MAS Youth Talk, I'm not who you think I am, Shereen Salama

[Music] i know you're all here for almost today man i'm here for almost a minute about 15 minutes inshallah and we'll be done together as was mentioned i actually have been looking for the answer to this question for the past couple months and it's that a lot of people on the outside look at you thinking that you're something you know you're a youth director you're a pharmacy student i'm sure many of you are msa members you lead things in your message you're in islamic organizations you just graduated from college and now you're a doctor or an engineer or you're a teacher you just grew a beard and now people are calling you sheikh you just wore the hijab and people are calling you sheikha and you know sometimes it's kind of hard to reconcile the fact that all of these people are looking at me thinking that i am something attributing the status to me you know thinking in their mind that i am superhuman or thinking in their mind that i'm angelic or thinking that i'm better than them and the question comes well what happens when the people see something of me but when i look at myself in the mirror i see someone completely different what happens when the person that people see is not who i actually believe that i am and how do we reconcile between that so i hope that this is a struggle that i'm not the only one facing does anyone kind of feel me on this all right that's good i actually have a story that kind of just goes along with this one of my haloqua students actually came up to me the other day actually this was a couple months ago and she was like so shirin like when you go home like do you just eat dates and drink zamzam and i was like no homegirl i eat cereal in the morning and i eat burgers for lunch and i eat kosher for dinner you know i'm normal you know just because i'm at the mess it doesn't mean that i eat something different or i breathe a different type of oxygen than you do and unfortunately you know in when we work in these types of organizations or in our masjid people start to look at you and think that you truly are not human or that there's you know something super human about you so that's kind of the thing that i want to address today is what do we do when we feel like the person in the mirror is different than the person everyone else sees so subhanallah you know something that we have to do is first try to understand whether those people are two different people whether the person that you see in the mirror is truly different than the person that your community sees or whether you're just being too harsh on yourself and you truly are amazing or whether you're thinking of yourself too highly and you really should start to reconsider some of the things you've done and so i kind of came up with a litmus test as to what you can ask yourself to try to understand whether those two people are really two people or if they're one and the first question that you can ask yourself is and i want you guys to think about this if i were to go up to someone in your community whom you work with or if i were to go up to someone you know on your shooter in the msa or someone in your masjid that you work with or someone that you've mentored in a halaqa or someone that you work with at work you know your co-resident or whatever it may be and i were to ask them you know tell me about sharing like what is like what does when you're washing how do you feel when these people are with you how do they feel when you're around them and think of that answer if i were to go up to someone at work or someone that you work with what would they describe you as okay think about that in your mind now if i were to go and ask your sibling at home or ask your mother or ask your father or ask your brother what is sharing like to you how do you feel when shadeen is around you how does shireen make you feel do you get a different answer is it that the people outside think something of you and when you treat them you treat them a certain way yet you go home and you treat the people at home differently and if you find that those two answers are different then know that there is a problem and again i wrote this because i need the answer and i'm saying this to myself before anyone my mother's in the audience and she can attest to this but i'm sure many of us can look within ourselves and say you know what those two answers are different the person that i am on the outside is different than the one i am at home the person that the community sees of me is different than the one that my mother sees of me you know and the prophet saw salam told us he said he said that the best among you are the best to your family and i am the best to my family why does the hadith not say the best of you are the best to your communities or the best of you are the ones who give the best speeches or the best of you are the ones who give the best helicopters but the best of you are the best at work because it's really easy to be good outside it's really easy to be nice to the people at work because if you're not they're gonna sub tweet you on twitter and if you're not they're going to think you're terrible and they're going to have this illusion of who you are and they're going to talk bad about you but if you do something bad to your mom she's not going to disown you i hope you know if you're disrespecting your sister she's still gonna be your sister but if you do something bad on the outside you can potentially ruin a relationship and so that's why it's easy for us to be good on the outside but it's hard to be good at home and that's why the hadith goes that the best of you are the best to your family because your true character comes out at home when you've had a long day at work or a long day at school you face a lot of difficulties a lot of struggle you've had a hard day and you've tucked it in so no one sees it of you no one sees the flaws no one sees the weaknesses but then you go home and you unleash the monster you unleash the thing that's been building within you the entire day and who do you unleash it to the people that you should care about most the people that deserve the most respect from you you know and that's that's what we do so i need you guys to think about that and i i shall deal with was asked about the prophet saws she was asked you know we know that the prophet saws on the outside is amazing tell us about what he's like at home we don't get to see him at home aisha tell us what he's like at home and her response was profound not just in the way that she described the prophet but the fact that it came from her she said ken a quran and yamcha that he was a walking quran he wasn't just a walking quran when he was at the masjid he wasn't just a walking quran when he gave a halal not just when he was in the community he was a walking quran when he was at home too the quran that he was walking he walked outside and he walked inside the people who were in his home felt the same way that the people on the outside felt that's why this is profound that's why this is important but i'm sure all of us are trying to be that quran and yamchi on the outside we're trying to be that amazing holocaust giver on the outside we're trying to be awesome to everyone on the outside yet to the people at home we don't care and there's a beautiful line of poetry that i read the other day and it's scary listen to this what good am i if i did not if i do not fill the plates of the ones who fed me but fill the plates of strangers what good am i if i do not fill the plates of the ones who fed me yet fill the plates of strangers what good are you if the one who raised you doesn't see anything from what she's raised you with what good are you as the one who fed you doesn't see any of the fruits of what she's taught you the one who spent her blood sweat and tears on you for 20 30 years and the one who is the reason as to why you are who you are today the one who helped you get there yet as soon as we get our degree as soon as we can speak as soon as we're something to the community we forget about everyone who taught us we forget about the people who made us who we are so that's the first question you want to ask yourself what does your public self look like versus what does your family see of you what do the people in the community see versus what does your mother see and what do your siblings see and the second question that i want you guys to think of and again i'm talking to myself before anyone here is compare what your salah looks like in the masjid when there's a bunch of people in the congregation versus your salah at home and the only person that can see you is allah when you're at the message you tend to read the longer suras do you tend to pray the sunnah and then stay and do that with god after and when you're at home do you do the same or when you're at home is it and then you're done and then you're not even praying and you don't even do with god and then you move on to the next thing right and i'm sure if we were to think within ourselves the answer to those two questions at least for myself is probably different that when i'm outside i'm acting a certain way yet when i'm inside i'm not the same my worship in the eyes of people is not the same as my worship when it's only allah who's watching me and the question is why does it matter who's watching when allah was watching in both why does it matter who else is around you when allah was always around you and there's a very scary hadith that allah talks about and he says he says my slave why did you make me the least of your worries why did you not care about the fact that i was watching you he says he says you were embarrassed in front of my creation but you were not embarrassed in front of me the creator you were scared that people with the message would think you were bad so you prayed your sunnah and you solely longer yet when you went home and i was the only one who watched you you didn't care you were embarrassed that you read and that's it you weren't embarrassed that you didn't pray your sunnah you were embarrassed that you didn't do your ith god why don't you remember that i was watching you and i was always watching you and i'm always watching you it's panel i don't know if you guys were at the left session right before this shift must have mentioned a beautiful story and i'm going to share it so if you heard it i'm sorry that i'm repeating but he talked about how when he was 16 you know he became like a quran assistant in his masjid and he was teaching alongside of like this awesome right he was talking about how he was 16 teaching quran and he felt like a g he was like man i'm like awesome you know i'm 16 and i'm teaching quran to other people and so one day i guess he went to the masjid early like before fajr or something and he went and he found that his shirt's car was parked outside the masjid but all the lights were closed so he was like okay that's kind of weird and he mentioned that you know he had to go make udu so he walks into the bathroom only to find that his scholar his teacher one who was taught by many righteous amazing scholars before him was on his knees cleaning the toilet of the masjid and so shaykh musta ghost him and he's like what are you doing you're an amazing chef you learned with this person and you learned with that and your status is like how are you on your knees cleaning the masjid and his response was profound he says this is the work that the one who sees always sees this is the work that when no one else saw you allah saw it because what we do is we love to be the one with the microphone we love to be the one who everyone can attribute things to we love to be the one with the title you know i love to be quoted i love for people to know who i am yeah allah sees the things that no one else sees the things that you thought no one saw when you did the dishes and your mom didn't sell you thank you allah saw that you know when you picked something off the floor and no one saw it allah saw that the reason why we do things in the community is because we're really we love that recognition we love for people to pat us on the back and say good job we love the volunteer appreciation dinner we love that but realize you're not always going to get it and sometimes it's better for you that only allah and it could be that that deed that you did in secret that no one saw besides allah is the reason why you entered jannah and everything that you've done in the public everything that people saw everything that was out in the open was stuff that you did for the wrong reasons and you never know that may not even count for you so this is kind of our thought process in understanding whether or not we have this problem now once you find out you have the problem what do i do what's the solution so a couple things i was thinking about is if you feel like people are holding you up to this standard you know you are this and this and this and you have this title and this title and this title and you're amazing challenge yourself to live up to that standard that people are holding you to you know if you go home and you say man people think i'm great but i'm actually not try to actually be great and it's not for the people it's not for people to say you know shirin salama was great but it's for me to improve myself so allah can say shrieking salama was great for me to take the standard that you put me at and to try to actually achieve it not for you but for allah and the second thing is that for every public deed that you do in the eyes of people that you double that in your private in your private life in your private ibeda that man if you prayed in the masjid try to pray at home when no one else can see you besides allah try to wake up when everyone's asleep in the dark just you and allah create that relationship and the third and this is a diet that was taught to us by abu bakr allah he used to receive praise and there was this beautiful diet that he used to say and it goes which translates to oh allah forgive me for what they do not know about me and make me better than what they think that i am because it's funny we like to cover up the fact that all of us have a hidden past all of us have some secret all of us have some sin all of us have something that we've done that no one else knows but remember that when you're being praised that you once were in that state not to put yourself down but for you to remember that allah is the one who brought you there and finally and i'll conclude in reminding us that this is a journey this by no means is something that we are going to accomplish it's going to be a constant struggle but at least when we die we'll be dying on the path and struggle for the sake of allah so i ask allah to make us among those who can improve upon ourselves and to make the journey to him easy subhanallah [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: MASICNAConvention

Views: 862,701

Rating: 4.9261994 out of 5

Keywords: MAS Youth Talk, I'm not who you think I am, Shereen, Shereen Salama, masicnaconvention, mascon2020, mascon2019, knowledgeretreat, masac ademic conference, islamic conventions, Islamophobia, MAS-ICNA, competition, Leaders, MAS-ICNA Convention, Facing challenges, MuslimsGotTalent, american muslims got talent

Id: GYnXI00IfrQ

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021