 As-salamu alaykum, can you hear me? Can everyone hear me? Sorry. As-salamu alaykum everyone. Thank you all so much for coming out today on a Friday evening and thank you to the MCC and Tumenier especially for helping us to organize this special evening with you tonight. My name is Meira Nagas and I have the very distinct pleasure of serving as the Executive Director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding or ISPU for short. We are a non-profit, non-partisan independent research organization and what we do is we conduct and we share research on critical issues facing American Muslims in this country. Our research generates data, much of which you'll see here tonight. We uncover successful solutions to some of our major community challenges and we amplify the voices of American Muslims through polling. We share this research through forums like these by gathering people together. We share our research through virtual needs through videos and other things, one of which you'll see here tonight. We share our research through writing op-eds with community leaders and with leaders at the highest levels of government. And all of this we do with the aim of injecting scholarly understanding and facts into the debates and challenges of our time. We're all here tonight I think because we care. We care about this election cycle and we understand how critical it is for our voices to be heard. The topic we're going to be talking about obviously is American Muslims and elections 2016 and I don't think I need to explain to anyone in this room why this is an important and timely topic. We've all seen how polarized this current election cycle has become. We've all seen and experienced the ramped up anti-Muslim rhetoric that's become sadly a staple of this election cycle and we started to see the dangerous repercussions of this rhetoric on everyday people, men, women and children. And I think we're all asking ourselves what can we do? We're all asking ourselves how can we deal with this situation. So tonight we're going to do a couple of things. ISPU and our director of research will share our groundbreaking survey of American Muslims and other faith groups across America. This survey provides an evidence-based portrait of the American Muslim community and very important data points for educating both ourselves and others. Then we're going to hear from the Council on American Islamic Relations who's going to talk about civic engagement and how to respond to the current electoral climate. And then we'll hear from ING who'll talk about the role of education as a response to all that is going on as well as some steps to address bullying in schools. So without further ado I want to introduce you to our three panelists tonight. The first panelist we'll hear from is Dalia Mokahed. She's ISPU's director of research where she leads all of our organization's pioneering research and thought leadership programs on American Muslims. She's the former executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies where she led the analysis of surveys of communities worldwide, of Muslim communities worldwide. She's the co-author of the book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think? And back in 2009 she was appointed to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Many of you probably have seen her TED Talk and her appearances on The Daily Show and other news outlets. So I'm going to let Dalia go first and I'll introduce the other panelists as they come up. Thank you. I promise you this is not boring but I want to start before I jump into our poll of American Muslims with how we came to this data. So as Mira said this election cycle has been played with discussion about American Muslims. American Muslims are actually at the heart of this election cycle. The most talked about issue and we're one percent of the population. But what's missing oftentimes even though we are the most discussed topic, the most discussed group is we very rarely hear directly from American Muslims. We are the topic of discussion but rarely participants in that discussion. So we wanted to address this gaping need and wanted to contribute to our democracy by giving the public a direct access to what American Muslims really think. Now to do that if you're familiar with survey research you would know that polling a group that is only one percent of the population is extremely difficult. It's extremely difficult to get a representative sample. So we set out to find the country's top methodologists on polling minority groups. Especially minority groups that don't show up in the census right because unlike ethnic groups you know religion is not in the census. So we found at David Dotwin. Dr. David Dotwin is the country's leading methodologist on how to poll Jewish Americans. And we asked him to be the chief methodologist on this study how to poll American Muslims. Very similar challenges both groups about one to two percent of the population and you you can't find them by using our census data. So we started out there and we came we we gathered a sample representative national sample of American Muslims of 550 participants. We didn't just want to poll American Muslims we also wanted to poll other faith communities in America to give our data context to not just study American Muslims as a an isolated specimen but to actually place them within their country's religious context. So we also polled American Jews, American Catholics and American Protestants. Our field date so you're going to ask when did you ask these questions. I'm going to tell you right up. January 18th to the 30th earlier this year so this is from January this year. If you're interested in more about the methodology you can read all about it on our website. So the first thing to to know about American Muslims is how diverse we are. In fact American Muslims are the only faith community in America with no majority race. We are about equal portions white or self self-identified as white, Arab, Asian and African American. Another thing to notice about this in addition to the fact that we are the only faith community with no majority race is that the percentage of us that identify as Latino or Hispanic has grown has actually doubled in the last 10 years and it is the fastest growing community in in our in our American Alma. Really interesting thing about this graph is this is a lot this is really what America is going to look like in 2050 or earlier. American Muslims are dealing with the challenges and opportunities of diversity that the entire country will actually be dealing with in a few decades and that's an that's an exciting opportunity to contribute solutions to a national challenge that the country will be will be looking at in in a few days. American Muslims are also the youngest by far the youngest faith community in the United States and that's one reason of many that the projection is that Muslims will be the second largest religious community by the year 2050. Now where do American Muslims land on the political spectrum? Who are they voting for in this election season? The top candidate among American Muslims this is again a a this is a representative sample all American Muslims was actually Hillary Clinton 40 favored Hillary Clinton followed by Bernie Sanders. Now I I am in San Francisco or the Bay Area and everyone is shocked completely shocked by this data right because that's not what you or anyone you know looks like but it is when you look at the national landscape actually where Muslims land now if you do look at young Muslims they they do favor Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton by quite a large margin but overall this is what it looks like it is interesting to know that the only woman candidate has her greatest popularity among Muslims right so that's an interesting response to people who think that Muslims are uncomfortable with female leadership. The other thing to know is that Bernie Sanders a Jew is as popular among Muslims as he is among Jews. You know in terms of political affiliation Muslims are they lean Democrat Muslims look a lot like Jewish Americans actually politically and as you'll see later look a lot more like Protestants religiously. So only 6% of Muslims identify as Republicans but you'll also notice that Muslims are the most likely faith community to identify as independence and what this means is that essentially Muslims are voting a lot of times on policies not based on partisanship and they are a community that if if the Republican Party weren't so you know negative toward the community could actually win a lot of people over because independence really can go either way and many Muslim independents also identify ideologically as conservatives and would maybe actually identify as Republicans had the rhetoric not turned so negative. Now what are the priorities of this community? So this question gets asked all the time by pollsters in fact it's one of the oldest questions that's been asked by by polling companies in America and basically asks what are the political what are the priorities that the government should have? What should the government focus on? When you ask Muslims this question what should the next president be focused on the first thing the most uh the most mentioned thing is the economy and jobs. So Muslims are focused on their everyday needs their economic needs and economic security is an issue among Muslims. The second most mentioned thing and it is a distant second actually it's it's bigotry and civil rights not surprisingly. Now what you'll notice here is how similar Muslims are to the broader African American community this isn't African American Muslims this African Americans generally. There are political priorities of the Muslim community as a whole and the African American community as a whole is almost identical with economy and jobs is number one with civil liberties coming up close behind and education as number three the top three priorities are actually identical it's just that Muslims also include immigration African Americans don't have that that's actually the really only difference. Interesting difference between Muslims and and the other faith communities we poll is that Muslims do not have national security as a top priority. Now a lot of people will look at that and say oh Muslims are soft on terrorism but a couple things is Muslims look a lot like Democrats and also look a lot like African Americans all three groups are not do not mention national security as one of their top priorities what you're really looking at here is a map of people's fears anytime you ask this and it changes with time it's not always like this it's a map of what people are thinking about what they're afraid of for Muslims for African Americans for many Democrats they're focused on their economic security and they're focused on their kids education they're focused on bigotry and civil rights that is their everyday worry it is not actually that they're going to be the victim of a terrorist attack because rationally that is almost not even within the realm of possibilities you are more likely to die of furniture falling on you literally than terrorist attacks so this is actually more rational reflection of what people should be afraid of and yet on the other side with the other faith communities national security is a huge issue and that is a reflection of people's fears not a reflection of people's priorities around whether or not they want the country to be safe this helps explain where why big treat and and civil rights is a concern for Muslims Muslims are the most likely faith community to report having experienced some level of religious discrimination in the last year far exceeding even Jewish Americans who tend to be the ones that the FBI will tell you are the most likely to experience a hate crime now that may be because our community sell them reports them but when you actually ask people have the experience discrimination Muslims far far exceed any other community in that regard now who is experiencing the most discrimination within our community the most likely groups within our community to experience to say the experience of discrimination are women young people and Muslims without a college education so when you think about this this is the most vulnerable among us are you most likely to say that they experience some level of discrimination now what does discrimination do this is a question we had as researchers how does it impact someone's other views how does it impact their their identity their religiosity etc and we found that actually it makes almost no difference except on two things people will experience regular discrimination are less likely to be optimistic about the country's direction that's not surprising but surprising to us is that people who experience Muslims who experience regular discrimination are more likely to actually be engaged in their community so it is linked with less optimism but more activism now what about Muslims in general and how they compare to other people in terms of satisfaction with the way things are going in this country believe it or not Muslims are the most optimistic faith community in America they are the most likely to think to say that they they think that the way things are going in this country is is positive and they are by far the most likely to approve of president Obama and it's or like this question is likely a response to how Obama how the Obama administration is running the country and Muslims tend to approve of the president's performance this is not simply that Muslims are always happy with the government under president Bush for example his approval rating among Muslims was seven percent compared to here 78 percent for Obama now the heart of the issue political engagement now does does this this optimism and approval of the president translated to political engagement yes and no Muslims the good news first which is that Muslims are as likely as Jews to say to report volunteering in their community to report cooperating with other people to solve a problem in their neighborhood so civic engagement or volunteerism is on par with other people but unfortunately bad news is that Muslims are far less likely to be registered to vote they're contributing but they are not having as much of a say 60 percent of Muslims are registered to vote these are 60 percent of eligible voters so we didn't we actually ask people if they were citizens and then only ask the citizens this question 60 percent of eligible voters are registered to vote however 85 percent plan to vote okay so there's a problem here right we have 25 percent who want to vote but haven't gotten around to it and we call this 25 percent are inshallah voters these really this group the 25 percent who want to vote but haven't gotten around to registering are where I believe we have to put 100 percent of our energy because they're they're easy they're an easy you know nudge and and we'll get them there we should have we should have more registration drives I think every single Friday until the election to get that 25 percent completely registered the 15 percent that don't want to vote they're a completely different category a lot of times we focus on them they're actually not who we need to focus on now they're a long-term focus but they cannot be where we waste our time now because there's so many that actually want to vote but just need a nudge so why do people want to vote well we asked that question and they said things like civic duty I want to make a difference I I want to make sure that a certain candidate is not elected and it's it's an important right that they cherish why don't people want to vote the people who don't want to vote what did they say they said they don't think it counts or matters they don't like anyone running a lot of people say that and the issues they care about are not represented by anyone running now what you don't find here and we always look at what we expect to find and don't find what I expected to find is it's hard to vote that's why I don't want to vote I'm not going to vote because it's against my religion nobody said that literally nobody said that now I'm not saying that this doesn't exist but it is a lot lot less prevalent than it used to be and and more than we thought so the issue is not let's convince people it's head end to vote it's not really the issue at all what it's with the actually if you want to get people to vote that are not wanting to vote it's you convince them it counts you convince them it makes a difference and you convince them that you know even if the the candidates aren't perfect that getting out there and and making their voice heard is important one thing that actually correlates with more civic engagement which is really important we're here at mosque is frequent mosque attendance so people who go to mosques once a week or more are more likely to volunteer to be civically engaged to be registered to vote and also to plan to vote so mosques in america are a a force for moderation they're a force for a greater commitment to the system that that a group like ices would want to destroy it's a direct uh it's a direct contradiction to what has been said about mosques in this election okay so how many people go to mosques i hear this number thrown around all over the place only two percent muslims go to mosques or only two you know 10 percent muslims go to mosques it's just not true okay 42 percent of muslims say they go to a mosque once a week or more it's on par with the protestants muslims and protestants look identical in terms of their religious patterns i will also mention one very important point which is when you look at that 42 percent that go to a mosque frequently and you break it down by gender men and women they are almost the same virtually identical and so if that is the case if men and women are attending mosques at the same rate shouldn't our resources space allocation and programming reflect that reality another exciting slide should your religion be a part of american law okay the question on sharia and the accusations from sharia well here's here's actually what the data says so again we didn't just ask this of muslims we asked this across the board of dews catholics protestants and muslims and the group most likely to say that they think their religion should be american law or protestants followed by muslims the majority of muslims say they don't think their religion should be a part of american law but there isn't a minority less than protestants but still there that thinks it should be a part of american law lots of ways to interpret this but it's important to compare it to protestants a very large percentage more population they tend to be the ones that engage policy from a religious framework and and nobody freaks out about it it's normal right you can say i know it's my religious conviction that certain things are are wrong and therefore they're pushing for them to be illegal muslims actually don't do that it's it's not their uh you know we don't have the banner of sort of these kinds of things but when you ask most muslims who are politically active and they're working in social justice spaces they are coming at it from a you know a point of religious conviction when you look at muslim um priorities political priorities there there were some people in other religious communities that said you know morality muslims actually never mentioned that they're talking about jobs they're talking about education they're talking about civil liberties all of these things are from the perspective of you know muslims they're working on these things from a vantage point of Islam of an Islamic you know sort of liberation theology so i think this is important data as a starting point for the conversation rather than denying the idea that muslims would want to see their ethical framework reflected in their country's laws we just need to put it in the proper context with the rest of the country now the other you know one of the most common um refrains during this this election cycle and it's kind of been happening forever is this idea that being a muslim and being an american are contradictions that you have to choose you know so ben karson said something like you know muslim has to to denounce their faith in order to be president of the united states so we wanted to test this idea is a muslim identity and an american identity compatible or not so we asked everyone to tell us how strong they identify with their faith and how strong they identify with the united states as their country and this was the the results most people identify strongly with both their faith and their their country and muslims are no different in terms of um you know comparing to other big communities but what was really interesting is we looked at these two variables and how they relate to each other meaning is a strong religious identity is that linked to a weak american identity or the other way around and the answer is actually somewhat surprising what we thought is that muslims with a strong religious identity were actually far more likely to have a strong american identity than muslims with a weak religious identity that they not only not contradictions but they're actually mutually reinforcing uh the final topic that we are going to focus on is use of violence okay this is very important incredibly important data in light of this last horrific attack that we are just finding out about yesterday and today so we asked this question of every american or of every big community we pulled we asked this some people think that for the military now notice the wording of both the military to target and kill civilians is sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified what is your opinion and then you could say never sometimes depends don't know refused okay muslims are the only community that have a majority 65 percent who say is never justified to target and kill civilians by the military everyone else it's just it's actually minority all right then we ask the same question the only difference is instead of military we said an individual or small group so the first question asked about a war crime this is actually the definition of war crime targeting civilians by military the second is basically terrorism as it's generally defined what you find is that muslims are as likely as anyone else to denounce quote terrorism and more likely to denounce war crimes why is this important the reason that's important is because there is there is a lot of conversation right now again about the propensity for muslims to sympathize with violence because of this toward the attack that we just saw and this kind of research in addition to to other similar research is is a way to respond to fear with facts so just to summarize muslims lead democratic they are engaged in their community but less politically they are pious and patriotic at the same time muslims reject attacks on civilians at least as much as anyone else and mosque attendance is linked to civic engagement not radicalization and finally muslims are weary of discrimination but they're still optimistic and you can read all about it out on our website at icpu.org forward slash poll all right thank you for your attention thank you dahlia our next speaker is going to be zahra gulu she is a civil rights attorney and the executive director of the san francisco bay area chapter of the council on american Islamic relations also known as care um she's frequently seen at mosques and universities facilitating trainings and workshops as part of care's grassroots efforts to empower the americans on community and build bridges with allies on civil rights issues she also provides direct legal services for victims of law enforcement uh targeting anisonophobia she's the recipient uh in 2014 of the national lawyer skills san francisco bay area chapters unsung hero award and in 2013 recipient of the south asian bar association of northern california's trailblazer award zahra so i thought about asking for a show of hands to see how many people here are registered to vote but i don't want to embarrass the people that aren't the inshallah voters and so i won't ask but if you aren't you can register today online without printing or postage it's something that really takes just a couple of minutes to do instead i'll tell you a story a couple of years ago once again the apartheid state of israel was bombing palestine and every time this happens we feel like it's worse than the last time but i remember at our office we were moved to action and we don't engage in a lot of palestine work except where there's a civic engagement opportunity where we can say to our fellow american muslims this is how we're going to have an impact because so often we'll live here from people whether it's the attack in france the situation in turkey the ongoing in my time at care i come across many instances people who want to talk to city council about foreign policy people who want to talk to state legislators about federal issues right like this confusion of who sets zoning restrictions in place just a couple of days ago many of you are following the news of what's happening with the state board of education and the edits to textbooks and really the islamophobic edits to textbooks what's frightening is that two years ago the legislation was passed in california that opened the path to that effort and most muslim community members were absent from that discussion we didn't oppose that legislation and even then looking at the organizing that happened to oppose the edits it was a valiant effort and they made a lot of success there's been progress they've had victories they've gotten some of the edits fixed but people are surprised that this is happening right and so if we're not paying attention if we're not registering to vote if our elected officials don't know who we are this kind of thing continues to happen something that i'll say frequently is that i know even for me as an anti-islamophobia activist i think of islamophobia as something that happens in tennessee and florida and arkansas somewhere not here but those textbook edits that are being considered in sacramento would open the pathway to some really horrible curriculum in our state so what to do dalia talked about the inshallah voters and about the importance of registering to vote wanted to review some basics as well as some possible action items the first is i've mentioned if you're here and you're not registered to vote get registered to vote if you are over the age of 18 if you will turn 18 in time for the election if you have recently become a us citizen and or if you have moved since the last election register to vote if you need to change your party register to vote if you haven't been getting election mail register to vote if it's been a few years since you voted i tell people be safe and register to vote right like you don't want to show up on election day and find out that you couldn't register to vote the second thing is to tell other people to vote some of my early activism before even working in the muslim community was in moving young people to vote moving college students to vote 17 year olds who are turning 18 19 year olds who felt disenfranchised with the system already to move them to vote and one of the things that we learned there that applies to minority communities also is that my friends telling me to register to vote is far more impactful than zahra or dalya or maha telling people to register to vote because at best we're public speakers we're trainers we're randoms that you see once in a while but when i call my parents and tell them i registered to vote they're going to listen when i sit with my brother at dinner and i say no fill out the form on your phone right now while we wait for dessert to come out he's going to get registered to vote and so it's not enough that you're registered tell other people make it a social thing don't pressure them don't shame them i'm actually not in the camp that believes that we should shame people who choose not to register to vote if that is their chosen method of civic engagement if they are protesting in that way if they are taking that energy and putting it into action elsewhere but that's not what i find when i talk to people who aren't registered if they're not registered it's because they don't care they're over the system they don't feel like they can have an impact and that's different those are the people that we want to talk to but it can't just be election or conversation also so yes we're having this panel today we're going to like register voters at dozens of massages for the next couple of months but if our advocacy ends the day after elections what was it all for we've actually heard from elected officials that the muslim community can sometimes be one of the easiest to appeal to because they can move us to vote they can take our money and we don't show up the day afterwards to hold them accountable we've actually had elected officials say we voted for xyz legislation because we didn't hear from any muslims so we assumed that there was no opposition which is a really frightening concept right is that even when we do show up if it ends on election day what was the point this has been a concern not just for our community but for others candidates make promises but if no one says well are you going to deliver on that promise if no one follows up and says you didn't close one Hanabo you didn't lower college tuition you didn't do all of these things you promised then i gave away my vote and so when you're thinking about civic engagement when you're recruiting other people to get involved don't just think between now and november i'm really interested in what happens in january for those that were supporting a really activist candidate a couple of months ago what was really inspiring for me was to see that there was a commitment that not only are we going to support these candidates we're going to support them after their elective and if they don't do what they're what they promised we're going to protest them just because i voted for you today doesn't mean i can't hold you accountable it's not just about voting also so if all i'm giving is my vote i would say that that's the least i can do that is the absolute least it is the bare minimum i just had a conversation with some students who are not yet 18 and they said what can i do volunteering with a campaign as visible muslims is so important because one you're building a relationship with a candidate and start very local everyone that eventually runs for senate served in a local office prior so yes it might be really difficult to drive to sacramento every day and volunteer in a campaign out there it might be difficult to go to the state board of education meeting in person or muslim day at the capital or things like that i'm not saying you shouldn't you absolutely should and i'm so proud of the muslims who did drive out to sacramento yesterday and spent two hours each way and a full work day in sacramento saying we want to be heard but volunteering with a local campaign is how you develop a relationship when you think about people who are friends with high-ranking elected officials those aren't relationships that were built after i won the seat for congress or after i was sworn in as a senator i knew you when i ran for school board right like you put in countless hours when i ran for school board you doorknocked for me in your local neighborhood you wrote me a check on a regular basis and you stayed in touch and so actually getting involved with the campaign is so important they remember that i would i remember the volunteers that helped us put together our dinners i remember the volunteers that will put in the extra hours right that's true for a non-profit organization that's going to be true also for candidates and those are people that are moving up so if you have their ear now you maintain it and you keep it that's true also i mentioned the high school students so i will get questions for people who are non-citizens um and who are under the age of 18 how how can i make a difference what can i do you can register other people to vote you can mobilize them to vote you can volunteer in a campaign you don't have to be a citizen or even of voting age to volunteer on a campaign right if you can't give money to a campaign directly either because you can't afford it or because you're not a u.s citizen you can encourage others to give money to a campaign i've given up on chasing the unicorn of a unified muslim vote we're not all going to agree on a candidate which is why the result of which candidates we're supporting are so astounding because i can't believe it but i get that like we're in the liberal bane area we're not going to agree we can't agree on when we start Ramadan we can't agree on when we celebrate either how many republics we're not going to agree on who the next u.s president should be but what we can agree on is that if i show up as a visible muslim as someone who either looks muslim or acts muslim right i want to be careful about using the term visible muslim if i show up as someone who identifies as muslim in whatever way that means for me and i'm involved in the civic process and we've got a few people on each local campaign including the ones that are running against each other that's a good thing that is a very good thing because they can remember that let them fight over our votes some of you may be following the district 17 race in the south bay where two candidates are competing for the muslim vote they're reaching out to muslim leaders they're trying to visit as many mosques as possible i don't think we're going to agree on which one works and i think it's great that there's muslim vote campaigns i will stop there i'm most excited about the q&a part of this discussion thank you so much our third panelist is maha el kanadi she is the chief executive officer of the islamic networks group um the author of training handbooks on average for american muslims as well as training seminars for public institutions on developing cultural competency with the american muslim community she's a senior fellow of the american leadership forum and was recently named by the san jose business journal as one of silicon valley's women of influence thank you ma'am i got right into it because um we only have about eight minutes um so we're going to sort of take a a left turn here because we're not going to i'm not going to talk about local engagement in the same way that denia and zahra just uh just spoke about i'm going to talk about a different kind of political engagement and that is civic engagement particularly engagement in our school system um the organization for those of you that may not be familiar with it which doesn't surprise me at all because most of our work is actually not within the muslim community it's outside we work primarily with schools with law enforcement agencies with health care facilities with corporations our presenters are from the muslim community but we don't really see us we don't really publicize because of the sensitive nature of the work that we do so i would be surprised that all uh sisters and brothers if you didn't know about this organization we've been around for 23 years we have affiliates in 22 states and our mission is what you see there encounter prejudice and discrimination i always use the iceberg as a way to describe the work that we do because i think it's important for you to understand what we do we're strictly education and interfaith engagement and i use the iceberg above the waterline is the behavior that would be work like political activism civil rights um advocacy and so forth underneath that waterline are all of those things that impact a person's behavior ig's work is in that space where we try to impact beliefs that people have in this case about islamic muslims which has a direct impact on a person's attitude which then has an impact on a person's behavior so we are in the space of working of prevention preventing bullying preventing bias preventing stereotyping preventing discrimination and addressing those issues as as they come up islamophobia hopefully all of you know what that is it is more than just these these frames it is an industry that is producing vitriolic material about islamic muslims it is no coincidence that people have the negative perceptions that they do it didn't happen by itself it is very old it's very historical but more recently i would say since 9 11 it's really kick them 200 million dollars has been spent on this industry given to certain individuals that have been producing very negative material about islamic muslims and these are the kinds of frames that they that they project now how does this impact schools it impacts the way that islam is taught in in schools teachers themselves of course may be biased which also impacts the interaction their interaction with the students the teaching material in south may be inaccurate and there are many examples of that throughout the country and these are examples of two books for example that are used in some school districts that we've that we've worked against and most school districts now have stopped using them as a result discussions about current events may be very insensitive towards muslim students where muslim students are usually singled out as the experts as a spokespeople for for islam and in terms such as us and them usually relegates muslim students as the enemy also harassment muslim students results from this and polls have or surveys rather have been done one that was done recently by care last year which found that about 55 percent of kids experience verbal bullying and harassment in schools other surveys have shown that it's actually all the way up to 80 percent in some cases and what kind of things do kids experience they experience things like name calling and teasing being called terrorists camel jockey killer the harassment of muslim girls not surprising as study pointed out in the people that are usually the first victims of discrimination are women that stand out as as muslims and parents are usually unaware of these of these issues i can tell you from personal experience growing up in the united states i was harassed and i didn't want to talk about it because it was i was ashamed of it so i didn't talk about it i didn't talk about it with my parents i didn't talk about it with really anyone and i just sort of learned how to how to cope with it so this is quite common and it's important to put in context that bullying is a national problem one out of four kids is a victim of bullying with our community and with the c community as well and with the gay community it tends to be much higher rates and why this is important now what we are interested in kids are bullied for all sorts of reasons what we're interested in is bullying that is based that is ethnically or religiously motivated ethnically because they're south asian because they're arab because they're perceived to be of of of of of a muslim background and religiously motivated because that type of bullying we believe is preventable through education youth empowerment and parental engagement education in schools youth empowerment and parental engagement i'm going to talk about these three really quickly and i hopefully i have a little bit more time for educators um and many of you know and many of you might be actually speakers or more speakers at one time for i and g we are actually in schools every day how many presentations and seminars does i and g do about 500 in the bay area alone when you add up all of the presentations and seminars that we do across the country it's around 2000 we do an average of three a three a day we're out of your children's schools supplementing education about Islam and muslims and we have various topics uh that we do that with and all of our content is scholarly based if you want to become a speaker for us we would love to have you all of our speakers and volunteers the reason we're able to do some work so much work is because all of our speakers are volunteers they're trained and they're certified to do this work we also do quite a bit of work with educators as well uh and it's about a two and four hour workshop that we do and we do the same work in in interfaith all panels the impact is tremendous for those of you that do educational outreach that are out there speaking to churches and synagogues and schools and so forth you'll know that the impact is there right people do change their perceptions when they learn more about Islam and when they engage with you as a muslim and that's why this work is so important we just need to do a lot of it across the country and we have a window of time i feel uh in which to do this before it you know before before it gets uh worse we also do uh we also have online curriculum not every teacher's gonna call us in they're not gonna invite us in so we've put all of our curriculum online it's free from teachers that can download our power points they can download our uh script videos all sorts of material that we provide for teachers to be able to teach the stuff without ever having a muslim speaker in the classroom and we also have a lot of answers to frequently asked questions about Islam what we're really excited about is the new program for youth where we actually now i'm gonna quickly we didn't talk about student rights or parental rights maybe we can talk about that later um and you know zahra is here don't sort of respond to these questions um what i do want to talk about is our youth program okay my eight minutes are off i time myself so um we actually certify muslim youth speakers so that they're able to respond to questions about islamic schools so that they're able to present islam because it's required to be taught in middle and high school it comes up in all of the grades so that they're able to present and our presentations for kids are about 10 to 20 minutes um and then we also provide them we also develop their skills in responding difficult questions about islamic muslims i'm very excited about that we've partnered with minute and we'll be doing a lot more of that work we we did our pilot right here at the mcc and i see some of the kids here that attended that training and i'm hoping that there will be the first ones to be certified as speakers what that means is this when i get called in um at the at the ing office instead of sending an adult person like me a paler who sort of is a is a parent to these kids what we want to do is read one and refer them to the kids in that school or in that school district that can actually go out and do this peer to peer presentations are far more effective than adult presentations how do you prevent bullying how do you prevent harassment how do you prevent teasing uh teasing it is when their friends speak up not when their teachers do it not when their friends say well not when the parent becomes involved it stops when their friends say you know what cut it out cut it out i don't like you doing what you you know what you're doing and that's and it's powerful peer to peer uh relationships are incredibly important which is why we want to certify kids across the country i'm going to stop here because i ran out of my time and i can take questions later thank you well we have a lot of collective wisdom on this panel so we want to give you a chance to ask some questions um we are going to be passing out no cards i believe there's someone coming around passing out some no cards and pens um so if you could write your questions on the no card they will bring them up to me and we will uh take a selection of questions so i'm just going to give you just a minute to um to do that um yeah maybe while we're waiting um well the no cards are being passed out we are going to share with you just a short video it's our passion speech about voting was not enough to get you to register this video will push you over the edge and get you get you interested so we'll just share this with you this is an isq video that we just um that we just put out q and a um thank you so much for those of you if you had trouble seeing the words i know you just hear the music but if you have trouble seeing that video it's actually available on our facebook page um and and it should be available on our website as well but you can like us on facebook and uh see it see it that way or love inside isq.org um and share it with your friends to get everyone interested in in this election season can you hear me okay okay so we're starting to get some questions um i'm going to try and feel the best we can and if we have to break from preparing for back we can do that too so as there are continued questions we can come back um so the first question is for dalya uh how is the survey data going to be used to influence decision makers in today's environment okay yeah we'll take three that's a good question so how will this survey be used to influence decision makers in today's environment um someone is asking i think it's directed towards maha about how a 14 year old boy could be part of the program if you could just talk a little bit about how people could actually do that um and then a third question for all of the panelists you encourage someone to vote who believes that their vote is useless what are some tactics that you might be able to take so i will leave you with those three policymakers we are taking this research directly to policymakers we had um i was uh i participated in a meeting with with uh senior officials at the white house and this research was presented we held a briefing on capitol hill where we where we shared it with um staffers and and members of commerce um we've written about this data in in op-eds we've had multiple media articles and and appeared on news programs citing this data but also ultimately there's a limit to what we can do we really this has to be disseminated by all of you in how you engage with with your elected officials this is all public you can download the powerpoint you can take these graphs and share on your facebook page and your twitter account so i want you to own this data yourself and write about it engage when you talk to your uh elected official tell them about this research that's really the only way that it will it will impact policy so how can a 14 year old boy be on behalf of him um in the program so this hot but if you could stand up this hot baton he's this young man right here we just hired him he's our very first igu coordinator great background um he used to get ahead of the msa at his um at his university uh we have uh six to eight hour workshops depending on what kind of training that you want by the end of that training you will develop skill sets to be able to respond to difficult questions and to be able to present as well then we certify you through testing and you do have to pass a test and then you're part of a network that would include lots of training and you become part of a national network of youth speakers we just started the program as i said and we're partnered with been as a first big partner to do this work but uh mcc was our first pilot which i'm really excited about thanks to brother wheneer and and others that helped organize this and i think we trained about 50 or 60 but i think only uh 15 are becoming certified and i hope some of the young guys that i've seen here and young ladies are going to come to the test that's happening in the end of the life the question about the effectiveness of voting is hard because there's no standby answer to it and also the person that feels that way could feel that way for countless reasons which is why i think the inshallah voter video strategy is so important this idea that i'm talking to my friends on a long-term basis about the effectiveness of civic engagement i as a peer i'm going to be able to push them over to to move them on the issue the few ideas that come to mind for me are one that local elections like hyper local elections school board elections are sometimes won by just dozens of votes our Sacramento executive director of arsenal capacity ran for the school board last year maybe two years ago lost by about a hundred votes ran again this year and won by about a hundred votes i'm more concerned about having diversity on the school board because those are the people that are directly overseeing the policies the issues the practices the remedies when my child has an issue in the community those are also people again that are just starting out in the process people that run for congress today ran for school board 10 or 20 years ago less than a hundred votes that's as many people are as far in this room today that's one issue the second issue is that we are winning in certain cases the muslim community has been able to push out bad elected officials and bring in good ones so it's not just about getting people in sometimes it's about getting people out the third is that as muslims we believe we're rewarded for our efforts so i may not always win but i made the intention i did everything i could and so when i think about my civic engagement being divinely driven or being motivated by my faith i may not get the president that i want but did i do everything i could to get the best person in office now longer conversation offline about lesser evils and how we determine what the best person is big for our individual vote but did i make every effort and then the last piece is that person that thinks that their one vote doesn't count if that's all they're doing yeah they're taking the least effective civic engagement strategy right so yes start with voting but if i'm not staying in touch with the elected official if i'm not giving money if i'm not writing to them on a regular basis and i'm not volunteering in my community then yeah like i'm going to have little impact i'm going to get as much out of it as i put in okay thank you so much these are all really great questions all the ones that are coming in so i'm gonna throw in a couple more um there are a number of questions that similarly ask the same question which is um i think a lot of people are feeling helpless or they're not really sure what to do on two fronts one how do you start to denounce and counter the views of groups like ISIS but two how do you denounce and counter the the anti-muslim rhetoric that's also coming from uh from politicians and others at the moment um as a as a normal citizen how do you do that or as a working woman or um just in your daily life so that's one question a second question how do you talk to your kids about Islamophobia um and a third question um um there's a couple of very specific uh questions around the poll um so i'm going to ask one of them which is can you explain why there's a disconnect between mass rhetoric which often focuses on foreign policy and your findings would show that foreign policy is actually less of a concern so let me start actually with how to talk to your kids about Islamophobia because it's a question i've gotten personally i've gotten almost everywhere i've gone wherever i go this is a question that has come up and so i i would say there are three things we need to do this tricky little so here are the three things i recommend one is we have to teach our Muslim American kids about their own history in this country the idea that they are foreigners is a fallacy it's a fallacy it's a historical fallacy that is a foreign concept foreign agent in america is not it's just not true if we were to to make them aware and make them proud through a wonderful curriculum like like i just talked about about Islam's history in this country that would that would give them the confidence to to respond to some of these issues number two is this idea of helping our children grow spiritually so that they are able to this is something we all need not just our kids i personally needed but this idea of wearing a a barrier or wearing a an armor of praise or an armor of love not love for for the bigots necessarily that's not i'm incapable of that but love for those things that they did great we if the idea that Islamophobia is just something that we have to kind of you know defend against so we're not victims of like bullying is not true bullying is one aspect of it a much more pervasive issue is internalizing Islamophobia is believing Islamophobia is is actually thinking you know maybe something you know is wrong with our faith and so that response the ability these responses that kids are able to give is first to themselves is to be able to actually reinforce why this identity why this faith is worth maintaining and if we don't all continue to replace that that sense of awe and and and deep love for the prophet and and Allah is very very easy for it to get shipped away by the attacks okay then the third is to arm our children and ourselves with the critical thinking skills necessary to dismantle and deconstruct the attacks because they're actually all built on false logic they really are but if we don't have these skills if we don't have these conversations to really look at things from the lens of critical thinking it's very easy to get pulled into them so I those would be broadly the three things I would I would recommend is teach the history you know continuously strengthen our praise and our love for our faith and then third is critical thinking that reminded me that part of our training that we do with youth is deconstruction of questions that are asked to help them understand that some of these questions that come at us are usually loaded with a lot of assumptions and and misperceptions and that we need to first unpack that don't jump in and respond a lot of the questions that come at us but to unpack it and ask why do you think this way you know why what makes you think that all muslims are this or that women are you know mistreated and so forth to try to get to the root of the question that is being asked and respond to that is instead of instead of jumping in immediately and because when you do that you're actually reinforcing and that does require critical thinking so I really love that you mentioned this I'm also going to say one thing about to add to the idea that is advice was which was brilliant is to speak up it's incredibly important now when you hear something that is negative that is critical of your religion not only against yourself but other people you absolutely need to speak up absolutely I need every presentation that I do with Americans of other faith by asking asking them to become ambassadors now that you've learned more now that you understand the truth about this faith and so forth you now need to speak up you now need to challenge what people say to you that it is negative now that you know you have that responsibility and I would say the same thing to muslims you need to speak up for your for yourself and for your for your religion it requires literacy which is to the point of that you have to know your religion well there are a number of organizations that provide answers to frequently asked questions ing is one of them they're all online questions on sharia questions on ices questions on general questions you know about Islam i'm women and all sorts of common questions that we usually get very easy to respond to but you have to make the effort to read and to reflect and to put it in your own language to be able to respond that's I mean we have to do this we have no other it's not an option for us not to do this do it if you don't want to do it for yourself do it for your children do it for the next generation you but you have to do it