The Wasted Talent
There was one particular girl that Ali was going back and forth with. I went on her TikTok page and saw a couple of videos to give myself an impression of what's happening. Before, I didn't have the time, as you guys know. I had an MMA match, which I decisively won, and I had a series of debates and stuff like that in the Oxford Union against some real enemies of Islam.
But nevertheless, I did check it out, and she was speaking in a very articulate manner. She was definitely cogent. She was very coherent. And you know, it's a wasted talent if someone like that, with the right training and stuff like that, she could be a great person to give da'wah to women and be a role model for women and speak to them about Islam and stuff like that.
Fighting the Real Enemy
We could be working against the people who are enabling genocide together. Everybody could be doing that. We don't need to be in a rivalry together. We don't need to be in that kind of situation. I don't see it. It's a fruitless endeavor. What are you going to gain from it? Think about who the real enemies are.
Think about it. If we care about women, if we all care about women, then women are being killed in Palestine. There's no greater tragedy against women's rights in the world today than what's happening to women in Sudan and what's happened to women in Palestine. I went and spoke to some Rohingya women some years back, the ones who have been killed in Burma, and the stuff I was hearing from them. That's really where women's rights needs to be emphasized the most.
We're living here in Western privilege. We're talking about household chores and stuff like that, and people are being burned in furnaces. With all due respect, everyone now has to look at priorities properly. This is an international ummah. If we truly care about the ummah, then we don't care about women's rights just in the Western context, although that's very important as well. Of course, I'm not trying to trivialize that, but we care about women's rights in every single context.
Using Your Platform for Good
So, if you guys are on TikTok and you're starting to get followers and you're starting to get this and that, look, you can—I'm not saying we don't need to do anything—but you can go out and speak about the genocide. You can go speak about this issue and that issue. You can decide not to do that. If you had a dedicated page that's just about oppressive relationships and what women should do, Islamically speaking, then I have no problem with that. I think that's a fine thing to do Islamically. I don't think that's haram, actually. I don't see why that would be haram.
Just like if a man had a dedicated page just for that, it would be unusual, and some people call it distasteful. But I wouldn't say it's—why is it haram? The principle that everything is halal until proven haram is at play until you tell me the reason why it's haram. It's not haram for a woman to do that. It's not haram for a man to do. And sometimes it's healthy. It's healthy for some women to air their grievances like that, so long as—and this is the great caveat that needs to be respected here—so long as...