Sheikh Yasir Qadhi is a profound thinker and speaker addressing the modern crisis of the human experience, particularly the rise of hyper-individualism in contemporary society. Through his talk, he critically examines how the prioritization of personal success and independence has fragmented community bonds, leaving many individuals feeling isolated despite constant digital connectivity. Sheikh Yasir challenges listeners to reflect on the consequences of a communication culture that often lacks genuine communal connection and empathy.
Sheikh Yasir advocates for intentional actions to restore community cohesion and collective responsibility. He emphasizes the need for active participation in local and faith-based spaces, encouraging individuals to cultivate authentic relationships, support one another’s wellbeing, and foster environments where shared values and mutual aid thrive. His work inspires a transformative approach, moving from self-centered pursuits to community-centered initiatives, as a vital step toward healing the social fabric in an increasingly disconnected world.
Below is a full transcript of his talk & discussion at Nuun Collective on March 16, 2025.
00:00:00 Introduction
Kamran Kazmi:
So this week, I've been preparing for this talk, and I was researching these statistics known as deaths by despair. These are deaths that happen due to suicide, alcohol, drug overdose, depression, etc, etc, etc.
In the past two decades, these numbers have skyrocketed, and that's no surprise to you guys, right?
But what was interesting about my research was between the 70s and into the 90s, these numbers were not only low but they were declining.
And I was like, whoa, that's amazing. Sheikh, you grew up during this time. You were in Houston, Texas. I want to just take a time machine and go back into that time.
How was it growing up for you in that environment and how is it compared to what it is now?
00:00:49 Growing Up
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
It’s a very deep question, obviously. So I want to begin by stating that we all have a tendency—as human beings—to romanticize the past, to imagine it as somehow being better, purer, more pristine. As you grow older, you’ll do the same with your own childhood. And in fact, look around you—look at the MAGA movement. There’s this nostalgia for some past that they’ve retrieved. The brutal reality is that every single epoch and era has its good and bad. We just have a tendency to reimagine the good as bigger than it was and to overlook the bad. That’s human nature.
I say this because I don’t want you to feel deprived, thinking, “Oh, we’re in a bad time and a bad place.” No—you have different challenges, and I’ll be the first to tell you that. But you also have amazing opportunities that I didn’t have. So I want to begin by prefacing this notion: don’t assume that things are always getting worse in every single arena and department. Because if you set your stage and paradigm with that negativity, it’s going to impact your productivity—and we don’t want that.
Now, I completely agree with you that in some aspects, there are a lot of problematic statistics. Every survey has shown—and even Harvard has a detailed report—about the rise in mental health issues, suicide, and other troubling statistics. At the very least, those numbers have tripled or quadrupled in the last 40 years. That’s a fact, even in the most conservative data. But that shouldn’t lead you to think that it was all rosy and glamorous back in the 80s or 90s either. We had other sets of problems. We had other issues.
You asked about my own experience. I was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s. Our community was so small. I honestly am in awe of what I’m seeing these last few nights—our youth just thriving, flourishing. You have to understand—this is surreal for me. We couldn’t have imagined this back in the 80s or 90s. The sheer quantity and quality of enthused Muslims gathering together during Ramadan, at 11:40 PM, not just to socialize but because deep down inside, there’s a connection to the religion—you want to hear about Islam, about your culture, identity, and religiosity. That is a massively positive development that simply didn’t exist back then.
So yes, I had a different childhood, a different upbringing. Our entire community in Houston in the early 80s was one masjid—just one. Then two or three slowly popped up. Maybe just a few dozen families, that’s it. My father was probably one of the first Pakistani Americans to come to Houston—he arrived in 1962. So when I got to university—the University of Houston—our MSA was probably as large as your group is now. But here’s the difference: I was one of only two, as far as I know, who were born in America. The rest were all foreign students—some of your parents’ generation. That’s all I am—part of that generation.
The types of problems we dealt with were very different. We were dealing with foreign students from Pakistan, Malaysia, the Gulf, India—so many international students. In the 80s and 90s, that was the peak of American universities actively recruiting foreign students. As I said, most of your parents are probably from that generation. I was one of the only Americans in our MSA board—actually, I was the only one. There was one other brother who would pray with us who was also born in America. Everyone else was from overseas.
Now, I’m pretty sure hardly any of you grew up overseas. Even if you were born overseas, almost all of you were raised here. That’s a very different dynamic. It has its pros and cons. We had to deal with a very different mindset. The khutbahs I gave weren’t even directed toward Americans—they were for foreign students. My first khutbah at U of H was for an audience made entirely of foreign students. The level of activism, political engagement, and sense of ownership of society—that wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my rhetoric; it wasn’t even in me. It took me decades to think through who I am, to form my own identity.
What I see in you is different—you know your identity much earlier than I had to figure mine out. You’ve been blessed with that. You’re ahead of the curve in that regard. You didn’t grow up among foreigners. You grew up with your heritage, your identity, your attachment to this place. Alhamdulillah, that’s a big positive.
So bottom line: the reality of Islam in the 80s and 90s was much more of a fresh immigrant Islam. I have to put in the caveat that I grew up among the immigrant community. The sad reality is that the African American Muslim community at that time—and still, unfortunately—was a bit disconnected from ours. We have two trajectories of Islam in this country. It’s sad, but I’m just being factual. You have the African American community—Alhamdulillah, they make up 30% of Muslims in America—and their masjids, their khatibs, their scholarship are slightly disconnected from the immigrant community. That’s just a fact.
9/11, by the way, did help form some bridges. You know, we did start bringing some, alhamdulillah, you know, ties and whatnot, but pre-9-11, completely disconnected communities, right?
So anyway, to finish off my point here that I would say the biggest difference is that number one, the quantity of Muslims now is much more.
And number two, the attachment that you all have to your American Islamic identity is much more pronounced.
And hence that comes with a new set of pros and cons, a new set of challenges.
That answers your question.
00:08:14
Kamran Kazmi:
I think one of the things I wanted to highlight was like, because of the immigrant populations, mostly coming from the East, there were also this idea of collectivism versus here is very much individualized. And as much as like we have the benefits of big community and we have events like this, I think a consequence is also like, like I've had so many friends come to me like, man, I go to Qalam and I go to all these places and they're beautiful and they're doing amazing stuff. But then when I try to have deep, meaningful connections, I'm not able to do that.
People say like everyone already has their friends, everyone already has their cliques, you know, and I would even say like a lot of the people that I know who have gone through depression and drug abuse and addictions is because of this feeling like I don't have a community behind me. Yet people are moving here for a community.
So what are your thoughts on like the hyper individualization that's happening in America now, in our communities?
00:09:05
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
So actually, when you're talking about this issue of community, I just remembered my father telling me of the first group that formed the first masjid in all of Texas, which is now the Richmond Center, located in almost downtown Houston. This was back in the late 60s or early 70s—before I was born. There was one Iranian, two Pakistanis, two Turks, one Malay, and one Arab. It was a complete mix, even including both Sunni and Shia. Everybody came together because you needed the support of whoever was around; you didn't have the luxury to be divided.
My earliest memories, which go back to the late 70s—around 1978 or 1979—are of that group of six or seven families coming together. Everyone dressed differently, spoke differently, but we knew: these were our people. Because there weren’t thousands of desis or large communities. It was a small group, and we stuck together. Now, as we’ve grown and reached a critical mass—with people from similar backgrounds—unfortunately, it’s easier to form cliques and to subdivide. That’s a reality we need to be honest about.
There’s also the big elephant in the room we haven’t talked about yet: social media, the internet, and cell phones. Every single study on the rise of depression, loneliness, and even suicide points to one primary cause: isolation and an overemphasis on social media. That isolation from physical connection, from people, allows you to retreat into your own bubble, and social media facilitates that. It gives you the illusion of connection, but it's not real. You might find companions who are not the best influences, or people pretending to be something they’re not. And so you cut yourself off from society.
This is something I thank Allah for. One of the biggest blessings in my opinion is that I’m old enough to have missed that era. Cell phones didn’t come out until long after I finished university. Throughout university, no one had a cell phone. I remember one student—a very wealthy Kuwaiti—was the first person I saw with a cell phone. It came with a backpack. It was larger than a water bottle with a huge antenna. This was around 1994, and we were amazed that he could carry a phone in a backpack.
The internet arrived in my last year of university. In 1994, it was just becoming a thing. There were no cell phones, no social media. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to physically go to the MSA and sit there hoping people showed up. You couldn’t text or coordinate times. You’d just go and interact. You formed social skills, friendships, bonds. It was a very different world.
Now, you can stay home all day and be "talking" to people without ever speaking to anyone. It’s surreal for me because I caught the tail end of the pre-digital era. A few years later, everything changed.
I was also in Medina for ten years. When I would stay there for nine or ten months at a time, I'd come back for the summer and be shocked at how fast technology had changed. This was the late 90s. I didn’t have a cell phone or internet in Medina until the 2000s. So every time I returned to the U.S., there’d be this technological whiplash.
I have a funny story about that. I think it was 1997 or 1998. After spending ten months in Medina, cut off from everything, I landed at the airport and saw a well-dressed man walking and having a full-blown conversation with seemingly no one. I thought, "What’s wrong with this guy?" I genuinely thought he was a lunatic. I didn’t realize he was wearing a Bluetooth earpiece. I’d never seen one in Medina. He was just walking and talking, and I couldn't see the device in his ear. It took me a minute to understand how much technology had changed.
You guys can’t even imagine a world without phones and internet. But I caught that world. And I feel, in my humble opinion, that while I wouldn’t want to go back to it entirely—because of the perks of technology and social media—we should recognize the value of that time. This phone can connect you to anyone in the world. That’s phenomenal. If you had told me this when I was your age, I wouldn’t have believed it.
That technology hadn’t been invented. You can literally, wherever you are, make a phone call. We had to go, there was one phone in the whole house. And you had to literally dial the nine all the way back there, right? You would have to dial every number manually.
And whenever the phone rang, everybody would run to see who it was. There was no caller ID when I was growing up. That came when I was 17 years old, no caller ID. The world has changed so much for all of you. And that’s a lot of good, but there’s also negative.
So I want to finish off this question with the point of: You need to ask yourselves, what are the harms of not having that personal connection with other people?
What are the negatives that come in my life when my relationship with another physical human being is primarily through texts? Primarily through emails? I’m not seeing the human. I’m seeing light on a screen. And I’m sorry, that’s not a human being.
So I think we need a healthy balance. Yes, take advantage of technology. But whatever you do, never stop your connection, your physical connection with other human beings: friends, family, cousins, relatives.
There has to be a physical back-and-forth interaction, discussion, the flesh and blood, not just on a screen, or else you are disconnected from society.
In fact, the reason why we are called humans is because we’re social creatures.
The reason why Allah (Subhānahu wa Ta‘āla) created us, we are creatures of social conduct. We congregate together. That is the Sunnah of Allah (Subhānahu wa Ta‘āla).
One hadith that comes to mind, and then I’ll hand it back to you: The Prophet ﷺ told us that the person who interacts with others in society, even if it’s difficult and he has to bear their negativity, is better than the one who cuts off and remains disconnected from society. He’s not talking about social media, just about how, yes, there are problems interacting with other people, but you’re going to be a better person for it.
How else will you navigate the difficulties of society unless you interact with society? How else will you be productive? How else will you contribute, unless you’re a part of the very society you want to benefit?
If you just shut yourself in your room, lock your door, if you’re just online all the time with your games, with your cell phone, with your text messages, how have you contributed back to a living, flourishing society?
So, bottom line: healthy balance. Take advantage of technology, no doubt. But never forget: humans are humans.
Humans have a soul. Humans have flesh and blood. Humans have physical speech, not just light on a screen.
So make sure you have that human touch with your family, your cousins, your relatives, with your friends.
00:18:37 Prompt #1
Kamran Kazmi:
Awesome. That actually plays really well into our next prompt.
This is an opportunity for you all to sit and reflect on what we just spoke about. Take a moment to quietly write your answer to this. After a few minutes, we’ll pick someone to share.
Prompt #1:
How has a hyper-individualistic mindset—where personal success and independence have taken priority—shaped my own life? In a world of communication without community, how has this mindset impacted my personal and communal connections?
So take a second, reflect on this question, write about it, and then we can talk about it right after this.
00:19:23 Prompt #1 Discussion
Kamran Kazmi:
Okay, Bismillah. I want to volunteer from the guys and the girls and we'll go back to Sheikh.
Mustafa Syed:
So if you want to share what you and your group, maybe like the people around you were kind of talking about discussing, someone raise your hand or I'll pick somebody random.
00:19:55 Speaker #1
I think I haven't experienced this mindset up until probably this month, actually, where I've really prioritized myself in all aspects of my life. And I think because of that, I went to South by Southwest, and going there and seeing so many successful Muslims within the creative industry and the potential that we have as Muslims in all industries—it really opened my eyes up to the opportunities that we can have as Muslims in this day and age. It’s made me rethink a lot about my career path, my future, and what I want within the next few years.
So I think because of that—and other stuff—I’ve just prioritized myself in general. I’ve distanced myself from some friends and gotten closer with others. That distance and prioritization of myself, I think, negatively impacted some of my connections but greatly positively impacted others. But I think that’s just life.
And then—what was your name? Oh, Safat. Safat had a really good answer too, completely different from me though, if you’d like to share?
Oh, it’s one person? Oh, share what the group said? Okay.
My partner, he said—he was saying how nowadays, with social media, everyone is more... I guess social media has caused communities to kind of disperse because you can have online communities. And so, because of that, it takes away the need of having those in-person communities. You can meet people from around the world. So if you can meet people from around the world, then what's the point of going to see people in person, or moving to Dallas, and having this Muslim community especially?
And so, how has that impacted connections in general? It's good and bad. Good in terms of... well, he thinks it's more negative, just because social media has—kind of like what Yasir Qadhi was saying—negatively impacted a lot of people in terms of leading them to depression, thinking that they have connections through online spaces and not realizing the value of those in-person friendships, relationships, etc. Which is also a really interesting mindset.
00:22:44 Speaker #2
My name is Bintu. I kind of answered in two parts.
For the first part, I said it shifted my world from a space that was surrounded by community to one that’s hyper-individual. I lived under the false pretense that I could thrive alone without depending on others, but that was simply not true. I am who I am today because of community and couldn’t have gotten as far as I have on my own.
For the second part, I said it’s been lonely. There’s a cognitive dissonance where social media makes us feel so connected, yet very alone. I have shaped my online community to reflect my personal values, which has really helped me connect with others in a communal way.
00:24:01
Kamran Kazmi:
I want to give this group a chance to speak real quick because I've heard they were cooking.
00:24:11 Speaker #3
So I think when we look at the hyper-individualistic mindset with people today, it kind of comes to mind that people are so hyper-individualistic that they've lost the reliance on Allah (SWT). And so when we think we can control everything, when we think we have the ability to do whatever we set our minds to without the bounds of Qadr, without the bounds of the rights and responsibilities of other people, it really forces us to take a deeper look at what is possible.
And so when things don't go your way—the job doesn't come through, the college admissions don't come either, or whatever it might be—people tend to crash out. And so we then have to come back and take a look at what we can do at a community level to kind of create that support system. Because at the end of the day, if we don't have the people that are next to us to feel supported when things do go wrong, and we aren't turning to Allah (SWT) in that same process, we tend to rely on things on an external level, whether it be drugs, alcohol, or other addictions.
And so if we firmly root ourselves within that relationship with Allah, it'll then allow us to create a better relationship with our families and then extend towards, you know, your individual community and even potentially, you know, the rest of the world. But at the end of the day, that starts with Allah. Thank you.
00:25:37
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
MashaAllah, really good points. Two of them I want to expound on. The first, somebody mentioned about the illusion of online communities. And that is so, so true. When you're online, you will find people that think like you, talk like you, act like you, but you have no clue who they actually are in their real lives.
And maybe some of you are aware that I have withdrawn myself from social media because of this reality. That social media is quite literally an alternative universe that doesn't actually exist. It is a figment of the collective imagination of those that are in that online community. It has no impact whatsoever in the real world. Generally speaking, social media is an imagined community. And it is possible to get lost in that imagined community until you lose yourself. And that's the danger.
And I found myself spending way too much time trying to defend or get involved in the—you know, if you know what's happening in social media, you know the reality. And I realized, you know what? This is not going to benefit me. I withdrew. And alhamdulillah, I finished three books in the process since I've withdrawn. I've done so much, traveled the world. And you really see online is a fake imagined universe. It has no impact in the actual real world. So I have benefited immensely in my own personal sanity by withdrawing from social media.
I'm no longer in charge of my accounts. I've handed over to somebody else and I rarely, rarely log online and tweet. Rarely. Sometimes I do. I had to recently with the governor and whatnot if you saw what's happening right now. But otherwise, it's not something I get involved with, you know? And it's been, wallahi, I swear to you, infinitely better for my own personal sanity.
Second point somebody raised about family, and allow me to speak, inshallah, as your older brother or older uncle, however you view me, I don't know how you—my uncle G, I don't know, however you view me, right? Look, I have a lot of stress in my life, a lot. Death threats being one of them all the time. Even today, these people are crazy online, and the far right, and internal critics, and—and—and.
I will be very honest with you, I'm sharing something very personal, but I want you to understand this point. One of the biggest motivations for me personally, one of the biggest sources of comfort and sanity is to just be with my wife and children. Just to be with my family. The amount of personal satisfaction, wallahi, I don't care the negativity outside my house when I come home and sit down for dinner and my wife and kids are there. Who cares how much the world is hating on me? I have here all the love that I need.
And I genuinely feel sorry for those who don't understand the benefits that happen when you have that personal connection. And I can understand why people go down dark paths when they don't have physical people to share their love with and to love them back.
One of the biggest sources of personal comfort comes from the connections I have with my own family. And if you don't understand this reality—and again, let me be blunt here—especially when you're in your early 20s and you're single, it's very risky if you go down the path of isolationism.
And again, let me be blunt here, the incel culture is a manifestation of that, right? The incel culture, the mass shootings that take place, one of the reasons, almost invariably, are people who have been disconnected from society. They're literally in their imaginary world. They don't have a human connection. And so they go down a very dark path.
As well, most of the people—and again, as I said—that go down the path of self-harm or even removing themselves from this earth, the majority of them, every study has shown, were those who immersed themselves in the imaginary online world and they didn't have a physical connection.
So I urge all of you to understand online is imaginary. It's not real. Cut back. You need to, I get it, but you have some connection there. But that's not the real world. Make sure you prioritize the real world here. Physical interactions, especially family. Family, and of course the Quran mentions this, the Prophet mentions it. Look at Khadijah. Look at, and he himself said this, that, you know, nobody gave me the comfort of Khadijah. When Iqra' happened, who does he come running back to? Right? He is the Prophet of Allah, but he needs a physical touch of the woman that he loved, the physical comfort to calm him down.
If Rasulullah needed that, you are certainly not better than him that you don't need the love of your partner. So humble yourself and understand Allah created us to be social creatures. And that's where you will find the ultimate connections with life.
00:30:55
Kamran Kazmi:
Before we ended off last question, we were talking about balance. And... we hear from the member, we hear like, love for your brother what you love for yourself. Love someone for the sake of Allah. But when it comes to practicality, it's like, I can't really be friends with everyone at the masjid. And that makes me feel like, oh man, where do I really go from here? So I wanted to ask you, how do we contextualize this in our own lives? And how was this type of stuff manifested during the time of the seerah?
00:31:27
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
So obviously, when the process of saying "love for your brother what you love for yourself," obviously you cannot sacrifice everything for everybody. That's not going to happen.
The goal is that as a Muslim, you must think of the collective and not just be selfish. That’s the point here — imagine what will benefit society. Imagine if I’m going to do something.
So the smallest things — you know, the Prophet literally commanded the Sahaba that, you know, don’t leave something on the street somebody might trip over it. He said it’s a part of iman to remove something from the street. It’s a part of iman.
He literally instructed the Sahaba: don’t spit in public, right? Don’t spit on the road where people are going to be walking. Literally these small things — that is loving for your brother what you love for yourself.
It doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice everything for everybody. That’s unrealistic. But it does mean that every time you undertake an action, you ask yourself: Is this overall going to benefit me and society? Am I doing something that’s going to harm other people?
And yes, at some level, there should be a generic love: I want to benefit my people. I want to benefit the world around me. That’s completely a part of Islam.
So...
Love for your brother what you love for yourself.
I want my brothers and sisters to live better lives.
I want them to have better education.
I want them to live in a land where they’re able to practice their faith.
That is a part of Iman then.
Therefore, tap into this hadith in order to be socially productive and beneficial, and remind yourself of what the Prophet ﷺ said.
This is a beautiful hadith.
I want you to take this as your mantra for the rest of your life:
"The best of the people are those who are the most beneficial to people."
This is a hadith.
The best of the people are those who are the most beneficial to people.
This should be your motto.
This should be your slogan.
I want to benefit the most people in my life.
That’s exactly loving for your brother what you love for yourself.
00:33:23
Kamran Kazmi:
Practically, what can I do? Like, what can I do though? You know, in terms of — like, we go to these, we're part of these communities. I'm part of Noon, you know. I come in here, I’ll say salam to a couple people, you know. But how do we foster that connection? And I don’t want to romanticize the past — that’s not what I’m doing — but how was this manifested during the time of the Seerah? Like, how did the Prophet create that environment where you have a person coming in and saying, “Man, this person loves me more than anyone”?
And then obviously there’s a hadith talking about how he loved Aisha more, but this seemed like this was a feeling that people had during that time. The Sahaba were disunited. Like I said, I have a friend in a different state who tells me, “Man, I moved and I do not feel like I’m part of any community here, even though I’m going to all these places.” So I guess, how do we as communities fix this type of problem?
00:34:11
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
Good question. I would say two things, completely disjointed or completely separate answers. Number one, understand the akhlaq of a Muslim. Why did the people feel the way they did in the presence of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam? It’s how he treated them — the warmth, the friendliness, the smile, just asking. His whole body would turn and he would speak and engage with the person, giving full attention to them, right? These days, you can't even sit with your best friend without the phone coming out in your face while you're talking. And even when you're speaking, he might be texting somebody else. How rude is that, right? Literally, you're talking in front of him and the phone comes out. That's not from the sunnah. So without a doubt, when you're not following basic akhlaq, obviously cliques form, and a new person comes and they feel like they’re outside the clique — you’re not following the sunnah. The warmth, the friendliness, the stranger should feel a part of the community.
Secondly, a very important point, separate from the first one — everybody has certain hobbies, passions, and talents. Find people who share those talents and hobbies. That’s how you form bonds, friendships, and connections. This is human nature. Look at broader society — whether they go hunting, fishing, or golfing, whatever it might be — and yes, all of these are halal sports. You can do that or other things you’re interested in, whether it’s seerah, knowledge, or whatever. Find people that have the same passions as you and physically connect with them, and go on that journey together. As you go on the journey, you will literally form the physical connections and the bonds of brotherhood or sisterhood that need to be formed.
00:35:50 Prompt #2
Kamran Kazmi:
Awesome. I want to take this opportunity to almost ask you guys a similar question. Recall Iqbal's poem that we had in the beginning. That was awesome when you did that, by the way. It speaks of the tension between the individual and communities not being so much a tension, but a symbiotic part and whole relationship.
Prompt #2:
What initiatives can we take as individuals and ourselves to bolster, strengthen, and aid our community? Be specific about the spaces that you're a part of and describe concrete actions that you would take.
So, I'm going to give you guys a second to write about this — take two minutes — and then we can talk about it and proceed.
00:36:40: Prompt #2 Discussion
Speaker #4:
So something that I was thinking of, which was actually brought up earlier as well, is trying to think about whether we are community building or clique building. This is something you don’t really think about actively when you’re making friendships or building community, but it takes a lot of self-evaluation to see how much you’re putting yourself out there for people to feel like they’re included and actually cared for outside of being in your clique. Because to build a real community and foster these relationships or connections, you have to have a lot of humility and mercy — it’s just stuff that Allah teaches us to be to other people. To have real community, you have to want the betterment of your community or the people around you as much as, or more than, you want betterment for yourself.
So when you think of building these communities, you have to ask: are the people in my community, the people I hang out with, are we in an echo chamber? Is everybody I’m talking to just echoing what I believe, or am I having meaningful connections where I’m having disagreements, talking to people, and coming to consensuses about things like that? That’s how you make people feel included — by hearing them out, hearing their perspectives, hearing about how they lived and what makes them who they are.
You have to know if you’re building cliques where everyone around you is echoing the same political beliefs, educational backgrounds, cultural backgrounds — is that all you’re building? Is everyone around you thinking exactly the same as you? Or are you reaching out to people and building connections that will last longer than just right now?
I think having access to social media and phones gives us the feeling that people and connections are easily replaceable. Like if somebody doesn’t believe the same thing as me, I’ll find somebody else. You can drop people so quickly. There’s no humility or mercy to grow with people or teach them something they didn’t know. Social media and phones give us a false sense of how easily relationships can be replaced all the time, but that’s not really true. If you want to build community, you have to be with people when they don’t agree with you, when they do agree with you, when they’re at their lowest and at their highest. You can’t just be with people when they think exactly like you all the time.
00:39:27
Speaker #5:
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. Regarding the prompt, I think that Allah SWT has granted everyone here a special niche and a special interest. Just looking at the room alone, I think there are dozens and dozens of interests and occupations that everyone has, whether that be IT, CS, engineering, the medical field, being a lawyer, or anything really. We have to honestly find our niche, identify it, and implement that into our community—not only for the UMA but for the greater space in Dallas as well.
For example, if you're in IT or CS—that's very generic—but you could offer IT services or CS services to your local mosque and local organizations, trying to help them get better websites, etc. If you're into the culinary field, Dallas is already very oversaturated, but wherever you may be, you could open up nice food businesses and restaurants. If you're in the mental health field, you could offer faith-based counseling, counseling services, and medical services that have Islam rooted in them to help Muslims not only feel empowered in their identity but also receive secular treatment as well.
So, I think identifying your niche, implementing that into the community, and getting over that mental hump—that “oh, it’s going to take too long to implement this, I don’t have the energy or willpower, there are so many other people who will beat me”—getting over that mental hurdle and just doing it, I think that’s what’s going to get us far, inshallah.
00:41:08
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
Alhamdulillah. Listening to these responses reminded me of something the Prophet ﷺ said: Shaytan attacks the lone wolf and is further away from two. If you're with two people, it’s more difficult for Shaytan to attack you. The Prophet ﷺ said, Allah’s hand is over the jama’ah, the community, and he said to stick with the community. Whoever breaks away is breaking away towards Jahannam. All these hadith emphasize sticking with people, keeping with the jama’ah, keeping with the community. Don’t be individualistic. Don’t break away. Because when you break away, Shaytan can attack you easier.
This is exactly what mental health experts tell us: when you break away from society and family, Shaytan can cause you to fall into depression and do really bad things. One sister mentioned the online communities that people have—they’re echo chambers. Radicalism thrives online but not as much in the real world. Why? Because online you only interact with people who share your views and reinforce your beliefs, creating an echo chamber. In reality, those same people can’t behave the same way in real life. Everyone has an online alter ego, even those with extreme views—they can’t act like that publicly.
It’s so important for us Muslims to have a reality check and stick with community—always stick with community. As an older brother, one of my concerns for your generation is the rise of fanaticism and fundamentalism. The appeal of simplistic slogans and the slippery slope of fundamentalist understandings of Islam won’t help us in the long run. That kind of radicalism never thrives in mainstream masajid; it’s always online. Look at any community—the movers and shakers of radicalism have no real impact in the communities they live in. The loudest sectarian leaders online—you don’t even know which masjid they pray in because they have zero real-world influence.
That’s why I encourage all of you to get out of the online bubble and interact with real Muslims, find communities. The Prophet ﷺ said Allah’s hand is over the jama’ah. When you interact with a masjid, with a community of thousands, you cannot be simplistic or fall into slogans and fundamentalism. The world is more nuanced than slogans. So get involved with living people, with communities, masajid, large organizations.
I can say much more, but one thing to emphasize is that the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ is a blessed ummah. Don’t have negative thoughts of the ummah. The Prophet ﷺ said, whoever says “my ummah is destroyed,” he is the most destroyed of them (hadith in Sahih Muslim). Whoever says everybody is misguided is himself the most misguided. This ummah is blessed. When you find large communities and people flocking together, inshallah there’s khair and barakah in them. Isolationists and those who break away are heading towards Jahannam as the Prophet ﷺ warned. Allah’s hand is over large communities. Find your space in those communities, be productive with actual people, and inshallah you will contribute positively to a legacy that lasts well beyond your life.
00:45:53
Kamran Kazmi:
First of all, I never thought about how these big celebrities are actually not at all, like you said, an iota in the community. It’s a crazy idea to think about. But I want to talk about how a lot of our topic actually manifested in your life. There was a time when you were thinking about focusing on your—like, let me get my PhD, let me do this. And on the other side of the world, you were seeing the aftermath of what was happening to Muslims after 9/11. Walk me through what you were thinking during that period of your life.
00:46:30
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
I've spoken about this quite a lot and my journey and my understanding of Islam is a very public one. I don't shy away from admitting my mistakes and false and from talking about my own evolution because I do believe there's a lot of benefit learned from the mistakes of other people.
Pre-9-11, and remember, I came of age pre-9-11, right? I got married pre-9-11. I had kids. I was already a young man finishing my bachelor's degree in Medina when 9-11 happened. So I already had a formative understanding of who I thought I was. I thought I knew who I was. I thought I understood a version of Islam that I felt was authentic and correct.
And 9-11 happens, and I was actually in Medina. SubhanAllah, Allah blessed me that I was here in America in the summer, and then end of August, I flew back. If Allah had willed, if I had remained another two weeks, I would have been stuck here and maybe not been able to pursue, because they shut the flights down for months after. So I literally came to Medina a week before, and I was in Medina and we didn't have a TV back then.
An American neighbor, you know, student came running Salat al Asr, I remember, because 9-11 happened in the morning. It was Asr time over there, you know. So I prayed Asr and an American student rushed in because his dad had called him, you know, and he's like, “Hey, Yasir, what happened?” I said, “What happened?” He goes, “Somebody attacked the World Trade Center. You gotta find out what's happening.” So I rushed back home, told my wife, you know, my son Ammar, he's not here. My son Ammar was a little baby. I put him in my hand, rushed outside to my neighbor's house that had a television. I didn't have a television. And that's when I saw the second tower fall, right? I saw the second tower fall.
And I knew deep down inside, the world is gonna change. I just knew this is not a trivial thing. And the rhetoric began and the, you know, and then I remember my father, you know, calling me a few weeks later and I could hear the fear in his voice. And he actually said to me, “Don't come back right now.” Like I could, it's just, he didn't even want me to come back because I was thinking, “Don't come back right now.” Things are changing, you know?
And 9-11 for me really was a massive wake-up call and a personal transformation about who I was, about my understanding of Islam, about my understanding of what I wanted to do with humanity. Because, and this is very public, I don't shy away from this, pre-9-11, I was a very sectarian-minded person. I thought one interpretation of Islam. I was quite black and white in my halal, haram, bid'ashirk type of phase. And I really just thought that is the way forward. Simple fundamentalism, right?
And 9-11 made me realize that the world is far more nuanced. And at the time, pre-9-11, I actually thought that I wanted to leave America permanently. Dar al-Kufr and dar this and dar that. You know, you're taught these slogans and you like them. You don't really think critically. You just follow what people that you trust say. You just start thinking to yourself, and after 9-11, you know what I realized? I realized, actually, that is my country. And what's happening there, somebody has to explain to people on all sides what is going on.
My religion is being smeared, my prophesism is being criticized, my book is being dragged in and being called very negative things. And somebody has to go back and explain why this is happening. And I know this sounds so crazy, but you guys understand this. But if I say this in a non-Muslim audience, it's easily misunderstood.
Obviously, coming from a Muslim background, at that time frame, I understood both sides of the Atlantic. I'll just say that, if you understand what I'm saying here. I understood both sides, why they're doing what they're doing. I fully understood. I could understand. I don't want to say empathize, it's going to be in trouble. I could see the perspectives of both sides. And I realized somebody has to build bridges to explain what's going on.
I never felt as American as I did post 9-11. And that's when I, and my wife knows this, you can talk, that's when I went to my office and said, you know what? I was set, my mind, my life, my vision, my passion. I was gonna be the first American to ever graduate with a PhD in any Islamic university in Saudi Arabia. I was set to be, that was already there. I was doing my master's, my first year of the master's. I was set, that was my goal. I would be the first person, you know, come back, you know, having spent 20 years in Medina and whatnot, I would have been the first, I would have been.
9-11 was what triggered me to come back to America. Because I realized, what's the purpose of me being away when these are my people? I understand my culture. I felt American through and through because this is my land in the end of the day. I couldn't negate or deny who I was. I understood. It's my responsibility to come back and start mentoring my community, protecting my community. And by my community, I mean not just all of you, but the broader public as well. I don't want the broader public to hate my faith. And somebody has to teach them what my faith is.
And that's exactly what I did. As soon as I handed in my master's dissertation, I told my professor, I'm leaving, I'm gonna go back. And they were just shocked. “You're literally set to go and how could you, what are you gonna?” I said, “I have to go, my people need me. I have to go back. I don't know how I'm gonna earn a livelihood. I don't know how I'm gonna get a job. I don't have any idea. But I realized I need to go back.” And that's why I decided to do a PhD on this side of the world, right? And I gave up for over a decade. It was my passion and dream. And Alhamdulillah, Allah chose a better path for me. I didn't know I would have that path, right? I gave that up and I came back here. And the rest, as they say, is history.
And I navigated a lot because when I came back, Oh my God, Islamophobia was a nightmare. You guys, this is the third wave of Islamophobia. And I have to go into a little bit of a tangent here. I have lived through three epochs of Islamophobia in the last 20 years in this country. You guys are just seeing the rise of the third epoch right now with what's happening with the Columbia student, Donald Trump and his 21 list ban, and all of this happening right now. This is the third wave. Reiteration.
So I'm a seasoned vet, been there, done that, bring it on. Because I've seen version one and version two. When I came back, oh my God, being pulled aside, interrogated, the quadruple S's, armed escorts in the plane for me. Do you know how humiliating it is when the pilot announces, “We have a special request from the TSA, whatever. Please, everybody remain seated down.” And you're like, “What's happening here?” And troops come in. Well, not troops, but agents come in and they walk to your place on the plane. Says, “Can you accompany us?” Right. That's happening to me. Simply because I'm a Medina grad, a sheikh, whatever preacher, that's how crazy it was. Go and be interrogated for hours and hours every single time you travel. Get on some weird watch list, this and that. Intimidated, death threats. And then 10 years ago, another rise when you guys were probably in middle school or whatever. And now we're seeing the third wise here. And we're gonna weather through this because in the end of the day, this is the battle that Allah has chosen for us to be a part of. This is our time, our place.
And if you guys are not gonna fight for your rights, then who will? If you guys are not gonna ensure that your children love their faith and can contribute to humanity, who's gonna do that? And so yes, I am extremely passionate. I've said this many times. I have the opportunity to live in over a dozen countries. I could pick and choose where I wanted to live. And I have never once doubted my places here. Because Allah blessed me, tested me to know this land, to speak the language, to understand the culture. I have the most value over here because I know how to contribute. I know how to shape. I know how to move. This is where I know all of these things. If I go to another land, I'm going to be a foreigner, a stranger. I can hardly contribute.
So I'm not looking at the negativity and running away. That's not Islam. That's not the seerah. That's not what my Prophet s.a.w. taught us.
I'm looking at the potential for positive. That's what I'm looking at. And in this country, the potential for positive is second to none. You can accomplish in this country what you cannot accomplish anywhere else, in spite of all the negativity, in spite of all the hatred, in spite of all the Islamophobia. You have the potential to leave a legacy the likes of which you cannot do anywhere else.
And so my final message to you in today's lecture is very simple: embrace who you are. Understand Allah has blessed your generation with a task, with a responsibility that is solely yours. And I said this so many times, I say to you guys as well, you are the only generation. And I'm the older part of your generation, because we're basically firstborns, right? This is our parents immigrated, right? So I'm kind of like caught the very first of your generation. Yes, I am your generation in that sense. I'm not that old yet, okay?
But there's only one generation, that's mine and yours basically, that is going to be first generation immigrants. You are fully in tune with your parents' identity. Almost all of you understand your heritage, understand your language. You might not be fluent, but you understand it and you know it. Your children are not going to have that luxury. And they're gonna be very different, which is fine. My own kids barely speak Urdu and whatnot. It is what it is, right?
This is the one generation, yours and mine, that is going to distill the culture and religion of our parents and lay the foundations for our great-great-grandchildren to come. Your generation and mine. I actually thank Allah I was born in this epoch and era. It's super challenging, but it's also super exciting. What we do for the next 30 years will dictate Islam for the next 300 in this country.
I say that again, and I want you to understand, this is my vision and philosophy. What we do for the next 30 years, because this is the foundational, this is the pivot, this is the filtering of our tradition down to America for many generations to come. What we do for the next 30 years will literally dictate and decide Islam for the next 300 years. And so you have to start thinking long-term.
Success is not gonna happen in one day. I don't know if I'll ever see the end of Islamophobia in my lifetime. That's not my goal. My goal is to contribute to that foundation. My goal is to set up that long-term vision. What does it mean to be a Muslim in America? That is the question I go to at night sleeping about. What does it mean to be a Muslim in modernity? What does it mean to be a Muslim battling all of these identities, nation states and politics and democracy and liberalism and socialism and feminism and all of these things? What does it mean to be a Muslim given this reality? That is the question I'm constantly asking myself.
And if you listen to my lectures, my talks, that is the primary theme that I'm constantly bringing up. Because that's who I am in terms of the intellectual understanding of Islam. And of course, for all of you here, that question can be answered politically, socially, economically, civilizationally. What are you going to contribute back to your nation? What will you show the world? What does your faith contribute to the land that you live in? And the sky's the limit. So many different ways we can contribute.
In fact, we're doing it right here and now. Because right here and now, you are creating a version, a culture of Islam that is unique to this part of the world. This is a new culture. Right here. The coffee shop culture, right? In the tarawiyah prayers and whatnot. This is a new culture. It wasn't around when I was your age. It's not around anywhere else in the world. The notion of, you know what, in this time frame, we're gonna come, talk about our faith, engage, form bonds, friendships. This is civilizational Islam.
And I encourage all of you to understand that Allah Azza wa Jal has blessed and tested you to be in this generation and to then ask yourself What can I contribute to the Ummah? What can I leave as my legacy? So that inshallah, when I'm gone, whatever I’ve done, whatever it might be, will remain for many generations to come. And at the very least, it will impact yourself, your family, and your community. If you do this, inshallah ta'ala, I am very optimistic. I truly believe the future is bright. We will face some hurdles, as we have in the past, but alhamdulillah, on a positive note, wallahi brothers and sisters, it is truly inspiring to see all of you youth. I’ve been to the Lighthouse Initiative, your initiative, and other initiatives across the country. There was the president of Pakistan, Imran Khan, who studied here in the 70s. He went back to Pakistan and said something I also believe in — he said that the children of the people he was with are practicing Islam better than the parents who were here in the 70s. And that is so true. I’m telling you, that is so true.
We respect our parents' generation because they sacrificed a lot. At the same time, I don’t blame them, but there was this notion that they were not comfortable in their identities. There was a lot of shyness, embarrassment, and hesitation. That was their reality. But your generation? I see bravery. I see a claiming of identity. I see a pride that did not exist when I was your age because we didn’t have many of you then. We were very few born and raised in America. You don’t need to prove your Americanness the way our parents did. Because they did, they were understandably more conservative and cautious. But you don’t need to prove who you are. And with that knowledge comes confidence, with confidence comes power, and with power comes civilizational strength.
I personally thank Allah to be part of this generation. I thank Allah that I am at the very beginning of this amazing generation to tap into your talent, your resources, your strength. And I see us going from strength to even stronger, inshallah ta'ala. There are peaks we’re going to conquer, and that will be because of all of your generation. So don’t trivialize your roles.
Do not trivialize your potential. Understand that Allah has blessed you to be at a certain place in time, and then ask Allah that you reach your maximum potential. That will only happen if you know who you are, you know your faith, you have a strong family, and you have a good set of friends. With this, I conclude the three Fs—in that order: faith, family, and friends. This goes back to our theme as well. Faith, family, and friends—that is your recipe for success. Make sure your faith is strong, prioritize your family, and have a good set of friends who will keep you sane, grounded, and productive. This is the maximum efficiency for you to be a thriving human being.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala bless all of us to achieve our maximum potential, to allow us to participate in the legacy-building project of creating civilizational strength for the Ummah. May Allah allow especially this month to be a month of purification where our sins are forgiven, where we connect deeply with our faith, and inshallah wa ta’ala, become spiritually charged.
And with that, inshallah, are we... I want to call it here, to be honest. I want to go home on this note. Is that cool? Okay, let’s call it.
01:03:22
Kamran Kazmi:
Wow. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Until next time, inshallah. Would you like to do one last dua for everyone?
01:03:33
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:
Okay, Bismillah.
Let's finish off with a dua.
If we can raise our hands to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Oh Allah, You have said in the Quran, “When My servants ask of Me, I am ever close to them. I respond to the du'a of the one who makes du'a when he or she makes du'a.”
Ya Allah, here we are raising our hands to You,
believing in You,
knowing You are hearing our du'a.
Ya sami’, ya sami’ad du'a, ya mujibad du'a, ya qareeb, ya Allah.
We ask You to strengthen the Iman of our hearts, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, purify our hearts of any evil, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, make us proud to be Muslims, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, any doubts that we have, eliminate them, Ya Allah.
Allow us to taste the sweetness of Iman, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow us to grow spiritually every single year.
We want to be closer to You, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow us to thrive in this faith, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, grant us beautiful progeny, Ya Allah.
Grant us loving family, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, grant us the blessings of this dunya and the akhira, Ya Allah.
We ask for rizq that is halal, money that is pure and beneficial, Ya Allah.
We ask for family that is loving, Ya Allah.
We ask for friends that are comforting and supporting, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, any calamity that is destined for us,
we ask that You avert that calamity away from us and grant us aafir, Ya Allah.
Give us the best of this dunya and the best of the akhira.
Rabbana atina fid dunya hasana wa fil akhira hasana.
Ya Allah, allow us to contribute to the civilization of this Ummah, Ya Allah.
Allow us to leave a legacy that will, inshallah, continue to accrue good deeds until the Day of Judgment, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow us to follow the footsteps of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Ya Allah, we ask You for the best of this world and the best of the hereafter, Ya Allah.
Strengthen our knowledge, Ya Allah.
Strengthen our Iman, Ya Allah.
Strengthen our physical strength, Ya Allah.
Make us the best of the people as You Yourself said.
Make us the best of all people, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, forgive our faults, Ya Allah.
We have sinned, but we know we have sinned, and You are the One who forgives sins.
Ya Allah, allow our good deeds to be more than our bad deeds, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, accept our repentance, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, whatever sins that we do,
cover them and conceal them from the eyes of others, Ya Allah.
Do not embarrass us in this world or the hereafter, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow our Iman to ever remain pure, Ya Allah.
Do not corrupt our Iman, Ya Allah.
Do not test us through our Iman, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, we ask that we live our lives as good Muslims and we die as righteous mu'mins and that we be resurrected with the righteous and the prophets, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, give us a good life and give us a comfortable life and give us a sweet ending in death, Ya Allah.
And allow us comfort in the grave, Ya Allah, and comfort in the Akhira, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, let us be in the companionship of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in Jannatul Firdawsil A’la, Ya Allah.
And we ask You because You are the Rahman and You are the Raheem.
We know we don't deserve it, and yet we desire it.
And You give based on desire.
Ya Allah, we desire to be in Firdaus al-A’la.
Even if we don't deserve it, we ask You to be in Firdaus al-A’la, Ya Allah.
Ya Rahman, Ya Kareem, Ya Mannan,
give us the best in this world and the best in the Akhira.
Ameen.
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