 You have the ability to live the fullness of your Islam. You can speak, you can do, you can be a part of this. That's a ni'ma that Allah will ask us about. And there are people that have done that work and that continue to do that work. One of those people is our beloved Imam Siraj Wahaj. When I think legacy of Imam Siraj, when he was on the streets in New York, shutting down crack houses, cleaning up people off the street, his khutbahs being recorded on cassette tapes that were part of my own formation. Some of the most important lectures in my life were those cassette tapes. And if you don't know what a cassette tape is, please ask your parents when you get home. Those cassettes of Imam Siraj's khutbahs. When Imam Siraj is in the streets, shutting down those crack houses, cleaning people up, turning this place upside down in a good way, I don't think he knew the impact that he was having in those moments. But all of us are his students. I say that without hesitation. His students, not necessarily in his khutbahs or in doing the exact work that he did, but we all learn something from his intense passion, sincerity, and love for the people. He wasn't driven by any vanity or social media, didn't exist at the time, or any type of recognition. It was an intense love for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, love for the people. That's greatness in action. We have to honor that legacy and continue at bidnillah ta'ala by paying attention to the two common factors. Our circumstances will be different. Every year our circumstances, in fact you're living in the same country and your circumstances are so different. You can be in the same city and your circumstances are so different. But the ni'mah of patience and the well of sincerity have to be the constants in not just making any type of meaningful history, but honoring properly the history that came before you. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to bless our predecessors in khair, our predecessors in good, and to allow us to be a continuation of that good, and to allow us to be the inheritors of the greatness of the past and those that inspire the greatness in the future and not lose ourselves in the present. And I could go on and on about my teachers of Damascus but I want to bring back to another important teacher. We'll kind of take you from the land of Damascus back to the Midwest. And here I am, having begun my initial studies of Damascus. I'm a teenager. I was very young, just a teenager. And my parents, Jazah-Allah al-Khair said, you know, they had a group of family friends, like many of you have family friends they would meet with regularly, they would go to each other's houses and so on. And so they said, well, everybody now is a teenager. Maybe we should make sure that all this Islamic knowledge we've been telling them in their Islamic schools and their Sunday schools and their Saturday schools as we also went to Saturday school. And all of the extra things that we've been teaching them to make sure it's really resonating. How do you make sure that teenagers really understand the deen that you've been teaching them? So the parents, the ammos in the group decided that each teenager was going to go ahead and give a lecture. To whom? To the parents. And before I knew it, I was picked to be the first one. I went to my father and I said, my mother, I said, I don't have anything to speak about. What am I going to talk about? They said, anything, anything, everything that you've been, you know, reading and studying and just anything. Just anything. Don't worry about it. Well, right before that, right before that, I had been to a conference, one of my first, and I'd heard some really amazing speakers speak at this conference. And Sheikh Omar outdated himself, so I'm going to outdated myself, too. Inshallah. And the speakers were amazing. I'll tell you, I'll tell you. My very first encounter was I was, they asked me to volunteer and to give out little note cards to the people who are sitting in the lecture to collect questions. So here I am with a stack of note cards, and I'm kind of just going around giving different people. And then the speaker gets up on the stage and he starts to speak. And I can't even begin to tell you the amount of eloquence and the Arabic and the English and the Quran, and I had never heard anything like this. I was standing in the middle, apparently, in the middle of the aisle. I was right, because I was giving out note cards to where somebody had to tap me on the shoulder and go, move. The speaker was Sheikh Hamza Yusuf. I didn't know who Sheikh Hamza was at the time. And I remember finishing that lecture and running over, we were in the youth hall and the parents were in the adult hall, and running over and going, mama, mama, I'm looking for my mom frantically and going, there is this person. And he's a convert. And he can speak Arabic, yes. And he's, and it's amazing. And she said, tell you, tell you. And then right after that, the next lecture in the Arabic hall, that was giving, the lecture was giving in Arabic, was the same speaker. Sheikh Hamza just finished giving us a talk in English and then gave the parents their talk in Arabic. And then my mother said, oh, this is very special. So when I took on that night, I took cassette tapes back home. And I also, in that conference, heard an amazing other speaker. Really, really taken subhanallah, just amazing. When you think of the young hearts, what these lectures do to young hearts? And took on the cassette tapes. Well, back to the story of my father when he asked me to prepare the lecture. I was looking frantically through my stuff. I was like, what do I do? I need to prepare. I don't know what to, pulling books off shelves and figuring out. And then I went through my stack of cassette tapes and I pulled out a tape titled, Whom do you follow? Whom do you follow? It was by Imam Siraj Wahaj, which is the other dear speaker that had spoken at that conference and really touched the heart. You know what I did? I copied every single line from his lecture, literally. And in the lecture, I hope you hear this lecture one day, every few sentences he says, Whom do you follow? And then he would keep going, Whom do you follow? And keep going. Mashallah. So I would write Whom do you follow? Every single time. And when it came to my turn that weekend to give the lecture, I held, I sat between the mom's hall, the woman where the woman's sitting, where the men were sitting, they put me in the middle. And I held the papers and I gave my very first lecture ever. In the words of Imam Siraj Wahaj, Whom do you follow? Letter by letter, word by word. Allah is the Al-Qaeda. Especially for those of you that have been in my halakas, you're all giggling right now. Yes, this is how we started. Now, fast forward a couple more years, just a couple more years. And suddenly I am responsible for putting together a Minna conference. I'm still a high schooler at this point. Minna Muslim Youth of North America, which was a youth conference that continues to happen, and I encourage our children to go, and had happened when I was growing up and I really believe the minas, the MSAs and these kinds of organizations really made from our Islamic identities. So I was in charge of 300 kids, 300 teenagers like myself, and I have zero previous experience organizing anything. But to show you where we got our start, we got our hands full. And the organizer said, now mind you, this is before email, before texting, before social media, before you literally had a landline with the cord. Yes? That's all there was, no cell phones. Just the landline with the cord. Or you write a letter, the handwritten letter. Those were the only ways you communicate with anybody. They gave me a sheet, and the sheet literally had the names of different speakers and it said on there things like Sheikh Hamza Yusuf phone number, Imam Siraj Wahaj phone number. Different era, completely different era. I picked up the phone, here I am 17. I picked up the phone. Assalamu alaikum, my name is Rani, I'm organizing a minna conference, would you be willing to come Imam Siraj Wahaj? Who picks up the line on the other end and he says minna conference? Where? I say Detroit. He says put me down. And that was that. And Imam Siraj Wahaj shows up to Detroit because a high schooler asked him to speak at a high school conference. Not MSA college students, not adults, high schooler. He's in New York. He comes out because a high schooler asked him to speak. And if you look at Imam Siraj Wahaj's itinerary, you will see that every day for years on end he has been traveling all of the communities of this country. And the impact he has made in every single one of us without fail each of us has stories to share about this person. And probably and I'll end with this, that the most beautiful story is that one of our own teachers was speaking this morning and she said to me back when I converted in the 80s Imam Siraj Wahaj was a name. And today Imam Siraj Wahaj continues, and I will bless him and increase him, continues to be a name. And all the names in between they're no longer names. And she said what's the most beautiful thing about that time period or about him is the fact that he stayed consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent without fail. And thereby affecting generations of people, I'm a nameless 17 year old, who am I? Continue to affect generations of people to stay true to their deen and on their deen and inspire those of us who went off to studies and now people call us teachers right, who inspired us. But like the dua of my teachers my insides match our outsides and our outsides match our insides. Allahumma Ameen and this is the like of Imam Siraj Wahaj. When I come to this country 30 years ago 30 years ago I don't mind for you gussing my age no problem I was advised to watch a movie, a series called Eyes on the Prize and the professor who advised me to do that he said because I want you to know what it looked like to be a black man in America. That was the best advice I have seen or heard and I watched those tapes video cassette tapes no DVD 17 of them I watched them yes one and I didn't have a machine in my home but I watched them in the library in the University of Maryland and it changed my perspective and at that time I was near to the country was my father and Allah bless his soul I came to a gathering in the mall that what Muslim was gathered from around the United States and non-Muslim to speak with our brothers and sisters in Bosnia I don't know if you remember that rally and I was sitting there and Imam Siraj Wahaj went to the microphone to speak like Dr. Rania saying I memorized every single word of him and I said I would like to speak like this man I want to be passionate like this man I don't know who he is I didn't know his name at the time except the man said Siraj Wahaj and I like Surat An-Nabab because his name Siraj Wahaj and I said Subhanallah look how people passionate about Islam in America and this man if he spoke Arabic because I was living in English maybe he can change at the time he spoke the same way maybe he can change so many people in the Muslim world but I didn't realize at the time how much change he is doing that is really impacting the Muslim world and then I come to know that the effort he made in an inner city and I said to myself now I see Imam Siraj Wahaj as an African American Imam leader of Muslim in America but I can appreciate also Rosa Park was made possible for him and I to be able to be free in some sense and to be able to have full participation in society remember at that time I didn't have a car I used to ride the bus and I was saying that for that lady Rosa Park to refuse to give her seat and made it possible for many leaders in this country like me to be able to participate to be able to have a voice I have to show appreciation for Imam Siraj Wahaj and all the legacy also in America that come before him and therefore my dear brothers and sister when we think about people like Imam Siraj Wahaj we cannot just to say just thank you but we have to show a genuine appreciation for a man who traveled almost every city in the United States and there is millions of dollars for a messenger to stand with him and his family in difficult time to be there for him in a difficult time that's how we show appreciation to people because I can have lip service and says I'm talking about me personally and I said I really appreciate Imam Siraj and this and that but until I show how I appreciate him Rasu'a Sallam said Imam Siraj Wahaj said Imam Siraj Wahaj said Imam Siraj Wahaj said Imam Siraj Wahaj said most of you feel purple deers or devils have a shiny thing on their head because most of the time we are not ever feeling white feel white that's our that's our body that's our dead body and our presence and our blood this is our lives and death To show appreciation to someone like Imam Srajo Hanj, to say to him, what do you and your family need this time? I want to be there for you. Going back to the Hadith that I just mentioned earlier, Ar-Rus'a As-Sallam said, Laish kur Allah, but laish kuran nas. No one will show gratitude towards Allah unless he or she shows gratitude towards people. I want to conclude by saying the following. You know, each one of us, when he or she reflected in their own life, we have people who have influenced our life in way or another. Some of those people have passed away. They are not with us, like my father. Allah bless his soul. Like my mother, Rahim Allah. We make dua for the people who have passed away. But people who are living among us, we church them. We don't wait until we spoke to them in the past tense. We say, we're here for you. We hear you. We feel your pain. And we would like to show our solidarity or appreciation to you. You know, my father, Rahim Allah, one time told me, he said, son, do you remember the first person who taught you how to read or to write? The teacher? And I named a teacher. He said, you forgot. And I remember who taught you, the first person who taught you how to read or to write. He said, do you remember that one who sent you to that preschool called Raouda in Sudan? I don't recall it now. You know, to study the alphabet, he said, I want you to make the dua. I want you to make the dua for her. Because he was telling me, because we live in a different city, she passed away last month. He said, that's the first person who taught you how to read or to write. She taught you the alphabet. Then we'll send you to the Quranic school. My point is that sometime it will become big, become known, and we'll forget who made us who we are. And I'm going to tell you, it was no hesitation, I'm standing on the shoulder of Imam Siraj Wahaj. This man many times gave me advice and encouragement. He came and taught us at the Adam Center. This outreach Adam does and so forth, that he's the first person to give us a workshop, how to reach out to other people at the Adam Center. When Adam is 500 Grovis Street. Imam Siraj Wahaj is a beloved to everybody. When I first started practicing Islam, we used to go to MCA. He used to come to MCA. I thought he actually lived down the street because every two weeks he was Imam Siraj Wahaj at MCA. Then I realized he's in the East Coast. He really inspired many of us. He's one of the giants of the Ummah. We have benefited greatly from him. I personally met him early on in the 90s. I'm not going to say when because you guys are going to figure out my age too. So I'll try to hide. But he was the first person to do a major event in 1999 in Madison Square Garden, where he did a program called Repairing America, Putting Allah First. And we flew from here a bunch of youngsters went to New York. It was one of the most amazing conferences. It was sold out and thousands of people came from all around the world. I remember the buses were coming from Philly and buses were coming from D.C. It was really an amazing scene to be part of. He's an icon of the Muslims in America. The man has done so much work that I don't think that a conference like this can do justice. I'm so happy that these works are done for him. We did another program for Imam Saraj Wahaj, a Chandni about 10 or 11 years ago, where we raised some money with Sheikh Hamza and some of the speakers. They came for his Masjid program. The humility is one of the things Imam Saraj Wahaj, his humility is amazing. And if you look at his pictures, all the time he has a pocket right here with about six or seven pins, always. He always has those pins because he's always taking notes. And I've been in gatherings where if somebody said something, he just threw it down. Just a humble human being, a beautiful human being. And just for people who have seen him, what an honor to see that man if he had been in his presence to be giving him a hug and kisses his hand. What a blessing. And for us to know him, it's a blessing. An amazing man, a man of God, a man of humility. And may Allah protect him and his family in this trial time, inshallah. Imam Saraj Wahaj, subhanallah, if I turn and profile to my side, to my right, like literally as I was growing up, I decided how would my beard look? And if you look to the side, you can see the angle, that was Imam Saraj Wahaj. I said, subhanallah, if you want to look good, if you want to be a Muslim who like commands respect, that's Imam Saraj Wahaj and Siddhi Fridun. The other reason he has pens, because every time he would be talking to people they'd walk away and go, Imam Saraj, do you have a pen? So he'd be giving away pens and he wouldn't have any for himself to take notes so he had eight pens or ten pens for that. But what I wanted to really say is that subhanallah, you know, there comes a time in our lives when we start to realize that all of the words, all of the deeds, everything comes to an end. But with Imam Saraj, subhanallah, there is a legacy, a deep legacy that is Islam in America lived, which means we talk about the nation of Islam, we talk about the fact that the transition to Sunni Islam, we talk about the fact the contributions to community. Imam Saraj taught us how to ask for money. Don't worry, we're not going to ask for money. People stop breathing when we say money in the mosque. So he taught us how to do that. And then I asked him, I said, Imam Saraj, how did this happen? What is the style we use right now, the style of asking? And he said, Allah Yerham, Dr. Ahmad Sakr invented that style early in the 60s. So when we gather and we talk about a person who has had this phenomenal legacy, we have to look and see every aspect of our life has been touched by someone like him. I was the president of the National MSA, and he was beginning with Imam Zaid and Dr. Jackson and Sheikh Hamza and others to form MANA, which is the Muslim Alliance in North America, dedicated to an indigenous sort of agenda. And someone had said, you know, you should come because this is a great, a new sort of gathering, we don't know what it will become. So I went there, I was a PhD student, and I just started volunteering to take notes. And then as I was taking notes and just going along, at one point he just paused and he goes, you know, why is he taking notes? I said, I'm just volunteering to take notes, just helping out. He said he's as much of the indigenous agenda that we're trying to form, and he said he has to be in our executive committee. And Subhanallah, and you'll like this, at a MANA conference he actually stood up and he gave me, and I'm not going far, I'm just telling you what happened, an honorary African American status. And I'm telling you, I was like, nobody does that, who does that? Who gets it? And I go, today you're an honorary Musli, right? Or today you're an honorary Hyderabadi. I mean, you pay the problems of eating Hyderabadi Biryani, right? All of us have done that, Masha'Allah. But he just got up and he said, this is what's going to happen. This guy is one of us. He was basically saying what? Everything the Prophet SAW did would make everyone feel welcome. I have never heard of someone, not once, complain that Imam Siraj Baha'z was inaccessible. Not one person. Whereas even we are now being complaining. I said, we can't reach you, we don't know how to get to you. You have people we have to go through. Imam Siraj, you could stop him anywhere. And he would stop with all of his books. And by the way, you know another reason we carry all those books? And I'll close with that. You know what? He asked him. He said, sometimes they keep trying to shake my hands when he meets all these other people who are not Muslims. So he just shuffles the books and they stop shaking hands. He doesn't have to explain. He doesn't have to do anything. I love this man, Sapa'Allah. And my father happens to also be named Siraj. Success, that legacy. And I want to now bring it and make it personal to one of the causes why we are here today. And that is to talk about and to honor Imam Siraj. And others of that generation, some of whom have gone on and some of whom still remain. And if you look at these three characteristics and you see those pioneers of American Islam who laid the foundations of these very masjids. There's hardly a state and a city except that Imam Siraj and others have traveled and fundraised for the masjid in the schools of those cities. You look at these three things. Number one, ikhlas. Let me say this. We have a problem right now. Big problem. We seek Allah's refuge. Sometimes I feel myself and others of our generation are part of the problem may Allah forgive us. And that problem, let me just call it, is called celebrity sheikh culture. Let me just be honest with you. When I was growing up, I mean I grew up in the 80s who was born in the 70s. When I was growing up, there was no national Islamic figure that we looked up to. I'm just being brutally honest. Early 80s, no one. That we really and genuinely, the way that some of us look up to others of our generation, some people that we knew, masha'Allah, doing stuff, saffi in there. But there was no one of that caliber. There was no one who was mesmerizing the entire nation. There was no one who made a career out of preaching and teaching. We had du'at who were engineers and they loved Islam. So they'd give da'wah. Who were professors of economics and they loved Islam. So they'd travel to teach and preach. We didn't have full-time preachers. We didn't. I mean that's just a fact. Look at those early people. Who were they? People like Ahmad Sakr, may Allah bless him and bless his soul. People like Jamal Badawi. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala bless him for the remainder of his life. People like Siraj Wahaj. Let me just be brutally honest here. I have a sense of jealousy for that generation. Positive jealousy. You're allowed to be jealous for positive reason you should know. Because whatever you want to say about them, you can never doubt their ikhlas. Whatever you say about them, you can never double guess why they did what they did. Never. There was no fame in Islam. You didn't get rich being a preacher. There was no limelight, no stage where 10,000 people were watching you. This is a fitna of our generation, may Allah forgive us. Imam Jamal Badawi. I spoke with him a while back and asked him to tell us some stories from the early 60s about his travels and going around in America and what not. And honestly my jaw just dropped listening to some of the stuff that he would tell us. He said that at times when he was a grad student they would take the greyhound bus into a city, into a place and sometimes they wouldn't even know any particular Muslim over there. So they'd open up the yellow pages and look up the name Muhammad or the name Khan and some other name. Khan is also very common at that stage. And they would just random cold call. Say, are there any other Muslims? Is there some place we can go and have a gathering or what not? The MSA conventions, there was no isna back in the 60s. The only thing was the MSA. The MSA conventions would take place in graduate student houses. The halakas would take place in the living room of the same place where they'd sleep that night. 10, 15, 20 people crammed together. The notion, the concept of grandiose banquet halls, of tens of thousands of people. I mean he told me if we got 20 people we would think this is amazing, unbelievable. There was no money to be made. They'd have to pay their own money to go. There was no fame. What fame is there? There's no internet, no YouTube, nothing. They did what they did for the sake of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. And the brutal fact of the matter, let me say this bluntly, perhaps after them, perhaps after them, people came that have a longer CV, that have more degrees from Islamic university, that have memorized more mutun, but the barakah of that stage, it doesn't exist anymore. The sheer blessings of those people and what they accomplished. We seek Allah's refuge. It's not there. May Allah forgive us. I speak for myself. I don't take the greyhound. When I land at the airport somebody picks me up in a fancy car. I go to a hotel to stay the night. And yes, this is a career for me. It is one of my sources of income. And I do get paid for many times that I go. Today I'm not getting paid, by the way, don't worry. But sometimes I'll be honest here. Usually I get paid. So yes, I am guilty. It is my career now. By the way, we need full-time imams and that. I mean, that's the problem here. We need people to have a full-time career in this regard. We cannot have part-time. But see, when you have the fame, the limelight, the money, the fat honorarium checks, don't be surprised when you're going to find a type of corruption. There were no munafiqun in Makkah. Why did they start in Medina? There were no munafiqun in Makkah. Why? Not a single sahabi of Makkah. Was even, I mean, there's just no question. There was nothing to be gained by being a Muslim in Makkah. You were a Muslim because you wanted to be a Muslim. In the 70s, in the 80s, in much of the 90s, there was no fame or glory or money. And I caught that era. I know this well and I'm not Astaghfirullah bragging or boasting. I'm just telling you how it was. I applied to Medina in 1994. And even in 1994, there was no career to be made out of Islam. I literally thought I would come back and continue my, I have a degree in chemical engineering, continue, I worked at Dow Chemical. I thought that I'll go to Medina for four years, five years, and then come back and continue a career. I had no clue, no understanding that a full-time career can be made. And that has pros and cons. Let's be honest here, has major pros and cons. When we look at Imam Siraj, when we look at that generation, there is no nifak in that generation, inshallah. They caught that timeframe. They did it for the sake of Allah. Humility, my time is up, I'm just going to finish up in three minutes, inshallah. Humility, look at that humility. Sleeping in the dorms with 20 other students, traveling greyhounds city to city, coming back Sunday night to go to work 40, 50 hours a week of a job that has nothing to do with Islam. And that is their career. Again, Jamal, by the way, what is his career as a professor? Those other people, Ahmad Sakr, he has secular careers. They have careers, they have to live like all of us are living 40, 50 hours a week, and on top of that, they did what they did. I once asked my father, my father was one of the early pioneers as well, 1963, he came to Houston, and I asked him about those days and inviting speakers and preachers and what not. And he hosted Ahmad Sakr in Houston in their annual convention of 1971, I think, as you told me. They had an annual convention in Texas, a grand total, a massive number of 50 people came for the Texas MSA. Think about that. 50 people and they were ecstatic. And they invited Ahmad Sakr to come. And he told me that we all slept in the apartment complexes we lived in, all of the people that came, and Ahmad Sakr was hosted in the apartment complex I was born in, I wasn't born in 1971, I'm that old, but the house that my parents lived in at that time, they lived over there. And then my dad told me point blank, because he knows I have a career in this, my dad told me point blank, in those days, we didn't give honorariums. We didn't give honorariums. The concept of paying somebody to come wasn't there. Perhaps that is why those people accomplished what later cannot accomplish. May Allah forgive us for that. And I said you didn't even used to give hotel rooms for the speakers. And he thought for a while he said the first hotel room we ever got for a speaker was 1973 or 74. He invited Sheikh Qardawi to come from overseas, so we thought we should at least get some money for him, but no honorarium. International speaker. And all he got was a measly like Motel 6 or something, which was a big deal for them. But see, humility, ikhlas, and sabr. That is how you achieve that legacy. May Allah bless me with this religion. And he blessed me to know Imam Siraj Wahaj. So I'm a segue into that. So we said we started this little master. 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 Siraj Wahaj. Before that, one of the first messages I sat in after I converted in 1977 was Imam Siraj's message. 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 message it at Takla in Brooklyn. And they had this theater. And I sit in the balcony way in the back and listen to Imam Siraj Wahaj and get inspired. And when they had the drug thing, we got a group of brothers. We're in New Haven, Connecticut, 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 Siraj's, with his people helping to patrol those neighborhoods and clean up those neighborhoods. And Allah blessed me to establish a relationship with Imam Siraj. So when we opened our little storefront Masjid in New Haven, Connecticut, that was probably, the whole Masjid was probably from this, 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 snowstorm. 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, salamu alaykum, Allah alone. Sister Iman, Tauheed 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 Siraj brought a group of Muslims, 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 we started the Masjid in New Haven. He came. Then we had, you know, we said, Imam Siraj 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 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 Siraj, then it was a big trial. And we had, Alhamdulillah, the police knew we were cleaning up the neighborhood. So they were actually on our side. So how this all happened, the police won'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 neighborhoods 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, possession 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 accelerated rehabilitation. 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 and has been there. So we know about the fundraising, but he's been there for communities and inner-city communities, for poor communities. He's been there. When I left New Haven, I'll tell you, I'm only out here because 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-Takwa. 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 his 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, their 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.