Shaykh Ismail Kamdar: Rediscovering Our Rich Islamic History

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Shaykh Ismail Kamdar (00:00):
Many people don't know that World War

(00:01):
I, is one of the most importantevents in Muslim history.
It directly impacts how theMuslim world is today in many
different ways.
But because we are so ignorantof our history, we think of it
as a European event that hadnothing to do with Muslims.

Mifrah Mahroof (00:17):
Asalamu Alaikum everyone and welcome to the
show.
I'm your host Mifrah Mahroof andin today's episode we have on
Shaykh Ismail Kamdar.
So a bit about our guest today,Shaykh Ismail is the graduate of
a traditional Alim program andalso holds a Bachelor's in
Islamic Studies.
He has studied Islam in bothtraditional and modern setting
and has been a student ofknowledge over two decades.

(00:40):
He has served as a facultymanager at the Islamic Open
University for 10 years, haswritten over 25 books and is
currently the researcher andproject manager at Yaqeen
Institute.
So I hope you enjoyed thisepisode and without further ado,
let's get started.
Asalamu Alaikum.
Welcome to the show.

Shaykh Ismail K (00:58):
Wa'alaikumsalam Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh

Well, thank you so much for coming on.
so you were one of our gueststhat we had back in the days
where Muslim Life Hackers, Ithink it was like 2015.
So it's a pleasure to have youback on again.
And this time doing Muslim LifeHackers 2.
0.
So, what actually has changedsince then?
I know it's been a very longtime.

Yeah, it's been a almost a full decade.
So I think in many wayseverything's changed, right?
When I first came on Muslim LifeHackers, I was a young man
starting my first onlinebusiness and self publishing my
first books and Alhamdulillah, alot has changed since then.
Back then I was working for theInternational Open University

(01:39):
now I'm the Yaqeen Institute asa researcher.
And The website that I startedaround the same time as Muslim
Life Hackers, Islamic Self Help,is still going strong.

Alhamdulillah, that's really nice.
It's good that you continued

think one big

paused.

Yeah, most people pause.
I think the one big differencefor me is that, when we started,
I had just started homeschoolingmy kids, and they were all small
children, and now I've got allteenagers.
And they're actually working forme at Islamic Self Help and
they've already started, doingbehind the scenes work on video

(02:14):
editing and things like that.
So, it's a very different stageof life for me.

Oh, that's really nice.
Cause I'm actually juststarting.
I am where you were 10 yearsback.
Now I have my own daughter andnow I'm thinking about,
different schooling options,what's out there.
And, it's going to be aninteresting decade ahead,
InshaAllah.
I'm still alive.

Yeah.
I know, when my eldest son wasborn, I spent like four or five
years researching every type ofschool system and speaking to
different people before makingthe decision to homeschool him.
It's a big decision to make.

Yeah, a hundred percent.
And I know like you have so manyinterests.
So you had the homeschooling,you have the personal
development, and now recentlyyou also told me how you got
into the whole Islamicmasculinity, around all those,
especially with all thediscussions that are happening
these days online.
But in today's podcast, I wouldreally love to go deeper on
another passion that you have ofIslamic history.

(03:04):
So where did that all begin?

Islamic history has always been a
passion of mine, one of myearliest memories as a child,
when I first started readingwhat my mom bought me, the
biographies of the Sahabacollection, and I read all of
them as a child, maybe when Iwas like 7 or 8 years old.
I've always had a passion forhistory from a very young age,
I've always noticed it as a gapin our curriculum.
Like, even when I did myAlimiyah program.

(03:29):
There was no history componentto it.
That's a major gap currently.
Many Alimiyyah programs don'tteach history.
And it was so bad that some ofmy teachers would actually rely
on me for historicalinformation.
Like, they would ask me the nameof the Sahabi, or that king, or
when did this happen, when didthat happen.
I was like 14 or 15 years old,and my teachers were in their
30s and 40s.

(03:49):
But History just wasn't taught.
It wasn't something that wascommonly taught, and I always
found that to be problematic.
Because we are living in such astrange time.
And if you don't know history,you just think that this is the
way it's always been.
That's the major gap in mostpeople's mind, right?
They think.
we've had the Prophet SAW, thenwe had the Khulafa Rashidin, and

(04:11):
then we have the mess we're intoday.
There's like a 1, 300 year gap.
That's completely blank in manypeople's minds.
And what happened was, when Iwas working at the International
Open University, which I workedat for over 10 years, I was the
Islamic History teacher there.
And every year I would be takinga different group of students
through Islamic History, and Iwould notice certain trends

(04:34):
amongst them, right?
Islamic History was a shockerfor them.
Many of them thought that it'sjust going to be stories of the
Sahaba, and it's going to bemotivational, and it's going to
be all nice things that happen.
And then they learn about thesecivil wars, and these brutal
kings, and murders, and theMongols, and the Crusaders, and
the Reconquista, and Some ofthem actually used to get

(04:55):
overwhelmed.
They were like, this is not whatwe thought our history was.
Because, again, we have such agap in our history.
That for us, when we think ofhistory for many people, all
they think about is stories ofthe Sahaba and stories of the
Auliya.
And for me, I've always had thisattitude of being as transparent
and open about our history aspossible.

(05:15):
Not leaving anything to thebooks, like if something
happened, I talk about it.
Like I just did a four partJummah Khutbah series on the
aftermath of Karbala.
The 14 year civil war that tookplace after karbala and that's
like a topic nobody talks aboutbecause it's a very dark part of
our history

yeah,

But I realized that there was no real
resource in the English languageon Muslim history that, it's
comprehensive from the time ofthe Prophet SAW until today and
what happened was in 2020 duringthe lockdown I was stuck at
home.
I was bored.
I said, you know what?
Let me record it.
So once a week, over a 10 monthperiod, I recorded a 30 part

(05:58):
series.
I put it up on my website.
I thought I'll get maybe 30 or40 people to sign up.
I was surprised.
Right now we have 1,900 sales.
So, Alhamdulillah,

Well, it really shows the

far the most successful thing I
published.

Yeah.
So, if you were to take a fewsteps back, why do you think
it's so important that we knowour history?
because the thing is, if youknow the Prophet SAW time, you
know the Sahaba's time, then youhave your framework, your role
models.
Then, what happened in

What's the point of

What's the point, hey?

Yeah.
That's a good question.
That's a good starting point fora discussion.
I think one of the best ways tostart off is to make a
distinction, and I make thisdistinction in all my history
courses and books, a distinctionbetween Islamic history and
Muslim history, right?
So, Islamic history is thestories of the Prophets and the
Sahaba.

(06:48):
That's where we learn Islamfrom, that's where we get our
role models

Yeah.

Everything that happens after that is
Muslim history.
Basically, after the time of theSahaba, it's normal people like
you and me, they have theirgood, they have their bad, they
have their ups, they have theirdowns, they have their faults,
they have their victories,they're not necessarily role
models, and if you understandthat this is Muslim history, not
Islamic history, you now have adistinction, okay, I'm not

(07:12):
studying this to learn Islam,I'm just studying this to learn
it.
What happened in the world,right?
What did Muslims ever do oraccomplish or how did we get to
where we are?
That's the most importantquestion to me.
How did we get to, where we are?
So for example, I spent a lot ofthis year specifically studying
and teaching the history of thepast 200 years the colonialism

(07:33):
and World War I, and how thesetwo events affected the Muslim
world.
Many people don't know thatWorld War I, is one of the most
important events in Muslimhistory.
It directly impacts how theMuslim world is today in many
different ways.
But because we are so ignorantof our history, we think of it
as a European event that hadnothing to do with Muslims,

Okay.
So why is that important?
World War I.

Well, simply put the Ottoman Empire
lost World War I, and theKhilafat was abolished, and the
Muslim lands were taken over bythe British and the French and
divided into the countries thatwe have today.

So the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic, a Muslim
empire.

It was the last caliphate, the last Darul
Islam, the last Sharia land, andit was still a superpower in the
world right until World War Istarted.
It just so happened that it wason the losing side of that war.

So it was actually a superpower up until
that time.

Right, till that time, in fact, one of
the interesting things about theOttoman Empire is they spent the
18th century restructuring to bea modern Khilafat.
So they had changed a lot oftheir policies and
administration, to basicallymake the Khilafat work in the
new world, in the 20th century.
But they never got a chance totest all of that because they

(08:44):
lost the war and they lost alltheir lands.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.
So this is a part of our historypeople don't know about at all.
It is very difficult to evenfind books on these topics.
I had to put together 20different books, each with
little pieces of it.
And, read all 20 books to putthe pieces together in my mind,
to understand properly whatexactly happened.
Because Just 300 or 400 yearsago, the Ottoman Empire was the

(09:11):
largest and most powerful empirein the world.
It was the world's superpower.
Right?
It was the most powerful empirein the world.
So how did we go in 400 yearsfrom being the most powerful
empire in the world to being inthe mess that the Muslim world
is in today?
Right?
Because we don't study history,we don't know.
And because we don't writeenough about history, it's very

(09:31):
hard to access this information.
the main point of studying allof this is to understand how did
we end up where we are, right?
the other main reason to studyhistory is that common saying,
those who don't learn historyare doomed to repeat it, right?
History is cyclical, it goesthrough cycles, there is ups and
downs of history.
When I study history, I noticetrends.

(09:53):
Things that happened in the pastthat kind of are happening again
today.
And when you study history, itmakes a lot more sense, right?
I'll give you two examples.
Number one, about 800 years agoor 700 years ago, Palestine was
conquered by the Christians, theCrusaders.
And for about 90 years, theMuslims of that land were
oppressed.

90 years

then a new Muslim power rose up.
Yeah.
So a new Muslim power rose up.
Salahuddin Ayyubi andreconquered that land and it
became a Muslim land again untilWorld War I.

And how long was that?
So after it got

That was another 700 years.
like So for about 700 years, itwas a Muslim.
It wasn't under one Khalifa.
It kept changing power, but itwas always Muslim powers, right?
Yeah, because it was theAyyubis, then the Mamluks, then
the Ottomans, but it was aMuslim land, and right to the
end.
So, for example, Zionism startedin the 1800s.
And they spent a lot of timetrying to buy off Palestine from

(10:47):
the Ottoman Empire.
And the Ottomans told them, aslong as we are around, you
cannot have that land.
So the Zionists conspired withthe British in World War I, and
gave them weapons, advancedweapons, not in exchange for any
money, but in exchange for apromise that if they win that
war, they will give that land tothe Zionists.
And that's really how Israelstarted, right?

(11:08):
The foundations of Israel werealso again in World War I.
That's why I say we're stillliving in the aftermath of World
War I.
Everything from the IsraelPalestine conflict, to not
having a Khilafat, to beingdivided into nation states.
To be living as minorities innon Muslim lands, all of this is
still ripple effects of whathappened in World War I.
So there's there's repeatedevents here in history, right?

(11:28):
Muslims ruled Jerusalem for thebulk of our history.
At one point, the Christianstook over for a while, oppressed
everyone.
Muslims got it back.
Now the Jews have taken over fora while, are oppressing
everyone.
InshaAllah, Muslims will get itback as well.
Second example, about 800 yearsago, the Arab Khilafat
collapsed, right?

(11:48):
We had Arab Khalifas for thefirst 600 years of our history,
the Omas and the Abbas, and thenthe Mongols invaded and the
Khilafat collapsed, and peoplethought it was the end times.
They thought, it's the end ofthe world.
There's never gonna be aKhilafat again, it was a very
dark period for the Muslims,

How long was that?

200 years later, 200 year.
This is 800 years.
ago, right?
200 years later, the OttomanEmpire rises.
And now we have a TurkishKhilafat that goes on for
another 500 years.
Right?
And then that collapses exactly100 years ago in 1924.

Yeah.
Like, uh,

a lot of people think that this is our
first time in our historywithout a khalifa, there's
actually a 200 year gap wherethere was no clear Khalifa.
Some people say there was aProphet Abbasid, some say the
Mamluk, some say the safavid.
But the fact is, for those 200years, the Muslims were divided
into many smaller lands.
Each with their own king, eachof whom were fighting each
other, and none of whom reallyhad the power to call themselves

(12:45):
the Khalifa.
Right, and even the Ottomans inthe early years were just a
small state, right, just a fewcities.
It took them 200 to 300 years toreach the level of power where
they felt confident to startcalling themselves Khalifas.
They didn't call themselvesKhalifas straight away, right.
It was only after they hadconquered Constantinople, which
is Istanbul today, Palestine,Jerusalem.

(13:08):
Makkah and Madinah.
Once they were ruling these fourcapital cities then only they
had the confidence to say we arethe Khalifas of the Muslim
world.

That's interesting.
So, it makes me think like ifyou were to speak to someone who
was in those down periods, likethat 200 year or that 80 year
down period before Jerusalem wasconquered,

yeah.

might've, been a very bleak conversation with
whoever was

It would have been.
In fact if you read the bookswritten in that period, the
books in that period can be verydepressing.
So many of the ulama that livedduring that period, they
actively described the Mongolsas Yajud and Majud, as Gog and
Magog.
Like, they actually thought theywere living in the end times,
and this is Gog and Magog, andit's over, right, we now, the
world is ending.
But, the world's still around,over 800 years later.

(13:53):
And the thing is, many peopletoday have that same mindset,
right?
And Allah knows best, the worldcould go on for another thousand
years.

That's an interesting one because those
people now who think that, Hey,we're at the end of times, it's
because some people feel that,Hey, all of these minor signs
have happened.
And we're at the peak of suchall of these shameless deeds and
stuff that are happening.
So they feel that, okay, this isit, this is the end of times.
I'm curious to know, what areyour thoughts on that?

So, as a historian, I notice every
generation thinks they're livingin the end times.
Starting right with the Sahaba.
The Sahaba, many of them thoughtthe Dajjal might come in their
lifetime, right?

And that's how

Every generation thinks they are
living in the end times.

too.
Like it's,

Yeah, every generation thinks that.
Because every generation isdefinitely closer to the end
times than generation beforethem.
Right?
and there's always crazy thingshappening in the world, like
right now there's a lot ofthings going on in the world
that are quite depressing andscary.
There are many actual signs ofthe Day of Judgment that are
happening at the moment, butthose are the minor signs, not

(14:56):
the major signs.
And, there's a hadith where theProphet SAW was asked, when will
the Day of Judgment happen?
And he replied, what have youprepared for it?
Right, meaning it's not our jobto speculate whether it's the
end times or not.
It's our job to prepare forJannah, right, because we don't
know.

(15:16):
It could happen in our lifetime,it could happen in a hundred
years time, it could happen in athousand years time.
There is no way to know forsure, until the actual major
signs start rolling in, that weare living in the end times.
And I feel a lot of people usethis as a crutch not to do
anything with their life.

Yes.
That's what I've notice as

well.
You know, to just sit back.

It's like, okay, well,

back, they complain, the world is doomed.
Only Mahdi can fix it.
Only Jesus can fix

Mahdi can that.

yeah.
Yeah.

So what do you

and what's strange is when you actually
study the signs of the times,it's very clear that when the
Mahdi comes and when Dajjalcomes, there will be a Khilafat
already, Muslims will be rulinga large portion of the world.

Interesting.

And there will actually be like a world
war between Europeans andMuslims before Mahdi comes and
before Dajjal comes.
So, we're still very far awayfrom any of that.

I guess it means that we need to get back to
actually looking at what we'repreparing for that Day of
Judgment.

Yeah, everyone should focus on what
they are doing to prepare forthe afterlife.
And, going back to your questionabout why we should study
history.
Two more points about why I liketo study history.
Number one is it humanizespeople.

Hmm.

Like, we tend to think that, oh, we're
not like the people of the past,we can't be as pious as them, so
what's the point of trying?
When you study history, yourealize the majority of Muslims
were never pious.
The majority of Muslims wereaverage.
They struggled, they had theirsins, they had their good deeds,
they were people like us.
And, you don't have to be fromthe old era to get to Jannah.

(16:47):
The average person.
Can get to Jannah if Allahforgives them for their sins.
And that's what we make Dua forthe people of the past.
Allah forgives them for theirsins and for the people of
today, Allah forgives us for oursins.
So it's very humbling when youread, for example, the travels
of the great Muslim travelersthroughout history, people like
Evliye Celebi or Ibn Batutah,Ibn Jubayr, all of their travel

(17:08):
logs have been translated intoEnglish.
And you realize that the Muslimsof their time were just as
messed up as the Muslims today,right?
And they saw even crazier andwilder things than what happens
in the Muslim world today.
and you realize that there'salways going to be, at every
point in time some sins that arepredominant and some people who
are weak and some people who arepious, and the average person in

(17:31):
between who is just average.
And it gives more hope to theaverage person that we can still
get to Jannah, right?
Because we lose this much ofeverybody being pious throughout
history, uh, and you can relatebetter to the people of history,
right?
You can actually relate betterto the people of history, when
you realize that they are human,and I think that to me is one of

(17:52):
the most humbling things aboutstudying history.
The other point is that it getsyou over this feeling that we
are living in the worst point intime in history.
We're not living in the worstpoint in time in our history The
ummah has lived through andsurvived much darker times than
what we're going through rightnow, even just 50 years ago,
even just a hundred years agoThe ummah was in a much more

(18:13):
devastating state than it is intoday.
We are actually living through arevival phase, like the
devastation came from World WarI, and now we are 100 years
later, we are now in a revivalphase.
We're actually in a much betterplace than we were even just 30
years ago.
but if you don't study history,you can't see all this.
you can't really see all this ifyou don't study beyond your own

(18:34):
life.
Yeah.

It definitely puts a lot of things in
perspective because it showsthat there's so much that's
happened before.
And this is how history moveson.
And this is just one part ofhistory.
I wonder though, you see how youare saying about those travel
logs of, about those Muslimtravelers, how they saw things
that were like even worse thantoday.
Do you think that, like howeveryone's online today and
social media and we see more allof those haram things are

(18:59):
highlighted more.
And then we think that, oh, theworld is really bad because it's
actually broadcasted thosethings, whereas in those days it
wasn't as broadcasted, but itstill happened.

Yeah, I've got a very shaky relationship
with social media.
On one hand, social media hashelped me to reach many people
and it's also been very good formy business.
On the other hand, part of mefeels like social media should
be haram, like there's more harmthan good for the average person
on social media.
One of the biggest harams isthat it has made sin public and

(19:32):
normalized.
Right?
throughout history, you willfind, for example, in almost any
era of our history, you study,you will find Muslims drank
alcohol.
They were Muslims who werealcoholics.
But they recognized it as a sin.
And they did it in private.
And they were ashamed of theirsin.
And if they tried to do itpublicly, others would have

(19:53):
shamed them, they would havebeen lashed, they would have
been repercussions for publiclysinning.
Right?
It's the same with homosexual,same with Zina, same with any
major sin.
It existed, but in the shadows.
And, what happens with socialmedia is that sin is not just
normalized, it's moralized.

(20:14):
Like, there's now a moraljustification for sinning.
It's become such that socialmedia is all about, being you,
going viral, and, getting peopleto praise you, and it's much
easier to do that through sinthan through good deeds.
Like, if someone goes online, ifa Muslim goes online, for
example, a Muslim goes onlineand she takes off her hijab, she

(20:35):
will have thousands of peoplepraising her for getting rid of
oppression, and freeing herselffrom the patriarchy.
For people who are looking forattention, for people who want
that praise, who want that fame,it's very easy to now just get
caught up in this world ofpublicly sinning.
This is the big problem withsocial media.
It's not only publicized sin,it's moralized.

(20:55):
It's become completelydesensitized to it.
Just think about, for example,just 20 years ago, how shocking
it would be to see an image of anaked woman.
Right, and how normal it istoday,

Hmm.

it's all over the internet, even if you
don't want to see it, it pops upon social media without you
because the algorithm just putsit up there, people advertise to
it, bots just throw it outthere.
It's become so normalized thatYou actually meet young Muslims
who don't even really think ofit as a sin anymore to look at
such pictures.

So it sounds like the sins were there, but
because it's broadcasted out,it's become more normalized.
So people have an impressionthat, Oh, this time is really
bad.
We're in a the worst time inhistory.
And then it just makes them goback and, feel like only the
Mahdi can save this, right?
It's like It's not myresponsibility, like I'm
helpless.
It's interesting.

Yeah, this idea that it's not my
responsibility.
This is us running away frombeing an ummah, right?
Because Allah SWT tells us inthe Quran that the believing men
and women are allies to eachother.
They command what is good andthey forbid what is evil.
Which means that we are supposedto be holding each other to
account.
We are supposed to be correctingeach other, right?

(22:09):
This is going away, for example,if a Muslim woman displays her
beauty online, and a Muslim mancorrects her, she'll say, You
have no right to correct me.
It's none of your business.
Or you're being misogynistic, oryou're being a patriarchal.
But, it is based the Quran sayswe are supposed to correct each
other.
We are supposed to hold eachother to account.

(22:30):
We have to hold the linesomewhere, otherwise, everything
comes through, one after theother.
So there has to be this,accountability between Muslims
and there also has to be thisworking to improve.
Look at the issue of socialmedia.
We can just have a defeatistattitude and say social media is
here, nothing we can do aboutit, let's just embrace it or We

(22:51):
could try and brainstormsolutions.
So for example, one of thethings I do with younger people
is I try to help them cut downon their social media time

Yeah,

because a lot of them are just online 24
7.
It's very unhealthy to be onlineall the time, so I try to help
them have healthier habits whenit comes to social media.
Number one to cut down on whatthey are following and who they
are following.
Number two to just log in onceor twice a day.
And maybe to have an hour a daywhere you check all your social

(23:23):
media.
Because it is not healthy to beconstantly connected with other
people in this way it's nothuman.
What I'm realizing now is thatthis generation doesn't even
have time to think anymorebecause we're just feeding
ourselves these algorithm feeds24 7.
No one actually has time to justsit back and think.

(23:43):
It's like we have to beconstantly absorbing something.
And so people don't have time toform their own thoughts, they
don't have time to even thinkabout their own life, to have a
vision, to have a goal, to dosome self reflection, to improve
on themselves.
Because we're just constantlyconnected and we're constantly
absorbing other things.

days.
Um,

Yeah, and boredom is important.
right?
Boredom is important, it'ssomething I do for myself, I try
to be offline as much aspossible.
I don't have social medianotifications on any of my
devices.
I log in once or twice a dayjust to post something
beneficial or to advertise forone of my courses or books and
to check my notifications andthat's it for the rest of the

(24:23):
day I'm not on social mediabecause it is a dangerous place
to be and we are the firstgeneration, to be exposed to it.
We actually don't really knowthe long term harms of it until
our generation gets old.
Then we look back and say ohwow, this really messed up our
generation.
We the guinea pigs

Going back to the topic of Islamic history
there, I'm curious to know, whatkind of things were in the
Ottoman Empire or at least ourrecent caliphate that you don't
see in the Western world todaythat the average Muslim would be
surprised hearing about.

One of the things that frustrates me about
history is the Ottoman Empire isperhaps the least Studied Muslim
Empire in the English language.
It's very hard to find Englishresources about the Ottoman
Empire and some people knowabout the Umayyad, some people
know about the Abbasids, notmany people know about the
Ottomans.
There's actually a lot ofresearch into the Ottoman Empire

(25:18):
this year because after I finishteaching the history course,
what I'm currently teaching is acourse on Sharia.
And more specifically, thehistory of how the Sharia was
applied.
And a lot of it focuses on theOttoman Empire.
So I'll give you a few of theinteresting things that I
noticed about the Ottoman Empirefrom this study.
Number one, I think humanity mayhave achieved peak freedom under

(25:40):
the Ottoman Empire.

Interesting.

like a strange thing to say.
Right?
Peak freedom.
What do I mean by this?
So, under the Ottoman Empire,they had the Millat system, the
religion system.
And what that meant is, youwould have a Christian village,
or a Christian town, or aChristian neighborhood.
Similarly, Jewish towns, Jewishneighborhoods.
And they would entirely selfgovern according to their
religion.
The only interaction with thegovernment was once a year, they

(26:05):
pay the taxes, which is like 2to 5%, just yeah, just 2 to 5%
taxes per year, and

40%, 50%, 45% in some.
Yeah.
There was actually onlyobligation

to the government, to pay the tax.
Other than that, the only otherinteraction with the government
is that the Khalifa or hisrepresentatives would meet with
the priests and rabbis and askthem, Do you need anything?
Do you have any problems that wecan solve?
Is there anything we can do foryou?
And other than that, all ofthese Christian towns and
villages and Jewish towns andvillages were completely self

(26:38):
governed.
They would be run according tothe Torah or the Bible, and they
would have full freedom to justlive their lives as they wanted.
Muslims would not interfere intheir lifestyles at all, and it
was very similar for Muslims aswell.
People think of Sharia as, thisstrict enforcement of every
small rule using, violence.

(26:58):
That's not what Sharia is.
Under Sharia, there's only like10 sins that carry a capital
punishment or like a violentpunishment.
And the conditions to apply theviolent punishments are so
strict that they rarely evercarried out.
So for example, people bring upthe issue of stoning the
adulterer.
In the 500 years of the Ottomanhistory, how many people do you

(27:19):
think were stoned for adulteryin 500 years?

I don't think there's any, even in Islamic
history, right?

In 500 years, it was one person.

One person.
Okay.
Wow.
One

incident in 500 years from what I've been
able to find.

That's amazing.
That's

how rare it was for these punishments to
actually

So it sounds like these

They existed more as to scare away
people from public sin.
Yeah.

I see.

So these laws tend to exist more as a way
of scaring people away frompublic sin.
But in Islam, you're not allowedto violate people's privacy.
You're not allowed to look intopeople's private sins.
You're not allowed to spy onpeople, right?
So, what people did in privatewas their own business.
So there's actually a lot offreedom under Sharia, the only

(28:02):
restriction that the Sharia hasthat modernity does not have is
that in Sharia, public sin is ano.
If you see somebody sinningpublicly, you will call them out
for it, you will advise them,you will shame them for it.

So

that prevents sin from being
normalized.

the non, Muslims living in those lands can't say
consume alcohol, for example?
The non Muslims for example

the Christians in their
neighborhoods would have theirpig farms, they'll have their
bars, they'll have theirchurches, they'll have their
alcohol, but they wouldn't beallowed to be drunk in a Muslim
area.
That would become public sin.

right.

Right.
So as long as they're notshowing up drunk in a Muslim
area and causing a publicdisturbance, Muslims didn't care
whether they're eating pork ordrinking alcohol or going to the
church.
They're paying their jizya, theyhave their freedom of religion.

But that wouldn't stop like a Muslim from
going into the non Muslimneighborhood if he wanted to
drink.

Yeah, and that's exactly what happened,
right?
As I said throughout every phasein our history, there were
Muslims who drank alcohol andthey always got it from the
Christians, right?

Hmm.
I see.
So that's

And again, if they did it privately, that's
a private sin, that's betweenthem and Allah, Allah forgive
them, yeah.

of course.
okay, so you have those, milletsystems by religion, but then
what about with today's timewhere people don't ascribe to a
religion, you have your atheist,I don't know what they believe
in spirituality and different,would they

People not following a religion is an
anomaly, right?
this isn't something that hasbeen common at any point in our
history, and I actually thinkit's dying out, especially since
COVID, since the past fiveyears, there has been a decline
in actual atheism.
People are starting to believein the unseen again.
People are starting to believein life after death again, it's

(29:45):
just coming in stages.
There are a lot more people inthe world today who actually
believe in angels and in demonsthan they were 10 years ago.
There is a return to an ideathat things exist that we can't
see.
So, the idea of atheists is ananomaly in our history that it
wasn't common at any point inour history.
But what you will find is thatatheists did exist in the Muslim

(30:06):
empire and just like any othernon Muslim, they were left to
their business.
They never had communities.
They would be individuals.
So they'd be considered like madindividuals and people wouldn't
really pay much attention

then?
Would they live within thegreater

I mean you're more likely to find them
in the Christian areas or in theJewish areas because I mean they
would still be Christian byculture or Jewish by culture as
many of them are today.
Many of them today stillculturally identify with these
groups, even if they don'treally believe in them
internally.

Right.
I see.
But in this Islamic world, if wewere to be transported there
right now, would you only seethese millet systems with people
of the book religion?
So the Christians, the Jews, orwould you also have like other
communities as well, otherfaiths?
How did

This is something that the scholars of
today actually have to discussand figure out because there
haven't been communities ofatheists in history as far as I
know.

just atheists,

And obviously some modern, I was
about to bring that up, thatsome modern religions like
Satanism would not have a placeunder Sharia at all.
There is limits to our freedomof religion in Islam, right?
the Quran mentions specificallyJews and Christians.
But historically, Muslimsextended that to any religious
community.

(31:20):
So historically, Zoroastrians,Hindus, Buddhists, they all
lived under Sharia and paidtheir Jizya and had their own
communities.
And that same thing may applytoday.
It's just that today there aresome weird and bizarre beliefs
out there that never existed atthat time.
So, if it Sharia that had tocome about today, the Ulama of

(31:42):
that land would have to make adecision of how do we deal with
these kinds of people.
Until then, it's just ahypothetical discussion.

Yeah.
I see, that's very interesting.
So there were like different,like people lived within their
neighborhoods, but they stillhad the opportunity to mingle
with each other and still hadthe opportunity to travel out to
different

Yep.

and not be restricted

And again, the freedom was a different
level compared to today becausethere were no passports, there
were no borders, there were novisas.
If you are living in the OttomanEmpire was the size of, what's
today, 25 countries.
You could be living anywhere inthat land and decide you want to
move somewhere else in thatland, and you're perfectly fine,
no one's monitoring you, noone's keeping an eye on you, no

(32:20):
one's forcing you, even ifyou're moving between empires.
So, with the Ottoman Empire, theSafavid Empire, the Mughal
Empire, the Mablouk Empire, allof these exist at the same time.
But as a Muslim, an averageMuslim, you could live in any of
these empires without having tothink about things like
citizenship or passports orvisas.

(32:40):
It's just you had freedom ofmovement, which is very much
restricted today.
The modern nation state systemhas restricted it so much that
there's very few countries inthe world where you can actually
get citizenship as a Muslim.
Even most Muslim countries wouldhave to live off visas for life
and that puts you at the mercyof people deciding they don't
want to renew your visa anymore,kicking you out at any time, so

(33:02):
you can't really settleanywhere, that didn't exist
under Sharia.
That's actually, in my view,that's Haram.
It's haram for Muslimgovernments to treat people like
that.
If someone's a Muslim, you'resupposed to let them, if they
want to live in your land, letthem live in your land.
That's what the Sharia teaches.
So there was a lot more freedom,in that sense under the Sharia.
For religious communities, interms of low taxes, in terms of

(33:24):
freedom to travel and to moveand to settle anywhere in the
land.
Also, there was freedom in termsof whatever business you wanted
to run.
The government didn't really payattention to the average
person's life.
In general, under Sharia, peopleand communities self governed.
And only if there's a problem,they would go to the local
judge, the local qadi.

(33:44):
And the local judge, yes, he'spaid by the Khalifa, but he's
someone who grew up in thattown, who went to Madrasa, he
knows everyone, he knows theculture, he knows the families.
And his primary goal is to keepthe peace and to make sure that
everyone's, gets along with eachother.
So, it's again, the governmentwouldn't even really interfere.
The only time the Khalifa wouldinterfere is if somebody

(34:04):
complained that the judge isbeing unfair or the judge is
taking bribes, then they wouldfire them and replace them with
someone else.
An interesting point is, theyactually reached a level of
accountability where under theOttoman Empire, the highest
position is scholar could getwas that of the Syeikh ul Islam,
so the Syeikh ul Islam was likethe Grand Mufti and the Chief
Qadi of the Ottoman Empire.

(34:26):
He's like the main judge and themain Mufti of the Ottoman
Empire.
And he actually had the power,where if the Ottoman Khalifa was
an alcoholic, or someone who'strying to change the Sharia, he
could pass a fatwa saying thisperson's no more fit to be
Khalifa, and the army wouldremove that person and put one
of his brothers or cousins inplace of him as new khalifa.
Woww so there were checks andbalances even on the Khalifa

(34:49):
himself.

that means that even the Khalifa himself wasn't
above the law.

That's the key difference between Sharia
and the modern state system,right?
In the modern state system, thegovernment makes the law, the
government's above the law, thegovernment enforces the law.
Under Sharia, it is God's law.
The ulama interpret the law.
The judges enforce the law.
The Khalifa's job is to protectthe borders and to keep people
safe.

(35:13):
And to handle administration.
He's not involved in law makingat all.

Hmm.
That's

actually an interesting point in our
history, besides the KhulafaurRasyidin who were Ulama
themselves after that time, itbecame two separate power
structures.
You had the Ulama, the people ofknowledge, the Fuqaha, the
Muftis, the Qadis, theyinterpreted the law, they wrote
the books of law.
They judged between the people.
They dealt with new situations.
The law was entirely in thehands of the Ulama.

(35:39):
And they ran completely as acompletely separate power
structure that actually had moresocial influence on the average
person than the Khalifa.
The Khalifa's in his palace,he's commanding the armies, he's
collecting and distributing thetaxes, and he's paying the
salaries of the Ulama and thegovernors, and he's really not
involved in the day to day livesof the average person.
There's no state control the waythere is under modern state

(36:00):
system.
This is something new,especially in the Muslim world.
What we have in the past hundredyears, where they control almost
every aspect of a person's life,and even what the Ulama say,
this is very new to Muslimhistory.
it's an anomaly in Muslimhistory.
Historically, ulama had a lotmore freedom, and they were
actually the leaders of thecommunities on the ground, and
they were the ones who shapedthe communities on the ground.

(36:23):
This is why we tend to studymore biographies of scholars
than we do biographies of kings.

Hmm.
That's very interesting.
One question I am curious aboutthough, when you said about
taxes though, were they taxed ontheir income?
Was it an income tax or was itwhat their own tax, like an
asset tax?
And what was the differencebetween the Muslims and non
Muslims?
Were the non Muslims liketreated unfairly in the way they
were taxed and the Muslims werefavoured?
what was the understanding of

that?
Again, it depends on which pointin history,

well, look, let's just go back

400 years of

since it was like the recent one.

There's what we would consider the
legitimate taxes and thedisputed taxes.
So, legitimately the taxes thatthe government would collect
would be the jizya from the nonMuslims and the zakah from the
Muslims.
And along with that they didinstitute other taxes.
There were farm taxes, there wasproperty taxes, to some extent.

(37:16):
On mainly on agricultural land,not on other types of land,
there was a specific type ofagricultural tax that had to be
paid to the government as well.
And that was more or less it.
There wasn't an income tax,there wasn't a VAT, there wasn't
all these high levels of taxingwe have today where every little
thing we are doing is taxed todebt.
This didn't exist beforemodernity.

(37:37):
Taxing was actually very low.
Not to say that there weren'tpoints in our history where
people invented other taxes toexploit people.
That did happen.
So, for example, some of theearly Umayyads, they would
double tax converts.
Meaning, people were paying theJizya, and then they converted
to Islam.
They would now charge them theZakah and the Jizya.

Hmm.

Right?
So they would double tax them.
This was wrong.
This was sinful on their behalf.

And the Zakat, when you actually look at like
the cost of it.

Yeah, so These are the two taxes that
existed in the Islam.
Jizya is basically what nonMuslims pay to the Sharia
government, it's like aprotection tax.
In exchange for Jizya, they havefull freedom of religion.
They have no military service.
In fact, it is the duty of theMuslims to protect them and keep
them safe.
So if they are attacked, theMuslim army has to protect them,

(38:26):
and the Muslim army has to keepthem safe.
So it's like a protection tax,and they pay it like once a
year.
Similarly, the Muslims haveZakah, and Zakah is basically
two and a half percent.
Today, we treat it as a charity.
Under the Sharia, it is actuallymore of a tax.
So the government would send taxcollectors to collect the Zakah
from you, and it would be usedby the government for a variety

(38:48):
of services.
For helping the poor, yes, butalso for funding military
expeditions.
For paying the salaries for thetax collectors themselves, and
for a variety of other things aswell.
So these were the two types oftaxes, as well as the
agricultural tax.

like varied according, is there a set kind
of,

Oh, you mean like a set amount?

how much was the Jizya tax?

There's not really a set amount.
The few points in history I wasable to find numbers for it was
actually lower than the Zakah.
So Zakah is two and a halfpercent.
And yeah for many places at manypoints in time Jizya was like
two percent

2 percent and that's only charged on the
people who can afford it.

Yeah, exactly.
And like in the time of Omar RAfor example

Hmm.

Yeah.
So like in the time of Omar RA,when he found the old Jewish man
begging because he couldn't paythe Jizya, He changed the law
and he said that we won't chargejizya to the elders, we will
actually provide for thembecause, the elderly, they can't
work, they can't pay

SubhanAllah, you know what really makes me sad
when I actually go out to theshops and I like go buy stuff
like I feel very sad when I seeelderly behind the cashier, like
scanning my items and I

Yeah, it breaks my

it breaks my heart so much because I was like
they spent their youth working,paying taxes and putting it into
their, what here in Australia iscalled superannuation, but I
know in different countries istheir retirement fund, then that
retirement fund is taxed.
And then that retirement fundloses its worth, like that
value, because there'sinflation, because the
government's print money.

(40:18):
So their value actually getsless and less.
And then they end up, like,driving or they're in the
checkout and they're likeelderly men and women.
And I feel so bad.
And I think to myself, thiswouldn't be allowed in an
Islamic Sharia ruled world.

in the Islamic land, what's amazing is
not only were elders taken careof.
But, for example, I readrecently that even for horses
that were grown old, they wouldbe like old age homes,
retirement homes for horses.
So instead of people shootingtheir horses, when they grow
old, they leave them in thisplace where they could relax and
live out their old days.

And

taken care of by,

and dogs right?
I heard about that

yeah, for cats and dogs as well.
There were animal shelters wherethey would be treated and
pampered, really.
They're treated very well.
Which is still the culture insome Muslim countries like
Turkey.
That's amazing,

like we don't hear these things as commonly.
I guess it's now like, asthings, especially in these
Western lands, it just get moreand more expensive, that even to
just live, pay the rent, payyour food, which is keeps
increasing and like people aregetting homeless in these
countries, but it's all likecovered, it's like they're
hidden away, so that it doesn'tmake the society look bad.

(41:25):
It's like there might be like aslum, which is like somewhere
else or something.
So people don't even know thatthere are poor people in these
Western lands that are like,have all this money and stuff.

One of the biggest scary things about
modernity is that people aremore oppressed and controlled
than ever before with theillusion of having freedom.
So they give them the freedom tosin, but through these sins they
control them.
So for example, make drugspublicly available, maybe even
make them legal.
Well now you have a bunch ofdrug addicts, they're not going
to know that the government'soppressing them.

(41:57):
They're not going to know whatthe government policy is.
They're not even going to beable to function properly.
So in this way they're able tocontrol people.
And this is the sad reality ofthe modern world that through
many things, whether it's drugaddiction, or pornography
addiction, or just keeping thecost of living so high that
people can't think aboutanything else besides work and
paying bills in all these waysthey're able to keep people

(42:18):
under control.

Yeah, I wonder though, you see how all of these
prices and all of these, livingcosts is very high.
So it doesn't give people freetime at the end because like you
obviously have to be working allthe time.
And because they don't have freetime, we won't have time to
pursue things that will helphuman flourishing, invent
things, And so do you,

This is a key difference between how life
was under Sharia compared tocurrent life because under
Sharia you'll find in manycultures Muslims will just work
enough.
Firstly, it's just a man wouldwork because the cost of living
was low, right?
So you didn't need two incomes.
So just a man would work and theman would just work enough to
make enough money for the day.
And then he would go hang outwith his friends, go to the

(43:00):
masjid, go spend time with hisfamily, engage in his hobbies,
be part of the community.
It wasn't all about work.
There was much more to life thanjust working.

Yeah.
And in today's society, it's allabout work.
Like you just, you commute forone hour.
You get there to the office,then you commute back and you
don't see your kids.
It really is like a way modernday slavery.

It is a form of modern day slavery,
especially minimum wage work.

Hmm.

debt plus the debts and interest based
debt system.
It keeps people enslaved forlife.

Yeah, because whichever way you go, you're
just paying extra tax here andthere.
And it's like what remains atthe end, to just eat food and
Subhanallah.
I guess the thing that like,

That's why I said earlier, we tax to debt,
that's the modern world.
People are Tax to debt.
There's no way out of it andthere's no room to even breed
and have a normal life if you'restuck in that system.

I think the thing is very sad like you were
saying earlier, it's theillusion that the system we're
in is the best system.
We have freedom, we can doanything we like.
And then when you think aboutSharia law, or the thief gets
their hand cut off and all ofthese things.
So, it's like this thing, peoplehave this impression that it's a
barbaric law.
and we're at the best timebecause we're in the modern

(44:13):
world.
But it's not really the case.
But,

we are now living in a time where crime is
out of control.
And under Sharia, we had thehighest levels of safety.
And even something as simple aswhat you mentioned now, okay,
cut off the hands of the thief.
Actually, you amputate the handof the professional thief.
That's a better way, or a morecorrect way of wording it.
Because the average thief, underSharia, does not get their hands

(44:37):
chopped off.
They may get even just ashouting, either or scolding.
Or so, if they were poor,hungry, they may actually just
give them charity instead.
That's actually how Sharia wouldwork.
If somebody stole an apple, andthey were taken to the judge,
and they told the judge thatthey're hungry and they're poor,
the judge will tell the shopowner, forgive him and give it
to him as charity.
That's Sharia.
Right?
It's only the professional, bigboss type of thief, who's

(45:00):
dedicated his life to crime,when he's finally caught, that
they'll make an example of him.
And that would completely reduce

the, it sounds like the big corporations, the
banks.

people don't realize that Sharia law
was always effective compared toany of the systems people have
invented afterwards.
Sharia is the most effective lawsystem.
For reducing public immorality,for reducing crime, for creating
a God conscious community, forhaving family systems that work,

(45:30):
for having charity systems thatwork, for having a low cost of
living.
In all these areas, Sharia workseffectively.
The problem is there's no landon earth today that actually has
Sharia that you can point to asan example.

Yeah, of course.
But I think it's like you weresaying, right now is the time of
revival.
And right now it's veryimportant that we learn this
because if we don't know thatthere is a better way for the
world to function, then we wouldthink that this is the best way.

And this is why history is important.
Because right now, history isour only reference point for
Sharia.
Right, and how it worked.
That's why I'm teaching thiscourse.
So I had a course on history, 30videos.
Currently, I'm teaching a courseon Sharia.
That's also 30 videos.
I only got 3 left to record.
And, again, it's the same thing.
I'm trying to show,historically, this is how the

(46:17):
Sharia functioned.
And it's not as people think,it's not what people imagine.
So, for example, some peopleimagine under Sharia, that the
Khalifa's going around choppingwomen's heads off if they're not
wearing Hijab.
Right?
I cannot find any historicalreference of the government ever
enforcing hijab.
Like it's not something thegovernment gets involved with.

(46:38):
Yeah, maybe a woman's husband orfather would enforce hijab as
the head of the household.
But maybe some aunties in thecommunity may shame them if they
leave the house without hijab.
But that's as far as it goes,right?
Or maybe the local alim willgive them a lecture about the
importance of hijab.
There's no governmentinvolvement.
There's no state punishment.
There's nothing like that.
It was on a family level.

(46:59):
It wasn't on the governmentlevel.
Under Sharia, there's levels ofpower and one of those levels of
power is the family.
So hijab was a family thing.
It wasn't something thegovernment got involved with.
Furthermore, under Sharia, thenon Muslim woman and the slave
woman wouldn't wear hijab.
So if you see a woman walkingaround in the city without
hijab, you're not going toassume, that she's a Muslim
woman sinning.
You might just assume it's not aMuslim or something, right?

(47:20):
And you lower your gaze andcarry on

It's so interesting.
It's like it goes back to that,I don't know if it's a saying or
a quote or something, but it'slike, you can't decolonize our
lands until we decolonize ourminds.
And I think we have this

that's that's the big one.
Yeah

barbaricness and like, Oh, that won't work.
But it's because there's a lackof information and we don't know
any better.
SubhanAllah.
This

is again one of the reasons why I'm so
against the school system and aradical Anti schooler and
homeschooler because I read theschool system we have today.
Yeah, the school system we havetoday was designed by the
colonizers, and it is used tocolonize our minds.
And I see people come out ofschool with absolutely un

(48:02):
Islamic ideas And you don't evenknow they have un Islamic ideas
because you spent 13 years inthat system being indoctrinated
with all these ideas So whenwe're educating people we have
to de school their brains Wehave to de colonize their brains
because there's so much wronginformation in them

Hmm.
SubhanAllah.
I definitely have to get you onanother episode to dive deep
about that and your lessons youlearned over homeschooling your
own children.
It's been so interesting to getdeep into this topic.
But, we're actually gettingclose to the end of our time.
So I would love to ask you thequestions that we ask all our
guests.
What's one life hack that'simproved your life?

A life hack that's improved my life.
Well, you know, I've writtenbooks on time management that's
filled with dozens of life hacksI've had to choose one of them.
My favorite one is, You knowtaking a major project and just
breaking it down into smallworkable chunks, and then just
focusing on the next step andthen the next step and then the
next step so For example writinga book sounds like such a mind

(49:02):
boggling task to most people.
But I just focus on writing 1000words a day Which takes me about
30 minutes.
I write 1000 words a day, at theage of 38, I've written over 20
books.
Right.
So it's really about breakingthings down into a workable
chunk.
Like someone ask you like, okay,my Sharia course 30 videos, I'm
recording.
I actually record one video aweek.

(49:23):
It's a very workable chunk to doone video a week.
So you can think to yourselfthat I'm going to do, this large
project and it feelsoverwhelming or you can think to
yourself I just need to do thismuch for the week and you do
that consistently Every week fora year and the work gets done.
So for me taking a large projectand breaking it down into
manageable chunks has been Oneof the most important life hacks

(49:46):
that has made every aspect of mylife easier.
And I apply it across the boardto everything I do

Alhamdulillah.
That's awesome.
And what about a book that'shelped you level up in your
life?

Same thing books I read 60 books a year, 60
how do I even choose

which which one stands out to you this year?

This year there's been a lot of books I
read that really stood out, butmostly Dr.
Wael Hallaq's books on Sharia,right?
I've been talking a lot aboutSharia today.

Yeah.

I actually only discovered Dr.
Wael Hallaq's books on the topica year ago, and I've read all
his books in this one year.
You know, on the topic.
I've actually read one of themtwice, because he's the only
Western academic author who'swriting honestly about the
topic.
Others have their biases, andthey're trying to portray the
Sharia as barbaric, and they'relying, and he just gives, such

(50:36):
an honest and beautifuldescription of what life was
like under Sharia, and thosebooks were mind blowing for me,
and I used them as a basis formy course on Sharia, and a lot
of discussion I have today isbased on his books as well.
So, the first book of which Iread one year ago, The
Impossible State, I justfinished reading it for a second
time last week.

(50:57):
It basically shows how Shariawouldn't work in the nation
state system.
But it shows it in a way thatproved the nation state system
to be oppressive and Sharia tobe

Oh yeah, I actually, I heard a podcast
series about that with Imam Tom.

Yeah

Based on that

Yes, Imam Tom's podcast was my
introduction to the book and

was very,

the author.
So that's really a good.
Yeah, that's a book and anauthor that's made a huge
impression on me this year.
If I had to go to self helpbooks that made a big difference
in my life, when I was veryyoung, the first self help book
to really make a difference inmy life was Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People byStephen Covey.
And I remember back then, I usedto recommend it to everyone.
At that point in my time, thatwas what I needed to read.

(51:38):
Now, there's many other booksthat came afterwards that built
upon that.
But yeah, for young people,that's always a good starting
point here.

True.
Awesome! And where can ourlisteners find you online?

Well, my website is islamicselfhelp.com,
and my second younger website isizzahacademy.com.
Islamic self help has beenaround for 10 years with a lot
of things there, online courses,ebooks, blog posts.
Izzah Academy is just about ayear old, so there's not as much
content there.
Islamic self help focuses onpersonal development.

(52:10):
Izzah Academy focuses onmarriage, parenting,
masculinity, femininity,reviving the traditional Muslim
home that's the goal of izzahAcademy.
And those are my two mainwebsites.
Otherwise, I'm active on Twitterand on YouTube.
Recently I have been workingwith Yaqeen Institute, so you
may find some of my stuff thereas well.

And you also have that very comprehensive
course on Islamic history aswell.

Yes, so I have my online course on Islamic
history and my newer one onhistory of Sharia?
Uh, I highly recommend bothcourses if you learn more about
this.

It's still in the making.

The new course is currently labeled an
Introduction to Islamic Law, butonce I'm completed with it, I
might end up changing the namebecause it ended up being more
of a history course.

Oh, nice.
Thank you so much for coming on.
I've learned a lot in today'ssession.
I really hope our listeners havealso learned and it actually
sparked that interest andplanted that seed to learn more
about our history and learnabout how the world was before
how things were today.
Alhamdulillah.
Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.
JazakAllah khairan.

Hey everyone.
That wraps up another episodefrom the Muslim Life Hackers
podcast.
I really hope you enjoyed ourchat today.
I've got some great takeaways.
if you like what you heard anddon't want to miss out on our
next conversations, hit thatsubscribe button on YouTube,
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, orwherever you're listening to
this from.
It means a lot to us, and ithelps us reach more people who
can benefit from this show.

(53:35):
Thank you again for tuning in.
Until next time, keep strivingand getting better every day.

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