Qur’anic Psychological Decolonisation: The Web of the West

Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says The similitude or analogy of those who take protectors or allies besides Allah is like the similitude of spiders. That they take for themselves this as a home. But then Allah brings up the reality of what this means. In in weakest of all homes is the home of the spider. If only they knew.

Now we've been talking about this a bit here and there, but whenever I hear this ayah from the twenty ninth chapter of the Quran named the spiders, the forty first verse, I think a lot about how people have internalized so many structures and systems of of of power, of western empirical power as as pretty much being like the supreme power of the world. And the intricacies of the design of those power dynamics in the history, it seems like a lot of people are stuck in it like their own little spider web. And even just what it means to take allies besides Allah, to to take non Muslims as allies or to lean into power that is not, you know, conducive with the trajectory of where the world is going, which is far more Islamic power, far more Muslim countries coming into their own the global South rising. These are just some of many things that come to mind as well as the nature of the spider and some of the tafasir related to it. Of course, you and I having this conversation, inshallah, is just pulling some reflections of the Quran and connecting it to things that we see in the world around us.

But wanted to take a moment and ask you, when you hear the similitude of the spider's web in its home, what comes to mind for you, Sheikh?

Well, I think there's there's a lot of obviously, I mean, as again, as you and I have talked about, the guidance of Quran, the layers, the depths of the guidance that you can get from it, all of the meanings that you can take from a single ayah. You you could go on for days just analyzing and reflecting and contemplating on it. But we were talking about how and middle and this is the sort of the whole focus of Middle Nation, is exactly that, to to restore the proper place of Islamic guidance, the Quranic guidance, the guidance of Allah to exactly that guidance. Meaning something that you actually follow, something that you are guided by, something that actually tells you how to understand the world properly. And I think that, you know, when I hear this ayam, there there are several layers of sort of real world meaning that you can draw from it in terms of in terms of protectors.

And finding a home in in in the spider's web or finding a home or finding protection, finding guardianship. People that you trust, people that you rely upon for protection, people whose opinion matters to you, people who are your source of truth, meaning that you trust them. Meaning, you think that they're telling you the truth. That's what that's what trust means. You think they're telling you the truth.

And patronage, reliance, There's so many different ways that that manifests in our daily life. Whether you're talking politically I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is epistemologically. Because because when you're talking about the spider's web and finding a home in that and and seeking protection from other than Allah I the first place that my mind goes is that when you are using other than Allah and other than Allah's guidance as your source of knowledge, as your source of truth, as your source of understanding. Because these are all ways that you protect yourself. The way that you understand the world is how you either protect yourself or endanger yourself depending upon how you understand the world and upon whom whom you trust or distrust.

Who you place your confidence in. And if that's not being guided by Allah then by whom? Except by those who are not worthy of your trust. Those who cannot protect you, you know. But so epistemologically, I I think about it in terms of you have adopted their, their methodologies, you've adopted their philosophies, you've adopted their ideologies, You've adopted their paradigms.

You've adopted their frameworks for understanding the world, and all of these things put you in danger. All of these things put you in danger because as Allah said, this is the weakest house. This is you've put yourself now in the weakest house, the house of the spider. And then the other thing that makes me think about the the other thing that I think about is, you know, Allah never uses a metaphor recklessly or or or without a very clear intention when Allah uses a metaphor. And if you think about a spider, I think one of the one of the interesting things to me about a spider is that it literally spins its home from within itself.

It creates its home from within itself. Unlike almost any other creature in the world. I mean, are a few examples. Mhmm. But Allah presumably chose the spider because it's the most obvious and the most known, not like a mollusk or something.

Sure. You know, some some some sort of an amoeba. But the spider spins the web from within itself, from the from the substance within itself that it secretes. It creates this web. It creates this home.

And this to me is very, very, apt. When you're talking about the West, and I was just talking about it in in a recent talk about how the West's intellectually, they're intellectually inbred because they only breed with themselves intellectually, ideologically. They refuse and reject any ideas outside of their frameworks. They reject any non Western thinkers, any non Western thought, any non Western ideas, any non Western philosophy. And, of course, they reject religion.

They reject the ultimate source of knowledge that's non Western, The creator of the East and the West. They reject that. And they create from within themselves their own home, their own ideological home, their own intellectual home, their own philosophical home from within themselves what they already have, what they already believe. And that's in and of itself is very materialistic. The substance from which it creates its whole world, its whole protection, its whole home, its whole safety net.

And this is exactly like the West, epistemologically, intellectually, ideologically, politically. Everything is is is self referencing self self referential. They're they're they're pulling it all out from themselves, and they're rejecting anything that comes from outside of them. Even if that outside of them is from the transcendent, from the creator of the universe, they even reject that. They it has to be right here with me in order for me to believe it and trust it and make something out of it.

And if it's coming from Allah or if it's coming from the East or it's coming from Africa or if it's coming from anywhere else, well, it's useless. It has to be coming directly from me because that's the only thing that I value. I find this this is very western. And then if you're gonna then then obviously, there's the part and I'm sorry I'm speaking so much. No.

I'm good. Then there's the fact of you taking protection with these people. Mhmm. You you're taking them as your protectors when they themselves are not protected. And they're not the ones who they're not the ones who grant protection.

You're you are seeking protection, again, not just literally, not just physically, not just militarily. I know most people would jump on that. That that that we that we rely on them for, you know, military contracts or weapons from America and so forth. That's the least issue because even that actually, if you think about it in real terms, no one is asking America to protect them. That's not why those military bases are there, that's not why they buy the weapons, that has nothing to do with we want you to protect us, That has nothing to do with it.

They're doing that for leverage. But in fact though, in fact, the purchase of those weapons is a is a way to avoid needing protection from America. Meaning, being protected against America by buying their weapons so that you can get on their good side. That's not seeking protection with them. It's seeking protection against them.

But the thing that that, when I think about it is the thinking. You're the the ideal ideologically, philosophically, their paradigms, their frameworks. You're seeking protection in that. You're seeking you're making that your home. You're making that your home.

Whether you are in the West or not, you've allowed that spider web to reach all across the globe until it's gotten into your own mind and into your own heart. Yeah. Where to where that's the way you're making sense of the world rather than seeking protection from Allah. And as he said, this is the weakest house. This is absolutely the weakest house.

And of course, he's he's using the the example of the spider web because of its own weakness that if a just a strong wind comes up, it's it's gone. Yeah. But the point is any protector besides Allah, that's the that's who he's talking about. Is anyone who takes a protector besides Allah and the example, the the similitude is the is the web. The the inherent, innate, intrinsic weakness of that, because like I say, you're not the one who grants protection.

You're just like me. This is seeking this is lateral. This is horizontal protection. It's not being granted from the one who grants protection. Like America, the West, what have you, they can't protect you from Allah.

They can't protect themselves from Allah. So why would you seek protection with them? Again, not just physical security protection. Protection in terms of your mind and your understanding of the world. Yeah.

Exactly. Socially.

Right. And your your your values, your standards, your your whole criteria for judging life in the world. Why would you trust this? You know? If you're if you're if you're looking outside of Allah for for your criteria for understanding the world, then you will misunderstand the world.

Absolutely. And this is very weak. This is a this is a puts you in a very weak and vulnerable position. You're you're relying on people, and you're depending on people, and you're seeking protection from people who are dangerous to you. They will use, especially when you're talking about the West.

If you seek protection from them, all that does is give them the upper hand over you. And they're just like anyone else in this world just trying to survive. You're dealing with someone who is dependent just like you, who's helpless just like you, and who is self interested just like you. So what makes you think they're gonna protect you?

Well, what do you say about these Muslim countries and Muslim government governments who are taking Aliyah with the West or Abraham Accords or or or? Like, isn't isn't there a double standard there that, okay, Muslims in the West, yeah, they take a lot of their ethics, a lot of their morality, a lot of their worldview from that spider's house. But aren't aren't you seeing on a geopolitical level allyship with these proverbial spiders?

I don't see it that way, and I don't think that the leaders themselves see it that way. Sure. Because as I said earlier, what they're actually just doing is navigating reality. They're navigating a a very dangerous and risky region and a very dangerous yeah. The the the I mean, exactly.

And and we know their intentions. We know their intentions. So if you make any kind of a deal that gets them off your back, that that that buys you some latitude, that give that buys you some slack, and gives you some degree of autonomy, then this isn't you making friends with them. That's you knowing that they're your enemy. That's you knowing that they're a threat to you, and you're trying to get them at some kind of a distance to where you can protect yourself.

This is the opposite actually of seeking protection, as I said earlier. It's the opposite of you're not seeking protection from them. You're seeking protection against them Mhmm. By means of making some kind of a deal or making some kind of a trade off that will abate the threat that they pose to you. So I think this is this is very different.

I think if you if you see it that way, then, again, like we've talked about many times, then geopolitics is just not your area.

Sure. Sure. And, you know, one thing that you led with earlier is how I I know when when you and I talk, we always kinda go back to this sort of Quranic framework. We're looking at the Sirah of and how, masterful he was in his strategy as a statesman, looking at the Khulafar Rashidin and and and these righteous leaders who had to navigate a plethora of different, power dynamics, you know, both regionally and as Islam spread throughout the world. I know we're always having that conversation on the back end, but just to kinda bring everyone in into into that dialogue, you know, For the Quran, we as Muslims and take it from two former Christians, like, we don't we don't view the Quran through the same framework as the bible where we can just take our opinion and just project our opinion into what we extrapolate from it.

So we have an an exegetical process that we use in order to extrapolate interpolation and application. And this is a call for us. It's a call for us to reflect. It's a call for us to contemplate, to deliberate, and then through that understanding, live according to it. And so in the Quran, there's, over 40 emphal, these similitudes and analogies, and this is one of them.

This chapter, the twenty ninth chapter of the Quran is named after this similitude. It covers a lot of different topics. It covers, you know, prophet Noah and his time with his people and the trial of that. And, you know, it it it it has a wide range there. But then right before you get to the end of the surah, you get this analogy of the spider's house.

Those who take allies besides Allah are like those who take for their allies the spider. And then Allah explains that the weakest of all homes is the house of the spider. You know? And later on that same page in the Quran, Allah says These are analogies and similitude that Allah strikes forward for human beings to think about. But the only ones who will really be able to intellectually and rationally really reflect on this are people with sound knowledge, sound fundamental knowledge.

I know for me, when I think of this, I I think about, you know, being in the spider's web, how people came here thinking that it was a home, seeking political opportunity, educational opportunity. But we see popular figures, we see Muslim communities in the West get ensnared in that trap. And subhanAllah, I I I became Muslim about twelve years ago in memorizing Koran, and we come across this chapter. And I just have all these miscellaneous facts in my head about animals, but even more so spiders. Right?

And, subhanAllah, I remember being so so fascinated by this ayah because Allah says, that's beta. They take for their home, the home of the spiders. But spider webs are not homes. They're traps. It's a trap.

You've taken for a home a trap. And when you look at the classical, tafasir explanations of this, Imam al Tabari, Rahmatullahi said that those who rely on other than Allah besides Allah for protection, for provision, So not just to be protected, but also to be provided for. They're like the spider that relies upon its web. It avails them not. So it's a false sense of reliance because when you think about a spider, spiders have fangs.

Sure. Some of them can cause a painful bite. Some of them can make you sick. If they bite you, some of them can literally kill you. But the spider as an animal is weak.

It has fangs. It has venom, but the rest of it is extremely weak. So it's a fragile creature. In its home, you know, they say that spider silk is five times stronger than steel, right, by weight. But strength in one area, having fangs, having venom, having, you know, spider silk that's five times stronger than steel, strength in one aspect does not equate to stability or strength in other aspects.

So when you rely upon false systems, they may seem durable, but they shatter very easily. They shatter very easily. So, you know, there's sometimes, like, non Muslims will try to be critical of, you know, hadith, you know, you know, it's not met income analysis or, you know, the but if you start to poke holes at their history, it falls apart very quickly. So why would any Muslim in the West use their web and take that as a home for an academic criteria? Or when it comes to ethics, like, we we come across this a lot in different Muslim communities.

Young Muslim sisters who are online and they see these anti Islamic anti Islamophobic anti Islam Islamophobic narratives about the age of A'isha Raghulaw Anha, about hijab, about oppression, sharia law. But if you begin to look at the most hypersexualized society on the face of the planet that has pretty much, you know, tried to weaponize the, the beauty of a woman and degrade that down to just porn industry, OnlyFans, and and and. The minute that critique is pointed at that thing that you've taken as a home, it falls apart very quickly. So Imam Abu Bakr even saying that those who rely upon other than Allah, it's like a spider relying upon its web. The spider is weak.

Yeah. It has fangs, but it's weak otherwise. And its home is weak. It can't really protect it otherwise. It's a fragile false sense of reliance.

That the spider's web cannot protect you from heat. If it's cold outside, you're not gonna be warm inside of it. It can't protect you from rain. If it's raining outside, you're gonna be wet inside of it. It can't protect you from destruction.

This is this this is the same for all false gods, for all aliyah that a person takes besides Allah. And the same is true, like, also noted, like, it's it's a lateral level of of reliance upon Allah. Like like, can't help you against Allah's plan or decree. So the appearance of the intricacy of the spider's web, it actually betrays its own weakness. You can see a spider can take hours, you know, like in a time lapse video.

So a spider can take hours creating a web. And with the pressure of just the whole thing falling apart. You know? And and that is how it is on an epistemological level. We're seeing the fragility on an economic level.

An economy is so fragile that people can can be deceived and and lose all this money just off of NFTs and Bitcoin, all these all these scams and schemes on an economic level. But that's where one thing that comes to mind. I'm just bringing some of the tough I see here that that comes to mind. Emile Cortebe, when he was describing, like, the similitude of the spider because these these analogies in are are are rare in the Quran, a lot of scholars historically spend a lot of time explaining what it means. So Imam Al Kortabi, he mentioned that when the male spider approaches the female spider, that she devours him.

And when the young spiders hatch within their web, they engage in simulacide. They eat each other. So the weakness of the home of the spider isn't merely weakness because the spider's web is fragile and the spider is fragile. It is ethically fragile because they have there's spiders don't have a sense of moral unity. They're weak in structure, but they're weak in ethics too.

The nature of the spider and the nature of the spider's home is is naturally self destructive. And if any of you have ever heard of a black widow spider, you know that the female spider devours the male spider after mating. And so you have, like, relationships within the spider's web speaking, you know, in this case, reflectively about the West, not saying the aya is about the West, but reflecting on the world that we live in in 2025. The relationships and the systems consume each other. They consume each other.

And you pointed this out to actually in in your videos that now that they can't eat the rest of the world, where do you think what do you think they're gonna eat? They turn to one another. When you look at different species of spiders, wolf spiders, hatchlings, orb weaver spiders, which make these really complicated webs, those many species of spiders, but those are just two, for example, they engage in simulacide. The young eat each other. So when you are in a society that doesn't have any divine ethics whatsoever, of course, they're gonna devour one another.

Spiders, you know, Allah says, plural, spider singular. Allah says spiders, plural, but spiders are solitary creatures. Spiders live alone. You know? They may kill intruders.

They may eat each other, but their nature is a solitary one. And so when you take for your home, the home of people that only care about themselves, individualism is the whole nature of their existence, then you can't be surprised that you will also lead an isolated existence. You know, doctor Murthy Vivek in 2023 issued a loneliness epidemic in The United States that one in two, meaning fifty percent of all Americans, experience severe loneliness. So when you're in the house of the spider, you take on the nature of the spider, and the solitude of that ego replaces the companionship that's supposed to come with faith. One thing that that comes to mind, Sheffna, about just the nature of the spider is, you know, spiders, on average, depending on the species, they live about a year, maybe max.

So their home is fragile. So every time it rebuilds, it constantly has to rebuild it. Day in, day out, week in, week out. They make a they make a spider's web in the morning, it may not even make it to see the ending. And when you think about just Western ideology, hedonism, seeing this world as Gemini, seeing this world as everything, their worldly pursuits are short lived.

And when you think about what it takes for a spider to optimize its web, the web is a trap that it uses for hunting, in more cases than not, or a nest for its sibling or for its hatchlings, which then just eat each other. But how does a bug get caught in a spider's web? It's a gophla. It's heatlessness. Heatlessness is what causes them to become ensnared.

It's you are getting trapped in something that that when you're ensnared in it, what is then supposed to be the reflection? When you're stuck in it, You at least have to have the self awareness to recognize that you're stuck in it. You can't be delusional and say, hey. Not all webs are bad. And just because we're in the web doesn't mean the spider's gonna eat us.

Like, you you can't start doing these mental gymnastics. Lo can or yon la moon. If only you knew if only you knew the nature of it. And so a lot of Middle Nation content at its fundamental core is waking people up to the reality of just how widespread that web is. And then using that understanding to then recognize where you're ensnared intellectually, spiritually, socially, economically, psychological colonization, economic sovereignty, corporate democratization, to then try to get your your way out of it.

And, you know, we we we pray to Allah that those who are having to engage with this web on a geopolitical global scale are solely but surely wriggling their way out of it because Allah knows that web has become a trap for far too many. The clarification

that that the spider's web is a trap. It's not a home. And I I I don't want this to be misunderstood as a geographic location. Sure. Because we're we're we're we're we're making a lot of comparisons, obviously, to the West.

Mhmm.

But the ayah is talking about anyone who takes protectors with other than Allah, who takes other than Allah as their protectors. Mhmm. Mhmm. So this isn't this isn't even about your location. This is about your mentality.

This is about your intention. This is about what's going on in your mind. Before you before you ever, for example, rely upon someone to do something for you or that you think they're gonna protect you or what have you, it's a thought before anything else. Before you ever take any action about it, before you ever seek someone's help, you have already thought to yourself, oh, this is the one that's that's gonna help me. So we're talking about a mental state, a a spiritual state, psychological state, which is the the basis for is what is what the ayah was talking about, is what what's going on in your heart, what's going on in your mind, with who you think is trustworthy, who you think you can rely upon, who you believe that you can depend upon, excuse me, who you believe can protect you.

And as in the the tafsir that you were talking about, I think it was a tawari, maybe a qutubi, was talking about, for example, provision. Mhmm. And so this is protection against hunger. You know, you understand that when Allah talks about protectors, like as I said in the beginning, we're talking about many different types of protection. It's protection against doubt, protection against uncertainty, protection against hunger, protection against fear, protection against insecurity, you know, protection against loneliness.

Just like you were talking about. There's all of these ways that you try to like, I mean, in fact, loneliness. Let's go with that. Because what's the what you're you're going to other than what and and here here when it talks about seeking other than Allah as your protector, I'm not talking about becoming an ascetic who is quote unquote married to Allah. That's not what I'm talking about in terms of loneliness.

I'm talking about solving your loneliness by the guided by following the guidance of Allah for how you cannot be lonely in this world. Mhmm. Marriage, through the proper Islamic ways. This is how you how you deal with your normal human needs, your normal need for intimacy, for companionship, and so forth. Follow the way that Allah showed you.

Follow the guidance. This is what we're talking about. That the guidance is exactly that. It is guidance. And if you follow the guidance of Allah that is you seeking Allah's protection.

You're seeking protection from Allah against misguidance, against being lost, against trying to find your own way. Whereas, if you're seeking the guidance of others, then you're seeking the protection from others and and taking the spider's house as your home. The spider's trap as your home because it's always a trap. Because it's always a trap. If you're seeking a way to solve your loneliness, by the way the West teaches you to solve your loneliness, well you're gonna be even more lonely.

You're gonna be more lonely than you ever could have been and you're gonna end up having, like I was talking about in that recent talk, an AI girlfriend or a robot girlfriend because you're not able to even establish a human connection. You're you're solving your loneliness problem by just giving up on even the idea of ever having a connection with another human being. That's the worst solution. That's a trap. It just draws you further and further down.

It brings you further and further into the problem that you're seeking protection from, where you're seeking protection against. It's exactly perfect what you said. It's not a home. It's a trap. Mhmm.

If you if you if you're seeking and and, again, it's not just the West, and it's and we're not talking about anyone who goes to the West or anyone who lives in the West. We're talking about if you're thinking and you're seeking protection from any of these various types of things, like I said, it's not just physical protection security. It's protection against confusion, against being lost, against doubt, against uncertainty, against obviously, like we were talking about with provision, against hunger, against the material needs, the practical needs, of these things. So for example, if you're seeking protection from hunger from other than Allah, we're not talking about, oh Allah, give me food. We're talking about keeping halal.

We're talking about believing in your risk that your risk is from Allah.

Shouldn't have to clarify.

Right. But but it has to be clarified because some people some people are are are either unintentionally or deliberately foolish.

Sure.

We're talking about the fact that you know that Allah is and that you don't have to fear poverty and that your your provision is written for you. And so therefore, swerve into the haram in order to achieve your. Yeah.

Don't get ensnared.

Yeah. Don't get ensnared. Yeah. But exactly. Because if you do that, then you're doing exactly that.

You're you're doing you're seeking protectors other than Allah. Meaning, I don't believe Allah is gonna be the one to protect me from hunger, but I think so and so is gonna protect me from hunger. I think this, you know, alcohol company will protect me from hunger if I work for them, you know, or this whatever house of finance that engages in. I will work for them, and they'll protect me from hunger. Yeah.

This this is what this is what I mean, where you're you're seeking protection from other than Allah, meaning you're not following Allah's guidance. And you're following a guidance of what the what the whether it's again, I keep going back to the West because it's just the obvious example, but it could be anywhere. Sure. Meaning, whatever whatever someone outside of Islam, whatever some paradigm or what what some some framework outside of Islam tells you you must do in order for you to be protected from hunger, from fear, from uncertainty, from doubt, whatever, from derision.

Success is like

What's protection from failure. You know? Right. Protection from failure, protection from poverty, protection from humiliation. If you're seeking any protection for from any of these things or against any of these things.

From other than Allah, meaning from other than following Allah's guidance, they're all traps. They're all traps. And and and if you're seeking you're seeking protection in those things, you will inevitably only endanger yourself further. You will get even further at risk, than what you were seeking protection from in the first place or protection against.

And one one thing that that comes to mind is, Imam Abu Razi he mentioned that the in in his tafsir that the spider's web is actually wahim. It's delusion. And that it's complex in form but void in essence. And so as you noted, like, yeah, it's easy to say West or it's easy to talk military power, but it's even just in terms of your your own states, in your own hearts, in your own mind. Like, how many people are ensnared in the digital web?

They've taken, x. They've taken Reddit. They've taken illicit sexual material sites. They've taken, you know, a certain content as distractions from the actual world that they're and they're they're ensnared in the virtual web of likes, in the virtual webs of follows, in the virtual web of screen time, of taking validation as a protector, of seeking refuge and popularity. You know?

Just so now they're ensnared in the web of the algorithmic design. But that web, it collapses when facing any semblance of reality or even you know, not take too many shots, my brothers and my my diaspora brothers and sisters, spiritual diaspora brothers and sisters in America. But come on, man. Every year, we're waiting for a new campaign, new candidate. Every four years, you're looking for a new savior.

Spiders are spiders, blue or red. The web is still the web. And and these are signs for those who reflect. So, look, you know, I know it's gonna trigger somebody because, look, far too often, Muslims, we we, because of Western academic conditioning, have trained ourselves to just be so skeptical that we lack an open heart and an open mind. We're more critical of our own than we are of everyone else and everything else, and we engage in this form of spiritual hyperbole where two things can't be true at the same time.

Brother, how am I supposed to feed my family? You're saying I have to listen, Achid, take it easy. Two things can be true. You have the job. You have the work and all that stuff, but you know that it's a law.

You're not taking that workplace as your home. That is weak. The one who enabled that place to provide for you is Allah. This is the deeper layer of thinking, and people have to be trained into that. But using that as a precursor to talk about, like, the flotilla.

I'll look at what the non Muslims are doing and and and, you know, when your heart relies upon systems that are divorced from Allah, the result will always be disappointment. The house of the spider will always collapse, and it will collapse again, and it will collapse again, and it will collapse again. We mourn oppression, you know, but we have to look at ourselves. We have to look at what we contribute to that. We have to be willing to un snare ourselves from these traps that we find ourselves in.

And, again, like modern distractions, the material webs, the the web of entertainment, the web of wealth, the web of consumerism, these are the spiders' modern threads. And so whether it's Imam Al Tabari talking about the weakness of the false protectors or Imam Ibn Kathir talking about the fragility of false power or Imam Al Khourtabi talking about the moral cannibalism or Imam Al Razi talking about the cognitive delusion, the Oham, or Imam al Alusi talking about the emotional and spiritual weakness of it. For us, we're looking to something deeper than that web. So now the question becomes, if you see a world immersed in the spider's web, Like, what do you think Allah is trying to tell you? It's to tell you to rely upon him alone with our partners.

And and and do not let shaitan don't let the devil lock you into a defeatist mindset of, well, what am I supposed to do with that? Well, the reliance upon other than Allah started in here, so the unsnaring of being caught in that web has to start here too. And when you start here, when you start here, when you begin to untangle yourself from that through relying upon Allah, through turning to Allah, through investing spiritually, intellectually, socially, economically, when you begin to invest in reliance upon Allah, you will find yourself free. You will find yourself, you know, a way out of those situations and circumstances. If only they knew.

Allah knows that they call upon other than him. Allah knows this about them, but he, Subhana, is the one who is the all powerful, the all supreme, and the all wise. And Allah gives you these analogies to humanity. But the only one who's going to be able to reflect on it are those who have that sound knowledge. You know?

So this is something just I mean, I could honestly go on, you know, and how that spider's web makes you think that tawakal in Allah is not an answer. But the only reason why you're stuck in the first place is because the tawakal was what was, was was deficient. So fixing that deficiency, the tawakal deficiency, is what then gives you the strength to break out of that web. It is a weak home. You know?

And don't ever let anything that you see in life make you think otherwise. The weakest of all homes, and that's the the weakest of all homes is the house of the spider. So just because you're in it doesn't mean you always have to stay like that. And that's why, you know, from a middle nation perspective, we have that future future historical analysis. We know what Allah has promised us.

So, yeah, it's complex, and and we all feel ensnared in a lot of ways today, But it's weak, and Allah is the one that can change the tide. And Allah will do that because he promised he would. That's why from a middle nation perspective and and a paradigm, this is why we we have that victorious narrative. Yeah. You can look at all of the things in the world and be like, wrong.

Wrong. They could do this better. That, or the third. Well, first of all, see and make sure that you're not ensnared in that Western sort of pseudo intellectual hyper skeptical, overly critical, cynical mindset and free yourself of that. And then when you fully relied upon Allah, what then does the narrative look like besides victory for the oom of Muhammad That requires a lot of psychological decolonization.

You gotta un snare yourself quite a bit, but inshallah, we can work our way towards it together.

I mean, think this is one of the most important aspects for the for for analysis with regards to that ayah and that similitude is the weakness that Allah is pointing to the weakness. And again here, it's it's the weakness of those who seek protection, and seek protectors other than Allah which again as we've explained, has to do with all different areas. Even, as I say, protection against even ignorance, protection against confusion, protection against being misled, protection against being lied to, and so forth. Protection against misunderstanding. And that when you are seeking like, okay.

In the in the in the context of analysis, as I've talked about before and as you just mentioned with the victorious narrative, sort of future history, which is, as I've explained many times, the way that we do analysis or the way that I do analysis is more like looking at what's going on today from the perspective of a future historian, who is writing the story, writing the history of Muslim victory. And looking at 2025 or whatever year it might be, and looking at the events in 2025 and seeing explaining the history of what role those events played in the ultimate eventual victory of Islam and the victory of the Muslims. This is coming from a point of truth. This is coming from a point of knowledge that is sound knowledge, that is unquestionable, undeniable knowledge because it comes from the creator. It comes from the one who's already written everything that's going to happen ever.

So Allah has already told us the end of this story. We know the end of this story. We know what's going to happen. How how this we know all the way up until the last day of this life, of this existence. We know what's going to happen.

So this must play a role in your analysis. If this if you're a Muslim and you have this knowledge and you pretend that this is just a religious belief that has no role in how I interpret reality, how I interpret events in the world that are really happening, then you have already fallen into the spider's web of thinking about religion the way that the Kufar think about religion, which is it just it's just something that makes you feel good. It's just something to make you a better person, make you be nice to people, and so forth. No. It's knowledge, it's guidance from Allah, the creator of everything, from the creator of you and I.

All of this has already happened from the perspective of Allah. It's already been written. The pens have been lifted. The ink is dry on the page as we know. But you're acting like you don't know.

Mhmm. You're making analysis and you're a Muslim and you're acting like you don't know this, then you've already fallen into the spider's web in terms of seeking the protection of the Kufar against a misunderstanding of the role of religion. And all they've done is make you misunderstand the role of religion even more because like you said correctly, that's that that house is not a house, it's a trap. And all it does is pull you in for the prey of the one who made that house. In this case, we're talking about whoever's paradigms you're using that created those paradigms to trap you and to prey upon you because like I said earlier, we're this is lateral.

This is we're all on the same level here. There's nobody above anybody else. We're all coming up with the same types of things. So you can come up with your idea of how the world is supposed to work. You can come up with your idea.

You can come up with your paradigms, and they're all the same. They're all of equal value, which is of no value when it's compared to the one who gave who gives us guidance from the one who created this reality that we live in. We're all dependent on that, and we're all unprotected except if he gives us protection. We can't protect each other in this regard. Again, not talking about physical security protection like that.

I'm talking about in your understanding and protection from all of the things that people seek protection from, whether they frame it in that way or not. Like I said, you're you're seeking protection, for example. If you're analyzing if you're a Muslim and you're analyzing the world without considering the fact that everything has already happened with regards to Allah in terms of it already being written, the the the the history that we have that that we can remember, the history that's gone behind us is not more settled than the history that's in front of us. The history that's in front of us is also settled, exactly the same as the history that's behind us, And we know that as Muslims. This is what is part of a core belief of iman.

We believe in this. And so if you're if you're acting like, well, I don't know if the Muslims are gonna have victory. I don't know if this is gonna happen or not. Okay. Then you're you're you're you not applying the correct understanding or you're not using you're not utilizing the message of Allah and the guidance of Allah as it was intended to be used and utilized and understood.

You know how how how the the Sahara, when they would memorize Quran, they would take, I believe, three ayah at a time.

Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Okay. 10 by 10. Yeah.