Ali Dawah - November 14, 2024
NO RIBA HOUSE FOR MUSLIMS FINALLY!! - , Pfida’s Home Provision Scheme
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
213.90492
Summary
In this episode, we are joined by the founders of Faijah, Reza and Salman, to talk about their vision for the future of the Islamic finance industry and how they are building a home that is free of debt and completely free of riba.
Transcript
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As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatu wa barakatuhu, brothers and sisters and dear friends, hope you guys are well insha'Allah.
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I'm a Muslim like you guys and alhamdulillah when it comes to the issue of riba,
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this is something that we are all afraid of, it's something that we all try to abstain from.
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And we don't need to go into the details of the severity of the sin.
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We look for solutions, sometimes we can't find solutions.
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And there are people who follow the fatwa that you can buy your first house on riba.
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But obviously some of us hold the opinion that to be better on the safe side, alhamdulillah.
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And sometimes Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran, in Surah Talaq Allah says in the Quran,
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that if you fear me, I will give you a way out from places you can never imagine.
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So I believe in this concept, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will always give us a way out.
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And I am here with two amazing brothers, may Allah bless and preserve them.
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They're called Faijah, usually I would pronounce this P-Faijah, but we'll come to that in a minute.
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Yeah, so I'm Rezaullah, I'm the CEO and founder of Faijah.
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By background, I'm an actuary, which is effectively a complex statistical modeler.
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I've worked in the London financial markets all of my life,
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for the likes of PwC, the Bank of England, Lloyds of London Marketplace.
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And I had a life-changing experience on Hajj in 2016,
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when I realized that with the skill set that Allah has given me,
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I have a duty to try and do some good with that skill set
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So I gave up my role at the Bank of England as soon as I came back from Hajj,
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with a view to providing a better way for providing home ownership,
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that is completely free of debt and completely free of riba.
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I'm the chief legal officer and also head of Sharia at Faijah.
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I was about to say primary finance, that was our old name.
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So my background is I'm an Islamic finance lawyer.
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I worked at an international city law firm, both here and in Dubai.
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I worked and advised all the big international banks across Europe and the Middle East.
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But I was very disillusioned with what's happening in the Islamic finance world,
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They take non-Islamic interest-bearing products and then, quote-unquote,
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Islamize them, they sort of squeeze them into Islamic or Arabic-labeled contracts.
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But really, the economic substance is exactly the same.
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and I left my practice and started looking for a greater purpose,
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And then Raza came along and told me about his journey,
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and I joined his journey, and here we are today.
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So you guys want some Faijah for the community?
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So, yeah, so the word Faijah, as many people will recognize,
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So, in Arabic, and in Turkish, also in Urdu, in Bengali, many different languages.
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And the P actually stands for people, as you say,
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because our intention is to always put people first and bring great father to the people.
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MashaAllah, may Allah bless you guys, inshaAllah.
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And I went on your page, because I didn't know about Sheikh Salman,
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and to me, like, Sheikh Aetham is someone that I know as well, alhamdulillah.
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And I thought to myself, yeah, I need to take this to Sheikh Aetham, see what he says.
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And then I went on your website, I saw his picture, and I was like, say no more.
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Okay, so let's get straight into it, because we're tight for time, inshaAllah.
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So, tell us a bit about how does your product work?
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Yeah, so to understand our product, you need to first understand the two extremes of home ownership.
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So, on the one extreme, you've got a mortgage, where you borrow money from the bank,
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you own the property on day one, and no matter what happens to that property, it's your headache.
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You still owe hundreds of thousands to the bank.
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Now, that is a straight-up loan, and any interest on that loan is straight-up river.
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Where you don't own the property, the landlord owns the property.
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Now, you don't take any of the headache in the property in that situation.
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If the property is destroyed with a mortgage, you still owe the money to the bank.
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If the property is destroyed or anything happens to it when you're renting, it's the landlord's headache.
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You can move on and move to another property, you don't have to worry about it.
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It's the concept of owning part of the home and renting part of the home.
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So, rather than us lending money to the customer,
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we buy the property with the customer as partners.
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The customer can rent our share, and that is the only obligation.
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So, the way to think of it is, imagine you're renting from a landlord.
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Your only obligation to your landlord is to pay your rent on time every month
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And the landlord may say, yep, sure, you can buy it from me.
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You just have to pay rent on the part of the property that isn't yours.
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And if you want, at any time, you can buy us out as well.
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You can offer to buy shares at any speed you like, or not at all.
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You can just rent for the rest of your life if you like.
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It's based on genuine partnership, which means we share in the risks of partnership.
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So, the acid test is what happens if the property is destroyed.
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Even in an Islamic bank mortgage, you must immediately buy the bank's share off of them
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Whereas in our partnership, we take the risk together.
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If the property is destroyed, you take the loss on your share,
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I'm going to come to more questions a bit later on that.
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There's another product they offer, which is the...
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Effectively, when you put money in a bank, that money in a conventional bank is used to lend with interest.
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When you put £100 in your bank account, you're actually agreeing to let the bank use your money to lend with interest.
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And as Muslims, that should make us extremely uncomfortable.
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Even Islamic banks, when you put money in an Islamic bank,
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all banks, all regulated banks, this is how the banking system works,
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And the act of printing new money devalues the very money you're putting into the bank.
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And the people who suffer the most from that are the poor.
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So, the banking system is actually designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
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So, the way our savings accounts work, there's no money creation.
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We use that money specifically to put people into homes in a debt-free, riba-free mechanism.
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And you get a halal return on that in the form of a share of the income that we're receiving on those homes.
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You know exactly what your money is being used for.
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And it's by virtue of the fact we're not printing new money.
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It's not contributing to the widening of the rich-poor divide.
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The other thing to think about is when you put your money in a bank account,
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because that money is devaluing your money, it makes it harder for you to buy a house.
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So, actually, the very worst thing we can do is leave all of our money in a bank account.
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We need our everyday cards to spend on every day and draw cash from the machine every day.
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But leaving all of our savings in a bank account,
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that is what's promoting the inflationary cycle,
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which is making houses more and more unaffordable.
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We need to be putting our money in places which don't price us out of our own homes
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and which we know is only being used for halal and promoting wealth, particularly amongst Muslims.
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Okay, so personally, for myself, if I have a certain amount of money in my account,
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instead of it sitting there and the bank using it as riba,
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which I do not want to, but it's because I have no other choice,
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if I put it here, the only catch with you guys is that you can't deposit it.
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So it's a saving account, but it's not your typical...
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So when you put it there, you get a return on it.
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It's an investment because you're using it to invest in properties.
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Which is your other product, which if there's homeowners who want to buy a house.
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If there's anyone watching, it's like, okay, I have this much money
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and it's going to be sitting in my account for one, two years.
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Instead of it being used for riba, put it here, whereas it's an investment.
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Yeah, so generally speaking, the worst thing you can do is leave all of your money sitting idle.
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Well, as Muslims, what we need to do as a community is we need to skill up
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and we need to get used to and comfortable with the concept of investing.
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It's also equally not sensible to invest all of your money in one place.
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So I'm not saying people should take all of their money and put it with fiver.
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But there should be an allocation for something like this,
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which is a low-risk alternative to a bank account.
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There should also be an allocation, and we should get more comfortable with this,
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but as you get more and more comfortable with investing,
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this is what we as a community need to get better at.
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The worst thing we're doing as a community is hoarding all of our wealth
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in one place, in a bank account, where we don't benefit from that money,
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The only people who benefit from that money are the wealthy bankers
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and that's why we've created our Fiverr Savings Account,
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Okay, that's where I'm going, alhamdulillah, and your name is very unique,
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what is unique about other products, for example?
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Yeah, so let's compare to a conventional mortgage,
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So in a conventional mortgage, as I mentioned, it's a debt.
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And most Sharia scholars will agree that's not permissible.
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There is the exception where some scholars allow you
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the way it works is, rather than the bank lending you money,
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and you must now buy the bank's share out of them
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Sheikh Haith Mal-Haddad, who has approved our product,
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is one of those scholars who does not agree with that approach,
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and Sheikh Salman will talk to that a bit more.
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The next product is a shared ownership product,
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because wages don't keep up with property prices.
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And it's because I feel I have a responsibility.
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Okay. So basically, even though it seems like you're investing in the shares of the company,
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And then they are buying out the shares of, let's say, individuals in the savings accounts
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money has been used to buy that house. They are solely buying those shares out.
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Yeah. So the way the deed works is it says if it's a £100,000 property and you've got
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£50,000 of shares, your partnership rights are 50%. That means your rent is reduced by
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50% because you're not paying rent on the share that you own. It means if the property
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is sold, you have a right to 50% of the proceeds. So it dictates your partnership rights based
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on how many shares you have in the company. And actually, just by having shares in the
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company, you are one of the ultimate beneficial owners of that property anyway, because you
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are one of the owners of the company that owns the property.
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But specifically, my cut of the share would be made clear on that specific property. And
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then you might have thousands of other people who's...
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And so, simple example, with the £100,000 house, once your shares in the company reach
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£100,000, at that point, we would transfer the property to you. And then that's the end
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Okay, interesting. So then people are going to ask, for those who are happy with the answers,
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Yeah, so it's important to mention here that we do have a waiting list. And as you can imagine,
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this is a radically refreshingly different product. So we've got a huge, huge amount of
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demand. Alhamdulillah. So anybody can sign up to the waiting list by just going onto the
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website and signing up. But the waiting list is quite long. We do have a shortcut. And basically,
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anybody who opens a savings account with us, specifically a home savings account, so a
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savings account for people looking to buy homes, they're feeding into the system. And
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they're supporting this giant committee structure that Sheikh Salman talked about. And so we reward
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them by serving them quicker. So if you just want to get on the waiting list, that's fine.
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But if you support the system and put your deposit in sooner and allow your deposit to be used
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to help others while you wait, then what we do is we promote you onto what we call a priority
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waiting list and we serve you quicker. And there's full details of that on our website,
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inshallah. And then when your turn comes, we reach out to you and say, okay, your turn is
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here. Now it's time for you to start looking for a house. And then we take you through that
00:38:56.760
Okay, interesting. I mean, I don't really have any other questions to ask. Personally, like
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I'm personally satisfied. And obviously with this stuff, because as public figures, we're
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very careful who we associate with, who we work with when it comes to other dais, etc.
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Because at the end of the day, not that we're anything special, but it's just affiliation.
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So when it comes to this, when it comes to people's money as well, like I said before,
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you know, Dr. Salman, Sheikh Salman, may Allah bless him, yourself, Sheikh Haytham being
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behind this. I've asked the relevant questions. I don't see any, you know, I would say I've,
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I believe, believe that I've tied my camera to a certain extent. But the Prophet ï·º said to
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the man who was going to, I think, to the masjid, Sheikh Haddad, I can't remember. And
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he left his camel untied. And he said, I found my trust in Allah. Well, the interesting thing
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in those times, people had more tawakud than doing their work. Today we have people who
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are not just tying the camel, their kamula is dead. Because they're too focused on thinking
00:39:50.860
it's in their hands. And the camel has sadly died. And they have not tawakud sadly. So
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I believe I've tied my kamula, Abu Bidu, and Istikhara. And after Istikhara, if this video
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was public, that means I trust it. You know, Alhamdulillah, I've spoken to you guys and we assume
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the best of the believers. May Allah bless you guys and preserve you guys for trying
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to benefit the ummah. I do see that in you guys. And yeah, may Allah bless you guys.
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And guys, if you're watching it and you are convinced by it, I mean, you can ask further
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questions. You can get in contact with them. We'll put all the contact details at the description
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box below. And yeah, come here, ask more questions if you would like to, inshallah.
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Those are the main questions I have asked. And yeah, that's all I have to say, brothers and
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sisters. And yeah, check it out. And maybe you can buy a first house with them. Or if
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you have some kind of money sitting around, you can invest in the savings account. And
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let that inshallah benefit you and your family. Till next time. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah