Kind: captions
Language: en
foreign
[Laughter]
[Music]
um
a
[Music]
for the opportunity to address you all
and after
thanking allah i want to thank my
colleague
and the classmate dr philander
for arranging uh this talk
which happens to be during the best
10 days of the year last year uh sheikh
randa and i
were together in medina at this exact
time
and this year allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
has decreed for uh this ummah and in
fact
for the entirety of
the world to be in a semi-state of
lockdown due to covet 19.
and that being the case uh we have to
find
other ways to take advantage of the
blessing
of these 10 days and we ask allah
to make us from amongst those who race
to
his mercy and race to seek his
forgiveness
and to take advantage of the seasons of
the good that he has prescribed for us
[Music]
can you see me yes i can
okay is there any way that they can set
it up so that i can see you because
it's going to make it easier for the
translation process
is that possible
you see meow
no no no i only i only see myself okay
i'm not sure
uh i'm looking for you but i i don't i
don't see we should
i i think that the uh the moderator is
gonna have to
figure out how to split the screen it's
okay um
it just would be easier if i can see you
it's fine um you can hear me correct
yes okay alhamdulillah so
islam i know that the title of this talk
is dawa in the united states of america
and islam is the fastest
growing religion in the united states
of america but before we can talk about
dawa in the united states it's going to
be very important that we understand
some of the history of islam in america
there are currently uh estimates
anywhere from
four to ten million muslims in the
united states there aren't any exact
numbers
uh how did we get that many muslims
where are those muslims located and why
some of those are the things that we
have to talk about so that we can really
understand
uh dawah in america as it's as it is to
death
the america
typically the history books will mention
that
christopher columbus discovered america
in 1492
uh that also happened to be the year
uh that the muslims
were defeated in landolus
and no longer maintained any form of
islamic governance of that land
history also records that some of the
people
who were navigating that
trip with columbus to the united states
to what is now known as the united
states of america
that some of those people were muslims
and
there's without a doubt uh evidence that
indicates that the muslims
probably 300 years before columbus ever
made it to america that muslims had in
fact made it to
america
christopher columbus
foreign
yeah so uh after
after columbus made it to america many
things happened and i'm not going to go
through the whole history of the united
states but
it is important to note that in 1619
the first uh slave ship
arrived in the united states of america
now they're trying to the europeans who
came to
the united states many of them were
protestant christians
they needed
labor they needed very cheap labor to
begin to
farm their lands and and build the
country
uh and and so they hurt they bought
slaves um from mainly from west africa
and the reason why this is important in
the history of islam in america
is that approximately a third
of the slaves who were forcefully taken
from their lands and brought to the
united st
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foreign
muslims a lot of people
do not know about the history of the
muslims who were brought from west
africa uh the
senate is primarily from senegal and
along the
west african coast but a lot of them as
you probably are aware
uh they were muslim people and they were
brought to the united states
and they were forced to convert to
christianity however there are diaries
that are left over accounts of their
daily lives
where they were praying many of them
were praying five times a day they were
still trying to fast the month of
ramadan
but over time as what happens in most
lands
is that the parents uh you know who have
some cultural attachment to their people
they hold on to their religion as much
as they can and then
as it goes down to the next generation
of children um
they're not holding on as much anymore
they don't have that same cultural
attachment and then it gets lost
not to mention um that they were forced
many of them to convert to christianity
or they would face death
foreign
get back to why but i do want you to at
least convey this message first
that out of the all of the muslims
in america today as it stands today in
one out of five uh
muslims in the united states and and
maybe it's
so 20 to 30 percent of the muslims in
the united states today
are actually uh african-american muslims
they're black muslims
and that's a that is the largest
group of muslims in the united states i
mean even though
we have arab americans we have south
asians so that's like
indian pakistani and bangladeshi
americans
the largest single group of muslims in
the united states
today happens to be black americans and
i'm going to talk a little bit
about the relationship between that and
slavery in a minute
the americas
uh so in 1865
uh slavery was abolished right but
that didn't mean that uh everything
magically
changed overnight so uh black people
were still looked at as second-class
citizens
um very difficult to get jobs there was
no
uh equality in terms of education there
obviously wasn't equality in terms of
housing in fact uh the government worked
very hard to keep blacks and white
people
uh segregated and so the housing that
was
uh it to uh black people was
usually inferior uh and
this lasted for a very long time the the
reason why i'm bringing this up
is because the first major
islamic or movement that had the name
islam
in america was back in the 1930s
right so we're talking uh 90 years ago
right uh there was the beginning of a
group
called the nation of islam
the americas
um
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there were obviously muslims in the
united states before the nation of islam
uh but this was the first large
movement that called themselves muslims
now
uh interestingly enough so this group
was
uh founded by a man by the name
of elijah muhammad and
elijah muhammad was in the nation
the nation of islam was very much
influenced
by uh what what they call the
the baltimore the ismailia uh
these what we would call esoteric groups
and also the ahmadiyya
the the group out of pakistan who
believed that
was their prophet so i want to state
from the very beginning that the creed
of the nation of islam
was not the traditional muslim
creed uh in fact it is it really is not
islamic at all but there was another
part of this particular
movement that is very important for us
to understand
and is important uh in the story of
islam in america and where we are
today in terms of dawah
well uh
[Music]
yes okay make sure you get this point
down okay because
it's it's very important for us to
understand
that elijah muhammad who was the founder
of the nation of islam
he taught that he was the prophet
of allah okay so with this is not
islam as we know it he taught that he
was the prophet of allah
that he was sent to black people and
he taught black people a form of black
supremacy
that now you this is this is a
very interesting concept at that time
because again we're talking about
just a couple generations ago many black
people in the united states
were slaves and now and they were and
they were taught that they were inferior
uh in fact uh you know in terms of
christian belief and this is what many
of the christian
uh black people believed at that
particular time
that white people were better than them
and if white people
were not better than them then god would
have
made them have a better life
so the fact that they don't have a
better life and that white people are in
control of everything
that means that white people are
actually better than black people and we
know
that islam came to eradicate this type
of mentality there is no racism in islam
our prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
taught us that there is no
virtue for a white person over a black
person or a black person or a white
person except with
uh at the top so this is totally outside
of
islam but elijah muhammad was teaching
uh black people that they are better
than white people he taught them about
economic empowerment doing for self
not relying upon other people but going
out and working very hard
this mentality caught on amongst
a lot of black people because
they liked his message the social part
of the message
a lot of them did not really understand
the akhida
or the theological side of his message
but they understood the social
part of his message and so they began
to call themselves muslims
and that is a very important point i
want you to talk about that and then
i'll
i'll come back and finish okay
elijah muhammad
america
[Music]
right so at this point you have a
a number uh you know thousands of people
calling themselves
muslims but it's it they don't believe
the way that you and i believe about us
and from amongst the most famous of them
and the most prominent of them was a man
who came to be known as
malcolm x or al hajj
is what is what he would call himself
later on now initially
he was a follow follower of elijah
muhammad and that lasted for
you know approximately a decade but then
after that
allah blessed him with guidance
uh and and he made the hajj
and on hajj that is when his views began
to change
radically because he saw
that even though and i forgot to mention
that part of their
creed part of what they teach in terms
of their ipeda
is that white people are devils okay so
black people are supreme
and white people are devils well when
uh malcolm x made hajj
uh and he started to see he he saw
people from all over the world
including uh european muslims and he saw
muslims with
blonde hair and blue eyes and
he began to reevaluate some of the
teachings because he knew that these
people were muslims and they're not
devils
and and so eventually malcolm x
actually uh took shahada you know he
he believed the way that sunni muslims
believed and said
and he met muhammad
and he broke off uh from the nation
of islam and he began to
uh invite people to real
islam you know real sunni islam
uh and eventually uh he was
assassinated
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so so this was um this was in 1965
that malcolm x was killed so we're
talking about
55 years ago but
what happened after that is that people
now
were exposed to sunni islam
and if they weren't just now under the
uh assumption that islam was a religion
only for black people
at the same time you had an influx
of yemeni immigrants
they were fleeing the war in yemen and
the car factories in the united states
needed
labor they needed laborers and so many
of
the uh yemenis uh began to migrate to
the united states at that particular
time
uh you also had a people coming over
from south asia and
so islam began to have
some type of prominence uh in the late
60s
uh in the early 70s you you know
there were there started to be some
pockets of
muslims now it wasn't just widespread
but there there were muslims now and
people
is
[Music]
yeah so so what happened in the 70s is
that now you start
seeing in the major metropolitan areas
whether it's new york city uh
philadelphia
even down south in houston uh as far uh
west coast
as california los angeles and socal area
there are mosques being built uh in
detroit michigan
um where where a lot of the the yemenis
were and now
uh certain cities in detroit uh certain
cities in michigan
40 arab population the point is that the
messages started being built with the
messages being built
and with their being muslims there needs
to be a way to educate the children so
also schools islamic schools are
becoming more prominent
in 1975 elijah muhammad died
he was the leader right he was the the
leader of the nation of islam
uh his son took over whereas and
eventually uh took the whole nation of
islam took all of the followers
of the nation of islam uh over to
uh you know what they would what they
would term orthodox islam
um so mainstream sunni islam you know
praying five times a day
fasting the month of ramadan uh you know
the shahid detain obviously and
encouraging hajj and so forth
which uh were not practiced um
the same way uh prior to uh
where does it be muhammad taking over so
now you had this big influx
of people into uh sunni islam
this is oversimplified but it's just to
give people an understanding
of how islam became more and more
prominent
uh during those times throughout the 70s
and then into the 1980s
sorry chef what's the the the
his name of birth was wallace mohammed
okay
metropolitan america new york city
philadelphia
houston
america
[Music]
one point that's important here is that
when the followers of wallace muhammad
when they all entered into sunni islam
it took away what may otherwise be known
as the
foreignness the foreignness of islam
islam looking like it's just some
foreign
religion from people who are immigrants
to the united states of america
these are black americans they've been
in america for 400 years they
um they are looked at they don't speak
with an accent right
everybody recognizes them as americans
and that
is very important in establishing
uh let's just say some degree of
normalcy um for muslims in the united
states of america you had
you know very prominent converts people
like
luau syndor who's lou alexander whose
name was changed to kareem abdul-jabbar
the famous basketball player
i mean that was a that was amazing you
know you've got this
you know this famous basketball player
with the name
kareem i mean that was amazing when
when cassius clay changed his name to
muhammad ali
right so these were these were major
changing points for
um islam in the united states of america
because it was no longer just seen as
some
you know uh immigrant religion but now
they can't
be gay and began to be seen as an actual
major religion
of the united states
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began to spread even more
there were many many dawah efforts uh
there were tawa organizations there were
islamic organizations that spanned the
entire
nation uh one thing to note um
and i know that this is um you know for
indonesia indonesia is a very
uh big country it's a it's a very uh
expansive from east to west and likewise
the united states
uh from new york for example in the east
coast
to california on the west coast is like
5 000 kilometers or something like that
six hours in an airplane i mean so it's
a huge nation
um you know how do we keep the ties
uh between the muslims and we're talking
about the early 90s there was no email
and internet and social media and this
type of stuff
so there were national organizations um
that had been formed prior to the 90s uh
but began to become more
prominent uh during the 90s there were
many daoa efforts
i mean people would actually get on
public transportation buses and trains
with
pamphlets about islam and just talk to
people
about why they should be muslims um
darwil was spreading in the prisons i
mean people becoming muslim in the
prisons left and right
um definitely the the you know fastest
growing religion
at that point uh in the in the prison
system in the united states of america
and so islam was what was uh
becoming more and more popular uh
throughout the the 1990s
[Music]
is
[Music]
uh
i i told the fironda maybe he needs to
translate this next story but i want you
to i want you to catch it
uh i became muslim myself in 1993
uh so alhamdulillah 27 years ago
and not too long after that
a very good friend of mine who lived
across the street from me
he was he was a neighbor of mine he
became muslim
and we uh we used to read
the quran together translation of the
quran we used to read every day together
you know we were very serious
uh about learning more about islam and
we were very serious about
uh calling other people to islam even
though we didn't know a lot
uh we felt like we knew that islam is
the truth and we need to
convey the message to everybody we could
so uh one of the things that we
uh as we were reading uh we've read
in sort of toba
the iowa allah says
if anyone of the muslim king comes to
you
and they ask for your protection then
give them the protection that they're
asking for so that
they can hear the word of allah
all right so this this i
kind of stuck in our minds like okay
this is important here
uh a true story now
mind you uh back then abu firaz we
didn't have like
shifts in the masjid and that type of
thing and i'm not saying that nobody
um you know that there was nobody who
had learned to slam back then
uh but we we didn't have like a lot of
information available and
like i told you there was no internet um
we didn't just have
uh accessibility to learning people so
we would read the quran and try to
understand it to the best of our ability
you know we were reading in english and
trying to understand it
i was in high school at the time and
uh i was in high school at the time
and uh uh a guy came to me
a friend of mine he was not a muslim and
he said um
he said uh listen uh i've got some
problems these
these guys are gonna come up after
school and they're gonna attack me
and uh will you help me so
i i thought about that i in
sort of to toba and i said i'll help you
under the condition um that when when i
get you out of this situation god
willing
and inshallah when i get you out of this
situation uh
you have to listen to the quran you have
to listen to
islam and so he said okay no problem
anything i
listen to anything you have to say just
just help me out so
that i don't get attacked
translate and then i'll tell you the
rest of the story
it's a bit uh the longer efficiency well
uh
um
[Music]
uh
foreign
so so what happened after that was he he
said he said um
uh oh well who else uh who else is gonna
be with you i mean we
you know these guys man it might be like
seven or eight of these guys and i said
who else could be winners i said i'm a
muslim uh i believe in allah
and you don't have to worry about it now
mind you
i understand looking back on it that
that really wasn't the proper attitude
to have but again this is my
understanding at the time
so we go out to school uh these guys
pull up in cars they jump out the cars
like they're gonna attack him
and i had him with me i had him on the
side of me and um
and uh as soon as they jumped out the
car i said
he's with me right i said he's with me
and they said oh okay we didn't know
we're sorry
that's exactly what that's exactly how
it happened
and he was looking at me like he could
like in disbelief like
what in the world just happened and i
don't know what happened maybe one of
them was muslim i really don't know
but allah protected us and so
he went with me to the masjid and
uh you know i had somebody talk to him
about his name i talked to him about
saying
and he said okay i believe in islam the
only thing
is my mother's a christian i just need
her to agree
he said you don't need your mom to agree
um all you have to do is just
take the shahada you don't have to tell
her that you're muslim right away he
said no i
can't do that you know i really love my
mind and you know so and so forth in any
event
what happened was he said that he
believed in islam
uh but his mother's subhanallah she was
totally against the idea of him becoming
a muslim
and he never did uh enter into the fold
of islam
but i'm bringing that up because this is
just
one example out of many examples and i
mean people have dao's stories for days
you know of people trying to encourage
other people to enter into the fold of
islam and teach them about the truth of
his name and i will tell you another
story after you translate that
okay well
foreign
[Music]
um
foreign
um
uh it reminds me of one of the
statements of
the salaf who
[Music]
foreign
is that allah guides them to a person of
the sunnah who will
carry them and this is very important
and i
i hope that you know everybody who is
listening right now
really understands the
the minima of having somebody who can
actually
teach you islam uh according to
the teachings of the prophet muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam the way that
he taught his companions
the way that they understood islam and
who passed that on
you know to the scholars generation
after generation that is a
big huge number from allah
to have somebody to teach you the sunnah
uh
at that stage we just did not have that
and we were left to our own
understanding of islam and though
alhamdulillah
nothing bad happened there is you know
many many many examples countless
examples of people who have gone
astray uh trying to understand the texts
of islam
uh without the proper understanding
without the proper training and without
being taught properly
um
[Music]
is
another time at this point i was in
in university at temple university this
was a year before
i actually was accepted into the
university
of medina and went to the university of
medina to study
i was i was in i was walking uh from one
class
to another class in the university and
a young woman stopped me in the hallway
she said excuse me are you a muslim
and i said yes she said i have a class
on islam and i need to
interview um a muslim student
about certain things about islam so
she said can i interview you and
uh i told her that that's fine she could
interview me
uh i said however we cannot sit in the
room alone
um somebody else needs to be in the room
and you have to excuse me i'm not gonna
look you you know
uh in the eyes i'm not gonna look at you
face to face
uh so she said okay translate that and
then i'll finish the story
the uh temple in the first is the temple
university
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so she began to ask me questions about
islam and a lot of times
in academia they ask you
questions and they're just looking for a
very uh let's just say a
factual response uh i looked at this as
an opportunity
to uh make her interested in islam i
wanted her to
feel like she needs to know more about
this i wanted her to understand
that her salvation in the next life
depends on her being a muslim and that
true happiness in this life
depends on her uh embracing islam
and so we finished the interview and he
said i have so many more
questions to ask you um
can i call you later on tonight
and finish the interview
and i said uh instead of you calling me
i said how about you give me your number
and i'll have my wife
call you so i got home
and i told my wife to
about what happened and i said i want
you to call this young lady
and talk to her about islam uh long
story short
she called her up and alhamdulillah
uh what happened was
she asked some more questions and i was
telling my wife i said listen
just tell her ask her is she ready to
accept this now so she sounds like she's
interested enough
and alhamdulillah she took shahada on
the telephone
uh that night and became a muslim the
next day
uh she got hijab and she started you
know
practicing uh islam alhamdulillah
[Music]
um
[Music]
um
[Music]
i want to change the style a little bit
okay so i'm going to
speak and then you speak right after me
okay ready yeah
okay like you're not going to have to
write down anything inshallah
okay i'll try okay
inshallah uh so uh
the events of september 11th
changed everything for muslims in
america
uh
uh all of the muslims now were painted
as being
terrorists
it was very difficult to just go out and
talk to people about islam because now
we were on the defensive all the time
uh even muslims who were at one time
proud
to openly look like muslims
did not want people to know that they
were muslim
muslim young
things changed politically they changed
laws they made it
a lot more uh difficult
for you know people to interact with
uh uh muslims from overseas
you know there was a lot of suspicion
uh there's a lot of prejudice uh
against uh muslims uh young muslims
being bullied in
schools uh difficult to get jobs if you
have a muslim name
[Music]
this was the uh general
sentiment that or the the
this was the way that many muslims felt
from east uh coast
all the way uh to the west coast
uh and it was even more difficult in
places where there weren't
a lot of muslims
all of this talk about islam and all of
the
uh islam in the media and portraying
muslims as terrorists did force
some of the muslims to to kind of fight
back and say wait a minute
we're not terrorists this is what islam
is really about
and began to uh have various platforms
to teach people about the real teach the
uh
real uh creed of islam and the real
tenets of islam
is
so even though there was a lot of
difficult in the very beginning
after 9 11 it actually
forced the muslims to
get better at giving dao
it also made the muslims realize
that they would never totally assimilate
into american society and that it's
important for us to build our own
institutions
so in the 10 years after 9 11
the misagid in america grew by 74
percent the number of misogyny
grew by 74 percent
they want to extinguish the light of
allah with their mouths
but allah is going to complete his life
[Music]
foreign
uh i i know that we have to uh begin to
wrap up so that we can take
questions but i i just want to say
that um obviously we face as
muslims in america a new challenge
uh when the last president was elected
[Music]
the american
uh the the nation uh basically kind of
split
into two different camps there on the on
the one hand
you have uh like the white supremacists
and on the other hand you have this
very uh liberal ideology
that kind of claims to be tolerant of
everything and accept anything
[Music]
but the muslims don't fit into this camp
and they don't fit into
that camp
as muslims we believe in the ultimate
authority
of allah allah is the one who determines
what is right and what's wrong
what is moral and what is immoral what
we
should do and what we should not do
and so as we try to navigate
uh our path as muslims
in today's america we face so
many challenges because our
children and you remember you remember
earlier i talked about
how children often times don't have the
same
cultural connection uh as their parents
the children are being um
indoctrinated with the prevalent
ideologies
of society and they are very much
uh against islam in principle
america
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muslims
that being said allah has blessed us
with more students of knowledge now than
we've ever had in the past
we have uh
misagid now close to 3 000 misaji in the
country we have more islamic schools
uh we have more islamic centers and
institutions than we've ever had in the
past
the american
and we have many cities with
large muslim populations
uh like new york city with close to a
million
muslims
uh over half a million muslims in texas
and a half a million muslims in chicago
muslims chicago and like
250 000 muslims in philadelphia which is
where i am
and alhamdulillah you'll see men walking
down the street visibly muslim with
those
on with uh you'll see women with full
hijab one
and everything
[Music]
but there are still places in america
where islam is almost non-existent where
a person has to drive four
hours to get to the masjid about four
hours is the closest message
so there is still a lot of
dawah that needs to be given and
much of that has to do with person to
person uh
interaction because the media's
is still very strongly uh again against
this
land and portraying islam a certain way
and so our job as muslims is still to
get out
there to know who our neighbors are to
invite them to the beauty of the dean of
islam
the american america what the
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to guide one person by your hands
is better for you than red candles
and the red camel was the best wealth of
the arabs
that for one person to be guided to
islam through you
is better for you than any form of
wealth
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i want to conclude by uh
mentioning that for those of you who are
living
in indonesia or malaysia or
any of the other muslim countries thank
allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
islam for the enigma of being able to
hear the event
for the nima of being able to you know
have your children educated in an
environment
that is not contrary to your values
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islam and one of the ways that you
thank allah for blessing you with this
man
is to continue to try to learn
your religion and teach it to as many
people as you can again for allah to
guide
to islam someone through your hands or
for it's law
for allah to help someone to stay a
muslim through your hands there's a
great reward in that
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uh
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uh okay so um
uh the question from sheikh philander
was to talk
briefly about how i became a muslim
and the very brief
story about how i became muslim
is that i was actually working with
someone who was a muslim
and from birth my name was taught here
um and that's another story in and of
itself it's not because
i was born a muslim but it's
because there was in the 1970s when i
was born
there was a lot of anti-american
sentiment or anti-government sentiment
from uh american people
and that was because of what was going
on in terms of civil rights
movement in the 60s uh and then the war
in vietnam
and a lot of the americans did not
approve of that and so they began to
look outside of
what was traditional american culture in
any event
uh my parents named me talia um
and uh so a person who i was working
with
um actually the first day
we met he asked me and he was a muslim
he asked me uh how my name could be
taught here and i'm not a muslim
and he was just like perplexed so
uh in any event um you know he gave me a
book about islam
i was actually from the saudi uh embassy
in
washington dc uh and and that is how my
journey began i began to read about
islam
uh islam made a lot of sense to me
christianity did not make sense to me
but islam did the creed of islam was
very clear
um the worship of one guy to recognize
that there is a creator and that he
deserves to be worshipped alone
to recognize that he sent uh
prophets to convey to mankind
uh what it is that we are supposed to be
doing what this life is about what our
purpose in life is
uh all of that made a lot of sense to me
and
uh eventually i lost mantada opened my
heart uh
to islam approximately two months after
uh i began to uh read about this thing
um
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um
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islam
uh
america
foreign
uh okay so uh the the question is about
what is the uh position of the
muslims towards some of the
policies and laws that have been
uh issued by donald trump
that may have some
may cause the muslims some difficulties
our reality here as
uh muslims in the united states is that
any type of injustice towards the
muslims
as you know the the situation here in
the united states
it is it is uh
permissible to voice your dissent
and your disapproval of laws so it's not
like in a place
uh where you know you have a
muslim government and uh
as people of the sunnah we're going to
avoid
you know protest or we're going to avoid
those type of things that would cause
a the gov
that would would be considered to be
anarchy right
um that we're trying to uh have a
revolution and overthrow the government
and those type of things
uh which ultimately uh usually bring
about
more harm than good as it relates to the
united states
situation is very different and the way
that we
address a lot of these situations is the
same way
that other organizations address those
laws
that they deem to be uh unfair and
unjust
and that's through petitioning uh
through
uh non-violent forms of protest
and and most importantly
is through lobbying um and i'm not sure
uh i will fairness are you familiar with
lobbying at all
sure that terminology because i don't
yeah okay i'm doing that good
so so uh that is actually
more effective um than
usually it's more effective than like
going out in the streets and just um
you know protesting or marching and
these type of things like that
it's to use your power
um to use what they call voting blocks
um and to use the
other tools that that you have to fight
against those
things that are unjust so i i'll just
give one example
um when donald trump first took office
there was what was famously known as the
muslim ban
and that did cause a lot of difficulty
for
muslims especially people who had
families
uh in those countries that were banned
um so that that was
that was like splitting up families
keeping people from getting back to the
jobs
uh that was was a very uh
different situation from other uh you
know laws that may have been passed the
policies that
were put into place so when that
happened uh many of the muslims
uh actually went and and
you know uh formed a demonstrations and
uh eventually you know got laws
passed uh through other court systems
because it's very difficult
again i mean to talk about these issues
really require some knowledge of the
politics of the united states of america
uh but they they challenged it legally
uh
that's that that'll make it simpler
inshallah they challenged it legally
and in many cases uh uh won
and were able to overturn some of those
uh
oppressive and unjust laws
you can summarize that answer yes
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summarizing you don't need to say
um
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foreign
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be
i used to imagine how muslim people in
america handled their eyes
seeing other american people doing
something like kissing on the street
lgbt people come out on public celebrity
on tv and other activities
which are haram in islam it's even very
hard in indonesia
we accidentally use the to see woman be
doing hijab on the street
on youtube instagram facebook and other
situations
uh you know it reminds me of
how some of the uh the scholars of
hadith
um how they would cover their ears like
this
uh anytime they would hear uh anything
that would distract them from hadith
because they their memories were so
strong
and they didn't want to pollute their
minds with with anything
outside of of the deed
and
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right and to protect their private parts
uh to protect their chastity so it's a
struggle
it is a struggle and there's nothing
else to that can be said about this
except that this is our jihad uh and
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
said
that the mujahid is the one who you know
strives against his own nufs
and so with these type of situations yes
it's difficult
um but the the reality is is that
for many of us uh we have figured out
a way to exist
um in this society and minimize
the harm right to minimize the damage
because islam comes
with
right which is to uh repel
all evil or to minimize the evil so when
you don't have the ability to
repel it then you try to minimize it so
you're going to spend as much time as
you can
around other muslims you're going to
spend time in the islamic centers and
the misogyny and so forth
and you're going to minimize the time uh
that you spend
uh with people who do not uh share
your uh values and who do not have the
same
outlook on life that you have there's
absolutely
nothing else that you can do uh because
you do not govern uh the society
um
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foreign
um
foreign
from the audience from you uh
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i'm working in one of english courses
and i'm
and in my working place there are some
americans
as a muslim of course i'm suggested
conveying islam
to all the people in the world
especially these american colleagues of
mine in the office
and of course before i try to convey
islam to them i need to make them
like me by building up a good rapport
one of the efforts is to have things in
common with them
but the problem is what they like
culturally is different from what i like
as a muslim
for example they like going to a cafe
or any place which there is a lot of
music inside
well i must stay away from the music and
in this situation
we know there is no match between us
so we know there's no match between us
so what should i do to confirm islam
while they are not interested at all in
our cultures
or habits that they think are not fun
okay alhamdulillah so uh first of all
i'd like to
uh commend the questioner because
that understanding is important which is
that in order to
convey a message to people
you do have to have some level of
rapport with them
at the very least they need to have some
kind of respect for you
or some level of trust for you and uh
this is this is important because the
prophet
alaihi wasallam himself uh he
was assadic
right he was the truthful and the
trustworthy
before he was sent with the message uh
the the people that he was sent to
uh they were not rejecting him
it is not you that they are rejecting
allah
but it is the these wrong doors it is
the ayat of allah it is the size of
allah
that they are in fact uh rejecting
and so uh what
i think is important here is for us to
understand that
being trusted uh gaining a people's
respect
does not mean that you have to do the
same thing that they do
um and you don't need to
do those things that are displeasing to
allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to try to get to the objective of
pleasing allah
so the way that you can build rapport
with them
uh is is not by obviously going to
cafes or clubs or things like that with
them if that's not
something that you you know feel is
going to be pleasing to allah subhanahu
but perhaps you can get to their heart
other ways by
giving them gifts um and it doesn't have
to be something that's expensive
uh by just uh you know being someone who
is always truthful uh doing your best
at the job that you do in allah has
written
excellence for everything that you that
you do things in an excellent manner
let them see that from you and when you
talk to them
about islam you don't have to talk about
a whole lot of details
uh you know stick to the very basics
and the very basics of his fan is that
we have a creator we are here
for a purpose life is going to
end you have to prepare for what's after
that
um the creator who created us deserves
to be
thanked he deserves to be worshiped
you know sticking on those very basic
topics and figuring out ways to
to talk about them is going to be
the best means and allah knows best
that's going to be the best means
for calling them to the religion of
islam
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and
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is
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the first point is that
what happened to his name was george
floyd
uh what happened to him was an execution
that was a murder that took place
in front of everybody's eyes on a camera
and islam uh as we know
teaches us to stand for justice start
there
uh and then i'll finish transfer i'll
finish with the answer inshallah
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um
uh as a result uh of
that action the american people
uh you know took to the streets uh
they protested they marched uh
and some of them a minority of them
uh became violent and
burnt down you know business
establishments and so forth but the
majority
of the protests that were done by the
american people
were not violent and they were not
destructive
in nature but they wanted to uh draw
attention to what had happened and the
importance of there being
some level of police reform number one
on a broad level and specifically that
the
police officers who were involved in the
killing of george floyd
that they be arrested and charged
for murder
foreign
murder of black people by
white police officers is not something
new however the way that this
particular killing was done on
camera brought out a lot of emotion
and it was a teaching opportunity for
us as muslims to
because again this is this is the
product of a racist
society it's a product of one people
believing that because of the color of
their skin
that they are better than other people
and as a result uh these things become
uh commonplace because you almost
dehumanize the person who is being
killed
it's almost like they're not a human
because they don't share your skin color
and we know from the islamic perspective
that
allah has informed us
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you from a male and female and i have
made you into tribes and nations so that
you may know
one another the best of you
uh according to allah are those who have
the most
taqwa and the prophet is
you all of mankind is from adam adam is
from toronto
adam is from dirk this these teachings
uh to get rid of racism to eradicate
and extinguish racism these were
explicit teachings of the prophet
muhammad
and you don't find it that explicit in
the texts that remain from
the previous prophets and so we
highlighted
that as muslims we also
you know supported efforts uh that dealt
with
police reform so that there was more
accountability so that people could not
just be
murdered uh you know subhanallah for
what
you know by by police officers just
because they
are police officers does not give them
the right to execute people and take
their lives
and so we we supported efforts and
continued to i mean this
is still going on this is not over yet
but we're still continuing to support
uh the efforts to reform the system
uh and also to recognize uh that we are
people as muslims
who as elizabeth has commanded us to
stand for a pistol right
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so we have to stand you know as
witnesses for
allah and we have to stand
for for justice
foreign
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is
uh
foreign
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uh
foreign
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a
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foreign
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foreign
you