Qur'anic Psychological Decolonisation: Al-Baqarah & the Slave Mentality

Your

brother will have to live.

They're not mutually exclusive. For joining me again for a conversation. I was very interested. There's something that you've talked about. I think you talked about it in one of our earlier talks.

And then in the telegram chat, you've you've talked it you've you've touched on it here and there. But I find it extremely insightful and very intriguing. And I was really hoping that you could go more into depth about it, which is the story of in Surat Al Baqarah in the Quran. You point out the the the ramifications of this story with regards to psychological colonization Mhmm. Of the Israel while they were in in Egypt in Masr.

Yes. And then and then the the long lasting effects of the psychological colonization long after they had escaped Mhmm. From Egypt. Even with divine guidance in their presence, they were still struggling with or grappling with the after effects of the psych of what we would what we would understand today as psychological colonization.

No.

And I think that that, Mashallah, the things that you've you've touched on, you've just sort of touched the surface of it in our previous talks and in the chat. I I would love for you to go through the layers of that, to really dig deep into that and explain it because I think it's fascinating and very very important for us to grasp, very important for us to try to wrap our minds around because our situation isn't terribly different.

No, it is not. We begin with You know, Shaykh, this might get a a a little long. I don't wanna give you a before, the ramifications of understanding the role of Suratibara in the life of a Muslim across every era in time is something that is tantamount to the spiritual growth and progress of of every Muslim throughout the entire world. But speaking as an African American convert to Islam, after spending years, not just as a Christian, but as someone who studied Christology, on a scholastic and academic level. When you begin to compare and contrast and juxtapose the story of the children of Israel from a biblical lens to the lessons that we take from Bani Israel from the Islamic lens, it is earth shattering.

And said that everything has a peak. Imam Ibn Hajid al Asghulani, he said about this, and this hadith is narrated from Abdullah Ibn Mas'ud, and Imam Abu A'isa put it in his sonnet. You know, just for academic integrity, we just wanna put the the sources there. Imam Ahmed collected it in his, Musnaq. Imam, Al Bayhafi, collected it in his.

Ibn Hajar he said that it means an elevated or the most prominent part. So is sometimes used to describe like the hump of a camel or even like the apex part of a mountain, like the peak of something, the acne of something. So Anabi said everything has a peak or a high point or an acne. Quran, the peak of the Quran is Suratibaqarah. It is this chapter of the Quran.

I remember when I, first became Muslim, and maybe you can relate to this, and and maybe even some of our viewers, heritage Muslims or converted Muslims or even non Muslims are likely like, I wanna read Quran. I remember, you know, saying that you open the book, and it's the Quran is fascinating in and of itself. That's it has an opening, but no closing. It has a but no. That can be a talk, the you know, for another time in and of itself.

SubhanAllah. But right after you see the opening, which it it makes sense to most people, then you see the cow. The cow. And for most chapters of the Quran, the name of the chapter is found in the earliest part of the the the surah. You know?

But for Surah Tibakkara, you have to go 67 ayats before you get to the story. You have to go 67 verses before you get to it. And Surah Tibakkara is the the second chapter of the Quran has 286 ayat, kufa count. So it's the longest chapter of the Quran by a long shot, and it is it is, subhanAllah, a very, very dense surah. You get everything from the creation of Adam, to rulings on Hajj and and Hayd, you know, if you know, you know, you get everything from Ramadan to Riba.

The longest verse in the Quran, Ayat Ubain, as it's colloquially called, is about contracts, and it fills an entire page. And for anyone who's ever seen a 15 line Mus'haf, one verse covering a full page is is is incredible. And he continued in this hadith that, in it is a verse which is Quran. It is the leader of all of the verses of the Quran, and in this chapter, Surah Ti Baqarah is which again could be another conversation for another time. The two hundred and fifty fifth verse in in Surah Ti Baqarah is a verse that describes the attributes, features of God Almighty creator of the multiverse as we know it and don't know it.

So this surah has all of these features. This chapter of Quran has all of these features, but it's named the cow. It's named the cow. You think to yourself, like, what is that? And then when you see the story itself, it's only, like, six verses or seven verses.

So out of 286 verses, the the story that this is named after is just a handful. So you gotta timeline this. Because as I mentioned earlier, the Quran has an opening, but it doesn't have a closing, and that's a part of its miraculous nature. You can read from any part of the Quran and connect it to other parts of the Quran. So it is not a book that in in any sense needs to be read or understood chronologically in order to derive benefits and reflection from it, but there is chronology in it.

And Musa, prophet Moses, peace and blessings be upon him, is the most mentioned prophet in the in the entire Quran. 36 different verse, chapters out of a 114, over a 130 different mentions. This story of Ahl Bakrah is a story about him and the children of Israel. Just again, time lining this, in the in the chronology of the children of Israel, It said that Moses spent forty years calling pharaoh, Firaun, to free the children of Israel. And we'll get to how they got enslaved.

Like I said, it might get a little a little long. We'll get to how they got enslaved, but he spent forty years calling pharaoh to free the children of Israel versus mentioned in Surah al Arof, the seventh chapter of the Quran, all the way to Surah al Nazaat, the seventy ninth chapter of the Quran. Of all of these signs, these ayats, these signs and miracles that Allah had empowered Moses with. The story in Surah I, of Moses going and inviting, pharaoh to believe in the creator and to free the children of Israel. And the story of the magicians converting to Islam after seeing the true signs from god almighty overtaking their magic with a k.

Right? They're sehr. So that happens for forty years. And then finally, the children of Israel are able to escape. And the children of Israel, they see all of this throughout this time period.

Right? They're not a a passive participants. They are first row audience to all of this. And they know the mission is their freedom. So now they're finally free.

We get to the verses in Surat Tisha Ara, the army of pharaoh chases after them. They have an army behind them. They have the Red Sea, the ocean in front of them, and they see with their own two eyes after thinking that, you know, victory or or that that victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat at this point, that there everything is about to be destroyed. What was the point in us leaving? And and and.

Now they're gonna overtake us. It's gonna be worse than ever. Ever. Musa with the with the staff that he had carried all the way from the verses in Surat Al Taha, just again painting this picture here across all these verses, takes this staff that he used to beat down bushes and and guide his sheep with, hits the ocean and sees it split in two. They cross and then Fir'aun comes after them, the ocean closes, they are saved, and they see their oppressor and his army drown.

Bani Israel watched the waves literally close in on the centuries of tyranny that had defined their existence, that had it defined their slavery for so long. So now they physically stood free by Allah's decree. The tyranny had been washed away into the sea. But freedom of body is not freedom of heart or freedom of mind, and that's where the story comes in. Now we get Musa the verses in Surah Titaah.

He goes to receive revelation from God Almighty. At Mount Tur, he receives revelation of the Torah, and when he comes back down, he sees them worshiping a golden cow. Okay? He sees them worshiping a golden cow at the, at the incitement of whom? Samiri.

Now I know I'm saying a lot of words and vocabulary here. We'll we'll, you know, we'll unpack each of these parts here as we dive into it and what this has to do with Qur'anic psychological decolonization, but just just rock with me a little bit, audience. I know the chef is here for, but just just rock with me a little bit here.

Yeah. Let me just let me just say just

Yeah. Please jump in. Yeah.

On this on this point, you can't use or you can't try to engage in quranic psychological decolonization unless you're familiar with the Quran. Yeah. So a lot of us aren't. Not for Allah. But many many many of us don't read the Quran even in our own language.

I'm talking especially about the the the people who mostly need Quranic psychological decolonization among the Muslims are going to be the people who don't really even have access to the Arabic Quran. Sure. People who only have access to the English Quran. And then even when they have access to the English Quran, don't read it. And you and you only know about the Quran just like just like the Christians only know about the bible what their preacher tells them on Sunday.

Many of our people only know from the Quran what the imam says in the khutbah. So no, you have to become very familiar with these stories because every single word was revealed by Allah and it was revealed with reason that will be that will that will be that will resonate that will be relevant, and that will be significant, and will be important for all times to come. Every word, every letter of every word. So you you can't just sort of say I'm kind of more or less familiar with the story and just and just go with that. No.

You have to read it. You have to read it, you have to understand it, you have to analyze, you have to reflect upon it, and you have to take time. You have to take the time to to to do that, to reflect upon it, to meditate upon it, to think about it, to speak about it with others, and to really analyze it. And and hopefully, you can have a a good scholar or a good learned person in your masjid who can also, you know, help you not only with recitation but also with tafsir and the the meanings of the words and asbab of the of the revelation, the the reasons for the revelation, the cause, the, you know, the the circumstances and the occasions upon which things were revealed and so so on and so forth. You must be you know, when we talk about epistemological sovereignty, and I'm sorry to sort of interrupt what you're talking about.

We'll get back to it, Insha'Allah. But it is very important. When we talk about epistemological sovereignty, for us, the the the foundation of our epistemology is Quran. That's the foundation upon which we build our knowledge of everything, of everything in the world, everything in the and everything in the So we have to we have to if we're going to use the Quran as our foundation, well, you have to read it. You have to understand it.

You have to be familiar with it. You have to become a student of the Quran. I'm I'm not saying that everyone has to become a Hafid Quran or anything like that, but you have to be very familiar with our book. With the book that Allah gave us. And as you you said, obviously, this is a topic that could become a whole other discussion, and you would be much better at that discussion than me with regards to why there's an opening and not a closing.

But the first thing that occurs to me is that because the Quran doesn't end. It it opens and it doesn't end. It will continue to be relevant just like what I was saying with with regards to the men in Israel. They went astray and they were psychologically colonized even while divine revelation was present among them. Well, divine revelation is present among us.

It's present among us just because Nabi Rasulullah isn't present alive with us today. The revelation is here today and it's a miracle from Allah that he's preserved for us so that we will there there will never be a Muslim on the face of the earth from fourteen hundred years ago until today and until the last day, there will never be a Muslim on the face of the earth who doesn't have access to revelation. So yes, you you you have to actually become not just sort of passively, casually familiar with the stories in the Quran and with the with the ayat of Quran, with the rules, and with the with the analogies, and the parables, and the, you know, the wisdom, just generally speaking. But you have to become very very intimately familiar with the Quran because it's the basis of our foundation, it's the basis of our knowledge, it's the foundation of our knowledge, and we're not gonna be able to build any epistemological sovereignty that is not rooted in a deep understanding of the Quran. And I'm sorry, that's enough of my interruption.

Please continue.

It's not an interruption. Alhamdulillah, it's a conversation. And and, you know, you and I, we've built together and we talk often enough. And and the truth is that a lot of Muslims really need to internalize this story, and not not in passing. But not to go on too much of a tangent, but you made a lot of excellent points.

We have an epistemological framework for how we understand revelation and application, and there's been far too much hyper Christianization of the Muslims' approach to understanding our relationship with God and our application of divine direction? A lot of it comes from colonized mindsets. And so we have a framework of of foundational principles that we use to consistently apply how to extract to extrapolate and understand the meaning of the Quran. Literally, metaphorically. And and without that framework, you cannot engage into.

You cannot reflect on how the Quran applies to your day to day life. And you cannot contemplate reasonably on how to what you're supposed to do with those reflections. And so with the advent of the Internet and everything being Googleable and everything, you know, becoming bite sized and and, you know, most people never opening a book or reading anything for themselves. And self study, in more cases than not, being so algorithmically driven that people's understanding is really just the parroting of what someone else understood without understanding to what extent that person understood it. And then thinking that you understood it.

This is how Benny Israil followed Samedi and built a golden calf. Hey, guys. Get the gold. Do you hear the sound? That's you're taking other people's mindset, and you're taking other people's understanding, and you're using it to construct something that you may be inadvertently be using to worship other than God.

And, look, I'm not gonna take too big shots at the Christians. You know what I'm saying? I know you gotta be watching. I'm not gonna get into, you know, the proverbial quote unquote agnostic Muslims who believe but don't practice or anything like that, you know, but that's why the story is in the Quran. Not to hold up a magnifying glass and to highlight the faults of others, but to hold up the mirror and to look at yourself and to understand where you might fit on the spectrum.

And more than that self reflection as teaches us, and it's also found in the ethic from Abi Hurayna to and this hadith found in Sunan of Imam Abi Dawud al Sajisani in his book of Sunan that the prophet said that the believers are mirrors to one another. If you see something wrong in it, you have to correct it. If you look in the mirror, and pardon the analogy, but let's just keep it frank here, if you look in the mirror and see a booger in your nose, you don't wipe the mirror. You get tissue and you clean your nose. And far too often, many Muslims with snot filled noses are trying to scrub and Windex the mirror that they're looking into as opposed to grabbing a Kleenex and cleaning your stuff first, you know?

And this story highlights that. You know, when Allah tells us about the introduction of this story, there was some background here, but they let me just start with the ayats. Okay? In Surah Tibokkadur chapter two, verse number 67, the children of Israel came to Musa. Many Israel came to Moses peace and blessings be upon him, and they said, you know, we want you to get your, ask your lord who killed this man.

There was a murder in their ranks. So this is after all the signs and stuff that they had seen, and this is after the story, you know, some scholars said, like, Ibn al Qayim Rahmatullahi'arei, that this happened after the worshiping of the golden calf. And we will circle back to that story, but just just just just introduce this story itself. Okay. You want to find out who murdered this person?

Your lord has commanded you to slaughter account. That's the sixty seventh verse of the Quran. Whenever Musa said this, god told you to do this thing, to kill a cow. They said or different. You mocking us?

Are are you making fun of us? And then Musa said I seek refuge in Allah from being amongst the people who are ignorant. They saw for literally decades Musa be very serious about the commands of Allah Subhanahu ta'ala. And now all of a sudden when they put the command of Allah when he puts the command of Allah in front of them after everything they saw from him, you could see that their pushback against the command of Allah was a reflection of the shackles and the captivity and the enslavement that did not drown in the sea with their oppressor and their enslaver. They held on to something, you know, that that honestly, far too many of us hold on to.

Sometimes it's just our shahawat, our desires. Sometimes it's just our own jahalad, our own ignorance. Sometimes it's our arrogance, but that thing has to be killed. You have to kill those cows, whatever it is. You know, one of the many, many categorical differences, and and I always find it to be so ridiculous when people try to make it seem like all religions are the same, you know?

It's just your absence of a religion is a religion in and of itself, but that doesn't mean that every religion or every belief system can just be put in the same box, like your reductive outlook does not reflect the reality. And Islam is is definitely different. Just how did we get here in the first place of the children of Israel being enslaved, of them worshiping a golden cow, of now they're being asked to kill a cow to find out why someone was murdered, and then pushing back against that. How did we get here? Well, the children of Israel made it to Egypt in the first place, Yaqoub and the Isbael, the, you know, Jacob and the 12 tribes of Israel, you know, they came there because of Yusuf because of Joseph, and this is the longest story in the book of Genesis, which is one of the longer chapters or books of the bible.

But when we say Joseph in the bible, we're not talking about Yusuf because the slander is just too ridiculous to say they're the same person, but that's neither here nor there. You'll note that in the Quran in surah to Yusuf, chapter 12 verses 43 to 54, that Yusuf he refers to the king of that time as Malek. And that the term is not utilized until you get to Musa. This is just one of several reasons why you can't just have a peripheral understanding and think it's all the same because in the time of the prophet Muhammad fourteen centuries ago, him making those distinctions isn't the same, wasn't based upon the same reasons why we know those distinctions are so incredible today with the Rosetta Stone and reading the hieroglyphs and all that stuff. Because what we know is during the middle to second intermediate period in Egypt, and this is just a fun fact, you know, as we build the point here, that they did refer to the leader of Egypt as a monarch.

They did not call that person pharaoh. But then once you get to the new kingdom, then that's when they suddenly start using the title, this is not a distinction that's made in the bible. In the bible, in the time of Joseph, it's pharaoh, and in the time of Moses, it's pharaoh. But in the Quran, the distinction actually reflects the historical accuracy. Now just for those who are listening, you tell me how a man in the middle of the desert who couldn't read or write historically, not just by Muslim accounts, but historically, how he knew that difference?

I'll give you one guess. Revelation, but neither here nor there. Why am I bringing that up? Because we see that when Yusuf was in Egypt, he had a powerful position, and the children of Israel were welcomed as special guests into that kingdom. They did not come there to be enslaved.

They came there to be honored. Now fast forward roughly some four centuries later, Musa is now having to free them. What happened? What happened? Well, it's what happens to a lot of us.

It happens to us in our workplace, happens to us in our individual lives, it happens to the ummah collectively, these highs and lows where we go from positions of power to positions of weakness. The fact that we have that delineation from the time of Yusuf to the time of Musa Musa from Joseph, peace and blessings be upon him, to Moses, peace and blessings be upon him, from power to enslavement to freedom is a testament that we can at least acknowledge as Muslims. It may not necessarily always be the way that we prefer, but we can go from strength to weak to power again, to freedom again. But it has to start in here. We have to be willing to kill those proverbial cows.

Now I'm a just say this point, and then I wanna hear from you, Sheikh. Why did they worship a cow? Of all things. When you go to Surah when you go to Surah Titoja, yes, the mooing sound, Samiti, so on and so forth. For those of you who know, know, if you don't, I I would say for now, this is just, know, an auxiliary point.

It's not a primary one. Why, of all the things under the sun, did they worship a cow in Surat Itau? Why build a golden cow? And then why, of all the things to push back against, you kill cattle all the time. You know?

We we eat, cattle all the time. Why were they so resistant to kill a cow? Well, historically, in the time of Pharaoh, Apis was considered to be a sacred god, a false god that represented fertility and divinity and was worshiped in Memphis. And there was a cult built around the cult of Apis. And Fathor was a cow headed goddess of motherhood, false god of course, and joy that was often depicted nursing Pharaoh.

So when Yusuf and his family come, they They have their faith, you know. They have I mean, even the dream of the seven cows and so on, it's over seven years and the drought that all that stuff aside, okay. But now fast forward four hundred years of generation after generation after generation of enslaved people having that imagery of shirk, of spiritual associationism, became so prevalent across the generation of generation that the sim the symbols of servitude became the objects of their secret admiration that they inherited from their masters. And I I I can't help but reflect on my people, four hundred years enslaved in The United States, taking on the enterprises and the belief systems of their proverbial masters. You know, there's a book called, How to Make the Ideal Slate from 1850.

This is about thirteen years before the Emancipation Proclamation, fifteen years before Juneteenth. Some, historians say that it's a false document, but the tenets of it are certainly true. The first of those five tenets is maintain strict discipline and unconditional submission of the slave, create a sense of personal inferiority so that blacks know their place, instill fear in the mind of slaves, teach slaves to take interest in the master's enterprise, and ensure the slave is uneducated, helpless, independent by depriving access to education and recreation. Of those four things or of those five things, the fourth one stands out quite a bit. Teach the slave to take interest in the master's enterprise.

The only reason why the children of Israel cared about cows at all was because it was a part of the master's enterprise and belief system. In a lot of ways, for for my people I'm speaking for my people. I don't need anyone else to do it for me. Thank you. But I'll say for my people, that the investment into, you know, sports culture, hip hop culture, brand culture is a part of, you know, decades of taking interest in the Masters Enterprise as it means a feeling that you have equal footing with them.

And on a spiritual level, for a lot of Muslims in the West, they become so invested in their Western or white or both masters enterprise that they take everything and filter it through the lens of what about ism. They take everything and filter it through the lens of, you know, but it's a different time and this, that, and the third in order to validate what the enterprise of whom, the belief systems of whom, and it makes it hard for that epistemological growth and Quranic application to exist, you pointed out, sheikh Shaheed, with Muslims not really reading the Quran. Oh, I don't know Arabic. All the excuses kick in, but then you have access in English and multiple English translations and interpretations. Yeah.

But it's not the actual language. Okay. So you won't read it. You won't learn the language. You won't read it in your language, and you won't try to apply it at all.

So what then are you applying, o Muslim, to your life? What then are you using? Peripheral understanding of Islamic concepts filtered through the Western master interprisal lens. And now when a simple command comes to kill your proverbial cow, it's pushed back. It's pushed back.

It's pushed back. Now, I wanna stop there before we get to the story of the actual cow and things like that and how that applies today. But in you hearing this sort of transition from power to enslavement, and I drew the analogy of, you know, the ideal slave and stuff like that, But that investment in the master's enterprising being a reflection point, not not a tafsir, like, an an explanation, but just a reflection point on how it was Bani Israel's investment in their master's enterprise that made them default to all of all things to a cow to a cow. And that that caused them to worship the golden cow, and that became the reason why they were resistant to just killing a cow and how that mirrors the spiritual state of a lot of Muslims today. Any reflections from your end on this?

I know it's a mouth a word salad, but

No. Not not at all. Of course not. Of course not. There there's so many, brother.

There's so many things to reflect upon. I mean, I think that one of the things I would say is is and I don't wanna harp on this even I you know, I already sort of mentioned something about this, but it's a very serious problem when we when we approach the Quran in sort of the same way that the Christians approach the Bible. And I think that that, you know, the the the larger version of that is us approaching religion itself the way that Westerners do. Because as as we've talked about many times, even it's not right to say Christian, that the Christians are this way and that way because these are Westerners. Their Christianity is this way because they're this way, and they made Christianity this way.

Like I said before, Rome didn't become Christian, the Christians became Romans. So this is a very western, deeply embedded, deeply ingrained in their psyche, the way they are, the way that they behave, the way that they process information, the way that they approach the world, their relationship with religion and so forth. And we absolutely cannot afford to do that because this religion is the truth and the Quran is the truth from the creator of this world. So it's indispensable. The the word of Allah is indispensable.

If you want to move around in this world in anything like success, and if you want to understand this dunya at all, you have to refer. And and actually, like I've like we talked about even in the last talk that we had, that Allah told you the truth and that this is guidance for you. It's guidance for you. And without this guidance, you don't have guidance. That was that was one of the things that that that popped into my mind with what you were saying.

Because also the other thing that I was thinking about was when you don't take the Quran seriously, and you just take the you you just think that the Quran is sort of a feel good book to make you a good person, to make you moral, to make you righteous, or what have you, the same way that the that the westerners approach the bible. Anyway, many of them approach the Bible in this way. And then even even with that, you don't even approach the Bible, you just listen to someone talking about the Bible on Sunday. And unfortunately, many of us also don't read the Quran, we just listen to someone say something from the Quran that, to be honest, many people don't even know whether it's from the Quran or not because it's just Arabic, he could be telling a joke in Arabic, you wouldn't know the difference. But when you don't take it seriously for what it actually is, then for example, you don't think about the fact that these things happened.

The stories in the Quran actually happened. These were actual people in an actual time, in actual circumstances, and then you have to try to imagine what that was like. In in real life, and, like, you talk about how when Nabal Yusuf went to and he received honor. He eventually was given a position of some authority and some power and some respect and honor and dignity and so forth. Okay.

Imagine the scenario in real life because this is something that happened in real life. The people are still. The people did not convert to Islam. The the people did not convert to the religion of Nabi Yusuf. This is universally understood and agreed upon.

So when Bani Israel were welcomed into Egypt, they were Muslims, believers being welcomed, so called welcomed, into a land of kufar. That sounds familiar. You understand? I don't know why they did it, and you don't know why they did it, but I know they were kufar. Maybe by giving them some degree of honor and and and respect and so forth was to make themselves look good, was to make themselves look beneficent, to make themselves look tolerant, to make themselves look multicultural, and so forth.

But we know how they are. They demand assimilation. Their their multiculturalism, their tolerance and what have you demands assimilation. And clearly, this was demanded of Bani Israel in Masrach, clearly. Because again, this is just what happens.

This is your your your rational reasonable mind can tell you, this is how this is going to go. Mhmm. This is what has happened every single time. Not just with not just with the Jews, because of course they weren't Jews at that time. We're talking about Bani Israel.

They were they were the Muslims of Bani Israel. They were the believers of Bani Israel. But we're talking about people with one belief system, tawhid, going into a society of kufr, of shirk, of disbelief, in which they are the minority in a majority of disbelievers. Well, those disbelievers are going to be very uncomfortable with you and your belief system, and they will want you to assimilate. I think that you can make a very a very easy comparison between say, the the worship of the calve and normal the normalization of the worship of the calve and how familiar that becomes to the Bani Israel, and how they start respecting it.

Because first when you you start to assimilate and it's surface level. When you start to assimilate, it's surface level and you have the code switching. Right? You when when you're when you're with these people you talk a certain kind of way, when you're with these people you talk another kind of way. With these people you dress one way, you dress another way, you never really show your true self.

It's a it's a surface level assimilation. And that's with not just obviously with Muslims, with any immigrants, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about immigrants. Bani Israel in Egypt are immigrants, and they were treated in Masr the same way that immigrants are treated everywhere. You you are expected to assimilate to the culture that you're in, and to and to behave like them, respect their ways and to respect their society, to respect their norms, to respect their beliefs and so forth.

Otherwise, they'll set ice against you. And it begins on a surface level, But over generations, brother, over generations It starts to sink in. Until eventually you have Muslims with Christmas trees. For example, You have Muslims thinking that, you know, we should respect, you know, I don't know, Santa Claus and and Merry Christmas.

All cows look the same to us. All cows Voli.

Voli. You know? So this this is what I see. It's it's this story is is also Allah I mean, Allah knows all of the reasons why this story included, why it's important for us to know this story. But in our current circumstances, in the current circumstances of Muslims in the West, Muslims in the lands of Kufar, you should find this story very, very relatable.

And and don't just throw rocks at Bani Israel for their misbehavior and for their disobedience and for their pushing back and so forth because you're doing the same thing. You're doing the same thing. And you have been under, to one degree or another, very similar circumstances. Okay. You're not slaves over there, but who isn't a slave over there?

Let's be honest. The whole system is a slave system. So you've you've gone from you've gone into bondage, that's just not official bondage, and you need to escape from that bondage the same way that Bani Israel needed to escape from that bondage. But I'm not saying that you have to necessarily leave, but you have to get the the bondage out of your mind. That kill

the cow.

Yes. You need to kill the cow. You need to do what you were told. You need to do what you were told. And obviously, the the reason for the the selection of the cow was precisely to exorcise you, to exorcise the Bani Israel from the psychological colonization that they had formed over generations, over centuries to where they had gotten this Through through assimilation, they had developed a peculiar and undeserving and unworthy regard and respect for this animal.

And and the they have had had accepted to one degree or another the Egyptians reverence for this animal. And and then also there's another aspect of it too, which I don't want to go on too much, but there's another aspect of it too, which is you have become used to people practicing a religion that is fundamentally unserious. That's fundamentally unserious. It's true. And and all that there is is the show of reverence, the performance of reverence, but not a religion that is do this, do that.

Do what Allah told you. He gives you commands. He gives you orders. He gives you laws. He gives you rules.

He gives you regulations, and you live by those. If Allah tells you to do something, you do it. They're not used to this. They're used to Okay. They're used to Firaun saying that he's that he's the most high.

But he's the government. So there's also that you've also already put into their heads that the only one who can make the rules is the one who's sitting on the throne. You know? Not that the rules come from revelation, the only one who can give you the rules is the one who's sitting on the throne because the government is God and God is the government. There's no one in the same under Firaun.

So there's so many things that you can draw from this story. Wallahi, there's so many things currently that are relevant to you if you really make and you really think about it and reflect upon this. And I don't wanna I don't wanna cut you off because I actually think I think you you you rushed a bit through the story and I and I I

haven't even gotten to the story yet. I've not even gotten to the story yet, you know. Like I said, this might this one might be a lump. You

take your time, brother, because this is all wisdom and this is all knowledge, and this is, you know, as I said, we we we we post on on Middle Nation for posterity, not for popularity. So it's gonna be in the record. This is a document. The entire Middle Nation channel is a document that Muslims will be able to refer to for for all time to come, and hopefully gain rewarded and gain gain benefit from it, gain knowledge and gain understanding from it. And this is a very important topic and a very important story to reflect upon and to dig deep into for insights in our current age.

Because again, the Quran isn't just a book of general generic wisdoms. It's not a book of, you know, aphorisms and and and axioms and whatnot. It's guidance for you every single day from from the day it was revealed, from the moment it is revealed until the last day. There is guidance to be found in it. You must take this very very seriously.

And it it astonishes me how people can look into to all sorts of other books. They'll make all sorts of efforts to read all sorts of other books, the whatever power, laws of power, you know, Machiavelli, all of these things, you'll take all of these things for guidance that they can teach you how to go through life, they can give they can give you how to deal with people, how to deal with this and that and the other situation, and you don't look at the Quran and believe that it can give you much better than that. Real practical, realistic, real world guidance for your life that can be found in the Quran. If you don't think you can find it in that, then you're just not thinking about the Quran the right way, and you're not approaching it the right

way. You you mentioning this part is the reason why we actually are talking about this, you know, because it's like, okay, you're a Muslim, you believe in the Quran, you believe in guidance from from Allah, from God Almighty, why don't you just follow it? But that is where the story of Atul Bakrat, this story, applies to so many Muslims, because it's like, they knew Musa was a prophet. They had no doubt in that. They knew that Allah was with them.

They saw it with their own two eyes. But kill a cow. Boom. Now you hit a wall. So what happened to all of your imam translating to following the command?

What happened? That process is what a lot of Muslims have to overcome. Because, you know, just to mention this, the story of Ahl Bakrat comes before all of the aham that you get, all of the rules that you get in Surah Tibakkara. I mean, so many commands in Surah Tibakkara, which direction we pray, fasting in the month of Ramadan, rulings on, you know, like, for women, divorce, riba, you know, you you get so many rules in this hajj, so many rules in this surah. And the back end of the surah is full of things like this, but interspersed between them are stories.

And, you know, it's it's said of Omar ibn Khattab that some narratives say eight years, some say twelve, that he took almost around a decade to memorize the surah. It's not because he couldn't just cram it in. It's because of the density of the surah. What stops us for all this faith from following the command? This story becomes a a perfect example of that.

And notice how we can't talk about the story of al HaBakar without talking about Yusuf because that's how they got there. But look at how Yusuf got there. He got there because he was sold into slavery by his brothers. He wasn't conquered by someone else. It was his own family.

Of course, he forgave them at the end of the story, and he wasn't as, vitriolic as he's displayed in the in the bible. No. He was merciful because that's how prophets are, and that's one of several distinctions between our books and or our book and theirs. But Yusuf went from slavery to power in his own story. And then Bani Israel went from that prestige to enslavement.

And then freedom to then trying to get into the promised land, Philistine. May Allah return Philistine to the That up and down in and of itself is its own reflection point. It is its own reflection point. But it is as you said, once they made it there, Yusuf was the only believer as far as we know in all of Egypt, and he was a slave, and then he was a prisoner, and then he reached power by holding on to his ethics, not selling out, not being caught up over a cow, by doing what Allah commanded him at every interval. Being tempted by a woman of power did not cause him to sacrifice his demon his demon, he suffered for that.