 Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. It is a great honor and a great privilege to be anywhere that's not two degrees and freezing when you're a Chicagoan in its February, but since being here in the Bay, masha'Allah, I've been meeting with lots of community members, lots of brothers, lots of sisters, and I'm always blown away by the hospitality, I'm always blown away by the friendliness, the amity that I experienced for Muslims in the Bay, and this trip has been no different. So I just want to express gratitude for that. I think that it's one of those blessings that you experience continually, but we tend to take it for granted. You know, I remember a funny story about this. I was sitting at Masjid Azhar, and I was talking to this one Egyptian brother who his entire Islamic education consisted of him sitting in Masjid Azhar and just studying in the Ruwak of Azhar, those side classrooms of Azhar, and he was an incredibly worldly man because of his, you know, exposure to many different people, many different teachers, many different disciplines, many different cultures. So one day I said to him, I said, Wallahi, it's amazing that every group of people excels at something. And I said, look at the Germans, Handa, sir, engineering, and I said, look at the Japanese technology. I said, look at the Americans, right, weapons manufacturing, right? I said, I said, as Muslims, what is it that we truly excel in? And he looked at me and he said, drinking tea, and then we laughed a little bit, and then he said, no, no, seriously, Diyafa hospitality. This is one of those, this is a Sibgha, a defining characteristic, a stamp of our community that is still very much in existence, still very much being demonstrated until the present day. The topic that I was given to discuss this evening was racism, and to attempt to discuss racism in a single sitting is very ambitious. But this is what the program organizers had in mind, and this is what we will attempt to do, inshallah. And I just have a few seemingly scattered ideas about this that I would like to share, and then we can open the floor and have some conversation, inshallah. The Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, said in an authentic hadith, In the body there is a lump of flesh, in fesadat, if that lump of flesh is corrupt, fesadat in jasadu kullu, the entire body is corrupt. When sallahat, sallahat in jasadu kullu, but if that lump of flesh is pure, if that lump of flesh is sound, then the entire body is sound. One of the things we can conclude from this beautiful comprehensive prophetic statement is that every act of beauty that we see from people, every act of dignity, every act of humanity, every act of friendship, every act of splendor, dignity, all of those adjectives, they first come from a human heart. Likewise, every act of ugliness, every act of barbarity, every act of unjustifiable violence, every act of harshness that also emanates from a human heart. And I find that in our context, when we discuss the scourge of racism as it was titled for tonight's program, we very rarely talk about the spiritual sickness that underlies, that undergirds racism. There's abundant talk about racism as a sociological phenomenon, abundant talk about racism as a historical reality, what I'm curious about as a Muslim. I think this is what we have to offer to these conversations. It is all too often that Muslims approach issues that are controversial or issues that are being discussed popularly, and we think that we have to choose a side, am I on this side or am I on this side, whereas I would like to see some toes, I would like to see us broaden some of these discussions. I would like to see us make some original contributions to some of these discussions. So when we think about racism, there's a lot of precedent that we can draw upon from the Qur'an and from the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But nothing occurs as striking to me. Then the story of Sayyidina Adam, alayhi sallam, and Iblis, a sheytan, right? That sheytan, and this is, we know this from the exegetical literature, is worshiping Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala among the angels, but he himself is not an angel. He's one of the jinn, right? But in the intensity of his worship, and in his proximity to the Divine Presence, he was like one of the angels. But when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created Adam and told sheytan to prostrate, and this is a prostration of ikram, not a prostration of ibadah, the angels prostrated, but sheytan refused to do so. And he said, I'm better than him. Many of the mufasirun, contemporary mufasirun, Ibn Ashur. He mentions this was the first instance in creation of somebody aerogating themselves on the basis of their physical constitution, on the basis of how they were created, on the basis of something purely arbitrary. This was the first instance of that. In the created order was Sheytan and Akhira, I'm better than him, and he cites nothing as merit. He didn't say, I'm better than him because I'm more intelligent. I'm better than him because I'm more devoted. I'm better than him because I was created from fire and he was created between. This is his justification, his basis for disobeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And there's a very lively discussion in some of the tafsir literature and in some secondary, I guess you could call them khawatir, kind of spiritual reflections on this encounter. The most striking in my estimation is by Ibn At-Ta'illah in his book at Tanweer Fiasqat al-Tadbir and he is willing to ask, what is animating Sheytan's response to Allah ta'ala commanding him to prostrate? What is really underneath the surface? And he says, it's insecurity that somehow Sheytan believed that Adam being promoted or Adam being elevated inherently meant that he was being demoted, inherently meant that something was being taken from him, that he was losing something in Adam being honored. And then this is Ibn At-Ta'illah writing centuries ago, he says every person that is engaged in some self-serving, other obliterating ideology, they're usually doing so out of insecurity. And insecurity always comes from a mindset or a worldview of scarcity that you believe that what God has is scarce, that if somebody else is esteemed, you are being demoted. If someone else is celebrated, you are being insulted. It's this idea of scarcity, right? It reminds me of the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, where a man entered the masjid and urinated in the masjid, right? And assuming this to be an intentional desecration of the sacred space, some of the Sahaba, they wanted to attack the man. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he said, no, leave him, leave him. And the man finished urinating. And then the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam called for a sijlum minal maa. I memorized this Hadith, right? Because I've never heard the word sijl used for like a pail. That's why I remember that Hadith. Sijlum minal maa. And the Prophet began with his own blessed hand, alaihi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, to clean this man's urine. This isn't what we're talking about tonight, but I remember as a young boy attending church, hearing stories of Christ cleaning the feet of his disciples. And how impressed I was with that. And I'm still impressed with that. But here you have the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam cleaning the urine of his Sahaba, alaihi wa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And then he asked the man, maa hamala bika and tabula fil masjid. What has caused you? Like literally, what carried you? What brought you to the decision to urinate in the mosque? And the man explained that I didn't think that this would be improper. I didn't think that this would be inappropriate. It was just jahal e balsitah, just simple ignorance. There was no intention to desecrate any sacred space. There was no intention to be an exhibitionist. No, he just really didn't know. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam explained to him that this is the masjid and it is to be used for dhikr and qira'a of the Qur'an and sallah. And it is not appropriate that we use it to relieve ourselves qadal haja. And seeing this example of prophetic magnanimity that he was wrong and the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam treated him with great sensitivity and great kindness. The man was moved to say, oh, Allah, forgive me and forgive Muhammad for anything he may have done. But don't forgive anybody else because he could feel how much they wanted to attack him. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said, Truly, you have made a vast thing constricted. And so people that gravitate toward these self-serving ideologies, they want to limit the favor of God and they want to exclude some people from enjoying God's, you know, one of my teachers said that human dignity is a God-given fiat. It's something that God gives. Truly, we have ennobled all of the children of Adam. That means that human beings possess an inherent nobility, all of us. And yet, there is an insecurity that leads us to try to exclude some from that because in excluding some from that, maybe we feel that we're preserving something for ourselves. So really, in my extrapolation from some of these classical sources and the story of Iblis in the Quran, I think that what is really undergirding racism, this very pernicious evil is a very deep kind of insecurity. Right? Allah Ta'ala says in the Quran, Oh humanity, we created you from one male and one female and we spread you intentionally into nations and tribes so that you would come to know one another. Right? In one translation, truly the most ennobled of you in the sight of God are those that possess the most God consciousness and God is knowing and informed. That's the most common translation of the ayah. That's the translation of the ayah that we see on all of the brochures in all of the books about the position of Islam vis a vis racism. There's another translation of the ayah. I was sitting with a teacher of mine at Azhar and he said another way to render this ayah is right? But the first time is mahboof, the first time is omitted, just like ta'awno ala biri wa taqwa. It's ta'awno ala biri wa taqwa. So this is something established in the Quran. Lead ta'arafu so that all of you together will know We were made into diverse nations, diverse tribes so that we would know that in most of our virtues, we share them. In most of our mahasin, we share them. There are intelligent people that are black. There are intelligent people that are white. There are moral, well that's actually the end of the ayah. There are inventive people that are black. There are inventive people that are white and other. But what the only substantive differentiation is on the basis of taqwa and racism to my mind is a system that tries to incentivize people to deny the mahasin of some. It's a system that when I think about very practical examples of racism, I think about how if we see someone and we notice that they are in some way experiencing mistreatment. They are in some way experiencing oppression. At least they are complaining of being oppressed. Racism is that desire to say no, no, no, no, no, no. It's something inherent to them that leads to them being in this position. It's something, it's not that the system is actually unfair, nor is it that we need to be more introspective. No, no, it's something inherent to them that leads to them being in this position. And the incentivization to make one believe that no, no, it's just them. That is kind of the very evil basis of racism. So take for granted affirmative, like take for example affirmative action, right? Take for granted affirmative action. What I find interesting about affirmative action and when affirmative action is being debated is that the complexion of the debate is often, well, should we allow people of color that are actually unqualified to assume positions that white Americans are more qualified for when if we actually believed in kind of an inherent equality of people, not that all people are equal, but that the ratios would be equal. You have some intelligent white people, some intelligent black people, some unintelligent white people, some unintelligent black people. We would be asking what is it about the way that we are testing, or what is it about our standards of admission that seems to recognize the intelligence of these people seems to validate the intelligence of these people, but does not validate the intelligence of these people, does not recognize the intelligence of these people, or is it that these people are really just more intelligent than these people? See, racism to my mind is when we're unwilling to look and say, okay, people have mahasen, people have intelligence is something equally distributed among people. Beauty is something equally distributed among people. Being hard working or work ethic, this is something equally distributed among people. Worth, value, these are things equally distributed among people. So if we are testing in some way for these qualities, then the ratio should probably reflect the ratios of the society. And if they don't, then what is going wrong? What is happening? Whereas I think racism, when you talk about the inherent denial or dismissal of the dignity of some is looking at those imbalanced ratios or looking at the imbalanced ratios and say, the prison population and saying, there must be something inherently criminal of all African Americans or people of color, there must be something there has to be because they disproportionately make up the prison population. No, no, I don't believe that. You see, I don't believe that I'm Muslim. I believe that if we're seeing a disproportionate rate of incarceration among African Americans, I don't believe that it's that they're inherently more criminal or inherently more prone to criminal activity. I don't believe that because to me that is an affront to a belief that we share in human dignity. There must be something systemic that we can control for that is leading to some of these outcomes leading to some of these consequences. And I think that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam confronted this issue by intentionally promoting people and putting people forward that might elicit some discomfort in there being where he positioned them among the community because when we and I want to say this and I don't want to put too sharp a point on this, to some degree racial bias is almost inevitable. I myself have recognized within myself certain instances or examples of racial bias or cultural bias or ethnic bias to some degree it's inevitable. So like I live in Chicago and in Chicago the Hispanic community is mostly a recently arrived immigrant community and a lot of the positions in labor, manual labor, some menial tasks, although every kind of work dignifies you'll often find Hispanic brothers and sisters performing those tasks. And I remember going to Denver for the first time and my wife was getting a six week checkup and the physician was Mexican and I said Subhanallah a Mexican physician wow and she looked at me and she said is that unusual to you and I said well you know being from Chicago you just don't see a lot of Mexican physicians but I never realized that maybe if that had been my situation for long enough maybe I would have believed that maybe Mexicans were inherently incapable of becoming medical doctors. I never believed that but it would be very easy for that lack of exposure to elide into a committed belief to elide into a bias. So oh yeah right that can happen almost naturally. It's like when I was in Egypt most of the white or European people that Egyptians experienced were tourists. So these are people that are coming to the country with disposable income. They're probably of the wealthiest and most educated of their societies etc etc and most of the Sub-Saharan Africans they saw entering Egypt were refugees people coming seeking a better life often working in labor and I realized that some of their perceptions of Africanity and Europeanness was just based on that very limited window of exposure that they had. Right some of that is almost inevitable it tends to happen from time to time. One must recognize that this is just the limitation of my experience this does not say anything about the inherent value or certain you know inborn characteristics that people possess doesn't say anything about that but we have to hold ourselves accountable and we have to be willing to to at least probe and to think about some of these ideas that we have invited we have imbibed excuse me and we have accepted as true and they might just be extensions of a very very limited experience right and I think that in our community I find that people have very limited experiences with African Americans in real life with black people in real life but they're full of opinions about black people right that somehow being black is synonymous with being poor being black is synonymous with being uneducated being black is synonymous with being violent I'm always wondering from whence did you get these ideas and why do you think that they're so definitive why do you believe them to be representative of anything besides just it's just your experience right but to me racism is the kind of mental scaffolding that wants to take those experiences and make an entire paradigm out of them oh no no no this is you know something happened to me in Egypt and it was when I was uh you know at the end of my time there and I went into a barber shop and uh you know I'm watching the barber trying to figure out whether or not I want to you know let him cut my hair as you can see the degree of difficulty for my haircut is not very high but I'm still quite particular about the way it's done I'm usually watching how hygienic the barber's practice is so I'm not watching how you know it's nothing to do here but is he disinfecting the blades or the clippers is he changing the blades etc so I'm watching this guy and he was good his practice was hygienic so I knew that I wanted him to cut my hair so I started pretending like I was from Said Mosque right trying my best to affect like a a southern Egyptian dialect because if he knew I was American I know the price was going up I don't even think they think about his gish they think about it's like a Doriba it's like a tax you got it like that so I can take it like that right and after a while he just said to me intimate fame I said oh he knows I'm not Egyptian so I just said to him in completely classical Arabic I said come in I said you guess I said you guess where I'm from he said well I know where you're from I said where he said Senegal I said that I said I'm from somewhere west of Senegal he said there's something west of Senegal right I said yeah I'm enemy Amrika I'm from America and he said Amrika Chika Bika right which was a reference to an Egyptian movie I later learned but then he got really serious and he said to me if you're from America then there's something I have to ask you and I got scared I didn't know if he was going to ask like about the war in Iraq or something about philistine or he said Obama Muslim or is he Muslim or not and I said Obama that's a Christian man and he said well I can it's more Hussain his name is Hussain there's no such thing as a Christian with the name Hussain and I said I believe that his father was born into a Muslim family in Kenya but then even his father after some time at university he became a communist he became an atheist and when I said atheist he said what is what is an atheist and I was shocked that he had never heard that tone before what is an atheist and I started explaining to him these are people that don't believe in anything beyond the to be what are to be nothing beyond the to be and he was like are there really people like that but his concern was not salvific his concern was social he's like what do they do when a baby is born what holidays do they celebrate how do they get married he like he couldn't imagine life without today you without religiousness he couldn't he couldn't imagine that and when I was explaining to him that you know atheism in western europe is quite popular it's growing in america even if you do a little alabia he's no no no no no no way no way no way no way and after a while he paused and he said subhanallah he said my lord is the best of creators and I said what caused you to say that I mean that was a strange pivot I didn't expect that and he said if Allah can create and sustain people who don't even believe he exists my lord must be olim he must be magnificent he must be overflowing in his grace and his mercy this was like one of the biggest lessons I learned in Egypt and it wasn't from any of my mashayih it was from a simple barber named Ahmed I said he encountered something for which he had no analog he encountered something that he had nothing in his frame of reference for this thing and just with a simple Quranic view of the world he was able to embrace a radically different other and he had no need to like to to like make a tush we like to like like he didn't need to like dirty that thing or even he didn't even feel like he needed to like go out and change it and it didn't make him feel insecure in who he was or what he believed and he could acknowledge the limitation of his experience and still say subhan Allah to atheism atheism some of us we find people just of simple we're talking about they simply have different ethnic backgrounds and we can't even approach them with that kind of openness subhan Allah that's different I've never seen that before no there is some part of us that needs to categorize this is no this is ugly this is violent this is this is and it's always strange to me that we don't see this as not just a limited exposure or experience that we have to something but a definitive representation of what that thing is and my question to our community why are we so insecure there's no need for that do you really believe that there are people that have been denied dignity do you really believe that there are people that have been denied beauty denied my catamela clock this is this is this is a strange way of thinking right and I think that racism it emanates from that place you know it imminent it comes from that place you know it's almost like subhan Allah you know it's a deep thing man it's a really really deep thing you'll find black american muslims arguing that the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was black and one of my teachers who loves black people he said you should advise them to be very careful about these arguments love black people I say why he said well because prophethood is a wahby phenomenon god makes prophets when they're arguing about the prophet alaihi wa sallam being black it's almost as if they're suggesting that blackness produces prophets right they're arguing like blackness is so great that not only have we produced inventors and warriors and statesmen and women and and scientists we've also produced prophets when blackness does not produce prophets god makes prophets right but then he said that this is what is key what kind of insecurity might they be feeling so that they feel this argument necessary you should tell them that blackness has produced great inventors blackness has produced great statesmen and women blackness has produced great scientists blackness has produced great warriors blackness has produced people of the highest levels of genius and intelligence and brilliance and beauty you don't have to do this in order to feel dick it's already there truly the most innovative view in god's sight are those that possess the most tankwa because in all of those other respects people have those things god has been generous in his grant of those things to people you know like there's you know my teacher was essentially saying there's no reason for that like you don't have to do that you don't to feel as though there's some nox there's some deficiency that by proving that the prophet alaihi wa sallam was black that deficiency is then covered you don't have there is no deficiency there is no there is nothing inadequate about blackness there is no deficiency and those of us that believe that there is some deficiency the only thing i've been attempting to say is we have to ask ourselves why and how did we arrive to such a conclusion where does that come from and what basis does that conclusion serve why what it's untrue it's false so in conclusion you know this is really uncharted territory because i i think that i would like to see more writing about racism as a spiritual illness there's much writing about racism as a historical phenomenon as a social phenomenon but as a spiritual illness what is it where does it come from and how do we cure it because you know people secure and what god has given them there is no need to to deny what god has given anyone else there's no need to do that you don't need to do that right and i think that um you know the muslim community in america really has no choice but to take aim at this issue of race you know there's no such thing as being racially agnostic in the united states of america right you can't say you can't be colorblind and even i mean this is what i was like this see this is exactly what i'm talking about in terms of there is no inadequacy so it's like when somebody says you know i don't even see race i just see uh you know a human being now why would you need to say something like that what what i don't even see i just see i just see a human being and i'm thinking so what he's like a platonic essence now or something like that it just he doesn't have physical characteristics he's what do you mean no it's because in your mind blackness is synonymous with undesirable right blame worthy characteristics and you're saying i can see past his being black and i can i can see past her being black and i can see you know a dignified human being worthy of respect but why is blackness something you need to look past why can't you just see an intelligent black woman why can't you just see an intelligent black man why can't you just see a morally upright black woman a morally upright black man because something of these um ideas about the inadequacy or unworthiness of blackness of black people we've accepted them in some way and if i myself as a black man can admit that i've accepted some of these things then i think all of us have to be willing to admit that we've accepted some of these things and we should try to purge we should try to cleanse ourselves of these toxic ideas right i've accepted some of these things man you know so you know i know that was a lot um it's something that i'm clearly thinking aloud about and trying to find a way to contribute to make an original contribution to the discourse of you know around race in this country you know i'm totally dissatisfied with the discourse around race as it exists now um and i think that you know muslims have um some some original contributions to make there um and we're just you know we're just thinking thinking aloud about these things so um if anybody has any questions comments ideas rebuttals this minute all right is that good luck here for the beautiful talk and um i think that a lot of people hear and probably online as well um sort of questions that the often would have about the topic of racism is that because many of us if not most of us i would imagine would say okay we know what islam teaches us about the issues of racism uh but a it an important question always is what can we do to fight against or dismantle racism right ourselves right and um you haven't really you know spoken about like your definition of racism what what really constitutes is racism often people think of racism as being sort of like a one-way street and in particular directed towards blacks you know and especially if it comes from whites right so the question i guess i would say would be of course i'm asking with my own sort of sort of ideas in mind but um how can muslims contribute to um ridding society of i guess was a racial bias uh and does that necessitate that we actually tear down any particular other races that are you know that we deem to be somewhat um undeserving of the type of compassion that we want to show to the less um advantaged uh or less privileged parties in society you know i think that the first thing we have to do is just commit to a level of introspection that might make us uncomfortable um i think questions of race almost inevitably you know make us uncomfortable so that when we recognize that there is a kind of um um perception that we've been deeply impacted by whether it's of what we're talking about race so of blackness for instance um when that shows up in our personal experiences are we willing to call it out because sometimes it's very it's unsettling that if for instance um and sometimes like i'll just speak to my own experience right if um somebody is presenting something to me like say like a real estate broker right well if it's one of my own people i find that i'm listening much more closely trying to you know trying to find some discrepancy in what was said earlier and what's being said now right but if the real estate broker and we're purchasing commercial real estate is white i'm not listening as closely like when i recognize that i'm a black man in myself i'm thinking so do i really believe that my people are less square dealing like what like i can recognize that in myself like you know you know and my wife might tell me after we finished meeting with the broker or meeting with you know a particular vendor man you grilled a black guy you were asking him all kinds of questions almost as if you didn't believe what he was saying but it's like when the white guy presented you just took everything he said prima facie at face value and for me to to to be willing to say get at that there's something wrong with that if both of them are presenting and i can't point to any ostensible signs of dishonesty but rather i'm just reacting to that something in me is wrong and i'm a black man but something in me has been impacted by maybe some images and that you know we've talked about this before that you know the creation of images you know when i when i when i when i first embraced islam up until the present day the hardest akam for me were the akam around tasweer around representational art my family is a fact we've always esteemed art and artists art everywhere in our homes so when muslims were telling me you know you want to be careful with representational art i was like what what could be wrong with representational art and this is one of those rulings i like plumbed the depth of that ruling and what i arrived to was that when one begins to craft an image this is something that really is reserved for allah subhanahu wa ta'ala he's musawir because it's a tremendous responsibility to to shape someone's perception of something now in islam there's a there's a there's a particular prescription around that when it's visual but you can still shape images of people just in the stories you tell about them in the ways that you talk about them right so like i know sisters can identify sometimes brothers and i don't mean to make this controversial or air dirty laundry but brothers will use the term fitsna as if it exclusively applies to women so if you think about a young boy growing up and hearing fitna fitna woman fitna woman fitna woman fitna woman now that when he marries there's some deprogramming there's some some introspection that he has to wait hold on this is i've been i've been affected by this so i think to take a position visa v racism we have to look at okay where have i been affected by this and how am i going to rid myself of it that's kind of answering the first wherever it shows up right a willingness to ask why and it doesn't mean i mean i put it to you this way i often get muslims that come into my office and they want to get married maybe the brother is african-american the sister is pakistan and she's telling me this isn't going to go over well with my parents and this that the third and i can always understand why it probably isn't i get that you know people that are deeply invested in cultural continuity they want to see their children marry people that are like them right i mean whenever i think about my daughter's getting married i think about them bringing home somebody like me i mean you know what i'm saying you know it's like you know she's like you know i like brother navid i said what about brother malik he's a nice guy i like him we play basketball on saturday mornings he has good at them i can understand that but here's the difference if it's based on like just a desire for cultural continuity that's one thing i get that that's something we all experience as parents however if it's based on some unsubstantiated toxic view that i have of indianness or blackness that has to be challenged if it's like well he's black he's probably going to beat you he's black he's probably not gainfully employed he's black he doesn't know anything about the religion he's black he that when those things and i think i'm using that example because it's very easy to distinguish one to to to to to misunderstand one to be the other and somebody's just like you know i'm more comfortable with culture that is familiar to me i don't think we should criminalize that i don't think that's a criminal thing i mean you probably couldn't tell but i'm much more comfortable with culture that's familiar to me but i don't have i i i hope that i don't have any toxic over generalized views about anybody because when you have those views it degrades encounter meaning you're not even able to assess the person in front of you because you have all of these false toxic preconceived notions about what they're supposed to be right so whenever you see that you have to catch yourself hold yourself accountable first and when we see it in our families we see it in our institutions we see it in our organizations we have to be willing to hold them accountable as well this is how i think we challenge this you know in ourselves in terms of racism being a one-way street i know i know you and i know your position and i know that you take issue with a modern definition of racism that says that power is the city quite now of racism that if a person doesn't have power they can't be a racist i actually understand what that definition is trying to get at right that there's a difference and i think that i'm willing to grant that so i think that yeah a person that is in a position to hire people or a person whose perception of blackness or black people might shape certain policies might shape certain attitudes around policing etc is not the same as a person just sitting in his living room saying this about white folks and that about white folks i don't think they're the same in terms of their impact but in terms of the spiritual disease it is the same right it is the same limited understanding of god's creative power and it's the same lack of appreciation for the diversity with which a lot of isla has created that is the same and it similarly needs to be uh uh you know cleansed it similarly needs to be reformed but the impact is not the same and uh you know so and i and i agree with the distinction as well right you know that be having a position of power anything to to do to someone that the other can't do is also you know it's something true no one can deny that however we also have to disabuse ourselves of this idea that only whites have power right yeah and that and actually that's that's what really what i want to get at is that you know so we we are moving in this anti-racism movement you know with muslims deciding we have to take a side on the issue that fundamentally what we are doing are embracing the idea that only white people can be races because only white people have power yes both which are and that and that was you know to your point doctor i'm doing that that's why i wanted to start with myself but you know i'm just a teacher but what if i was a law enforcement officer right what if i was i mean you know i'm the these images um have been devastating to black people and white people alike in terms of the consequence of accepting a lot of these images and you know some of them are just false you know a friend of mine was in california but not in the bank not in the bank and he was leading salat al-tawish and he said that oh he was leading salat al-tawish and he said that during the day a black man who appeared you know by his clothing to be a vagrant wandered into the masjid asked for some food they gave him some food he started asking questions about islam they started answering his questions after about two hours of talking he decided he wanted to embrace islam so he embraced islam right there and they said he stayed all the way through maghrib isha and tadawi his first day as a muslim he still left the masjid after tadawi he said one of us lost a cell phone we started looking around the masjid where's the cell phone where's the cell phone where's the cell phone and he said that we were fighting with every ounce of our e-man the sool done the bad opinion that this man had taken the phone right but he my friend said that some of the brothers were like look let's get real he took the phone you know you know how with it you know how they you know how come on man you know how you know and he said just as they were one of them was threatening to call the police on the man if he didn't produce the phone somebody looked and said it's under the membar the phone is under the membar and he said man it was the most awful feeling he had ever had in his life and i said when he told you that he didn't take the phone why didn't you believe him he told you he didn't take the phone he said i don't have it i said what prevented you from from believing him was it that he appeared to be indigent or was it that he was black and he said it probably was both right now this was a friend of mine telling the story i appreciate his honesty right but in that moment he could have called law enforcement and i don't know what they would have done over a law cell phone right but it might have made that man's life a little more difficult right so recognizing that man we have all been impacted oh by the way the person was black that's why that's why i mentioned in the story the person that was leading told him where he was black so this isn't about we have all been impacted now i said if the person coming in was was white and appeared to be middle class you would have said my cell phone i probably left it in the car that dog on phone he probably really stole it now you know right but we have all been impacted very very deeply man and you know something that we were talking about earlier and i this q and a is not just a conversation with me and doctor i think that many of us don't realize the extent of the intentionality of this imaging the images that you have they're not by accident it's not like oh you know no there's a there's a there's a there's a very intentional process by which you know these images have been created man on both sides of that of that coin right so we have questions coming in online but before we get to that so i'd like to make sure the sisters and the brothers here can answer the questions so i know there's questions on the brother side i'll hand the mic over to the sister side we'll kind of go back and forth one to one so if you want to just raise your hand i'll come over to you no sisters okay you'll get ready for that inshallah we'll have a brother here to your point regarding understanding how to possibly think of original of an original idea of better understanding um a better understanding and possibly having a sort of resolution regarding racism i sometimes see racism being looked at as a more recent phenomena but do you see a correlation of tribalism and racism as a root cause maybe preprogrammed mindset that has escalated due to allowing a sort of protection over someone's tribe or group or even self you know the racism is a rather recent phenomenon because race is a rather recent phenomenon right um you know other particularly like in the ancient world and the the the you know when we talk about the ancient world what really matters to us is the context of the prophet muhammad alaihi sallam and the sahaba racism wasn't that kind of issue for them because in terms of complexion they existed kind of across the spectrum you know you can read the ijnouni's al-isab of ita meza sahaba and you will learn that many of the companions of the prophet muhammad alaihi sallam were dark skinned were were were were yani uh asmar right they were they were they were dark but ethnicity was an issue you still had some issue between arabs and the habush or abyssinians and often being abyssinian in that context also meant that you had a a former condition of enslavement or someone in your family had a former condition of enslavement right um and that produced you know a lot of tension um there's a famous story of bilal and abudar el ghifari and the reason why and some people you know talk about the authenticity of the story but my taqik suggests that the story is authentic um abudar he was himself a swarthing person he was a a brown skinned dark skinned person himself but when he said to bilal yeah it been a so that son of a black woman many people say he was referring to his mother's condition of enslavement right and and and and and and and that is something that would naturally produce tension you know i say most of the the struggles that people have experienced intramural struggles in society it's always about us them who is us and who is them right how do we define us and how do we define them and that always produces um you know it can produce some tension you know what i'm saying um i i think that racism is just a modern iteration of that right um and and and race race i mean race serves a distinct purpose you know blackness is an invention just like whiteness is an invention it's not there's nothing uh there's nothing uh biological that takes somebody that has a you know dark skin that's Sri lankan and somebody that has dark skin that's west african that says they're the same race there's nothing right so yeah i mean but race is socially very real so in a sense like the context of race in america has made race which is comb is race is racial now you know just the the context has made race something very very real you know but it's not you know um self-serving other obliterating ideologies and worldviews not new at all not new at all you know not new at all and i i think it's important to i get in some trouble for this you know i get in some trouble for this but i i think it is important to humanize racism not not not to condone but to say look this is something that without the guidance of the Quran and sunnah a human being could very easily fall into right you know just on the basis like said just experience like you know just even like that something is is mooncraft i i don't i don't know what that is it makes me feel like strange it's it's you know it makes me feel uncomfortable because i'm i'm unfamiliar with it and i think that the prophet waslam there are direct references from his seerah where he saw things that were culturally unfamiliar but he was not threatened by those things right he wasn't he wasn't xenophobic he wasn't what is that so like the famous story of bennel arafida who they were a tribe of newly converted Ethiopians and they were in the masjid of the prophet waslam on the day of the eid right y'all don't cousin they were doing like choreographed kind of exercises right but it's kind of like it's choreographed so they're doing it in unison and they were saying muhammad don't take that muhammad is a pure soul and say no amar was very uncomfortable with this some people say it was because they were doing this in the masjid some people say just that kind of celebration was culturally unfamiliar to them and he started to throw hussat like little small pebbles some people trans like he was throwing like he was throwing like boulders at them or something you know just trying to get their attention to say stop stop and the prophet waslam stopped the amar and he said carry on sons of arafida i want people to know that you know there is a space for levity in this great religion sallallahu alaihi wa sallam but i think that these are the things that really cut racism off at the root and that's what i was attempting to kind of elucidate in my presentation is you don't have to be insecure about something that is foreign to you so that now you have to categorize it as less worthy ugly bad violent negative just say subhanallah that's why i was telling the story about the egyptian barber just said man i'm not i've never seen that before i've never seen people do that before subhanallah right you know but i mean i but but also too some of that uh i did that deep identification with people it takes time it's not something that happens immediately you know i lived in egypt for five years do you know how many times i got cheated in taxis and having bean sandwiches like not but the day before i left uh no the day before the air of spring i was sitting in a taxi cab in egypt and uh i said to the taxi driver hosney mubarak da damesh uh reis the malik i said there's no such thing as a president that holds the reigns of power for 30 years he's a king and the cab driver said to me hosney hosney damesh uh reis damesh malik not nusful either he said hosney mubarak is a divi god you know like he's not a king he's a divi god and we started laughing right the next day the air of spring happened people in tahrir it was crazy i couldn't i couldn't believe what i was saying now at the time i was taking my final exams five years and you know um my first wife she died in my third year she's buried in egypt now so getting to the end of this degree this was hard man so i came into the house i was so angry i was frustrated and i said man i've been in the sweltering desert breathing in pollution for five years and now you want so cool to neither um let me finish my finals and then you can tear the whole thing up man just let me just let me get my degree what i came for in my roommate he said to me he said obey the law these are our brothers and sisters man and they have been suffering under tyranny for 30 years they're raising their voices articulating their demand for popular sovereignty and all you can think about is your narrowly defined goal of being in egypt how petty of you how selfish of you and i said you're right i just hope they can wrap this up in a couple weeks i hope they can wrap this up in a couple weeks but what i realized in that moment was that distance that is some of what it means to be an immigrant in a place that even though i prayed with the egyptians learned from egyptians i didn't really identify very closely with them so that when this happened it was just a nuisance to me what is this right and i understand that some people come to this country with a similar mindset with a similar frame of you know black this black ops what what is all of that you know i was at the message once man and uh i have my own methodological issues of black lives matter but that's not the point of this story after juma a brother came to the front of the message gave some announcements and the last announcement he said we're chartering a bus from this message he was completely incredulous to go downtown for a black lives matter and then he said i don't know why this is important to us we're white my daughter looked at me and said dad he's not white but however he defines himself he defines himself but the point was there is still a distance there that he doesn't even see like how was this relevant to me how does this all this racial talk how what does this mean to me something has to to click when we begin to see no this is relevant to you if you're going to be it's impossible to be in america and this not be relevant to you this is relevant to you it's relevant to you because you wouldn't be here if it weren't for the civil rights movement it's relevant to you because black american muslims are one of the only historical muslim communities in a western industrialized nation that is not considered an immigrant community it should be significant to you but i realize sometimes it takes some time it takes some time so i think we have to be we don't we we should not condone but we have to be patient in allowing some of that transformation to take place you know other questions so sisters uh there's a sister number right there and she's waiting for you to just raise your hand and she'll bring the mic to you so i want to thank you for my gift uh first is i can look here i'd be appreciate you uh you you touched on something that's been uh deep in my heart and and and actually troubling me for years and years and years and that is uh the marginalization of black contribution to his land in this country um and uh just recently was praying issue at the masjid and uh you know the mojave after the salah you know he's reading from hip the lisa and uh the imam uh who uh the imam who was an immigrant uh he said you know he's talking about the importance of guarding your tongue and he said like you know if you get pulled over by a police officer you know he said sometimes we get angry that we got pulled over by he said but just be polite and just be nice and you know and more times than not everything's gonna you know he said but a lot of problems most of the problems that we have you know because we're rude to the police and i said that i'm sitting there and i'm saying yeah you know right yeah you can imagine what my so a lot for giving me my my usual reaction to this is to get angry you know so the talk was about hip the lisa and so an osmo i shut myself up i didn't say anything but i i would but uh as uh you know descendant of people worked in social activism in this country my cousin who was a major contributor in the snick movement in the bay area uh the concept of being an ally is important so i'm asking you how can i i how can i help to in these situations because the reality is the majority of these misages in the united states don't appreciate the fact that we're talking about almost 140 years of african-american contribution to the establishment of islam in this country you know islam wasn't established by any other ethnicity when when when msa was established in the 50s i think when the first msa started to be established in the 50s you know african-americans in this country had already been practicing and establishing islam in various uh various forms for you know three generations mashallah you know your your your comment reminds me of this article i read from a young scholar uh from the uk and the article was probably very intentionally incendiary in its title he said there was never any black contribution to islam and i was like of course you're going to read it after that he said because when you say a black contribution to islam you make it sound as if there is the central islamic activity and black people are contributing to it he said their activity was the central activity they didn't make a contribution all of that scholarship all of that civilization building like they were involved in the main formation it wasn't like there's this main formation and black folks made a contribution no no they were involved in that main formation so his article he said don't talk about any black or african contribution to islam no that that was they they helped shape what islam became as it emerged onto the world stage right i think similarly in uh the united states for a long time you could say there was never a black contribution to islam what black people were doing in the name of islam right to you know in in various capacities that was islam in america for all intents and purposes like that's what islam was in america so it's no contribution i think that you know um you know non-black muslim communities coming to america were put in a position that they really didn't ask to be put into right um you know you have people coming to this country many of whom are not coming for reasons of religion right they're really coming for reasons of upward mobility they're really coming you know maybe to escape political repression but alhamdulillah they begin to establish religious institutions and they just didn't seem interested and this is my read of that history they didn't seem interested in investing in what was already here it's like why you know didn't seem relevant to them right the add to that that the black american muslim community itself was going through a lot of changes and transformations in trying to kind of define its own identity and how it related to you know a more quote unquote orthodox you know version of islam and i think that muslims from majority muslim countries were just forced into the role of like authoritative arbiters because if they don't know what islam is who does right so in many ways i think uh look look you can't say this in chicago's i might not be able to get back into my home i think that that that that loss of authority um that that occurred in black american muslim communities we contributed to that man we we effectively disempowered ourselves and part of that really was buying into the tradition without an emphasis on gaining mastery in the tradition like that's you know it's like okay look quran was sunnah ulum quran and sunnah religious sciences but if i'm going to make this the center of my religious activity i need to gain some competency in this i can't make this the center of my religious activity and have to take it from other people because it'll be very difficult to be self-authenticating in a position like that and i think only now do we have people that are confident incompetent like dr. abullah like uh you know um imam zed shaker like dr. sherman jackson people that can deploy the tradition but do so in very um authentic but also personal ways and i think that was lacking for a long time so it was very easy to overlook you know black american muslim communities but i i i do hope that you know that is changing you know i do hope that is changing and then i mean the example you gave like about uh policing like community policing that's a good example you know it's aloha subhanahu wa ta'ala at least the way that we um the way that we first translate the aya says that he created us the nations and tribes lead to art of full right lead to art of full basic try just to get to get to know one another right this ta'aruf one of the things you learned with the ta'aruf is you learn sensitivity right you learn sensitivity you learn okay these are um sensitive areas in these communities from my time you know i i spent my first two years studying islam at a dar ulum madrasa so i learned certain things about daisies that okay you don't say that that's very sensitive that's a very sensitive thing you might not want to talk about that right i lived in yemen i lived in egypt i learned okay there's certain things you might not address in that way and only after significant trust was gained could i say why do people who i think are like religious people take the stimulant called cuts like that seems like incongruous to me like you like like to like be so dependent on like a drug that just that's weird to me man but i wouldn't just come out and say that right because i'm you know i understand that trust must be built ta'aruf must be done before we can have those kind of you know uh no holds barred conversations and that's to me that's an extension of respect but you find people they will enter black communities even though they aren't of the community and just air opinions about your police this and police that and you know education this and education that crime this and crime that family this and family that and i'm just like you're my shake and i love you but you gotta slow down you gotta slow down not we haven't even approached the substantive merit of what you're saying because what you're saying may have some substantive merit but you gotta build some trust first you you know you can't just i can't just come into your house and let me tell you about white people man let's the thing about white hold on i would say we just we just met you hold on now so i think a lot of this it would be interesting to me how those conversations look after trust is built you know how those conflicts you know it's like you know a very very publicized thing right and i want to get into that i'm in the bay but if somebody says something about the deterioration of the black family and we were having this conversation in my living room and trust was there i think this is something we should talk about but if that trust isn't established and you just say yeah this is this is not that's not important this is what's important well oh wait wait a second now it's not that what you're saying is substantively wrong it's like hold on we you know wait a minute we just respect respect and i think that's a part of to out of you know that's a part of to out of yes i'm intrigued by the idea of racism as a spiritual disease and i'm wondering if you can say more about the value of understanding racism as a spiritual disease as distinct from you know a character flaw a social ill flaw of reasoning can you say more about that please bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem well one of the greatest values of approaching something as emanating first from the heart is that it's applicable to everybody and this is one of the ways that i think as a speaker or as someone calling a person to something you uh you root your integrity see you find that because the goal is for the person to be receptive and you find that somewhat americans they have this recalcitrant like no i'm not accepting that because they think that you're singularly charging them with something that is like unique to them but when you say wait wait this is a spiritual disease that any of us could fall victim to i just think that white americans have a very vicious historical legacy of this spiritual disease you see i'm not saying that this is something that makes you subhuman or unhuman i'm saying this has been a problem and when we approach it from there i have found a little more receptivity a little more honesty in a conversation because sometimes i mean it's like look if you're conversing with somebody and your goal is to convince them to reform their conduct and you begin with you are bio deterministically inadequate in a way that you can never change that might not be a conversation start it might be like it's nice meeting you too but if you say look look look these are kinds of spiritual insecurities that lead us to this need to denigrate other people on the basis of arbitrary things that really don't mean anything and that these images that we have of blackness or hispanicness or arabness or even whiteness are things that we should challenge based on our encounter with the creation of a loss of animal to island and that to do so we would feel better because you know i mean the thing about racism is that the one that that that is is is enthralled to racism is really the one that's suffering not just the one that is is is experiencing racist abuse the person enthralled to racism it's like what a disgusting way to live like what like why would you want uh uh like what like what protection or what security do you think you gain in living like that in believing in such an ugly way what do you gain from that you know when the prophet salam addressed abu dar in the story that we previously told he said you still have some of this like ignorance in you and abu dar mashallah he wanted kamal al iman he wanted his faith to be complete so he went back in a tone for what he did but see the these were the sahaba and just to know that you know a lot of us has fed the entered into islam completely and with an attitude like that about this man's ethnicity some part of you has yet to really embrace islam he said i want to embrace islam i want to get myself together right so when you talk about it as a spiritual illness i feel like you um you leave the person room for redemption and um as a muslim i'm i'm i believe that no human being is beyond the pale of redemption i believe that i'm muslim um so sometimes even when you know and i and i and look i understand the need for catharsis you know like i get it man i get it like when you have been bombarded your entire life with anti-black views and some of us ashamedly we know that man there was a time in my life where i thought i was less intelligent less beautiful less worthy you feel not only guilt for having felt that but rage at the people you think made you feel that you're angry you're really really you know i you know personal story i was always a distinguished student until i became an adult and i went to a school that was racially mixed and it was a white if he's muslim that would be crazy but there was a white guy in my class named gary shelter and gary was also a distinguished student and whenever we were issued exams my goal was to finish before him and score higher than him like i like i feel like i had to do this for all black people and i'm talking about if gary submitted his test before me i would tear my test in half and my teacher would be like what has gotten into you gary told his paper in before me and she's like it's okay it's okay when i think about what i this was in second grade what was what was the world around me saying to me such that i had pressure in second grade to outperform this this this classmate i gotta be gary gotta be gary it's not true what they say about black people it is not true it is not true that is that when you think when it when i think about that it's enough to bring me to tears like i was a second grade i was in i was eight years old and i felt like pressure i gotta do this for my people as an eight year old boy i understand i guess what i'm saying is that i understand like that feeling of like uh rage and why we gravitate toward the most scathing critiques of white supremacy of white people and it's something they can never get rid of and this is just who they are i understand why we would gravitate toward that but i just think the call of islam is something higher than that i really believe that i think islam is calling us to see these as these are spiritual illnesses and there are spiritual cures these are spiritual illnesses and and there are spiritual cures so when malcom acts in that famous account in his autobiography says that he was making hudge and he saw people that were white but it's like islam had removed the whiteness from their minds that was a very mubash a very straightforward way of saying and i met people that they seemed cured of this thing and an admission from malcom acts that a cure is possible and if a cure is possible that means that this is a spiritual illness this is not something that's like bio determined no a cure is possible right a cure is possible we can actually aspire for greater harmony and an appreciation of each other but i do understand it man there's a lot of pain there man there's a lot of pain there there's a lot of pain there um you know there are uh things that you know a lot of black folks scarcely talk about uh in the presence of other people skin lightening and stuff for pain that when you think back on that stuff it's humiliating it's like that i that somebody incentivized me to hate myself damn subhan Allah what how and i'm a creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala like god created me this way and i was i would curse the darkness of my own skin man there's pain there man but i think in in in um you know approaching it as a spiritual illness i think you'll find people more receptive and you leave room for a spiritual cure i think that's the main you know advantage you know as opposed to talking about it as just something historical or something you know sociological you know and then the other part of it it's true you know indifigacity in the body there's a lump of flesh everything is everything emanates from the heart racism too so the question really is like man what what is what is in your heart that would that would you know cause this and there's some very interesting discussion about that some people say it's not insecurity rather greed some people say white supremacy is really just a a sub creation of avarice of greed right that we have to create some you know i was um i was um doing the shameless plug zaytuna podcast right and i was talking with uh uh muhammad professor muhammad falvin and professor laurence genuzi and in the course of the conversation they helped me to see that you know you had enslavement you know in the classical ages of the slime but enslavement was something that was seen as a part of like the vicissitudes of life like it wasn't something inherent to a person's being it was like they fell into this position just captured on the battlefield or right but in a republic where the government is supposed to be representative of its citizens the only way you can explain enslavement is that no no no this is inherent to their condition there is something about them that makes them primed for enslavement right and anti-blackness is a created that that is like the genesis of anti-blackness that no no no no no it's not like this just happens to be well you know this happened in in another situation they could be the masses and we could be the slaves it just happens to be that this is what the situation is no no no no no no enslavement is uh inherent to these people so you have to create all kinds theories to justify that mistreatment right that is legally enshrined and recognized and anti-blackness comes from there so some people say it's from insecurity some people say it's from greed you see we want to enslave them but we have representative government we have to explain that enslavement to ourselves how how can you do this if we're supposed to be a republic oh then the racism comes in thank you for sharing um uh i think you're it's nice that you're so um yourself as you speak and you're that can be a compliment or an insult no no no my husband's not but like you you're um the way you're humorous you're humorous humorous i'm just i'm just kidding i'm just so no i enjoy listening to you and um hearing what you have to say i think that um as you speak it it like it brings certain emotions up because um my husband is black so i i know like how that can feel like that feeling of of um overcoming like like the the indifferences um built in society uh and um just so like now being an adult you said it's different so um in what way is it different now for you i think it's different now because i recognize these things like i still catch myself doing certain things but i recognize and i'm like why am i doing this right what what you know it's kind of like i'm grown i haven't really i've had no run-ins with the law in a very long time and i'll still go into a convenience store owned by someone non-black and as i go into the aisle i would make sure that i'm holding up what i'm planning to buy so that they can see clearly that no theft is taking place then i said then why am i doing that like that's the difference in being oh like no i don't need to if i feel like that i shouldn't shop here and if i would you know you know patronize a store where the people feel that i'm a threat or a thief what's wrong with me so unless i absolutely have to even like in chicago like the the the out-of-own store with the big bulletproof glass you know i'm like if you're afraid of me then don't take my money if you're afraid of me then don't don't take my money and and then you know i i have people to say but obey man it i mean armed robberies really do happen in this neighborhood so what what do you want me to do what do you want me to do and it's complicated because i mean i have people that i think are like genuinely sincere proprietors and vendors that like wallahi wallahi i don't have anything against black people but i'm just trying to protect myself and and i said well you know you do realize that this thick glass right it conveys a message it conveys a message to everyone that comes into that store in that neighborhood right now for the people that have some criminal intent maybe it conveys the message and this is not the right place well for people who don't it conveys this idea that i'm dangerous people are afraid of me you know even the people that take my money and serve me they don't even want a modicum of human contact with me and i think that that message is dangerous quite frankly and um how we bridge right your need to be secure with the kind of messages we want to promote in these communities wallahi i don't know it's a it's a it's a it's a dilemma but one brother's name is amdallah ishme palestinian runs a uh you know fish and chicken restaurant in chicago we would have these conversations and then he just said you know what and until what comes out of law he just removed his bullet proof glass he said man i don't want to convey to the people that come into my store that i don't respect them or that i'm afraid of them or that i want their money but i don't want to get close to them five years hasn't been robbed anything like that nothing has happened to him in fact the people respect him more he's he's been able to form better relationships with his customers and he's complained of nothing except man just trying to keep up with all the new hires because the money is rolling in better so some people for them it's spiritual you know what i recognize there's a threat but this is this isn't conveying the right message man for me to be an outsider to the community doing business behind a thick glass making people stuff their money underneath the glass and until what comes out of law whatever happens to me happens i don't care nothing has happened to him can i add one more thing sir so earlier on you had said um about humanizing or like like what you said has been humanizing racism and it's kind of interesting like funny i don't know but so as a convert um already my family has to accept islam then i marry a african and then they have to kind of like um see like okay he's he's he's african i'm the i'm probably the first in the married african my family so and i was like you know i want them i was i was happy eventually like i was happy to bring able to bring his culture like our families came together and got to sit and and try different foods and those kind of things i was like i'm really like um that that is a form of like of a lot helping to them to bring people together so that's why i think i love being able that's one part of not looking like especially with love is when you're looking that's beautiful you know honestly you want to know something crazy about that my route to islam came initially through like a heightened cultural awareness and identification with you know my blackness and my africanity that like that's where it started for me like in like seventh grade eighth grade you know reading kind of that that black press that you only find at black bookstores right and that culminated in my embrace of islam but when i was really growing in my appreciation of you know um my heritage something that really crept up into me i hated seeing interracial couples whenever i would see i would be in downtown chicago and of course i mean any kind of interracial couple it angered me but if i saw a white man and a black woman and my my month was thrown off and then one day i was talking to two muslims married white man black woman it's early in my islam and they seemed like people that had such integrity in their relationship like he was good to that woman and she was good to him and it just it hit me like lightning i said these are two people that allah ta'ala his kudra his takdir has brought them together if i because of something i have going on have a problem with that i'm sick something is wrong with me i'm sick something is wrong with me but i was able to have that moment right this was something that i carried even as a muslim for a long time just you know i'll be seeing a salam sultan you can always come home you can always come home stop for a while stop for a while stop for a while what is this and then one day it just hit me man like but wait wait hold on hold on these are two people that allah ta'ala has brought together and they are together in matrimony upon the sunnah of muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and you have a problem with it i mean there's something that's wrong with you man and i was able to sit with that for like a couple hours just sitting in the room like you know what something is wrong with me there's nothing that isn't beautiful about that this is a man and a woman that love each other they have children they care for each other they worship a lot together they practice the sunnah of muhammad alaihi wa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam together what's wrong with it what's wrong with it so even for me you know do i want my daughter to come home with a guy to six fives you know an extremely intelligent african-american muslim very handsome sure i do but if she came home with any muslim practiced his dean worshiped his lord strove to emulate his prophet alaihi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam i got i got a problem with that something is wrong with me something is wrong with me something is wrong with me and i i'll say that publicly anywhere i got a problem i think there's something wrong with that something is wrong with me right so i just hope that your family can can get to that place through seeing the integrity that you all have in the relationship where it's kind of like you know this particular couple in chicago i just said if two people were made for each other is definitely the alien might you know if it's two people made for each other it's them it's just that's that that means for each other when people have integrity like that you know i think it has the power to melt away some of those biases you know what i'm saying we just three minutes if this lecture goes any longer i gotta call a real time yeah we're just three minutes away from isha but i do want to give i'm moving to the bay i want to give time to our online viewers we have quite a few and one question that came for sheikh uh real quick here is about um defeating the implicit bias and using that to defeat the hate that's out there and the questioner's asking specifically about the soul of our spiritual purification and using that to purify and cleanse the implicit biases we have embedded in us you know the the the thing about um to soul wolf as a as a as a discipline is it just encourages self-awareness you know the the biggest difference i see in people committed to a path of um spiritual discipline is that they don't take for granted that everything produced by the self is worthy they're willing to to sit with something produced by the self and and identify it as that's from my own weakness right that's from my own spiritual malnutrition or underdeveloped like that's that's something for me that's nothing to do with that other person and i think that people that don't um have that practice uh it's it's much more common for them to take whatever is produced to their heart or their mind as somehow indicative of truth like they feel something it must be true because i mean i you know i saw a black man walking down the street and i decided to cross the street because you know you know i felt it that might have nothing to do with that man and everything to do with just you right right in fact you know i find that um when we are more reliant upon allah subhanahu wa ta'ala there's less need for any of that and almost every facet of life like you know it's almost like when i think about implicit you know bias even though some of it is you know inevitable right um when you're aware self-aware you're able to catch it much more right so give you an example um here's a good instance of implicit bias many black american professionals that speak in professional settings they say that they can actually feel that people are listening to them waiting for a single solar system a single grammatical mistake so they can say i don't know how we got through berkeley man he can you know you know his subject doesn't always match his verb right but somebody from the uk will come make all kinds of grammatical mistakes and it's simply regarded as just a regional regional dialect so local flavor he didn't know way invalidates his intelligence it's just you know but in the case of a black person it's like you know and this this can be a person that has a jd from harvard he says a sentence the subject doesn't match the verb then she had affirmative action man affirmative action man i said you know but when you but see this is the this is that that that that you know spiritual discipline piece by trying now let's just say it's the favor of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that this person has you know um you know is a very accomplished person is a person that you know has the work ethic and the drive and you know inherent ability to achieve what he has said to have achieved or to occupy the position he occupies my question is what do you gain through attempting to invalidate him will it make you feel i don't know like something has been denied to you that you should i should be the one in that position see that's a spiritual thing that's a a lack of kana'a a lack of contentment do you feel like look at this i i'm working under this guy that's allah gave that person that what what what what what what's behind your need to deny her or deny him or why do you want to believe that they're undeserving of what they clearly have what is that and this is what i was saying about trying to get back to uh kind of a spiritual outlook that what is that where does that where does that come from so like implicit bias i think is a good place to like where does that come from what are you like what what's i guess my question is what's in it for the nuffs a willingness to ask that what am i getting out of that if i say yeah this person uh has some nefarious kind of what am i getting out of that to say well i'm better because i don't or what what am i what am i getting out of that and i think the soul will help us with that a lot thank you very much you sheikh uh so really quickly before we have a dawn for isha i want to mention that uh sheikh abdallah abans along with dr heffey unis dr onia what uh sheikh rami anasura a lot of other local scholars and i will be speaking tomorrow night at five o'clock at the hillton in new york which is just by fremont you can go to at mifta.org for a circle uh for those who are watching online to to um do that and then for those that are here you can get 30 off for your ticket tonight uh by going to the sister and brother there in the lobby and you can get registered they did cosponsored tonight so that's and we'll have another one for isha jizak lafey sheikh