When Tarbiyyah is Blocked | The Greater Jihad Ep.8 (Part 1)

Well, we operate from the understanding, like I've talked about before, that all human beings have an innate nature, and that their innate nature is good, is noble, and honorable, and so forth. Now that doesn't mean that we are gullible, it doesn't mean that we are naive. It just means that we recognize that wrongdoing is a fault or a flaw or what have you. It's a it's a kind of condition that we all are subject to varying degrees from time to time, you know, throughout life. It's something we all grapple with.

And it's gonna manifest in one way with one person and another way with another person. So as we move through life, we try to recognize, we try to identify and recognize these things about people, and we try to, calibrate our engagement with those people accordingly. It's it's almost a a a clinical approach, the way that we look at these matters, as Muslims. Now if you come from the background of the sort of western moral grandstanding approach, then you might misconstrue or misinterpret or misunderstand our approach in a few different ways, at least two different ways. On the one hand, you might think that we are overly tolerant or that we're overly pardoning or forgiving or understanding or what have you because we call these things sins and and and and wrongdoing and so forth.

We call these things mistakes, self oppression. We we understand that you oppress your you have oppressed your own self before you ever oppress anybody else. You wrong yourself before you wrong anybody else. We understand that you're supposed to be one kind of way. You were created one kind of way, and you're supposed to be like that.

And now your actions have run counter to your inherent goodness. You've mangled yourself. You've hurt yourself. You've harmed yourself. You've mutilated your pristine fitra by your actions.

See, you've damaged yourself. And then on the other hand, if you're coming from that same background, you might perceive our approach as overly judgmental. It's kind of funny because, like, either you're gonna interpret our approach as being too tolerant or as being too harsh depending on, you know, how you are personally taking it. Even though it's one singular approach, you'll take it one way or the other way, two extremes as usual. So you might think that we're too judgmental because we say that an action, that this or that action is wrong, is sinful, is corrupt, or what have you.

And we don't sugarcoat it in any way, and we don't gloss over it in any way. We call the action what it is. And this is just part of our process of diagnosis and our process of treatment. Because like I say, we're operating from an understanding of a defined baseline, the fitra. The fitra is your defined baseline.

And so then we try to identify whatever deviates from that baseline. Understand? And the minimum goal the minimum goal is to maintain that baseline. That's the minimum goal. Because, of course, you you you can improve upon that.

You can cultivate upon that or from that. You can deepen it and you can grow from that baseline point from your fitra. That's what you're supposed to do with your life, ideally. That's what you should do optimally. You start from there and then you build from there.

You build on top of that. But if you have already, mutilated or mangled your fitra, deformed your fitra, then, of course, the priority is for you to just try to get yourself back in shape. Try to get yourself back, to your original moral form. Now all of this is very straightforward. This is all very straightforward.

Our approach is neither overly forgiving nor overly harsh nor overly judgmental. We're just talking about identifying deviations from the fifth row baseline, and this is not hugely complicated. It's quite straightforward, as I say. This is the easy part. This is what I'm telling you.

This is the easy part. But you'll find that this is already the part where most tarbiyah stops before it can even start. It's literally the easiest part. It's the most preliminary part. But for a lot of people, they can't even get through this point.

They can't even get past this point, especially again if you're talking about people in the West. Because people in the West, especially, tend to react very negatively to having their actions categorized morally. And because, you know, if we're talking about Kufar, they don't accept the reality of an objective moral baseline to begin with. So like, the same way that they react in two different ways to the Muslim approach. They either say that, we are too dismissive of the severity of an action, the severity of a wrongdoing or a sin, or they will deny the severity of the action itself and and say that it's they'll resist any kind of a negative judgment about it, any sort of moral judgment about it.

So you end up being stuck in a holding pattern. You understand? You can never improve. You can never repair the damage. You don't repair the damage either because, you believe that the damage is beyond repair, like I say, in other words that you think that your actions or your wrongdoing or your sins or what have you, you believe that it is too severe to to ever be, atoned for or redeemed.

Or you don't even acknowledge that any damage was done at all because you don't even accept that there is basically morality of any kind. So functionally, this ends up being a choice to become worse, to get worse, to do worse, to to to do more damage. So it doesn't matter actually if you think that the wrongs that you have done are not wrong at all and because your moral relativist or what have you, or if you think that the that the wrongs that you've committed are too heinous to ever be atoned for, to ever be redeemed, or to ever be forgiven. It doesn't ultimately matter. It doesn't ultimately matter if you think that you cannot be redeemed or you think that you don't need to be redeemed.

Functionally, it works out to the same thing. It comes out to the same thing, which is that you're not going to change. You're not going to improve. You're not gonna change your behavior. You're not gonna improve your behavior.

You're not gonna reform. You're not gonna stop doing what you're doing. Okay? This is a decision to become worse. So tarbiyah, is a nonstarter with someone like this.

See, this is what I mean about how in Islam we believe in a practical morality practical morality. We take a middle way. We take a balanced way. Understand? We believe in your inherent goodness, we believe in your inherent, inherent purity, but we also know that your actions can sully that purity and that goodness and it can damage you.

But if you are someone who either does not believe, in any sort of an objective moral baseline or you believe that actions, can be so bad that they permanently dissolve the moral baseline, then you end up being stuck into extremes. And both of these extremes, facilitate continued immoral behavior. So for instance, when we call an action, when we call a wrong action by what it is, the point is not to vilify the individual. It's to say, look, okay, this act that you committed is counter to the kind of person that you were created to be. This action or this behavior or this lifestyle or this conduct, is not the conduct, is not the lifestyle, is not the behavior, and these are not the kinds of actions, that a dignified functional moral person would do.

You're making a mistake. This is our point. You're not humaning right because that's what we're talking about ultimately. That's what we're talking about. Your fitra is your natural disposition as a human being.

You know? So when you when you, when you contradict that nature, you're going against your intrinsic nature when you contradict that, your fitra. So we're just pointing that out. We're pointing out that these are the kinds of actions, these are the kinds of behaviors that take you farther away from your birthright as a human being, which is to be upright. Your birthright is to be upright, is to be decent, is to be dignified, to be noble, is to be honorable, is to be good, and so forth.

This is your birthright. See? So we're not calling out wrongdoing so that we can hurt your feelings or make you feel unworthy or anything like that. It's it's literally the opposite. What we're doing is literally the opposite because we know, that you are intrinsically worthy.

And we know that you deserve to preserve that worth, that intrinsic worth rather than squander it, rather than diminish it, rather than damage it through immoral conduct because that's what immoral conduct does. It's not an insult. We're not insulting you. Quite the contrary. We are objecting to the insult that you are inflicting upon yourself, by means of your unworthy, behavior, your unworthy conduct, your immoral conduct.

Now what you do with that, when we tell you that, that's out is entirely up to you, obviously. If you accept that the behavior is immoral and wrong, but you happen to think that that behavior is so bad that you're irredeemable, or as I say, if you reject the categorization of immorality altogether because you're a moral relativist, then from our standpoint, again, from our standpoint, it's exactly the same. It works out to the same thing because our sole interest is in trying to help you get back to your fitra. That's our that's our whole interest. And neither one of those reactions is gonna get you there.

From our standpoint, both of these reactions, of these responses are identical in their functional impact. Means you are refusing to change. At the end of the day, bottom line, you're refusing to change. And that reveals a deeper level or a deeper layer of self mutilation beyond whatever actions we're talking about. That's beyond whatever actions we're talking about.

And this is important for us to understand about you or about any individual that this applies to because, again, it's like a condition. It's like an illness. So we have to make, for our own safety, we have to make an accurate diagnosis of what your condition is If we're gonna be interacting with you, if we're gonna be engaging with you. Right? So that we can know what sort of a state you're in.

Like, you know, if you're talking about a a a an actual virus or something like this, an actual illness or infection, we need to know how it manifests. We need to know what the risks are. You know? Is it is it an airborne thing? Is it transferred through bodily fluids and so forth?

We need to know the symptoms. We need to know how it spreads. We need to know what precautions we're supposed to make if we're going to be dealing with you, if we're going to be dealing with an infected person. We need to know these things. We need to know what to expect.

Is this person going to have fits of coughing? Are they going have tremors? Are they going to have nausea and whatnot? Right? We need to know what to expect when we are interacting with this person given their illness, given their condition.

So the same applies if you're talking about moral maladies, if you're talking about moral illnesses, moral diseases. You understand? And especially if you're dealing with someone whose self mutilation goes even deeper than just performing immoral actions. It goes so deep that they reject correction. Understand?

Because, again, they either reject correction because they they don't actually even accept that objective morality is something that exists, or they think that their actions are irredeemable. To us, this doesn't matter. They are rejecting correction at the end of the day. That's the that's the bottom line of it. They're rejecting correction and they're rejecting improvement.

So that means that the infection has spread. It has metastasized. It has gotten deeper. You understand? And this has to then change our expectations with regards to this person.

This has to change the nature of our relationship to that person and how we interact with them. Because, as I say, at a certain point at a certain point, when you when you're going down that sort of a path, no one's gonna be able to guide you except Allah. The believers can benefit from reminders and from from advice and so forth. But for anyone whose sickness has gotten so bad that they cannot benefit from reminders, cannot benefit from advice and then at that point, I'm sorry to say, but helping you get back to your is beyond our capability. This is why the for example, get worse and they double down when you try to advise them, when you try to give them advice, when you try to give them means that the infection has gotten too severe, and the necessary treatment that they need is beyond our skill set.

It has metastasized from being just sinfulness to now becoming actual nifaq, a tumor of hypocrisy. Okay? This is when all of the little black marks of individual sins eventually cover your heart completely. Okay? So we're not the surgeons that can remove that tumor by means of our toolkit, by means of naseeha, by means of reminders.

You understand? By means of warning and whatnot. You are immune to that medication at that point. Maybe you're even allergic, to that medication. And, of course, when we're talking about non Muslims, when we're talking about Kufar, well, we already know, the extent of the damage.

The extent, of damage to your fitra is epic in scale. So now our main concern is not about treating you, it's about protecting ourselves from you and protecting others from you. And this is where we need to be fully able to understand and fully understand the symptoms of your condition and how your condition is transmitted or transferred to other people. Because like I said, your actual condition, has reached the point where it is beyond what we can cure. And all we can do is deal with the symptoms that are in our faces that we have to deal with.

And this requires on our part a great deal of vigilance in dealing with you. Because when you're dealing with someone when you're dealing with someone who's reached that state, that sort of a state, who's in that state, you are largely dealing with the condition more than you are dealing with the carrier of the condition. Do you understand me? You are interacting with a pathogen. You understand?

You're interacting with a pathogen. You you need to understand this. You're not dealing with the person. By and large, you're not dealing with the person. You are not dealing with their fitra.

You are not dealing with who they truly are. You are dealing with the condition that has seized them. You're having a dialogue. You're having an interaction with their affliction. Just like if you're talking to an addict, you're mostly speaking to the addiction.

You're speaking to the addiction that has taken over that person most of the time. Understand this is not dehumanizing them. That's not what I'm doing. This is not saying that that individual or that person is the infection in and of themselves. They themselves are the infection.

On the contrary, I am making a very deliberate distinction between who they actually are at their fitra level, a distinction between that and their condition, their moral ailment, their moral sickness, the sickness that has seized them. And we're understanding that when you interact with them, who they are as a person, their original essential self is largely absent from that interaction. You understand? You are mostly interacting with that, metastasized, infection, with that that infection that has spread over them. That's who you're gonna be interacting with, and that's who's gonna be interacting with you and who's gonna be reacting to you and who's gonna be, responding to you.

I mean, this really shouldn't be that difficult to understand because it's a relatively common phenomenon among people. This exactly what I'm talking about in various forms of various degrees. Like the example of drug addiction, like I say, this is just a very extreme example, illustrative example. But if you're like, say, in very dire straits, say you're gonna be, evicted or something, you desperately need money. Okay?

So in that situation, for most people, if you're in that situation and you're interacting with someone, the situation that you're in is uppermost in your mind and it's impacting your behavior and how you deal with other people. Maybe you hope that they're gonna help you out. Maybe you're you're you're trying to get your nerve up to ask for some money, so you'll laugh at their jokes a little more. You'll compliment them a little bit more. Right?

You'll avoid having any arguments with them because you are seized by the circumstances that you're in, and those circumstances alter your behavior. This literally happens all the time at different levels, like I say. So the reality is that many times you are not talking to someone directly in your life. You are talking to them through their circumstances. You understand me?

You are seeing a version of them that only exists or that only presents itself to you due to the circumstances that they're in. And another form of this is when you you're talking to someone who has been seized by some sort of a dogma or some sort of a political ideology or whatever the case may be. This happens all the time. There are many, many versions of this phenomenon throughout, social interactions. You think that you're talking to your friend, for example.

You think that you're talking to your friend, but it turns out that your friend has become a salesperson for Amway. Right? So now you no longer are actually dealing with the person that you know when you're talking to this person, when you're talking to your friend. You're dealing now not with your friend, but you're dealing with the logic and the panic of someone who is trapped in a pyramid scheme. So, okay, for you, it's disappointing maybe.

Is this one to see your friend now dealing with you as a potential Amway sucker, as a as a as a as a dupe, but you also know them outside of that context. Right? So you can tell the difference between who which which what's your friend and what's the circumstances and which one you're actually dealing with right now. Right now, I'm dealing with your circumstances. I'm not dealing with you.

That's not you talking. That's your circumstances talking. Well, like I say, if you have an acquaintance who, is going through addiction, if they're alcoholic or something like that, any other type of scenario that you can think of that causes someone to be completely seized by their circumstances or seized by some sort of a condition that they're in to the point that they are unrecognizable from who they were before this condition struck. So you know how this works. If you have any experience with people, you you understand that you are no longer interacting with the person that you know you are interacting with the condition that they are in.

And this happens all the time. So it's the same if you're talking about dealing with someone who has been seized by the infection of their own wrongdoing. When it has metastasized and when it has spread and when it has deepened into their heart, into their soul. It's just like if you if you're talking about jinn possession for example. Okay?

You're sitting across from me, but your voice is not your voice. Your words are not your words. I'm talking to someone else. It's your face. It's your body, but I'm having a I'm having an interaction with someone else with the jinn that's inside you.

You understand? So whether we're talking about someone who is drowning in their own bad conduct, their own wrongdoing and so forth, or we're talking about or we're talking about kuffer, the the fact of the matter is you're interacting with that condition. And like I said, you have to be vigilant. You have to be very vigilant in recognizing this and guarding yourself against this and guarding yourself, guarding yourself against the symptoms of this.