Lately, I have been seriously reflecting on the risks and benefits of being on the social media. I started thinking more about it after I came across this viralled incident involving a lady house officer who had posted about how her husband (who is a medical officer) had divorced her in front of the lady PPK he had had an affair with. According to her, she had tried using multiple formal and official channels (Jabatan Agama, MOH) to complain against her husband’s conduct, but apparently she was told that it was a private matter between her husband and herself and as long as the alleged affair didn’t affect her husband’s work performance, there was nothing they could do about it. (Is this always going to be our lot in life as Malaysians, that we must always rely on Jabatan Netizen Negara for prompt actions rather than on the official channels?) So, her action of viralling the issue was probably done as a response to the lack-of-response by the higher authorities.
I could sympathize with what she ended up doing, unleashing her wrath upon her husband on the social media, causing everyone and their grandma to know that her husband had allegedly committed extramarital sex with the PPK on their marriage bed. But there were many also who had criticized her for impugning the honour of the family (mengaibkan/memalukan etc). After all, her husband is also the father of her children and my heart breaks just thinking about how the children might feel when they finally grow up and able to Google-search how their father’s allegedly shameful conduct was laid bare for the delectable consumption of the public by their own mother. I mean, these days everything that you put up on the internet don’t exactly disappear even after you hit the delete button. It will always be around. Divorce without any kind of public drama is already traumatic enough to most children, let alone when the divorce is highly publicized like this.
On the other hand, I have seen many cases (too many, in fact) of how much of a struggle it really is for a wife to get a divorce from her husband even when the husband is clearly a scumbag. Some well-meaning ustaz in Jabatan Agama might advice the wife to seek marital counselling first and scare the wife from seeking divorce by quoting “Arays Allah bergegar” (by the way, that is hadis palsu guys! Tak ada maknanya kau bercerai kat bumi, Arays Allah nak bergegar kat langit. Hebat sangat ke kau ni sampai terlalu memberi impak far-reaching hingga ke langit? Get real. Divorce is permissible and halal! That’s a fact!). Once you have passed through the stage of the frowning ustaz in pejabat agama discouraging you from divorcing your terrible/abusive/cheating/non-providing husband, you then have to face the excruciatingly long process of getting your husband to turn up in Syariah court. The husband might not turn up in court multiple times too, delaying the divorce process even further.
The fact is, the divorce process itself can be a perpetuating factor to a woman’s clinical depression. The quicker the divorce can be settled, the quicker she can turn over a new leaf and move on with her life, and the quicker her depression would get to remission.
Some women even told me “I just want to get a divorce. I don’t care about harta sepencarian/alimony or fair division of our joint-owned properties. I don’t care if he doesn’t want to provide for the kids after the divorce. I can support the kids by myself. I just want to get the divorce over with.”
This is how painstakingly torturous a divorce can be to the mental health of a woman until she is willing to give up most of her rights just to get the divorce alone done and over with. A useless husband who is financially-dependent on his wife (whom he had taken for granted when he cheated on her with another woman) will never willingly proclaim the talak and would purposefully delay the whole process to punish the woman for trying to leave the marriage.
Studies have shown that a woman’s financial status suffers more than a man’s after a divorce (because they don’t fight for their rights to alimony/ mut’ah/nafkah when they are too focused to just get the divorce alone done). Yet they still want to get divorced despite knowing the socioeconomic difficulties ahead. Some women even suffer bankruptcy because after the lawyer fees are paid, they have to build their finance all over again from scratch! Speaks volumes of how bad the marriage must be that ANYTHING ELSE, be it bankruptcy or destitution, is preferable to remaining married to the husband.
The marriage institution is such that if you happen to marry the right person, it is a great institution. If you are unfortunate enough to marry the wrong one, it is hell on earth when you want to embark on the divorce process.
But a smart and efficient woman will know how to end the fire of the hell on earth quickly and effectively, even if she has to create a social media drama out of it. Just make the life of your cheating husband hell too by creating all kind of havoc at his workplace, make him lost his face in front of his boss and colleagues, confront and embarrass the other woman so thoroughly at her workplace, harass your husband while he is sitting in the living room with the other woman and provoke him non-stop while turning the camera on. She had succeeded in making him so pressured that he himself was willing to proclaim the talak stat and it was recorded on video, witnessed by the whole country. No more prolonged divorce process just to get the husband to proclaim the talak (even though the formal process in court might take awhile. But at least you know you are already kind of free. That is a lot of mental relief there already).
You see… a prolonged divorce process usually won’t happen to this kind of go-getter woman. They know how to get what they want fast and efficiently. Nobody mess with them. They would probably tell their husband “You think prolonging the divorce process is great? I will make you suffer so badly until proclaiming the talak become a more attractive option to you. I will make myself so difficult to handle that you will be so relieved to be rid of me.” This kind of woman is rare.
But this is not the type of woman I see in my clinic usually. Not all women have the personality or the internal and external resources to be able to handle their divorce as quickly as this. Not many can be as brave.
Of course, some people would also shame this kind of brave, go-getter woman by saying “memalukan keluarga”, “menyebarkan aib” etc etc. (There were so many Facebook posts saying things like that also, just like there were so many posts that support what the lady did). And I can actually see their point. I am not blind to the future repercussions of having your dirty linen so thoroughly aired in public. But… life is a series of choices and consequences that we can live with, isn’t it? There will be times when you can see that no particular choice is perfect but you must choose the one that you can handle better. Maybe in her mind, she knew she can handle public divorce so much better than a prolonged divorce process that will drain her spirit and her energy.
Of course if you ask me, I probably won’t do what she did. But then I thought to myself, what else would I do if I want to get divorced quickly enough without having to create a social media drama?
Well, I actually wrote about what I would do in one of my Facebook comments. Hahah. Guys, I do have a side that can get pretty dark if I am angry enough. May Allah always guide me to only use that side on those who truly deserve it (and not merely because I do not have a handle on my temper). Amiin.
So… some of the seven people who reacted to my comment thought I was funny haha. Glad they can appreciate the humour. But guys, I was being serious *dark evil laugh*
My Love-Hate Relationship With Social Media
I was a latecomer to Facebook. I didn’t understand the concept of Facebook initially, so I was not tempted to join in the hype at first. But ah… peer pressure, guys! Most of my batch-mates in medical school had a Facebook account and when some of them started asking whether I had an account so that they could add me, I was clueless about what that meant. Add me? I was confused about what it meant to ‘add me’. But I eventually succumbed to peer pressure (and curiosity) and signed up on Facebook. To my surprise, I found it quite fascinating. And I was fascinated.
And I found it addictive. *Sigh* And I was addicted.
So there were times when I would deactivate my Facebook account because I needed to focus on other things (like my semester exams. I always deactivated my account 1 month before any exam.)
As much as I hate the addictive aspect of being on Facebook, I recognize that Facebook is not all bad. These days, I catch up on the latest news mainly via Facebook. If I were to forego the usage of Facebook altogether, I bet I would feel quite like a frog underneath a coconut shell (katak bawah tempurung, guys! Direct translation of Malay idioms is my favourite pastimes. So sorry to any offended linguist out there.) So to me, having a Facebook account is a necessary evil that I will put up with for as long as it is relevant for me to do so.
I was a latecomer to Instagram too. I resisted Instagram for so many years because I felt like I could not afford the time to get hooked on another social media the way I was already doing with Facebook. But one day someone was promoting to me something that she had bought from Instagram… it was such a new concept to me… selling things via Instagram! I had wondered, “Wow, people could sell things via Instagram? What kind of social media is this?” I was curious enough (darn my curiosity!) to open an Instagram account to find out. I won’t say I am an active user of Instagram (the way I am with Facebook) but I still feel like Instagram does take some of my attention away from other more important matters.
From the very beginning, I keep my Instagram account more private and personal than my Facebook account. I don’t allow many followers on Instagram the way I do on Facebook. In Facebook, I have some followers I do not even personally know because I treat Facebook more like a campaign tool and a propaganda instrument (it REALLY is). For example, I used Facebook a lot to share articles and news about The Palestinian cause and to relentlessly troll the IDF (Israel Defense Force) page whenever they launch an attack on the Palestinians. During the 2018 General Election, I used Facebook a lot to promote for people to vote for PH (I was volunteering as a PACA at that time). I don’t really use Facebook to connect with friends these days… but to spread awareness and information to others and to become aware of the latest news, myself. So I am not that discriminating in accepting friendship request on Facebook. Usually, I will just approve the request if they had at least DMed me beforehand (usually people who read my blog will DM me via FB messenger and introduce themselves. After interacting with them for awhile via FB messenger just to gauge their overall decency, I usually just approve their friend request because most of these people are fellow health professionals, anyway.)
But I make sure my Instagram is more private. It is only for those I have personally known or found at least personable. So there are some pictures that I posted only on Instagram instead of on Facebook because I want to limit the number of audience who can view the more personal side of my life.
I am proud to announce that I never had a Twitter account and probably never will. I am able to resist that one, at least. I think, the reason I can resist Twitter is because I feel that Twitter functions in almost the same way as Facebook… both of them are used mainly for obtaining and disseminating information, news, campaigns and propaganda. So it’s just inefficient to have to allocate my attention to two separate social media for the same purpose. I really don’t think I can make the time, anyway. And so I don’t plan to create a Twitter account anytime soon.
I resisted having a Tik Tok account for many years! But OMG… even my work in the Psychiatry field now involves engaging in Tik Tok. These days, whenever we organize psychiatry-related events (like World Mental Health Day or Suicide Prevention Day) it somehow includes an activity in Tik Tok. Either we have to organize a Tik Tok video competition, or we have to make one ourselves for promotional purpose. I resisted being on Tik Tok for so long… but at last, in the year 2021 (around the time when my department organized World Mental Health Day) I created a Tik Tok account for myself. I wanted to understand how Tik Tok actually works and why these days Psychiatry doctors must use Tik Tok in our mental health promotion. Now, I know already what Tik Tok is all about. And damn if it is not ANOTHER addictive social media platform. Facebook, when compared to Tik Tok, is soooo yesterday! No wonder people use it as a promotional tool. It’s engaging as hell. And so addictive (kind of weird that Psychiatry is promoting the usage of something so addictive as this. We are not usually pro-addiction, LOL)
I love it!
And I hate it!
I hate that I love it, LOL.
I don’t make a lot of Tik Tok videos myself because I am just not talented at it. So I am not addicted to making Tik Tok videos. (Thank God for still preserving my sanity. Please slap me hard on my face if I ever made a Tik Tok video of me doing the latest Tik Tok trend of crazy dance-like movements that I am sure would make me look like I am having athetosis. Or worse, a seizure. Slap me until whatever alien that possesses my body suffer and surrender, please) But the reason Tik Tok is addictive is because once you start scrolling, you will find it hard to stop. I can keep on scrolling without realizing how much time has passed. I actually had to schedule my Tik Tok usage to only twice per week and only for 15 mins at a time to control myself (but who am I kidding? Sometimes it can go even up to half an hour each time. So that is one hour per week of Tik Tok usage. I could have used that time to read a useful book!) At the moment I am contemplating the idea of just uninstalling the app altogether because I am just not confident of the continued strength of my resolve.
See? I have always had this love-hate relationship with social media. The tension remains unresolved until now.
Below is my simple Tik Tok video (that I uploaded on You Tube) showing my personal library in the house. I am using Tik Tok to present an argument to fellow book lovers of how it is better NOT to allocate any particular room as a library because you can actually turn the whole house into one. Smart, eh? Haha. My living room downstairs, my lounge upstairs, the space under the stairs and my own bedroom contain bookshelves. I guess my house concept is ‘home in the library’ concept (to any interior designer who might ask LOL. I think if I ever become an active Tik Tok user, my videos would probably be about me doing book reviews.)
Social Media : The Most Obscure Vs The Most Intrusive
The most obscure (and therefore the safest) social media is the blog. It is less entertaining, and therefore less addictive. It has less viral-potential (mostly because a lot of people don’t really like to read) and therefore less socially damaging to anyone’s reputation. Even if you share the blog post to other social media platforms like Facebook, most of your Facebook friends won’t read it if they are not interested in the topic. Especially if the article is long, wordy and pedantic (like mine usually is hahha).Again… less viral potential because most people simply don’t like to read. (If you wrote about your scumbag of a husband who had cheated on you with some women in a blog, your husband would not suffer much embarrassment nor damage to his reputation because not many people would bother reading it).
When we willingly spend our precious time to read a long article in a blog, it must be because we are genuinely interested to know the content of the article. (Not because we are helplessly hooked.) Our attention is engaged PURPOSEFULLY rather than mindlessly. Maybe because the article has some vital information that we have been searching for. Sometimes we only go to that blog for that particular article and then we never visit the blog again. But even if readers come to your blog repetitively, it is usually because they are really interested in your blog concept and the content of your blog… or because they can relate with your thoughts… or because they feel your content are generally worth reading. Or maybe for various flattering or non-flattering reasons, they just want to know what you are up to. Unlike other forms of social media like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Whatsapp etc etc, following a blog is NOT easy and convenient. People have to actually type your blog address to access your content. It is not something they can access easily via an app and subsequently scroll for fun just to kill the time. Blog readers are genuinely trying to gain some specific INFORMATION and KNOWLEDGE (not entertainment)… otherwise they would not be coming to your blog. And these are the people that bloggers cater to. We cater to people who are seriously searching for the content that we happen to write. We are catering to a specific niche who likes to read.
We don’t aim to mindlessly entertain to get people hooked. Blogs are not entertaining in the least. We don’t tailor our content to random gossipers for the sake of getting the number of likes or gaining popularity. (In fact, blogging is the worst form of social media if what you want is popularity and revenue.) Bloggers are usually nerds who want to spread information and share ideas that they are passionate about, but prefer to do it via writing instead of having to meet and interact with people (haha… fellow introverts can relate to this, I am sure) and we want to test our theories by throwing them out there openly, to see whether people agree or disagree with our opinions. And by doing that, we gradually tweak and fine-tune our theories about the life of this world. Make it more refined. Make it closer to the reality… to the truth.
Sure, you can do that in Whatsapp groups too… just throw your random opinion out there and start a discussion. But I think most introverts don’t like to engage in Whatsapp Groups because it is the most intrusive form of social media. In general, introverts want the least amount of interaction that gives us the most benefit. Minimum socializing effort with maximum output is what we are aiming for. And Whatsapp Groups is the worst for that! Hundreds of people (mostly extroverts) simply throw their half-baked opinions right, left and centre (I am not saying introverts don’t have half-baked opinions. But we don’t usually feel comfortable throwing them out just yet when we know they are half-baked. We need to do our own research in our own sweet time to fine-tune the whole argument, and only then we will feel our opinion is worth sharing)… and suddenly some people just throw some emojis and GIFs in the middle of it all…. And then the discussion will be interrupted by some random jokes. And some people will simply say “I agree with this person and that person” (perhaps in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the authority) without really contributing a new angle to the conversation. (because let’s face it, if you REALLY want to contribute something substantial to a heated controversial discussion in a Whatsapp Group, you must risk offending some people who you know have an opposing opinion. And then that causes the conversation to be even more prolonged as more people try to defend their own stand. And your energy is spent typing and typing and typing….and you have to wait patiently in suspense as you see this person is STILL typing for so long, haha.)
But you see, the thing is you could have had that discussion via a phone call and it would have been faster. (Well, introverts are all about conserving energy from being unnecessarily drained). Engaging in a Whatsapp Group discussion is all just a lot of conversation back and forth that gets nowhere most of the time. Sometimes the conversation is superficial and mindless. And often times, the really important messages get drowned out by more recent flooding and spamming of unnecessary opinions. Some of the opinions are irrelevant to the majority of the group. Only a small subset of the group “syok sendiri” interacting with each other back and forth. It is really tiring to follow for the rest of us. And time-wasting too!
In contrast with blogging, people who bother to comment on your post will be someone who really want to ask you a follow-up question to your blogpost because they really want to know the answer. Or people who feel you had it wrong and want to share a better point of view. Either way, both bloggers and readers get some benefit with the least amount of unnecessary interaction. If any interaction happens at all, the interaction is purposeful and efficient… non-intrusive.
Until now, I avoid joining Whatsapp Groups unnecessarily. But I feel like this is becoming a culture now in most workplaces in various fields and we can no longer avoid it. I pity my sisters who are lecturers/teachers. Their Whatsapp Groups sometimes contain over-involved and over-protective parents who spam the Whatsapp Group 24/7, which is a great source of headache to the teachers. It must be so emotionally draining being in the teaching profession, these days.
In some workplaces, it is no longer acceptable to fail to reply to a message in a Whatsapp Group… sometimes even outside office hours. Is this now going to be a benchmark of what being a committed employee is all about? That the person must be responsive at all hours and only then he is seen as committed and reliable?
How about managing your working hours efficiently enough that you don’t need to ever bother others outside them? To me, THAT is the hallmark of a good employee. Even as a specialist, I try not to bother my MOs or HOs outside their office hours or when they are on leave. If they are on-call, I might ask them to update me about certain patients when I am on-call with them. But even so, I prefer to call them and get the interaction over with rather than prolonging the discussion (especially if it is a complicated case) via Whatsapp. The faster the interaction is over, the quicker I can get the patient out of my mind and place my attention on other matters. And the quicker my MO can focus on other patients without having to reply to me when they are busy on-call, right? I mean, it is efficient on both ends.
Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe most people are okay with Whatsapp dividing their attention constantly. I don’t know. Maybe I am just a kalut person who wants to cross things off my list so that I could do something else with my attention and my time. And you see… that is the main problem with social media. The platforms are not exactly free of charge. Facebook and Instagram and Tik Tok are not free! We just pay the cost with our attention (Many studies have been done about this! And I am sure we all realize it ourselves as we are using all these platforms). And now even Whatsapp is doing it (but not done by the app itself, but by the people using it), harvesting and mining our attention at all hours. Gradually, we become conditioned to pay attention to even non-essential messages. Assailed by the anxiety of missing important messages in various Whatsapp Groups, we then check the app every 15 minutes, just in case (sometimes even more regularly). It is such an inefficient way of spending our time and using our attention. It is now very common to see people always looking at their phones, typing away in Whatsapp constantly, especially when they are in the middle of a particularly boring meeting.
So for the past 2-3 years, my Whatsapp setting has been displaying this disclaimer: “I don’t check messages often. Call if urgent”. I am not planning to change that setting anytime soon. I hope people will understand if I don’t reply to their messages promptly enough.
Of course there are times when Whatsapp is really useful. These are the situations in which I prefer using Whatsapp:
1) I use Whatsapp when the issue is non-urgent and does not require an immediate response from the person (especially if I am not particularly close with that person.) I prefer to Whatsapp rather than call someone I am not close to when it comes to non-urgent matters. But of course if the matter is urgent, I will call whoever I need to regardless of whether I am close to them or not.
2) I don’t mind using Whatsapp as a mode of interaction with my family members and close friends as we update each other on the mundane, daily stuff that happen to us throughout the day. I don’t mind people in my inner circle engaging my attention through Whatsapp even if their messages trickle through continuously throughout the day. I don’t stick to any particular time as to when to reply to them too (unlike with work-related Whatsapp Groups in which I will only reply during working hours). I think, our family and friends do deserve the privilege of having continuous access to us 24/7. They are our support system and our tribe, after all. (But of course we shouldn’t allow this privilege to just anyone. It wouldn’t be efficient.)
3) I also prefer using Whatsapp to blast a one-off information and to distribute digital flyers about courses and programs (as opposed to engaging in a long discussion of an ethical topic that requires more in-depth analysis of the context. It is just NOT efficient and NOT effective to do this kind of discussion over Whatsapp. I avoid participating in this kind of interaction in Whatsapp Groups because I believe that serious matters deserve a thoughtful in-depth discussion, preferably face to face or via more appropriate medium like forums/talks/webinars. I personally do not have the energy and the time to type long winded arguments and justification back and forth in Whatsapp. Might as well I just create a blog post altogether, because when I REALLY want to justify something, I have A LOT to say! Suddenly I could morph into this extrovert persona who will not stop talking until I am done. Haha. When I REALLY want to justify something, I can create an extended essay assignment out of it. So why would I want to use Whatsapp for that? Or why don’t we just meet up and discuss serious issues face to face. More satisfying and more engaging! And less intrusive to other members in the Whatsapp Group who just couldn’t be bothered.)
The Most Attention-Efficient Social Media: You Tube
Based on my personal usage of social media, You Tube is one of the most attention-efficient social media out there. If your intention is to LEARN ENOUGH and KNOW ENOUGH of any topic, go to You Tube.
You don’t really ‘add friends’ on You Tube (unlike Facebook and Instagram) because what is the use of knowing what your ‘friends’ are doing all the time (Like, do I even care to see the pictures of what you had for lunch today? Haha. Okay… I post my own lunch also on Facebook, sometimes. Guilty, too. But at least I recognize how stupid and mindless it is, LOL)
YouTubers are passionate about creating high quality contents that cater to people of similar interests as them. It is like blogging, but more visual and more entertaining. You can subscribe to channels of your interest FOR FREE and learn a lot about any particular topic that used to be so hard when there was no visual aid. I learned advanced statistics (to prepare for my Part B MRCPsych Exam) via You Tube videos. Anytime I didn’t understand any particular statistical concept, I could always find a statistic lecturer on You Tube who had done a video on that concept. Sure, I could read those concepts from textbooks…but the visual aid made me understand the concept faster. See? It is attention-efficient. And it is PURPOSEFUL attention too (not the mindless attention that is involved in the scrolling of our Facebook/Instagram newsfeed)
I am interested in Theology… so I subscribed to Blogging Theology channel on You Tube. I am interested in Islamic Philosophy… so I subscribed to the Sapience Institute Channel. I am interested in comparative religion… so I subscribed to Dr. Zakir Naik and to other channels that feature the late Ahmed Deedat. I subscribed to many channels of eminent scholars whose lectures I will not have access to if I don’t use You Tube.
I am also interested in learning about significant events that happened throughout history (but particularly Islamic History). Recently, I came across an old lecture by Sheikh Dr. Yasir Qadhi on how the fall of the Ottoman Empire is related to their failure to embrace the Printing Press. It was a fascinating lecture. I highly recommend it.
I know I am never gonna be a scholar in Theology, Philosophy, Comparative Religion or History… but at least I know the rough basic of each. And people cannot simply say something false on that topic and hope I won’t be able to detect that something is off. Once I have detected that something is off, I can then go on and do my own research.
I mean, we don’t need to have a Nobel Prize in literature to know that an essay is not as good as others we had read. Sure we are not qualified sasterawan, but we are well-read ourselves and we can tell what is good and what is not. Not everyone has to be a doctor to know that some people are only spewing nonsense about vaccines without any real knowledge… because they KNOW ENOUGH of basic biology to suspect what is the truth and what isn’t! Like we don’t need to be a religious scholar to know who is ‘penunggang agama jual produk jampi’ versus real sincere scholars who spread the true knowledge of Islam. Because we KNOW ENOUGH of the basic principles. (But don’t be surprised if there are people who are easily fooled by ‘penunggang agama jual produk jampi’… because they don’t know enough in the first place to suspect anything. And that is scary.) See, that’s all I want… not to be a scholar of anything, but to know enough of something… so that I can easily tell if I am intentionally (or even unintentionally) deceived/misguided/indoctrinated.
You Tube is very good at allowing us to KNOW ENOUGH of any topic we want to learn. And hence, my argument that it is one of the most attention-efficient social media out there.
You can tell, can’t you? That I really LOVE You Tube. Haha!
You Tube Video of The Month
To be honest, I have not been able to finish even one single book yet this month (maybe because I have spent a bit more time on Tik Tok than I should haha). So no book reviews this time, guys. I am such a slacker, I know.
But I do have You Tube videos of the month to recommend to you guys
The first video is the one that I mentioned before: The Printing Press & The Fall Of The Muslim Ummah by Dr. Sheikh Yasir Qadhi. I think those who love Islamic History would enjoy this engaging lecture very much. I had listened to this lecture one day while commuting from SP back to Alor Setar. And I really loved it and I raved about it on my Instagram. These days, a lot of my, ehem, education from the University of You Tube (lol) happened during my 45 minutes daily commute between Alor Setar and SP. (Maybe that’s why I usually no longer have the energy to read as much as I used to. The daily commute has taken its toll on my end-of-day energy reserve. But Alhamdulillah, at least I supplanted my daily reading with something beneficial from You Tube. That’s something, at least.) And let me tell you, not all You Tube lectures I could finish in one daily journey because I would sometimes feel sleepy and switch to listening to the radio instead. But this particular lecture was so engaging that I did not feel like I have to listen to the music to keep myself awake. It was that good, guys. So, please watch it.
The 2nd video I would like to recommend is actually a podcast by Dr. Jordan Peterson with Mohammed Hijab by the title of Islam And The Possibility of Peace. If you guys have ever followed either Jordan Peterson or Mohammed Hijab on their Your Tube channel, you would know why this podcast was very highly anticipated by fans on both sides. Both of them are highly intellectual people with great power of speech that they wield like a sword to mesmerize, entice and slaughter – depending on whether you are their audience or their debate opponent. Listening to each of them on their own in their respective You Tube channel is already a mental treat. When you place both of them in the same video… well, brace yourself for the mental fireworks that will happen in your brain.
To give you a background of the video, some years ago Dr. Jordan Peterson had said in one of his lectures that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was a warlord. Understandably, the Muslims were furious and disappointed by his injudicious, uninformed and unfair comment. Since then, a lot of Muslims had suggested for Mohammad Hijab to engage with Jordan Peterson, to address his misunderstanding and refute his ignorant comment by looking at the historical, philosophical, and religious perspective of it. This podcast was long overdue… Jordan Peterson had cancelled on Mohammed Hijab on 3 different times (causing a lot of Muslims to flood the comment section of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s Instagram in disappointment) before this podcast finally happened. Within 3 days of being uploaded, the video had already been viewed more than 1 million times. Phenomenal! And also within a few days, various reaction videos were made on this podcast like never before. So if you guys haven’t watched this video, I highly recommend for you guys to watch it. You won’t be disappointed, Insya Allah.
Until next time, my dear readers. May Allah always guide us to use our social media platform and our time wisely and beneficially (Wallahi, I really need this supplication, myself). Amiin.
My Life Poetry That May Not Rhyme 