 Bismillahi r-Rahman r-Rahim Alhamdulillahi Al-Rabbi l-Alamin Wa Salat wa Salam ala Sayyidi al-Mursaleen, Sayyidi al-Mohammed Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salam tasneeman kathira Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh Alhamdulillahi wa Salat wa Salam ala Rasulillah Sallallahu alaikum warahmatullahi wa salam I think it's very important for us from time to time to reflect on the shoulders that we stand on because none of us are standing in air. Human beings cannot suspend themselves in air. Like, here I am. We're all standing on someone's shoulders. And we should... Shay Gasser said a lot of significant things. One thing that amazes me, because people see you up here giving speeches and some people think, like, you want to be up here. So they call, oh, you're one of those celebrity maims. Like, if you had a choice between being somewhere in a cabin in the woods surrounded by a bunch of books with no phone, you wouldn't choose that. But you're a celebrity maim. And so they see a celebrity maim and they come up and they say, you know, I want to be a speaker one day. What a lowly aspiration. Aspire to be a doctor, aspire to be a lawyer, aspire to be a teacher, aspire to be an engineer, aspire to be a garbage man to help people to be able to live in a sanitary environment. And if Allah blesses you with their ability or as they say, the gift of gab, then try to use that feasibility level of sincerity. Don't aspire to be a speaker, because you don't know the tribulation that might bring in your life and you might not be able to handle it. Don't aspire to stand on someone's shoulders. I want to be the one up there. Aspire to be the shoulders that someone else can stand on. And there's a hadith that says just that The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer and in each there's good. The strong believer is the one someone can stand on their shoulders. And if someone doesn't have that strength, they're still good. But try to strengthen yourself. As people move away from religion, they move towards accepting weakness. And in accepting weakness, accepting that that the state is going to compensate for my weakness. That this or that agency is going to compensate for my weakness. That other people are going to compensate for my weakness. That's delusion. Now I'm not saying the state shouldn't have a safety net. There should be a safety net. I'm not saying we shouldn't have institutions that help people who are struggling with this, that and the other in their lives. You should have those institutions. But people should also aspire to be strong and independent. And to be able to stand on their own two feet and to be able to provide strong shoulders that others can stand on. When we talk about, we know the sacrifices the Sahaba made, the sacrifices the Tab'een made, the sacrifices those who preceded us in Islam made. And we're standing on their shoulders. But I want to tell, but they're the giants, our teachers and notables. The people like Jamal Bedouin or Ahmed Sakhar or the people like Imam Wafid-e-Din Muhammad or the people like many, many others whose names we don't know. But they're all of us also standing on the shoulders of people whose names aren't known. And as I was a convert to Islam, some of those people whose shoulders I'm standing on, they're not even Muslim. There's a guy I remember, five. How many of you remember much? Can remember a song you learned when you were five years old? Raise your hand. We got a few. Mashallah. When I was about five years old in Atlanta, Georgia in a place called Carver Homes, southwest Atlanta, Georgia, there was a guy older than us. And I think he died. We were in the neighborhood when he died or was severely injured and he subsequently died. He was in a go-kart and the go-kart went out of control and he went under a car on the go-kart. His name is Hindery Turpentine. Hindery Turpentine. I remember his name. And he taught us this song after censoring it because we're in the Masjid. He taught us this song. I went to the barn to milk my cow away in the middle of the night to tell you the truth. I didn't know how away in the middle of the night I pulled his tail and pulled it away in the middle of the night and all I got was buckled away in the middle of the night. Why don't you come along, little children, come along while the moon is shining bright, shining bright. This Hindery Turpentine... What I want to say, you know what? He used to do to us. He used to bring us. He was significantly bigger. He would like fire us up, show the chest. Bam! Don't you cry. Bam! Don't you cry. Bam! Don't you cry. And what he was doing, some brothers laughed and they had a Hindery in their neighborhood. Huh? You were the Hindery's. But what they were doing, they let us know. You know what? It's a hard world out there. They weren't deceiving us like it's peaches and cream and hunky and dory. That same time a song came out. Johnny Cash. He wrote a song and sung a song called a boy named Sue. Some of you remember that. Johnny Cash, a boy named Sue. It was about a guy, he was getting ready to leave his wife. They had one child. So he knew he wasn't going to be there to protect that child. And so he named him Sue. Because he knew as soon as he went to school people were going to start teasing him and about his name. And he'd get into a lot of fights and he would learn how to fight and protect himself because he wouldn't have a father there to look after him. So he named him Sue. So go and Google that when you go home. Don't do it now. A lot of you like to Google while people give him speech. Boy named Sue. Johnny Cash. You can't Google Hender Lee Turpentine. Go talk to brother Rashid. Why'd I say that? Because we betray those whose shoulders we're standing on when we don't fight for this religion. There are too many people who say they're Muslims who aren't willing to fight for Islam. And I'm not talking about a physical fight but I don't have to stop the live stream. Let me make that clear. I'm not talking about a physical fight. But I'm talking about when some atheistic fool comes up in you and talk about oh blah blah blah and you're ready to give up your dean and not even fight for it. Just some get out of my face. You don't believe in God. That's your problem. You probably commit suicide in five years because you don't have any purpose in your life. Instead of fighting for the ready to just give up. And we can make hundreds of examples that are happening every day. We betray those who fought for us to be able to say la la la la. We betray those who fought so that the Quran could be translated and get it into our hands. We betray those who built this masjid. What's going to happen to this masjid 10, 20, 30 years down the line with this bunch of youth who should be here now and they're the elders who are holding it down. They gave up on Islam because people were looking at them funny. This group they gave up because people were teasing them for wearing a rag on their head. This group they gave up because they weren't sure who or what they were, what the identity was. I'm not even talking about just sexual identity. You know they're a human being. So they just gave up and these gave up for that reason and those gave up for this reason and none of them were willing to fight for their religion and to fight for the sacrifices that their parents and their grandparents made. We're standing on someone's shoulders. We're the end of a long line of people who sacrifice for us to be able to say la la la la. I said some of them were Muslim. If you're Muslim and you're free and you enjoy all this freedom and you can live and your skin is brown or black and you can live in a white neighborhood you're standing on the shoulders of Dr. King and Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer and all those people who struggled and sacrificed for a dignified living for people in this country. We're standing on the shoulders of giants. We're standing on the shoulders of giants and some of those giants, their names, aren't known as Sheikh Yasir said. I can tell you people when I was nobody, when I was someone who'd be in the back of this room in the corner people coming in they just walk over me because they want to get up front to listen to the speaker. There were people who said, you know, we're going to do something. We're going to start a little masjid because we need to be making da'a in this city. And I just came back from Egypt but not from Al-Azhar. I just spent 11 months in Egypt beginning to learn Arabic. And these people they didn't know alif from bat or tat and because I knew alif, bat, tat they said, you're going to be the imam. That's how it was at one time. Our father, Qura'at were the ones who Qura'at al-Ashr. They were the ones who memorized the first ten letters of the Arabic alphabet. Say, alif, bat, tat, qa, jim, qa, ha, da, da, enter half of the Qura'at al-Ashr. You're the imam. And now, Subhanallah. But I'll tell you something. They'll die for you. They'll die for you. They'll sacrifice. They'll spend a little bit of money they had and they'll appreciate a little bit of love because a little bit of love goes a long way. One thing, we get away from the basics. Now, we're up here sometimes and we project that sentiment down on anyone down there. They understand the issues we understand. They look at the world the way we look at the world. They're bogged down in the pettiness. The higher you go, the pettier things can get back because you lose a sense of perspective from way up there. And they project all that down. These are the people down there. They know it's real. They know it's life and death in many situations. And because of that, they're willing to give their life and they're willing to sacrifice. And they're willing to let people stand on their shoulders if it's going to serve the greater good. They don't care if they're not the one standing on someone else's shoulder. Therefore, they're not raised and elevated. You can't see them. They don't care. As long as they're providing the shoulders for someone else to stand on can help to advance the cause. And that's what we have to focus on, brothers and sisters, the cause. We have a mission. We're not here in vain. We're not feathers just waiting to be blown whichever way the wind blows. We're here to take that message that gave many of us life. When I converted to Islam, I couldn't talk about it for about 18 months, two years. We have this gift testimony. It was powerful because I knew without Islam I'd probably be where a lot of my friends were there or are now. Many of them are dead for various reasons. I could just as well have been them if it weren't for Islam. That could have been me if it wasn't for Islam. But Allah blessed me with this religion and He blessed me to know Imam Surah al-Hajj. So I'm a segue into that. So we said we started this little masjid. They said, you're going to be the Imam. And right around that time it's when all that, he cleaning up the streets in Brooklyn and all that, we said we're going now to help Imam Surah al-Hajj. Before that, one of the first masjids I sat in after I converted in 1977 was Imam Surah al-Hajj's masjid. My wife, I was in the military. I'm from Connecticut. My wife's from Long Island. So we go visit her family and for Juma we ride into New York City to masjid at Takla in Brooklyn. And they had this theater and I sit in the balcony way in the back and listen to Imam Surah al-Hajj and get inspired. And when they had the drug fame we got a group of brothers. We're in New Haven, Connecticut an hour and a half from masjid Takla. We jump in our cars and we drive down to Brooklyn and we go and join the rinks with Imam Surah al-Hajj's with his people helping to patrol those neighborhoods and clean up those neighborhoods. And Allah blessed me to establish a relationship with Imam Surah al-Hajj. So we opened our little storefront masjid in New Haven, Connecticut where the whole masjid was probably from this wall to where brother Yusuf is right there. Maybe, no, with this brother with the sky blue shirt squared. That was the masjid. The second Juma we had there was a snow storm. There were three people for Juma. I was the Khatib. My wife was there and a sister named Iman. A sister Iman. Sister Allah alone Iman. Because you meet that salam alaykum Allah alone. Sister Iman. Tawhid Iman. Allah alone. How you doing sister Allah alone? Sister, can you say anything besides Allah alone, Allah alone. It was me, my wife and sister Iman. That was it. Then we had the grand opening. Imam Surah al-Hajj brought a group of Muslims of brothers and sisters. I think they came in a bus because they had their own bus up to New Haven. And he was there at the inauguration. No, we knew him from Rutgers University when I was a student. We bring him to the MSA. And he come. And then when we started the masjid in New Haven he came. Then we had, you know, we said Imam Surah al-Hajj can clean up the neighborhood. We can clean up the neighborhood. So we started our own drug patrols in the projects. But they used to call our crew F-Troop. Some of you that you can't relate to that. So F-Troop got busted by the cops trying to clean up the neighborhood. Like the dope dealers call the cops on us. We had seven brothers and sisters arrested, weapons confiscated. But Imam Surah al-Hajj then it was a big trial. And we had a hundred lead. The police knew we were cleaning up the neighborhood so they were actually on our side. So how this all happened the police weren't strike. The police can't strike so they have what you call the blue flu. They're all calling sick at the same time. And so they called up the auxiliary police. They didn't know what was going on because they didn't know when the dope dealers called the cops on the Muslims, the cops, auxiliary cops. When the chief found out he said, man, you're crazy. And the people in the neighborhoods this was important to be working in your neighborhood. The people in the neighborhood said they arrested the Muslims all in the news. They went down and protested on the steps of the courtyard. And then we all, the courthouse, and then we organized the people and the police chief, the district attorney, they said listen, because the police chief had higher political aspiration. We were embarrassing him. He said stop the demonstrations we'll work this out. So at that time, the operation of a weapon was a mandatory five-year sentence, felony, because there were so many drug-related killings, the crack wars. And they rewrote all their charges as a misdemeanor and put all these seven brothers in an accelerated rehabilitation. If they didn't do anything for a year they expunged their record. And on the day of the trial, after one year, when their records were clean, Imam Siraj brought a busload of brothers and sisters from Brooklyn into the courtroom. That's Imam Siraj Wahaj. Imam Siraj is there. He has been there. So we know about the fundraising, but he's been there for communities in any city, communities. For poor communities. He's been there. When I left New Haven, I'll tell you, I'm only out here and Imam Siraj gave me permission to be here. That's the truth. He gave me permission to be here. And the day we had, my wife is a witness. So I went to Syria and came back and stayed almost two years, and then we said, okay, we're going to the Bay Area. So we had a big farewell. It wasn't big, it was little. There was about 10 people from New Haven were there. Sister Iman, Allah alone was there. About nine other people. But there was a busload of people from Brooklyn. From Masjid Taqwa. Every step of the way Imam Siraj was there. So you don't have to tell me about Imam Siraj. And what he meant for me, it's personal. And the sacrifices that he made for this community. So we pray that we're able to support him and his family. His grandchildren. The adults, they're responsible. The grandchildren, they're caught up in a situation, they're all in custody. And he's trying to get them back. So the only thing I know, we're not supposed to fundraise here, so I'm not going to fundraise. I'm just telling you to go to this link, launchgood.com slash I-S-W-E-M-Siraj Wahaj. And go to that link and then do something for Imam Siraj. So if that's fundraising, I just broke the rules. But that wasn't fundraising. You grab people by the ankles and you shake as hard as you can. They have brothers. You don't just lock the door. You post up some big brothers. And when you go towards the door, they look at you and you turn around and go sit back down. Well, God bless this community. This is a beautiful community. It's a community where there's a lot of love. There's a lot of vision. And there are very dedicated young people but there are a lot of challenges facing all of us and especially the young people. And so brothers and sisters, go get some of those old Imam Siraj tapes as I think Omar Suleiman mentioned. Ask your parents. I mean, you still got some old Imam Siraj Wahaj tapes in the closet. And listen to those tapes. Listen to the stories, the advice, the wisdom of people who were shaped in another place and time. Because the benefits are sometimes we can become so blinded by our time, we think that's all there is and that's all there ever was and that's all there will be. Now, this is the time. Increasingly, I know I don't understand it. Seriously. Because I was shaped in another time and things were extremely different. You know, it was a time where you could tell people, you know, you need to straighten up. Taqi la. You could tell people like, sister, you need to go put some clothes on. You do that stuff now, people might accuse you of microaggressions and, you know, blame you for their suicide. You know, suicide note, brother told me I didn't have clothes on. Hey, don't laugh. So it benefits us for reflecting back on another time and another place where the influences that shaped people's lives were different from the influences currently shaping people's lives. And maybe some of that stuff that Sheikh Yasir Akhadi was talking about, maybe some of that stuff will rub off on us. Maybe some of that will touch us and maybe that will inspire us to have a little more straightness in our backbone, to have a little more pep in our step, to have a little more fight in our hearts, to have a little more love and cherishing for this religion, to see what it did for others and to see that we shouldn't take it for granted as sometimes we do, and we're not all of us. There are people in here that have that pep in their step and they have that straightness in their backbone and they have that fire in their belly. There are people like that, but increasingly we see other than that. May Allah Ta'ala give us Taufiq. May Allah give us strength. May Allah Ta'ala bless us with the vision. May Allah Ta'ala inspire us to understand that we are the latest runners in a long race. It's a relay race. I used to run track and I ran the relay. I ran four by one ten. And you run, run, you get a running start. Look at the running start. Yes, Sir Khali was talking about it. You can order books online. You have teachers in every Masjid. The person who is half of Qiraat is actually half of Qiraat and not the first ten letters of the alphabet. That's a running start. So you got a running start. And then they say, like, stick. Like, put your hand out and get the baton. Now you got it. And you run as hard as you can to give it to the next man. And if you drop it, everybody loses. If you drop that baton, everybody loses. And it's not about who has the fastest runners. So if you follow the Olympics, the last few Olympics, the U.S., they're four, like Hussein Bolt, the Muslim Jamaican runner. I say Hussein. Hussein, Hussein Bolt. Well, they can't pronounce the H in Jamaica. Anyway, they had Hussein Bolt. They had the one fastest runner. But as a team, the U.S. should have had three or four gold medals. The last few Olympics, they dropped the baton and they lost. So it's not always about who has the fastest runners. It's about who has the most dedicated team that's going to practice passing the baton. Who has the most dedicated team. Who is committed to teamwork. That's what it's about. So may Allah bless us to be a cohesive team that is committed to not dropping the baton. And when we get to the end of our leg, so the stretch you call is called a leg. When you get into your leg, you're going to pass that baton. And then you might just collapse. Not for a four by one ten, you're not going to collapse. Four by four hundred, you pass that baton, cramp up and collapse. And they'll say, Alhamdulillah, he left it all out there on the track. And when each and every one of us, when we pass, may they say, Alhamdulillah, he or she left it all out there in the masjid. They left it all out there in the center. They left it all out there in the community room, in the teaching hall. They gave everything they had. And Alhamdulillah, because of those sacrifices, as I looked at them, down at them writhing in pain, dealing with those cramps, they got the baton into my hand. And I'm not going to drop the baton. Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.