Our Content Diet - Portal Gems #18

Est. Read time: 5 min
Edition Number: 18
Adapted from: A Changing World: Uncovering the Veils of Illusion
Instructor: Shaykh Suleiman Hani

Assalamu Alaykum,

Today we’re going through a gem from Shaykh Suleiman Hani’s course - A Changing World: Uncovering the Veils of Illusion. In this gem, Shaykh Suleiman discusses the importance of equipping ourselves with beneficial knowledge and constantly checking ourselves to make sure the knowledge we’re taking in is beneficial.

Hope you enjoy!

We begin in the Name of Allah ﷻ, the Most Merciful and Compassionate,
We ask that He ﷻ sends Peace and Blessings upon our noble and beloved
Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

When we think about the use of the internet, the way each of us individually use the internet. Ask yourself, if it's possible to estimate, what percentage of the information that you consume is beneficial compared to your overall usage of the internet. All the information that we receive, our eyes fall upon, or we hear if we're listening, how much of that is beneficial?

Now there may be some things that you're reading for the sake of understanding what's happening, let's say in the news. Or let's say you're a psychologist so you're reading a psychology journal for the day. Or you might be looking at something in terms of economics, the stock market, crypto, or something else.

The things you are consuming that have some benefit in terms of your livelihood, job, your awareness of the world, the news, the state of people in general, what's happening around you - that is technically beneficial.

Overall how much of your content intake is beneficial?

Because according to a number of studies most of the content we are exposed to, if we don't have filters, is intellectual junk. We have to be very frank about this because we are living in a time and a place in which no society before us, no generation before us has ever had access to as many different apps and sources of information as today. Therefore, what we're looking at here is a way to adapt and adjust that's not going to be based off of any experiences of the people before us. We have to figure out what's happening as it's happening.

People are now using this app or that app. People are now using apps in which there's no filtering at all, there's random algorithms. Are you okay with your eyes falling upon something that you weren't planning to see? People are now taking in things mindlessly, just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. No intention whatsoever to benefit - it's not like you were following a page that had a Hadith or had Ayat or had a story or some recipes or something specific. No, you were just randomly scrolling, randomly watching. That's something we fall into, we become desensitized to this.

So the reason we ask this question about how much of the knowledge that we consume is beneficial, is so that we're constantly adjusting, constantly adapting.

Not every app needs to be on our phone.

Not every app needs notifications on.

Not every app needs to be set up in the way that it's currently set up.

And if you cannot modify something that is harming you then you have to make a conscious choice.

Remember the traps of Shaytan: to desensitize, to make something bad appear as good, to make something harmful closer to you even if you're not yet at that stage - may Allah ﷻ protect us all.

Every morning the Prophet ﷺ would make the dua:

‏ اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَسْأَلُكَ عِلْمًا نَافِعًا، وَرِزْقًا طَيِّبًا، وَعَمَلاً مُتَقَبَّلاً ‏

‘Allahumma inni as’aluka ‘ilman nafi’an, wa rizqan tayyiban, wa ‘amalan mutaqabbalan (O Allah, I ask You for beneficial knowledge, goodly provision and acceptable deeds).’” (Sunan Ibn Majah 925)

May Allah ﷻ grant us all beneficial knowledge, pure sustenance, and accepted deeds.

أقول قولي هذا وأستغفر الله لي ولكم، فاستغفروه إنه هو الغفور الرحيم

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