Nafsi! Nafsi! Meets Husn adh-Dhann

Well, look. You know, on the issue of, I'm 52 years old. Okay? I've been through a number of experiences. I've met people from all around the world in all different classes and all different backgrounds and so on.

I've had, you know, innumerable interactions with other human beings. So when I make when I make an assessment of someone, when I make an assessment of what seems to me to be someone's motives, and I do an evaluation of their personality, that's based on all of my experience. Now that's not that's not to say that I'm suspicious about people, but I make a realistic assessment based on everything that I've ever learned about human behavior and what I know about myself. So if I say for example that like like now we're seeing this trend, right, of people converting to Islam, celebrities, influencers and so on converting to Islam. I mean it's since since October 7, it's almost become a social media strategy.

How to go viral and how to how to build your audience by first suggesting that you might or that you're interested in Islam, so that then you peak the interest of Muslims who will then flood your comment section inviting you to Islam, and you see the potential. You see the audience potential of how you could take off because the Muslims are active on social media and the Muslims are united in our support for anyone who comes to Islam. So you have a market demographic that's absolutely reliable and it's huge. It's 2,000,000,000 people. So if you are if you if you peak the interest of Muslims, if you tease the idea that you're gonna become a Muslim, then you will see your numbers, the the the views and the interactions on your social media posts and on your videos and so on, you'll see it skyrocket.

Absolutely skyrocket. Now some some people, I'm sure, some people are absolutely sincere. And even if when they come to Islam, they're not necessarily completely sincere when they start to come to Islam. Once you once you make Shahada, you are a Muslim. Maybe your imam is incomplete, but it's incomplete for all of us.

And maybe Hidea, greater levels and and degrees of Hidea will reach you, and you become a a better and more serious Muslim just like the the Muslims who converted or or the the who converted at the they didn't necessarily mean it at that time. Some of them didn't necessarily mean it, and they just saw, well, this is the trend, you know, it's it's it's unstoppable. Islam is an unstoppable force, so we may as well submit. And then subsequently they became righteous Muslims. So my point is that if I identify that someone like say like say for example right now Candace Owens, She's starting to sort of tease the idea that she could come to Islam because in my opinion the Daily Wire is just trying to cover all bases.

They have obviously the crazy radical fanatic Zionists represented by Ben Shapiro. And now they also wanna have the other side being represented by Candace Owens because they didn't fire her. She's still on board. She's still you know, and then they've got obviously Jordan Peterson, maniac. But so they wanna be able to appeal to all audiences because they also know that Muslims are generally conservative.

So Muslims Muslims may be, in fact Muslims have shared a lot of Ben Shapiro's post and and they used to be fans of Jordan Peterson until he started saying insane things about Islam and insane things about Muslims. So Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have been a sticking point for Muslims. You hurt your audience, you hurt your because you had a Muslim audience for people like the for for organizations like the Daily Wire. They had a Muslim audience and those are significant numbers because we are generally conservative, socially conservative. And the same things that you people preach about, you conservatives, the same things that you preach about, about you know, family values and whatnot, that appeals to us.

So you have a Muslim audience, but then you alienated your Muslim audience, by your radical Zionism. So you wanna win back that audience by having someone like Candace Owens, sort of tease the idea that maybe Islam isn't so bad, and she sort of apologizes to Muslims and whatnot and takes a pro seemingly pro Palestinian position. So you're trying to cover all the bases, and keep your keep your audience. Now you could say that I'm not exercising or practicing in that regard with regards to someone like Candice Owens, or if I'm talking about anybody else because as I said, I'm seeing all over social media people talking about Islam and making moves towards Islam and so on because it's popular now. I mean, of the reasons it's popular is is obviously because of the heroic example of the noble people of Gaza.

And of course, obviously when you when you start reading about Islam, it does does win you over if you have an open mind. If you're if you're actually someone who is sincere about the truth and you're an objective person, an intelligent person, then when you start to study Islam it becomes an an undeniable truth. It becomes undeniable. But but either way, when I express a degree of cynicism about the motives of someone like Candace Owens or someone who is a social media personality or someone who's a celebrity showing that they're interested in Islam or or interested in coming to Islam, and I say that there may be in their motivations concern for their audience, concern for their social media profile. You might think that that's not exercising, but look, that's just a realistic evaluation.

Human beings are human beings. You know, was thinking about this, know, on on everyone is going to be saying myself myself. That's all you're to be concerned about is yourself and your status and what your fate is going to be. But the reality is, the truth of the matter is, okay, your your situation on is you at your absolute core. It's your rawest, the the rawest realest version of yourself when all pretense is gone.

Everything that you every every version of yourself that you ever conceived about yourself or tried to present to people, it's vanished And it becomes just Well this is who we are anyway. This is who we are in the dunya to varying degrees. To whatever degree you have safety and security and stability and comfort in your life, you're able to think about other people. You know, it's just like it's just like on a on a on an airplane when they tell you that if the if the plane starts to go down and the the the oxygen masks come down, you're supposed to put it on yourself before you put it even on your child. So at that moment, it's nefse nefse.

You're thinking about yourself because you have to get yourself even even even you can say with a good intention, you have to you have to take care of yourself. You have to secure yourself before you have the ability to help secure anyone else. Right? So we're already it's it's at the core of our being to have self interest. That's a that's a core reality of human beings, and the extent to which your own self interest is secure, you're able to think about others.

That's generally the way people work. Now you will encounter in your life some people who are absolutely selfless, you know, but rarely. You'll have people who can present themselves as selfless. You'll find people who like to think of them who think of themselves as selfless, but in reality they're not. Right?

So what I'm saying is Hosanna Dan should not require me to think so positively and so generously and so charitably about someone that I am now imagining them to be such a rare human being as I have never met in my life. Doesn't mean that I have to imagine that everybody is Malaika, that everybody is an angel. Doesn't mean that I have to project onto someone that their personality is so perfect and so righteous and so pure that they are unlike anyone that I ever met in my life. That's pretty extreme. That's not Hasnat Dan, that's that's delusional.

So have you can have a because I don't to me I don't see it as a negative thing. When I when I look at someone's potential selfish motivation, self centered motivation, I don't see that as a negative. That's just human. That's just realistic. I don't I don't I don't that to me that doesn't constitute a that doesn't constitute to me thinking evil about someone, it means thinking realistically about someone.

Because there's compassion in that, I know that people are like that. Everybody has to think about themselves. Everyone has their own concerns. And in fact if you if you don't go through life in this way, if you don't interact with people in this way, then you're gonna have very unrealistic expectations of people. And you will be disappointed, and you're not it's not fair for you to be disappointed because you had an unfair expectation of that person.

Because we're just humans. Everybody needs to keep take care of their own business. Everyone needs to take care of themselves. Everyone needs to take care of their family, and that will always come first to people. And that will always be the driving motivations in their life.

One of the one of, if not the most driving motivation in their life for everything that they do, and it should be that way. You have to take care of yourself, and you have to take care of your family. This is your responsibility. That's the only way that you can potentially be safe when the time comes when you're when you're shouting on your because you've been taking care of your responsibilities and your duties to yourself and to others. Your body has rights, your life has rights that have to be taken care of, and if you're not taking care of those, then you can't take care of rights of anybody else.

So to me again, I don't see it as making an evil assumption about someone, And you have to be realistic in your evaluation of people, and you have to be realistic about the fact that people are inherently selfish. Now now people can be selfish in the extreme and that's what's negative, But being responsible in terms of your, you know, being moderate, being practicing in your selfishness, that's the key. That's the key. And you have to understand that. And and I think that that that even for for activists, we need to understand that.

Because whether you're talking about politicians, you're talking about corporations, or you're talking about just regular people, You need to make your you you need to align your expectations of other people. You need to make align your expectations of corporations. You need to align your expectations of politicians keeping in mind their selfish needs and their their selfish motivations. I don't have another word for it. Selfish has negative connotations, but I don't mean it in a negative way.

I mean people taking care of themselves and their own personal their own personal responsibilities, their own personal priorities and so on. So you can't expect people to do things that are against their own interests. So you need to formulate your strategy around the assumption that everyone is pursuing their self interest to one degree or another. And the best of people are the ones who who are moderate about their self interest and they don't become decadent. They don't become, you know, luxurious and indulgent and so on to the to the expense of others.

But if you're not going to approach people, whether it's whether you're trying to mobilize people or you're trying to persuade people, you know, you're trying to mobilize people who are on your on your side or whether you're trying to persuade people who are on the other side, you need to bear in mind that they are that they that they will have their own self interest. And you can't make demands upon them that that cause them to violate and to undermine their own self interest. That's not realistic. That's not a strategy that's going to work. You have to be able to craft your strategy in such a way that it it allows people to preserve and to continue to pursue to one extent or another their own self interest while also achieving something that's positive and beneficial and virtuous and righteous and so on.

That's why, that's the logic behind no justice no profit because we know that corporations don't care about justice but they care about profit. So we don't make our appeal to corporations on the basis of morality. Morality isn't a language that they understand. We make our appeal to corporations on the basis of profit of what matters to them. In other words, if you want to serve your self interest, this is the only way to do it, through supporting justice.

See what I mean? So you could say that I'm not having a hustle and a thun about say Unilever or you know, some other co corporation, but it's just realistic and I and I apply the same thing to a corporation as I would apply to people. I apply I apply the same thing to people as I would to a corporation or to anyone because everyone has self interest. So when you're asking something of someone, you need to try to make sure that you're not that what you're asking of them, does not, require them to abandon their own self interest. And don't tell me that means that I have to think that everyone is like a kind of a person that I've never even met in my life.

I will always make assumptions about people that they are normal people, not that they're some kind of angels, not that they're you know on the level of of of the prophets or something. I will deal with people according to what I know about people and what I know about myself. You can think realistically about people and also think well of people at the same time. It's not a contradiction.