 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome to this unique program in which we are exploring a pertinent and important contemporary question that affects an increasing number of our Muslim communities. And that is how can we help new Muslims, those people who choose to accept Islam to feel that they are a part of the community? How can we help them to have a positive experience with Islam so they become thriving and flourishing members of the community and are able to not only benefit from the community but contribute to the community and help our growth as an umma? Shall I repeat the secret I told you last time? Some of you might remember the secret. The secret was what we're talking about is not exclusive to converts and reverts to Islam. Good advice is good advice and much of this advice is good for people in general. We never know the situation of people in our community or in general, people in general but in the Muslim community which is what we're talking about here we may assume someone has family, someone is educated in Islam we may actually not know that they may have just decided to return to Islam they didn't know about it growing up they may even be learning the basics such as how to pray so we can never make assumptions about people and so much of this advice will be good for many people albeit in particular the topic we're discussing today may be particularly relevant for people who convert to Islam because people who convert to Islam tend to get a lot of special attention so today I would like to bring up the controversial question of whether or not people who convert to Islam whether we should ask them to share their stories publicly should we encourage converts and reverts to go on TV to go on TV and explain how they became a Muslim to go for example to the mosque and give a speech on how they became a Muslim to produce written accounts of how they became a Muslim on websites to do media interviews with the newspaper and so forth should we do this or not this question may not have occurred to you because it is taken for granted that this is something normal there is so much interest nowadays in conversion to Islam that people take it for granted that converts even very new converts to Islam such as people who've only been a Muslim for a month or two are asked to go and not only on Islamic media but even mass media in general CNN, the BBC, NBC and so forth and speak about their experiences but is this really something we should be doing I'd like to bring up some points to give a different perspective on this first and foremost I believe that when we are dealing with human beings it is very important to put the best interest of the human being first both psychologically, socially and in any other way as well and one thing to consider is that when people convert to Islam the path is not always easy in particular as we know there may be family problems, if they're married there may be marital problems, it may even result in a divorce one of the very frequent questions that people convert to Islam get asked is how did your parents react this is a very personal question and can involve publicly sharing information which is deeply personal and in addition to that may not necessarily be information that the other parties involved want to be shared for example if you became Muslim and your father kicked you out of your house or your wife left you or gone forbid the courts took away your children or something happened like that which did not paint other people in a good light it might not be respectful to them to go on television and say yes my father yelled this and that at me and kicked me out of the house and my auntie did this and so on and so forth especially in our communities we do believe that one should have a certain amount of respect for one's family and even if things happen that are not very good we don't always share it in public and yet sometimes there's an expectation that people convert to Islam will be very forthright about these things so there is that issue of privacy to consider it's not only the privacy of the individual convert but also their friends, their family and so forth who may not like it if the convert comes out and speaks about them on television especially nowadays Alhamdulillah we have YouTube so nothing ever goes away you give the speech at the mosque one day it goes on YouTube the next day Alhamdulillah and there's also just the general reality that speaking about something very deeply biographical and personal because it involves opening up a lot of yourself to the world and some people who give these speeches sometimes regret it later they contact YouTube and say can you please take my speech down because they find that they've said things that maybe six months later or you're later they think back and they say well I really wish I hadn't shared that with the world and indeed, Amir al-Walminin, alaihi s-salam he did say that silence is better silence that clothes you in the garment of dignity is better than words that bring you remorse that sometimes it's safer to be silent now I'm not saying that people should never speak about these things but just there are certain considerations I think it's important also when we are inviting converts to speak about their journey to Islam to consider what is the goal what are we trying to do because in my humble opinion there are good reasons to invite people who convert to Islam to speak about their experiences also there are less good reasons what are some of the good reasons for example we find it inspiring we all like to hear inspiring stories whether it's about religious conversion overcoming a challenge maybe accomplishing something great although you have a disability or some great obstacle in your life inspiring stories are beloved by all so maybe we find it inspiring maybe some people who are thinking about converting to Islam might empathize with your story and be motivated themselves to come closer to Islam maybe it will help people in that regard also to be fully candid there are some people who do academic studies on converts to Islam some of us might have encountered some of these researchers and it is a choice to decide whether or not one wishes to participate in their academic research which at the very least it does put converts to Islam and first generation Muslims on the map even though it can be a bit weird to be someone's research subject so these are reasonable uses but then there are what I would call bad uses things that aren't quite as good one big number one like big flashing giant number one agendas some media organizations like the big media organization in England and I'm not talking about a Muslim one they sometimes have agendas when doing coverage of Muslims some of us might have seen the documentary on new Muslim women or female converts some of them very new converts the people who were in that documentary said afterwards that they were completely misrepresented that they did not at all say and tend to things that were shown on TV so this is something to be careful of there may be agendas involved also there is a view among some people I swear to God I was told this to my face myself someone told me once, Amina you are shirking your responsibility to the West that as a Western Muslim and as a white Muslim it is your responsibility to help Eastern Muslims have more self-esteem because they're all looking up to the West and feeling bad about their culture and religion and you have chosen this religion although you are white so you have to help them improve their self-esteem by talking about how you became a Muslim what is wrong with this picture first of all self-esteem is an inner thing you can talk until proverbially as we say in the states until the cows come home about how wonderful Islam is but if someone has low self-esteem about their religion it's not going to work self-esteem needs to come from the inside no we can nurture it, we can help it grow but if someone appreciates the religion it needs to come from the inside not from someone who they're being looked up to because of their skin color or their culture it also again sends the message to the convert that they are different they are not like other people in the community sometimes even this praise oh you're so wonderful, you're so good this awe if you were of converts can push them away from the community because at the end of the day first of all we know we're not any better than anyone else second of all it makes us feel that we're not really a sister or brother in the community that we are something different and we're always going to be different and excluded so we don't want to do that and I think ideally the best time to have people who convert to Islam speak publicly about their stories is when they themselves want to do it when they feel they have something to share that they think would be positive and valuable when it comes from inside indeed conversion can be a challenge and talking is therapeutic and it may help them to sort some things out to speak about them or some people who've been through challenges may want to express these challenges to the world if they've discovered new things they may want to express these things to the world they may have unique and valuable things to say these people will oftentimes find ways to say it whether they're invited to or not they may write a book and there are books for example Martin Ling's books or a sister in the US named Diana she wrote a very nice book about conversion to Islam which is very useful for people who may be interested in this conversion has the desire in their heart to speak about it then by all means please do give them a platform and inshallah you and I will benefit from it but if they're reticent or they're not quite ready to we don't want them to do it just because they're being pressured to being socially pressured to share very deep and personal information can have a negative impact on someone and we don't want to have a negative impact on them with respect to the Muslim community ultimately for those of you who are being asked to share your stories are you a new Muslim? are you a convert Muslim? are you a long standing convert Muslim who's been Muslim for 30 years and is still being asked to share your story ultimately you should feel comfortable saying yes or no to the question you should feel that if your heart and intuition says yes then please do share your story but if you don't want to accept that too you are under no obligation to share personal information and the same goes for people who are returning to Islam so maybe you're a born Muslim but you didn't practice for a long time it's your decision whether or not you wish to share your story the thing that I think is important to keep in mind is it's particularly important to be sensitive to genuinely new Muslims new Muslim is the new euphemism for convert which makes no sense someone calls me a new Muslim I've been practicing Islam for more than 20 years I don't know anything else I'm not a new Muslim in fact people who are much younger than me sometimes call me that however there are genuine new Muslims who've been a Muslim for say 3 months or 6 months it's not always the best idea to ask them to take on these public platforms for one thing it puts a lot of pressure on them public attention it is stressful it does cause social pressures having your life shared with the entire world can be difficult for people especially if they don't have experience in media and being in the public eye additionally these are times of their life which are very critical they're finding their way they're changing honestly they're going through phases there's a number of phases of conversion that many people go through and this needs to be respected and it may be that 6 months or 6 months are not going to be the same things that they say after 5 years or 10 years so it's important to respect this development time like a butterfly growing in a cocoon not to push people too early now again if they want to and they have a desire to do it then by all means please but inshallah this is something that can also be taken into consideration so I hope that I have brought up an interesting question to ponder maybe some of you have never considered before and I hope inshallah this helps to shed new light on the question of how converts are portrayed in the media whether or not they should be used for media purposes and inshallah will help us to be sensitive to the personal growth and best interest of all people in the community stay tuned for another exciting episode