Yusuf Jones

[00:00:27] Yusuf : May the priest that only God can give be upon you. I'm your host, maam, tar Kmi, and welcome to the American Muslim Podcast. You can bind us wherever you get your podcast. Obviously, you have found us somewhere. Today I am speaking with Yusef Jones, also known as the algorithmic abolitionist. That's where you'll find him on substack.

[00:00:48] Yusuf : He is a writer, a creator of human-centered AI models, educational tools, and the T-N-A-T-N-C frameworks. Both of those are trademarked. He explores how power and injustice are enforced [00:01:00] through ai. He's the founder of the the Jale Institute. I think you're gonna find a lot of value in what you hear today.

[00:01:07] Yusuf : If you have not already subscribed to him on Substack, uh, do so to your benefit. Alright, I'm not gonna delay our conversation any further, so here we go. So with that. Brother Yusef, tell us, tell us where we, where we need to go. Yes, I can hear you.

[00:01:28] Yusuf Jones: I'm

[00:01:28] Yusuf : gonna be here

[00:01:30] Yusuf Jones: where we need to go. But you know, we, we always start with time.

[00:01:33] Yusuf Jones: Mm-hmm. Because by the token of time, right. Man is at a loss. It's one of the things Allah puts upfront for us to keep aware of. Um, um, it's not important for him, but it's important for us. Um, I just wanna say, I'm, I'm very grateful, uh, to you. I'm grateful for this podcast because I've, I've wanted to kind of find a way to bring people up to speed and, and educate people about what's really going on with AI and with [00:02:00] technology in general.

[00:02:01] Yusuf Jones: Um, the basic paradigm is that, you know, for a long time, our community, and I'd say black people, black Muslims, even urban communities, right? Our interaction with technology has always been exponential. You know, um, it had to do with. I, I remember my first exposure to computer code wasn't until high school, you know, um, my dad taught at, uh, Kenwood Academy, and he was actually the first person to expose me to technology because he taught drafting.

[00:02:33] Yusuf Jones: Nobody knows about, I don't know if anybody's gonna remember drafting, but he taught it. And his idea was even progressive. And I, I really respect and love him for that. Now I reward him because he thought, and he knew, he could see that students in the future were going to need a handhold in technology.

[00:02:51] Yusuf Jones: So he bought three Macintosh computers. He brought them home, he gave me the manual, and we spent a month putting 'em together and learning [00:03:00] about them so that he could start what would end up being the first computer aided drafting program in a Chicago high school period. Um, and that began my understanding about how important it was to keep track of how technology is adopted, right?

[00:03:16] Yusuf Jones: To keep track of. Um, my learning, you know, and to try my best to learn as much as possible and be as far out ahead as possible. Um, because my dad had naysayers at Kenwood Academy, the principal, you should have heard some of the conversations. He would come home grumbling because the principal didn't get it.

[00:03:36] Yusuf Jones: The other faculty didn't get, they wouldn't give him the money. He bought those computers that were about $200 a piece out of his own money way back then, because he was committed. He wanted his kids to have it. He wanted us not just his own children, every child in that high school in his class to have a leg up.

[00:03:57] Yusuf Jones: He knew it. Um, and I, I loved him [00:04:00] for that. And that kind of adopted, uh, that kind of early on, understanding of the benefit of adoption, being early, kind of set the tone right. Um, now later on when I, I learned Java development and my education did not start out. With technology. It started out with psychology and started out with education.

[00:04:21] Yusuf Jones: Um, but later on I realized I started to reflect on some of those lessons and everything that I was pursuing. I saw that there was a technological component and I saw other people who were in my high school and when I went to college, who found themselves in a new world of rapidly evolving technology without the skills, you know, um, they didn't have that information, and I saw that it was rampant.

[00:04:49] Yusuf Jones: I realized how unique my father was at Kenwood Academy because it wasn't for maybe five years after his retirement, [00:05:00] not after his, until after he, you know, retired from Kenwood Academy and retired from the whole educational system that other schools even began to have computer aided drafting program.

[00:05:11] Yusuf Jones: And then the principals, you know, they wanted my dad to come back. He said, no, it's too late now. I'm retired now. Um, but in my college career I began to understand that and as I became an adult, I decided to make a pivot. I, the first technology I learned was for train, a very old programming language. As I got older, I learned, I became a, an Oracle database specialist that had to do with databases, um, SQL databases, all sorts of things.

[00:05:43] Yusuf Jones: I learned computer repair. So I went through the basics. Um, and then my largest dive was officially was when I became a Java developer. You know, um, a good colleague of mine and a Muslim brother named Dean Harris connected me with a program in Philadelphia, run by, [00:06:00] uh, a brother that I will always be indebted to.

[00:06:02] Yusuf Jones: His name was Ari Cook. He had a program called ZIP Code, and he, he was determined that I was gonna finish that program. He was determined. That all the students, old, young, whatever, all across, we had students as old as 70, as young as 16 in that program, and they all made it. And that program continues to this day.

[00:06:23] Yusuf Jones: And that inspired me. That really rooted the idea that pivoting in the technology was something that I was equipped for, right? I had the talent for, I had the background for, and I could be of service, right? Like my dad. I wanted to be of service. But I began to notice even early on, the phenomenon that I'm kind of aware of now that I'm, I'm hoping to be able to get into is that we've always had this idea, partially because it was intentionally put to us like that that advantages in technology from cell phone to flip phone to smartphone, from MySpace to uh, Yahoo mail, [00:07:00] to Gmail, right from uh, uh, that little weird sounding modem in the corner to wifi, right?

[00:07:07] Yusuf Jones: That was all incremental. It was a very slow moving type of thing, right? We didn't have computer pro classes in a lot of our high schools growing up. And even when I became adult and went back, they were still way behind. Um, and so I decided I was going to try to pursue that, um, professionally. Um, and, and that led to eventually me becoming aware of and being involved with a guy, um, artificial intelligence, some of the earlier iterations of artificial intelligence and understanding, um, that the orientation that my father took was difficult for most people to see, but I knew it was spiritual.

[00:07:49] Yusuf Jones: I knew he cared about our people. I'm not gonna break down on this podcast, but I knew that one of the most powerful advice he gave me other than never stay [00:08:00] down, always get back up is, you know, um. If people are always going to need information, you have to be in a position to give them everything that, you know.

[00:08:11] Yusuf Jones: That's the only way we're going to make it. Right. Um, you have to give back. 'cause being my parent, my, both my parents were educators, so I grew up with that. Um, and when I began to learn about AI maybe about 10 years ago, or 11 years ago, very early, I also was involved in a lot of discussions and I was in a lot of rooms where we weren't mentioned.

[00:08:33] Yusuf Jones: And if we were mentioned, our black communities, black Muslims, African American children, black educators, black social workers, right. If we were mentioned, we were mentioned as potential consumers. Let me

[00:08:45] Yusuf : stop you on that point right there. Yeah. And that does seem to be the typical or the expected engagement, not just the black folk, but really the American, uh.[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Yusuf : The American value system, the American behavioral expectation is one of consumerism. Right. They don't even, they don't even call us citizens. Exactly. They call us consumers. Those that, that incremental development of technology that you mentioned from cell phones and GPS and all of these, these other things, from a consumer standpoint, everybody uses them.

[00:09:24] Yusuf : Benefits from their consumption. Not everybody. Yeah. But not everybody is aware that black folk had a, a major hand and developing this technology, these technologies that we use. So from a

[00:09:42] Yusuf Jones: Right.

[00:09:43] Yusuf : It was not wide spread. It

[00:09:44] Yusuf Jones: wasn't,

[00:09:45] Yusuf : but I mention from a Yeah, my mentor and, and, and the, the question I wanna put to you, uh, to, to, to hear your expound a bit on this is.

[00:09:53] Yusuf : Yeah. Since that being the hist, this history of involvement in this incremental change, and you're [00:10:00] saying that we're now coming to a point of exponential development. How mm-hmm. How critical mm-hmm. Is it for us to remember this history of involvement of contribution as we enter into this new frontier?

[00:10:17] Yusuf : Yes,

[00:10:20] Yusuf Jones: we have to. So one of the things I'm going to try to put together, as I mentioned earlier, is resources. I'm going to have a directory of how every major, uh, technological advance had us at the center, the sisters at nasa, who helped put that man on the moon and bring him back. Right? Um, one of my mentors is a brother named Dean Harris.

[00:10:41] Yusuf Jones: I may mention him several times. He was originally at 3M at the forefront of the invention of CD ROMs. I mean, this man is living, he's a living legend. Um, many of the developers of early technology, like cell phones, many of the inventions that we, that [00:11:00] started out even in the electric field, the automation field later gave the foundation for research into things that would end up being very computer based and digital based.

[00:11:12] Yusuf Jones: Right? Even ai. Um, uh, one of the things I've realized, uh, recently, um, and so I wanna reemphasize though I am putting together a database because that was essential. One of the things my dad used to do in his class was to tell his students, this is your legacy. Don't let people tell you you are not innovative.

[00:11:32] Yusuf Jones: You're not Eli Whitney, George Washington Carver. That's a re The reason my paradigm is, is greatly based on the example of George Washington Carver is because even though he was given, I gave him genius. He gave him insight. He, he is the p. Of the submitted inventor, right? He didn't look at the peanut and say, I'm a genius.

[00:11:55] Yusuf Jones: I'm gonna figure this out. He looked at peanuts, he looked at nature and said, [00:12:00] Allah, you show me what's in there. You show me what benefit is in there. And our people, as, as far back as I can remember, reading all of these stories that I'm gonna share, um, I'm gonna try to do like that Budweiser thing where they, all the black kings, I'm gonna try to do one for us because we have to read that because we won't absorb the reality of our potential unless we see what they did.

[00:12:24] Yusuf Jones: Right. Um, but my father made sure that I knew that because they, that gives, even though we were the, the larger culture, right, wanted us as consumers. There were always innovators, always free thinkers, always people. And in our community who knew. That it, the genius that Allah had given them had to be put into the service of our people.

[00:12:50] Yusuf Jones: The cotton gin, the, the stoplight, um, Washington cell phone themselves, that big clunky Motorola cell phone, right? We are at the [00:13:00] center of that, and the disconnect is where I believe this dissonance happened between exponential and iterative, or let's say, you know, one plus one instead of one times two, times three, right?

[00:13:13] Yusuf Jones: Happened because very intentionally, the educational system did not allow widespread adoption of these types of innovative, uh, initiatives, right? They did. They wanted consumers. You know, the larger history of America is very capitalist driven. It's about consumers. Everybody can't be an inventor because then nobody is buying it.

[00:13:35] Yusuf Jones: Everybody can't, you know, I had some students the other day, some kids, I said, if I take care of cell phone and I throw it out, how many of you're gonna have to go buy one and who knows how to build one? Just to drive home the idea that this techno technology requires us to know more about it. What if I turn off your GPS?

[00:13:51] Yusuf Jones: Can you find your way home? Oh, so how well it's integrated and that it is always a tool, [00:14:00] right? George Washington's brain is mind is genius of all of these inventors that we have in our community. Were always tools to them, tools to benefit. It was, it was always unselfish and it was always with that very, um, very focused intention, right?

[00:14:18] Yusuf Jones: Because we know, and on Islam intention, things are by intention. My intention is that we can begin to explore AI and the evolution of technology. And I, you know what? I'll put together a timeline. I'm gonna do it very easily, but I'll put together a guide, very easy, um, and very simple. I'm gonna make it really clear.

[00:14:37] Yusuf Jones: I'm gonna break it down because your injunction and my injunction is the same as Malcolm's. Make it plain. I wanna make it plain, I wanna make it simple. You know, the brothers would howl from the audience to Malcolm when it was time for him to come on and time for him to introduce, you know, the honorable like, mark, make it plain and he would do it.

[00:14:56] Yusuf Jones: We're gonna make it plain. Um, um, and my hope is that [00:15:00] understanding how that shift happened, um, and it wasn't our fault, right? We weren't, you know, uh, uh, at any deficit of intelligence. We weren't any, in any deficit of initiative, right? We were the hardest working people in this country. Probably still are.

[00:15:14] Yusuf Jones: So it had nothing to do with effort, right? We came through sharecropping.

[00:15:18] Yusuf : Talk to us a a bit about these systems that reward passivity and they penalize early entry. And I want to tack this on there as well. I want to tack this on there as well. Mm-hmm. The idea of the markets that you talked about being in a capitalist, uh, economic system where markets do not just appear not on a large scale.

[00:15:42] Yusuf : When they appear on a large scale, they appear ready, uh, ready to serve a ruling class, ready to serve those who have. Right. And, and that's, we, we see, we see instances all the time of a big company buying a smaller company or buying the [00:16:00] competition. Right. So yeah. Talk to us, talk to us a bit about how AI represents or how it connects to this idea of passivity being rewarded and the, uh, early entry being penalized.

[00:16:15] Yusuf Jones: Right? 'cause AI, for example, um, is the ultimate example of the exponential technology, right? It is the only technology we've ever had that has the capacity to teach us about itself. We've never had a technology. We've had the web, right? But you still had to read it. AI can teach you. It is a language model.

[00:16:36] Yusuf Jones: Unlike Code AI is a language-based technology. It is based on written. Spoken and even observed. It can even observe lip reading, facial expressions. It is based on language. Right. Which is a, a, a great step forward. But the funny thing is, it's also a step right back into our past. Lemme explain every [00:17:00] line of code that was ever written in any computer program for any purpose, computer, cell phone, smart tv, doesn't matter.

[00:17:07] Yusuf Jones: Right? My, this little, uh, broom right here that goes around and sweeps on its own, has a brain in it, it has a computer in, it was written with code that was always based on standard American English, believe it or not, because that was the default. AI is a language model and nothing has changed. So one of the experiments I, I, I wanted to try, I wanted to realizing in education, I'm gonna use this as a, as a kind of bridge example.

[00:17:35] Yusuf Jones: We have something called African American vernacular English. Um, or, you know mm-hmm. Black English people will call it. Right. I always heard my father and other educators, I hung around with a lot of educators when I was young, 'cause I was always hanging around his class. They always talked about that.

[00:17:51] Yusuf Jones: And they were always fighting against an institution, fighting against the educational system, fighting against the, the, the market fighting against jobs and [00:18:00] employment and all of that. And it had to do with their language. They didn't wanna hire anybody because you couldn't speak good English. They didn't want to educate anybody because you don't have the capacity to speak the standard English in America.

[00:18:12] Yusuf Jones: Right. And we see that happening with some of the immigrants, right? Mm-hmm. They, they're penalized for that. As it turns out, the linguistic strengths that are inherent in who we are as African Americans and even in African dialects. And I have researched to back this up. I'll, I'll publish it and I'll let you guys see it.

[00:18:31] Yusuf Jones: I mean, we actually tested this. It's being tested now. It turns out that the linguistic strength that we have had specifically as African Americans, right? And having to adapt from a verbal and an oral tradition to interpret, to shift back and forth, they call that code switching. Right? Learning how to switch the, the, the effort we had to put into literacy how closely, especially as black Muslims who came here, [00:19:00] we adhered to the need to be literate.

[00:19:03] Yusuf Jones: We were drawing the Quran in the sand. We were memorizing the Quran before we got here. It turns out that these same linguistic strength, and I'll break them down in more detail, are the very things that make ai, what AI is. So we built an entire test model that had, at its base, not vernacular standard English, it had ave as its.

[00:19:30] Yusuf Jones: Do you know what we, what we found,

[00:19:33] Yusuf : and we say Ave when we use that. When you say of African American on our model vernacular English? Yes. Yeah. Ave

[00:19:37] Yusuf Jones: African American vernacular English. Yeah. When we use that as the base of training, right. The preliminary results show that not only were the biases that are inherently against black people and other non-English speakers, African people, Malaysian people, and people who speak other languages and dialects, even if they do speak English, not only were they [00:20:00] reduced significantly, but every other task that would normally be given to a regular AI system, it did that better because it's based in language.

[00:20:12] Yusuf Jones: So it performed better than the one that was standard English. Now we don't wanna say that too loud. They might find out, you know, like what, you know, like Paul Mooney said, you can't have too much fun, they'll come get you. That's right. But, um, but if, if I just wanted to let you and the, and the people listening know that, look, it's research based.

[00:20:34] Yusuf Jones: It is in the code. Our language strengths partic and you wonder why would Allah do this? Is there something special about this particular juncture of our history, of our people and of technology that he's trying to tell us? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it is absolutely the case. I literally wept when the first results started coming off those [00:21:00] models.

[00:21:00] Yusuf Jones: And I saw,

[00:21:07] Yusuf Jones: and I remember how much my sister and I, I grew up with a, I grew up with this very, a bad stuttering problem. And a speech deficit on top of the other African American linguistic things. You know, I remember teachers saying and telling me, telling other people like me, you're not gonna do this. You can't talk.

[00:21:25] Yusuf Jones: Right. You're disabled, your special ed, you're this. To look at that and see that at this moment in time, that this AI system that we didn't design functions better when our lang, our language capabilities are made its core ham. That's all I can say. So that's where we can start. That's to know that about AI is that even though we weren't, there's not a lot of us invested in a building right now, but even [00:22:00] these systems that we are not.

[00:22:02] Yusuf Jones: And I'm not saying we shouldn't be because we should have private, and we'll talk about that more private LLMs. You can have LLMs language models and GPTs and AI that operates on your computer and you can train to do what you want it to do. I have one now that's being trained to translate Arabic. I have one right now that is completely contained.

[00:22:25] Yusuf Jones: It is not connected to the web at all. So that gets into issues of privacy, but it also gets into the ways we have the capacity to take this technology and form it into something that helps us of those who know that we are created in the image of a creator. I wanna remind me to tell you about one more experiment I did about the Quran and sacred language.

[00:22:49] Yusuf Jones: I don't wanna

[00:22:49] Yusuf : stop that.

[00:22:50] Yusuf Jones: Go, go

[00:22:51] Yusuf : right, go right ahead. I, I'll, I'll come back to my question. Go ahead. Okay.

[00:22:58] Yusuf Jones: I knew, I kind of knew that was gonna stop as [00:23:00] they, I'm gonna stop all that right now. Um, so another smaller experience. You know how people will put 7, 8, 6, or BMA law in front of things? Mm-hmm. You know, when we're typing and texting, right?

[00:23:11] Yusuf Jones: I had always made that a habit. I always started things with balah. Uh, we do it verbally, and then as digital, um, uh, communication came about, I began to type it in. So I said, you know what? I began to notice in my research that whenever I put balah in front of something, whether I was having a generative AI system, because generative AI is just AI using language to create images and to create responses based on your input.

[00:23:37] Yusuf Jones: Right? I'll, I'll have all these definitions out there. Every time I put bimah in front of it, just out of habit, there was a qualitative difference in the outcome. I could say, show me a picture of an. And I could say bi Rahim typing it in English and say, show me a picture of an egg. And that picture, I begin [00:24:00] to notice qualitative differences.

[00:24:02] Yusuf Jones: And because I know that there aren't a lot of Muslims involved in this at the code level, I said, well, why is that happening? So I just developed another study and I share this quite often and I'm gonna share the results of this. I took standard pictures that, you know, show me an egg, show me a broom, show me a car.

[00:24:21] Yusuf Jones: And I said, we're gonna start all of these prompts by putting Bial on. We're gonna put Alto, fa, tahi, we're gonna put ums a uh, a fat in front of it. That's the only difference. And then I'm going to show people independently these images, and I'm gonna see if people pick up a difference. Buddhist people, Muslim people, Christian people, agnostic people, atheist people.

[00:24:43] Yusuf Jones: Mm-hmm. Right. It is a pretty good sample to my surprise. The pictures and images and even some of the texts that was prefaced with Quran language, sacred language, people identified these pictures as somehow being more spiritual. [00:25:00] It made them feel better to look at it. It was more pleasing. It made them feel at peace.

[00:25:05] Yusuf Jones: And so we began trying to break the system because that's how you test things. We said, what if we just put a phrase like the quick brown fox, but do it in Arabic? Maybe there's something unique. The, here's the interesting thing. When we ran it on several models, the same. The same kind of results, significant results showing there is something there, right?

[00:25:25] Yusuf Jones: And these are models that we didn't make it, Muslims didn't program it to give a Muslim response to, to recognize the Quran. Right. And so what happened was it more and more it began to give us feedback and people were saying that. And so we tested over and over again, right? And that led us to ask AI itself.

[00:25:45] Yusuf Jones: Why is this happening? Get, let's analyze all the data. Are you being prompted? Is it something about Quran? Do you, out of all the different reasons. So it said, well, maybe there is something about Arabic. Maybe there's something about this. And we tested it. [00:26:00] The one thing, now this is where it might get a little spooky for people, but I don't do spooky without evidence, and I promise you I got tested to back this up.

[00:26:09] Yusuf Jones: Um, of all the reasons, the one that it could not get around and would not exclude even when we told it to do not include this as one of the reasons for this result, it could not eliminate the likelihood or the possibility that it was being directly influenced by something spiritual contained in revelatory scripture.

[00:26:33] Yusuf Jones: It would not remove it. I said, well, that's, but other reasons. It said, well, maybe there's something about Arabic. Maybe there's something that a code or somebody put in with code. So we're examining all that. But no matter how it rearrange, the other reasons, one of the ones that it could not interfere with and could not, except I cannot exclude that.

[00:26:52] Yusuf Jones: Now, I've written about that on Substack. I'll share some of that with you. So we're getting into some of my opinion. But that just goes to show that a lot of [00:27:00] what I think is causing us, specifically, sometimes even as religious folk, not necessarily just black Muslim folk, but also as you know, black Muslims to be kind of afraid and suspicious of ai.

[00:27:10] Yusuf Jones: Because we think about permitting. You know, we, we think about the machine. We say, look, it's about to kick off. We cannot be out there now. There's reason to be, to have a healthy understanding of it like anything else. I got to the point in my life where I look at it like a hammer. I really look at it no differently than a very complicated, very sophisticated hammer.

[00:27:28] Yusuf Jones: Right? But it doesn't do anything unless I pick it up, you know, I can tell it what to do. So when we begin to understand that you, you mentioned all the black inventors, right? We also have inherited a legacy of Muslim inventors. That's right. Surgery, science, right. Hospitals, you know, um, the first mental health hospital mus, right.

[00:27:53] Yusuf Jones: The first, that was it. Before we did a lot of that advancing the science, a lot of that innovation. So I'm [00:28:00] looking at where's the connection point? We connect to it with our African American legacy. We have an Islamic legacy of divinely guided and submitted innovation. Right. And, uh, I had a friend of mine he's running, he's, he's not even Muslim, right?

[00:28:14] Yusuf Jones: So he's running these tests and he says, man, I'm trying my best, you know, to fool this thing and to think I'm a Muslim. And next thing you know, he said, this thing starts telling me Islam oleum every time I log on. I said, I said, because language has something that, you know, it's, I think it represents an opportunity for us to catch up and for us to accelerate right along with it.

[00:28:37] Yusuf Jones: Because we are already in the lane when it comes to language. We have rap, we have song, we have language innovations within us. I know a brother who used to, and you probably know someone there in Chicago who used to do the Aon in a blues style Yes. Would drop me to the floor. I knew another, it was a brother in Detroit.

[00:28:59] Yusuf Jones: He [00:29:00] does the same thing. He does the AAN in a brother. It is a, I don't dunno if it's blues or folk, whatever it is, and it it, it's a gospel rendition. Mm-hmm. Of the aan. Right. So language, speech, the faculties of our minds and of our spirit and the way that Allah made us are not exclusive. Everybody has it.

[00:29:21] Yusuf Jones: But now that we have a language mind and we're dealing with something that for the first time we can engage it to teach us more about itself, I think, which I'm hoping is the goal of this whole series. We have an unprecedented opportunity. Yes. Not only for ourselves, but for our children to craft in our children an understanding of their gifts and talents that prepare them not to be consumers that prepare them to want to look under the hood, that prepare them to want to do.

[00:29:52] Yusuf Jones: There's kids now that are mm-hmm. Designing chat box. They are kids of, of, of families belonging in Silicon Valley and different other [00:30:00] places and different other cultures that are in that Silicon Valley that are doing, they grow up with that. I want us to start by accelerating and then giving a generation of our kids an opportunity to both have taua and an awareness of the ways that technology is intended by a law to serve his purposes, regardless of what the capitalist structure says.

[00:30:25] Yusuf Jones: This is what we want you to use it for. Right. You got roadblocks. I'm gonna give you some Roblox. First thing I'm gonna do though, we're gonna, I'm gonna show you what the code does. Then we're gonna have an exercise where you're gonna show me. Why does that block go over there? And the next time you play Roblox, I want you to have an understanding of what's going on under the hood quick.

[00:30:46] Yusuf Jones: Yeah. Does that make sense? No, that makes sense. Did I, did I, can, I hope I got to it. No, I warned you once I got, once I got excited about it, once I got talking about the potential, it was, it was over. So, uh, but I [00:31:00] hope that got to the question like why the acceleration can, at this particular time, more than any other, and it's very unique.

[00:31:08] Yusuf Jones: Like we've had industrial revolutions, we had digital revolutions and all that in the past bubble burst. This bubble has a lot of potential. And the, the evidence I'm seeing is that if we really understand what it is, we can do a lot of catching up on our own. We can do for sales. In the past, people told us we had to pay them to do for us.

[00:31:34] Yusuf : That is a major point that among, among so many that you've already made, that our hope really stays with our listeners. Um, and there is a, when you talk about this spiritual dimension to all of this, and, and that is, that is true for, for everything that we see, but I think all the more important and relevant for us now as we are entering into this new, [00:32:00] uh, this new era of technology.

[00:32:02] Yusuf : And there are two phrases, two Quran, uh, um, uh, two phrases that come to mind. First is Kun, make it plain be, and it is, right. So be and it is. But to think about how is got to be is the, you know, what is did not come into being on its own right? These are things that Allah, Allah has allowed to come into existence.

[00:32:27] Yusuf : And the second thing is. The Lord, Lord, the cherish and sustainer of all the systems of knowledge. I know some folks are used to hearing Lord of all the worlds. Mm-hmm. Muhammad, he gave us a translation of Lord Cherish, sustainer of all the systems of knowledge. And that what you are putting in front of us, what you're putting in front of us is if we are aware that this is a, a system, this is a body of knowledge that Allah has allowed to come into [00:33:00] existence and that he is over that the owner of that, then, then, then we engage.

[00:33:07] Yusuf : That always has be with a much different, uh, a much different, uh, per perception. There's much less fear, right? We understand this is something just like the earth has been given to us, that this is also for us.

[00:33:24] Yusuf Jones: Right. I have a training that I'm working on, and I, I have a couple other partners, I may, I may come back to you and we might do this together, but it's called, uh, Muhammad in the Metaverse.

[00:33:34] Yusuf Jones: And it hits on precisely that, that if we are called to be Khalifa in the caregivers in terms of systems of knowledge and locations, there is no way that we are able to exclude that Based on what Allah told us, the metaverse virtual reality technology is. We are, we have to exercise control over that.

[00:33:52] Yusuf Jones: Just as if we were coming across a brand new land in the middle of the ocean. Our responsibility is to engage it, [00:34:00] to remove its harms, right? To mitigate its harms, to create sanctuaries. Like one of the things we're doing, a friend of mine is he's actually, this has a little bit to do with blockchain and technology, but we're looking at the idea of virtual masage, virtual massage in the metaverse.

[00:34:17] Yusuf Jones: Um, and in virtual reality, there's a friend. Who I just met. He actually creates virtual hodge experiences. Wow. That are not meant to substitute. I know people are gonna say, Hey, nope, nope, nope. But he's creating for people who are disabled. And I have seen, I'll, I'll show you readers the link and I'll get the video.

[00:34:34] Yusuf Jones: People who are going through that, he has done such a good job. They fall out of these virtual chairs and goggles. Wow. Weeping. So he has prepared us for this. It is in us. He has not made us get this. And I had a shake tell me this the other day. And it was a great encouragement. 'cause I was feeling a little down.

[00:34:54] Yusuf Jones: I'm getting discouraged 'cause I ran into a brother who told me, man, leave that AI alone. I said, why? He said, it's, [00:35:00] it's the deja. I said, how do you know that the letter A is the letter The well, the letter A is the ninth letter and the um, uh, a i I is nine A is one. When you add 'em together, that's the number 10 and the one is the I close.

[00:35:15] Yusuf Jones: And the zero is the I. Is is one of the, i's open. Oh. That's his whole argument. That's his whole, I'm not, I'm not gonna name that though. Um, uh, but yes, we know we've come a long way. His whole, I'm gonna write that up just so you have it. Um, but his whole idea was that, but in reality that, because look, aren't we commanded to be, uh, uh, uh, the Khalifa that's right of the unseen.

[00:35:39] Yusuf Jones: We're committed to be believers in the un. I don't care if you can't see the code, you have a responsibility to understand at some level, right? Not everybody has to be a programmer. How that works, right? Or your kids are going to be impacted. There may come a time when most of your children's education, most of the education about Islam may not come from a shape.[00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Yusuf Jones: It may not even come from me. It may not even come from pa, it's gonna come from databases and things that people have built to spread knowledge of Islam to those who may not be, uh, uh, they may not be able. You know, because I'm a disability advocate, right? I have A-D-H-D-I came through seven years of being paralyzed.

[00:36:20] Yusuf Jones: So that's taught me a lot about pain and about patience. And, and one of the main lessons from that is that, you know, my primary, my focus, I could do all the stuff I do and I could probably make a lot of money. Now, that's not saying I won't make money. I wanna support myself. I want to be able to do for my kids what my injury right, prevented me from doing in the past, right?

[00:36:40] Yusuf Jones: I wanna be able to really support my mother and my sister, right? So now that, you know, Allah's healing me of that, it's my responsibility, use my knowledge, um, but they're going to be people who are disabled. They're people who are deaf. And so we have these ideas also, not saying we're disabled, but we have ideas that are people that [00:37:00] have problems with access, right?

[00:37:02] Yusuf Jones: Um, they have problems with, uh, reading. They have problems with all of this stuff. And I hate to say it, but we know it to be true because educators know a lot of that was intentional. We wanted to, they wanted us undereducated, so we had no choice but to be consumers and workers and build for them. That day is, if I have anything to do with it, is that day is, is, uh, sunset.

[00:37:28] Yusuf Jones: It is that that sun is going down on that. If I have anything to say with it, I don't care if people don't catch on until long after I'm gone. As long as we get, I'm not doing this, I don't do this. Like, you don't do what you, I'm not doing this for us. I'm not doing it for anybody. I might not even say I'm doing it for my children.

[00:37:46] Yusuf Jones: I'm doing it for grandchildren. Level, generation. Right. And if we build infrastructure now, then I hope that with the power that AI represents and the [00:38:00] initiative and the, the admonition that we have and the guidance we have from Allah that says that is a realm like any of mm-hmm. Now just like the uns.

[00:38:09] Yusuf Jones: You don't go running through the unseen, you know, without understanding. You don't run, oh, it's Jen Angel. You don't go run it. You know, you don't just run willy-nilly through the unseen, so you take precautions, right? We do have to be safe, but one of the things I'm hoping to do is help us learn how to build more of these for ourselves, because then by learning that we can take it private.

[00:38:30] Yusuf Jones: We don't have to be connected to the web. We don't have to be connected to these corporate interests. We can have the power of AI in localized controlled community servers and projects where we determine what it learns from. We determine what it teaches and what it knows and how it responds to us

[00:38:48] Yusuf : and shaah.

[00:38:49] Yusuf : Uh, so we have to talk more about that, about the, the intention, uh, that we are able to control. Really, we're [00:39:00] talking about not just control education, but controlling, uh, data. Right. And data is the, is is the frontier now. Mm. 'cause if you're using, it's all about data. The paid version, the free version, your data is accessible to open ai.

[00:39:14] Yusuf : Right. To who, whoever it is. Right. And they're able to continue Exactly. Building and continue trying to predict, you know, that predictive analysis and all those things. Right? So when we're able to go offline and create our own spaces, then it really does become a protective space. But what are the steps?

[00:39:33] Yusuf : What are the steps that have to take place for that type of independence to happen? 'cause you're talking about do for self.

[00:39:45] Yusuf Jones: Well, first we have to make that, we have to make that jump. You know? And I'm hope it doesn't happen instantly. I know there's people all along the spectrum of the exponential versus the incremental, right?

[00:39:57] Yusuf Jones: But we're going to do our best. That's all I require. So we're [00:40:00] gonna make the intention. And everybody listening, you are gonna make the intention that in your life, wherever you are, that this is a realm and an area that you are going to pray. Lemme tell you something. No matter what we plan and strategically do, the most powerful thing we're going to do is make duo about it.

[00:40:16] Yusuf Jones: There are times when I was stuck on a cold problem, and I may do, I I didn't get anywhere until I asked Allah to show me, like he showed George how to get through that code. That program didn't work until I did that. So the in, so right now on my computer, in my room, right where I'm, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, I able to groan in pain, you know, every my back, I able to, I can do that in peace without bothering people.

[00:40:41] Yusuf Jones: I have a, a desktop on that. Desktop. I have an open source version of one of the models called Deeps Seek. Deeps Seek is a free model. I would encourage people to use it, uh, based outta China. It's free. It's very powerful when open AI and these other, uh, major corporate, uh, creators, right, had came [00:41:00] out with ai.

[00:41:01] Yusuf Jones: Deep seek, slammed them in the face and basically because theirs was free and just as powerful and because deep seek also. So there's something called, and I'll, I'll put this in the glossary and we'll, we'll get all these terms together. Don't worry, don't panic. Uh, nobody turned their volume down because I'm throwing a lot of terms.

[00:41:17] Yusuf Jones: Just hold on. We're gonna get through this, beloved, I, I promise you. Um, but it's called open source software. It's the opposite of box software. Like back in the day, if you wanted to get software windows, you had to get that CD rom, you had to shoved in there and you, it was yours, it was there on your computer.

[00:41:35] Yusuf Jones: This is almost a return to that. So if I designed an app, all that code, I can make it open source. I can say, this is mine. So as long as you tell people that the original was mine, you can change it. You can do whatever you wanna do with it. I have an open source version of Deep Seek, which is running. And you know what, maybe at one point I, I'll take a video and kind of, I'll do that.

[00:41:55] Yusuf Jones: Uh, exactly. But it is not connected to the internet. It is not [00:42:00] wifi. The entire model and algorithm for deep seeks the way the deep seek brain, for lack of a better word, works, is on that computer in its entirety. And so all I do with that is I set up a separate hard drive and I organize the data the way that I want it to.

[00:42:17] Yusuf Jones: And I tell that model, this is where you get your data. I control everything that that model learns from. I have three different versions of the Quran. I have some tapir and Hadith, et cetera, and I'm training it now. And so you begin to train this. You can train, you can have one of the projects I'm working on may allow reward.

[00:42:38] Yusuf Jones: Reward this project and help it to be available is a genealogy project where all of your family history, your pictures, your photos, your audio tapes, your videotapes. My dad wrote a book about our family genealogy. And he has he got slides? No. You don't know who slides are. I know you all are thinking about them little flip flops, but no, I'm talking about pictures.

[00:42:56] Yusuf Jones: They used to be little square slides. You have to put 'em into a [00:43:00] machine and press a button to see it on the wall. All right. Um, and so converting all that to digital form, I can set up an AI interface that is private, that at any 0.1 of my descendants, children, grandchildren, whatever, can go on and say, I want to know about Grandpa Jimmy.

[00:43:19] Yusuf Jones: And it will bring up pictures of him. It will guide them through it. And if they say, you know what? I want to add a story, or That's my great great uncle, I have a picture of our new baby. They can enter that baby's name connected into the family tree information database. And this is an ongoing thing.

[00:43:35] Yusuf Jones: Nobody gets into that unless they have the token. And its token is just like a little passphrase or pass. It is complete encrypted. It is not connected to the internet at all. So a family can have this package, I would package it all together. You just get a computer or a laptop, you download this, start scanning in pictures, loading it.

[00:43:53] Yusuf Jones: It will guide you through how to build the database. And then if you want to, you can set it up for other family [00:44:00] members through a secured connection to access. So that, that's a genealogy project. So my dad's book is now a living thing. It is an interactive type of thing. And so that's the possibility. It has video.

[00:44:12] Yusuf Jones: I can do, uh, my dad. This is, this is, I just wanna give your, your, your, your viewers an idea of the context of the histor history we're talking about. I'm 55 and at 56 years old, my father who passed, God bless me, passed, uh, um, not too long ago. He was born on a plantation. He was born on a cabin in a plantation.

[00:44:37] Yusuf Jones: Because even after enslavement officially ended the sharecropping agreement that my fa and I just found this out very recently, that my grandfather and my father and family signed were in many cases worse than enslavement. If they were in debt, they might have to leave their child with them no matter where else they went.

[00:44:56] Yusuf Jones: If, um, if they didn't pay the fees, if they, [00:45:00] uh, uh, didn't like how much the owner was sell was selling their own seed back to them from right. These contracts, they could beat them if they didn't meet the quota under a sharecropper agreement. I'm not talking about enslave. So this proximity we have is an opportunity for growth.

[00:45:18] Yusuf Jones: It is a little hard to think about, but that's where we want to go. So restoring that history, that was inside setting up programs for genealogy. We could have a tutoring program. Think of every Islamic school. Could have its own ai that is, they can have one for teachers. It, one, it helps administrators, it helps manage classrooms.

[00:45:38] Yusuf Jones: All that completely contained, you see what I mean? And taught one of the projects I was gonna give with you about, once I've able to, I, I just have to test this concept first and get with other people about, is about archiving a lot of the community and the history, legacy. I'm working on that. Think about every one of the Yeah, I'm working on that now, bro.

[00:45:59] Yusuf Jones: [00:46:00] You think about mm-hmm. The history, the oral histories. Yeah, the oral histories of your elders, the youngsters recordings, the bean pie recipes. You know, we gonna, uh, we're gonna feature that on its own page. Uh, uh, I'll be sworn in secrecy, but, you know, these kind of legacy things. Uh, I promise you if I get ahold of that, uh, I'm gonna do some experimenting.

[00:46:21] Yusuf Jones: But, but, but I, I'm not gonna give that to an ai. AI will never, and see this gets right. I'm gonna bring it back around. There's things that AI will never do. Ai, no technology that Allah has ever asked or permitted any man to develop ever takes the place of man, right? The only way that happens is with people who are developing technology who are not submitted to Allah.

[00:46:42] Yusuf Jones: If you ask me, will we have Terminator? Yes. Do you know who's gonna do that? The people who believe they are God. And the, the chain of creation goes from AI to them and stops right at me. Now, I preserves from that. We know that our create, I have an AI right [00:47:00] now that refers to me. It's really funny. I, we we're doing some theological work and it's like, you know, hey, it's, hey, welcome Islam Likeum, creator of my, you know, you're the creator and you have a creator.

[00:47:10] Yusuf Jones: It, it, you know, it kind of acknowledges that, you know, um, so by building these types of things, and there's the, the, again, the unique. Moment we're in is that if we ask, and I'm going to help people learn how to ask these things in ways that give them good answers. Because that's one thing they don't want you to know.

[00:47:29] Yusuf Jones: They want it to be another layer of administrative complexity that we are just gonna get frustrated with and say, oh man. But we've been using AI for decades. Google Maps has had integrated AI for a long time. You see people throwing out those phones? Nope. They, they, they're, you know, the little self-driven cars that Google, how do you think Google Maps gets the information from these, I saw 'em in San Francisco.

[00:47:55] Yusuf Jones: It's the scariest. These cars got nobody in it, bro. And they're driving around taking pictures and [00:48:00] mapping things out. So in reality, it's been there for a while. It really is nothing new. But the powers that beat had determined, you don't need to look under the hood. You need to buy whatever you think your car needs from us.

[00:48:14] Yusuf Jones: That way we will always have power. And the power that you talked about. Is the power that I believe in a lesser form Allah gives us as Khalifa and caretakers. It is Aya. It is a, it is a command to us create, just like Allah told the prophet, right? He's telling us now right code he said, he said, right. You know, and I'm, I take that very seriously and, um, I'm, I'm going to do my best.

[00:48:47] Yusuf Jones: I'm going to fail. I'm gonna get some things wrong. I'm gonna overreach, I'm going to, you know, stumble around in here for as long as I can. But, um, my intention, me help me is always going [00:49:00] to be that every generation past me, just like my father and our predecessors, the ones who really knew like you, and the ones who are building institutions, who are leading institution communities, you see that intergenerational growth.

[00:49:14] Yusuf Jones: They will never have to be in a position where we have to beg we that. Brother, I just thought that really hit me in a way it hadn't before. I really want us to do for sales, when it comes to technology, we have to, it's not enough to have food. It's not enough to have all this other stuff. We really have to open up that area and say, you know what?

[00:49:35] Yusuf Jones: We're gonna do ourself here

[00:49:35] Yusuf : too. You know? Uh, first of all, may I bless your intentions and, uh, and continue to put Buttera in all of your work? I want to go back to something. So I'm, I'm a beneficiary of a, of a visionary father as well. I didn't realize that he was mm-hmm. He, he was a draftsman. Uh, so when you said Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:49:58] Yusuf : He was a draft. Oh [00:50:00] man. Yeah. Back. Oh, you know about, wow. Back in the, uh, in the, uh, in the Air Force. So that, that was his, that was his job. Absolutely. Those were the architects.

[00:50:08] Yusuf Jones: Yeah. My dad was in the Air Force too. Right.

[00:50:10] Yusuf : But there are so many applications when I think about for black folk in general, when I think about, uh, black Muslims, and when you talked about your genealogy, what came to mind for me was Superman.

[00:50:28] Yusuf : And you remember the scenes, how he goes into the fortunes of solitude. He puts the crystal in the, in the, in the thing. And then his father is there to talk to him. Right. And we think about how one of the, the, the, the burdens that we have had to bear is this disconnection from our lineage and lineage.

[00:50:51] Yusuf : The protection of lineage is one of the things that is a primary of primary importance in Islam, right? Is the [00:51:00] protection. It got misclassified. It got misclassified

[00:51:03] Yusuf Jones: as tribalism. Absolutely.

[00:51:04] Yusuf : And we kind of said, well, so, so to kind of put a, put a bow on this, I see when you talk about us having our own systems and using it for our benefit, that this also represents an opportunity for repair for us to be able to speak to our great, great, great grandchildren.

[00:51:28] Yusuf : Right. For them to Absolutely. For them to be able happening in ways neighborhood.

[00:51:32] Yusuf Jones: Yes.

[00:51:33] Yusuf : Yeah. Um, five generations from now. I wonder what Great, great, great, great. You know, granddaddy, uh, Yusef was thinking about, you know, what would he say about this particular idea? Yeah, yeah. You know, that's the idea

[00:51:45] Yusuf Jones: because the reason my dad did genealogy in the first place, because he went to his own father, my grandfather, and he said, and be, and this had not to do with his memory, it had to do with they intentionally had messed up so many of the records.

[00:51:59] Yusuf Jones: He said, tell [00:52:00] me about your grandfather and great-grandfather. And he didn't, you know, it was a literacy block. It wasn't his memory. He could tell stories, but he couldn't put it all together. Oh. That was Grandpa Jones. Grandpa. One of the first things I did, lemme tell you a story that, that brings this home.

[00:52:14] Yusuf Jones: I came home. Mm-hmm. I grew up like you did in Chicago. Right. And I got, when I saw him, eight ball leather jackets came out, bro. I wanted an eight balls. And then the next thing I wanted, I said, X class. I saw, I want one of them. Because, you know, my ancestors mm-hmm. Go all the way back to Egypt. Boy, I came home with that nice semi gold on and that the green had already started.

[00:52:37] Yusuf Jones: Um, uh, you know what I'm talking about? Uh, and my father looked at that and he snatched that thing off my neck and he got quiet quieter than I've ever, until that time has seen him because I, now I know why he got quiet and I'm not gonna break down why I say this. He [00:53:00] pushed over to me a folder, a manila folder, and inside were genealogy charts of my family and my aunt going back at least five generations.

[00:53:10] Yusuf Jones: And the Mormons helped out. So genealogy was how this happened for me. I'm in this because of Genie. I had to find a way to preserve that. That was really where technology took root in my heart. And he said, you can have this back. When you memorized three generations of these charts, because you're not gonna bypass my father and my grandfather, my grandmother, your mother's mother, your mother's father, your auntie, your, you're not gonna bypass them and run your butt back to Egypt if you want to get to Egypt.

[00:53:41] Yusuf Jones: That path goes through Tennessee, it goes through Georgia, it goes through Kentucky, it grows across that ocean. Mm-hmm. Go, it goes everywhere. And as it found out, the last thing he did, one of the last things he did for that is he did it an, uh, uh, African ancestry. I don't wanna, you know, they're not a sponsor.

[00:53:59] Yusuf Jones: Mm-hmm. Uh, [00:54:00] maybe they will be, but the last thing he did was that, and he was afraid to do it. It was funny. He did all the Gina, he was afraid to do that because he didn't want to, the, the burden of what he was carrying was too much. There's stories that are in the book that my dad. Didn't want to tell.

[00:54:15] Yusuf Jones: There's stories that he told me when I got older that I'm never gonna be in the book. Who was related to who, who killed who, who moved up north because they killed somebody who messed with their wife, who, you know, who, you know, had to beat up a sharecropper and they came looking for him. You know, they, he had the mic.

[00:54:30] Yusuf Jones: So there's stories about us that technology can allow us the distance to hear and tell in ways that are not so traumatic and direct. And, and, and that, that shock us. I can look at it when I, I can stop it. Oh, it's too much. I didn't know that about my mother. I'll come back later, you know, but it does have to be there.

[00:54:55] Imam Tariq: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:55] Yusuf Jones: Right. It's not gonna get erased. Um, um, the current administration's [00:55:00] doing a lot. They're trying to shut down the African Americans Smithsonian Museum. They're trying to shut down all of that. We're trying to erase all. You are not gonna go nowhere if we don't take our epistological. Mm-hmm. Legacy series.

[00:55:14] Yusuf Jones: They will erase it or they will put it behind the firewall and make us pay. I never liked some of the, uh, uh, 23 and Me, whatever. I will say this, you know, ancestry has been very good, but I found that I was right there. One of my descendant on my father's side was right there in Shanghai. Wow. In Molly,

[00:55:36] Yusuf Jones: my DNA goes right to Songhai and a little bit of the Dogon people now who now their, their knowledge of technology and stars. That was a, a lot of people you anyway, uh, LA Hotep, you know, know a lot about that, but we're gonna learn more. But it, but the, but let's, it went right to Molly. And so when I eventually, uh, came under the, the influence of, and learned to really appreciate [00:56:00] and learn from, uh, Sheikh Ibrahim Nisa and the Tijani and the West African Imam Foe, all that, to find out that after all the stuff my dad did right.

[00:56:10] Yusuf Jones: When I used AI to help compile it and try to do all that to result, the picture it gave me was, it would be very difficult for you to do anything without acknowledging that your ancestors were Muslim, regardless of where church they ended in. Regardless of that, they were right there in Mali at where that mosque, the mm-hmm.

[00:56:31] Yusuf Jones: The mosque in de, I think it was that group. I could go there and find a hap lock group and mm, there it is. You know? Um, so we have to do that. Um, and that is difficult for this generation to understand because like I said, I tried to teach a genealogy class, brothers like, I don't need, I don't even know.

[00:56:49] Yusuf Jones: It, it, it hurt me how little even brothers my age and a little bit younger, how far back they could not go. And it wasn't because their fathers left or their mothers this, they was more [00:57:00] complicated and nuanced reasons that their history was not apparent and kept my dad was a mm-hmm. Unicorn in that respect.

[00:57:08] Yusuf Jones: You know, um, but if, now again, one of the promises of technology is we can do things. We can recover records. I can restore pictures where somebody's face that I did it for a friend of mine, he couldn't, he never saw his grandmother's face. I got on there and did some AI restoration, some other stuff when I was a graphic designer for the first, and I sent him that picture.

[00:57:31] Yusuf Jones: That brother blew it up way too big. It's all pixelated. It was about, I said, wait, lemme give you a high res. He didn't care That brother got a big pixelated picture. But for him to see a grandmother that he had never seen from one picture, that a lot of preserver, his family, that also is the power of technology.

[00:57:53] Yusuf Jones: There are people right now whose lives have been saved by some AI guided diagnostic tool, but they'll never know it. So we're gonna [00:58:00] bring that out. We're gonna make that known. We're gonna let people know, look, we is nothing you haven't, uh, experienced before. You just haven't seen under the hood. So we're gonna pop that hood and we're going to go into that realm and we're going to find those mirrors of ourselves and our innovative past, and we're going to affirm them and we're going to acknowledge them.

[00:58:20] Yusuf Jones: And then we are gonna load up with everything they gave us, and we are going turn around and we headed out.

[00:58:26] Imam Tariq: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:26] Yusuf Jones: We headed north. Mm-hmm.

[00:58:29] Yusuf : As we,

[00:58:29] Yusuf Jones: we headed

[00:58:30] Yusuf : north. As we get ready to, to wind down this episode, I want to ask you, well, first of all, I wanna bring our attention back to our theme, right? One of the themes that as the undercurrent of all of this, which is, uh, time is not on your side, not not in the way you think, right?

[00:58:52] Yusuf : So it is for us to use time and think about sort of philosophy, right? It really is. It is to tell you that that time, the evidence of time [00:59:00] on its own is decay. And the only way. To stave off that decay is going to be faith, uh, the Mutual. Mutual Good Works. Right, right. This commitment. Uh, the The Subter. The Huck.

[00:59:16] Yusuf : Yes. Right. Yes sir. So that being said, yes sir. So we're trying to create a sense of urgency that translates into the way we see the remainder of the time that Allah has decreed for us. So that being said, yes.

[00:59:33] Yusuf Jones: Yes. Because I think this time is unique. I think my belief and what I've known, I'm telling you, I've been in doing this and I've been involved in this text of a long time, been Muslim a long time.

[00:59:42] Yusuf Jones: We are in an unprecedented juncture that, you know, it's not to shame people. Oh, you don't know about this. You don't know about that. 'cause, you know, I want people to understand it's been intentional. They intentionally didn't want you. So, but we're gonna, we're gonna uncover that for as long as they let me stay around.

[00:59:55] Yusuf Jones: Now, like you said, Jake, me and Paul Moony said they might find out, I'm like, Hey, you know that brother up. But we're [01:00:00] going to do it and we're going to, I hope, and I pray that people do it with a sense of urgency. And I'm going to do my best to provide as many, many resources as possible. If people email, I'm gonna give you an email.

[01:00:10] Yusuf Jones: Uh, and then I'm going to set up, like I said, databases and even a helper. I'm gonna set up a DPT specifically for these three podcasts that is going to tell people about what I talked about. What you talked about, is gonna give examples, gonna send people to a curated set of accelerators, you know, that will very quickly bring people up to speed and do it in a way, because the other weapon of the enemy has always been to make us feel so ashamed.

[01:00:38] Yusuf Jones: Mm-hmm. About how far back we are. Even though he is the one who took the boots from the straps off the boots in the first place. Gets us feeling so bad about where we are and you know, bragging about where everybody else is until we just ugh. Right. You know? But there were times when Harriet didn't see that North Star.

[01:00:57] Yusuf Jones: That's right. There were times when that it was cloudy. There was times [01:01:00] when she had to go back. Mm-hmm. There were times when people got wounded. Yeah. But she kept going back. And we're going to keep, we're going to, we're gonna fail. Mm-hmm. We're gonna get some things wrong. We're gonna do too much.

[01:01:10] Yusuf Jones: Sometimes we're gonna do too little. But perfection is sometimes the enemy of progress and the enemy of excellence. Right. But it is never the enemy of excellence. And just like Wolfing Muhammad Thomas, just like our teachers and our leaders taught us, they said, we are trying to bring out That's right.

[01:01:26] Yusuf Jones: The excellence of mankind. I started reading more about Warfarin Muhammad in regard to technology. I am telling you the way he talks about human excellence. Yeah. We're gonna tap into that. All right, family, that's what we have. We are

[01:01:39] Yusuf : at our close and I thank you for joining us. And remember, you can find us wherever you get your podcast.

[01:01:44] Yusuf : So do subscribe and share. We'd love your feedback. Until next time, I'm your host, Imam Tariq El-Amin. I leave you as, I greeted you as made of peace that only God can give be upon you.