 As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome to this series in which we are looking at how we can be a united Muslim community and indeed a united human family building on the strengths and experiences of all the members of our community, especially some members of the community who may not always be as included in what is going on. And we have talked about many, many peoples in these past episodes. Today I'd like to mention one group that is sometimes underrepresented and yet is a rather large group and is also a very generalized group. And that is people who have some sort of disability or something about them that makes them different from the average person, whether it is a physical disability such as being deaf or being blind, being in a wheelchair, or it may be a mental or psychological issue, as someone might be severely autistic, for example. I would also include in this category, although it's obviously not a disability on a medical level, people who did not speak the language of the community. So for example someone comes from, I don't know, Mexico, for example, and goes to Toronto and is at the mosque, they might not find many people who speak Spanish. So language minorities as well, because that in essence creates a communications barrier. What are some ways that we can avoid unintentionally marginalizing these people and appreciate what contributions they have to give to the Muslim community. So it is not only in the present day and age, obviously, that people have had physical or mental things that make them different from other people. For example, when we look at the companions of the Holy Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, companions of the imams, there are a number of people who were blind, probably even more than nowadays, because we have better healthcare nowadays. And there was an effort to try to include people in the community, whether it was, as is narrated somewhere, setting up a line or a rope for a blind person to come to the mosque. Jabir Abdelah Al-Ansari, for example, towards the end of his life, also he lost his sight, Abu Bakr, a famous companion, who also was not sighted. So it was fairly normal to have people in the community who did not have some of the sensory faculties that other people had. And it was considered normal. And because of that, there is a number of narrations mentioning this. And what we can glean from the narrations overall is that it is not the physical senses that make someone worthwhile, but rather it is the spiritual senses. So for example, we have a lot of narrations comparing physical blindness to spiritual blindness and saying, for example, it's related that the Holy Prophet said, the blind person is not someone without eyesight, so you can't see, that doesn't make you truly blind. It makes you physically blind, but not truly blind. The truly blind person is the one who's lost the inner sight, the sight of the heart, or might be in the brain somewhere, whoever it happens to be located, the Basira. That this is the person who is blind before Allah Ta'ala, because it is the spiritual sight which ultimately is going to help us perceive spiritual realities and perceive right from wrong. Or indeed, it's related from the commander of the faithful, alayhi salat wa s-salam, that the eyesight is useless if the inner sight, the insight goes blind. So there is this emphasis in the narrations about really the importance of the inner senses. Of course, there is an acknowledgement that life can be more difficult and is more difficult, and especially in those days I'm sure it was more difficult without the outer senses. So for example, it's narrated from al-i-mam sadiq, alayhi salam, that it is one of the acts of kindness to another human being, is to help someone whose death here without getting frustrated. Keeping in mind this is also before sign language, you didn't have iPads that you could type things out on. I mean there's so many ways that people go about this nowadays as there's much more difficult back in that time, but nonetheless he would encourage people to try to communicate with people who could not hear in order to include them in the community. Similarly, we have in some narrations a reminder that the imams in particular used to like to invite people to sit with them who were blind or deaf or basically had what we would call some kind of physical disability nowadays. And this may be an acknowledgement of the fact that especially in that society these people tended to be a bit more neglected. I wouldn't say it doesn't happen nowadays, but comparatively speaking because the society was so harsh they might have had a more difficult experience and so the imams made a particular effort to be inclusive. That being said I would like to make a point, which is an important point for anyone who is different regardless of whether it's a physical disability, a mental difference, a language difference, a personality difference, a cultural difference or whatever, a height difference. Some of us are very gigantic. No one really wants to be defined based on a physical characteristic or characteristic of difference. No one wants to be the white person, the black person, the person in a wheelchair, the person on crutches, the person who has MS, the person who has cerebral palsy and so forth. We want to be human beings, we want to be souls because Allah has given a certain dignity to the soul. Allah has created the soul and we all, whether we're conscious or not, we have this understanding that it is the soul that is ultimately valuable and the body it comes and goes. I'm sure all of us have something about us that is different. It may be an obvious physical difference, maybe even not a disability. You may have very bad eczema. Eczema can be very psychologically frustrating. You may have very bad adult acne. You have people staring at you and randomly advising you all the time. People, you may be missing a limb, you may, there may be so many things that may be different about you or again it may be a cultural difference, it may be a situational difference. Especially young people sometimes feel very sensitive if their parents are divorced or they lose a parent or God forbid you lose both parents or something is different about your life, your homeless. I'm sure there is at least one thing in your life that makes you different from other people and you don't want to be that person or that kid, right? You want to be a person who happens to be in this or that circumstance, a person who happens to be in a wheelchair, a person who happens to be blind, not defined by this one characteristic and you want people to see beyond this one characteristic. You want people to see you as a human being instead of stopping at just one aspect. As a matter of fact, as a wise person once said that, let's say you do have a medical condition, for example, that's one problem. Most people have many problems in addition to that as well. So that's something to keep in mind. Now different people are going to have different needs and different ways that may help them be included in the community. I would like to highlight one community that's doing this right. I won't use names but just speak about it in general, which happens to be in the United Kingdom. One thing they've done very well is to be inclusive of people who are deaf and also hearing impaired in their community. So either people who can't hear at all or people who have hearing aids and have moderate hearing but not the same as an average person. And they've done this in several ways. One is they have hearing aid support. So that means when you get up and give a public speech you have to put on the hearing aid microphone. And that allows the people with the hearing aids to be able to listen to the speech. Also because some people in the community are trained in lip reading so even if they can't hear they watch what you are saying and green most of it. Because of that they advise speakers and advise people in general that when speaking to someone who is hard of hearing and to make it easy for them to lip read. So for example you don't look over here and talk and they're watching from over here because then they can't see what you're saying right. You look at them and then they watch what you're saying. And these sorts of things are helpful for making it a community that everyone is included in. And I actually heard a very nice speech from one of the youth in that community about ways to be more inclusive and thoughtful of people who can't hear or who have limited hearing. So for example not yelling that if someone has limited hearing yelling at them is not going to help but of course some people do that. And also you know sorry to say but whether we're dealing with someone who is blind someone who's deaf someone who doesn't speak English well if it's English or doesn't speak another language as well. Because language is often an issue with this too. Sometimes you know there's a tendency to for some people to forget that this person is just like everyone else or someone in a wheelchair. You don't talk down to someone. Now if someone doesn't speak your language you might choose to use less complicated words simply to avoid confusing them. But to be honest that's a good communication skill for everyone. How often that it happens sometimes I speak to my students and I use a big long word and then I say wait a minute you know what that means and I say no. So it's always good to look at comprehensibility regardless of who we're speaking to. Now I did mention another group which is people who don't speak the same language. So there are so many groups being looked at today. And one thing you can do if it's not a little bit too weird is if there are people in your community who have some sort of special circumstances or need to actually look at the vast body of literature online about being inclusive to this particular group to see what maybe some considerations might be. What are some things you can take into account for example in planning religious programming educational programming and so far so forth. So you know for example when I was speaking at that community I had to face the people who could not hear so they could lip read. You know that's a modification for inclusion. You know that if I hadn't been told maybe I wouldn't have thought to do that. So also language is an issue too. So if someone is not speaking the same language you may be speaking through a translator as is okay but remember when speaking through a translator first of all make sure they want the translator. To tell you a secret it can be insulting if you give someone a translator and they don't need it. You'll never assume ignorance. It's always wise to assume knowledge but to be able to provide a service if it is needed or requested. So let's say there's a translator. Even if the translator or interpreter is talking or for that matter a sign language interpreter also speak to the person. The translator will do their job there just to facilitate the communication and remember that 90 percent of communication is non-verbal. People communicate a lot with their expressions. You know their expressions, their expressions, their body language, different body language and words actually tend to communicate quite little in comparison. So do not be shy about engaging someone in conversation even if they don't necessarily speak your language well. And because our community consists of people from so many countries who have moved around quite a bit oftentimes most of us have been in a situation where we did not speak, well I won't say most of us, but many of us have been in situations where we didn't speak the language of the people we're around and we understand what it feels like. And of course if you haven't been in that situation then you know you can maybe try it out somewhere sometime. But again you know remember that this person who you're speaking to is intellectually on the same level as you it's just the word choice might be a bit difficult. So try to focus on having meaningful communication and being welcoming and you can do quite a bit with a few words and masha'Allah some people are very communicative. Communication is an art. So this is a very broad category of people and again everyone has something that will make them different whether it's something that's immediately obvious like a wheelchair or something that's not immediately obvious. But we oftentimes never know the circumstances that people are in especially if they're not immediately obvious to us. So hopefully some of these tips will be able to build a more inclusive community and consider as some ways we can be thoughtful to other people to include them just like we want them to be thoughtful in including us. Thank you very much.