The GreaterJihad: A Ramadan Series on Tarbiyyah | Episode 1: Moral Territory

We can talk about, morality. Because, you know, we've almost reached Ramadan, so I think it might it might be appropriate. Because this is also, I think, something that, has been twisted by, Western frameworks and the the prevalence of western perspectives all around the world. And obviously, misunderstanding something as important as morality and as important as being a moral person, misunderstanding this is absolutely disastrous. Obviously, it's disastrous.

It's disastrous for the individual. It's disastrous for your relationships, for your families, for your communities, for your nation. And being a moral person doesn't happen as a result of you just believing in morals. You know what I mean? It's it's not something that simply happens because you have an understanding of what right and wrong are or what good and bad are or what righteousness is and what sin is and so forth.

You know, even if you have a coherent and consistent moral framework to go off of, like in Islam, unlike in the West, even if you have that kind of a a very clear framework, a very clear coherent framework, just being aware of it, just recognizing it and knowing about it, and even agreeing with it intellectually, that does not make you a moral person. That's not how you become there's nothing automatic about being good. You understand? About being righteous or virtuous or what have you. This is never something that's gonna happen, automatically.

Not as an adult, Not as an adult, maybe for children. Now this is something that you have to build as an adult, something that you have to become as an adult. It's something that you have to shape, you know, it's something you have to shape and mold and fortify and fashion and reinforce and try to maintain through deliberate disciplined training and hard work. In Islam, we call this or moral training, discipline, self control, self restraint, self purification, strengthening your moral self against anything and everything that undermines that. Being a moral person is a project.

Understand. It's a project. This is something that you have to con constantly and consciously commit yourself to. There's no other way to do it. If you if you don't do that, then you simply are never going to achieve it.

You're never going to achieve it. You're just like someone who goes to the gym. You know? You just go to the gym every once in a while. Right?

You lift weights sort of sporadically. You do some cardio here and there. You know? You have a salad now and then, you know, but you have no, exercise plan. You have no weight loss plan.

You have no diet plan or no nutrition plan. It's haphazard. There's no discipline. There's no seriousness to it. There's no commitment.

You understand me? You're never gonna achieve any sort of meaningful fitness or health results that way. Obviously not. Or you're you're like someone who who who, you know, who tries this this or that passive income idea. You know, you create an online shop and you promote it for a few days and then you stop.

Right? Maybe you bake something and you think about being a caterer. You know? Maybe you make business card templates or what have you, but you don't take it any further than that. You just leave it.

Or you take an online course, like, say, for coding or something like this. You attend a couple of classes maybe, but you never do anything after that. Okay? This is this is not serious. You're not being serious.

You're not serious about increasing your income or changing your career or you're not serious about becoming an entrepreneur, you know, or whatever the case may be, becoming a fit person or what have you. So you see what I mean? In any other context, you understand the concept of having a plan and sticking to it. In any in any other context, You understand that what happens if you don't have a plan and stick to it. You understand that nothing will happen if you don't have a plan and you don't stick to it.

You're not gonna get anywhere. You understand this in other contexts. You understand this in relation to other goals. That you cannot get an outcome. You cannot, become this or become that.

You cannot become fit. You cannot become materially successful. You cannot become an entrepreneur and so on automatically just by wanting to live the outcome. You understand? Just by recognizing the benefit of that outcome, just by thinking that that outcome would be great to achieve someday.

This is not going to achieve it. That's not how you're ever gonna get there. Well, it's the same with being a moral person. It's the same. It's absolutely the same.

In fact, it's even more the case with being a moral person. And obviously, it's immeasurably more important as an outcome that you should try to achieve in your life. Much more important than being fit or being healthy or being entrepreneur or being rich or what have you. Being moral is far more important. This is more important than wealth.

It's more important than fitness. It's more important than anything else. Truth be told. But somehow we treat it like morality is either something that you have or you don't have. Being a moral person is either, something that you, you you you either are a moral person or you're not a moral person.

It's not like something that you strive for. It's not it's not someone that you, have to work hard to become. As much as you all like to talk about, you know, being on a journey or it's a process and so on, you say those types of things all the time, but the truth of the matter is most of you are wandering. You're not on a journey, not towards a destination. You're just wandering.

You have no process. You have no map. You have no blueprint. You just have a series of experiences that you never actually process, that you never actually learn from. It's haphazard.

Like I said, it's haphazard. No plan, no clear goal, no steps, no discipline, no commitment, and no progress. And understand, this is what you are trying for. The you have to understand, this is what you're trying for in terms of your morality. You're supposed to be pursuing, and what you're supposed to be trying to achieve is progress, not perfection.

Progress. Measurable progress, being better, even if it's little by little. I'm talking about character, morality, about, being measurably, quantifiably better, making progress, real progress. This is a realistic, doable approach to tarbiyah, to moral training, to genuine self improvement. Being purer, being more truthful, being more decent, being more disciplined, being more honest, being more kind, being more just, being more fair, being less dishonest, less indulgent, less vindictive, less selfish and so forth.

You understand me? Progress, not perfection. But also we're talking about real progress, not some vague sort of aimless, you know, I try to be a good person sort of nonsense. Or I I I do the best I can. No.

We're talking about genuine changes in behavior, Genuine changes in attitude and, changes in demeanor and changes in actions. In Islam, we understand something called the jihad and nefs, the internal struggle. The internal struggle. It's an ongoing battle. The fight against our own weaknesses, the fight against our own desires, our own ego, our own impulses, our own appetites, so forth.

And like in any battle, we lose territory and we gain territory. We win and we lose, but we keep struggling. And, you know, the truth of the matter is that some of us are fighting relatively mild internal enemies. Some people are blessed with that. You they're blessed with what you could call in in geopolitical terms, secure borders.

You understand? Like, if you build upon the metaphor of of jihad, the metaphor of battle in in in, like, the real physical world, like, in nations and countries and so forth. Some nations, some countries are inherently more stable and more secure than others. This is a fact. Almost like like like an island nation or a huge landmass where you've got mountains on all along the periphery.

Okay? So some people are blessed with something with circumstances like that, with naturally secure and stable territories, moral territories, meaning psych their their their psyches, their emotions, their mentalities, and their spiritual strength. Some people are blessed with stability. But then there are other people who are facing very powerful internal enemies. Their borders are constantly under attack, constantly under threat.

Their territory is not secure or stable at all. There are some people like that. They have to be in continuous struggle, continuous confrontation against those enemies, those urges, those impulses, those desires, those appetites and so forth. And those and those appetites and those urges and those desires are very strong. You know, those invasive thoughts, those fears, those delusions, those temptations, those confusions and so forth.

For some people, those are very strong and stronger than than than what other people experience. So they are inherently unstable in the same way that a country can be inherently unstable. Not because there's anything particularly wrong with them, but because they grapple with trying to protect the borders of their psyches from hostile intruders, internal intruders. And if they give up that struggle, if they give up that jihad enoughs, well, they'll be completely conquered. They'll be completely conquered.

They'll be completely subjugated by all of their worst impulses and their worst characteristics. You can say that they, that they're colonized by their own nefs. They're colonized mentally by their nefs, morally by their nefs, and in terms of their character, by their nefs. Until they completely lose their natural self, their righteous self, their goodness. That's when all the territory has been lost and they're subjugated.

But most of us never give that struggle up. It's ongoing for everyone. And like I say, for some people, the struggle is relatively minor. For some, it's just sporadic. But for others, it's constant.

It's constant and traumatic and hard fought. But for anyone in these battles with your nuffs, you will take land and you will lose land. Remember, strength and weakness are both relative. You may not be strong or you or or as strong as you think. You've just never faced, challenges or threats that actually test the limits of your capacity.

So you may not be as strong as you think, and you may not be as weak as you think. You just happen to be facing very powerful challenges and very powerful threats that do test the limits of your capacity. I'm talking about internally, in your psyche, in your soul. You're strong or weak in relation to the strength or the weakness of whatever the challenge is that you're facing. You understand me?

You should remember that. You should remember that. So just like with nations, just like with countries, just like with, empires and what have you, it's by turns. You win by turns and you lose by turns. And over the course of your life, hopefully hopefully, you take more ground than you lose moral territory.

And hopefully, you expand your territory. And hopefully, your borders become more secure over time. And hopefully, you gain resilience and you gain offensive and defensive capabilities that are greater than your enemies. Greater than your enemies, insha'Allah. Greater than your internal enemies.

You know, I always talk about how the macro level reflects the micro level and vice versa. What plays out on the international stage? What plays out on the international stage mirrors what happens between people. And it even mirrors what happens inside of the heart of an individual person. It's the same battle that's always going on.

It's the same interaction that's always going on at all levels. And as long as you're making progress, you're winning. Achieving perfection is not the definition of success in this battle. It's not the definition of winning or victory. If you set that as the definition of success, then you are absolutely setting yourself up to lose.

No. Progress. Just progress. Just progress. Try to hold your moral territory and try not to lose any and try to gain more territory.

Again, little by little if needs be. Realistically, methodically, with discipline, with practice, and so forth. And when you make progress, you will always remember what you were like before you made that progress. You understand? Just like a country, a country never forgets that it was occupied.

They never forget having been occupied. They never forget having been invaded, having been subjugated and colonized. That haunts you. And you will have people who knew you when you were occupied by your worst self, when you were subjugated, when you were down and out morally. In other words, when you were more immoral than you were moral.

You understand? You will remember that, but also other people will remember that, people who knew you. And some people will think that you are still that. There are some people who will think that you can never be anything but that. You understand?

But listen, it's hurtful. Yes. But listen, if they knew you when you were morally down and out, when you were occupied, when you were controlled by your own worst side, your own worst habits, your own worst characteristics. Right? When you were seized and captured by your own worst self, colonized by your own evil.

I said your own evil. Because I'm not talking about Shaytan. I'm not talking about Iblis. I'm not talking about Shaytan. You can't put everything on the devil.

I'm talking about your own evil. Remember, I'm talking about your own internal enemies, your nefs. Your internal enemy is you. And if they knew you, when you were an occupied, colonized, subjugated, dominated lackey for the worst elements of your own self, well, then you and I both know that they will have some very bad memories of you. That's the truth.

They'll have bad memories, painful, hurtful memories about you, things that you did, things that you said or things that you didn't do or things that you didn't say that you should have, wrongs that you have done, pain that you have caused, lies that you told, sins that you committed. And even if you've, successfully changed the map, even if you've gained back territory, your own moral territory, even if you've redrawn the borders of your moral self, and you have successfully driven out the enemy of your worst self and secured your boundaries. Even if you've done all of that, you can't change history. That's the unfortunate thing. That's the that's one of the worst parts of all of this.

You can repent, but they can't forget. And the truth is they have no obligation to forget. But now that becomes a challenge for them. That becomes a challenge for them. Or for you or for any of us when we're talking about, other people.

You know, people that we have known or people that we have been hurt by. When we knew those people and they were down and out morally. Then it becomes a challenge for us to try to recognize and and acknowledge the reality of what this struggle is. The reality that moral territory is won and is lost, is gained, and is taken away. And just because we might have known someone, when they were on the losing side of their own battle for their own soul, well, they might be on the winning side now.

That's the thing that can happen. Maybe their internal moral territory was once the site of atrocities in the past. The site of massacres of character, massacres of wrongdoing. And again, just like with physical lands, with actual geographic territories that have experienced invasion, have experienced occupation, have experienced colonization and oppression and violence and so forth, genocide, torture, what have you, you know, places where terrible things have happened in this world. Those places can be rebuilt.

They can rebuild. They can rejuvenate. They can stabilize. They can prosper. They can succeed, and they can thrive no matter what happened in the past.

And they have to be allowed to do that. They have to be allowed to do that. And they should be supported when they do that. They should be encouraged when they do that. And they should be helped and they should be strengthened when they do that.

And the same goes for people. The same goes for individuals. If individuals have actually committed themselves to making progress, you understand me, to actually liberating themselves from the worst in them, Liberating themselves from those internal enemies that we're talking about. When they have a plan, when they have made measurable, quantifiable, observable, real world progress. And then that becomes, like I say, that becomes our challenge with regards to those people and the challenge of other people with regards to us.

Because the truth of the matter is, and we all know it, we have all been the villain in somebody's story. And they may or may not be ever willing to see us as anything, other than the villain. They may never see us any other way. Just like we may never be willing to see other people in any other way if we have known them at their worst. But told us to never let or to never help against our brothers and sisters by cursing them or denigrating them when they are morally down and out.

Because then you will just make them think that they are destined to stay that way, that they're destined for that, that they're destined for moral failure, destined for moral poverty. And that's not true of anyone. That's not true of a single person. This is why I'm saying you have to understand what this struggle is, what the nature of this struggle is. It is ongoing.

And what someone has been may not be what they are now, and what they are now is not necessarily what they will be. And none of us can fight that battle and none of us can wage that struggle on anyone else's behalf. And no one can wage that, struggle or fight that battle on our behalf. But we can support each other in trying to be better. And we can try to agree at least to not convince ourselves and to not convince others of the lie that the worst self, the subjugated self is who we truly are.

No. When we are morally down and out, that is the goodness that we know we have, that is the moral person that we know we can be being defeated. You understand me? It's not the absence of goodness. It's not the absence of morality or the absence of virtue.

It's the defeat of our own goodness, the defeat of our own morality, the defeat of our own virtue because it wasn't stronger, because it wasn't fortified, because it wasn't guarded or defended or protected well enough. And even if you may have lost multiple battles in the jihad and nefs, it means you have fought multiple battles. You just maybe need better training. Maybe you just need better weapons. You need better defenses.

You need better tactics. You need better strategies and so forth. So, InshaAllah, Middle Nation, we're gonna be trying to discuss some of these things during Ramadan, ways to train yourself, strategies for, strategies for, and so forth. Because not only is this something that we should be doing as Muslims, just as Muslims, it's something we should be doing, but also, as we've talked about recently in relation to Nur ad Din Zengi, moral integrity is a political weapon, both defensive and offensive. Piety and righteousness and integrity are extremely powerful, extremely powerful.

And in our epistemology, you cannot disconnect this. You cannot disconnect this from your politics, from your economics, from your community building, from your organizing. You can't even disconnect it from your analysis of geopolitics because there is a moral physics that governs the universe. This is a reality. And you you cannot be misaligned with that physics and succeed for any length of time, whether you're an individual or whether you're a nation.

Practical morality is exactly what makes a civilization beneficial to humanity. And the absence of practical morality, is what got us into the miserable situation that we have been in ever since the West ascended to global dominance. And ever since they did, or ever since they have been in the position of global dominance. Well, the understanding of morality has gotten completely tangled. The understanding of morality has gotten completely confused.

So we're gonna talk, inshallah, about building yourself as a moral person. The same way that you might talk about building yourself as a physically fit person. The same way that you might talk about trying to build yourself as an educated person or as a competent person or, as an entrepreneur or what have you. Because, no, it is not haphazard. It's not based on your feelings or vibes.

Right? It's not based on vague, platitudes. It's not a status that you can achieve regardless of your actions. You can't achieve it regardless of your actions, regardless of your behavior, regardless of whether you practice discipline, whether you practice restraint, whether you commit yourself to a practical code of conduct or not. You can't achieve it regardless of those things.

We focus on your deeds, and your deeds not only reflect your internal state, but they affect your internal state. You understand? You can act a certain kind of way because of your psyche, but then once you have acted, then your psyche normalizes the way you acted. And whatever flaws or whatever shortcomings or what or or what have you that had already developed in your psyche that made you act that way, now that gets reinforced and that gets intensified, and then you act worse. Because your psyche has gotten worse, and then the cycle just becomes a self perpetuating thing.

And then you lose moral ground, and then you become colonized by your worst self. Most of us don't become immoral except little by little. And little by little is how you have to work your way back to being moral again. It's exactly like any of those other things that I mentioned. You don't get morbidly morbidly obese overnight.

You get morbidly obese little by little. And you're not gonna get fit overnight. You have to get fit little by little. You don't go financially bankrupt overnight. One debt piles upon another, onto another, onto another, and so forth.

Little by little, you lose control of your finances. And you can't clear all of your debts in one fell swoop. You gotta pay it back little by little. You have to have a plan, and you have to have practical steps. You have have to have practical actions, and you have to have a commitment.

A commitment, like I say, to progress, not to perfection, but to progress. A commitment and a plan for progress. You don't become a moral person just because you know that it's good to be a moral person. That's not how you become one. You don't adhere to morals just because you believe that those morals are good.

That's not adherence to morals. That's acknowledgment that morals exist. Adherence means practically in your deeds, in your behavior, in your habits, and in your decisions. And you're not gonna be able to achieve that. You're not gonna be able to achieve that adherence overnight.

You're not gonna be able to achieve any of that without discipline and without a plan, like I say, and without practice and without commitment. It's not just a way that you wanna think about yourself. Being a moral person isn't just a way that you wanna think about yourself. It has to be a way that you actually are in reality. You understand?

If you are an obese, poverty stricken, physically unwell individual, but you wanna think of yourself as a slim, fit, rich, healthy man with a thriving career or as a business owner or what have you, well, you'd be delusional. And you are just as delusional. If you think of yourself as a moral person, when you do not practically adhere to any kind of coherent moral code, and you just act any kind of way that you like, you know, any way that feels good, any way that feels satisfying. You're one way with one person, another way with another person. And you say this, but you do that.

And you lie, and you break promises, and you don't keep your word. And you just follow your desires, and you just follow your urges, and you have no self control. While you are delusional, You're delusional if you think that you can be like that, and still think of yourself as a moral person. No. You can no more be a moral person just because you think it's good to be a moral person than you could be a rich man just because you think it would be nice to be a rich man.

No. This is a battle that you're in. This is a battle that we're all in. And every battle needs a plan, and they need their soldiers to be trained, they need their soldiers to be disciplined. And that's what we're gonna be talking about.

This this Ramadan, this is what we're gonna be talking about on Middle Nation, off and on anyway for the next next few coming weeks, inshallah.