The Da'awah Hustle

This is a different kind of video. It's just gonna be improvised, impromptu, no script, no nothing because there's just something that I kinda have to get off my chest. People who watch YouTube, Muslims who watch YouTube and who watch Muslim YouTube, you need to understand that ninety, ninety five, maybe 99% of what you're seeing and the the YouTubers, the Muslim YouTubers that you're seeing are phonies. And I and it's phonies because of the way you're taking them, not necessarily because of what they are, but because of the way you are interpreting, the way that you are treating them, because you're taking them seriously. And you shouldn't.

Because, look, most of these channels are monetized. You need to understand what that means. If a channel is monetized, it's a commercial channel. If it's a commercial channel, then the content is all advertising. Everything that they're putting out on their YouTube channel in all of their videos is for one purpose and one purpose only, which is to make money.

Now there's multiple ways that they're trying to make money. One of them is just to generate views. So their content is gonna be determined on the basis of what will generate views because they can make money the more views they get. There you you have the ones that are monetized, and then you have the ones that are even more than that, which is they're selling stuff. They're selling products.

They're selling services. They're selling courses. They're selling affiliate marketing links and whatnot, all of these types of things. That means this is a business for them. This is a business.

Whenever you watch one of their videos, you're watching a commercial. You're watching advertising. The same way that when you watch any corporate media, even the news, it's sponsored by companies. It's sponsored by advertisers. They will mold the content in such a way to reach a certain demographic to sell the products of their advertisers, the goods and services of their advertisers.

That's the same thing people do on YouTube. You need to understand that. They're not saying things that they really think. They're not saying things that they really believe. They're not saying things that they have expertise in.

They're saying things that will get you watching so that they can make money and so that they can form a list of people because, you know, most of these guys have, like, a newsletter so that they can get your email address. With a list of email addresses, they can market products to you, products, services, courses, whatever, and they can also sell that email list to anyone else, to any advertisers, to any companies, to anyone who's interested in having a demographic list of people who are interested in the types of subjects that they cover on their channels. Okay? If it's monetized, it's a commercial channel, and the content is for the purpose of generating money, period, point blank. That's what it's for.

They're playing a character when they get the channel. I don't take any of them seriously, and you shouldn't either. You don't have to take me seriously either. I'm not monetized. I'm not trying to make money.

I'm not trying to sell anything, but you still don't have to take me seriously. I'm just a guy with a YouTube channel. So are they, but the point is they're making money. They're trying to make money. And the extent to which they can make money is dependent on the extent to which you take them seriously.

And this bothers me because we're talking about the deen. We're talking about Islam. We're talking about the religion. We're talking about the truth. Not a hustle.

It's not supposed to be a hustle. But you've got people now who will say whatever and talk about things whatever so that they can get views because they know that it will appeal to a certain demographic. And then you've got people with YouTube channels who are just directly with their handout asking for money, asking for donations for Darwin to help support Islam. You got people who've been making videos for free for since the beginning of YouTube for ten, fifteen years. They've been making videos for free, now they need money to do it for what?

You've been doing it. You've been doing it without money. Why do you need money now? What? So you can get a new microphone?

You can get a fancy camera? You can, what, shoot at locations? How is that dawah? How is that helping Islam? How is that spreading the deen?

That's ridiculous. No. You're making money. It's a business. But the fault isn't their fault.

There's always been hustlers. But the difference is that you're supposed to be able to identify someone who's a hustler, someone who's just in it for the money, who's trying to make money. There's nothing wrong with trying to make money, but you have to know what you're dealing with and stop taking them seriously as or as scholars or as sheikhs or as or as whatever you wanna call it. If they have a monetized channel, they're businessmen and their product is to you some version of Islam. And the version of Islam that they're gonna teach, the version of Islam that they're gonna propagate isn't necessarily the correct version of Islam or even an informed version of Islam because they want to appeal to a certain demographic of people who are motivated to learn Islam only so far that they're going to YouTube for it, that they're going to the Internet for it.

You're not talking about students of knowledge. You're talking about normal people, regular people who are busy and whatever. And so Islamic knowledge isn't the top priority in their life because they're not going to an Islamic school. They're not they're not taking lessons at the masjid or halakah or darsh or whatever, what have you. They're just going on the to the Internet.

They wanna use the Internet in halal way, so they try to look at Islamic things because it makes them feel good to hear Islamic stuff. That means that the version of Islam that they're gonna put forward is a version of Islam that they know already agrees with your ignorance. They're not gonna learn. They don't wanna alienate you. They want to draw you in and sell things to you.

They wanna draw you in and keep you coming back for more views so that they make more money on their monetization, and they can make their email list so that they can sell things to you. And then they can ask you for money as well. Just straight up donations. Straight up Sadakah. So they're not gonna tell you something that they know you might disagree with, And you're potentially gonna disagree with a lot if you're not very educated in Islam.

You're gonna have a cultural Islam. You're gonna have an ignorant version of Islam, and they will validate that for you because that's how they make money. So the problem is is with us. It's with us, the audience. We should know what we're dealing with.

A monetized channel is by definition a commercial channel, and all of its content is advertising. That's what it is. You're looking at commercials. You're looking at people trying to make money from you, which is fine. Again, you can do that.

You shouldn't really do it with Islam because you're playing around with the truth. You're playing playing around with the you're playing around with this deen that Allah has protected for over a thousand years. And now you're someone who is not actually protecting it, but using it to try to make money, and that bothers me. And then the other thing is, if you're somebody if you're if you're a Muslim and you're asking Muslims for money because you can't you don't have a job. You don't have a proper job.

You don't have a profession. You don't have a career. You don't have the expertise to have career. And so what you need to do is rely upon and live upon the generosity of the Muslims because of their love for Islam. You're gonna live on the of the Muslims.

You're a bad example. I'm sorry. You're a bad example, and no one should support you. If you're not using the money, like, there's there's legit. There are legit charities.

If you're putting food in the mouths of Muslims, if you're helping to avert famines in Yemen, in Somalia, in Eritrea, in wherever, if you're helping actually with relief for Muslims in a material way, you're taking money from you're taking money from Muslims who have money and giving it to Muslims who don't have money, not taking money from Muslims and putting it in your pocket so that you can make dawah. That's if that's what you're doing, you're a very bad example, and no one should support you because that's not how we're gonna rise. From people who don't even know how to support themselves financially except by begging. That's not a good example. We need people who can make money and support their dawah work and can support Islam with the money that they make, not with money that they're begging people for.

Again, if you're getting if you're collecting to actually materially help other Muslims, impoverished Muslims, Muslims who've been hit struck by catastrophes, war torn countries, victims, if you're doing that, that's completely legitimate, and we will all help. But if you're asking for money so that you can have a better lifestyle because of your channel and so that you can produce nicer quality videos, no. You need to figure out how to make money like everybody else. You need to get a job. You need to get some qualifications.

You need to finance your own work. Don't ask other people to finance it. You know? We've got people with degrees from major American institutions, Ivy League, asking for money. Why don't you have a good job?

Why don't you work for Boeing? Instead, you start an Islamic institute with no Islamic training. You have no Islamic training, no Islamic background, no Islamic knowledge in an organized fashion, just the same as everybody else that you learned online, just like your viewers. You learned Islam the same way that they're learning Islam, is just Google, googling it, trying to find things out here and there, self taught. Nothing wrong with being self taught, but it doesn't qualify you to have an educational institute teaching people about Islam and the proper Islamic interpretation of this and that and the other.

You're not qualified. And that's that that goes for anybody. If you're just a guy who's good who's good at talking, that doesn't make you an expert in Islam, and you shouldn't be advising or counseling or guiding or giving fatawa or telling people what's right and wrong in Islam. Period. And if you are doing that, if you're even if you're if you're someone who's qualified to do that, support yourself with your own money.

Make money and support yourself, and then you're a good example. But if you can't even figure out how to put food on your own table, how how are you a good role model for anybody? If you're asking people for money, how are you a good role model? This is not what we need. So I just wanted to get that off my chest.

It really bothers me. Anybody can have a YouTube channel. Anybody can put up stuff, and it's supposed to be that, that you just if you have something on your mind, if you have something that you wanna talk about, if you have an opinion, you put it out there. Nobody's gotta pay you for it. Nobody's asking you for your opinion.

Obviously, if somebody want if somebody supports, what someone is saying, what someone is doing, and they want to help them out out of kindness, okay, whatever. But it's actually insulting. It's actually to me, it's insulting to a man. You're gonna pay me for what I think. You're gonna pay me for my opinion.

Why? This is not expertise. It's different if someone is doing deep research and they're doing real, you know, analysis of something because they have an expertise in that area or they're they're doing a some kind of helping someone with a business plan or they're, you know, something in-depth, something that takes expertise, academic expertise, professional expertise, you pay for that. That that that has a market value. Your opinion doesn't have a market value.

It shouldn't. Because if your opinion has a market value and you're selling it, then you will take the opinion that sells. The only opinion that you'll express is the opinion that can make money. It'll be the opinion that sells. So just for for for people in the YouTube world, the the the people who have channels, who have YouTube accounts just to watch videos, understand this.

The people who have accounts and who have channels, who have monetized those channels are just doing it for money and their content is for money. It's not for help. Don't give me the the business. Never meant to be naive. Never meant to be gullible.

Doesn't mean that you suspend rational, logical deductions about somebody's intention. So that's all I wanted to say.