 So a little over two years ago, my brother Diaz and his wife, Yusuf, and Yusuf's sister was at their apartment in Chapelville where they were murdered. It's been a very long two years. You feel all kinds of feelings. You feel all kinds of anger, sadness, anything. So when I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, I was on Facebook. I saw one of my friends posted about Nabra and the situation unfolding in Virginia. Can you guys hear me? Do you guys hear me? It doesn't matter. So it was unfolding on Facebook. I learned about the 17-year-old. She was in a group of 15 others. So I was like, someone's family is shattered today. There is the friends, especially the friends that were with her that night, going to Subod. I felt like especially dumb. If I can get to them, again, I've been through it two years on, and you still kind of learn lessons. You still got to go through all the difficulties. So the idea was maybe I could go there and help out and make some friends. And I did that up until I had a flight here. I landed in Oakland, drove by the Warrior Stadium. I also have a big fan. Congratulations on the championship. In fact, Steph Curry had, you probably might know this. When my brother was murdered, his profile picture on Facebook was of his wedding six weeks earlier, and it was kind of posed, kind of just like Steph Curry with the basketball or a GQ magazine cover. And anyway, Steph Curry at the end of like some kind of three-point contest or something after he, of course, broke the record, spoke about my brother. In fact, mentioned my brother's name, which to me was just mind-boggling. And signed some shoes that he wore and sent them to us. So that's another reason I'm a huge fan of the Warriors, and they deserve this win 100%. So what brings me here is that, Alhamdulillah, my sister just had a baby boy a little over three weeks ago. His cousins are here as well. The idea was I got to meet my nephew for the first time. Again, in the two years with that, there's also life. There's still difficulties. I'm not saying there's not, like, lingering difficulties, but Alhamdulillah to see life kind of come in. So we have a little boy in the family. That's exciting. I kind of struggle to kind of identify exactly what to talk to you guys about today. Some of you guys are rather young. I think it's just supposed to be for 12 to 18-year-olds, but I know there's some younger folks. And I don't know, difficult topics like death and murder and all that. I don't know if it's appropriate or necessary for the younger folks. But there are definitely some things we can talk about. And in fact, I'd rather hear from you guys as well to what extent I can talk about this stuff. So I don't want to kind of go into too much. And then you guys go home, your mom crying, like, oh, this guy talked about guns and whatever, and have nightmares. I don't want you to guys have nightmares. But I also don't want to miss out on a topic about a very important topic. I think what was kind of the same about both the Al-Yusur Resent and their story, and not about their story, was that each of us saw ourselves in them, or saw our siblings in them. They saw their kids in them. So many kids are out in college doing their best trying to do what they want to do. Everybody wants to be a doctor. So the fact that my brother is already in medical school, Yusur just got accepted. They just got married. They're just kids born here. The idea was, like, that could be any one of us. But now, bro, again, who doesn't do so well? I mean, some of y'all might be a little too young. But, dude, going to IHOP at night, that's, like, the best part of Ramadan for real. You do your bit, but you go to IHOP, you get the pancakes, the chocolate chips, and then you head back to the bathroom to continue some of your worship, and especially among great friends. All the friends are together to worship Allah. And that's what happened. She was on the way to IHOP and on the way back. It happened. And that's what was scary about it. And that's what kind of resonates with all of us. And I think that leaves a lot of us scared. As I was saying, I was in Greece, bro. I had a friend of mine who was just like a fundraiser, his family was. So I asked him if he wanted to come with me. It's like a five and a half hour drive from North Carolina to Virginia. And he said, yes, he'll come. All right. So we need to put the clothes down. Our banquet hall in 15 minutes here. So let's work hard again. The banquet hall is done. Any youth that are here, let's start heading into the conference room. Adults, if you wanted to join as well, they're talking to a really special speaker tonight. Just talk about this. By the way, special is really done with your scene. It's it for you guys to have them. I don't know how often it's here, but you guys have some awesome speakers. Plus the number of kids out here, this is crazy. There's a lot of kids. But you guys are looks like some sharp minds. So where was I? I was talking about, I was in Greensboro with my friend and I asked him if he'd drive up with me. The idea was I hadn't slept basically the night before. Maybe we could share some of the driving. And I'll tell you right now, the best car to ever own is the Honda Odyssey. Because you can put the seats down in the back and just lay down and sleep. Not a Mustang, not a, whatever car you all think about is cool. The absolute coolest car you can have is a what? Honda Odyssey. That's actually where we slept the first time. We got to Adam's Center for Peasant. We just slept in the back. That's how cool it is. So he came up with me this guy called Talha. And when we got back, what made me really kind of sad was that what he was kind of, his sister who was in medical school said to Snapchat, Talha basically wearing like boxing gloves and was like coming at her and he said defend yourself. And he was trying to teach her like how to defend herself in a situation where out of kind of random, a situation may kind of come into a situation where you just don't know how to respond and you're faced with this enormous amount of violence. And as much as it can be scary for the guys, you'll have to realize how hard it is for your girls here, for these young ladies, because you always kind of wonder why the person is being especially violent. We understand that like, we got like a moron president in office, right? So let me just say this. Like if he could be president, you can too. That's the best part about it. If he could be president, you can too. So we have this situation where like, we don't know if we're being targeted because we're Muslim or not, but Muslim women can feel on the day to day that they're being harassed. Sometimes we're especially kind to them or sometimes not so much. So when faced with violence, you're also wondered, you know, what is going on? Why is this person swinging the baseball bat? Kind of the gist of what happened in Virginia was that like, it was like a group of 15 kids walking back, silver on bicycles, the dude driving, might have been drunk or something. And I don't know the exact details. I think it's good to say I don't know. A lot of you guys just say, I don't know when you don't know. But the idea was he either came in the lane or did something to where he came into the lane and there was like, between one of the kids, there was some kind of like argument, like kind of yelling back and forth. And then he somehow ended up chasing them. The knobbra was the one he ended up catching and again, ending up killing them. And it's like, why, like, you know, I think a lot of people can wonder, like, you know, if I spilled coffee on the wrong guy, is he going to get angry enough to kill me? And you're kind of worried, you're worried about that. You don't know what people are thinking. And I think that's a situation where in today, you know, with the murders of my brother, the guy who did it was like this guy who just like completely hated religion, all of it. So there are all kinds of people out there. There is a lot of good people. There's a lot of people who obviously care for knobbra, who stood up for their interfaith community, people who condemn it right off the bat, no problem. So many people who wish they said they could have been there to do something. And especially those like other 14 kids or whatever, like I met some of them, and especially one of them, she's still angry today. She was saying, maybe I should have gone back and done something. But has that helped the attitude to have? Can you guys tell me, if you guys were there, would you have said, oh, I wish I had gone back, I wish I had done something different? You want to do something different, but you shouldn't kind of go down that route. You shouldn't go down this idea of doubt, of not being sure, because really, like, who planned it? Who wrote exact details of what was going to happen? God did. It was exactly how it was supposed to go down. We think that we're like superhuman after the fact. So this little like 14-year-old girl was it? The girl that was with knobbra? So she's young. She's high school, and she's thinking, she's getting herself off, about why she didn't go back and help. She said, maybe it's time to go back and help. She said, maybe 10 people could have, you know, overpowered the one guy with the bag. But we're afraid, we don't know what's happening. You run for your life, that's what you do. So don't go back, ever kind of regret, that's kind of what I told her. Because I told her, even with my brother, like there are so many instances where I could have, like, just shown regret, but I think that would have added one more victim. I don't want to be a victim to this. I believe thoroughly that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is behind it. Because obviously, to me it just didn't make sense. When it happened, my first Facebook status was, you know, I think it was like a couple, like, six hours after the murders that they confirmed the address and then they confirmed my identity. I was like, yes this happened, but I don't understand it, but I don't have to understand it. Because God is the most wise. That means some of the things that He's going to understand, in His wisdom, that we're just not going to. So I lifted it up. I didn't allow regret, I didn't allow any of that to kind of seep in. And obviously, some people kind of took it a little differently. Some people in my family, for example, I guess it's just two families. My brother, his wife, who's Yusuf, and Razan, her sister. Brother, that one spoke about the fidget spinner last time. The other, the young folks in the group, please don't distract the older folks. I kind of lost my train of thought. What was I saying, guys? This is a test to see if you guys are even paying attention. I got too many people saying something. Yeah, so the different ways that we kind of dealt with the situation. So, you know, some of my family members, and I was like, I have family like, some of them just, I think like, you know, the actual physical nature of it a little too much. Some, some in a sense, thought about the bigger picture. What do we know about martyrs, Shuhadah, right? What do you all know about that? I'm not going to stop you if you don't know enough about it already. You go straight to heaven. Say it louder. You go straight to heaven. You go straight to heaven. So there's a lot of like, if life literally is a test, right? We're here to just say like, you know, or think of it as a bridge. Before you're born, our souls were somewhere. During life, we're given this body, you know, this physical body, my hand that I might be able to pull up right now. Like this is all known from Allah's account time. This isn't my body. This is just a vehicle, a vessel, a car that gets me through to the other side of the bridge. And then your soul leaves this body, this temporary being and goes to Jannah. If that's all that life is about, then there's more to think about than just what happened that night. It doesn't end there. There's that Paul Walker song. You guys know it? So we want to sing it for you real quick. Somebody knows it. Who's a good singer? Actually, I'm quite impressed by the number of like, good singers there. You sing for us? I'm a terrible singer. Somebody can sing. I'm sure you can sing. Do you know the song? He doesn't know. Do you know it? Do you want to sing this? Yeah. All the girls are singers. Let's sing it. So I go something like It's been a long day without you, my friend. I'll tell you all about it when I see you again. So every time I hear that song on the radio or whatever, I'm like, man, whoever played this song, you subscribe. I'm not ready for it. But what it's telling me, it's like, yeah, like it's a long road. Like it's not easy. But I'll see you again. And that's how we understand this idea of like life is being a bridge. Like it's not the end of the road when you die. It's just a change in state. You go from a physical being that we can all see to being somewhere else we don't. And to maybe get a better understanding of this, let's think of my nephew, Adam. When he was in his mom's belly, oh, it has to be a twin. Let's think of this Adam. This is another Adam. This Adam, who's cousins with my Adam, has a twin brother. He's like, you just get up. So when he... Say hi, Adam. Hi, guys. Thank you, Adam. So when he was in his mom's belly with his brother, they were saying like, one of them was like, man, I can't wait to the next life. I'm going to meet my mom. I'm going to meet my sisters. And then the other one was saying, there is no next life. That's it. We're here. This is the life that we're going to live. So we're going to open up. So when there's two kids in there, who's right? Right? You're in this belly. You don't expect there's anything next. There's nothing. Stop. Fix that distraction. This is the gym. Run. Oh, my God. Talk about topics I should have bring up with nine-year-olds. So in their tummy, in their mom's tummy, one of them is saying, there's nothing next after this life. How could there be? All they know is there is each other and they're talking. But one of them is saying, no, wait. There is something more. And he doesn't know that there is anything up there. For sure he doesn't see it. But he's told so. He believes it. And to me, that's kind of like a lesson in life. We don't see what happens next. We don't know as though we're told about it. We're told stories about it. But we don't actually see it. And that's the kind of belief that, are you that kid in there that doesn't believe it because you don't see it? Or you've been through it before. You've been in a phase where you don't see where you are and what's next. But you've got to better believe it's there. And that really, it just does help. It helped me a lot. Right? It helped me a lot to know that my brother is not just no more. It's not like something I just don't see. The idea is I have an opportunity to keep working and to do things until I kind of check the time. So 55 isn't right now? Okay. So, so I'll tell you a little bit of what I've been doing in the past two years. The night of the murders, I wanted to make a Facebook page so I can let people know about the genocide. So things like this happened. There's all kinds of like rumors that go around, whether it was how the person died or who did it or whatever. Just so everybody, again, has an opinion for sure. I think with Snapchat, it's even worse. Like everybody like thinks they know. So I wanted to make a page where it's like officially through us, you know, first thing, what it was that happened, what the genocide is. Let there be no confusion. So I made the page called R3 Winners. I wanted, I thought like R3 Angels might work, but like, are they Angels? The editor said we're not Angels. They were not made of light. They lived amongst themselves. Going back to this idea of life as a test, right? I believe they were winners that had just gotten married to each other. You said just got accepted to the same dental school as my brother, which is the top hospital. Resentment just seems like a word from an architecture school like an ingenuity and design. There were all individuals in the community who were non-profitational, who loved each other, who loved everybody around them. They didn't know such things like had drama. If there was a girl that had drama with you said she'd go and invite her out. Like these were the people that lived their lives. And you know, I don't know what happened that night, but I know that if life is a test, they won. So I came up with the name R3 Winners. And that kind of stuck to kind of represent who they were in the essence of life. There was plenty of losers. The dude who murdered Nopra? Loser. Donald Trump? We actually don't know yet. We don't know yet. He has a chance. He's still alive. Or whatever. Not under the term. But the idea is that we don't necessarily know like he can change. But there are people out there that like, what's that Taylor Swift song? Y'all know. Like something about rocks that, people throw rocks at things that shine. Is that Taylor Swift? You know. Am I the only one who says Taylor Swift? Yeah. Sing it. I'm not going to sing Taylor Swift. Sing it. And something wrong, it's like, y'all got to look this up. It says, people throw rocks at things that shine. What does that mean? Yeah. It means exactly what it means. So, in this situation like, obviously when I think back to the situation of my brothers, they used to were happy people, man. And they were happy despite the fact that they wouldn't switch out. Where in Craig Hicks' mind, the neighbor who murdered them obviously thought, you can't be religious and be happy. In his mind, religion doesn't play a thing. God doesn't exist. So, I think as we go around, and people see your smiling faces and see who you are, you guys are shining in the community. You guys are taking the attention that the community has and it's on you. And people throw rocks at things that shine sometimes. Some people sit and admire it, but some people are just going to be like, hey, let's see what happens if I throw a rocker. And what does happen when people throw rocks? Not always. There's never really a joke. But the idea is that there's a chance of coming together and being a team. Playing as a team and being proud of ourselves. It was awesome to see the Muslim community come together for a black Muslim young girl. Right? We came together for Nabra because we all know that her life matters. We know you cannot mess with the Muslims, man. You mess with the Muslims will come to get you. Seriously. We're going to be there. And Muslims, the thing is about Muslims is we want to see light happen in the world. We want to see love. Right? So how do you accomplish that? How do you see more of that? In the aftermath of the capital shootings, my brother left a property. So you know, usually when your mom and dad dies they get a property inherited into your house into your business or something. And this way it was just the opposite. Right? My brother died and my mom and my dad inherited a property that he which is a property in downtown Raleigh. So we took that property and set it up as a sort of vagina. The idea anything good that happens out of that house goes back to the fact that my brother helped make it happen. And he tweeted once I have a dream that one day we'll have a structured and organized community and I'll be able to help you with your projects. So we're doing exactly that out of the house. We're running basically youth programs and incubator. It's shared office space. Amazing things like tonight they're at the end there for damn professionals. So we're doing all this but at the front of the house as I was renovating it I put a quote up. And the quote was you basically laser cut it into wood and at State University I got the laser cutter which is like this really cool thing which slides right into wood and we put it right up top. So I like them. So I think that some brothers and sisters who brought their coffee and tea inside you know with the carpet we want to be extra careful if it's got a plastic cup on you know we're kind of worried concerned about that. So please do what you can to be safe with that. We are asking that if you're drinking a water bottle that has a cap on it so if it tips over it won't mess up the carpet. And finally there's a lost cell phone it's a spirit phone iPhone and so if it's yours it's in the office just a quote. So the quote that goes around in front of the house to the side is darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. So when faced with darkness is what happened on February 10, 2013 what happened this past Sunday what happens in some day to day activities the idea is that Muslims don't like that. They want to live in the light. God is light. They want to see more of that. So how do we respond? When we say we got you we respond by putting more light into the world. We've each become a beacon of light for each other we come together and we become a beacon of light for the community at large as well not just the Muslim thing man we're out there doing great things for the rest of the world better believe it. And the rest of the quote is hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that. So for somebody to hate us for who we are to hate what we represent what they think we represent what do we do? We don't respond with hate what is that going to be getting it's going to be getting more hate that's fighting fire with fire What do we want to see? We want to see a little bit more love in the world we believe that's possible so you do not fight hate with hate you fight it with love you respond with more love and honestly like if I were to say there's a few things about Diaz Rezan and Abra that I want to see right now and I learned some of this obviously visiting was that they were good to their parents the last thing that Abra did at home was she had a thought or a bunch of her friends at her house she left with her friends couple minutes later she came back home her father felt like or thought she forgot something but what do you think she did? She came back just to tell him I love you and thank you you're not going to reach a high level the level that Diaz Rezan and Abra could have achieved without them the last text that my brother had to my mom you guess I love you how crazy is that? the day after so he was murdered on the Tuesday on Wednesday we were planning to feed about 50 of his like dental classmates so just for fun just to kind of do that say thank you for the awesome program my brother was so proud of his school so proud of his team his classmates so honestly do that and my brother said I love you they were good to themselves they were good to others be good to your parents but smile care about other people the last Facebook post my brother had was he was distributing dental dental kind of kit like a toothbrush, toothpaste, stuff like that floss and food in downtown Durham and it was in this like crazy like chain of events where like he was murdered and guys he was having a live go fund meeting and lunch with him and you carrying it so he was pleading to people and he was after Joanne prayers every day every Joanne he had these little baggies that he would sell for $5 and I will love that when I was a grower you're not going to change the world $5 at a time these little baggies at a time right? that's not the main thing to say I don't bring these brother there's a lot of things I can say after credit but I told him we're not going to change the world like that but I don't think it's up to us to change the world I think it's up to us to kind of put in the effort of pure intention with a good effort and that's all we're responsible for the results come from God so he was at $16,000 to do dental relief for Syrian refugees on the Turkish port so he planned the trip out he knew exactly where we were going who we were serving how we were helping them and was at $16,000 he was murdered like a week after putting up that video and the question was then how are people going to respond seeing this they understood him as the person who wanted to give back to the community this crowdfunding campaign grew to $600,000 in the aftermath of that murder and every year we've been able to go to Turkey that first year was the hardest because the first year he planned it and we get there we're struggling to get there we're taking our dental supplies we're there and then you're like you look around and you think that should have been there and you just like kind of cry and look off into the distance looking into Syria and you're just like man, that should have been there but we've been able to do it every year since then they cared for others they loved their parents but they also made mistakes they're normal human beings that's the best part of it like each of you have to believe that you can reach that position like God loves you that much and that's the hardest part is really believing that God loves us I think God really loved my brother that much to give him such an honor I guess the answer is yes and it's in each and every one of us to kind of believe that within ourselves and my last piece of advice right, time's up but for those who have siblings I told you I regret a lot just kind of like person more and it kind of happened in a dream and sometimes you have dreams of the people passing honestly this kind of wasn't happy so I was in the bedroom my brother's bedroom and there are two beds there's a bed there and a bed here in the dream I was doing what that kid right there was doing he doesn't even know what we're talking about he's on the phone distracted right sorry brother but the idea is that's what I was doing man we're distracted by life we're over here instead of being in the moment instead of loving each other instead of whatever you're over here like and I'm sure whatever you're doing is fine like either you're trying to relax or there's like talking to somebody important or whatever like it's not like we're doing bad but we're not there in the moment and to me I was in my dream doing this on the bed and my brother was next to me on his bed on the phone as well he was probably texting you said all these cute things and I really wanted to turn to him and tell him I loved him but I wasn't able to so I wanted to tell him I loved him but what will like in the dream like my physical body couldn't turn to tell him that it was so sad when I woke up and I felt like I couldn't tell my brother I loved him despite how much I missed him despite of what it is you know you really don't know what you're missing until you've used it kind of a thing and that was like my advice to you guys is tell your siblings tell your parents tell each other you love each other be here for each other so you don't have that regret later on and Alhamdulillah through the mercy of God a little bit over two weeks later I had a dream where he was dressed in all white large soldiers happy he came to me and did what he hugged me in his signature bear hug and he said I loved him and I was able to say to him I loved him and I woke up like the happiest I've ever been in the long time I think he knew I loved him and I knew he loved me but I gotta say it and that's literally like a story that you can take to the bank and like just do more of it and that's all I need you to take from me today is to know to tell each other you love each other and then really that's it