 very possible because I was a philosophy major in college so I often say things that I don't even understand so raise your hand and ask me to clarify if you have a more substantive question I would ask that you save it to the end and if it isn't immediately connected to the subject at hand if I can't answer it I will try to answer it by way of clarification however I am not a sheikh I'm not a traditionally trained Islamic scholar so I cannot answer a shit question for you and so on and so forth Masha'Allah you have many such resources in the Bay Area who can do that I am someone who thinks about and and love studying about and and trying to understand Islam as a faith as a culture as a civilization historically and going into the future that was my introduction so what I wanted to talk about tonight is the future of Islam which I think is something we don't talk about nearly often enough we often and for good reason talk about the past sometimes we talk about the presence but we rarely ever meaningfully and thoroughly talk about what the future will look like there are some different reasons for that one of these if I'm honest is because I think our communities are not confident we don't believe that we have a bright or vigorous future ahead of us we are often afraid of what lies ahead as opposed to thinking about the opportunities that may lie ahead but secondly and more importantly religious cultures stand at odds with the modern world in one very fundamental way the big difference between societies in the past all societies Muslim or otherwise and the world that the West has created is not technology or science or democracy these are obviously big differences the main difference is newness this is the big thing in the pre-modern world outside of the West most people did not assume the future was going to be different from the past let alone that it should most people believed that their grandchildren would live lives very similar to their great grandparents if your grandparents married from within the same village and practice the same culture in the same profession five generations down the road you would too the West produced a break and that unleashed immense power when you began to think about what does it mean to plan for the future what does it mean to shape the future what does it mean to dream of a different or better future as well as incredible instability right because suddenly just because something is new often means it is good so you've seen this if you have kids or you are a kid right you see that whatever is new is good and whatever is old and old means like four years ago is automatically embarrassing and bad right we live in this constant present this amnesia about the past and eagerness for the future so that for Muslims is often a little bit off-putting we don't know how to deal with that especially since we anchor our identity in the past so I wanted to talk about that and I'll talk about it through the book so a long story short five years ago I remember about growing up Muslim and I titled it how to be a Muslim it was actually a story about how I often tried to be Muslim and failed it was about struggling with Islam trying to make sense of my Muslim background and what it meant to be Muslim in the world and you know a number of people bought the book thinking it was like a how-to manual on how to be Muslim which it was not and I'm not qualified to write that book and nevertheless after a year the book did reasonably well and the publisher said to me would you like to actually write an introduction to Islam and so I said yeah sure why not that's actually a good idea I've spent about 16 years of my life most of my adult life teaching about Islam mostly to audiences that were not Muslim and so I had a decade and a half of experience so let me do that let me talk about what Islam is so the first thing you do when you want to write a book is you sit down and cry and then the second thing you do is you start buying up or going to the library or downloading or whatever it is the books that people have already written on the subject because the worst thing in the world is if you write a book somebody's already written nobody wants to do that right so what you do is you I you know got a big pile of books introductions to Islam and I read them and read them and read them and there were many good ones right I won't tell you which the good ones were the bad ones were because you should buy my book first but the important thing is there were a lot of good ones but most of them did this one thing they introduced Islam through facts and figures through chronologies timelines maps sectarian movements these are Sunnah this is shay right and these are all important things I'm not discounting that but it felt to me like something really fundamental was missing and the thing that was missing was the explanation of why right so I'll give you an example right you all live in a blue state I live in a red state right although if summer my wife is listening she will insist it is a purple state that has momentarily lost its mind but nevertheless the last two elections at least Ohio has voted for the Republican candidate for president right so as we know and I'm this is not a surprise to anyone right Republicans and Democrats often look at each other like they're crazy and often in our conversation we can't seem to imagine why people do the things they do and I remember once reading a book about Islam in Lebanon by a man named Augustus Norton which by the way is one of the greatest names ever but Augustus Norton said something in the course of this book that's really important to understand most people aren't crazy actually most people think in the exact same way the difference is the assumptions they start with are different so if you start from two different places even if you're moving in the same way you're very likely to end up in a different place and then the experiences you have the information you collect in the course of your life pushes and pulls you in different directions so it like I'll give you a simple example if you believe that everything you have in life was due to your effort alone right which is an assumption it's effectively impossible to I mean even know how to examine that right then if someone comes along and says hey we should pay higher taxes and support XYZ program to help the environment or help people who are less well off you'll say that's crazy someone outside might say that's selfish but for that person it may very well be that that is a fully logical and consistent position if you believe on the other hand that everything you have comes from someone or something else and someone says you should share that it may feel totally natural and normal to do that and someone else would think that person's crazy what are they gonna do in the future if they just keep giving their money away how are they gonna plan strategically for their kids or grandkids if they're just giving money away left and right without thinking about this so neither person is actually irrational they just have different assumptions about the way the world works and then they act on it so I thought to myself one of the problems mainstream American audiences have is we don't make sense to them like why would you do the things you do it's very strange and yet if you understand the larger concepts that animate the Muslim worldview then everything makes sense it's like you know I have a lot of friends growing up who grew up in very Muslim households but no one ever told them why they were supposed to do the things there's they were doing does that make sense right so like you had to fasten Ramadan you weren't supposed to talk to girls you had to wow I got shy that's kind of amazing see everyone should write a book you get shy so you know in effect if you don't know why you're doing something then the obvious thing that's gonna happen is someday something is gonna come along and knock you sideways and make you question everything and if you don't have a good reason for doing the thing you're doing you're probably not gonna keep doing it and so I thought I would write a book about like what are the big ideas of Islam the ideas that that really shape who we are and why we do what we do do you have a question no maybe Captain America yes how are you can you take my book yes because I believe everything was not due to my own effort so you can come and take it but I need it right now because I need it for the talk so I can give it to you after I'll sign it to do you want to sign it to Captain America or someone else because you have the shirt my name you want me to sign it to Haroon your name what's your name Ahmed okay it will be to Ahmed slash Captain America that would be a plot twist if Captain America was a kid named Ahmed at MCC East Bay nobody saw that one coming but yes you you got yourself a book see initiative wins the day okay so here's the thing so then I thought to myself I want to write a book about why Muslims believe what they believe and so I talked about this in the earlier today that there's this philosophical distinction and I'm sorry if it's really boring but I'll make it make sense between description and prescription description is tell me what something is and prescription is tell me why so I'll give you a simple example right if if you say for example how do I drive from here to there or how do I turn on the washing machine or how do I do X Y and Z that's a description right I'm just telling you how to do something right how do I turn on the microphone prescription is should I right is it a good idea for me to do this or not as a simple example like from an Islamic legal perspective right you can ask the mom how do I get married right and the mom will get will give you a list of you know these are the conditions and this is the Nikah and you know X Y and Z that doesn't really answer should you get married right that's a completely different and much more difficult question to answer right that requires a lot of thought so as I started I started with just description right this is what Muslims believe this is what our faith is about and then as I was writing this something really profound happened it real I realized that these are actually things that more Muslims should be thinking about especially for those of us who are parents who are educators who are community leaders who are hadeebs or imams that we should begin a conversation about our core concepts our first principles so that we can better pass them on to our communities to our families to our congregations to our colleagues to our audiences what have you whoever it is so that we can share what it is we believe and why we believe what we believe does that make sense so I started looking at the concepts and the one I want to talk about today is one of the main concepts in Islam which I think is vital to the future of Islam and that's this which is sometimes hard for people to hear but I think is really important namely this idea of Khilafa caliphate and I don't mean the political caliphate right so don't like get too panicked right if your heart rate's going up just let it come down right that's not this talk don't worry brother when he was a little bit concerned he's like who did I invite what is happening here where are the exits fortunately they're all very clearly marked Khilafa and I'll get into it in more detail is this Arabic word it's a feminine word incidentally Khalifa is also a feminine word that means something like a power of attorney right so what's the power of attorney you need to enter into a contract or or basically something very substantive is happening you're delegating someone to act on your behalf right we do something similar in hospitals end of life situations if God forbid someone is really ill you say I appoint this person it's a proxy to make decisions on my behalf I have a living will right these are ways that we make up for the fact that we might be absent or unable to act and Khilafa in the Islamic concept begins with the Khalifa of God the Caliphate Khalifa the Caliphate of God the story of Adam and Eve and I'll get to that in more detail but effectively it says Adam and Eve may God be pleased with them peace be upon them and subsequently every human being including all of us in this room are Khulafa we are Caliphs of God which means we have been given authority in different ways and forms to live out divine instruction in the world another word could be a custodian a steward a caretaker in the old-school translations from the 19th early 20th century they use words like vice-jarrants which nobody has ever used in any other context so I don't really like that word because mostly when you say that word people get very confused but that's what happens in the colonized by the British so you know and what it means is we all have this distinct moral status and here's what I want to say about the future the one thing we know about the future and that we've seen just in the last few years with climate change with COVID with war in Ukraine is that you probably don't know what's coming somewhat but a lot of it is unexpected the world moves faster and changes faster year after year after year what that means is that no Muslim identity is going to survive unless it comes from a place of deep conviction and it can only come from a place of deep conviction if we educate and empower as many Muslims as possible especially young Muslims to live Islam on their own resources right if you teach a kid how to drive at some point and there's no formula you have to let them get on the main road right there's no point at which you say this person is 100% ready you have to put them in a situation where there is danger otherwise you never master the skill if you shelter a child excessively the child will never develop a core faith and at some point you will no longer be in the picture and the child will be on their own resources and if they don't have a strong sense of faith the faithful crumble communities and institutions will not be enough because we no longer live in a world where religion is inherited for most people in history they just did what their parents did I'm not saying that's right or wrong that's another debate I'm just saying that the conditions are changing faster and faster and so what we need to do for the future of Islam is to focus on the concepts that empower us to get through what is coming and what that means is less focus on big picture thinking and more focus on smaller communities local communities accountability transparency and what I call religious confidence the ability to believe that you can live and shape communities on your own I'm not saying community is an important don't get me wrong I'm saying that when community grows so big that the average person the average attendee disappears within it and can basically function on autopilot that community is probably too big and if people don't have the ability the confidence to understand that this is their own responsibility that faith is not going to survive does that make sense so I will give you an example when I was younger and unfortunately it seems like this is constantly the case in the Muslim world there were a number of crises in the Muslim world right so I grew up long long time ago in the 20th century and some of the crises that were happening in the 80s and 90s included Kashmir Palestine Bosnia a little bit later Kosovo Chechnya right more recently there was the war in Syria there's still Palestine during that time and now what's happening to the Urghur in East Turkestan and Western China right these things continue to happen or broke out and often I would hear people say things if only Muslims were more united they would even say it's because we're bad Muslims that we're disunited and certainly there are people who are ostensibly Muslim who are bad actors who don't seem to have the best interest of the umad heart but one thing I noticed over and over is that even among people who seemed like good religious people it seemed like the more religious they were the more they fought sometimes unfortunately literally but even in community context otherwise very pious people seemed to constantly disagree with each other and couldn't come to terms and I thought to myself how can it be that if someone is pursuing the same path and the same discipline that it makes them more likely than less likely to disagree with each other and here's what I realized it's actually a design feature of Islam and I don't think we fully understand this or the implications any faith tradition any idea any philosophy any collective form of life has different values that exist in tension if you go too far in one direction you become imbalanced and your society won't survive right so if we had a society that focused only on selflessness and had no room for selfishness then someone would just come along eventually and take everything because there's bad people in the world right if you tell someone never get angry that's actually terrible advice because someone will come along and take advantage of them and sometimes anger is righteous you have to stand up for your rights or the rights of others right I'm you're hurting someone I'm upset that doesn't mean you react unthinkingly but the emotion doesn't have to come from a bad place but if you only tell people to be angry right then you get what we see in a lot of America today where people are just always angry and then you can't have a society of people can't forgive each other or see each other as human similarly in the tradition of the Prophet peace upon him we see values that pull in different directions why because sometimes you are poor sometimes you are rich sometimes you are healthy and strong sometimes you were frail and ill and one thing doesn't necessarily apply at the other time right if you are strong and powerful then you then you should be meek and kind because you can go too far but if you are weak physically socioeconomically and you embody meekness that just invites people to take advantage of you and you see this in simple things like when you know for example the Prophet peace upon him would tell his companions different things in the same situation why because they were different people they needed different advice for where they were in life and we in our religion have something similar we have on the one hand a narrative that we must be a community that we are brothers and sisters in Islam but on the other hand we have two principles the first is that all of us are we are all Caliphs which means we are all accountable to God which means no one can pass the buck to anyone else no one can shirk their responsibility and you cannot say on the day of judgment it's his fault right you have agency and the second thing is that fundamental to our religion is that the Prophet Muhammad peace upon him is what the last prophet and therefore after he passes from the world no one can reproduce his authority if they claim to then they are effectively saying they are a prophet which is blasphemy which means if you take these together the more seriously you take Islam the more you realize your own accountability the harder it is to seed ground on an issue that is important to you I give you a simple example if your family wants to go on vacation and maybe this is not a problem for you in California but it seemed like a good example when I was in Ohio right like and you know half the family says we want to go to the mountains and then half the family says we want to go to the ocean right unless you have some really pressing reason probably the adults in the room should be able to figure it out and find a compromise right like it's not the end of the world if you could go on vacation Hamdallah that's a great thing right so you make the most of it but imagine the tougher situation imagine for example you have two kids one's going to college and one's a year away from college and you've planned all along that they're gonna go to one of the UC schools the tuition is you know it's more affordable it's more within reach it just makes sense and then you find out your son your elder son has gotten into his dream school on the other side of the country except the financial packages in that great and now you're gonna sit there and think to yourself well you know we were saving we were splitting the money between the two kids and we were doing it half and half but that was on the assumption that we're gonna go to a school nearby where the tuition because your in-state is better right but now there's this opportunity far away but there's all these new costs and that means dipping into the fund for the other kid and what are you doing that situation right when there's a lot on the line it's not easy to agree not because you're a bad person but because there's a lot on the line and religion is like that if you were making a choice that you believe has implications for eternity you're not gonna simply say yeah sure we'll just go your way it's not that easy right if it's what color is the carpet in the mustard you know I don't I imagine that's not really an issue on which the community is gonna divide but if someone says hey we have five thousand dollars to spend this year and a few people say we should spend the money on education for new Muslims and someone says no we should spend the money on programs for youth right now you have a harder conversation because they're both good causes but it's not clear where you you know it's not an easy decision and there's no person in that situation who can tell you decisively what is the right thing to do you don't actually know I mean you have knowledge and information but there's no conclusive decision so what I'm trying to say is that it's not surprising that Muslims historically and presently disagree with each other so much because it's part of how our religion functions the beauty and strength and challenge of Islam is that it doesn't locate authority in a pope or a church or a centralized institution that makes the big decisions for everyone else it locates authority in every individual it's liberating and it's terrifying it's those two things at once a brother came up to me after the hook about earlier today at San Ramon Valley Islamic Center and said how do we balance fear and hope and it's a good question because if you have no hope that's not a good place to be right but if you have no fear it'd be a terrible human being right I was talking to someone once and you know they were asking why does religion push you and I said well if you never get pushed and you just constantly think you're a great person you would basically be a fascist right like you would be a terrible human being if your worldview just validated everything you did right but if on the other hand your religion as you understood it demanded so much of you that it was impossible you would break down it's a lot like exercise or work you don't take a 12 year old and put them in med school right like that would be a bad idea especially if you were the patient on the other end of that right also if you're going to the gym for the first time in ten years you don't go do what the guy's doing in the corner who's the trainer unless you talk to the trainer first right it's it's simple but you also don't sit there and do nothing at all and so for us as Muslims what I am proposing in the book and thinking about quite a bit is this idea that we need to as Muslims lean into and I'm sorry for the expression I couldn't think of a better one the character of our faith to accept that disagreement is built into the DNA of Islam it's what it's not actually a weakness unless you take a very narrow short-term view it is what has allowed us to survive for centuries unchanged sometimes we measure ourselves by other people's standards we say why don't Muslims have this why don't Muslims have that why aren't Muslims like this faith community why are Muslims like that faith community do you know what we have that is amazing that's effectively impossible to find in any other faith tradition if a person from the time of the Prophet Muhammad peace peace be upon him we're to arrive here five minutes before Makhrab they would probably be very confused you guys are wearing really weird clothes you're talking in a language they do not understand right there are like weird glowing objects in the ceiling there is cold air blowing out of holes in the wall it's very strange right there's a lot there's giant machines like moving around making loud noise and I guess unless you have a Tesla then you know they have to like manufacture the noise but you get it right it's a very weird world a lot of it would seem like magic or insane it would be very weird I mean literally many of the fabrics we're wearing did not exist right let alone like what the heck is this and yet when someone calls the event they know exactly what's happening name one other faith tradition in which the forms of worship have survived unchanged from beginning till now zero you can go anywhere in the world I mean assuming you have the resources and go to a musket and pretty much know what's happening within two minutes you might not know the language you might not know the culture you might say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing in little ways but effectively the worship is almost exactly the same that's why in the United States Canada other countries like immigrant countries with immigrant communities of Muslims people come from all over the world and pray together with not really that many problems I mean yeah it's like oh you put your hands like this we're like little things here and there people you know like they put their feet on each other's feet they're like some daisies are not that quite as comfortable with that we're a little bit weirded out right but like you know 99% of the stuff is basically the same why first of all why aren't we proud of that our theology is the same no one in first century Christianity had a concept of the Trinity literally historically did not exist it's not there the rabbinic tradition in Judaism did not exist in the time of Moses for example in Joshua didn't exist worship was anchored around the temple in the time of David and Solomon peace be upon them it's a different religious tradition I'm not saying this pejoratively I'm saying we focus on weaknesses instead of strengths but what made the strength possible is actually the difference in disagreement because it keeps coming back to individuals and for some weird reason we stopped focusing on that as a source of strength and saw it as a form of weakness and now that we are facing a modern world in which more and more authority will go down to individuals and more and more will come down to local communities we are pulling in the wrong direction and if we are worried about kids and I'm sure probably all of us are in some way shape or form and if you're not because you don't have kids yet right and you will the minute you have kids right you will start worrying about those things you have to realize that the only thing that's gonna get them through the only thing is by giving them the tools and asking them to walk to do it on their own and they may fail there is no guarantee I mean there never was a guarantee anyway that's not in our hands the judgment of each is for God and God alone right no one can take anyone's agency away but to simply expect that people will do things because I did things is definitely not gonna work and so the idea in the book the central idea is this idea of hilafa as human agency that God creates Adam and Eve as caliphs on earth meaning what you screw up you mess up and you can come back to God but you will screw up you will mess up you will disagree and yet you can still make it work what makes an ooma is not that we are part of the same political formulation or the same ideology that we march and lockstep no it's actually that we agree to have a conversation around the same text do you ever try to teach a kid grammar right like it's really annoying right grammar is really frustrating right nobody likes grammar I'm a writer I don't like grammar I don't even know why I write half the things I write I've just internalized it because of good teachers that oh we don't say that right if there's a witch as opposed to a that there's a comma before the witch there's no comma before the that like I don't even know why I just know these things right but why is grammar so important it's the same reason why your apple pay counts it's a shared set of rules that enable us to talk to each other if I just start spouting gibberish that's not communication that's narcissism right it's not and religion the way our religion function is we agree to have a conversation around certain texts does that make sense and the final point I want to make because I know I think we're I don't know brother how are we doing on time we're okay awesome okay so the final point I want to make is that this idea of agency and religion of I'm so excited I'm knocking down my own microphone it's because the microphone is a Khalifa I don't even know what that sentence meant that's the best part but it grammatically it was correct so that you understand so here's the thing we formed a civilization over centuries where we shared and debated around ideas and beliefs and practices so the amazing thing is that very the early in Islamic history our umma was politically fragmented this is a fact right from literally the moments after the death of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him there was disagreement among the companions sincere and good people disagreed on what to do next by the time of Hazrat Orthman the third Khalifa may Allah be pleased with him there was all out armed conflict between Muslims right by the time of Hazrat Ali may God enable him it's it escalates and then you have the omayeds they take the caliphate and turn it into a monarchy they move it you know this history right and yet the amazing thing is that from and I want you to process this for a moment in the 1600s there were organized Muslim commercial expeditions to Ireland and Iceland there were Muslim surveyors working for the Ottoman Empire in Achean Indonesia and in Mozambique in Southeast Africa and there was a Muslim Khanate the Sibir Khanate that bordered the Arctic Ocean so effectively in what we call the old world there were Muslim communities in a meaningful sense everywhere we have from the 16th century evidence reputable reasonable comprehensible evidence that Muslim traders in Indonesia traded with the indigenous population of Australia they were not cut off from the world weirdly enough they never really thought about like killing them all or taking their land they just did business with them right like what a surprise I hate like what a novel idea and yet they were not these Muslim communities are not part of the same political entity and yet they shared ideas poetry language they worship together at Hajj right they were part of a shared space trying to force political unity would have actually caused more disagreement and more dissension and more harm but the texts and the ideas and the practices were shared in such a way that produced a world in which you and I live where the core concepts of Islam are unchanged from the beginning which is itself it's from God but God had the wisdom to create for us a faith that enables it to survive in different times and places and what I want to say then as a final point is that I talked in the beginning about frameworks right if you start with an assumption your mode of thinking isn't necessarily different right so this is simple right if you know you see someone wearing something that triggers a feeling in you your way of engaging with that person may be different now to someone else to be like why is this person being so hostile or being so skeptical or something like that right they get very confused isn't that so you know I've I've had this interesting experience in my life where I sometimes I'm ethnically ambiguous right so people think I'm different things right depending on where I am so I went to Miami a few years ago for program with the Muslim community down there and everyone assumed I was Latino and I'm not wrong with that I'm just not and so people would start speaking to me in Spanish and then I would say I'm sorry I don't speak Spanish I took five years but Mrs. Zimmering in like 10th grade summer's high school just couldn't cut it and my Spanish is like just garbage right so like and some people got offended and thought I was like a self-hating Latino right like that I just I'm ashamed of my identity I'm not ashamed of my identity just you know also my word is terrible but that's another story right but so there's the theme I guess so maybe they were finding something but here's my point the information you have shapes your your approach on things and sometimes we have this tendency to see Islam in the West as opposites right Muslim culture and American culture is two different things and actually there is this tremendous overlap and I don't just mean in the obvious fact that we are Americans and we identify as Americans we live in America and all you know all of these things that are surprising to some people in on some news channels right what I mean is that American philosophy Western philosophy starts with this idea the American tradition especially that rights come from God and so government can't take them away you know I'm from New England and I have a baseball cap I feel kind of terrible because I wore it to a Muslim conference recently in Texas where there were a lot of British Muslims and it's a colonial era slogan and then the Queen died and I felt like maybe it was a little bit like you know a little cringy like I'm sorry but fortunately didn't know what before the flag that we know is the American flag was designed American colonists in New England marched to battle with a flag that had a tree on it that said appeal to heaven why because the authority everyone imagines supreme was the king and every European society the king is appointed by God so they said we are appealing to God over the king and we have a right to be heard because we are asking God not the king and the king can't stop us so they articulated and it leads from there directly to the declaration of independence that these rights are in alien and so in the foundation of America you have an idea that is similar it's different texts different sources but there's a similarity that's really important that rights are from God and you're not supposed to pass them off on any you're not supposed to deprive anyone of them we have a similar concept that we are all qualified we are all created by God for a reason and we are held accountable for what we do what is now missing an American society is that we are losing ethical traditions whether they are faith traditions or otherwise that emphasize that rights are responsibilities I don't mean in the sense of imposition I'm not arguing for that I think you know especially for minority but not only for minority a pluralistic and neutral state is ideal what I mean is that if you can't govern yourself through individually in his communities you will have a dictatorship or you will have chaos and it is not coincidental that Islam traditionally doesn't like either of those things and what we are losing in America is a narrative that emphasis emphasizes our ability to restrain ourselves and this is not a left or right thing I see this frankly in a lot of parts of American society is hedonism this idea that limits are artificial and unhealthy whether that is in terms of how we conceive intimacy with other people or how we use resources the idea that there should be limits that there should be temperance that there should be modesty and humility is seen as anathema it's offensive and yet if you cannot limit yourself someone will have to come in and limit you and that person will not have your best interest at heart and so I think that we need as a community to one focus on our first principles in order to pass them on to those who come after us who will have to succeed after us right at some point in the relatively near future none of us in this room will be in the world anymore and whether this room is still used for a halakar or what have you is up to the people who come after and that's partially our responsibility although we are not wholly accountable for it but we have to make an effort the second thing is those principles are not identities or ethnicities or cultures they are moral values and therefore they are for all people and we should be and I'm not saying this to your community specifically from everything I've seen you have a wonderful community I mean just to Muslims generally need to be a little bit more confident instead of defending our faith we should be articulating how our faith can be lived out in the world and not just by us how our values are of benefit especially now in an America that seems to have lost its mind in a kind of zero-sum contest between left and right there is a need for alternate ways of looking at the world and if we allow ourselves to be caught in a spiral of polarization and I hear this often you know Muslims should be Democrats or Republican values or Muslim values no a 1400 year old civilization that is meant for all times and places cannot be limited to one of two political parties in a brief moment in time in one corner of the world we are bigger than that we have broader horizons we can't be limited and the third and final thing is a culture of moral restraints is not just good for your soul it's good for our society and we should share that and build on and so I am actually cautiously optimistic for the future I think we will have enormous challenges I think it will be difficult I think that some of the decisions we have made as collectively mean we will lose people along the way because we didn't invest in the right things in the right places but our faith is not controlled by us in the sense that it is given by God and it is secured by God just like the Quran is protected by God and if you make an effort that effort is rewarded and that comes down to I think over and over again this idea of Khalifa of being a Caliph of standing up and being a grown-up and we don't do enough of that we have an American culture that lives in a kind of permanent adolescence that's afraid of responsibilities and what really are people who are willing to take responsibility so with that I will close thank you for your time and I believe we have space for questions just let me know if you have a hands up and I'll come over with the mic we'll have to use the mic because there's people watching online inshallah raise your hand inshallah that means I did a very good job you did an excellent job for like what is he talking about oh there is a question right here oh there's a question there too all right let's say this is first just the zaka love that insightful talk so you're I read your book it gives me a lot of hope in the chaos that's surrounding us if you had to give advice to a younger Harun or let's say my children two things that we need to think about when we're presenting Islam to the Western world in our schools or in our workplace or how do we the way you say that we need to present it with confidence what does this confidence look like that is a great question so I will say that to me confidence implies two things calm and courage and so a person who frenetic response to events instead of thinking about where they want to be and how to get there is not acting from a place of confidence and we as a community often react and and this is not I'm not blaming us you know like we live in a world that that invites us to respond to everything at all times right that's one of the wonderful gifts of instant communication right but if you are constantly responding you are not actually planning anything you're not building anything you're not focusing so I think a framework that allows us to withdraw that doesn't demand being pulled into everything is part of confidence and courage implies taking a leap a leap of faith I read a great book recently by a gentleman named Russ Roberts who is a former U Chicago economist and it's called wild problems it's a very slim book and he basically says why is it one so hard for people to make difficult decisions and two why are economists so bad at helping people make difficult decisions right and and what he says effectively and he uses Darwin as an example and it's actually quite a funny book that we misunderstand big decisions so he says for example one of the most common decisions people face is should I get married or should I have kids and he says this is what Darwin did and don't raise your hand if this is you but if you know it just feel shame inside he made a chart and said pros and cons right and literally should I get married right and he was like someone to talk to right like I get bored right like cons won't be able to do as much research right might get annoying right like not even getting right like this you know like actually he because he's like he's a rigorous scientist he wants to spell everything out and he says what's the problem with that I mean it seems logical right like if you say should I live in Chicago or should I live in San Diego right like you can make a list right like maybe is this maybe it's that you know I you make a list right he's like some problems are different because when you come out the other side you were not different in terms of how you use your time you are a different person he said so ask anyone who is a parent even when you're miserable your sense of self is completely different because your parents he gives an example if you take a purely utilitarian calculus voting is a waste of time your vote doesn't really count I mean you're in California definitely doesn't count right like I'm like you know I mean if you think about it as long as enough people vote like let's say you're you're on the left right as long as enough people vote that candidate will win the state why should you waste your day you're better off making a few hundred dollars you know renting out your car or I don't know whatever right like doing some deliveries or something right and and rashly makes sense because no people get offended because voting is fundamental through identity I'm a citizen this matters even if it doesn't matter right in a numerical sense it matters existentially and and what I will give you this is as an example and I'm sort of going a little bit farther or feel but you know if you think about marriage if you think about parenting people don't think that on the other side you are a different person and it's not about you know I'll have less time to watch Netflix which by the way you will right but it won't even matter the things that on that side mattered seem kind of weird on the other side and vice versa you change who you are as a person and so for me confidence is the calm the willing to be the willingness to take the world slowly not to rush into things because you don't we don't know how significant a thing is unless we're able to step back from it and try to appraise it with some you know with peace of mind if we're constantly pulled in one direction or another we're not thinking rationally and and we see a lot of this in American culture now we just jump from cause to cause without and one thing I will say for Republicans that they've done very well is they act politically disciplined right whatever you think about Roe v Wade they've been working on that for decades right like the gritty boring work of sitting there and making like voter lists that is not glamorous or exciting they're doing it right it's patience I'm not saying that therefore calm itself is you know enough and then the second thing is courage is the willingness to step in and do things and not in a way that's irresponsible but the willingness to challenge yourself I will say for me as I'm I'm a stepdad the biggest change in my life came in becoming a step parent and I could not have imagined before and after how big the shift was because it's not simply that oh I have a new responsibility as in you know I got like a new portfolio at work no it's like my fundamental sense of self and my relationship to time and existence and eternity is changed and so to me what we need from Muslim communities is a little bit more focus on the local a little bit more focus in general and a willingness to make hard choices not recklessly but not in the sense of simply passively sitting there and letting the world go by at some point you have to enter into the arena right it doesn't mean you enter into every fight and get into every argument I don't know if that answers your question but to me that that is part of it yeah yeah you're welcome I think there were a few more questions all this is very good shy I don't know where the brother is who made the chai but it's good shy I'll be awake till Thursday now I was curious given your philosophy background and given obviously that the nature of the book if you were ever when you were writing it tempted to start leaning into like political philosophy and critiquing it and critiquing like forms of government how do you mean say more what was that sorry how do you mean like so I it's been a really like recent interest of mine like political philosophy despite the like that I graduated microbiology college but sort of looking at a macro level of how sometimes different forms of government are aren't actually compatible with different belief systems and so I was curious you know the sense that I get from this book is that it's a very sort of like individual by focusing on your so inner self your your local self if you will and I was wondering if in the course of you writing this book if you were ever tempted to address sort of the macro level of things if that makes sense you know that actually makes sense so I've been thinking about this a lot it's not in the book so the book actually was pretty much finished before COVID started it was delayed a little bit because of COVID in the process became a step parent a lot of things that were more abstract in the book became like very immediate and impactful and then other things that I thought were important felt relatively less important but one thing I've been thinking about a lot recently is so you know I live in Ohio as I've mentioned right and it's a wonderful place to live but I lived in New York City for a long time and lived in a very coastal bubble I grew up in England lived in New York I imagine you all are in your own coastal bubble congratulations it's very nice at least you have palm trees so here's the thing I was initially really surprised by how many Muslims support Trump it's actually a very large number right I don't know what the landscape is here again in different communities different places but certainly where I am and in many other Muslim communities are large numbers of Muslim voters for Trump and that's people who are self-reporting right so there's probably even more they're just at this point still hesitant to say and you know I was curious to investigate why right because I I see strengths in conservative and liberal narratives and I see weaknesses I put Trump aside as a uniquely problematic phenomenon in so far as he does not support constitutional democracy so I see that as a fundamentally un-American concept right as to whether you're a Republican or Democrat to me that's a legitimate political conversation you know that you know we could have all day or all year whatever but I just I wanted to make that clear for what comes next so what I noticed is that among you know some Muslims it was purely fiscal you know like lower taxes isn't that but a lot of them focused on social issues right their values are closer to my values and you know the question I often ask is which values right like it I don't think it maps out that neatly right and and so you know but I like exploring these questions and and where I think we as a country have to really go is I think that faith and morality are our best left to it spiritual and religious questions left to local communities in a democracy like ours and government is better off focusing on issues that we can work together on so infrastructure healthcare climate resilience so on and so forth that's not political philosophy in any deep sense I just I think that for a long time as Muslims we focused on big picture thinking without focusing on the local and in so doing I think it's very to kind of your question it's very easy to put the cart before the horse and and get too far ahead of ourselves as I may have done in that question so yeah okay thank you thank you this is really insightful my question is really around the idea of starting with your local community could you tell us some tangible examples of what that could look like or do you have communities in mind that have done really well in this area yeah so I will give you a personal example something a Shaykh once said to me which I think was very profound is you should have multiple teachers and I have translated that to mean that you should have multiple sources of your faith and the reason is because if you put all your eggs in one basket that basket may break and often what I've seen in in Muslim kids who grow up in very narrowly religious households where they are not allowed to have interests outside of strictly Muslim ones is they lose their faith like that because if you have invested everything into one thing and you have no other outlet then if you are struck by some kind of calamity right personally communally institutionally you have nothing to fall back on you have no social networks you have no friendships or relationships you have no consciousness of the world beyond the very thing that has hurt you and so that can mean abuse that can mean you know behavior that is unethical that can simply mean a divorce whatever it is there's no there's nowhere to go and so everything falls apart because it's sort of like you know it's like if you cut the end of your tussby all the beads fall off right because there's nothing holding them in place and and so what I have taken that to mean is that every person should have multiple sources of faith because it makes your faith more resilient right in the same way that you know you should not take your news from one source right I'm not saying different news from anywhere but you know it you know you should not have one type of friend you should not have only one friend you know what I mean like that friend may be busy that sort of thing so you know as an example when I was at NYU when we were very young I was 21 9-11 happened we were the largest Muslim community in proximity to ground zero and we had fortunately started giving our own hotbas and the day after you know our leadership team met and said at this point we cannot allow anyone to speak in the mustard like we don't even know what's happening but we can guess we cannot allow anyone to speak in the masala unless we know who they are intimately and we we know they have our best interest at heart now this was a very difficult decision to make because none of us were in the traditional sense like she'll we didn't we were not traditional scholars and yet we understood that given the the paucity the the dearth of qualified people who were competent people right just because you know how to give a hookah doesn't mean you should give the hookah right we had no other choice and what I mean to say is that you know kids should learn these things right you should know how to give a hookah right it's really weird that we don't teach that you should know how to speak publicly you should know how to like balance an account right I don't know why we don't do more practical knowledge even in a religious space but I'll give me a simple example I'm when when I moved to Ohio you know I got married recently we live in a multi-generational household so my wife's parents are with us we're all together right and we didn't go to that the aid them as they eat Salah the the first year of COVID because we were we thought like at this point there were vaccinations we're like better to be on the safe side right and this is very hurtful because it was sort of like does this mean we're never going to the mustard and so we did our own I'd Salah right I don't like again I don't know the validity I mean it was sort of an extreme circumstance but this happens people go to places where there is no mustard or you know they're not welcome in the musthers so there are two musthers in proximity to us right and one of them is a much bigger kind of stereotypically suburban mustard than when I can I take the kids there that's where I often go although the parking lot is a bit of a disaster so sometimes just you don't have enough time to get enough so I go to another mustard but the other mustard puts women behind a wall and I refuse to take our daughters there I believe I have to go there and this is my own calculation that Juma is an obligation I owe to God even if I don't like the way the musthers is doing it I have to do it right but I don't think that they should be in that space I don't think it's respectful to them especially at this point as as young women who are who are developing a faith identity I don't want them to associate their faith with being behind a wall I think that's obscene right it's completely unnecessary and you know so that's my point right so it's you know if you were in a situation what do you do if that's the only musthift right what do you do if the the mustard is simply too far away and you know these are little things and even you know it's not even that right like I'm sure every family's practice we try to pray muffled up together every night and you know sometimes it doesn't work his timing this and that but we try right and I often encourage the kids to do the odd my wife does as well afterwards or youngest he leaves the prayer and then we often ask the girls to leave the door why because we tell them we don't want you to think that because you're women you don't have a role and we want our son to know that like just because you can leave the door and he does a really good job I'll be honest the result if you're listening go to bed East Coast time and what's happening but you know he does a great job but we also want him as a young man to be conscious that if you are in a leadership position you should be conscious of everyone else in the room and bringing them in you know that doesn't mean that like they're gonna go ahead and form a community but like your family is a community right like some people are blessed to be able to go to the must do all the time a lot of people is really far away or their job doesn't permit it you know like they maybe they're working two jobs or they don't have enough cars or whatever it is right you can pray at home but you should have the confidence to know how to pray at home right you should have the confidence to know how to do a draw and everyone has different levels of capability but that gets to the point of confidence I don't mean confidence in like go like give a footwork like if you can't do it you shouldn't do it but like there are certain kinds of religious practice that you should be able to do on your own and I think one of the beautiful things about Islam as a religion and this to me is evidence of the fact that it's universal is we have like the most Spartan faith in the world you really need almost nothing to do your muslims right like a clean place on the ground and like enough clothing I mean you don't need like an elaborate structure you don't even really need a prayer rug right I mean you kind of need to know where the sun is but I mean the sun is kind of always there don't have to carry the sun with you right it's kind of amazing it's a very portable religion that before the modern world and people thought nothing of traveling thousands of miles religion was given to people who thought nothing of traveling thousands of miles so I don't know if that answers your question but hopefully does yeah also I really recommend the chai you should have a cafe thank you other questions we have one question online maybe we can answer that inshallah sure so the question is how can we make our Muslim organizations more diversified how can we have women on the board African Americans on the board so I'm a bit of a heterodox thinker on this one and let me explain myself because I don't want to be misunderstood I think it is fine if people want to form a community that holds to their particular understanding of Islam right I do not believe in imposition I don't believe in forcing open spaces my response to that to the earlier questions is the right response is to empower people to create communities that they feel comfortable right and then you work together where you can and you agree to disagree if we're lucky you know where you can so you know for example you know where I live there is a new community immigrant community that's growing in numbers and in wealth and they have decided to build their own mustard now maybe that's not a bad like they're not going with the muster that exists that they attend right now they're building their own maybe that's not a bad thing because you can't fit that many people in a muster anyway right like I don't know but you know like for example there are ethnic groups that have gone through severe trauma right like genocide ethnic cleansing if they want an ethnically tailored mustard I mean I'm Punjabi there's like 200 million of us like I don't feel endangered right and I don't mean that flippant right like if you come from a culture that has been persecuted and attacked and you want to preserve your culture in the name of religion I mean it's a little bit there's some tension there but I can't say I don't understand the impulse right it's it's normal for human beings to want to continue their culture and there's nothing by that fact alone on Islamic about it but what I think is to your questions is we should enable people to found their own spaces now what I do say is that look if our religion has certain features then we should accommodate them in different ways so for example most Muslims you know the vast majority believe that a mixed gender prayer should be led by a man right so our imams are men right so that means that you have an imbalance so what you should do is you should work into the administrative structure of the masjid a balancing effect right so the president of the masjid should be a woman or the chairman of the board should be a woman or you know there should be a female scholar in residence to balance out the imbalance right so if the vast majority of your population are you know let's say of a certain ethnic group right and as a Pakistani it's like often we tend to like ruin everything with our prodigious growth rate right but you know they're just a lot of Pakistanis right okay so you have to actively seek out ways to involve and engage other communities that can mean term limits that can mean you know creating youth chairs and you know I mean and this is there's ways to do this that are creative if you can't do it if you can't break through and that happens and there's reasons or you simply don't see eye to eye right like you know there are Muslim communities where for example they don't believe from their understanding of fiqh that the khutbah should be in English now if someone really believes that that is there that is their right I can't force someone to do something that they don't think is right but what I can do is encourage people to start their own masjid and I don't mean that in the sense of creating fit now simply saying that's if that's how you want to do it then that's how you should do it I don't I don't believe that we have to force things so if there is a Sunni community and Shi'a community like people don't have to abandon their commitments to be to work together that's kind of strange and from a democratic culture that's very strange right we can work together all the time people do it all the time right people form lines at stores people like figure out how a four-way intersection works right this is totally normal you can like you can find ways to cooperate and if they don't they don't work and and that's simple you know it's the same with Sunday school if someone is passionate about believing that the Sunday school should focus on hith for example on memorization and some other folks are passionate that it should focus on no you know x y and z then you don't have to agree right I think that there's actually strengthened that because then one of the advantages is then the next generation has a community that has skills distributed more equally and more meaningfully does that make sense so it might in the short term feel bad but in the long term it actually resonates you know a friend of mine and and you know this so a friend of mine was visiting he's an Imam he was visiting the Netherlands and he was taken on a tour of one of the Muslim neighborhoods and he had the great it was so funny I don't think he meant it as sort of a profound statement but it came out that way he was going through the neighborhood and there were two mustards like side-by-side and so the tour the guide said this is the Moroccan mustard and that's the Turkish mustard and so my friend like doesn't mean it offensive he goes to where do the Dutch Muslims go right and then there was a moment of awkward silence like nobody had thought about this right but you know I mean let's say you know a large number of white Americans convert to Islam and they don't necessarily fit into an ethnic mustard that's fine can have their own mustard right and then you like many people like different musters do I mean the must together right they do an aid celebration together it's totally fine I don't that's me personally I don't have a problem with that it doesn't bother me as a Muslim I think that's simply the way Islam works and that was what I was saying in the talk is that when you have a if you believe you are accountable to God then you are making the best decision it's no different than the fact that in this room you know I'm assuming we're all Muslim many folks are parents if you ask nitty gritty questions on parenting styles you'll probably butt head no one believes that like someone should come in and say no your parenting is wrong I will parent your children right this is very strange right it's the same thing with communities this is this is the community this is how it works it grows it changes if it doesn't accommodate you you know you have one foot in maybe and one foot in other space that works awesome I feel like I'm answering your question to a laptop it's a very strange sensation yeah oh two questions very exciting being a parent and also being inheriting or having inherited the religion itself I felt like or the last decade or so it's been more of like a learning journey for myself to rediscover religion for what it means and I thought when you talked about in the Jama'u Khutbah around the beauty of Islam and how it's very different was something that I feel like I'm discovering now and as I think about educating kids my kids on what the religion can mean and specially contextualizing it the way you put it as teaching them how to do do or leave Khutbahs or those kind of things I feel like even I don't know how to do that right let alone teaching my kids how to do that do you think there's a space in the community and the educators within the community should be taking the initiative to at least guiding parents if not children to do that more so so then we can propagate that further because I feel like the point is great I don't think a community lacks resources like I struggle finding Muslim storybooks in the libraries or even otherwise right so that's just a starting point I feel like the resources are very scarce good quality resources what are your thoughts on that yeah I think you know this is this is a beautiful thing about communities right that no one person embodies themselves everything right so a community functions you know when you have a diversity you know to the point at diversity diversity of experiences and talents right so you know for example yeah I teach some of these things but that's where I chose to concentrate my time and energy right like I'm a person who did Islamic studies and graduate school so it's it's a different trajectory right but everyone brings something to the table in more ways than one so for example the youth program at our local must do this run by a young gentleman who is actually a soccer coach at a local college and he's quite talented and so he has a knack for knowing how to motivate kids right like you don't want to watch me play sports it's like an insult to many levels of existence right like this is not you know what I did but I'm with you I learn a lot of things and you know I one of the things I really I was as you probably tell is very bookish kid right like and you know when I was growing up the jock nerd thing was like really real right so like either you were a jock or you were a nerd right so either you played sports or you read books and there was very little overlap and then the people who did overlap were the worst people in the world it's like how can you be smart and good at sports that's not fair right also this one friend Mark Martinez in case he's watching he was like really good looking like like super muscular great at sports and like really smart and the nicest guy in the world and it's like what am I supposed to hate about you right like you like you don't have anything wrong here like what it like how is that fair right so other than mark right is that one example of a problem right like here's the thing I actually learned a lot too like you know the kids are very into sports and that's actually encouraged me to start going to the gym one to keep up right but to also the recognition like that's a part of my life that I'm missing right and you know I like the fact that the must have has all these sports programs but then I'm also conscious that there are a lot of kids who don't play sports and so where does their point of entry so everyone has something they can offer in some way shape or form and contribute to the community in whatever way it is you know having doctors around is an immense benefit right like I really do wonder in a country like ours and I'm saying this fully recognizing how incredibly provision makes me sound like as a they see from a certain generation like every other person I know as a doctor right but like really I mean you know if there's a problem you've 10 people to call like right there on your phone who can prescribe a medication come and see a kid and for a lot of Americans don't have that like imagine how terrifying the world is you don't know any doctors you may not even have health insurance so what I'm trying to say long story short is I don't think it's about focusing like you don't know how to do something like I do think the community should provide those resources but it's also like what can you provide and I'm sure there's lots of things you can provide that other people cannot provide and it's about creating a more resilient community and connecting to kids in ways that help them feel like meaningfully engaged and involved right so to me that's that's what it means is modeling a sense of Muslim this right that is confident that is comfortable in the world and that has room for different kinds of people you know that can be a writer that can be a doctor that can be an entrepreneur that can be a VC person that can be you know a house husband or a housewife whatever it is there's something that that person has to contribute and a strong community is one that finds ways to pull those people in and say how can you then give back share this knowledge share this expertise one of the coolest things and I'm sure a lot of colleges do this everywhere when we were doing this we were very young in the in the late 90s is like professional panels you know and it's you know that's really impactful and oftentimes I will say if it comes from someone other than the parent the kids are more likely to take it seriously right the parent says it's like yeah whatever right like that's not we don't believe you but then someone else comes and says so I don't know if that answers your question yeah yeah because I can love her for the way beautiful lecture thank you and I haven't read the book but I'm looking forward to it so my question actually touches in a lot of the recent questions as well which is the generational advancement of Islam in let's take our country for example the US because people coming from I came migrated actually so I'm like I consider myself like zero generation but I have kids the first generation my wife actually was the first generation because her dad is the one who migrated so so we have but it's kind of like again this is I think common all of communities should we and related to to the topic of your book as well so some of us were came or whatever some of the folks came migrated either they are really like playing from persecution or or trying to find like the freedom because the freedom is not there under many Islamic countries and some of them come and is located you know that they carrying a message to deliver or whatever some very very limited if I will but but the point here about this the first and second and third and fourth generation which is gonna come which is start appearing right now there are a lot of these should so do you recommend that the culture come with the folks and should like prevent teaching cultures at all and let the new generations live though the life of their community here and just be history lists from from what the culture came in because some of a lot of negative things came from wherever overseas or should we still keep some of those cultures wherever and so the recommendation is should we teach the Islam as an absolute or keep in our communities in an absolute Islam and try to really prevent any culture cultural impact or preferences or should we take a little bit for here and here and there so that's a few can touch on it's okay yeah that's a that's a light question so I appreciate a software and an easy question that's a good question so I will say a few things and again I'm saying this not as a chef so I'm just telling you someone just you know who thinks about these things a lot so take that with a grain of salt or whatever spice you prefer so here's the thing if you don't have a sense of hope for the future you're not gonna flourish but if you are not anchored to the past you're not gonna flourish either you need two wings to fly and so kids do need a sense of where they come from not if it limits them it's dangerous but it gives them a sense of solidity and history and belonging it's meaningful so I don't believe I mean let me put it this way there are kind of three in my like very I'm actually writing on this right now there's three there's three kind of ways in which Islam asks us to submit right there's one way in which we have very little freedom of operation those like Ibadat right you have to pray right you don't really have a lot of room for you know how right there's something you know like for example if you're a man you know these parts of your body should be covered nobody's saying like you have to wear shawar kameez or a soap or you know that's up to whatever I mean you know if it's cold it's raining whatever right but yeah yeah of course yeah yeah how you pass it on yeah okay I understand it question better now so I will say I don't think that I think that let me put it this way we should teach people how to do things when they are young right like if any of you is like over 30 and has tried to learn a language it's really hard and if you watch the five-year-old learn a language it's like painful to watch because it's so easy it's like your brain is like why right and and there's something to that right so that's the wisdom of classical education is you teach the laws and you don't teach creative thinking at five there's nothing to create right like you're not that smart right like you're fine right your kid you have to learn the foundation then you play with the concepts as you mature right it's the same with writing if you don't know grammar you're never gonna be a good writer but if you only stick to grammar you will be a boring writer right so I am a big believer that we should teach kids how to do things but I always say I mean a lot of them I don't know like we're all kind of just trying to figure this out as I say I say to them I'm teaching you how to do it so that when you go out into the world if you want to choose this path and I would be sad if you didn't but but it's not my choice it's your choice and you have to answer for it then you at least know how I'm giving you the tools right it's the same way of saying if you teach a kid how to drive I'm teaching you how to drive because it's important what you choose to do with that car ultimately I can't control right like I can tell you so we upset if X Y and Z happens right but I I am literally giving you the ability to drive away right if you go to college somewhere far away nobody's monitoring you so I can teach you like how to find the table I can teach you what times to pray I can give you resources so that if you choose to do that it is easy but the choice is yours I think it is we have to strike a middle way if we don't emphasize it what we are saying is it's not important and if it's not important you won't and many kids come back to it I will say that many kids in their early like late teens early 20s drift away that's I think that's quite normal right especially in this culture this time but they come back as the responsibilities of life become real like oh now I have a baby like oh my god right what do I do with this your whole like I said earlier with Russ Roberts the book your whole sense of self-changing if you don't have the tools you are walking around blind right my hope is the idea sink in they make sense and they they come back to the surface over time some kids Mashallah they just they're very diligent they're very good they stick with it some really struggle and we respect the struggle right it's the same thing in the time of the profit piece around me literally the profit was right there and some people took like 15 years to convert and some people heard it once and they you know they were like this is different personalities right and some people never did and that's as painful it is that's a possibility there will be kids of Muslim families who choose not to be Muslim we live in a pluralistic society as reality if we push it too hard they will associate it with imposition not with choice and that's dangerous but if we don't emphasize it then what we're saying is it doesn't matter you know like it it's it's meaningless like I will tell you this this thing that really struck me and at first I was like proud and then I was terrified because I realized the hubris Cincinnati's very Catholic town city whatever very the original kind of white population was very German Catholic Italian that kind of thing so like your parish this and that like really matters right so the Catholic schools all play each other in sports all the time and you know the kids love to go to the games because they're like big events you know like it's like when you're growing up sports you know rivalries and stuff for a big deal so I went to one of the games and I sat far away so I don't embarrass the children right you know and vice versa I suppose and the Catholic schools they start with a prayer and they start with the national anthem well the prayer the national anthem right so in the name of the father you know so on and so forth and then they cross themselves the parents about 60 per 50 60% of the parents cross themselves guess how many kids did and the vast majority of kids are Catholic guess how many kids did yes zero not one why I don't know my guess is the parents have confused socializing with Catholics for Catholicism so they have like you know a Catholicism of you know cultural institutions and that's fine that's how some people do it that's totally fine but if the idea is to pass on faith I don't know and maybe it's just you're in high school it's weird right so like you don't want to be the one person does it you actually do it we don't want to do it in front of other people like those are all legitimate questions and our community is not somehow magically immune to the same trends that are we live in the same society right but it is interesting to think about that faith identity is something that is very hard to know how to pass on because if you push it hard and it's forced and imposed it's not a choice and then the second thing I will say is that if you are given freedom to test the boundaries a little bit when you're at home you don't lose your mind but if your first experience of freedom is when you were in college and you can do real damage to yourself it's a lot more dangerous so there is something I think to be said for you know saying like yeah you know this is a choice I'm not gonna you know like force things on you know and and I don't know I could be wrong you know maybe an approach that is all love and and no memorization is the best right and maybe your purchase all memorization no love although that doesn't sound particularly promising but you know I think it's a fine line and I think you know to your point in culture I don't think culture is a bad thing I think there's a lot of wisdom and culture it anchors us and if we denied it's actually more did you know it's how some Americans say I don't see color it's sort of a weird thing to say right like you know like where do you live right like who are you right like these things matter not in the sense that they differentiate us but they they they affect how we experience the world right so I have an example if you have an interfaith marriage I am always a little bit worried when I hear about interfaith marriages because I think people underestimate the challenges inherent in them but even intercultural marriages and by no means is a Muslim am I against Muslims from different ethnicities to marry each other I think it's beautiful but you have to really go into a very mature because you may think that the things that are Islam are cultural practices and if you are not capable of having matured difficult conversations about what does it mean to accommodate your family and my family you know my parents will express this you know like you really need to like do a lot of work to make it work if you can't do that you're setting yourself up for disaster that doesn't mean that just because you marry in the same ethnic group everything works out you know hunky-dory but at the same time it's an awareness of these things so to pretend like there isn't culture is not healthy either right you can make a decision like okay I don't want to do that I want to do that and things like that but you have to at least acknowledge that this is where we come from this is the norms we live in our shaped by and then we determine our relationship to them as we grow older yeah hope that made sense awesome yes minutes before sure Isha Prar we have any final questions here no I think we'll wrap it up awesome thank you very much everyone Salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh