 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Allahumma salli wa sallim ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa ashabi hajma'in. So the topic that I wanted to discuss today or to begin with is something that I feel needs more of a place in our communities and needs more of a mention. And that is the story of Al-Hajmal al-Shabaaz, Malcolm X, and today is the 55th anniversary of his assassination, of his martyrdom, of his shahada. And so I believe it's very fitting for today especially to remember what he did, who he was, and what he did for Muslims and Islam in America, but also worldwide, and how we can bring that into our lives, especially the lives of our children and so forth. And that's one of the the topics for the Boys Halakah tonight is we were going over in some of the groups the story of Malcolm X and we asked a number of them, you know, do you know Malcolm X? And a number of them said no. They had not heard of Malcolm X. Now we didn't try this here, but if we were to ask them, have you heard of Martin Luther King? How many of them might know that? It might be a good indication of what our society has, whose story is being told. And narrative is very important. The story, like who tells our story and what is the story that is being told? So for example, when we look at stories in the Qur'an is full of stories, what was the story that was being told about the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? What did they say? Well, yes, they did say he was sadaq al-ameen, so they recognized that he was the truthful one, but once they started realizing that his religion, if people follow his religion, they're going to move away from the old Arab ways, what did they start saying about him? He's a magician, he's a liar, possessed, right? All of these stories. And you see this that they tried to push this narrative consistently wherever they went. When the Muslims felt oppressed or not felt oppressed, they were oppressed and they made their hijra to Habashah, the first hijra to the land of Ethiopia under the king and Najashi, Rahimullah, because he became Muslim and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam made a janaza for him in absentee. And actually, you know, some people, they will pray janaza in absentee and they use this as a proof and that it's a valid scholarly opinion. But others said, no, this was something specific, khas that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam did for the king, Najashi, which makes it that much more important. In other words, it was not his sunnah to pray janaza in absentee, but he made an exception for a Najashi, to honor him for what he did in protecting the Muslims when the Muslims went there. But when the Muslims went there, who came to a Najashi to tell them another story? Right? He said, oh, the Muslims, they're telling you this, this and that about you. We got the other story. When the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam went to Taif, what did Quraish do? They also went to the leaders and they started telling the story, their story, their narrative, their version of who the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was and it affected them. So the leaders of Taif, now they have two stories. They hear the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and what he's telling them, who he is and what he wants to do in their community and that he wants to get a safe haven where he can teach, unappressed and yet the leaders of Quraish have told their story and so who do the leaders of Taif go? They go with the Quraishi narrative at the time. Najashi was guided by Allah subhanahu alayhi wa sallam and he could see through that narrative and he didn't accept that narrative. But constantly, in fact they used to put Quraish, used to put people outside or there was a place where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam used to preach. We used to teach people and call people to Islam and there were pathways that led to that place. So one of the things that Quraish did is that they actually hired beautiful singers, women who were singers and placed them along the pathway to misguide people. So people would walk and they hear, okay I heard about, there's a man named Muhammad and he's teaching. We want to go find out where he is. They probably ask around to where we can find them. You take this path and then they go on the path and they find these beautiful singers and they could get distracted and so there was this economic push. It wasn't just, oh we don't like what's being taught there and we're not going to, and you know, we don't like it. They were taking active measures. I mean imagine how much money it takes for them to travel to Ethiopia from Mecca. But they did that. They traveled to Taif. They hired these singers and in this ayah or this situation is the ayah where Allah says, do you not see, maybe somebody can remind me of the Arabic, the one who spends his money. There's a, we can look it up. Maybe somebody can look it up. But you look at the person who spends his money to distract people from the path of Allah. But it was talking about these people who used to set up the singers to distract from the Prophet. So this battle of narratives, who controls the narratives is very important. It's very important to realize and it happens all of the time. It happens all of the time controlling the narrative. Even Iblis, we can also, it's not only controlling the society. We also control ourselves. We tell ourselves something and then we make a decision based on the story that we have convinced ourselves. So what did Iblis, and before he was Iblis what was his name? Azazil. He wasn't an angel but he had a name like the angels. We hear Jibreel, Mika'il, Israfil, all the Eel. What does Eel mean? Allah. It's the name of Allah in Sirianiyah and it's the language that the angels speak. And so when you hear Eel, Jibreel, Mika'il, Israfil, Eel, Eel. It's like when we say Abdullah, Abdulrahman, you know the slave of Allah, the slave of the merciful and so forth. All of those names are names indicating that they're there, you know it's a name that has the name of Allah in that person's name. His name was Azazil, which means servant of Allah with a specific meaning. So when he was Azazil and he saw what was happening to Adam, that he was going to be given this position that he wanted deep down inside, what did he tell himself? What was the story that he told himself? I'm better than him and I'm better than him and then he had back up, he had proofs. You created me from fire and you created him from clay and then he went on, you know, so he's he deluded himself, he disobeyed Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with this story that he told himself. So we have to be very careful of the stories that we tell ourselves and this goes in whatever situation. I mean, if we think for a moment, think back five years ago or 10 years ago and think about maybe or maybe two weeks ago, think about a characteristic about ourselves or an action that we used to do that now we no longer do it and we hate that action and when we think about ourselves, when we used to do that, we cringe and with that stuff, I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I convinced myself that that was okay because we told ourselves a story. We told for whatever it was, we told ourselves a story and we believed it and we kept telling ourselves this over and over again. In fact, the brother mentioned a book about a couple weeks ago, we were talking about forgiveness and he had mentioned a book called Forgive for Good, right? It's called Forgive for Good. I'll share the links online. It's a very good book. I started reading through it and one of the things that he says and the author says and I didn't realize this, this is like there's a center for forgiveness, research on forgiveness in Stanford. So his whole book is research based about forgiveness and how to incorporate forgiveness in our lives. Very interesting, all research based and but one of the things that he says is the inability to be able to forgive people is that we tell ourselves a grievance story. So somebody hurts us and then we tell ourselves a story about that. Yeah, he did this and she did that and he shouldn't have done that and she should have done this and so then now we keep that broken record, that story, we're in the car, we're thinking about it or we're talking and we tell ourselves that story and he says what happens is we latch on to that story and we kept telling ourselves over and over again and it's not the original thing that the person did to us that's hurting us. It's this story that we keep telling ourselves over and over and over again and it's hurting us and so we would be doing a favor to ourselves first and foremost to forgive people and he goes through a process and maybe next week we can go through some of those points about forgiveness but the reason I'm mentioning that is because part of the inability to forgive is the grievance story. So stories are very powerful, we tell ourselves stories all the time, we tell our kids stories, we tell our community stories, thank you so much. And society tells stories and that's now we're saying we're in an election year so everybody's telling stories, right? So the same guy who a few years ago supported the NYPD surveillance of Muslims, now he's trying to, I'm not even going to mention his name in the best, but he's trying to get the Muslim vote by saying oh I don't support the Muslim ban. So now he's telling us a story. The story is you should, oh Muslims, you should vote for me because I didn't support the Muslim ban but hey wait, you left out the chapter about you supported the NYPD surveillance of Muslims that was targeting Muslims and that was found to be illegal and unconstitutional and so forth. So we have to be very careful about the stories. In fact I wanted to start the series of the prohibitions of the tongue because we went through the book on the rights of parents. And the interesting thing is the first prohibition of the tongue that Muhammad Mollud mentions in his book is, beautifying what the sharia has made despicable or ugly and the opposite is true as well. So making beautiful what the sharia has made ugly and making ugly what the sharia has made beautiful. So as an example, the hijab, it's something that some Muslim women choose to wear, maybe some women are forced to wear, who knows what's going on in their lives, some women don't choose to wear it, but ultimately the hijab, is that a beautiful thing? And the sharia or is that an ugly? For even for people who don't choose it, is it a good thing? So if it's a good thing then we should be telling a good story about it. But in the news what is it portrayed as, especially in the Islamophobia machine, what are some of the stories or the catch phrases that they use to describe the hijab? Oppressive? Right? Oppressive of women. But they don't tell that same story when it comes to nuns wearing the same exact clothing. So what's going on? They're telling themselves a story that they'll accept the nuns is not oppressive clothing, but the hijab is, or a Muslim man wearing something to signify his Islam, a beard, a kufi, a thob or something, you know, they could say things about that. And on and on, even sharia, the sharia, right? The story's about sharia courts. An interesting thing that I found out recently, and this is good for us as Muslims to see how other religious communities are dealing with maintaining their religious identity in a time where so much is being done to push away people's religious identity in the cartoons, in the late night shows, in movies, in books, in speaker circuits. They're really trying to push away not just Islam, but just there's an agenda to remove religion from the life in our society. So when we look at other religious communities, we can see what have they done. Well, one community are the Methodists, and they have a book. It's called The Book of Discipline. Now that sounds pretty already. The title seems kind of like, you know, strong, right? The Book of Discipline. In The Book of Discipline, they have a sophisticated way that they have worked out that for the church to put clergy or congregant members on trial for things that they may have done or said that goes against the church's principles. And they have it all set up. It's in all in the book. This is how you choose the judge. This is how you choose the representatives, the lawyers. This is how you choose the jury. This is how you make objections. This is how you submit evidence. This is how you do this. Like a whole trial system. Well, what does that sound like? It's a court system, right? If the Muslims did that, same exact thing, and it's interesting because they have certain things listed out, and they say if a pastor supports this, this, or this, we're going to, we can actually get him out of the church, but we have to go through this trial process. If the Muslims set up the same exact thing, what would they say we're doing? Sharia courts. And all these people who are passing legislation against Sharia law. And so Sharia just means law. Jesus Christ had a law. That was his Sharia. Moses had a law. It was his Sharia. When a Jewish community chooses to eat kosher and follows all of the rules of kosher, they're following their Sharia. They're Sharia law. When the Methodists choose to set something up and say, we are going to protect the integrity of our church as we see it, and we're going to have the Book of Discipline, and we're going to set up our court system that's not part of the judicial system here, but it's something that, you know, they're not doing any implementation of punishments. It's just like you're no longer going to be part of the church if we find you guilty of such and such crimes. That is a crime to the church, not to, in the law of the land. Well, that's a Sharia court, right? But the story doesn't allow for Muslims to do the same thing. So one of the things that the Jewish people of Medina who did not accept the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam as a prophet, they knew him and they knew the description of him to the point that how does Allah say that about them, about their knowledge of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. You know him or they know him like their own children, their own children. So just like if you don't, you don't have a picture or anything of your child, but somebody says, describe your child. You're going to describe his or her features, their character, what they like, what they dislike, their personality. You're even going to be able to describe things about them that they don't know, like the back of their head, right? The back of just their actual back. We can't see our backs. Our parents saw every part of us. We can describe our children down to a very, very detailed description of what they are. That's the way the scholars of Medina, the Jewish scholars of Medina, knew the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. The other question is, why were they in Medina? Why was that sub-tribe of Bani Israel? They were related to the great prophets of Musa alaihi sallam and Haroon alaihi sallam and Ibrahim alaihi sallam and Ishaq alaihi sallam, Israel alaihi sallam, Yaqub's other name, Israel. What were they doing in the middle of the Arabian desert? For hundreds of years to where they had taken on the culture of Medina. They had Arab names. They had Arab poets. They participated in a lot of the Arab traditions, including the Jahlia wars. What were they doing in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula? They were waiting for the final prophet. But when he comes and he's not exactly what they wanted, now he's an Arab from Bani Ismail, from the children of Ismail, then some of them rejected him, some of them accepted him. And the ones who rejected him even though they know him in the scripture, they had to start telling another story because the story in their books, they knew where he would come, what he would look like, the description of his hair, the description of his actions, everything. One of the children of one of the scholars in Medina, he was looking through the Torah and he found two pages were stuck together. He was like, what's this? So he saw that they were glued together. His father had glued them together because when he opened it up, he found an exact description of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So they knew him. But then they started covering it up with different stories and so forth. And so this is the ayah where Allah says in the Qur'an, Do not literally give libas in shroud or cloth. Do not clothe truth with falsehood. And you know, and you are well aware of what the truth is. So we have the truth, we have the reality. The Quraysh, actually the brother mentioned when I said, what did the Quraysh say about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Long before they said that he was majnun or a sahid or a sorcerer or so forth, they knew him as al-ameen, a sadaq al-ameen, the truthful one. So that was the original story, the true story. And then they changed it. And so Allah is telling the Jewish scholars of Medina, don't do that about the Prophet. Well the principle that we get from this is that if we see something that's truth, we call it as it is. If we see something that's falsehood, we call it as it is, even if it means that we did something wrong. So how many times have we in front of our kids, our spouse, our parents, our friends, coworkers, we've done something wrong and we say, you know what, such and such is wrong. Well you do that, any parents ever get their kids to say like, you know, you don't have to raise your hand, but you know your kids will, but you do that, you know, you're teaching us the Prophet did this, but sometimes you do that and then you realize, you know, are the mistake and now we have two choices. We can make a story and say, well, you know, there are exceptions and I had, you know, or we could just say, you know what, son, daughter, Habibi, Habibi, you know, you're right. What I did was wrong. So we can tell the true story. So let's not clothe the truth with falsehood while we know. And this can, you know, we can use this and so you see this in so many different ways, especially in the media. So if somebody goes out and kills 50 or 100 people, what do we call that? Mass murder. But when the U.S. Army drops a bomb on a country, on a hospital or a place in Iraq or Afghanistan and the same body count occurs, what do they call that? Collateral damage. Collateral damage is very, language is very, very powerful. So you go to anybody and you say, you know, when they say support our troops and, you know, thank you for your service and like, well, what if somebody had murdered some, no, no, no, no, no, no. They didn't murder people. That was collateral damage. So we can, we can tell our, we can tell ourselves stories and make us think about things in other ways. So we have to be very careful about the stories we tell ourselves, what we tell our society, what we allow our media to tell us. So I preface all of that to say, when we look at the legacy of Malcolm X. Why is it that we have a Martin Luther King day and the kids get off right from school? They're home. Martin Luther King day. And rightfully so. He did a lot for this country. So sure. Yes. Commemorate him. If they've commemorated other people in this country, people who have done good work, let them be commemorated. Why isn't there a Malcolm X day? There's Martin Luther King boulevards all over the place. All over the place. Where are the Malcolm X roads? Now recently, did anybody see in Turkey the road that the U.S. Embassy is on in Turkey? The Turkish people changed the road to call it Malcolm X boulevard. So now the U.S. Embassy in Turkey is called Malcolm X boulevard. I don't know if that's, that's, that's true if that was photoshopped, but the photos look, look true. Maybe somebody can look it up, see if it's actual, it's not a hoax or urban legend. But we don't have those, those stories and those reminders. So we have to do that. When we look at a person like Malcolm X and what he's done for Islam in America, we have to commemorate him. We have to commemorate what he did. We have to commemorate the sacrifice that he made that on this day, when he went to the Audubon ballroom, he knew there was a chance there were threats against his life. So he knew every time he went out and did a public speech, there was a chance that this could happen. Well, what did he do? He actually called up his wife who wasn't planning on being there and told her to come and bring the kids, his daughters. Now imagine, you know, the, the, how many times for us as parents that we, we, we shield our children from things. We shield our things from, from news. We shield our things, our children from, from, from seeing certain things. But he wasn't afraid and he wanted his family to be there with him at all times and see what he was doing and the, the message that he, that he, that he was teaching. So another, another point that comes to mind is that if you ask a lot of people who have either come back to Islam, started practicing their faith, and especially people who have become Muslim, and we've done this a lot at our organization, Tlaiba Foundation, and, Alhamdulillah, to date, we have served over 6,000 incarcerated Muslim men and women in the U.S. And in a lot, in a couple of the different courses and actually in some of the, some of the intro courses, we asked them to share, if they're willing to, their story on how they became Muslim. So many of them have become Muslim by reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. And in free society too, if you ask a lot of people who have become Muslim, it was either the major factor in their life to read his autobiography, or it was a very, very important, it's just typing children's book, Malcolm X, maybe somebody can give us the, the title. I bought it on Kindle. I think I have it, so maybe I can, I can look, but there's a children's book to where you can introduce his story. There's a lot of videos for kids to introduce the kids to his story. Of course, there's documentaries and books for us as adults that we're, to learn about his life, and to learn about where he came from and what made him. So what are some of the primary, the primary, you know, the primary influences, what's that? Malcolm Little. Okay, thank you. So his name was Malcolm, or the, the children's book is Malcolm Little. So that's a children's book you can read, you know, bedtime story, Malcolm Little. Put it right there on the shelf. You have the books, Stories of the Sahaba, and you have stories of Muslim heroes. And right there, Malcolm X, like let's make his name, a household name. We don't have to wait for the holiday. We don't have to wait for streets to be named after him. We don't have to name, wait for society to catch up and tell his story, as it is. Because a lot of people today, they actually, they look at him when they see Malcolm X, what's the story that comes into their mind? What's a word? Nation of Islam, what else? Hate, monger, radical, what else? What's that? Anarchist, militant? Our program at Theba Foundation, when we first started it, we had a couple of different programs. Now we're primarily focused on the incarcerated population. At the time we had a couple of different programs. And so to distinguish our prison program, we called it the Al-Hajmalik Shaba's Distance Learning Program. So that's what's printed on a lot of our early books. Some of the books are still in the prisons. We actually had a prison official who was criticizing our program. And he said, because some of the students were in prison were taking our program. And he said, these students are taking an Islamic course that teaches the militant ideology of Malcolm X. That's in an official file that somebody wrote, that somebody, and it was a book about studying about prayer and purification, bahara, how to do, we'll do. But the name of the program is Al-Hajmalik Shaba's Distance Learning Program. The reason why we call that is because we said we look to him as a role model and we want others to look to as a role model that society had seen him as a criminal. He came from, grew up in a very, very racist society to where his family had to move out of threats of the Ku Klux Klan, the KKK. That's a reality that they lived in poverty. And then he took on a life of crime, but in prison he reformed himself and then he became the man who he was. And how many lives did he touch? So we said, if he can make that change, we want other people, men and women, who are still in prison languishing in the dungeons of America who can see I have potential to be more than the stories of what people have said about me. And so we called it Al-Hajmalik Shaba's Distance Learning Program. And here's a person studying prayer and purification, but the story that the prison and that specific, it's not every, we have wardens that recommend our program to Muslims. Alhamdulillah the story is changing, but we had somebody say in an official file he is part of a militant Malcolm X ideology program. So that's the story they're telling. So we have to reshape the narrative. We have to take control of the narrative. We have to embrace and say when we tell our children the story, the heroes of Islam, especially recent history, Malcolm X's name needs to be right there at the top for us Muslims in America, because his name still resonates with people. People are coming to Islam because of his story. And then we can learn. And so many people have learned a lot about the realities of America. So how much do we know about racism? And I'm not talking about just somebody, you know, making a racist remark. I'm talking about the deep rooted historical racism that affects policies and legislations to this day. They just had a what was it in Mississippi? They had people who were part of was it the juvenile justice system, maybe juvenile system that are now in print or they're possibly going to prison for siphoning off money. It was either the welfare system or the juvenile system. There's judges who have been indicted now because of rather than putting youth into alternative programs, they divert them into the juvenile system. Because then once you institutionalize them, they go from the juvenile system to the prison system, they collect our taxpayer money, $30,000 to $80,000, half a million in medical facilities yearly. Our taxpayers as Californians we pay $500,000 per prisoner in the CMC medical facility up here. $80,000 on average and also up to a million if it's a supermax prison with higher security. We're paying for that. So the value of an individual in a prison system has a numerical number more than the labor that they can produce in the prison factories and so forth. So understanding the prison industrial complex Malcolm X's story is a great way to start to understand that his story in prison and understanding that racism as it exists in America so that we can also now work towards removing that not only from the societies but starting in our massage it starting in our homes. So I know it's nine o'clock we have to end so I just want to in commemorating him we don't have to you know we make dua for him and make dua for his children. His children who are still here I think there's a program there's a flyer over there you see the on that right next to Munir's office there's a program it's going to be an MCA one of his daughters is going to be speaking at that program so that's the other thing his daughters are still here they're still alive they're still working and writing and teaching so his legacy we're still is still living through his children and so so have our children learn about have ourselves learn about his story learn have our children bring his name into the home and really I'm talking about not just superficially no but look into after reading his biography look into and understand racism as it exists in this country from the from the remarks on the street all the way up to the policy and the legislation level understanding prison understanding the the the race structure in the in the us even in how we have allowed our societies to be segregated and so forth and so so not just telling his story but bringing the lessons that he stood for and that he lived for and that ultimately that he died for and use that as as as uh as you know not let his legacy just become forgotten just because the society certain aspects of the society have a story about him we will tell his story and we will make his story part of our lives and his story will become part of our story and our children's story and we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to to forgive him and to forgive his wife uh and to enshroud them in his in mercy and to to to take care of his children and and all of those who have come to Islam through him and subhanallah two years ago i met the man the imam who is the imam of the masjid in new york that he set up and he said he made it he made a he made a comment and i still remember this was in new jersey at a conference he said we just celebrated our fiftieth year five zero as a jama'a a masjid which masjid in america can claim claim to that you know most masjid are young five ten fifteen twenty years as a jama'a they've been around for half a century that's a huge statement so uh we hope the one day that that will you know that mcc will have their fiftieth anniversary but i i believe that that his story has to be part of all of our stories for us to get to that point we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to give us the trophy and to follow in his footsteps and to grant us shahada in this life amen Ya Rabbi Al-Alami