomub ibsari hem these people started like literally throwing their eyes at me you know could you imagine like just just like because you're in prayer you can't talk so they're just like you know glancing at him cutting uh what did they say cutting um with their eyes right what does it say what is it saying the is it side eye okay yeah so they're giving him side eyes all this stuff and he's looking at them um and uh and then after the prayer um he said listen to this febi ebi huwa wa ummi like may my father and mother be sacrificed it's a figure of speech in other words like this is i'm so what's that well not humiliated but just like whenever you they say febi ebi um wa ummi it's like may my father and mother be sacrificed like it's a it's a it was a way to like emphasize like what i'm about to say is true and i'm willing to sacrifice my parents for this statement he said i have never seen a teacher before him or after him a person teach in a better way than him sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he did not um he did not scold me well i'll drop me he did not hit me well i'll shut them any he did not curse me call it and what he said to them he said in the head is salad liya sallahu fihash when Kalaam and nas in the mahu tazbiha what to be what to what to read to the Quran this is a prayer that you cannot have conversations with and yarrham Allah is a type of speaking to another person it's for Kira of the Quran and doing tazbiha and takbir so this was this was a person who is now attesting to how great of a teacher he was sallallahu alaihi wa sallam about this hadith Imam know what he says there's a there's so many things we can derive just from this hadith but he says the first thing is that the grand character that the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam had which Allah bore witness to wa innaka la ala khuluqin azeem like one of the things that Allah attest to him is that you are upon a grand character and we have to pay attention to how is Allah describing the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in these various verses of the Quran what is he saying about him sallallahu alaihi wa sallam if he's telling us by addressing him and says you have a grand character that now we know that this is an affirmation from Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam it's not just the people around him who knew him is a sadaq al-ameen right the truthful one the trustworthy one even the Quraysh knew that even non-muslims recently I was reading a collection of sayings of people just historians who have looked and you look at the way what they're how they speak about the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and how they're like his character his character his character so the Muslims witness to his characters Quraysh his enemies witness to his character but even more important than that Allah bore witness to that character verily you are upon a grand character Imam Novi says about this hadith it also shows us his gentleness with the ignorant ones in other words this person came into the masjid he's not familiar with it with the rules and the etiquettes and the eddabs and the rules of prayer he didn't say what's wrong with you why didn't you study go over and then teach him he was gentle with him as he explained it to him and the person was allowed to maintain their their self-worth and their dignity his kindness and compassion for his nation his umma a lesson to follow his example in being easy with the ignorant ones teaching them in a beautiful way being gentle with them making them understand the correct thing to do these are the kind of things that as a parent as a teacher halqa leader like it would be good not good necessary for us to review this before we engage in teaching before we go out there to do da'wah to remind ourselves of like okay we're conveying this deen we're conveying his sunnah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam but how do we do that how are we going to to convey them in the in this way there's another hadith and it has a lot of rulings so I'll just start off with that if you laugh during prayer do you still have will-do some people say yes no what's that you have will-do but your prayer is invalid what's that shafi'ah okay so there's a difference of opinion amongst the madah so in the maliki school as brother mentioned your your your will-do is valid but your prayer is invalid is that the same in the shafi'ah too right yeah same shafi'ah malikin shafi'ah is the same the hanifi school says not only is your prayer invalid your will-do is in prayer your will-do is invalid as well laughing during prayer well where do we get these you know sometimes people hear the difference of the madah and they're like why can't we just have one rule for everything well let's take a look at this hadith let's see where the mujtahideen malik shafi'ah abu hanifa where does this begin well it begins and it's a it's a testament as well to what we're talking about here how the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was with with his students so he said or there was a group of people praying behind him during the prayer somebody passed wind and then some of the other people laughed at that you could just imagine right it will it's human nature and it's human nature to laugh after the prayer the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said repeat your will-do and your prayer all of you repeat your will-do and your prayer all of you abu hanifa looked at this and he says okay I can see what's going on here the one who passed yeah that breaks his will-do those who laugh during prayer laughing in prayer breaks your will-do others like imam shafa'in imam madak said no no no this is this is not that's not what's going on here this is setir and they actually refer to this as hadith of setir the the hadith of veiling or concealing and so what he was doing when he sent everybody to renew their will-do what happened there he didn't out him because if he said okay whoever broke their broke their will-do go do your will-do and the rest of you you laughed in prayer so wait for him to come like they would know who did that so this is called hadith of setir now in that where you can see the rules that are like the fiqh is one discussion the other thing the principle there regardless of of maliki shafa'i hanafi ruling that that's derived and what a person chooses to follow that message of veiling the person and honoring them and veiling their and for their the preservation of their dignity that's all the same right that's not lost in that fiqh discussion right and to give you an example my teachers our main teacher murabat al-hajj hafidhu rahimuhullah he's passed away in 2017 almost six years ago it was in July in in in the days before actually even up until very recently people would copy out books by hand and even when I was there I was started going to Mauritania in 1998 on the weekend some of the students that's what they would do because they didn't have access to print shops photocopy places or book shops so if somebody wanted a commentary of a book they would sit there on the weekend and you know just talk with each other and just copy out a book by hand it might be 10 pages 20 pages 500 pages I know one person who copied out a book by hand he said it took him six months and then that's the book that he's going to study from then he will give it to somebody else so that that tradition was still going now it's it's it's it's not as much because just because of the the availability of copying machines and bookstores and so forth at the time earlier like say in the 50s 60s 70s it was almost non-existent so they're they're getting paper was very rare and then copying out the books was a long process so you can imagine if somebody has a hand written copied book that's written in a natural charcoal ink that if you spill water on it it's going to bleed to preserve and then they also didn't bind it so they would they would have it in leather like leather bind so if the wind comes and like and I've seen this happen the person's opening their their book a strong wind comes and then there's there's paper all over this the place I've seen it multiple times Quran students they're reviewing using their mushaf there's no binding on it and you know those dirt devils or whatever they call they come through and it'll just then you see paper everywhere and then you see the Quran students running after their papers to put them together so so it's they're they're very delicate so the teachers would loan out their books to their students Murab al-Haj had loaned out his books to some of the students and they didn't take care of it and so he's looking through one of his books some of the other students are around him and and he and he just says you guys need to take care of my books you know I take a lot of take a lot of time so he just gave him a reminder like please take care of my books the students who were the perpetrators left and the the the serious student who really took care of the books he was still there and but he got he was involved in this general reprimand and then Murab al-Haj asked him he says oh fulan you know so and so he says you know hadith of setir right he said yeah he said qad alika said you know that hadith of set like in other words I know you take care of the books and I wasn't talking to you but I didn't want to out them and leave you because then that would cause like some animosity between between the students so that's hadith of setir now how we implement that think about it for a moment like how can I do that in my life how can I do that with my children with my students with other people that maybe I want to teach them how is a way that I could convey a message they get the message but that dignity is preserved so that's one thing you know if you if you think about it and you want to share when we what time is Murab is in about six minutes actually let's stop right there does anybody have any thing they'd like to share about so far what we began with or an idea of how that can be implemented in a modern context or any questions so far all right then I'll end on this session and we'll come back after Murab we're not going to get through this whole this whole packet and again we'll do our best to get this packet into your hands what I want you to do when you finally get this packet is to read through the whole thing and read through it not feeling that oh I need a teacher to go through it line by line with me because what I want you to see and that's what I'm just going to take some of these hadith like as I'm sharing they're pretty self evident right as I'm sharing it you're like okay I see that lesson now the difficulty is how can I bring that lesson into my life we can all do that there's one thing that we cannot do when we're when we're when we're doing self study which is extracting rulings تخرج الأحكام that's a separate subject so like the hadith of Seter what Malik and Shafi'i and Abu Hanifa did in terms of extracting rulings that's the purview the job of the Mujtahideen of the Fouqaha the jurists who have reached that level that they can look at something and they can extract the rulings so when I'm encouraging you to read these hadith I'm not encouraging you to say like okay I'm going to see this is Halal this is Haram this is Makruu based on that that's not what we're that's not what our job our job is now to say like okay on the moral side the ethical side how can we bring the principles of say for example that hadith is Seter into our lives does that make sense so as you're reading the through this you'll see that a lot the majority of this it's it's going to resonate you don't need a teacher you don't need a teacher so what I'm doing in this seminar is really more inspirational rather than informational I want you to feel confident that you can take this home and you can read through it and you're like okay that makes sense you might have some questions some clarifications and I'll open up you know through email if you want to send an email to me you know but I think even in in a discussion you'll be able to to to understand most of it and then to be encouraged to by the original book that this was based on Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuda's book that's translated in English as the perfect Muhammad the perfect teacher and then read through it and see how can I bring this into my life because and this is where I'll end before mahrim you will be able to uncover things when you're reading the Quran or reading hadith that may be nobody else has uncovered before I'm going to say that again you might be able to uncover things in the Quran or in the hadith that nobody else was able to uncover before again not akham we're not talking about rulings we're talking about insights into what's going on here and this is something that Ibn al-Hajj says one of the miracles of the Quran is that every generation will uncover things that the previous generations didn't we're not talking about a new theology or new fiqh akham that has already been established we're just talking about those insights and I'm going to give you a couple of stories to show you how that's happening the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was excelled at everything right being a teacher being a father being a husband being a friend being a military leader being a countryman establishing a country inspiring people inspiring leaders teaching people purifying everything he was also the most physically fit right he was the greatest warrior himself not just in sending others out to battle well there was a champion wrestler who came and wanted to wrestle the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and they wrestled and who won the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and then what did he ask what did the wrestler ask for a rematch he wanted a rematch and so he wrestled him again and he beat him a second time now most of the time and even when I first heard this hadith like what's immediately gained from that is that oh wow the prophet was you know great he could even beat the champion wrestler right like and it makes us feel good like when we see khabib and what he did Hafidullah may Allah preserve him and his family we're like yes a muslim did that a muslim did that and so when we hear the prophet doing that I was like yes Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that too there was a wrestler one time listening to this he said I know why he asked for a rematch and up until this point you know most people might have that I heard discuss that is like oh he's he didn't want to lose his title he wanted the rematch he's like no no no as a wrestler looking at that I know what he was doing as a wrestler he if he was a champion the first time he got lost he knew he was beat he knew that's it I'm no I'm no longer the top this person the top the the the rematch he wanted to know how he did it so now that wrestler might have given insight to that hadith story that for the past 1400 years as it was transmitted nobody ever saw that maybe they did Allahu alam but a wrestler looking at that he's like oh I see what's going on here if you're a parent you know when you read certain hadith you can say oh I see what's going on here as a friend if you have a close friendship if there's a hadith about friendship you know what's going on here so I'm saying that to preface that as you're going through this that's what I want you to do I want you to look for those gyms and those jewels in that way again we're not looking for a new theology our aqidah is established in firm alhamdulillah there's no changing it our fiqh our sharia is established in firm we don't need we don't need to do that but we can find these jewels there was another man who came into a setting a sitting a gathering of ulama and up until that point all of the this was very early on like within the first few hundred years all of the tafsiz of the quran when they got to the section of surat al-rahman yuhraju minhum al-lulu wal-marjan that Allah takes from them to the salt and the fresh water pearls and coral right lulu wal-marjan well the Arabs in those early times and the early Muslims they only knew coral and pearls from salt water now we all know about fresh water pearls right but in the early generations they didn't know that so there was actually if you look in the early tafsir when they get to this they're like wait a minute yuhraju minhum al-lulu wal-marjan Allah is telling us that he takes pearls out of both waters but experientially we only see him coming out of the salt water so they give a linguistic commentary to that there was a man who came with a fresh water pearl he came into a gathering of ulama and he said I'm a just witness and I bear witness that this came out of fresh water you need to change that tafsir and your understanding of that so again this is a story of like how we can change understandings it's not ruling or it's not changing our aqida it's not changing our fiqh it's not changing our theology or our our law another story up until very recently the ayah that says surat al-hadid the chapter of iron how does Allah describe iron the introduction of iron to earth wa anzalna al-hadid we have sent down iron well the early people they dug iron out of the grounds right the iron ore so they're like Allah is saying we've sent it down but we dig it out from the ground what does anzalna mean they're like oh it must mean abharna you know so they gave a wheel to it but what would we say now meteorites right so now we have a modern understanding where again it's not changing our theology or our law our aqid or our fiqh but it is saying we now we've uncovered something that the earlier generations didn't know an insight about that hadid so with that that's why when we're reading this reading these hadid about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and how he interacted with other people some of the lessons are going to be straightforward at the same time you can also say all right how can I how can I bring these into my life how can I bring life to these to these sunnas and we'll stop right there because I know they're about to give adhan and if anyone needs to make will do and then we'll pick up after mother of inshallah oh there quick question yeah okay yeah the question was so in my experience how much does this the preservation of dignity affect little kids and I would say it's very important very important and then the other parents are who are here teachers you know and it's probably I could venture to say it's more important than with adults because with the children they're still they're still forming their identity they're still understanding the way the world works the modeling that happens you know there's this bumper sticker that says everything I everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten I love that bumper sticker right um which I also found out I found this other bump sticker that I like which is it'll be a great day when when the schools get all of the money they need and the army has to have or the military has to have bake sales well the person who wrote both of those same person I found out he's got a series of articles so everything I learned I learned in kindergarten and most of our socialization happens between like three to five years old three to five years old socialization so when we look at the problems in society like say authoritarian regimes we can trace it back to authoritarian households and so if the if the parents in those households are like in their in the marketplace they don't respect the dignity of other people you know they're talking down to this person they're doing that the kids are learning that and so the same thing with the dignity like the dad it's you know stuff rolls down right like if the if the dad's but if the leader is not respecting the dignity of the people under him eventually it's going to run down to the leaders of the company down through all the managers and the supervisors down to to the worker then he or she takes it home and then it keeps going down then it's going to go from the from the kids then to the cats and the pets right that's it'll it'll it'll it'll go down that that way so it is it's it's it is extremely important and if we see the way the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam how he dealt with children you see this like this honoring of children that the Arabs didn't have at the time this honoring and compassion so we know he would kiss the children Allah who akbaru you kiss them Allah who akbaru and also Allah who akbaru Allah will alright Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim Allahumma salli wa sallim ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala ahri wa sahabi ajma'in we ended with the point about gentleness does anybody have any questions or comments maybe about about that point other hadith that maybe come to mind about his gentleness sallallahu alaihi wa sallam or anything you want to share one thing that came oh yes so the question was and correct me if I'm wrong and summarizing but there are certain disciplines like say for example sports where you might require certain firmness in in in conveying that and what would be my opinion I think that it's it's not either or it's both and so it's it's you can you can teach you can have firmness and still be gentle at the same time what's the it's it's the firmness with the harshness so you can deliver a very difficult message but we all know like either you've been on the receiving end of somebody who's who's delivered some very difficult you know information that you need to know or advice that you need to hear but if they've done it in a way that's caring and respecting and gentle it just lands a lot better as opposed to just like not caring about that and I think even in in those disciplines like whether it's coaching or any type of coaching if the coach is well here I'll back up one that there was a there's a researcher who wanted to find what's the magic bullet in education what is that one thing that if we did would give our students so much more success so she looked into extra testing and uniforms and after-school programs and year-round school and summer school you know everything that everybody says like you know extra what is it called training for the teachers and after-school support and tutoring whatever everything somebody says you know if we just did this our schools would be so much better our students would be so much more successful you know what she found after looking at all of the various studies the number one thing that actually had the most impact care care so it's not about the teachers training themselves they could have graduated from harvard and any other ivy league school but if they don't come into that teaching environment with care and they show that care because especially little children they'll pick up on that real quick right all the parents in here you know like if you've had little kids they can they almost it's like they send out feelers like is this person like relatable fun and if you just give them a little bit then they'll just like open up but if a person if the adult is is is reserved then they're like okay i know i can't talk to that person or laugh or joke around that person so they're very very attuned to those subtleties we have it as adults as well but children have have like i think an extra dose of that maybe it's a survival function allahu alam but once they feel once a student or anybody feels that you care about them the whole relationship changes so what i would say about that firmness is if if there's that there's that you've already established this report with the person you they know you care about them so they know that that firmness is going to come from a place of of care and concern and if it's coming with care and concern it's going to be delivered like not with that with with a harsher or a snappy attitude or a snappy comment right so it's they know the platform is care and then it's coming in with it's it's going out with care it might still be firm but they know it's care there's been research on parents who have more like the the disciplining of children whatever it is whether it's verbal reprimands or if a person chooses physical reprimands you know in in rare instances with you know according to the sun according to the law all of them not going to get into all of those but how regardless of how a parent chooses to discipline their their child and everybody says you know if you just did this more with the child it would be it would be better if you just did this more the the difference is as long as the child knows that the parent cares about them and the parent actually tells them listen I'm doing this discipline whether it's grounding taking away things giving them verbal reprimand whatever it might be as long as the children knows the base on this interaction this relationship that we're operating on is that the parent truly cares about me and cares about me for my success then it just lands a lot a lot better with there's there's much more success with that and with the delivery if it's coming from a point of care it's not going to have that that element of harshness in it and one thing that comes to mind is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the Quran speaks to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he says if you were fadban ghaliq al qalb if you were harsh and hard-hearted and uses both of those if you were harsh and hard-hearted what would the reaction of people be to the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam they would have ran away from you now we have to really think about this because this is the greatest of creation this is khayru khalqillah the greatest human being to ever walk on this earth the greatest messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam the Habib of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala I mean we could just go on and on about how great he is sallallahu alaihi wa sallam even if he was harsh and hard-hearted people would have like ran away from that so now when when we're trying to convey this deen we can't come with the attitude of like well it's the haqq it's truth how many times have you heard that somebody said you know brother you know sister you might have said that a little bit more you know it's the truth it's the haqq and I speak the truth and I'm a Muslim and I speak how many of you heard that somebody say that right that attitude and so it's like well that's not what Allah is telling us about the rasool he's not sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he's not just saying yeah speak the truth he's like deliver the truth and you're not hard-hearted and you're not harsh and because of those two qualities that's why they're not running away from you it's not like okay he's got the truth so the same thing the coach on the on the field the teacher in the classroom the parent in the home you can deliver those messages sometimes with firmness sometimes with sternness but if you're harsh or hard-hearted oh it's gonna it's gonna it's not going to end in good results one so this this packet then inshaAllah everybody will eventually get into their hand what's that what if you have both approaches and they say they understand but repeat the same thing and then again you're upset and then again the second time you're gonna reprimanding them for that for it and then even then they don't understand it happens usually yeah and and that is there there's something to be you know said about that and and what I would respond is that when it comes to application and how we apply this now this that's not my job to tell you or to to or to be the expert I'm not the expert I'm just we're we're working as a group to see all right how did the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam how did he reprimand people how did he interact with people and now let's as a as a community say share with each other all right now how do we bring this into our household especially with a child that might be resistant and we've tried multiple approaches and so now we need to we need to figure this out I don't have the answer and that's where I mean we can bring in people who are experts on child raising parents who have raised children who have grandchildren I mean we can have all these different voices as long as we're saying like okay let's use this as our guidelines and now figure out how we're going to take that and apply it into our situation so I know that's not the answer that you're probably looking for I can't give the answer I don't know in that specific situation what I hope is that we go with a little bit more insight and a lot of inspiration to say like okay now I know the general framework now my challenge is to bring this to life in my life and there's no guidebook on how to do that that's where the Ijtihad is going to come in and by Ijtihad I don't mean extracting the rules I mean like what are you going to do in that unique situation at that very small moment in time as long as you have a lot to work with you have a higher success of doing like doing your your your you do your due diligence so you study you seek counsel you reflect on it you ask other people and then when it comes time to make a decision you put your best foot forward and you just say and we don't know what's going to be and it's difficult like especially in raising children it is it's it's a fitna right it's a it's a test it's a trial it's a tribulation so I don't know the answer what I would say is that when we and we'll we'll see some of these other situations these other stories like there are stories where the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was a little bit more stern with his companions so we have the general gentleness but there were also some of these other situations so actually that'll go into this next one this is a longer hadith so I'm going to to paraphrase it and basically what this hadith is talking about it's narrated by Munziri and al-Hayfemi where there was a group of people who were new to Islam and they did not know much about Islam and they lived outside on the outskirts of Medina and they they're they're they're area of Medina which to give you an idea if you've been to Medina or if you've seen the pictures of it the current Masjid and the courtyard is basically the old city of the time of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and if you go like imagine this is the courtyard okay let's just say this is the courtyard this is the beginning because now it stretches really far back right so if this is the front of the Masjid back here on the western corner there's called the Saqifah Garden has anybody been to that or seen it go to the northwest corner the western corner it's called the Saqifah Garden that's the garden where the Sahaba gave Ba'a to Abu Bakr the Siddique radiallahu anhu the garden is still there everything is developed around the garden is still there not the original plants but the garden is there and I on this last Romra in Ramadan I went to I just stood there at the the the gate around I just tried to picture like the stories that we hear of the Sahaba and they're giving the Ba'a that happened there over here there's Masjid that was the Masjid where they would pray Eid in and the Sunnah for Eid is to go outside the city limits it's right here on the outside of the courtyard that was outside the city limits that was where they prayed Eid and that's also where the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam prayed the janaaza on and Najashi over here is what Baqiyah Baqiyah Al-Gharqad the the the cemetery which if you read the Seerah literature you had to go outside of the city to the to the to the cemetery now it's just you go outside of the courtyard and into the to the cemetery I'm just mentioning that to say that like when we talk about Medina and the city it wasn't the sprawling metropolis that we have now it was very very small so outside the city limits there lived this group of people they lived next to a group of people called the Ash-Ariyin the Ash-Ariyin not the Ash-Ariyin like the Aqidah of the school of Aqidah the Ash-Ariyin who is a famous Sahaba that's from the Ash-Ariyin just think of like he's a Abu Musa Al-Ash-Ariyin you hear that name right Abu Musa Al-Ash-Ariyin on the authority of Abu Musa Al-Ash-Ariyin he was from the Ash-Ariyin the Ash-Ariyin were known as a as a as a as a group of people who really were committed to knowledge they made it the culture of their their tribe their sub tribe to be committed to knowledge and we see this in various families across history in various tribes in various cultures in Mauritania where I studied there were there there were actually different tribes some are known to be crafts people some are known to be herders and they're just like that's all we do we just heard goats and sheep and everything if you want to the best herder go you know to the to that group if you want the the crafts people you go to that group if you want the warriors the Ben-i Hassan that all they you know they're they're having all these intertribal conflicts and they have the focus on getting date palms and and and guns and just weapons of war that's the Ben-i Hassan the Zawaya tribes what do you think their focus was the knowledge they said that that's our pride to the point that up until very recently it was almost impossible for a young man from the Zawaya tribe to get married if he had not studied if he had not memorized the Quran like you know how it is in our society now it's like you got to have a job and a degree from a university right to basically propose to somebody well in their tribe it's like you have to memorize the Quran and some of them they said you have to study Risaleh in Fiqh intermediate level Fiqh like that's our and then and I would hear people they would they would reprimand not reprimand but just gently remind people like hey you're a little bit too focused on the the Dunya remember you're a Zawi you're from the Zawaya tribe so there's this constant like re-emphasis of that's who we are that's our pride we are people of knowledge it's it's fading away and it's actually shifting to other groups of people and it's interesting to see that sociological sociologically just to see how that that's happening in any case the Ash-Ari'in were known that knowledge was important for them they spent a lot of time learning their neighbors they complained to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam they said the Ash-Ari'ins don't have time for us they're not teaching us they're not bringing us out of of ignorance so what is the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam do one day the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam address the people he praised Allah and he exalted him like a khutba right and alhamdulillahi and alhamdulillahi and alhamdulillahi and al-hamdulillahi and al-hamdulillahi he then mentioned some groups of Muslims and spoke highly of them and then he says what do some people think that they do not educate their neighbors they don't explain to them they do not command to good they do not prohibit them from evil and what do you think about some people they don't learn from their neighbors they don't educate themselves they don't try to understand them and I take an oath by Allah that the people should certainly teach their neighbors educate them make them understand command to good and prohibit evil and people should certainly learn from their neighbors educate them and try to understand from them if not I anticipate punishment for them in this world that was the end of the khutba so and I wrongly said that the other people had complained to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he had just he had he had heard that they weren't learning and these weren't teaching and so he rebuked them both but he didn't name them by names he said mabalu aqwaam and this is one of the sunnas of the prophetic dawa he would not out people or groups by name he would just say what do you think about certain people because what happens what happened after that and this is what the alama say that when you when you speak in generalities the people who need to hear that message if they're smart and they reflect they're like oh yeah he's talking about us that's us and that's exactly what happened with the ashareen so then the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam entered his house and remember this is if this was the if this room was the masjid where is his house right there right right over there and so the some people said who do you think he was referring to they said like they're like okay that was that was definitely not a general there was somebody he was talking to and then somebody says we think that he was talking about the ashareen because they're very learned and their neighbors are they're unlearned and they live in the oasis like the the the bedu the ashareen the ashareen heard about this and they came to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and they said you described some people who are good and you described us as bad what have we done wrong and then he said people should certainly educate their neighbors the hadith goes on it's longer but you get the idea the idea was he sent out the message and he said ma balu akwam he just said in general what that also does it allows the person to develop their own understanding of like okay he said this and this is what we do there's more reflection there's more self-reflection there's more introspection as opposed to a dictate being issued oh ashareen over there you guys teach those other people over there it's just a command you don't help that person develop that introspection and so that was one of that was one of his his methods of teaching sheikh abdul fatah abu ghuda says about this hadith he says this show this hadith is a a proof that the shortcomings in teaching and learning are a social crime the shortcomings in teaching and learning are a social crime this is what the ummah of muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam knew from the very beginning we are the ummah of iqra we are the ummah of seeking knowledge and so wherever you we went there was this emphasis on knowledge and not just knowledge of the of the dean knowledge of everything so there's we have to constantly remind ourselves and renew it with our children the people come into the faith this is this is who we are this is what we are about at tawba foundation one of I mean our main area of teaching is teaching people in prison and one of one of my students who I've been teaching for about 10 years his name is Ahmad and may Allah give him freedom he has a life without parole sentence in other words he can't get out and the two main witnesses that that put him at the scene of the crime even though he was on the other side of the city they both came forward and they said we lied and I mean he's he's a victim of shahada to zone like the the false testimony and still the district attorney is putting so many hoops to jump through to to get that that get that reverse so but in spite of all that in spite of being in prison over 20 years losing his wife living his children losing his freedom he's still always upbeat always smiling if you type in his name Ahmed Adisa you'll see some there's a a short documentary it's on our website as well Taba's website but he's always smiling always in in good spirits and what was I why was I mentioning that oh okay so he said before he was Muslim he was always he was always a good student but he said in his in his neighborhood and in his classrooms people would tease him for being a good student and they would they would call him names and they just it was it was just in his school in his area there was like it wasn't cool to be to be a good student and to be good at studying and so he fell off he let his education go to the wayside when he became Muslim and now he sees the emphasis on knowledge he said I was able to reclaim that part of who I was like being a very astute student and now when people say oh why are you studying are you trying to be like you know the oppressors or be like other people who you are not and you know not your people said no no I'm Muslim I'm Muslim and this is part of our religion this is part of our pride of who we are we study we learn we teach he studied one of the books that we teach about the about prayer it's called the muhtasar of ahdari and in that is a section about telling the times of prayer and it through the sun like the learning the when the sun reaches the the zinith knowing when the hr enters asr maghrib like it's something that we should all learn it's so important Imam Malik put that as the first section in his book of hadith the muhattah the first section is ba'ab muwaqit of sallat the times of prayer and he starts with the hadith about jibreel alaihi sallam came to the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam and taught him the times of prayer two days the beginning time for each day and then the next day was the end time and he said between these two times are the times of prayer it's really really a big part of our deem to know how that is of how to do that so Ahmed at that point he had been in prison about 17 years he studies this and he says oh I want to do this so he goes out to the to the yard the prison yard and he gets a poll he finds a poll and he starts measuring the shadow but he doesn't he can't see when the hr comes in so he went back in and at that time we were sending in recordings on on cds and so he listened to the lecture five times the next day he went out now he's like okay I think I realize what I what I where I messed up he went outside he measured he saw when the shadow moved and when it increased and he saw when the hr entered I said Ahmed how did you feel when you actually saw the hr enter using the shadow he said I've been Muslim for over 17 years he said it felt that the the joy that I felt was the same as the joy that I felt on the day I took my shahada that's how like because now he he sees it he sees the creation of Allah he sees how the Rasul the prayer and the time and learned all that then he did that for the rest of the prayers now he like he keeps a journal now he's keeping a journal on the prison yard with all the limitations imagine there's not even vegetation in the prison yard I've met people who have not touched a tree for 20 years the first time they touch a tree is the first day out of prison there's no trees there's a lot of places there's no grass with that said so he's he's taking you know note of all the prayer times then he starts noticing things on the yard whatever on the prison yard whatever whatever's growing he starts drawing it then he wants to know about that the flora that's there those weeds that whatever's there he wants to know he sees birds come in and and insects and now in his journaling of the prayer times he's taking note of the flora and the fauna that live that's coming into the prison then he starts studying astronomy he starts studying physics and I told him I said Ahmed what you've done in that like in that little the microcosm of your world you've recreated what the Muslims did because the first thing they wanted to do was figure out the times of prayer but then they learn about the astronomy they're like okay there's a lot going on out there let's start naming these things and hey we learned some astronomy from the Indians and from the Persians and from the Greeks let's bring that all and bring the Arab astronomy let's put that together and now we have Islamic astronomy and then we need all this math figured out for inheritance that's algebra and you see what happened in the Oma we're so proud of that well that can also happen on a very individual basis and that's what happened to Ahmed so I mentioned that just to say that we should be proud of being people of the Oma of Iqra and that is the prophetic method of education and so the shortcomings in teaching and learning as Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuda says are a social crime those who commit this crime will deserve a worldly punishment there's some other proofs that he uses to show that there's the next section is just an overview of the prophetic method of education and I want to I want to list it out but before that I want to mention another example about gentleness so when I first started teaching Muslims in prison there was a Sheikh who who heard about that he asked somebody else he said oh how's Rami doing I had met him number of years 20 years ago now over 20 years subhanAllah and he said how's Rami doing he said oh he's good he's now you know teaching people in the prison he said tell Rami to be gentle with the prisoners tell Rami to be gentle with the prisoners and at the time when I heard it and I'm going to admit you know I had a little bit of bad edub I was like ah Sheikh really doesn't know the dynamics of prisons and the harshness and the reality and there I was like I think they can they can take it they can handle it I'm not saying I was going to be harsh I just didn't feel that I had to be extra gentle with people who come from gang backgrounds and murderers and their fighters and even as Muslims when they leave their jahlia when they leave their jahlia they're on if there's a if there's a if there's an attack they're like fi sabirullah we will go to war to protect ourselves and to protect the Muslims and protect the weak like I had heard all these stories I'm like yeah these aren't wishy washy type people later on I learned that even with them with the back with the raised in violent neighborhoods gangs and crimes and then themselves perpetrating things and then the harshness of prisons even in those situations gentleness is has an amazing effect on it and they need it and I mentioned this to a brother brother Mustafa who passed away last Ramadan did anybody ever eat at the falafel corner in union city did you meet brother Mustafa African American brother with glasses passed away last Ramadan amazing character mashallah always smiling and he always had the Qur'an open and last November when he passed away of a heart attack he prayed Fajr with his roommate stood up to go to the kitchen had his mushaf open and he collapsed from a heart attack then he was in a coma for two weeks and then he passed away he's buried here at five pillar cemetery right next to musa sarari rahimullah anybody know musa brother another amazing he was always standing here right film and recording MCC in the very early days any if you like a lot of the early massaged MCA here in San Leandro you would always say brother see brother musa sarari they're buried right next to each other and I think there's a there's a there's a huge lesson in that and brother musa and brother musafa buried right next to each other at five pillars junaid's dad yeah so if you know junaid anybody know junaid their kids are friends with him yeah junaid's father he used to be at north star also elementary after school programs sometimes so brother musafa I told him this story I said you know musafa years ago a sheikh told me this about being gentle and I didn't know it at first but then after interacting and I realized he said oh yeah he said I know it he said I'll give you an example so musafa tells me when he was at san quintin when he was teaching a class he called up a brother to the board to write something on the board during a ta'alim session something it was arabic maybe and he just asked him to write something on the board and he said the brother broke down in tears and I asked musafa I said this brother he wasn't he wasn't a push-over by any means he said oh no I said musafa if something popped off on the yard this brother was down right he said oh yeah this is not like a wishy-washy brother this brother would hold his ground in a prison riot and if you've ever seen the mayhem in the melee that occurs on in a prison riot it's it's like just you never want to be in one of those situations and I said he would never back down from that I said yeah I said but when you called him up to the board he started crying and he said yeah and he said and I and I found out why he said because when he was a child second and third grader and we'd be he would be called to the board and he had a learning difference or a learning disability whatever you want to refer to he had trouble with his education and he would be ridiculed by the teacher and the other students and so that was when he was called to the board even I mean he's with his his friendly teacher musafa and with his fellow muslims and they're learning the dean and he started crying at the board because it triggered for him that trauma that he experienced as a child when people were not gentle with him they were the extreme opposite and being harsh and scornful and and and ridiculing him and that that triggered it for him so I this he told me that story in response to the chef's advice that remind him to be gentle with the prisoners so gentleness is is a great go to I know there's some situations as you were mentioning sisters sometimes with children it doesn't always work so we have to figure out how can we generally be gentle like that may be our main and then when we need to be stern how can we be stern with care and gentleness an overview of the prophetic model of education again we apologize for not having the books in your hand we'll get that and once they're delivered here they'll be at linear's office sorry I'm gonna volunteer your office but if you've registered you can just go and pick one of those up so an overview of the prophetic method of education I presented this to a group of teachers and and and one of the teachers said just this page we should print it off and put it in every classroom like as a reminder or in your home so an overview of the prophetic model of education the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was the foremost teacher of goodness spoke eloquently was clear in his expressions sweet in his methodology using subtle references had a glowing spirit open-hearted soft-hearted abundant compassion used wisdom had great foresight high intelligence extreme concern and abundant kindness that's a challenge to implement for us isn't it that would be very challenging but if when we look at that then we can ask ourselves all right how far or close am I to this in individual interactions with my children with my peers you know with my fellows on the on the like how is that's generally like sometimes people present the dean and they're like harsh and banging on the table and like yelling at people and ridiculing them it's like well like that's that's not how he presented right he wasn't he had he had he had dignity about himself speaking about we'll just go over the the speech of how he spoke so we'll focus on that part of this is also found in the Shemail if you don't have a copy of Shemail at Tirmidhi and there's a new recent translation please purchase it tonight like have that book in your house again it's a book that you can read on your own you'll gain a lot of those gyms and jewels even just through self-study of it one of the the sections in the Shemail at Tirmidhi is that is his speech how did he speak so when we when we look at how what he said we should also look at how he said it so if we're conveying one of his Hadith sallallahu alaihi wa sallam then let's not let's not do it in a way that he wouldn't say let's not mumble let's not yell he also he never spoke very like a very high he never like yelled his message he never spoke in a way to where people could not hear him we all know that feeling like you're talking to somebody and you're like you didn't catch things and how annoying it is as the listener like wait a minute what did you say or the quintessential hallmark of every masjid in Islamic organization that the the problems with the audio right when it goes out or in the sister side if you can't see the Imam and you lose the audio right how frustrating that is so his and I'm not saying that about MCC I don't even know if it happens but it happens in almost every masjid right like issues with the audio so he his speech he would not speak very loud and he would not speak very low he would speak very clearly he would speak clearly use pauses to the point that listeners could do what with his words they could count his words like sometimes talking really fast and like okay just hold on just let's take and I'm speaking to myself my mother pointed that out to me she said Rami one of the things you need to work on is speak slower and smile more so I hope I'm doing it mom I've been working on it for a long time and I still have a lot of work to do so he would speak clearly use pauses repeat his words for emphasis oh here's another one would turn and fully face the person he was speaking with sallallahu alaihi wa sallam when you do that even on a day-to-day interaction like that's just that's an easy thing don't talk over your shoulder don't talk and you can't even face the person just try if we can try that just say okay you know what let me just every time I'm going to speak with somebody my child my spouse my friend my boss my co-worker my employee my employer somebody in the in the store let me turn and fully face them and just notice the difference that that has and just be present with that person and speak to them I'll give you another example about this turning and fully facing one of the things that they mention like from modern research and advice I haven't seen this yet in the sunna but if you go to speak to a child how should you speak with them get down on one knee and I used to not do that and when you do that oh it changed it totally changes the interaction and one brother he pointed out to me he's like yeah could you imagine he's like if the child is this tall and you're like this tall it's like it's like Dawood speaking to Jalut right it's like speaking to a giant there's a lot of hay but just in that so when you come down to their level it's like okay yeah we're we're on the same level just get down on one knee and you know say salams to them the other thing is how have you have you again that's something that I've found from like modern advice but I find it in line with the sunnah it seems like it would be in line you know with the sunnah but it's not necessarily that we we can't say like doing that as a sunnah so I'm not trying again to extract I'm just saying like by principle wise it makes sense that it it is congruent with the sunnah the other thing is and he would do this sallallahu alaihi wasallam is that he would give attention to everybody in the group even if it's a child now think jahili arab society where you had to earn your place in the mejlis you had to earn the respect of the adults and all of a sudden now he's coming with his fledgling umma and they're saying well who who is your people who are your tribe this is abu bakr okay we know abu bakr he's a man this is quraish men run the society we got abu bakr who else you got khadija it's a woman who else is from ali a child that's who but they didn't know who ali was and a few years later then he's gonna be out on the battle as haydar slicing people in half and saying oh yeah you you mocked that child and his potential and his ability but look at what the rasul alayhi salatu was-salam did he he he he brought out the potential of all these people bilal that's who your people is sumaya that's who your people are but they didn't see what he could see salallahu alayhi was-salam in that going back to the children you you'll notice this in masajid if there's or even in people's homes a group of people meet there might be one or two children in the crowd they shake hands with everybody and they skip over the kid right have they skipped over you yeah but you've seen that right why if we know that the the rasul alayhi salatu was-salam would ask about every member of the of the household and he would give attention to every single person that makes a huge difference when you give that individual intention to people to your children to your students to your fellows it it it goes a long way so he would turn and fully face the person and he would also speak to the people in the dialect that they could understood that they understood to the point that sometimes like one time a man came into his presence the prophet salallahu alayhi was-salam spoke to him in arabic but in a dialect that abu bakr is-siddiq radiallahu anhu didn't know and the whole conversation happened and he left and abu bakr didn't know what what it was being said so it speaks to his knowledge of of of the people's dialects but also he respected them he's like i'm not going to speak to you in the the dialect of quraish i'm going to speak to you in your dialect and one of the the differences in these dialects is reflected in the qiraat so you might have heard like when i recited is anybody ever is that the first time they ever heard surat ad-duha read that way yeah so it's like oh that's different well that's reflected of of the different dialects of people you can find a little bit of that in in the qiraat so the imala or sometimes the sad is changed to za in certain qiraat so those different qiraat reflect the different qiraas of the or the dialects of the people so he would speak to them in a way they understood how we can relate that if you're speaking to children you know speak to them in a way that they understand don't you don't have to speak in a in a high level academies language you don't have to speak very fast you can you can bring it down don't use complex and technical language oh thank you here's another one the messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam abstained from argumentation he abstained from argumentation that is his sunnah and they and it's so so important they said min sunnati and la tujadil an sunnati from the sunnah is that you don't argue about the sunnah from the sunnah is not to argue about the sunnah and there's a lot of hadith that talk about leaving it leaving disputation mirah jihad and so forth there's a place for it there's a place for back and forth but in general the general rule should be stay away from argumentation because what happens most of the time when people get into arguments does one side get do you convince the other side no through modern research and they did this on two like political groups they took republicans and democrats like hardliners and they they came up with with a debate like like arguments for each side and they just you know they separate them one on one and so they they're gonna debate with each person individually and but they're going in hard on that on on that person so with the republicans they're going in with the democratic points with the democrats they're going in with the republican points what they found is that after that that that that that what is it like that the introduction of that of that segment of and they use the same exact argument points with each with each group they found that each side was actually more entrenched in their views more entrenched in their views so it's just part of human nature like you want to defend your your your point and if you're argued about it you're actually gonna you know you're going to dig in dig your heels in even more and there was one person who was talking about this yeah okay there was one person who was talking about this and he said that that sometimes when we try to approach people from like a cognitive level like okay I want to change your heart by just going brain to brain brain to brain you know like like this he said that's not the way you have to go in through other ways like showing care compassion for the person honoring them and so then I thought to myself wow the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam when he came to Medina he said feed people what would happen instead of a debate say you know look let's just go have a meal right let's just go have a meal have you know and then the person eats the food and gets honored completely changes the the the the the scenario there was one man after Katrina from a small town in Mississippi he went down to New Orleans area and got some of the relief that Islamic Relief was giving and I'm not paid by Islamic Relief but for all those listening support Islamic Relief they do amazing work they're one of the only people the first people that were allowed in in Katrina even before other organizations and what is their logo looks like a message right so after he gets some support from Islamic Relief he takes the bumper sticker puts it on the back of his truck goes on these little roads you can imagine little my mom's from Mississippi I grew up portion of my life Mississippi so I know those backwood gravel roads in Mississippi like it's deep in the country and he goes and he goes and his neighbor comes and he sees the Islamic Relief and it's got the message he said take that off your car and he said no he said I'll give you $20 to take it off the car he said no he said these people fed me when I was in need these people helped me so now imagine the difference between if like we went to that same person we're like all right let's have a debate about a slam as opposed to like hey we can talk about this later we don't even have to talk about it do you need any help some rent assistance you know you got some debt you know debt relief we have this thing called Zakat it's not the cat it's Zakat you know but we have debt relief in there we can help you get out of debt imagine if Muslims like started funneling some of our Zakat to debt relief amongst non-Muslims in America like on a systematic fashion like you can walk into a store just like sorry an office just like Catholic charities and we have Muslim charities and it's just like yep we're not going to hand you any pamphlets we're not going to hand you a Qur'an you know if you want to get them you can the impact will will happen nonetheless but we don't always have to go in through argumentation and the same thing can happen with our students with our friends you know we don't have to always think cognitively we can go in through this Ehsan this door of Ehsan but so you're going to ask a question regarding education one of the states where yeah so the question was about you know dialectical and and debate teams and so forth I definitely think there is there there's a there's a there is a place for that and there's actually sections in the books of of the Sunnah about how to have a Sunnah compliant debate so in general we want to avoid it but there is a way to to have it and one of the things that I will say about like debate clubs is they have certain parameters set up to where it doesn't cause or at least it will it will reduce the chance of causing enmity between those people like there's there's etiquettes and there's you know they meet up before they meet up I don't know all the details on but I know it's just like in a team sports team competition right there's like this the camaraderie and the ethics and the the chivalry of the sports like look you're going to shake hands I don't know if they still do that I know the one when I growing up after every soccer game or you know you shake hands with the opposing team right so things like that it's like it's not personal we're not going in so if there's things set up to be able to prevent that then then there is there is something to be said about that to be able to learn how to to refute things and to refute in a manner where you can actually you don't have to it doesn't have to be a ping pong match where it's like you know tip for tat like here you said this what about teaching people methods and there's whole books on Jidad like how how to have a sunna compliant debate and when I read them there's actually if you're interested I got some training in this it's called the practice of dialogue so not just dialogue let's have a dialogue it's called the practice of dialogue and they use what's called the cantor system where this person looked at how people interact with each other and there's four voices that people generally use and depending on the voice that you use if you use the opposition voice so I'll just you get that there's four voices basically there's move follow oppose and bystand though in any family system in any classroom and anything you will find because they just they analyze how people interact with each other and they found everybody in any interaction they either make a move they make an oppose a move meaning like I think this is or I think this is not right making a statement like this is this is the way it should be or this is the way it is I'm making a move saying this is or this is not or this should be oppose would be I'm going to oppose that bystand was like I'm not making a move or or an oppose I'm just pointing out what's going on here there's some other data there's some other things and then there's the there's the follow voice yeah I think that's that's correct so any family any work any classroom you're going to find these these voices and if you know how to use them properly and the key one is the is the oppose so they call it the respectful oppose and the the disrespectful oppose or the successful oppose and the unsuccessful oppose the respectful oppose it has three components you summarize to the person what you heard them say summarize what you heard them say explain why you disagree with that and then you you you you present your your your position now think about the majority of opposes that people do I hear what you're saying but does the person actually like do you really and then usually what happens like no no no you don't you don't understand what I said so now to be able to summarize to that person what what they said you actually have to listen and that's a skill that most people don't have just like and it's not listen like you know it's like they got their hands on the tray you know the triggers are yeah yeah and it's like he takes a breath but what I was going to say that's how most people are right so you actually have to retrain yourself to be like let me listen let me we've been talking about the message of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in the roda my first trip to to the to the message when we when we do dua or when I do dua I face the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam I'm not making dua to him but Imam Malik was asked by Harun al-Rashid he says when I go to the masjid should I face the qiblah okay we're using this but should I face the qiblah or should I face him because if you're at the muwajah of visiting him and you face the qiblah what are you doing you're turning your back to him so he's like now I want to make dua to Allah and we also know from another hadith where what is the qiblah of dua anyway like a lot of people like generally oh let me face the qiblah of sallam but what is the qiblah of dua most people don't even know this from the sunnah as-samaa the qiblah of dua is as-samaa that's the qiblah of the dua so but in this situation Harun al-Rashid was like what do I do if I'm at the muwajah do I face the qiblah and have that etiquette bring that etiquette of the prayer into my my dua or and have my back to the Prophet or do I face him and Imam Malik said how would you face away from him and he is your way into jannah and your father Adam's way into jannah all of humanity has to go through him why would you turn your face away from him he said you face him now it's not that you're doing dua to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam it's just like like if we were going to do a group dua would you find it to be bad etiquette if somebody's like as we're doing a group dua somebody just turns away from us would it and that's just in our human interaction like here so why would we turn away from the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam so I go in gung ho like with that in mind and I'm doing my dua and one of the haram police come up and he's like turn away and face so I start trying to have this I'm like trying to tell him the story of Imam Malik and so forth and you know he's like had a kid you know this is wrong you know after I left I felt very remorseful because I did that in front of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and we're known la tarfa'u aswatu kum fawq wa sulted nabi do not raise your voice in the in front of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam so I made toba from that the next time I went to Medina I was in the roda and this man saw me with my hands down as the Maliki school is and I only made one salam from my prayer he came to me to argue that it was wrong I listened to him for half an hour and and I only mentioned one hadith a hadith that Ibn Majah and others relate that Aisha radiallahu anha said she saw the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam only do one salam and so that's what the Maliki school is one salam to end the prayer that's all I mentioned I just mentioned that hadith other than that I was just listening to everything he had to say and then at the end he said he said adabtani you have you have given me adab al lam tani husn al istima'at you have taught me how to really listen to people I didn't have the heart to say well it's not you Rasul is right there and I don't want to do what I did with the other guy but what that taught me is and then every time afterwards after I saw him in Medina we were like close friends even though we would continue the debate but it engendered something between us when I actually showed like I'm listening to you because what does that of the message to the other person you care about me you care about what I say so in a in a debate or a dialogue if you actually listen to the person and and and ask questions open-ended questions like what's like well what about this and what like at and they're like oh wow this person is actually interested in my in my opinion your child if you do this with your child with a student and they're like no I don't think that is oh that's interesting so what makes you think that and don't use the word why why do you do this or why do you think this that's that's a big one again it's not from the sunnah but it's just our modern like looking at how language is used and then if we're trying to engender compassion between us in our interaction then it makes sense so if somebody's talking to you and they say well why do you do this what do you why do you wear that thing on your head if somebody came up to you and asked you as a sister like why do you wear that thing on your head and why do you put your hand why do you put your foot in the sink if they say or let me not even like put that like why do you wear that thing on your head why don't you shave why do you put your foot in the sink when a person says why what does that conjure up for you defense right puts you on the defense because most people's questions are actually said that 40 percent of questions are actually statements disguised as questions another 40 and this is by analyzing how human beings talk another 40 percent are judgments disguised as questions and only 20 percent are actually questions of genuine inquiry like i really want to know what you're saying and so when you say why it just triggers for the person like you know you know it triggers that statement the 80 percent that we're used to why why do you do that why do you got that thing on your head as opposed to so what are some of the benefits that you find from wearing that thing on your head or what what is one of the reasons that i see you putting your foot in the sink you know like once you change it to what it just happens in our language that it makes the person think like oh this person actually wants to know what i'm thinking what time do the this is all here oh 10 o'clock okay now one of the points i have in here is i speak into the mic and if we need to turn away don't speak until we're back facing the microphone like that could be a a way we implement the sunnah of being clear with our voice is you know because if i go back to this and i start talking can't hear me as much right so just to to speak to speak clearly not to use academies in our lectures for the general population using a vocabulary that the general student will understand one of the things that we mention here is the the average reading level of us prisoners is below fifth grade level so that means for us at theba we can't just take any islamic book and expect them to understand it some will some are you know you could put them up against harvard harvard debate teams and they'll like dunk on them all day long because they're spending hundreds of hours in the law libraries they're spending hundreds of hours learning arabic and tafsid and this like they are scholars at in every meaning of of the word but for the average person we have to present the material in a way that they can understand so this is one of the reasons why we develop our own material to take what's what's available and then to make it in the in the language of the students or accessible to them the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would not confuse people with esoteric speech and would give each person what they needed and there's one of the stories they mentioned moulana ashraf alitan when he says that oh he said there was a scholar from deli that taught the sulam which it's a book on logic and the students requested a detailed lecture based on the commentaries and then he provided that and then he asked them during the following lesson to repeat what they heard and they were not able to and so he said what is the sense in me taxing my brain when you can't remember anything now tell me how should I teach all of them replied teaching the actual text of the book is sufficient so sometimes we can go into especially with children and young people when we're explaining things try to and this is a difficult thing try to make it like in bite-sized morsels to where they can understand it also try avoiding matters that even if it's from the sunnah that it could just cause a person to go in a tailspin and like think about that when there should be more important things to focus on sure in the east coast they love to be direct and people enjoy it and they admire it on the west coast yeah yeah yeah oh yeah great great question yeah that's a great question and not something that I have an answer to or can solve the question was about like east coast west coast there was a funny video about how people in the east coast will ask you about if you need a tire changed and like you know they might yell at you on the east coast but they'll get out there and actually like fix your tire but then yell at you like what were you doing when you're like you know why did you avoid that thing where's it California's like oh man you got a flat tire yeah good luck dude but there is there is a difference in how people talk based in the cultures even in Mauritania sometimes when I would be in the the marketplace and interact with people and I was very direct and they're like oh you must be from eastern Mauritania because the eastern Mauritans are known to be more direct than the western Mauritans similar to here in the US right so I don't know what it is about just the coast just kind of like mellows you out but yeah that is some there is something to be said that that certain people will not will get a message clear from like if you know the nuances of the culture so yeah I would say if somebody is really going to be able to deliver that not only do you have to like balance in terms of like the gentleness and the directness but also know your audience in general and and every situation is going to be different and at the at the end of the day that's what I was mentioning earlier about the HD had of the moment like that that decision that you will make in the moment like what am I going to say and how am I going to say it in that moment you just do your due diligence in like absorbing as much as you can of the Sunnah of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and then you ask Allah for Tufiq and doing that and then it's coming through you as a prism in that moment and you just say you know Tufiq Ya Allah let me say this and sometimes you might have to yell it okay oh yes yeah it is overwhelming so you have the general population then you have people that you know so in this course we're talking about the prophetic model of teaching and generally that's the teacher student interaction or parent child or maybe amongst your siblings like the people that you know and so there is one method of interacting with people that it's with the the like the default like just the people you don't know how are you going to interact with them and there's no one way like I'm going to I can't say like what to say to the people in that moment and what would be congruent with the sunnah at that moment Allah o Alam I don't know in those things but generally the people we're talking more about like the people that you know and that you can build up knowledge of that person I'll give a concrete example you know how there's people in every single message that take it upon themselves to be the Haram police there's always that brother or that sister there's always that auntie or that uncle right like my father Allah have mercy on him he saw a person at one of the messages here in the bay area I won't mention it there was a person who took their shahada and on the day they took the shahada like he's trying to pray you know how people have trouble sitting down in the prayer and sitting on their on their feet in the sunnah style so this person goes up to him in his prayer the new muslim and starts twisting his feet there's another situation and this happened in another message here in the bay area a sister she became muslim she's a teenager older teenager she doesn't tell her family because they are if they found out she was muslim they would kick her out of the house and what would happen to any person young male or female in this society if they were kicked out of their house right it's very dangerous so she was hiding her aslam she still goes to the masjid she wears hijab but she takes it off when she goes home but she's walking home with hijab brother pulls up in the in the car as she's leaving the masjid rolls down the window which is already bad right that's like that's not the and then and then says salam aleykum sister and makes some comments about her clothing and then drives off so again going back to like and I don't know what she was wearing or what he said but the whole interaction is like that's not so my advice to masjid and in general that that the reminders the nasihaz the hisba the amr bil ma'aruf nahi an al-munkar the the enjoining righteousness and forbidding evil should be delegated to people in the masjid who know the people because you all know people muslim or let's just say muslims that you know that if they walked in the masjid and they got a a harsh masjid a harsh message that might be the last time they walk in through those doors but you because you know them in your your your friends you could deliver the same exact message but you know how to do it and you know how to use the you know the the right words the right time parents for example who's who's a parent that has had somebody who's not you know a parent come up to you and tell you how you should be raising your kids right or they see you interact with one of your kids and then afterwards like why were you so stern with them or why were you so gentle with them right but you as an expert you know like look this this son of mine or this daughter of mine if I was stern with him or her in that moment like that's not going to work so you as an outsider not knowing this human being and all their subtleties and all their you know like you're not an expert on this child I am so I know how to deliver the message that they need I'm the expert on this child in the same way people in the community who should be delivering those messages it's not a person just like anybody like oh I see somebody and I self-appointed you know Hyspa police I'm going to go over there and tell the person you really have to know the person I'll give you another geopolitical in in the ISIS controlled territories you know who who they would appoint as the police the non natives of those cities so if they were in Syria in a city it would be Algerians and Libyans they're given the police what's going to happen in that structure what's going to happen when you have policemen who are like given this power and they don't know those people as opposed say they took their own ISIS people from that area and made them the police what would be the difference in the dynamics as opposed to have foreign nationals as the police force as opposed to local population as a police force you can all you can see what's going to happen right because they're because the local person be like no no hold on hold on a second this Abu Ahmed I know him I know his cousin I was at his you know niece's wedding now hold on a second like okay we're gonna follow the law but just hold on a sec I know Abu Ahmed and let's let's let's work with him right as opposed to somebody who's like nope this is the truth and let's go headstrong with that so I'm just giving a couple of examples to say that it's really important to know the person that we're dealing with at the same time there's certain times when we're gonna have to interact with people and we don't know what they where they're coming from you go up to somebody like at a customer service thing at the airport right you just have like five minutes to interact with this person how are you gonna interact and we all know you can be gentle but then if you if they if you're come across as a pushover then you need to have a little bit of like like pride like okay hold on a second I'm gonna be stern with with respect I know this is gonna end in about half an hour the messenger of Allah would not cut people off in the middle of their speech unless they transgress the bounds or digress from the truth he exercised patience over strangers ill mannered way of speaking and asking such as such as the harshness of the Bedouin Arabs we all know those stories right so how can we bring those into our our lives and also like you were saying you know knowing when when are we gonna show that forbearance that hill and and give precedence to that manner of the Sunnah and when are we going to be like no we're gonna we're gonna stand up I'm not going to have that because we can have both it's not either or oh this is another beautiful one they're all beautiful the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would give each of those sitting with him his attention none of those sitting with him ever thought that the other was being given more attention like each Sahaba thought he was the best friend of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam I've had this experience with one of my teachers Sheikh Muhammed al-Amin popularly known as as haddamin just like a as a nickname and wallahi I thought I was his favorite student and I kept it to myself because when talking to the other students I didn't want to be like you know I'm I'm the teacher's favorite student and then one day my good friend Nabil who was also we were also studying at the same time lived in the same tent we were talking about something and he says you know I think I'm his favorite student I was like hold on a second no I'm his favorite student I started listing out the and then we started talking with other people and wallahi everybody thought he was that Sheikh's favorite student so what does that tell you about like that that personal one-on-one interaction that he's giving to to to each person how can we do that how can we do that in our classrooms in our homes in our communities to make each person feel like they are they are respected and that they're they're felt to be the favorite without showing favoritism to others that's the challenge I don't know how to do I don't know the the answer oh this is this is another one oh actually this is the page that the word says maybe print and laminate for the teacher it's actually more of them so the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would teach through asking questions he would answer questions he would answer with more than what was asked he would give examples he would swear by Allah when speaking not all the time you know like Islamic school students they're like wa lahe bro wa lahe wa lahe wa lahe like all the time not all the time but not leaving it totally swearing by Allah when appropriate sometimes divert the questioner from from the question for wisdom this is a deep one because sometimes when people are asking questions that's not really what they're asking about so again going back to that nuanced understanding of this person like actually I think what you're what you're looking for is over here so we can we can let's change the conversation over here using writing using drawing and I'm going to give an example of the drawing giving a simile explicitly saying something alluding to something or insinuating present a doubt then give an answer joking debate introduce a subject subtly comparing between two things refer to the underlying reasons to provide an answer ask questions when he or she would know the answer in order to test the people giving partial information so that they would ask giving specific time to the women take into consideration that there were children present now all of those like when you reach it Abdel Fattah Abu Ghuda's book of the Hadith and the stories you're going to see all those what this is is basically like all right here are the themes that you would see in all of his interactions now how do we implement those to give you an example of the drawing I put it on the cover of this book can everybody see that again if you had the books in your hand you would be able to just look at it I apologize for that but it's basically the Sahaba said the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam drew a square for us in the sand now we don't know exactly what it looked like we have the description of what he did in some of the Hadith books you will actually the Hadith transmitters would draw something out so this is my interpretation of what that Hadith is saying and if you look it up online if you look Prophet drew box sand if you look you'll see all these different interpretations of what it actually looked like this is just mine based on what my reading of the Hadith so he drew a box in the sand he drew a line starting in the box emanating out of the box and then drew lines from from that initial line in the box it's like power point presentation right and he said the this box what it symbolizes is your life your lifespan the the beginning there's a beginning to it there's an end this line is your hope look it's going outside of the box because every single one of us and May Allah give you all long and flourishing lives we all have hopes and dreams that we'll never attain so our hopes and dreams are outside of the box and then these are the distractions these are the things that distract us away from the straight path and fulfilling our hopes what are those distractions now he didn't say exactly what those distractions are he just said these are the distractions now he gave us this is almost like I told people if you want to do like a daily journaling you could do this as a as a daily journal just draw out this box what are my hopes for to get from the end of the day what are the possible distractions and then I got to be realistic I'm never going to reach all of them so let me plan accordingly and then understand what are the things that are going to distract me from my daily goals this could be a weekly thing this could be a life calendar this could be you know just in general it's a powerful symbol that he gave us now what we can do as teachers we can say like all right let me draw a picture I love always having like a white board and I if I had that I would probably be on the white board most of the time I love drawing and trying to explain it sometimes to a fault people are like don't always have to draw a picture Rami all right one of the things that I said like in terms of to encapsulate the the distractions and again that's not from the hadith this is just a separate thing is sheikh Ahmed Ubanda has anybody heard of sheikh Ahmed Ubanda if you have not please go home and read some articles or some books he's from the late 1800s early 1900s in the Senegambia area he established a city called Tuba and before Gandhi and Martin Luther King's nonviolent resistance and a successful nonviolent resistance you know who it was sheikh Ahmed Ubanda because he looked at the European especially the French colonization of all of western North Africa and literally the massacring of entire villages entire schools taking out entire I mean how many generations in one school would they bring out if they just massacred everybody and they would just mow them down with their machine guns so they have massive amount of troops they have steam engines they have machine guns and they're going up with people still fighting with spears bows and arrows and swords