Critical Thinking | The Prerequisite to Fairness

We're we're good to go, Sheikh. Okay. First and foremost, we thank everyone for taking time out of their morning, afternoon, or evening. You know, if you go on the channel, you'll see that there's several videos about critical thinking, critical thinking about propaganda, critical thinking about different different articles and things like this that have come up over time. So, we thought that it it might be very good to just talk about critical thinking.

What does it mean to think critically? There's, the the unraveling of the fabric, you know, video that really challenges the way that people actually think and how and it's such an extremely jarring thing, like what's happening in Philistine. May Allah remove it sooner than soon. Allah I mean, really wakes people up and and gets people thinking in a way that maybe they never had to think before. But we also mentioned the, video shared the video critical thinking, the West was never rationed, that sort of challenges the the ethical values of the West.

So we'll, start by just putting it in front of our our noble, Imam and Mustaf Shahid. I wanna ask you, you know, what factors do you think generally or even specifically contribute to the compromise of of critical thought?

There's so many. There there are so many. I mean, if you're if you're, if you live in the West I mean, we're sort of talking mostly about people who live in the West. If you live in the West, the main factors are just the environment itself, the culture itself. There's there's so many reasons why I mean, if you if you you could choose almost any point in the history of Western so called civilization, and you'll find reasons why critical thinking was discouraged or was completely absent from the society, discouraged from the society, and overall prevented.

It's it's a constant, actually, in the West. Going back as far as as far as you wanna go, despite the you know, they they had they they hyped themselves up as being, you know, very logical, rational. You know, the the enlightenment was all about rationality and reason and so on. But this never been the case. This is this is completely this is a self description in false advertising.

In the if if we were looking at just now, in the modern age, say, the twentieth century, twenty first century, they have a very obvious motive, I guess. You could say a very obvious motive for discouraging or subverting the cultivation of critical thinking. And that's the the very simple fact that if the people of the West and America in particular, if they were critical thinkers, then every Western economy would collapse. De facto social order would collapse. The political system would collapse.

The way the whole society is managed relies on the population not being critical thinkers. In terms of the economy, mass production is the basis of every industrial economy. And in in in order for mass production to not result in the production of wasteful surplus, wasteful surplus of identical standardized goods, then you need to make people make their consumer choices without any hint of critical thought. They need to be impulse driven. They need to buy on impulse, on feeling, on an irrational sense of brand loyalty.

You know? All of these things that the advertising industry exists to do. They need to to to not buy on the basis of what they need and what actually makes sense, what's what's actually, you know, a sensible rational purchase. They need to somehow believe that this, you know, this vast variety of basically completely identical goods, identical products. They need to believe that the that these products are all unique and special even though they're they're actually, you know, interchangeable.

And you need them to assign value to a to, you know, some some item, some product, some whatever on factors that have nothing to do with its utility. It has to be how it makes them feel about themselves or or what have you. It's not a it's not a, an actually, it's not a critical thinking process. So critical thinking would completely destroy the American economy. If if the American people were critical thinkers, the economy would would collapse.

It's the fundamental mission of advertising and marketing. They wanna subvert any degree of critical thinking in a in a shopper, in a consumer, the and whole economy is based on that. The whole economy requires the population to be disoriented and impulsive and feelings driven, not thinking driven. So, I mean, if you're in the West, this is this is all going to affect you. I mean, in in in in the social order.

I've talked about before the fact that America and the West generally, but but, you know, based on my own experience, especially in the wet in America, it's a society of strangers. You know? Economics has to do with that also. Economics has a has a great role to play in why America is a society of strangers and the West generally. Again, because with with mass production, you know, industrialization and mass production, that was a sort of a form of monopolization, and that created industrial centers.

And you know what I'm talking about. Those industrial centers put people out of jobs in other places, in other parts of the country, in the rural areas and so forth, smaller towns and so on. So the jobs and the availability of jobs were all located wherever there were clusters of factories. So then you had urbanization. You started to have these big cities and then the phenomenon of internal migration within The United States from outlying areas to the urban industrial centers.

And that meant that these were people who were uprooted, away from their extended families and so on, strangers living together side by side in in tower blocks who and they didn't know each other. That's that's still the case until now. I mean, you already had in America that that that America itself is comprised of foreigners. The the entire citizenry is comprised of foreigners and immigrants who have nothing in common. They have no shared heritage.

They have no shared history, no shared tradition, no traditional structures, and so on. You know, structures that, like, back even in in Europe would have been based on some sort of some sort of traditional heritage. That's all interrupted when they came to the to to The US. So the rules of the society, the rules of those big industrial centers, then the rules of the country, and the people who make those rules, have no have no grounding or have no they they didn't arise naturally from a sort of traditional organic natural order. They're sort of elected or appointed or what have you on the basis of some sort of arbitrary popularity, not on experience, not on the track record, not on any connection with the community, with the people, and so on.

So none of none of this actually makes any sense. You know? This isn't this isn't historically how societies were supposed to operate or did operate. It makes no sense. It's completely unreasonable and unnatural.

It's an unnatural social model. It's a it's a way of a way of trying to manage the society that doesn't make any sense. It's an artificial manufactured way, but it only makes sense for the people who are in power in the in that country and in that society to have the people isolated and atomized and alienated from one another and alone. And they they they in America, they call this rugged individualism, being independent and all that. But it's all it's all a tactic for making people defenseless, making people helpless, making people lonely and desperate and vulnerable.

And this is this is makes them very easy to control. Makes it much easier to control. You know? You indoctrinate people in The US and in the West. I I think it's maybe less in other parts of the West, but it's it's you know very well in in America.

You indoctrinate people that they're a failure if they live with their parents into young adulthood, even though that's absolutely the norm everywhere in the world. Everywhere in the world, people continue to live with their parents in their parents' home until they marry, until they get married, and sometimes even after their marriage. But in in America, that makes you a loser. If you're still if you're still in the house by the time you're 19, then you're a slacker. Well, why?

You know? There's no reason for that. That's that's the a natural way of of doing things, but they but they want everyone to be alone and isolated and vulnerable and defenseless. I mean, then that that that there's like then then you have the whole issue of marriage itself, which is already discouraged in the society and almost looked down upon. You know?

You've made I don't I don't wanna get too much off track, but I'm just talking about how the whole society is based on a need for the population to not think critically because the society itself doesn't make any sense. You allow things and you encourage things and you promote things that are completely against your interests, that are self destructive, that are chaotic, that are anarchic morally and psychologically for yourself. So they they they can't have you stop and think about any of this, you know, for more than two seconds. You're not supposed to think about any of this because it's it's nonsense. It's nonsensical.

But it's necessary to keep things it's necessary it's necessary to keep the completely unnecessary status quo going. It's a status quo that is it's actually unnecessary, but it's only necessary for those who are in power. But it's very much against the interest of the population. I mean, it's I mean, like in America, you don't run out of things to talk about with regards to why critical thinking isn't in their interests. Like, if you just talk about the political realm and the and the so called democracy that they have, it's obvious why critical thinking would undermine that system because they need you to continue believing that you live in a democracy and that they need you to also believe that democracy is itself the best possible system of government even though neither of those things is true.

Neither of those assertions is actually true. You don't live in a democracy, and democracy is not necessarily the best system possible. It's not necessarily the best system of government. There's, you know, there's so many reasons. The whole society is managed through the infliction.

As I've said many, many times, the whole society is managed through the infliction of severe comprehensive cognitive dissonance, meaning that they need you to believe in a reality that bears no resemblance to the reality that you actually experience and observe in your day to day life? Well, obviously, critical thinking would make that a very difficult thing to maintain. That would make it very difficult to maintain the necessary cognitive dissonance that allows the West and and and American society to perpetuate itself. So critical thinking skills are anathema to the entire so called western civilization, to the whole society, to the whole economy, to the social order, to the political system, and so on. Everything.

Every conceivable way is used to undermine and to subvert the population from acquiring or exercising those intellectual skills. Now as for the sorry to, you know, get back to the question, the original question, the things that actually compromise critical thinking on an individual basis. Well, there's again, there's gonna be so many things. There's there's you can you can sort of partition it into the into categories of subjectivities that interfere with objectivity because critical thinking has to begin. The beginning point is trying to get yourself to a point of objectivity.

So things like your emotions, your, you know, preconceived notions, assumptions, your ideology, even a personal anecdotal experience, which you which you then conflate and extrapolate to conclusions that aren't logical, that that not aren't actually fair, any biases that you have, or just intellectual laziness, intellectual convenience. You know? All of these things are impediments to critical thinking, and all of these things are strongly encouraged in the West, in America. They're all strongly encouraged continuously. And I've talked about that.

I mean, you you you you pick these these two videos to focus on, but it's it it runs throughout almost any video where I talk about Western civilization, so called, where I talk about the West, where I talk about Western society, where I talk about America, all of it. There isn't a sign in in American society. There's no hint of their actual prioritization of critical thinking, and I think it's obvious why. It would be it would be extremely detrimental to their society, to their whole system of power, to the whole system of management, to everything. It would be incredibly detrimental for them to actually encourage critical thinking.

So all of those that sort of plethora of, as I say, subjectivities are actually the things that are encouraged as opposed to critical thinking and the idea of being objective. I mean, there's there's no like, if you watch I mean, I don't I don't watch mainstream American television, but I see clips. You know? And I used to watch it, obviously, so I remember, you know, growing up what it was like. And I and I remember growing up how it changed, how the how how how I mean, now it's you can't watch it.

It's just one pole and another pole shouting at each other on two ends of a on two ends of a spectrum. And there's there's a there's a big trick going on there because it makes you think that they're actually talking about the the extreme ends of all possible opinion when actually both opinions are within accepted opinion. And they're and they're dictating to you the framework of the way of thinking about any particular issue, any perspective you can have. This is the farthest you can go, and this is the farthest you can go. And now these two are gonna shout at each other.

And we'll pretend that that's a process for for making you think and making you understand an issue, but it's just a process for indoctrinating you into this framework by by by emphasizing to you the the allowable extremes of opinion that you're not allowed you're not allowed to, venture beyond that. That's all they're doing. It's it's not even arguing points. It's not actually even about that. It's about setting the parameters of allowable thought.

You know? And and the the the passion that they speak with, the the the hostility that they speak with, the the lack of seriousness, all of it. All of this is is trying to encourage that type of behavior, those types of habits in the viewers, in the consumers of that media. So that, as I said, all of these subjectivities get activated, get ignited, get inflamed, and so that it now becomes impossible for you to actually try to be fair. Because the the the only way that you can critical thinking is necessary if you want to be fair about anything.

You have to have critical thinking skills in order to be fair, in order to be because you have to be objective in order to be fair. You have to be able to look accurately at any situation, any issue, and any individual. You have to try to be as objective as possible so that you can be fair. That's the only way you can do it. So you you have to approach any of these kinds of things in life with critical thinking skills.

Something that you that you said or you you mentioned a few things just if I if I may kind of, synopsize your points. The economy, the society, the powers that be, the plutocracy, the corporatocracy, the machine doesn't benefit benefit from generating critical thinkers. Right? And, when you then, towards the end of what you were sharing, mentioned, like, just Western media, TV shows, and how it's evolved to this hyperbolic these are the two extremes, and this is the discussion point. To make it seem like you're speaking to the spectrum and the parody of every given matter by putting two talking heads across from each other arguing points, it made me I I had a thought in my head, which was that Frankenstein's monster only made sense to Frankenstein.

No one else was thinking about doing what Frankenstein did, an amalgamation of dead parts, putting it together and trying to give it life, which is essentially Western society in a nutshell. It is Frankenstein's monster, and it makes perfect sense to doctor Frankenstein. But when that monster broke out of the laboratory, it terrorized the people, and and it terrorizes and they wanted to kill it, and they wanted to put it down. And who was its greatest defender? Doctor Frankenstein.

Doctor Frankenstein. And so culture is dead. It's a byword in The United States. I can't speak for Canada. I can't speak for Europe.

I can speak for The United States. In this instance, my experience being my expertise as much as as able, Culture is dead. There is Western culture is popular culture. From children to adults, everyone is just repeating what they hear in songs, TV shows, which is a smoothing of the critical thought process because now you're just echoing things that you've heard. Education.

Nothing about our academic systems actually show great value by way of creating educated people. It's an internal feedback loop of the elite essentially using, our collegiate and university systems as work permits. A bachelor's degree is just a work permit. A master's degree just gives you access to a greater financial tier as far as your workforce goes and even a PhD. There was a poll that was shared this past week that a bachelor's degree is more profitable than a master's degree.

And when you sift through all the nonsense in the article trying to explain why that is, why lesser education and higher education is greater than higher education and postgraduate education, you reach this point where, it's because you can get into the workforce faster, and you don't have to put yourself in so much debt to get there. It's easier to pay off that that initial work permit. Even when you spoke about the economy, there's a term for this, a sociological phenomenon unique to the West called the loneliness economy that literally preys upon your notion that I cannot be satisfied or satiated through human interaction without purchasing something to validate my existence, to interact with people. It is Frankenstein's monster incarnate. It it reminds me of a statement from a fifth century scholar died about eight hundred and fifty years ago.

Ibn al Jawzi, has a book called Tibul Rouhani, which, the English copy of which, for anyone who wants to find it, you probably get the PDF for free online, is is normally translated as disciplining the soul, but is is, like, the medicine of spirituality. And in the West, spirituality is as good as dead. People just essentially make up what their spiritualism is based on the world that they've kind of been put in. But he begins this book by talking about the excellence of the mind and that an excellence of a thing is known by its fruits. And the fruits of the mind is in knowing its creator, and the mind contemplates the proofs within the creation to know the creator's existence until the creation knows the creator and the proofs of the prophet's truthfulness until they recognize that truthfulness.

And then the mind, if it's thinking, will encourage obedience to the creator and adherence to the path of those messengers from the creator. And the brain exists to find ways to obtain difficult things and to tame things and to teach things, but that's if the mind is operating at its highest function. If that functionality is completely deteriorated because there is no higher understanding, there is no higher call, there is no higher anything except yourself and what you can buy for yourself and how you can simply just exist and exist and exist within said society. Well, do not be surprised if you see the fruits, come from a poisonous tree, to use a legal term. The the fruits of the poisonous tree, it nothing that comes the tree is already rotten, so everything that it bears is essentially rotten too.

And I see people online, especially those who don't live in The United States, who kinda have this understanding of what The United States is. They think they know, but they really it's there's there's no way to know it unless you're in it. And there's no way to really understand what it's like to be out of it except to go from being in it to out of it. And there are factors. You know, maybe people tend to feel like, oh, just power on the West.

Factors in in in many societies, cultural factors, social factors, economic factors that inevitably lip because human beings are limited. But Islamic history created great thinking minds from impoverished demographics, from racial minorities, from every every every part of the society. That is not so in the West. It's not so in the West. It's you have to overcome a great many obstacles in order to be in a position where your critical thought can actually add value to the society, and even then, only so much.

Only so much. And, to that point, it reminds me of, an ayah in the Quran, in in Surah al Imran chapter three verse a 100 and, 85. Every single soul will taste it. Just this ultimate supreme reality that the Quran calls us to understanding, that death is inevitably the ultimate equalizer for every living thing. And when a person understands the reality of death, then the value it adds to life is significantly more.

This is, from amongst the most well understood teachings of the prophet Think often about the cleaver of pleasures. The companions came to the prophet. They asked who is, the best amongst the believers? And he said, thinks about death often. And who is gonna be the best in, amongst them?

It's whoever has the best character. Nothing in our society calls us to a standard of excellent character in our interactions with each other because social interactions and family interactions have been completely dissolved and replaced with what? Purchasing on Amazon and going to malls and, you know, every being inside and terminally online and all of these factors that eliminates humanity. Eliminate humanity. And if if humanity is eliminated, then the weight of death is something that's seen as trivial.

No wonder we have the most suicidal nation on the face of the planet. No wonder we have people whose mental health is absolutely deteriorated into nothing. No wonder we have an economy driven by loneliness. And the the most wise amongst the people are those who are are constantly preparing for their return to god almighty. So we live in a society that eliminates critical thinking on a lot of levels, but our society, as you've pointed out, has created this sort of utopian worldview that life is somehow eternal and death is somewhat optional.

It's trivial. And movies and TV shows, they trivialize the ultimate equalizer that gives value to life by showing that not everyone's life is actually the same in its value. And that makes it easier for a society to eliminate heritage, eliminate culture, take these dead components from these things that don't give life to anyone, and create a Frankenstein's monster to create this main character syndrome with delusions of grandeur where you have an entire generation of of people, of youth, my generation, I'm speaking to specifically, that are living their lives vicariously through anime characters from a society that they can't even relate to. They think they're Naruto. They think they're they think they're all these little cartoon they think they're Goku.

They think they're just gonna power up, that they're just gonna have some training arc, they're just gonna conquer things. That is delusional. And with just enough education and just enough money, I can be just sedated enough to just get by. And and and what I'm consuming from popular culture becoming my culture then becomes the morals that I live by and critique. I do want to pass it to our audience, and thank you all for taking the time to come.

I wanna read a few of the comments here and then maybe hear from one or two of you just a few minutes just so we can keep the recording short. So let's see, some of what we we got here. And whenever you start thinking critically, you are labeled as a weirdo in a tin hat and conspiracist or whatever. They have great mechanisms not just to limit, all caps, critical thinking, but even mechanisms to attack it when it starts developing in someone. And it's like, you know, in in the body, you have an immune system that's meant to attack, bacteria attack viruses, excuse me, that that actually make the body sick.

And amongst the worst sicknesses a body can have is where the immune system attacks the good things in it. And that is the, the West in a nutshell. Even if you're not in America or in Europe, if you're peripherally, in in in any vicinity of that, anyone that is influenced by that wave of thought will will reach, will will find themselves in the same position. We ask Allah to make that easy. We also have a contemplates death equals morbid.

Yes. As if, thinking about the inevitable reality that every person will meet is somehow a bad thing to think about.

Yeah. You can you can you can give it I mean, there there's there's almost nothing that that can show you how incompatible, Western so called civilization, Western thought is with Islam. And the fact that that that the very thing that told us we should remember as often as possible is what they tell you to never think about.

Let me read one more of these, and then a question that we got. Critical thinking is about to detect and compare, quote, unquote, narratives. Is it not? Does the political, financial elite believe in their own narrative? I tend to think yes.

The alternative would be that some people are utterly aware of what is going on, maybe unaware of what is going on. An explanation that in the end is in danger to fall into conspiracy theories. The challenge is to debunk the system without being trapped into it, into too much focus on people, but rather debunk the mindsets. Can you comment on this if it fits into your thoughts? And we also had a question.

What practical steps can we take to apply critical thinking skills? I would assume first is to stop to think, but how do we unpack and analyze what we need to make a decision? We will we will actually get to that, Inshallah, through, through the outline that we that we have prepared. But but just to this

No. I would say it's not about comparing narratives. Mhmm. It's about knowing what's information and what's narrative, being able to distinguish between actual information and narrative. Because narrative is just another word for spin.

It's just another word for, you know, a deliberate, fabricated, manufactured, agenda driven interpretation of information. So critical thinking is where you can dissect what you're hearing and know from what you're hearing or seeing or observing or or being told what is actual information and what is spin, what's actual information and what's narrative, because there is objective reality. So you have to be able to identify what is objective reality as opposed to what's narrative, what's propaganda, what's marketing, what's advertising, what's spin. That's that's what critical thinking is in this regard. It with regards to consuming and filtering information, that that vetting process that you should go through when you read anything or you watch anything or you listen to anything is to be able to identify in in what I'm being told and what I'm being shown what of this is actual, objective, real information, and what is their explanation of that information the way they want it to be explained to me, the way they want me to understand it.

You know? That's that's critical thinking. It's not about comparing narratives. It's being able to extract from a narrative what's factual, what's actually factual. And then you can make your judgment based on your values and your ideas and your, you know, your own thought processes.

That's that's how as I said, that's that's why it's it's a prerequisite to fairness is to be objective. That's the prerequisite to fairness. And and, so so achieving objectivity, is the the beginning point of critical thinking, is being able to achieve objectivity. Although it's become so difficult for people to even achieve objectivity that it's not even the beginning point anymore. You have to go through so many steps to reach objectivity before you can even start using critical thinking.

You have to you have to you have to get the all of the all of the subjectivities that are that are obstacles in your in your way, that are obstacles between you and objectivity, you have to remove all of these subject subjectivities. And and and there's that's that's almost an endless amount of things that will that will vary from person to person. And then there will there will be some that are common to a certain culture and to a certain like like like to the West, like in America. There are certain subjectivities that are common because a lot of them are, implanted. And as I said, a lot of them are encouraged and promoted in the society.

Subjectivities meaning biases biases and, you know, a a worldview and a paradigm and a narrative that you've grown up with that then even without effort by the person who is giving you information, it already gets filtered through all of the subjectivities that you already have in your own mind that have been implanted there through indoctrination over the course of your life that already makes it hard for you to be objective. And it hard already means that they know that they they they can rely on you looking at the world through the paradigm that was implanted in you your entire life so they know how you're going to interpret the information, how you're going to receive the the narrative has already been placed in your mind so that when when any information comes to you, it will be appropriately located within that narrative because of the the paradigm that you inherited and and had enforced throughout your entire life in the West and your entire life in America so that you will understand it a certain kind of way without them even having to try. And then like like I said, there's there's there's just the the fact of intellectual laziness and intellectual convenience, where you literally have people only reading headlines.

Not reading the story at all. Only reading headlines. And very often, the headline is very different. The headline is the beginning of narrative creation for for for information. The headline is the beginning of that.

It's almost like the in a nutshell, this is what we want you to get out of it. It doesn't necessarily mean that's what it what it is. It doesn't mean that that's that has anything to do whatsoever with the actual information that that that sometimes just barely any nuggets of information in an article. The the the rest of it is all narrative, and and we're gonna summarize that narrative that we have built around this one tiny kernel of a fact. And we'll put it in the headline because we know that that that none of you really have interest in being properly informed anyway, and and also don't have the time or the attention span because we made sure that you don't.

So you just read the headline. So, yeah, I mean, the the the all of these things, this is they're they're counting on you not having any critical thinking, and they do everything possible to make sure that you don't, to make sure there is no incentive whatsoever for you to be a critical thinker. I mean, brother was talking about, I mean, I I wanna take a lot a lot more time, but you were talking about the education system. Everyone complains about the the liberal arts, and they treat those types of degrees as a joke if you have a liberal arts degree. I mean, it's just a it's a common thing that I see on the on the Internet, people mocking anyone who has a liberal arts degree.

And liberal arts departments are being reduced, you know, drastically and being cut drastically. Well, you're turning university into a vocational college. It's it's just turning you you you have this mindset, again, because of the materialistic nature, materialistic character, of Western so called civilization, which is that education only has one function, money. As everything else, it only has money. The the only utility of education is money.

It has nothing to do with understanding the world. Education isn't about understanding. It isn't about being it isn't about being intellectual. It isn't about being intelligent. It isn't about being wise.

It isn't any of this. Well, these are the types of elements of education or the the dimensions of education that you generally found in the liberal arts, in studying, you know, philosophy, political science, literature, all of these things. And, well, that's useless. You can't make any money off of that, so there's no point. You know, it's it's it's it's mercenary.

It's absolutely mercenary. And and now it's a joke if someone goes to liberal arts. And then they've also, to a certain extent, made the liberal arts a joke with with, you know, all of the gender theory and, you know, and whatnot. They've been you know, a lot of postmodernism became absolutely ridiculous. And and exactly what you were talking about, which is this postmodernism became this idea that there is no truth.

Everything everything is subjective. So that, you know, there's no point in at that point, what is what is the point in critical thinking when there is no objective truth? You have to begin with it with from the position of of understanding and knowing that there is actual objective reality. It exists. And and if you know that that's the case, then that's what you will continuously look for when you see information or when when when you're given information.

You will your your your natural inclination, your hunger will be to know what's the reality.

Such a vivid image came to my mind, in a very western popular culture, which is that of zombies, and you've used this analogy before as well. I've always found it fascinating that zombies, they want to eat brains, and they want to kill the living and and add to the rings of the undead. They don't think, but they want to add to their rings. They don't have any agency of their own, but they want to kill the ones who have agency. And they always supremely outnumber the rest.

You know? And it becomes survival against against this this thing that is is undead and wants to kill the living and wants to eat brains. You know? Just it's a it it pretty much summarizes the tactical propagandist approach to eliminating critical thoughts in a nutshell. The if if no one did want to to share, then maybe the the next point will will will get people, loosened up a a bit more, than

And I I think, you know, I think I think, that the I don't I I think that the the zombie metaphor I think that the zombie movies are are supposed to be like that. I think they're supposed to be a metaphor. Those stories are supposed to be a metaphor, and it's supposed to actually touch on the way people feel. People people people can't necessarily articulate this, but they feel it in the West. They absolutely feel it, that they've been zombified.

And that it's a that it's a society of zombies, but they can't identify necessarily what the source is or the reason maybe or certainly how to get out of

it. Mhmm.

Sure. We have our sister, Sunma,

who Yeah. I I would like to it's it's some it's nothing, you know, remarkable, but I just want to point out that, you know, in in the condition that you're in, you know, like, you're zombified or you're disconnected from reality or you don't know objective reality or if you can't ascertain what is real, what's not, I think the the for us, we have a very healthy interface, which is the Quran. If you listen to the Quran, if you're if you're reminded of an ayah, and then that, you know, interferes with your heart, and you you will think and you will reevaluate what you have you know, what you've been doing or whatever it is that you are encountering. And that, in turn, you know, affects change within you. You know?

This is like to the sisters asking about the practical application of critical thinking. You know? It's in your interaction with the world and your dealings with your day to day activities. If you inter interact with the Quran, you'll be able to somewhat apply some level of critical thinking to your personal self. And, you know, that's a that's a that's a start.

You know? And then it will inevitably, you know, manifest in other facets of your life if you, you know, actively interact with the word of Allah. It's I I I mean, it's it's quite obvious. I mean, I know it's an obvious point, but I just wanted to, you know, pinpoint something.

No. Just exactly, Loftheba. The the the the thing with our with our is and and, actually, today, after salah, I I was having this this conversation with the with the congregation is that we have in I can only speak to to what I see, which is in The United States. We've certainly reduced the relationship with the Quran to just either you memorize all of it or you don't really interact with it at all. You're either actively memorizing it and reading it often as a as a student of the Quran, or it's just a Ramadan only sort of thing.

And, you know, maybe you take an Arabic class, maybe, maybe not. You know? But that that is sort of one of the ways that outside of the West, as an ummah, our rich history of critical thinkers has been eliminated and and and requires touch deep. We have to revive that amongst ourselves, amongst our spiritual collective. So that was certainly profound and and definitely appreciate you sharing.

What would you say then in the face of these components that eliminate critical thoughts? And don't worry. We'll we'll close this session by discussing steps towards critical thinking, inshallah, if god almighty wills. What does it mean to actually think, and where should critical thought be applied, whether you want to go in the direction of self or society, news propaganda, lifestyle, religiosity? What does it mean to think?

And then where should critical thought be applied?

It's it's a good question, and it actually is a is a question that sort of came up when we were beginning the process of putting together a critical thinking course. And that when and and in fact, my wife asked me, what's the difference between critical thinking and just thinking? And I don't know. I don't know. Because to me, this is just how you're supposed to use your brain.

It's it's almost a trick in and of itself to say that this is a special thing that you do with your brain, to say to say that this is a special skill set, and that the normal thing that you that you're supposed to do with your brain is just let it, receive narratives. That's the normal thing that you're supposed to do. It's not really use it. It's brain is supposed to be passive. That's that's the normal thing.

And to use your brain actively is is a bit strange, and it needs a special set of skills and training and so on. And I think that it even to a certain extent, I think that we we're we're guilty of a a level of colonization in the use of the term critical thinking because it's just thinking. It's actually just thinking, way you're supposed to think, the way you're supposed to use your mind. And as I said, I think for for me, one of the main one of the main sort of characteristics or components or even, as I said, the the the purpose or the goal of now I'm gonna have to start to say so called critical thinking It's just fairness. It's actually it's just being fair, being accurate, and it's a it's a prerequisite to honesty.

And like Rasulullah said about, you it's enough to make you a liar if you just pass on everything that you hear without without checking. And we're and we're told, you know, obviously, we're told in the Quran to verify information. And, you know, we're we're told there's many, many ayat, and I'm sure that you can recall them better than I can. Ayat that that really encourage you and almost like it's for you to use your mind to think tafkir, and to evaluate. I mean, Allah mentions there's many ayat that talks about how are you judging?

You know, he draws out the way that people do things, or the way that people think about things, or the actions that they take, or the opinions that they have, the perspective that they have, and then ends it with a question, which is obviously a rhetorical question. How judge you? How are you judging? On what possible basis did you reach the conclusion that what you're thinking is correct? You know, there's there's many examples of this.

Meaning, you're supposed to think. You're supposed to use your mind. You're supposed to actually analyze. And I don't for myself, I don't see how you can put that in one area and not in another area. I don't see that that well, it only applies to when you're reading the news.

It applies to when you're reading the news. It applies to when you are assessing yourself, as you said, with regards to the self. Does it apply to our self? Well, of course, it should be. You have to be.

More than more than more than with regards to anyone or anything else, you should be objective about yourself, which is to not think that you're better than you are and also to not to think that you're worse than you are, for example, and to and to to be honest with yourself about why you do what you do, why you think what you think, what your actions are, and so on, and to to not think inaccurately about yourself because this is one of the big problems in the West, in my opinion. They lie to themselves about themselves, and they lie to themselves about their society. They lie to themselves about what they pretend to believe when they know perfectly well they don't believe in it. You know? There's, again, too many examples.

Some more catastrophic than others in in the things that they pretend to believe in. And and and you you create a habit in yourself of accepting to pretend to believe things. You pretend to believe all of these things that you don't actually believe in because what you actually believe in is shown by what you do. It's shown by your behavior. Your behavior is the proof of your belief in anything.