Middle Nation Book Discussion | The Crusades Through Arab Eyes | Session Ten: Lessons from Nuruddin

So this session is going to take a bit of a different turn. Ustad Shahid was not available last time, and it was determined that we need to have his input regarding PR and regarding the the the the importance of PR in in the context that we're studying in the story of the Ferengi campaigns on The Middle East and how that can be related, to our current context. So, this is going to be more of an extension of last time's discussion, and we're hoping that the remarks that the will be adding will be beneficial to the discussion as a whole, inshallah. So we're just now waiting for to join. Until he joins, a reminder for our listeners what exactly or which which parts of the story that are of interest to us today.

The first part is the the ability of Nur ad Din, Nur ad Din's takeover of Damascus, more or less bloodlessly. There was no blood spilt in that takeover at all. However, it was a a culmination of a constant bombardment of PR that enabled him to finally stand with his army at the city walls and enter the city by complete or through complete agreement of the population and many of the al helwalaq, the people, the decision makers. So Abak, the ruler of the city, was more or less isolated. And by the time Uredin had arrived on the city walls and entered the city, PR had had done its desired effect, and he was able to take the city bloodlessly.

And it was a victory as important as any battle in the in the in the story that we're studying right now. So this is an this is one aspect. The other aspect is Nordhyn's treaty with the the the the eastern Romans in order to isolate their interference or isolate them from isolate the the the the region from their interference, like prevent their interference in the region. Because at that point in time, they were going to ally with the Firangia against Noreddin, so he made a he signed a deal with them or a treaty with them whereby he would attack some of the Roman Seljuk possessions. They were Muslims, but he attacked some of their possessions in exchange for the the the Eastern Romans not involving themselves in the politics of Bledeshem.

And so the immediate threat of the Eastern Romans in Bledeshem was averted, And after a while, a treaty or a truce was signed between Noordadin and the and the Roman Seljuks whereby the possessions that he attacked and and he took from the Roman Seljuks were returned to the Roman Seljuks, and so it was a win win for everyone. So these are the two these are the two aspects that we're going to to discuss today, and I would like first to to to start with Ustad's remarks on PR, and then we will have a bit of a Q and A. So, welcome, and, to you,

Okay. Assalamu alaikum. Everyone. Can you hear me?

Clear.

Okay. It's it's on my screen. It's still showing me as a listener, so I'm not sure. We're having a fairly severe rain over here, so I'm afraid that we might we may have network problems, but, everything will be fine.

Do pray do do pray for us, Hosanna.

I mean, okay, inshallah. Okay. So first of all, let me start by by offering again my my apologies for missing the last session. I really didn't wanna miss that, and I I I appreciate brother Omar for extending the topic for another session because we're really getting into the most crucial period of the Muslim response to the Frang invasion or what's known as the Crusades. The leadership of Nur ad Dinzenge to me represents sort of the embodiment of all the lessons that were learned over the course of this whole cat catastrophic history.

He recognized several things that had been overlooked by other leaders or misunderstood to one degree or another prior to his coming to power. He realized, for example, the scope of the real threat that was posed by the French. He recognized the self destructiveness of internal division among the Muslims. Nordhine understood the importance of informal power players better than anybody. He recognized perhaps, most importantly, the, quintessential religious nature of the conflict, and he was able to synthesize all of these things together, all of these realizations, all this understanding into a realpolitik strategy.

You know, everyone knows about Salahdin and rightfully so, but for me personally, I've always found Nur ad Din to be the most compelling and the most admirable figure in the history of the Crusades. There's just there's so much to say about him that it's hard to know where to begin. Walahi Nur ad Din was some kind for me, ad Din was some kind of political or geopolitical savant, in my opinion. The man was absolutely amazing to me. Nur ad Din himself was a righteous man, and not only was he genuinely a righteous man genuinely, but he also understood the strategic importance of being a righteous man, and the strategic importance of being perceived as a righteous man.

He understood that integrity is a political weapon. It's a defensive weapon and an offensive weapon. You can accomplish with integrity what you can never accomplish without integrity, and he understood that very acutely in my opinion. I'm not gonna go back over all of the all of the events that were covered in the last session. I think we can go through some of the examples of what he did.

I know that the main topic here is to discuss PR propaganda soft power and so forth, and the importance of narrative control. And Nur ad Din was absolutely masterful in this, and in recognizing the importance of this, and also in understanding how to deploy it, to deploy narrative, and how to deploy PR strategically. When you read the book, one of the things that becomes painfully clear is how a lot of the Muslim leadership at that time sort of treated the fringe as a recurring nuisance, you know. You had skirmishes here and there, you had rage, you had territory going back and forth and so on. But Notre Dame took it much more seriously, he didn't treat it like that.

He recognized that the French invasion, was supposed to be some kind of a civilizational project on their side, a long term insertion. They wanted to create a new reality, a permanent reality, and establish themselves, in the region permanently. They were building the castles, the alliances, the trade patterns, and so forth, new loyalties, and so on, and he recognized that they had every intention of staying. This wasn't a temporary or transitory presence. They wanted to actually become the dominant authority in our lands.

It was it was kind of the earliest iteration of colonization. So if you understand the enemy, if you understand that the enemy is actually trying to become permanent in your land, then your response can't be sporadic or occasional, the response itself has to become permanent too, and Nordhedin and his father understood that. So Nordhedin saw the presence of the fringe as structurally geopolitical geopolitically structural, so when you understand that, then you have to reassess your own side and your own response to the franj, because if you just see the franj as a nuisance, as a sort of a rogue violent actor in your region, then you can maybe justify using them against your own regional rivals, is what we saw up until now. You use the franca as sort of spoilers. But if you recognize that their presence, is trying to be a long term structural presence, then no, you you you realize now that your internal division is actually a weapon in their hands against you.

Rivalries between the rulers, jealousies between cities, petty petty politics, a lot of what we've seen up until now. You see again and again how the French benefited from this fragmentation between the Muslims. They didn't need to be geniuses. The French didn't need to be geniuses. All they needed to do was be there when the Muslims competed with each other.

You know, this is how they really benefited. So Nur ad Din understood that unity was absolutely essential. And he didn't mean unity the way that a lot of people talk about unity. It wasn't sort of soft and squishy. You know what I mean?

He treated unity as a mechanical requirement for victory, a condition for victory, for success. You know. He saw he saw the very basic reality that without unity you cannot properly coordinate and you cannot properly sustain any pressure, you can't hold any ground, you know, you can't discipline your own people, you can't even fund anything for the future, for over the long term, you can't really build your future, this is practical morality, this is what he understood. He saw that division isn't just immoral or offensive morally, but he saw that the the strategic importance of unity surpassed almost everything else. And like I say, it wasn't about, you know, we all have to love each other or something like this, it was the practical coordination is necessary, the unified cohesion of action is necessary.

You need to be able to operate like one functional machine, this is what he understood. Notre Dame recognized that, as I say, what I call unofficial or informal power, you're talking about the people who don't sit on the throne necessarily, who don't necessarily have governmental positions, but they determine what the population accepts as legitimate, you know, because you can be a ruler but you're actually weak. You can maybe the only reason people are obeying you is because they fear you, or maybe they only obey you because you're bribing them, you know, or maybe they're they're they're only obeying you because they're just waiting for you to decline or weaken or or or die. But Nordhedin understood that in order for rule to be durable, you have to have legitimacy, you need moral authority, you need the public's emotional commitment, and that commitment is shaped by specific groups in the society, scholars, judges, preachers, poets, administrators, merchants, notable families, and so forth. These are the people who set the tone for the society even if they don't hold governmental positions, you know.

And they have the power to undermine you or they have the power to strengthen you because they have sway over the minds of the people, and Nordhedin took that very very seriously. He didn't treat it as sort of unimportant people because they're not in the government. He understood that that power is is built through sort of the the control over, you can say meaning, the control over meaning, and the the like gate gatekeeping meaning, you can almost say. And like I said, Nordhedin recognized very importantly the religious nature of the conflict, which was of course not only correct, it was not only correct that it was a religious conflict, is not only correct and true, but also practically speaking, politically, realpolitik speaking, a religious framing is a mobilization system for the population. It gives it a shared language that compresses the complex context of the conflict into a comprehensible meaning that everyone can understand, and that produces discipline.

A religious framing can unify people across their tribes, their cities, their classes, their rivalries, everything that we've seen up until now, because it was really missing that fundamental religious framing, people were able to we saw the division that we've seen up until now in this in this history, all this petty competition. But the religious framing can create stamina, it can create bravery in the population, commitment in the population, and so forth, and Nur ad Din understood that. He didn't just believe the the reality of the religious framing, but he also understood that the religious framing causes social cohesion on a practical strategic level. In my opinion, this is what he he understood. It gives you a shared operational moral framework to produce coordination and endurance among the people because you're talking about now, he's understanding it to be a long term struggle, not we're dealing with these annoying roguish bands of marauders, these these crusaders, we just have to deal with them here and there and it's a nuisance.

No, he understood it as they were they're looking to be here for good, they're looking to control things around here, so we we need to address it in a very permanent long term, long horizon way. And as I said, Notre Dame synthesized all of this understanding into this realpolitik strategy, and this is what makes him really special, this is what makes him special in history. He wasn't just a scholar, he wasn't just a ruler, he wasn't just a, you know, a warrior leading the battlefield leading on the battlefield and so forth. He was trying to build an architecture of cohesion and legitimacy for the whole land, for all of the Muslims in in the who were under the under the threat, and who were dealing with the with the fringe, while he's still also dealing or maneuvering with the dirty word of the the dirty world of politics. So Notre Dame knew how to negotiate, he knew how to punish, he knew how to persuade, he knew how to how to intimidate, he also knew how to compromise, and he knew how to guide the the population towards a real how can I say?

A real they were he was able to convince them that victory was possible, that liberation from the French was possible. So it it gave that gave them a unified purpose, like a long term purpose. And he did that, like I say, we were talking about we were talking about PR. So he deployed the PR, the narrative control, the soft power, the propaganda, whatever you want to call it, rhetoric, whatever you want to call it, the framing. Let me first of all, let let me let me just clarify something first of all about propaganda because it has a it has a bad name because we always associate it with the West most most of the time.

And so we automatically assume that it just means lies, and it means manipulation, and so forth. So let me just clarify that because every civilization teaches their people a story, you know. Every civilization teaches their people a story about themselves and about everybody else, an interpretation of reality, a framing, you know, every ruling order in any society anywhere, they have to give their public an interpretation of reality, a framework for understanding reality. And that interpretation and that framework can either be truthful or false, it can be noble or it can be corrupt, it can be moral or immoral, but there's always an interpretation. If you leave your society without any disciplined, controlled interpretation of reality, then other other interpretations are gonna fill the void, frankly.

So Nordhedin didn't leave that to to chance, you know, he built what you could call an apparatus, a a propaganda apparatus, an apparatus of delivering meaning, conveying meaning and understanding and framing to the population. So he built legitimacy as an institution in and of itself, not just around him personally, but as an institution itself. Consistently, he cultivated a reputation for himself of justice and personal restraint. He he he tried as I say, he tried to be known as someone who feared Allah. He tried to be known as someone who respected the scholars and who served the public.

He didn't behave like a tyrant. This is extremely important. This is this gives you an idea also of the different way that you that that Muslims would approach what we call propaganda or PR versus the way the West does. We'll probably talk about that more later. It wasn't just genuine virtue and genuine taqwa, but it was also a form of power building.

Because when the population believes that the ruler is just, then this this changes everything, this changes the whole relationship with the ruler, their obedience becomes willing and voluntary, you know, their patience becomes stronger, their willingness to fund things, to give money, to give financial support to whatever the ruler the projects of the ruler are, they're willing to do that more, and they're also ready to fight, They're more steadfast, not to mention they're also more how to say? They're more forgiving or they're more compassionate with regards to the mistakes that the ruler might make. This you you create a much closer, dearer relationship between the population and the ruler. I think that the best example that we have of someone like this right now in the world today is probably Ibrahim Chawroi. There's probably nobody that has quite that same status operating in politics or operating in government anywhere in the world today more than Ibrahim Charroy who sort of fits the bill with regards to that that that sort of dynamic.

Because people are gonna tolerate what whatever hardships they have to tolerate if they believe that the leadership is clean, if they believe that the cause or the projects that the leadership is trying to engage in, if they believe that that's clean, if they believe that it's moral, if they believe that it's just, if they believe that it's in their interest, you know. They're willing to tolerate difficulties and hardship if they believe that that they're not being exploited, or rather I should say they they won't tolerate it, they won't tolerate hardship, they won't tolerate sacrifice being expected of them if they believe that they're being exploited, and if they believe that the government doesn't care about them in any way whatsoever, and is not looking out for their interests, and it's just, you know, looking out as sort of a like a nepotism or something like that, that they only care about their own. Then the the population, can't expect them to sacrifice for you. So this is what I mean when I say integrity is a political weapon. I mean it very literally.

Integrity increases your operational capacity as a ruler, and it reduces friction between you and your and your population, which which protects any project that you might be involved in, any cause that you want to pursue as a government, as a ruler, and so and so forth. This reduces opposition, it reduces sabotage of whatever you're trying to do, it reduces defections, and it reduces cynicism because that's one of the worst things that can happen in a population is when the population is cynical. So when you're like this, when you have political when you have moral integrity as a as a leader, then this reduces cynicism. So you understand what I'm saying? I'm saying that, the the PR that Notre Dame was engaging in wasn't without substance.

It was backed up. So he was walking the talk, so to speak. This is why his piety mattered. It wasn't just theater, you know, it was a foundation that made everything else possible. Everything else that he was trying to do politically, it made everything possible.

So he disciplined a narrative about what the crusaders were and what the nature of this conflict was, and he made it public, and he he he elevated the struggle against the French into a shared moral and religious project of the entire population. Because, you know, one of the most dangerous realities for us at at at that time as Muslims at that time, one of the most dangerous realities that the Muslims were dealing with at that at that time psychologically was complacency was complacency, and that should sound familiar. People just getting used to the fringe being there. They were used to the fringe presence, you know, people were just adjusting their lives around the reality of the fringe being there, people were treating it like it's just, you know, part of the weather or something, and Noordadine fought against the normalization of the fringe presence in the people's minds psychologically, And like I say, he did that by making the moral meaning of the conflict present in the public in public life through commissioning chutbas, you know, sermons, the religious leaders, through education, through public messaging, so that the general climate of the cities fell under his influence.

The the general climate of the population, the general sentiment of the population were getting the message through, as I say, the the the people who generally craft meaning for them. So that made it hard for any other leaders to hide by behind any excuses. You understand? So he he sort of bypassed the the governmental structures or the the official power and made appeal directly to the unofficial power, the the the the informal power, and that made it very hard for elites to treat the fringe in a way that conflicted with the growing impression of the fringe Nur ad Din's campaign was causing in the people's minds. He was changing the mindset, he was changing the mentality of the the population.

So he made betrayal of that that framework, of that depiction of the franj, and of that depiction of the struggle, if you betrayed that there was a social cost for the elites and for any rulers and so forth, for any governors and whatnot, any sultans. That soft power, that's what we call narrative control, like in the in the Middle Nation relative power index, that's narrative control. So he was able to get the people through this soft power, through this narrative control, to have a whole different framing of the understanding of what this conflict was, and that it wasn't just something that you just have to put up with, it's something that you have to adapt to. He targeted the the manual what what we would call now the manufacturers of consent. This is one of the most important lessons for us, I think.

Notedin didn't only as I say, he didn't just negotiate with rulers, he worked through the scholars, he worked through the the respected figures who shaped legitimacy in the society. He understood that the reality is that the public this this is something that I think a lot of people don't understand, this is and this is very important to understand. People don't obey the ruler directly in their hearts. When we talk about obeying the ruler, okay, yes, it does mean directly obeying the ruler, but the people are not obeying the ruler directly in their hearts, they are obeying the moral world that they live in. They're obeying a framework in which it makes sense to obey the ruler, and that world is shaped by specific people in the society that that that's shaped by the like I say the scholars, the judges and so forth, the respected figures who align with the leader, and that increases the leader's authority without needing any violence or coercion or whatsoever.

So, Nordhedin sought to align these people with the project of unity and the project of jihad in the classical sense, disciplined struggle for the sake of Islam, and he built a climate in which the serious voices of society were all singing the same tune. You understand? And when the the serious voices in the society all sing the same tune, then detraction and opposition immediately looks like betrayal or sabotage or or or treason. This is how you isolate the traitors and the hypocrites without having to hunt them down by your soldiers, you know, because you basically annihilate opposition and what to say, opposition and and and cynicism and criticism and attack against the the rulers and against the government, against the leadership by aligning the whole society in favor of of their project. So now you're you are the the odd man out if you are now against that, and you immediately look like you're with the other side, you're with the enemy.

And Notre Dame used institutions as media, he used institutions as media to relay the message, to deliver this message to the population. This is also a concept that I think many people miss. They think when you think about media, you think about newspapers, you think about TV, you think about social media, what have you. But institutions are also media for conveying messages. Schools teach people what's normal, courts teach people what's acceptable and legal, masajid teach people what is their religious duties and so forth.

Endowments, teach people what the society values, you understand? Public works projects teach people whether the leadership in their society actually serves the public or doesn't care about the public at all or exploits the public. So Nur ad Din invested in public legitimacy through institutions, because when the society sees justice, they see justice operating in the society, they see it as a as a living breathing reality in their daily life, then they will internalize a story of order and a story of justice, a story of fairness, a story of righteousness or what have you. But when they see corruption operating in their society, they see moral corruption, legal corruption, political corruption and so forth, when they see that operating in their society on a daily basis, in their daily lives, then they will internalize a story of unaccountability, and that should also sound familiar. So he understood that public trust is built through the repeated lived experience of your own population.

You understand? He understood that the narrative cannot actually be disconnected from reality to such an extent, you know, because if you have to if you have to rule by means of inflicting cognitive dissonance among the the those whom you are ruling, then your time is not going to be very long. If you want to if you want to build a movement you can't just live on rhetoric alone, you have to actually create structures, you have to actually embody the values that you claim on the ground, and if you don't do that then the public is not going to respect you. They won't respect you, they won't trust you, they won't listen to you, and eventually they will regard you as traitors to the very project or to the very cause or to the very nation that you initiated all of that, you know, on the on the on the pretext of initiating all of that, on the pretext of serving that nation or serving that public or serving that cause, they will see you yourself as a traitor to that cause. So Notre Dame's moral authority was reinforced by his own tangible governance, and there's a there's an important psychological point here because people must be able to imagine victory in order to endure what is necessary to achieve victory.

I'll say that again, people must be able to realistically imagine victory in order for them to be willing to endure everything that they must endure and everything that they must do in order to achieve that victory. They they have to be able to taste the possibility of liberation in reality, and Noordadin cultivated that possibility in their imaginations. He made future liberation feel like an actually approaching reality, not a fantasy, not I have a dream, you know. He treated it as a project that had steps, a realistic project that just had steps, steps one, two, three, four, five that we have to do, not a dream that you just fantasize about, not empty hope. This is how you shift the public mood from despair and complacency to, discipline, because discipline is what you need.

Discipline is what you need, not hope, discipline, not not empty hope and not utopianism. So he didn't allow the public to drown in a sense of helplessness or hopelessness or complacency, and he offered them a framework. This is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, you know, this is how we will get there, and this is must this is what you must be ready to sacrifice in order to get there. That's leadership. Now you can translate all of this into a kind of a power logic that you can use anywhere.

If you understand what what Notre Dame was doing, then you can apply this anywhere, you can apply this understanding to history, to modern politics, to community building, to activism, and so forth, even in your own personal life. You see what I'm saying? Because power isn't just about force, power is the capacity to produce outcomes in your own environment, produce outcomes in your environment. Nordhedin increased his capacity to produce outcomes by strengthening several areas that were under him, the his own authority, which means the ability to impose binding decisions that others must accept or can accept or do accept rather, as legitimate, imposing binding decisions that people accept as legitimate. That that's important.

The legitimacy of it is important. That's the thing that actually makes it binding. He increased his control of critical inputs, of money, of manpower, of supply, of administrative compliance, all of this is building his power, and like I say his narrative control, the ability to shape how the public interprets events, he strengthened that, He strengthened his immunity to retaliation, the ability to act without being easily punished or being easily undermined, he he strengthened all of that. He strengthened his adaptability reserve, the ability to withstand shocks, the ability to recover, the ability to keep moving. This is all from the Middle Nation RPI, the relative power index.

These are metrics from the relative power index, and Notre Dame was working on all of them and strengthening all of them, and then he reduced three sources of weakness, at least three, which is, for example, his dependence upon unreliable partners, his exposure to sabotage from internal rivals, and he reduced his that any perception of vulnerability that he might have that would invite opportunists or or opposition or competition or rivalry or or disobedience or defiance. So this is what you're seeing in the book, in Amin Malouf's book. Notre Dame was reducing the fragility and increasing the cohesion of the Muslim lands that were under his sphere of influence. When you control the public meaning of a struggle, then you make unity easier, you make sacrifice easier, and you make betrayal and cynicism and opposition and sabotage harder to do. That's through narrative control, that's through soft power, that's through PR.

You may not you may not necessarily recognize it as PR, and and that's probably, like I say, partly because our approach as Muslims to PR is different from the Western approach to PR. Let me say what else. Though, to bring it to today, to bring it to today, to the modern day, we are absolutely flooded as Muslims, we are absolutely flooded with narratives. On a on an unprecedented scale, we are subjected to a torrent, you know, an inundation of negative narratives that we are not controlling, narratives that we are not controlling but we are participating in, narratives that fragment us and divide us and weaken us, narratives that keep us reacting and defensive all the time, you know, narratives that that that how can I say this? Narratives that we respond to through taqwa signaling, you know, how the Kufars have have virtue signaling, well, unfortunately, the Muslims have their own version.

Taqwa signaling, where you make your own morality and your own virtue, your own taqwa, your own faith into a performance on social media, and you don't and you don't even mean it. It's just for for performance. And we're subjected to narratives that convince people that we're powerless, that convince people that the Muslims are powerless, that we're weak, that we're the Khalid, the the ummah is already destroyed, you know. We're subjected to narratives that convince us that our leaders are all evil, that our leaders are all hypocrites, that our evils our leaders are all evil hypocrites just as bad or or or worse than the leaders in the West, and that our own people are are also, you know, barely functioning as Muslims, barely have any imam and what have you, you know. And the the the narratives out of the West that make you ashamed or defensive about Islam rather than proud of it, Narratives that make Muslims treat the ummah like it's some kind of a myth, like the ummah as one body, as one nation doesn't exist, that we're all different, you know, that we don't that it's just a myth, that that we talk about a unified ummah.

And when you when you're subjected to all these narratives, and you're not how can I say, you're you're participating in these narratives, and you're sharing these narratives, and you are helping to deliver these narratives to our own people, how how do you wonder now why it's impossible to coordinate? Why we can't coordinate? Why we can't sustain any projects? Why we can't build institutions properly? Why we can't protect our own interests, you know.

Look at Notre Dame, subhanAllah, you're not going to build strength by treating narrative as secondary. You have to you have to prioritize this, and especially because most of us don't have material power, most of us aren't rich, most of us aren't from the in the in the sense of military power, political power, financial power, so forth, but you are participating in narrative every day. You're participating in narrative construction and delivery every day, and you're not going to be able to build any strength while you're allowing the enemy to define your reality and define your frameworks. You're not going

to be able

to build strength as long as you are allowing internal petty conflict to become some kind of, I don't know, rage bait or click bait or whatever, a a kind of a a just a way to generate content or generate following by by petty conflicts between between Muslims, getting involved in drama and so forth. You're not gonna be able to build strength while your your your public your public makers of meaning are compromised, are cowardly, or are bought, or unserious if they engage in nonsense, you know. You have to treat legitimacy as a source, as a resource. You see what I'm saying? In our time, legitimacy has been demolished by part of it is by the fact that we simply don't interact with each other face to face, we don't actually even know each other.

So you don't even know who who has legitimacy or not. So all legitimacy is, well, maybe maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe this person means it, maybe they don't. Maybe they're maybe they're just saying what they're saying for money, maybe they're saying what they're saying just for clicks. You know what I'm saying?

And then the even the even the figures who have, like, official authority, well, they're all viewed as corrupt, you know. There's there's there's immense public cynicism across the world, across whether you're talking about Muslims or non Muslims, people assume everyone is lying, people assume everyone is lying. Unless they're saying the worst things, unless they're making the worst slanderous accusations about people, then you automatically assume that they're telling the truth. But as soon as anyone talks about anything that's that's right or good or righteous, you assume that they are liars. You just assume.

You assume that every leader is exploiting, you know. You assume that every religious voice is just a performance. And so when legitimacy collapses, your ability to mobilize anyone for anything completely collapses. You understand what I'm saying? And and and legitimacy is built through exactly what Noordadin showed us.

You build trust through discipline, you build trust through justice, through consistency, through sacrifice. People can smell insincerity, but they can also smell sincerity. They can they can sense it, they can they can can sniff it out if you're just performing or if you're telling the truth, if you're, you know, but it but it but it as I say, it's it's a matter of walking the talk. So if you want to lead people, then you have to pay a price. If you want people to sacrifice for you, then you have to be willing to sacrifice for them.

You build an apparatus of meaning through you can do it, and anyone who's here right now in this chat, and anyone who's in the Middle Nation channel so forth, as I say, you are already participating in narrative construction and narrative conveyance, you're already participating in that. So you can participate in helping to build for the Muslims an apparatus of meaning online in social media, and that doesn't mean lying, it doesn't mean manipulation, it means clarity. That's what our propaganda means, that's what our PR means, it means clarity. It it means repeating the truth in a way that sticks with people. It means training people, to interpret events through a coherent moral lens.

You understand? If your community consumes its interpretation of reality from hostile sources, from your enemies, then your be your community is gonna behave in a hostile manner to themselves, and this is exactly what we see. This is why education matters, this is why this is one of the reasons why we're even reading this book. This is why public discourse matters and how you handle public discourse, this is why disciplined communication matters, why why why disciplining your tongue and your mind and your thought processes, and disciplining yourself even in silence, this is why this matters. Now, Nur ad Din was doing this through scholars and through hadibs and so forth.

In our time, as I say, we have many channels for this. We're all we're on one right now, and the principle stays the same. Identify the informal power players and take them seriously, even if if you're one of them. If you wanna build a community, then you have to know who shapes the mood for the rest of your community, for the rest of the Muslims in your area or around the world. Who shapes trust?

Who shapes credibility? Who shapes what people consider respectable? This is an untapped or what not I won't say untapped, but neglected category from the Influencers, people who are online, people who are participating in narrative. We're letting them just say whatever they wanna say. They'll they they can talk all sorts of nonsense, and they're never disciplined for that.

You are corrupting your own the the the narrative of your own people, of your own ummah, of the of the Muslims. You're corrupting a narrative, and you are fighting against a victorious narrative that will bring us to liberation. You're actively fighting against that when you're not participating in it, and when you are participating in and when you are conveying narratives that are framed by our enemies. So if if you're if you're you're makers of meaning, if the people who are crafting frameworks, the people who are crafting narratives, or or not even crafting but just conveying, if they're captured by utter nonsense, then the whole society is gonna be captured by nonsense, the whole community is gonna be captured by nonsense. You have to fight the the the normalization of your own defeat, your own irrelevance, your own the the ability to be dismissed, and and and frankly, you have to fight against deserving to be dismissed because of your lack of seriousness.

This is one of the most poisonous things in the modern Muslim world. People are just adjusting to what is what is already an obsolete situation, which is our subjugation. This is already becoming obsolete. In many parts of the Muslim world, it's already obsolete, but we're but but we're still delivering and sharing and conveying narratives that emphasize our humiliation and our subjugation. You understand?

This build you you people will build their entire life around low expectations if you do this. Low expectations. You you start treating weakness as something permanent, you know. So so Noordadine understood that this mental state, this, you know, he everything that Noordadine was doing with regards to narrative and and PR and so forth, this falls under what we call epistemological sovereignty. He was taking back control over narrative frameworks, over understanding, over how things are defined, and this is what we try to do at Middle Nation.

You have to you have to fight against the story that you are being told, and and and you have to rely upon your own sources of knowledge. You have to fight this psychological surrender to their narrative. That's where a a shared how can I say this? In order for you to have a shared victory at any point in the future, you have to first have a shared expectation that it's possible, like I said earlier. You have to have a shared expectation that victory is possible, and then that shared victory can become a shared reality.

You understand? Any actual practice that you implement through discipline is part of this. It's not just a slogan. This is this is unity. You know, when when we talk about unity, this is this is what I mean.

A unity, when you talk about a shared reality, a shared victory, well, this requires practical unity, not as a slogan, not as rhetoric, not as well, we all have to love each other and and whatnot. You have to be unified even if you don't love each other. Like I say, it's not just a slogan, it it it means in practice, it means standing together like one single solitary structure shoulder to shoulder like Allah told us with the Muslims from all over the world no matter where they come from, stand with the Muslims, the people and the leaders, whether you like them or you dislike them personally. It means holding your tongue sometimes, you know. It means confronting the critics of our people from among our enemies rather than conceding to those critics.

You understand? And it means not speaking badly about your own people and not letting your own people be spoken badly about. You shouldn't allow this. So Noordadin was righteous, and he understood that the that his own righteousness has strategic importance, the strategic importance of righteousness. He understood that integrity is a political weapon.

He understood that legitimacy is not just spiritual, it is practically operational. He understood the public meaning of the conflict, the way that the way that the whatever conflict you're talking about, in his case, obviously, we're talking about the invasion of the occupation of the French, but it can be any conflict. The the public meaning, defining and understanding the public meaning of any particular conflict, this is going to be decisive in determining whether your people are willing to endure and struggle. He understood that the scholars and the respected voices in the society can either fortify your project or sabotage that project, and everyone has a responsibility towards that project if that project is good. He understood that institutions teach people what's normal.

He understood that victory requires a disciplined narrative that you convey through multiple means, including through the or how can I say that the that the that the narrative that you are wanting to press or push to the people, it has to actually be reflected in their lives? You know? Saladin was the or is the visible triumph that we all talk about, and that's why we all know him. He's the visible triumph of the Muslims against the fringe, against the crusaders. But Nur ad Din was the architect that made that triumph possible.

That was Nur ad Din. So I think I've I've talked a lot. I'll I'll go ahead and turn it back over to brother Amar. I again, I I apologize because I missed the last session. I had a lot of things to say as you can see.

I had a lot of things that I had planned to say, but I missed that session. So, again, I appreciate brother Ahmad for extending it extending the topic so that we can talk about it a bit more. And I'll be completely quiet for the remainder of this space.

No. I think it's actually yeah. It was actually a good call that that we extended it so that you can talk in abundance about the topics there because yeah. I mean, there there are a lot of ideas that I don't really know where to start. But I think the the the most, yeah, the most blaring point made was the fact that the of the transformation of the whole thing.

Right? The transformation and the realization. So first of all, for first, he realized, Nur ad Din Mahmud, the the nature of the of the situation and the permanence of the of the the Ferengi presence, and I think we this became extremely obvious to him after the second crusade or after the second Ferengi campaign. So to remind our listeners and maybe our speakers, last time, it was related that in November, Ibn al Khalansi, the the historian of a famous Muslim historian, had for the second time in his lifetime witnessed the arrival of of of of of the from Europe, from, like, behind the sea, coming in overwhelming numbers and trying to take his city of Damascus. Right?