 With Allah's name, the Merciful Benefactor, the Merciful Redeemer, I give open and sound testimony that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and Allah alone, and I give open and sound testimony that Prophet Muhammad is indeed the Messenger of Allah. I greet you all audience this evening with a greeting of peace. Assalamu alaikum. Tonight we're going to have an open and frank discussion about a very essential movement and a narrative that is taking place in America. In the backdrop of many incidents that are taking place globally and nationally, among people trying to find identity, trying to find relief, trying to find relationships, trying to be culturally competent, as well as those who are a major part of society today, and that is the faith community. The faith community has an extremely large and important role to play in any society and in all times. But sometimes that faith community can find itself divided against itself until someone has the courage to step outside of the ring, step outside of the box if you will, come out of the dark and into the light and open up a conversation and have a dialogue. Tonight we're going to talk about the forerunner who has started this dialogue and where that dialogue is today. We have with us some very experienced men, men of knowledge, men of faith, men who have traveled around the world, men who have interacted and intersected with societies and peoples from all around the world. We're going to talk about the interfaith movement here in America, what it has produced, what we hope it to produce, and where we're going from here. To my immediate right we have Imam Raqib Abdul-Jabbar, and to his right we have Imam Antar Jannah, and to his right we have Imam Abu Qadir El-Amin. My brothers, I greet you in the greedy of peace. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah wa rahmatullah. When we talk about the interfaith movement, we know that in our book, the Qur'an, and we're all Muslim, God lets us know that we are to respect his books and to respect his people, and that there is a kinship among the people, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and all people of goodwill and faith. But the Abrahamic faith community has a specific and a unique bond within itself. And we know that for many years if we kind of wind the clock back a few years, go back, back, back into time just a little bit, then we'll race forward. There was a time when the largest identifiable Muslim community in America was a community that spoke rather harshly, I would say at times, about its brethren and cousins in their faith community. And there was a reason for that, there was a context for the narrative. But God and his wisdom, grace and mercy, saw fit to have that community, which was then the nation of Islam, transition from its developmental stages into, I would say, an expedited entry into a global thinking and a reconciliation of thought to become an active community and a leading community in reconciling not only its own thought, but reconciling its relationship with others, the people of the book. And the forerunner and leader of that movement was the late Imam Wadath Houdin Muhammad. May Allah be pleased with him. I would like to start with you, Imam Abu Qadir Al-Amin. If you would give us the listening audience or the viewing audience, some insight, try to keep it, you know, a little briefer than my introduction into your experience with that movement and how you see the interfaith movement today. Yes. Okay, well, to give a little background, I'm going to try to be as brief as I possibly can and be as thorough as I can. At about 14 years of age, my older brother was involved with the nation of Islam and began to bring home literature, newspapers, books, things of that nature. And many of my peers became members of the nation of Islam. So at about 14 years old, I began to be influenced by the language of the nation of Islam and the narrative of the nation of Islam as it existed at that time. Then at about 17 years old, I began to claim Islam. And at 19 years old, I made a serious commitment to follow Islam. At 20 years old, I began to practice Islam. So coming out of the nation of Islam, we were characterized as a baby nation. And looking back on that, you know, we know the life of babies and the life of babies sometimes babies cry a lot, holler a lot when they're uncomfortable. But that same baby that used to cry a lot and holler about the discomforts and holler when it was hungry and holler when it was in pain has evolved. And now is, I would say, a young adult, no longer a teenager. There's been some years that have passed. We've evolved. We've grown in our intellect and our understanding of our faith. And we are no longer constrained by the structures of what was that baby nation. And we have been involved with interfaith at the direction of Imam W.D. Mohamed since he stepped into leadership in 1975. And so some of us came from households and families that didn't necessarily accept Islam. So we have sensitivities for Christians. And we understand the life of Christians. Many of us came from that background. So for us, interfaith was natural. We were already involved in interfaith activity if not necessarily dialogue with our family members. But now it's more pronounced, it's more deliberate. And we have established purposely relationships with Christians and Jews in our locales to further our understanding and look for opportunities for cooperation. And not just dialogue, but working together on common concerns. Imam Anta Jannah, I remember at a point in our development, when there was a movement, and that movement was the movement to remove all racial images that attempt to portray the divine. And I remember that you were very active and enthusiastic in that movement. That movement seemed to have been, from my perspective, the movement that I would say heralded in many good works. As we targeted the Vatican, with Imam Wurthi Muhammad was introduced to the Vatican. And great works came out of that. And great works came out of the results, out of the work that you were leading in that particular movement at the time. How do you see the development of the interfaith narrative, the development of the interfaith work as Imam Alameen has addressed? And where do you see that work giving fruit today? That's a good question. Just to talk about Craig, Imam Muhammad brought in this committee in 1978, 79. And when he moved to Oakland and became the resident Imam here, he made me the, I was the resident Imam. Craig Chairman of Oakland. And he made me the national Craig Chairman. And so, and he moved here. And when he moved here, we were very active. We would visit the pastors and give them 90 days. We were talking about idol worship and the removal of statues and pictures from the churches. And so I thought, I was called like the calling card of the prophets. Imam Muhammad was letting them know, even though he was a Muslim, he was concerned with the Christian church. And so we would give them an opportunity to take them down. If they didn't in 90 days, we would pick at the churches. So we were picking churches, nonviolent protests. We were picking churches all over the Bay Area, Richmond, East Palo Alto, San Francisco, Oakland. And just as a short story, the preacher's union was very upset about that. It was kind of bad for business. And so they delegated one of their representatives, Reverend Thrower, to meet with Imam Muhammad. And so we went to Imam, Reverend Thrower's church. And he said he felt like a pot of spilt meat with Jesus. And he complimented Imam. He gave a nice presentation. And then Imam gave a presentation. And the Imam told him that we would no longer pick at the churches anymore, because he just wanted to put something on their mind just to educate them. And I think that was monumental, because we sent the word out all around the country to let them know what had happened in Oakland, and then everybody stopped. And Imam was just trying to let the Christian, that was interfaith to me at his highest level. He was letting the Christian to immediately know that Exodus 20 verses 115 said there should be no graven images in religion. And he was just there to educate them, because they were there. They were there. And he was suggesting that they take it down. And to see the interaction between Imam and Reverend Thrower that day, to me, that was the first opportunity I had to see a prominent pastor representing the preacher duty. And Imam Martha D. Muhammad, a national leader, have dialogue about this element that was in Christianity that needed to be removed. And Imam was in the forefront, like you say, he was in the forefront of making that happen. Not just in the United States, but it went all the way to the Vatican. It was a national petition drive to have a dialogue between Imam Muhammad and John Paul II. And so the Vatican got a good understanding of the Imam. And I think that, like I said, was the highlight of the interfaith dialogue for me to see that happen. Well, sometimes when we correct a situation, the corrections sometimes taken as an offense or as an affront, what do you perceive to be the damage or the harm that the Imam, other than in the church itself? What psychological damages or community-wide damages do you think was trying to be brought to the table? This was the Imam's main concern that Caucasians worshiping under a picture of a Caucasian man that they say is God causes a superiority complex in them. And it causes the opposite in African-Americans. They have this inferiority complex. So subsequently, they would perform really well in a society with these images. So the Imam didn't take them down, remove them because they're not supposed to be there anyway. In 1980, the Black Psychologist Association passed a bill, a bear witness to what Imam Muhammad said was true, that they should take the images down because subliminally, it's a subconscious manipulation. That subliminally, people were getting inferiority and superiority complexes. So the Imam said, this was a solution for racism. That's one element, take the picture down. Absolutely, very beautiful, very beautiful. Well, that shows the impact of the faith community being loyal to the core of faith that there's one God and whether your faith or not, the works of the faith community will have an impact on you. And it had an impact on society, very, very good. Imam Raqib Abdul-Jabbar, I just met you recently. Just met you last night, as a matter of fact. Thank you very much for that nice suit that you made for me. I'm sorry that I'm from tees in the audience. No, they missed out, it's all right, they missed out. Imam, in the interfaith movement, I know you travel nationally, internationally. You've been to many countries and you've done a lot of work in the world of chaplaincy across the board. How do you perceive dialogue and do you see the benefit or is there a harm that you may perceive in dialogue with others outside of the Islamic faith and how do you perceive that that dialogue should proceed or not? Bismillah. The dialogue, I see a benefit in the dialogue. It's just like you, ma'am, Alameen said, for us being raised as Muslims in this country, being of descent of Africans, either we came into Islam with Christian parents or one of our parents was influenced either by the movement in the 60s, either by the nation or even by Malcolm. Like my grandfather was a Garveyite and when my father came of age, he came into the nation and followed Malcolm. So when he introduced Islam to our family, my mother never became Muslim. My mother is still alive today. My mother's 88, my father's 91 and my mother's a Catholic. So that, for us, interfaith is natural. We don't have those predisposed attitudes that of trying to convince or beat someone over the head to come to our way. What I have found in my travels with the interfaith is that with that context, we approach it from a non-apologetic standpoint. We have nothing to apologize about being Muslim. It's nothing that we have to convince people of like our brothers that come from across the water. So being a chaplain in the prison system or in the hospital is very easy. It's more harder for them to accept us that we can accept them than it is for us to, for them to believe that we can automatically accept them on the standpoint of where they're coming from and just have a dialogue. The most enjoyment that I have working as a chaplain is in the hospital. And the reason why I say that is because death has no race and it has no religion. So when death comes to a person in the hospital, you'd be surprised how many people don't have anyone to talk to or don't have family that's coming to visit them. So in the hospital, people wanna talk. They got a lot to get off because being in the bed, being sick, you know, some kind of way, you trying to get right with your creator. And I did my CPE in a Catholic hospital, come to think of it. And I was the first Muslim chaplain that they ever had an African American Muslim at that. So, and it was an indigenous neighborhood, but they were very surprised that I was astute to their book as well as being able to talk to them just about life. So I think that interfaith dialogue, I think actually we need to find another word for maybe we just need to drop the interfaith and just call it dialogue. You know, human dialogue, you know, because faith doesn't play a factor when it comes to dealing with humanity because you're trying to find a base where we are equal at. But if you come in with religion first, we go on, I think Malcolm even said that, right? Well, he said, put it in the closet. I don't wanna put it in the closet, but you know, we just have to deal with each other on a human basis, on a human factor. And then from there, we can settle our differences. Okay. Imam Abdul, I mean, Abdul Qadir, following up on that, interfaith is when you're engaging with others of faith, not necessarily of your own particular persuasion. That has been effective because everyone, not everyone, but many of us realize what we have in common, how much we have in common and why we should share with our shared values, the living space that we're in to try to make life better and different for not only ourselves, but for those who we as a faith community feel that we are charged with aiding, assisting and improving the conditions thereof. What experience have you had as an Imam and you yourself, I know, are world traveled, nationally traveled, have engaged on many, many levels with many people, what is the condition that you find in the inner faith, the intro faith, among Muslims that are as Imam Abdul Jabab pointed out that come into this environment, not having necessarily some have it because I've gone into Africa myself in different places where people don't seem to have a problem getting along with each other and accepting that people are okay in their own right with their faith, but some are more polarizing in their view and maybe even a little bit critical of those of us who would dare engage with those whom they would consider an enemy to us and to our faith and definitely to them. What has been your experience and how have you handled that or have you had that experience? Yes, thank you. Yes, I have had that experience. I find that sometimes, and this does not apply to everyone, but I've encountered individuals who are insecure within themselves and those people who are insecure with their own faith sometimes see someone else's faith as a threat to a position that they may hold and in cases like that, then it becomes this kind of competition. Us versus them kind of mentality. And I've had people tell me, why do you do interfaith? They're not gonna accept you. I said, well, you know, that's your position. That's not my position. My position is we live here together, we share the environment together, we have to establish relationships with one another. And so one individual pointed out a verse to me in the Quran that says they're not gonna accept you until you become like them. I said, well, they won't accept me then. But that's not the only thing the book says. So he pointed out that verse and there are many other verses that say that we should have dialogue, we should protect the places of worship of Christians and Jews and that we should recognize them for their sincerity. We recognize that they're governed by a book, we're governed by a book. So we have to bring to this our own thinking. Many of them are opposed to some ideas because of experience they may have had being under colonial powers. So these are some of the challenges that I've experienced. But I'd like to quote Muhammad Ali, who I saw a video where he was being questioned about his faith and he was being questioned about the differences in religion. And he pointed out, he said, are you familiar with lakes? Person said yes. He said, what about streams? He said yes. He said, what about ponds, oceans? And then he summed it up and I'm paraphrasing him. He said, it's all water. So when you think about faith, it's all faith. And none of us can speak absolutely. Though we may have absolute conviction, we are not absolute authorities. God is gonna be the ultimate judge. The creator of law is gonna be the ultimate judge, not us. So when we bring it like that, I think it lowers the threshold of people keeping their guards up. I'm not trying to change Christians, except to make them better. And the same thing with other people that I encounter, I wanna see them to be the best they can be. At the same time, I believe that I have something that contribute to human beings growth, development, and enrichment. And that's Islam and the Quran and the life of Muhammad. Sala Allah. Sala Allah. And the great contributions of Muslim leaders, individuals like Imam Debbie Dean Muhammad, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, his whole funeral was a Dawa program. His whole geniza, he planned that it would introduce Islam to more people. So that's how he lived his life and that's how he left here. So that's extraordinary. And that's an excellent transition. Imam Antajana, you've written books. One that I wanna get, I'll talk about that out there. But you wrote a book and you had a program about fathers. And so the point, the reason I'm bringing this point up is the knowledge that we have as people that are produced through faith, our knowledge, our base, our foundation is our faith. Can you speak to the benefit of sharing what your faith has offered, has given to you, sharing that in the shared living space, in the general society, without the requirement of one becoming what you are? I think it, Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him, he said, the only reason that he would came was that we would have good character. So like with the father's program, we're just talking to men about character, honesty, trustworthiness, integrity, morality, moral consciousness, again, it's across the board. It's across the board, I can go to any faith and talk about these characteristics that should be in a man. And so we start, and then the same thing with nature. If we look at husband, father, husband and men, agriculture, horticulture, dealing with animals, dealing with plants, so if you know how to grow plants, if you know how to raise animals, then that's a good prerequisite for raising a family. We've gotten away from that now, we're in the city now, we don't do that, but a long time ago, we were on the farm, we were in nature, and we had a lot more patients. Like the prophets, they were all sheepherders. And so it builds a certain amount of character and caring in this and stuff like that. So really we don't have to talk with religious labels to get our point across to make people better. We just deal with nature, we can deal with character development because all of the great spiritual leaders, that's what they were teaching. If we just boil it down, take away the labels and all that, what were they teaching? They were teaching people how to be morally conscious people, obedient to the Creator. So I think that this is what makes us, it gives us that extra incentive to have interfaith at the dialogue, because basically we're the same. Absolutely, that's beautiful. Well, we are coming to the end of this session. Perhaps there'll be a part two, but I think it has been absolutely fascinating to hear the depth of wisdom that has been exposed to myself and to those who are watching this program, coming from the three of you, and yet that wisdom is so simple, so available, so common, sensical, and it's wonderful. We're gonna talk a little bit more about some of the nuts and bolts of interfaith because all three of you gentlemen have brought up the point of really the nucleus of society and that being the family, that being the family, and there are some questions that I'm sure comes into the mind of the average person on any given day. One is inner marriage, because we live in a society, in societies and in communities where we do have ancestral and historical ties, family or familiar ties, and some of those ties have boundaries that though their ties are there, the relationships may be there, the association may be there, but there's a mechanics also that is there that requires that those of faith respect those boundaries and respect those mechanics. So on the next portion of this talk this evening, I would like to start off right back with Imam Rahib Abdul-Jabbar and begin that conversation more in depth about the inner workings of families, marriage, interfaith marriages, who can marry whom, and we'll just kind of take it from there. I think we need to kind of move back another veil and peel back another layer of the onion here. A serious veil right there, brother. Hopefully when we come back, we will be able to do that. So at this point, I'm going to say, Alhamdulillah, thank you very much. And we thank Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala for, and as God's highly glorified as He for allowing us this opportunity. And I pray that whatever is being said tonight is of a benefit. And I want our audience to know that whatever's being said here, if we have offended anyone, it is not deliberately. We're only explaining what we have as men of faith experience and are willing to share. And if we've said anything wrong, that is not valid, it is on us. And we ask God to forgive us, have mercy upon us and correct our speech, our behavior, and accept our good intentions. So I'll say at this point, peace be unto you. As-salamu alaikum, I am Imam Mikal Shabazz. See you soon.