In the wake of the state of Israel’s genocide on the people of Gaza, the global Muslim community adopted boycotting as an immediate act of protest against individuals and corporations with direct or indirect links to the Israeli state and its occupation.

Boycotting is not new to those involved in pro-Palestinian activism as its a central element of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose goal is to use economic pressure to achieve Palestinian liberation, mirroring the tactics of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

Although this strategy is understandable as a tactic of punishment against entities complicit in the oppression of the Palestinian people, the drawbacks of boycott efforts in America are that they’re often reactive and overly broad. Targeting global conglomerates like Microsoft or Disney can dilute mobilization and impact due to their sheer size.

In practice, such boycotts risk becoming symbolic rather than transformative, unless paired with the creation of alternative systems that foster lasting autonomy. In these situations, guidance can be drawn from Islamic tradition and obligations as well as other communities that have evolved in America.

Islamic obligations often function not only as obligations but as spiritual catalysts for the creation of decentralized networks. For instance, because Jummah is wajib for men, regular congregations naturally form, allowing communities to emerge even in areas with a sparse Muslim presence often at a faster pace than other religious groups.

After the collapse of the anti-religious Soviet Union, Muslims were able to reconstitute themselves through informal Jummah gatherings when mosques were shuttered by the state, driven by the immediate necessity to fulfill a core Islamic requirement. In contrast, Orthodox Christians struggled to recover, partly due to their reliance on state support and the more ritualistic nature of their congregational practices. (Frank)

By applying this same principle to the marketplace, one can observe a similar phenomenon driven by another core Islamic force: the concept of halal.

The extent of Halal dietary restrictions, also known as Zabiha, can vary depending on culture and Madhab (School of Thought). This piece will refer to halal as the dietary restriction that includes meat slaughtered in accordance with Islamic methods. It will not delve into this debate from a fiqh perspective but from a Ummatic approach.

In the early Muslim community, halal consumption was not just a matter of individual piety but also of collective development. Scholars understood food as a line that divided the ummah and other communities, one that shaped diets, economic networks, governance, and political independence. For example, Ibn Taymiyyah emphasized that consuming only what is halal and Tayyib (pure) was essential for safeguarding the spiritual and material well-being of the Muslim community. Thus, to him, preserving halal was linked to maintaining the moral and political integrity of the ummah. (Maevskaya)

When Muslims lived under non-Muslim political authority, dietary law became a means of maintaining distinctiveness in addition to following Sharia. For example, under colonial rule in India, Muslims often insisted on halal-only diets as a way of resisting forced assimilation into British and Hindu-majority systems. South Asian ulama issued fatwas emphasizing the obligation of consuming halal food as a means of safeguarding one’s faith identity (Metcalf).

In the Ottoman Balkans, where Muslims lived alongside Christians and Jews, halal markets became centers of Muslim communal life (Armanios). Even when political boundaries shifted, these networks preserved Islamic social autonomy. By maintaining their own butchers, traders, and certification practices, Muslim communities reduced dependency on outside systems.

Jewish Americans offer a clear precedent for how dietary discipline can serve as a foundation for community power in the United States. Through the development of kosher food systems in major cities such as New York and Chicago, Jewish communities not only developed domestic religious identity but also built robust economic ecosystems (Lytton).

Kosher certification created demand for Jewish-owned businesses, from delis and bakeries to distributors and certifying agencies, ensuring that money circulated within the community and reinforced its institutions. Over time, kosher became so well established that it moved beyond the Jewish market, gaining recognition in mainstream food industries and generating influence far out of proportion to the community’s size. The legacy of this can still be seen today in brands such as Hebrew Nationals, Empire Kosher, and Kedem.

This strategy was also central to African American organizing traditions, which repeatedly emphasized the importance of economic self-determination and keeping wealth circulating within Black communities. Calls for rejecting dependency on hostile systems and building independent structures were one of the pillars of the civil rights movement’s success (Gordon).

Many argue that adopting a halal-only diet in America is too difficult, impractical, or not required due to living in an Ahl al-Kitāb nation. Yet, this perception overlooks both the progress already made and the methods to achieve it. The fact that halal food is more accessible today than ever before is not an accident, it’s the product of deliberate choices and sacrifices made by earlier generations of Muslims who refused to compromise on this sunnah.

The Desi community played a large role in laying the foundation for today’s halal economy in the United States due to cultural emphasis on halal requirements more so than others. When immigrants arrived in the country, they often found themselves in cities and suburbs where halal meat couldn’t be found. As a result, families began small butcher shops and informal distribution networks to serve their families and the community.

These efforts were not just attempts to follow sharia, but also acts of institution-building, quietly creating demand, fostering supply chains, and laying the groundwork for the halal economy we know today.

Halal options are now available across America, from urban centers to suburban grocery stores. National supermarket chains, fast-food franchises, and restaurant groups are increasingly recognizing the halal consumer market as a force, in addition to the observation that halal meat is a higher-quality product.

Adopting a halal-only standard has clear systemic implications, as it redirects consumer spending toward businesses that are either Muslim-owned or certified through halal regulatory bodies. Economically, this creates a closed-loop system where capital circulates within the community, rather than flowing outward to corporations that are indifferent or even hostile to Muslim concerns. This strengthens Muslim small businesses and fosters job creation. It builds institutional capacity, much like other minority communities, such as the African Americans or Orthodox Jews, who have historically utilized targeted spending to enhance collective autonomy.

Over time, a halal-centered economy has shift the market, incentivizing larger producers and distributors to accommodate Muslim needs. This has already occurred in markets such as Australia, where most meat exporter products are halal-certified to meet the global demand from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In the United States, the halal market is already projected to reach around $88.9 billion by 2026 (Das). Far surpassing the U.S Kosher market, valued at $5.5 billion in 2024 (IMARC Group). This demonstrates the scale of opportunity available if Muslims approach halal as strategy, not merely as ritual.

Thus, halal dietary practice should not only be understood as a matter of individual piety but also as an instrument of collective power-building in America. While boycotts seek to weaken oppressive structures, halal consumption strengthens internal Muslim cohesion and develops economic power.

This dynamic is already visible in several American markets, most notably New York City and the Detroit metropolitan area, where Muslim communities have organically developed successful, self-sustaining economic ecosystems.

In New York, the now iconic chicken over rice emerged from the needs of Muslim taxi drivers seeking reliable halal meals. What began as a practical solution, born from wajib, evolved into a defining feature of the city’s food culture, eventually producing national brands like The Halal Guys, whose model has been exported to regions with far smaller Muslim populations.

Detroit offers a parallel through the rise of Yemeni-owned coffee houses, which while not explicitly halal food, have created third spaces that originally catered to Muslims and have since drawn a large non-Muslim clientele, especially as Starbucks has declined in cultural relevance.

These businesses not only keep wealth circulating within the Muslim community but also pull capital from the broader public into Muslim-owned institutions. As these models grow, Muslims gain opportunities to franchise, manage, and work within these expanding networks, demonstrating how disciplined consumption can evolve into durable economic power.

By consciously centering halal food systems, slaughterhouses, certification bodies, supply chains, and restaurants, the Muslim community develops an independent economic infrastructure that is less vulnerable to the toxins within Western global capitalism, spiritual and physical alike. It also allows those within that infrastructure be more vocal towards injustice such as Palestine and other Islamic causes.

In a society where food is deeply tied to corporate monopolies, investing in halal-centered networks offers Muslims a path to both moral integrity and Ummatic autonomy.

Many insist that Muslim-majority states should be ready to bear sanctions, aid cuts, and diplomatic fallout to defend Palestine and other oppressed Muslims. But such demands are meaningless without individual actions that demonstrate collective resolve. Empty rhetoric and symbolic gestures are no different from the hollow condemnations Muslim governments give while continuing business as usual.

If Muslim Americans are serious about resistance, then it must transcend slogans and adopt strategies that genuinely build lasting independence and power, such as pushing for the adoption of Halal on an individual level and within our communities. Or at the very least, preferring halal meat over non halal options for those that take less strict options on halal.

Eating halal only in America is indeed a struggle, it is by definition an act of greater Jihad. And those who struggle in the way of Allah, amid inconvenience or cost, are Mujahid.

Tajuddin Ingram is a former policy advisor to the New York City Mayor’s Office and the State of New York, and an associate student at Qalam Academy. He writes periodically on his Substack @modernitycritic.

Disclaimer: Material published by Nuun Collective is meant to foster inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published media do not necessarily represent the views of Nuun Collective or any member thereof.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Works Cited

Maevskaya, Ludmila & Aga, Khaisam. (2023). “Concepts of What Is Allowed and Forbidden in Islam Through the Analysis of Ibn Taymiyyah’s Fatwa.” Transformação, vol. 46, no. 2, 2023, pp. 1–15.

Frank, Allen J. Islam in Russia: The Four Seasons. Orientalia Press, 2000

Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900. Princeton UP, 1982.

Armanios, Febe, and Boğaç Ergene. Halal Food: A History. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Lytton, Timothy D. Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food. Harvard University Press, 2013

Gordon Nembhard, Jessica. Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014.

Das, Sonalika, and Eswara Prasad. “Halal Food Market Size, Share, Competitive Landscape and Trend Analysis Report: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2032.” Allied Market Research, Dec. 2023, www.alliedmarketresearch.com/halal-food-market.

IMARC Group. United States Kosher Food Market Report by Type, Application, Distribution Channel, and Region 2025-2033. IMARC Group, Nov. 2025, www.imarcgroup.com/united-states-kosher-food-market.

Introduction: Primordial Truths and Modern Blindness

In John Steinbeck’s classic novel East of Eden, we are introduced quite early on to two half-brothers, Charles and Adam, who serve to contrast one another. Charles, despite being a year younger, is shown to be not only the stronger of the two but also the more intelligent; he tends to outshine his brother by any measurable metric. Yet, at the same time, Charles is shown to be cruel, selfish, and relatively jaded towards the world. Beyond this, Adam is shown to not only value life, but is also valued himself. While Charles craves the love of their father, it is shown that it is Adam who receives it, because while Charles may be more alluring on paper, Adam is in possession of something far greater than any physical characteristic. Some may simply say that Adam has a heart, and as he loves life, he is given love in return. Charles eventually attempts to kill Adam, envious of the love he received. Of course, you have undoubtedly heard this story before in some regard, as Charles and Adam are very poignant allusions to the biblical Cain and Abel, and it is perhaps through this reframing that we can garner an understanding of one interpretation of what the story of Cain and Abel, or Qabil and Habil, may be communicating to us today. Put simply: “All that glitters is not gold.”

There comes a point in any study of history where it becomes easy to get lost in the reeds, to find a tangle of murky details with little discernible story, and to keep searching until one finds themself at the present day with little to show for it, knowing what events led us here but not knowing how we got here. For this purpose, sometimes it becomes useful to discern history through a specific lens and craft a story, or at least part of one, from that point. Yet, even in this regard, modern histories are often over-compartmentalized and lacking in some regard. Simply put, we look at symptoms but often ignore the root cause. It is here where one might attempt to craft a spiritual narrative of history, which, of course will also weave together other areas of study but still attempt to remain rooted in a unified epistemology; if we are to claim belief in a higher power, then would it not make some sense to craft our history in relation to Him? But, I hear you asking, what does this have to do with Steinbeck? Moreover, what purpose do Cain and Abel have in our history apart from, presumably, taking part in it? The point is that amongst the first humans on this Earth came forth a primordial truth, such being that our station, our strength, in this world is not necessarily reflective of our station in the hereafter. To hark once more unto Steinbeck’s interpretation, we can view Charles as a stand-in for many things, which may be ever-changing themselves. To some, Charles is modernity; to some, he is humanism; to some, he is simply wealth or power; or to others, he is the worldly life (dunya) in general. But what does not change, or what should not change, is the position of Adam, who is representative of the true guiding light, the primordial tradition, and it is upon this that we should base much on, specifically, law and nations, as this paper is concerned.

The unfortunate truth, which we find ourselves facing today, is the reality of the post-colonial stage (if we are to concede that there is such a thing as post-colonial). This reality, as such, is post-colonial insofar as it is post-destruction, and no one destruction may have been more impactful than that of our institutions, because it is from these institutions that we derived knowledge, and more importantly, knowledge based upon an epistemology which was our own. It is now that our knowledge, our basis of life, is not our own, and as such, it is no wonder that our goals and, as an extension, our societies are lost within themselves. As Fanon bluntly stated, “for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.” (Fanon, 12) I fear our destiny to be the same.

The Modern State as Epistemic Break

To many of us today, the state and the nation are two near-metaphysical identities, and I would even venture to claim that the predominant view of the state is that in which it forms the collective actualization of the nation. Indeed, many of us take on the national view of the German romantics, wherein the nation attains its own individuality, complete with a supposed unified will and destiny which it seeks to fulfill (Kohn, 446). More importantly, national culture is such that it is based upon not only language (with some exceptions), but also a unified history; indeed, one can argue that the history of a nation is at times more a mythology. Indeed, as Benedict Anderson points out in his seminal work Imagined Communities, despite the personhood we ascribe to a nation, the nation is not an individual and as such does not have a discernible birth or life-cycle; the rectification of this dilemma being to fashion a story ‘up-time’ towards a certain point in history, setting forth a historical ideal (Anderson, 205). Take, for example, the American Revolution, and the near-deific status that has been ascribed to the so-called “Founding Fathers,” especially names such as Washington and Jefferson. Indeed, much modern political discourse revolves around what these figures would have wanted, or what they intended in regards to the United States. Beyond this, we can look towards national considerations such as Catalonia or Kurdistan, where populations feel a need for their own state, largely due to presumed (and often real) encroachments by the state or nation where they currently reside. With this said, among the diverse peoples of the world, one preeminent unifying facet of the epistemology of a nation is its history, as was previously stated, which is in itself problematic, as society is then cast as not progressing towards something, but rather “emanating” from something. In this manner, as was described in regards to United States politics, the past becomes the ideal which the present must honor in some capacity. For the German romantics, this time was the Middle Ages, regardless of the actual historical record, and of course, for many so-called “Muslim states,” that time would be the time of the Prophet ‎ﷺ and his companions (Kohn, 446). However, this view does not necessarily mix well with statecraft, especially in regards to the law, as we will soon see.

While this idea of society as being organized from a point may seem natural to the modern man, Wael Hallaq points out in his work Impossible State that for much of human existence on the planet many cultures have sorted their history in the opposite manner; he describes this as an eschatological framework in which we progress towards a point (for Abrahamic faiths we can imagine end times and a final Day of Judgment) which then creates a narrative of life as a series of conscious moral choices (Hallaq, 21). With this framing in mind, morality is put at the forefront of the human experience, which Hallaq defines as refraining from an action because one cannot allow oneself to live with the consequences (Hallaq, 14). In contrast, our current paradigm, which flips the narrative, has humanity working towards not a point but an abstract, which Hallaq simply calls the “doctrine of progress.” This progress, believed as such to be the ultimate goal of a society, is self-affirming and, as such, Hallaq argues, is a god in that it forms its own authority (Hallaq, 21). This forms an epistemic basis, among others, of the modern nation-state: that the state is the most efficient means of allowing the nation to achieve its desired goal and progress. Hallaq defines a modern state himself later on as consisting of five parts; however, for the purposes of this paper, the two that will be discussed are the state’s constitution as a relatively local and specific historical experience, as well as the legislative monopoly of the state (which Hallaq links with a monopoly on violence as well) (Hallaq, 26).

To begin with the former, we have already established the mythologies of nations as a historical experience, and this too bleeds into the state. The concept of citizenship, for example, is in many ways an homage to the population history or the historical personage that constitutes the state. This is often where nativist or anti-immigrant sentiments arise from, which transcends religious and even ethnic lines; Pakistan’s deportation of nearly 1 million Afghans between 2023 and 2025, many of whom share both ethnic and religious patronage with a sizeable portion of the Pakistani population, can be seen as an example of the phenomenon. It is important to note that already this concept of citizenship is an adoption of Western norms, and it would be anachronistic to claim any precedence in Islamic law of citizenship; indeed, arguably the first use-case of what we consider citizenship would be during the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire, where citizenship was extended to all subjects regardless of ethnic or religious affiliation. As we can see, and as Hallaq much more eloquently and masterfully explains, the concept of an “Islamic state” as we might know it is already on faulty ground. The states that we know, and that modernity has brought, are in many ways inherently opposed to Islam itself, which in theory should transcend racial or ethnic boundaries, based on both Quranic and Hadith evidence (Qur’an 49:13). In contrast, how the modern state operates as seeking the self-interest of a particular nation even at the expense of others reinforces not Islamic but Humanist principles. From a Subject-Object perspective the nation must view itself as the subject in order to secure itself, and the people it serves will thus be the subject as well whilst other populations are simply an experience of the nation; in the so-called “Islamic world” we might look at the treatment of migrant workers in the Arabian Gulf, or even Turkish-Israeli collaboration in the Azerbaijani onslaught of Armenia; in these cases, self-interest and personal preservation are the main determinants, not any question of a higher purpose or atonement in the hereafter. As the self-interest of the modern state has now been established to some degree, we must now consider its interest in regards to its own people, and it is from here that the law of the state plays a role. While it would be out of this paper’s scope to examine the laws of every state in the Islamicate, I will rather attempt to describe how we approach the law, and more importantly, how we think about Islamic law in particular.

To begin thinking about the law, we must first consider its purpose. In an Islamic context, it is not uncommon to move towards a function-follows-form explanation for the law, in the sense that the law is divinely ordained through either the Quran or the Hadith, and it is also not uncommon to see, especially in the modern day, literalist interpretations placed directly into a certain code of law for a Muslim state. The idea, in this case, being that the law must be ethical because it comes from God, but this line of thinking errs in the sense that by placing Islamic rulings in a relatively strict legal system, especially compared to previous fatwa systems, Islamic law is not Islamic law as it is intrinsically changed. To expound on this point, one could consider the epistemic purpose of Islamic law as being to enforce an ethical society, as the Prophet ‎ﷺ himself stated that “Verily, I have only been sent to perfect righteous character,” and due to this the fatwa system was very much case-by-case, to the extent that the Ottoman empire, for example, had not only different courts at a time for each madhhab, but also court systems for religious minorities to live by their own rulings (Musnad Ahmad 8952, Gör 212). When placed into the constitution or legal system of a modern-day nation-state, however, the basis of the law becomes determining, or more importantly, defining criminality. By this process, Islamic law, as we know it, sees a significant modal shift from regulating an ethical society to enforcing a perceived normative behavior. To call upon an extreme manifestation of this phenomenon, we can turn to Pakistan’s 1979 Ordinance on Zina (The Offence of Zina Ordinance, No.VII of 1979). In this instance, Pakistan’s Ordinance categorized rape as a form of zina (extramarital sex) and, as such, also placed the same requirements of providing four witnesses upon victims as rape as would normally be placed upon one accusing another of zina (Quraishi, 403). Of course, the nature of rape as an often solitary crime made this quite difficult, which was already concerning, yet the problem becomes more harrowing when also accounting for the fact that the courts generally took pregnancy as a sign of sexual action occurring. What this resulted in was victims of rape, upon getting pregnant, actually being charged for adultery under the zina ordinance, and subsequently arrested– amongst these cases are one in which a fifteen year old girl, Jehan Mina, was forced to give birth in prison after being convicted when she was unable to provide the required witnesses to prove her rape case (Quraishi, 407). We must, when faced with these facts and when reading through the horrifying accounts of suffering, ask ourselves what it is that Islam stands for. Is the Islam I know one that punishes the victim, whilst allowing the perpetrator to walk free and unharmed? Certainly not. So, in what world could we call such a law, or even the legal system that created it, Islamic? This, of course, is an extreme case, but we must ask ourselves what makes something Islamic and what makes something the opposite. Just because something is theoretically derived from an Islamic basis (in this case, zina) cannot, and should not, endear us to it any more than any other form of law if it fails to fulfill the basic tenets of justice and human dignity. The legal systems which we see, based often upon a specific constitution or strict legal codes, are modernist concepts insofar as they suffer from the same plight which the French scholar Foucault noted in his work Discipline and Punish; that being that the justice system of the modern state serves more to rectify deviant behavior than it does to judge and rectify the actions of the individual. In the case of the Ordinance on Zina, one might look at the mere act of speaking out against sexual assault, or bringing attention to societal dishonor, as itself the deviance; this charge is only strengthened when considering that not only did the police in Pakistan threaten women with charges of zina when they tried to lodge cases of rape, but also there are multiple cases of the police sexually assaulting women themselves, including those in their custody who had been sexually assaulted before and charged after trying to lodge cases (Quraishi, 407). Indeed, the Ordinance on Zina proves to be a particularly dark example of the attempt to graft Islam onto the apparatus of the modern state, and shows in particular the way in which the true root of Islam has been subsumed to an aesthetic meant not to direct, but rather to justify the actions of an unjust society. The selfishness of the modern state is in its insatiable thrust for dominance, even over that nation which it serves, and in setting a normative for that nation it then seeks its way to enforce that, and in the context of an “Islamic” state like Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia (both close allies of the United States), the answer comes in creating an Islam fashioned for the citizen, theoretically steeped in its own culture, and unassailable in its supposed connection to the divine; this then creates a model citizen, and allows the state to maintain its veneer of benevolence regardless of its own actions. We should not be fooled, and must understand that even “our” nation-states will still act as nation-states, and we live in a time where religion is not the end, but rather a means by which to achieve it.

Conclusion: Toward a Reclaimed Epistemology

To say that our current condition is bleak would perhaps be an understatement; indeed, it would seem that we are faced with an enemy which is unassailable in that it is in many ways rooted in ourselves, derived from our own desires. The hand of progress latches on to us, beckoning forth with promises of riches; our current state is theoretically pious and teleologically wicked. One might go so far as to say that the version of Islam which we practice has become so entrenched in abstracting piety so as to serve the whims of elites that it has been neutered of its revolutionary potential. While there may be some truth in such a claim, it would be in itself a disservice to the true plurality of our religion, as well as the revolutionary nature of its message which is itself transcendent and eternal in its cosmic reality.

In our march towards the basic Islamic tenet of “[enjoining] good and [forbidding] evil” (Quran 3:110), there are two tenets which I believe give some inspiration in this time. The first amongst these is Karbala, and the martyrdom of Hussain. The second is the hadith, wherein the Prophet ‎ﷺ states that “even if the resurrection were established upon one of you while he has in his hand a sapling, let him plant it” (Musnad Ahmad 12902). In regards to the former, we must question ourselves the theological implication of the grandson of the Prophet ﷺ, not very long into our history, being martyred in a battle which was in many ways against an insurmountable foe, and doing so against not any tyrant, but one who claimed the crown of Islam. This ties to the second, because the hadith is not just about the sapling, not just about the trees. Rather, it serves as a testament to the basic call to do any bit of good which we can in this life, even if it seems ultimately futile. That is our call, our duty on this Earth. Beware anyone who is enriched, who lives well amidst the suffering.

Islam is not a religion for the elite, for the wealthy, but it is one which reinforces and reaffirms the basic rights of all humanity. When we look at our history and at the message of Islam, this much is apparent. Be it the Maliki jurists who pioneered the expansion of divorce rights through defining dharar, or the basic concept of maslaha (common good), or the Muslim slaves leading rebellions against their Spanish masters, or the sufi sheikhs rallying their followers against the French, or the Iranian people rallying against the yoke of colonial oppression, or Zayd Ibn Ali’s martyrdom against Umayyad tyranny, or the Prophet’s ‎ﷺ first followers who came from amongst the poor and the slaves, or the concept of zakat, or even the basic idea of equality between believers, and that there is none who is superior aside from their faith, Islam has always in its essence been a theology deeply rooted in liberation tied to recognition of the intrinsic truth of the human condition. You cannot tie Islam to a power structure, or a code of law, because you cannot police faith itself.

And it is here where we must reconcile with the fact that Islam has in very many ways been subsumed into a system of global capitalism, and that our normative version of Islam in many ways entrenches this system. We must consider, for example, the way in which our messaging regarding wealth has become Christianized into an Islamic doctrine of progress, wherein charity is put over attainment, where the focus becomes shifted from communal organization to private practice. Why is it that the hijab, or gender segregation, or the LGBT movement becomes means for “mobilization” of the community, but BDS is in many cases a conversation that is treated as too complex? Why is it that Dubai is treated as a case of Muslim excellence, with its Western architecture and slave society, with its funding of colonial wars, simply because Muslims are at the top of the capitalist pyramid (even if Muslims are at the bottom as well)? Moreover, why is it that the seemingly most conservative Islamic states (Saudi, Pakistan, etc) are deeply entrenched and aligned with global United States foreign policy? The only conclusion that can be found is that our modern version of normative Islam, and its discursive formulations of what debates are both allowed and centered, has been carefully crafted as to create a semblance of religious plurality whilst denying the necessary conversations which would meaningfully lead to a large-scale rejection of both the capitalist system and the dominance of the Global North.

In the sense that we must rebuild our epistemology anew, we cannot continue forth by simply fitting hadith into Western legal systems or simply grafting the aesthetics of Islam onto the very same world order that destroyed its essence. If the root of Islam is ethics and the liberation of mankind, then any and all steps must be taken to ensure this, even if facing insurmountable odds. It is in this spirit that we must question our own profit, as Muslims in the Global North, and our attachment to nation and capital. Because for all our nations, and for all our capital, we have never been so weak a people. Genocide after genocide, atrocity after atrocity, befalls us, and what have we to show for it? We must rebuild our worldview, centered not on abstraction and private faith, but on morals, and on liberation by any and all means.

Eesa Ansari is a writer whose interests lie at the intersection of Islam and decolonial studies.

Disclaimer: Material published by Nuun Collective is meant to foster inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published media do not necessarily represent the views of Nuun Collective or any member thereof.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Quraishi, Asifa. 1999. “Her Honour: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Provisions in Pakistan’s Ordinance on Zina.” Islamic Studies 38 (3): 403–31. https://doi.org/10.52541/isiri.v38i3.6139.

Human Rights Watch. 2024. “Saudi Arabia: UK Court Accepts Case about Saudi Spyware Use.” October 22, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/22/saudi-arabia-uk-court-accepts-case-about-saudi-spyware-use.

Steinbeck, John. (1952) 1952. East of Eden. London: Penguin Books.

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Allahu A’lam. God knows best. This phrase has ornamented texts encompassing various genres written throughout the history of Islamic Civilization. Jurists, Theologians, and Philosophers would decorate their works with this phrase, appending it to a position they viewed as the truth. But this phrase always succeeded their truth because they affirmed that only Allah knows The Truth.

The Origins of Theological Discussions

In the early decades following Prophetic revelation, the Muslim armies expanded westward into Roman land and eastward into Persian land, and they faced internal political struggles amongst themselves. These experiences led to new proto-sects emerging and an opposing counter-sect, revolving around a specific question of discussion, taking opposing positions.

The internal politics during the time of Ali RA led to the formation of the Khawarij, who revolved around the relationship between action and Iman, believing in a direct correlation, with sins making you into a disbeliever that must be killed. As a reaction to them, the Murji’a formed with the opposing position that actions and Iman were entirely unrelated.

In the Persian lands to the East, the influence of converts from Zoroastrianism caused new conceptions of Allah based upon their conceptions of Ohrmazd, the God of Good, and the Qadriyyah formed, revolving around the question of Freewill vs Predestination, taking the position that man is entirely responsible of his own actions and that Allah doesn’t even know the future. The Jabriyyah formed in response, taking the opposing position that we have no agency, and that men are simply robots fulfilling whatever was written by Allah.

Meanwhile, in the West, the Roman Christians were discussing the nature of Logos and the relationship between Jesus and God, and this caused a discussion amongst Muslims regarding the attributes of God. The Jahmiyya came forth positing that Allah can only be described by what he is not, and hence attributes can’t describe him. The Mujassima emerged in opposition, positing that Human attributes can completely describe Allah, because, from their perspective, God is just a man in the sky.

Due to politics, religious conversion, and religious dialogue, the Muslims started asking three questions: Firstly, on the relationship between Actions and Iman; secondly, on the relationship between Freewill and Predestination; and Thirdly, on the Attributes of God. Each of these three questions had two proto-sects taking opposing positions, and thus the Mu’tazila came forth trying to answer these three questions without falling for the three extremes. However, the proto-Sunnis disagreed with the Mu’tazili answers and tried to formulate their own answers, resulting in clusters which crystallized into the three Sunni Credal Schools: Atharis, Ash’aris, and Maturidis. Meanwhile, the Mu’tazili positions they were responding to have been adopted and further developed by the Twelvers, Zaydis, and Ibaḍis. However, what the Mu’tazila share in common with all three Sunni Credal Schools is the belief that their human answers to human questions resulting from human experiences are the truth, but that Allah knows the whole truth.

Instead, it could be posited that these human answers to human questions resulting from human experiences are human interpretations of an objective truth, and that objective truth is known to none other than Allah. Only Allah knows what his attributes really mean, or how qadr actually works, for the human mind is incapable of even grasping these concepts. The majesty of Allah is beyond our experience, and hence it is safe to say that only Allah knows the truth, and he revealed it to us through his Prophet, but that’s only a cross-section of the whole objective truth, and we are attempting to reconstruct an objective truth that we can never truly comprehend, that is beyond not only our capability of thought, but our capacity of existence.

Flatland

In 1884, Edwin Abbott wrote the story of a square that resides in a two-dimensional world, called Flatland. Flatland is a singular plane of existence populated by a variety of polygons and line segments, none of whom can even comprehend the third dimension, and deny its existence. Abbott describes the square protagonist’s interaction with a three-dimensional sphere that resides beyond his entire existence. The sphere was speaking from an unknown direction of “up” that was beyond the experiences of any flatland, that they’d deny its very existence. The square would feel that the spheres voice was a symptom of insanity, and when the sphere tries to enter flatland, the square would only see two-dimensional cross-section of the three-dimensional sphere, a cross-section that the plane of flatland intersects with, making the sphere appear as a shapeshifter that appeared out of nowhere, showed himself as a series of circles increasing then decreasing in size, and then disappearing. The two-dimensional square would have trouble understanding the very concept of a three-dimensional creature, but he’d know that there was a concept. However, his existence is too limited to understand the very concept of the third dimension.

The square’s perspective of his world is as a line. Abbott writes that they viewed depth through differing brightnesses, with closer objects having a different brightness than further objects. So, imagine the square and his friend viewing an equilateral triangle from two opposing viewpoints. The square views him directly from his angle, essentially seeing two sides with the angle in the middle. His friend sees him from the side, where the triangle would resemble a line segment. Their vision of the same triangle would appear as different. However, the sphere would be able to view from outside their plane of existence, and hence can objectively see that it is in fact a triangle, he can not only see every side of him, he can see inside him as well. The flatlanders were two-dimensional creatures with a one-dimensional vision, and likewise the sphere is a three-dimensional creature with a two-dimensional vision. If the sphere and his friend were to look at a Cone, with the sphere seeing it from the bottom and the friend seeing it from the side, the sphere would see a circle and the friend would see a triangle. The same three-dimensional object would be seen as different two-dimensional shapes from different angles of vision. Only a creature from a higher dimension would be able to observe the entire Cone, observing not only every angle of the outside but of the inside as well.

What the experience of the square in flatland demonstrates is that a view of the world is limited by experiences. He can not truly comprehend the sphere in its three-dimensional existence because his entire existence is two-dimensional. The square can only truly comprehend a series of circles, or at least his one-dimensional view of it. And if the square tried to reconstruct the sphere within his own limitations, what would result may be any two-dimensional shape, but it will not be a three-dimensional sphere. This applies to all of our capacity of knowledge.

Understanding Truth

Now picture our human knowledge as two-dimensional and the Truth as three-dimensional. Let’s imagine Truth as a dodecahedron, a polyhedron with twelve pentagonal faces. A dodecahedron entering flatland could result in a variety of cross-sections, whether a pentagon, a hexagon, or perhaps a decagon. If Truth is a dodecahedron, then its two-dimensional cross-section would be the human access to truth. The cross-sectional decagon would be what was revealed to a human prophet. In other words, the truth is Allah’s knowledge, and Allah’s knowledge exists beyond our existence. Allah revealed to the Prophet, and he preached to us a cross-section of the truth that was available to humanity, like the cross-section of the dodecahedron being a decagon. However, after the Prophet ﷺ returned to Our Lord, humans tried essentially reconstructing the three-dimensional dodecahedron while stuck with the ability to only produce two-dimensional polygons. And so therefore, every school and movement essentially expanded the decagon to produce a new polygon as an attempt to reconstruct a polyhedron that is beyond our existence. None of the polygons are the actual dodecahedron, they are all attempts that don’t even reach its dimensionality.

However, if the truth is known only to Allah, then what is falsehood? It has been stated that the schools and movements within Islam are attempts to grasp the truth, but none of them have been accused of falsehood. Our beloved Prophet Mohammed ﷺ was the last recipient of Prophetic revelation, and our Ummah, as intellectually diverse as we may be, preserved the essence of what he preached. So, then, what is false? If the cross-section of the truth that we got through him was a Decagon, then every polygon we produced encompassed that decagon. However, there were previous ummahs that didn’t preserve the message of the Prophets they claimed to follow. The Samaritans accept the Prophet Musa, but they reject Dawud. The Rabbinical Jews may accept Dawud AS and many after, but they don’t accept Yahya AS. The Mandaeans may accept Yahya AS, but they reject his nephew Isa AS. The Christians may accept Isa AS, but they reject the final Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Not only did these 4 abrahamic faiths refuse to accept theProphets that came, but they also diverged from the message of the Prophets that came to them. Their reconstructed polygon did not include the decagon of revelation.

Now, one may bring up the objectiveness of logic, of reason, of various methods of inquiry, but he or she should be told that the human capacity to reason is limited by the human experience. When a German artist was tasked with drawing an elephant, a creature he’d never seen, he essentially drew a giant horse with a longer nose, because he had experienced a horse and size-differences. Imaginary creatures tend to be a combination of descriptions of actual things we’ve experienced. The earliest mythological portrayals of what we describe as a dragon was a serpent. The standard portrayal today is serpentine with characteristics of lizards and felines. We’ve seen a teapot, we’ve experienced orbits, and we see paintings of Mars, so it’s easy for us to imagine a teapot orbiting Mars. If our imagination itself is based on our experiences, so is our reason.

Our experiences give us specific worldviews, and impact how we view Islam itself, and how we convince those around us to adopt our understanding of islam. With our own reason, we develop our own thoughts, an individual effort, but then we are faced with “proving”— which is a collective phenomenon. The concept of “proof” and “proving” is not necessarily an individual phenomenon but a collective one, i.e. a singular individual can convince himself of anything, but it’s something else for him to convince another. A man alone on an island can easily convince himself of anything using principles he can concoct out of anywhere, because the only refutation he’ll get is from the angel of death. If you haven’t caught on by now, I have severe autism. So over the centuries, over millennia, humans have been figuring out how to “prove” something, i.e. how to come up with argooments that fellow humans are unable to refute. How to come up with principles that others can agree upon to derive more agreed-upon truth-claims. This millennia-long process seems to have culminated in a study called “logic”. So, logic is just as much a result of human experiences as reason is, logic just involves more people.

One may also ask: What about the existence of revelation? Can’t we read the Quran and derive the whole truth from it? While Revelation is the intersection between dimensions, the cross-section of the objective truth available to humanity, our interpretation of the text is a human effort. The fact that ardent followers of what Allah revealed through his Prophet and what his prophet told us still differ in interpreting and understanding what they follow shows the humanness of interpretation and understanding.

What we must in the end realize is that only Allah knows the Truth. The Truth is the knowledge of Allah. The truth of what is, of what is not, and what cannot be, and what is beyond this is known to none except Allah, and all we have is what He allowed us to know and our human attempts to develop beyond that. The attempts to reconstruct what exists beyond us is invigorating, as well as needed in many contexts, but we must refrain from acting like we’ve reached the Absolute Truth through our human effort, and from censuring those who formulate different conceptions of reality. We must instead encourage healthy dialogue between our various positions of truth, for the Truth is known only to Allah.

As Allah says in the Quran, “وَفَوقَ كُلِّ ذي عِلمٍ عَليمٌ” “But above those ranking in knowledge is the One All-Knowing.”

And indeed, Allah knows best.

Disclaimer: Material published by Nuun Collective is meant to foster inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published media do not necessarily represent the views of Nuun Collective or any member thereof.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ This particular work is satire.

Nūn. By the pen and what everyone writes!

— Qur’an 68:1

For some time now, an idea has lingered at the heart of Nuun Collective, an idea too central to ignore, yet too ambitious to rush. It has waited, taking shape through our talks, our gatherings, and our restless conversations. Today, it takes form as Nuun Magazine.

If one surveys the landscape of our communal life, one finds it thick with lectures, conferences, and educational programs, which are all noble, all vital. They have given us grounding, preserved continuity, and built an infrastructure of learning. Yet it seems that this frontier has been thoroughly explored, if not completely settled. The next horizon lies elsewhere: in culture itself. It lies in the realm where ideas are born, refined, incubated and shared. It lies where faith and tradition encounter new modes of living, and where art, criticism, and reflection become instruments of renewal (tajdīd).

Nuun Magazine is a small but deliberate step into that space. It is our attempt to revive a culture of reading and writing that once animated the Muslim world. A culture in which writers, scholars, and poets engaged the full range of human inquiry with confidence and depth. Where faith and reason were not opposing forces but parts of a single conversation about meaning, justice, and beauty. Where thought moved freely across disciplines and languages, drawing from revelation and experience alike to produce work that was at once grounded in tradition and alive to the unfolding world. We do not seek to mourn a lost golden age, for nostalgia is too cheap a comfort. Our task is to build anew, to fashion a living tradition capable of speaking to this century’s anxieties and hopes.

Our inaugural issue, with its slate of essays, short stories, translations of great works, and poetry - each contributing to a wider milieu of constructive dialogue and inquiry - will unfold over the course of several months. Our aim is not sheer volume but vitality - works that prioritize rigorous exploration and remain anchored in the Islamic tradition while facing the world as it is.

This magazine is, in truth, an experiment, an effort to build a space where writing becomes a widespread communal practice, where ideas are not merely passively consumed but cultivated with great care. It belongs to all who care to think seriously and feel honestly about what it means to live faithfully now.

We invite you to join us. Subscribe, read, and - most importantly - write. The pages of Nuun are open to those who wish to participate in this collective act of renewal.

Call for Submissions

We welcome submissions in the following categories:

Essays: Analytical or reflective writing that advances understanding. Essays should explore ideas with intellectual rigor and stylistic clarity.

Journalism: Reportage or commentary grounded in fact and moral awareness. We are especially interested in stories that document overlooked lives, movements, and transformations across the Muslim world and its diasporas.

Poetry: Verse that listens deeply to language and experience. We welcome work that draws on the cadence of our tradition while finding new forms for contemporary expression.

Translations: Faithful and thoughtful renderings of texts that deserve renewed attention. Introduce forgotten thinkers, poets, or reformers to a new audience through translation and brief contextual reflection.

Short Stories: Fiction that captures the human texture of our moment. We are drawn to stories that reveal the moral, spiritual, and emotional dimensions of everyday life.

Submit Your Work!

We trust that Nuun will, in time, become a gathering place for minds disciplined in thought, generous in imagination, and steadfast in purpose. Thank you for walking with us into this new frontier.

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Currently teaching at Qalam Institute, Mufti Muntasir is known for his thoughtful, accessible writings and translations on hadith, Islamic theology, and law. Through his articles, reviews, and public lectures, he offers clarity on complex religious questions while nurturing a spirit of reflection, sincerity, and precision in understanding sacred knowledge.

In this discussion, Mufti Muntasir explores how Muslims can integrate Islamic values into their everyday lives, particularly in secular and professional spaces. He emphasizes the subtle, powerful impact of living one’s faith with integrity—through actions as simple as maintaining prayer or bringing mindful God-consciousness into ordinary conversations.

Below is a full transcript of her talk & discussion at Nuun Collective on June 18, 2025.

00:00:00 Speaker Introduction

Mustafa Syed

Mufti Muntasir Zaman, he is a scholar of Islamic law and hadith. He currently teaches at Qalam Institute. He completed the Alamiyyah and Ifta programs in South Africa, and he holds a Master's and MA in Islamic studies from the Markfield Institute in the UK, with a focus on hadith sciences and classical Islamic scholarship. Mufti Muntasir Zaman, he combines traditional learning with an academic research, regularly contributing translations, articles, and reviews. His work reflects a commitment to both scholarly rigor and accessible Islamic education.

And interviewing him today, we have our research chief curator, Anzar Lateef, who is an electrical engineer by trade, but I don't even think he should be an engineer. I think he should focus on what he loves to do, which is be a huge nerd about history. He is the biggest history nerd you'll ever meet. You can ask him any question about any time period, and he'll give you an answer. So yeah, without further ado, Anzar.

00:00:56

Anzar Lateef

Assalamu alaikum, Mufti Sahab. Welcome to Nuun and Hajj Mubarak. Today I wanted to get started by asking you a very important question. How do you look so young?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

I actually don’t know how to answer that question. I’m sorry. I hate to break it to you guys. I'm sorry.

I think every time somebody says that to me, I grow like a white strand of hair. And right now, if I open up my turban, you'll just see like this bush of white hair. So, Jazakallah Khair for that.

But Mashallah, Tabarakallah should be before it and after it. No, but honestly, there's a hadith where Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says, نَضَرَ اللَّهُ إِمْرَ أَنْ سَمِعَ مَقَالَةِ فَوَعَاهَا فَأَدَّاهَا كَمَا سَمِعَ. It's quite interesting. It's embedded in the intellectual tradition that every science has its own perks and specialties. One of the perks of studying the science of hadith is two things.

One, you get, hopefully, an illuminated face. And two, you live a very long life. Many of my hadith teachers live past 100, and many whose works I've studied. So if anything, I would attribute it to that.

00:02:06 Spark to Study Islam

Anzar Lateef:

Wow, mashallah.

So, Mufti Sahib, you have studied under a lot of Hadith scholars. You have traveled around the world studying in South Africa, becoming a Mufti and a renowned Hadith scholar at a young age. I have to know, what was the spark that led to all of that?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

All right, that's going to take some time. All right, so what inspired me to go on this journey of studying and in particular studying hadith? I think I had somewhat of a typical immigrant family upbringing, although I was born and raised in New York. But my parents at a very early age, you know, mid-90s, late 90s, they wanted me to study hadith. I wish hadith, but they wanted me to study the Quran, do hibdh. And I don't think I had much of a choice in the matter there. I just woke up one morning and I know I was in a hibz madrasa memorizing the Quran. It's funny because I remember when my dad decided to say, anybody been to New York or from New York here? You guys ever heard of Flushing Muslim Center? It's a hibz madrasa, that's where I did it.

And I remember, I think this was like 99, 2000, I'm like eight. And my dad's like, okay, you're going to join a hibz madrasa. And I said, you know, why didn't you ask me before I joined? And my dad just looking at me with this face of like surprise, like, yeah, I'm going to sit down and ask eight year old, what do you think about joining a hibz madrasa? So that I didn't have much of a choice. But then one thing led to another, eventually I'm memorizing the Quran and I noticed that the people around me are studying Urdu, Farsi, Arabic, Fiqh, Hadith and that inspired me to go and kind of take it to the next step because memorizing the Quran, although it's a huge accomplishment, understanding the message of the Quran was always something I hope to achieve looking at my peers.

Again, I'm like a 14-year-old. It's not like I have this philosophical, like, you know, Ghazalian moment where I'm like, you know what, I want to change the course of my life. But I decided, you know what, let me go and study. And at the time, I was studying in Canada. So I went from New York to Canada. And I felt that I wasn't getting the level of rigor in my study that I had hoped. And it was a funny story, I actually got in trouble for, let's just say playing football at a time I should have been playing. I was supposed to be studying and I ended up playing football. And I kind of got expelled, right? And I decided, you know what? Although the teacher said, you can come back, I said, you know what, this could be my excuse to go and pursue my studies further somewhere else.

I had a friend who was studying in the UK and another friend who was studying in South Africa. And I said, you know, bismillah, let me go and study in South Africa. So I'm this 15-year-old, New York-born, Canadian-studied teenager on my way to South Africa. Yeah. You can imagine what that looked like. I couldn't imagine what that looked like. And eventually, you know, your imagination runs wild. Like, will there be monkeys, lions, Simba, Mufasa? Like, what does South Africa hold for you? You don't know, right? I'm this typical ignorant teenager going to South Africa for the first time. And I'm in this madrasah with... give or take 500 students from 60 different nationalities and backgrounds, from Malaysians to Russians to Chinese to Nigerians, Americans, Canadians. And this diversity in culture and interest really opened my eye to something I really never saw as a first, second generation immigrant growing up in the West.

And then one thing led to another. And initially my interests were in philosophy and theology. And if anybody knows anything about hadith, the one science that the scholars of hadith are not too happy about, if you're going to put it anyway, it's philosophy and theology. So I was just sitting down and I'm studying these books of Maturidi theology, right? Isharatul Maram, if anybody's interested. And I'm reading through it and this student, he passes by and he says, what are you studying? And at the time I was, I remember very vividly, I was in my fifth year of study in South Africa. I was about maybe 19-ish. And I was studying the question, the problem of evil from like a classical Islamic perspective. How did they address Husun and Qubh? And the student who was more interested in hadith, he passes by and he's telling me, he's like, what are you doing? And I said, I'm studying theology.

And he told me point blank, you're wasting your time. And I said, serious? He's like, yeah, you know what? This is a subject not that many people are interested in. Why don't you study hadith? And he introduced me to this Syrian scholar, Sheikh Abdel Fattah Abu Ghuda. And I started reading his works and the rest is history. From there, I started reading the books of Sheikh Abdel Fattah Abu Ghuda. I got interested in hadith. But I would say that initial foray into theology and philosophy always lingered on in the back burner as I continued studying hadith with different mashayikh in South Africa and elsewhere.

00:07:02 Further Masters’s Education

Anzar Lateef

So you studied from childhood, studying the Quran, and then you went on to study in Canada, and then you went to South Africa, and you had this interest in theology and philosophy, and then you got into the hadith sciences, right?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Yeah.

Anzar Lateef

So after all that, after studying via the traditional madrasa curriculum, you went on to achieve a master's at the Marksfield Institute. Many traditional graduates don't do that. What prompted this next path in your life after your studies?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

I think this is an interesting question that very often young Muslims such as yourselves—you’ll tackle this. And that is, for the most part, we inherit this tradition, right? That is largely from the Arab world, from the subcontinent, from the Middle East, the Eastern regions, which is very rich, which has so much to offer. But we’re born and raised here in the West, right? Whichever part—whether it’s Canada, UK, America, different states.

And just by virtue of going to high school, by virtue of, you know, listening to podcasts, watching movies, listening to the news—whatever you're doing—you find yourself exposed to certain ideas and questions that, no matter how much you want to bury your head in the ground, at some point it’ll catch up with you. Like, okay, as a Muslim woman, why am I wearing the hijab? As a Muslim male, why do I, you know, keep a beard? As a parent, why do I want my children to develop certain ethos? As a Muslim, why do I eat certain things, not eat certain things?

And it’s interesting because I just came back from Hajj. And when I went for Hajj, and when I go for Umrah, this happens to me every single time. You go for Hajj, you go for Umrah, and you’re in the midst of this Muslim environment—you hear the Adhan, you see people dressed in a particular way, everything is revolving around Salah. And within a few days, you feel yourself acclimating to like a full-on Muslim identity.

And then the moment you step foot in the airport in Medina or Jeddah, you feel like that first layer is being scraped off. Then you land in Turkey or Dubai, then the second layer is scraped off. And then you land in either JFK, O’Hare, or in DFW, and you feel like you got hit by a nuke. You know, like it goes—it’s like smooth, smooth, smooth—and you get punched in the face by this reality that we have a completely different lifestyle than what many people in the world are experiencing.

So now when I’m in South Africa, I come back to the States, I come back to New York, and I interact with my friends. So as much as I would love to take on this persona of this fully integrated young adult in a Muslim madrasa, I’m always being haunted by—“haunted” is a bit of an eerie word—but I always have to look myself in the mirror and realize there are some serious questions that I have to address.

So then I started reading books by Muslim academics—people like Dr. Ahmad Shamsi, Dr. Jonathan Brown, Scott Lucas—many of these Muslim intellectuals. And I start reading their books, and I’m still in the madrasa. And the first shock to me was just the language with which they’re probing some of these serious questions. Like, okay, we say Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim are the most authentic—why are they the most authentic? We follow one of the four legal schools—how did these legal schools develop?

In my traditional training, yes, these are questions that we addressed, but from a completely different paradigm. Now I’m addressing them from a Western paradigm that looks at history not from a divine perspective, but more from a very secular perspective. And, you know, I’m reading these books and I realize, man, although I’m traditionally trained, there’s this vacuum in my knowledge that I would love to fill in.

And... okay, I shouldn’t be saying this out loud, but I kind of dropped out of school in second grade, right? And I never went back to school—I went to madrasa after that. And then somehow I got my GED—I still don’t remember how I got it. So now I’m trying to apply to colleges and it’s not really working, right? They’re like, “Alright, what do you have to show for? You want to apply to, like, Oxford’s undergraduate program?” And I’m like, “Alright, I did my second grade in Ideal Islamic School in Queens—does that count for anything?”

And they’re like, okay, we have this weird situation where the person’s writing sample is enough to get him into a PhD program, but his credentials should put him back into middle school. And I’m like getting rejected left, right, and center.

And the other problem I was facing is, I’m trying to enter into these graduate programs, but I’m like 18 or 19, right? I’m just about finishing my madrasa. So I couldn’t do it. Until I spoke to a friend of mine, and he was in the UK, and he said in some of these Commonwealth universities, they have this interesting option where merit-based master’s programs are available. So if you can show that although you don’t have a high school degree, you don’t have an undergrad, but you can show that through your writing sample that you have something to contribute, we’ll put you right into the master’s program.

So somehow I showed them some of my writing samples, because I was writing at the time. And boom—they just fast-tracked me from second grade to a master’s program. And then I don’t know how that happened. But anyways, I’m in there.

And fortunately for me—and this is something a lot of traditional scholars are scared of doing—taking that leap into Western academia, whether it’s UChicago, whether it’s Harvard. You have to understand, these are traditions that are extremely foreign to what we’re used to. These are people who, for the most part, are atheist or agnostic. They have a different set of orthodoxies. They have their own scholarship, history.

Now, stepping foot into that is like putting your faith right in the front as cannon fodder. And not everyone’s ready for that. So over the last decade or so—or two decades—what Muslims have been doing in many countries is try to develop this middle space, kind of similar to TISA, where you offer graduate-level programs, but taught by Muslims. So you get the best of both worlds.

And that was Markfield, where I went to study. And they offered that, but it was a learning curve for me. You know, trying to learn how to write critically—critical thinking, academic writing. So over the year and a half, it really helped me to, you know, mashallah, get exposed to the Western academic side of things and kind of create this hybrid with the traditional studies that I have.

And I’ll be honest—it was quite a rocky road. It wasn’t that easy. Like, for instance, just to give you an example: if I’m reading Islamic history, if I’m reading a book, let’s say Tarikh al-Khulafa by Jalaluddin Suyuti, Egyptian scholar, 10th century of our tradition, he’ll talk about the Islamic past, he’ll talk about the Umayyads, the Abbasids, he’ll talk about Abu Bakr, Umar, and the Khilafa from a very confessional perspective.

Now I’m reading somebody like Joseph van Ess, and he’s talking about these same things from a very critical perspective. And I’m sitting there thinking like, man, this person is really harsh. But maybe—is it that I’m too scared of facing the truth? Or is this person really clouding reality with a bunch of academic jargon?

So then I thought, you know what, let me start reading further and further. Then I got introduced to some more Muslim academics. And long story short, that’s where I find myself today to a certain extent. Although that was like 10 years ago.

00:14:54 Solving Current Problems Today

Anzar Lateef

So you mentioned that during your Madrasa days, you were reading Jonathan Brown and Ahmed Shamsi and many others. And before that, you were reading Aqidah books on the problem of evil, like from a more classical perspective, right? Do you believe that your interest in philosophy and your understanding of the problem of evil led to this interest in solving current problems today as well?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Honestly, I would say my studies in theology and philosophy had absolutely nothing to do with it. I feel like there's a part of my brain that I consciously forgot about, and there's all the theological, philosophical studies that I did, and eventually I got into it again. What really led me down the path of asking some of these more serious questions of, okay, there's hadith, there's Quran, but then you have empirical science and philosophy, and how do we create this bridge between the two? What really got me onto that was, ironically, just a study of history. I feel like as I begin studying history more and more, I realize some of the more...

I feel like there's like a tale of two Muslim scholarship. A lot of us growing up, we hear the names Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Imam Nawawi, Ibn Hajar, Shah Walyullah Dihluwi, Ibn Taymiyyah. We hear these names very often and they're thrown around. But when you study their lives much more, like take Ibn Taymiyyah for instance. We often associate him with certain brands or elements of Islam. But then when you study his life, you realize he was a very capable, able scholar of philosophy. He was grappling with some of the most serious existential questions of his time. And then I thought to myself, if they're able to do it there, why can I not do the same for certain questions that are popping up in the day-to-day in my life?

00:16:48 The Height of Adam

Anzar Lateef

MashaAllah, thank you for sharing.

So then after your whole educational journey and you're grappling with questions and understanding and coming out stronger from it, you, and becoming such a renowned Hadith scholar as well, you wrote the book... The Height of Adam at the Crossroads of Science and Scripture. Can you tell us about the book and the work that went into it?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

First of all, I kind of wish I switched the subtitle for the title now that I think about it. Every time somebody picks up this book, they're like, The Height of Prophet Adam. They're like, I don't care how tall he was. Like, okay, 5'6", 5'7", 5'8". I remember when I published the book first, somebody's like, okay, what's next? The Length of Noah's Ark. And I'm like, oh, come on, man. So I'm like, okay, you know what? I wish I put the subtitle first because that's at the core of what I was trying to answer. And that is at the crossroads of science and scripture.

So like, what's the sebabun nuzul of this? How did this all begin? I remember it was 2018, I got a question from my sister-in-law who said, look, I'm reading this hadith that Adam was a 90-foot tall giant. He was created like that in Jannah and then he comes to earth and our ancestors, they were all giants. And I'm going to an MSA event and all these people are really interrogating me on this and I don't have an answer. Can you share an answer with me?

So at the time, there was this famous scholar, Mufti Taqi Uthmani. He has a commentary on Sahih Muslim, famous book of hadith. And I went there and I copy-pasted his answer and I sent it to her. And although she was satisfied with the answer, there were still some questions that were lurking in my mind. I said, okay, you know what? This satisfies this side, but it doesn't answer that question.

And... Alhamdulillah, I got the opportunity of publishing a few books altogether. And my general trajectory of publishing books is I first write a footnote in a book. That footnote becomes a paragraph. The paragraph becomes a paper. The paper becomes an article. And then the article becomes a book. Then the book becomes a footnote. And then that footnote becomes a paper. It's like a weird cycle of life. I can go into detail on why that happens.

But then I wrote this footnote in one of my books about this. And then Yaqeen Institute reached out to me and they said, hey, you know, why don't you start writing some papers on hadith? And I thought, you know what, why not write on this particular topic? So I wrote a paper at the time and I said, you know what, this deserves a book length treatment.

And as I was writing the paper—because you have to understand, what's the question that I'm trying to answer? The question is, an authentic hadith is telling us that Adam was 90 feet tall and his progeny was decreasing in height. Now, if anybody studied archaeology and science, archaeologically speaking, when we look at some of the remains of humans, at least hundreds of thousands of years tracing back, they're relatively the same height as you and I.

And then when you study science in terms of human anatomy and physics, it's really hard to imagine human beings that large. And I thought, you know what, I have to answer this. But the biggest problem I have is, as I told you guys, I dropped out in second grade. So my science is kachara. Like my science is absolutely horrible. Like I just about know how to do like addition and subtraction and multiplication. I'm just about not getting ripped off in Walmart from normal purchases. So science, math, archaeology was like... out of my imagination.

But I had to really tackle this because I've noticed some scholars who are trying to answer this question—how did they answer it? Like literally a true story. There's a scholar from Morocco who wrote this three-volume book on problematic hadith and he wanted to answer this. And I'm reading this and he's like, yeah, you know what? There are actually archaeological remains of human giants. And these... human giants, our forefathers were like 60 feet tall and 40 feet tall.

But unfortunately, what happened was the Smithsonian, this museum in America, went around the world and stole all of the bones and had them burned and incinerated. So we don't have the evidence anymore. So I'm like, wow, I actually never came across this. And then I look at the footnote and you wouldn't believe, you would not believe what his reference was. Can anyone guess? The Onion. Anybody heard of The Onion before? It was literally The Onion. He quoted The Onion and I said, You know, I'm like, we're cooked. Like, we're done. If this is your citation, The Onion, we're done. And the thing is, this is a published book and so many people are reading it.

So I decided, you know what, I don't want to fall into the same problem again. Let me make sure I do my research, but I don't know jack squat about science or archaeology. So I started emailing a bunch of scientists and archaeologists. I started reaching out to people. And for the next year, that's all I did.

I delved into the science part of it, like putting aside the history, the hadith and all of that discussion. I was going into like, okay, scientifically speaking, is it possible that human beings could be that large? Okay, the square cube law. Are there exceptions? What about dinosaurs? What about, you know, a saber tooth? What about like, you know, tales of giants? And so I really went down that rabbit hole for like months.

Okay, I got that done. Then I had to go down the rabbit hole of archaeology—that, okay, do we have evidence of giants? And if we do, whatever happened to them? I started emailing a bunch of archaeologists. I started going to random museums. You know, they're seeing this guy in a turban and a jubba walking around a museum looking at like dinosaur bones. And they're wondering like, what happened to the guy? Somebody find this guy's family. Maybe he got lost, right?

So anyways, I'm like emailing a bunch of people trying to figure out the specifics of this issue. So that took me a year. And then after—I wouldn't say mastering it—getting to a point where I was confident with that. Alhamdulillah, I had my background in hadith and the science of hadith and fiqh and history. I put the two together. And I would say from like the three or four books that I've written, this was perhaps the most challenging for me in my life.

00:23:03 Journey towards Knowledge

Anzar Lateef

So thanks for telling me why you wrote the book.

So I want to tell you why I read it, actually. And this takes us to our next one. So I read a book because I had heard a summary in a session about your perspective on this hadith, right? So I mentioned it to a former friend of mine, and he ended up takfiring me over this.

He literally called me a Kafir, like an atheist, because as you said, there's an authentic hadith, and what I understood from your perspective is like, maybe the prophet didn't say it, and stuff like that. And also, that's a one-star review on your Amazon advice.

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

It's fine, I get a lot of those. The nature of what I'm writing demands that I'm gonna get a bunch of one-star reviews. We need to get these guys, new and collected, $5 a piece. Everybody go and give me five stars. What do you call it, like a troll farm? The opposite of a troll form.

Anzar Lateef

So after being takfired, I read this book. I decided to read the book for a more in-depth understanding, right? And I found this quote particularly insightful regarding the message of the book: “Unscrupulously dismissing a problematic hadith is a simple task that even an ignoramus can accomplish. The brilliance of an intellectual shines when he can resolve the contention and provide a suitable interpretation.”

This quote, in my opinion, exemplifies your methodology. Anyone can reject or ignore, but a true intellectual will address and engage with what they see as problematic to find a way forward.

So, in your journey, you mentioned that this specific topic was brought up by your sister-in-law, and then you wrote an article for Yaqeen and stuff, right? And then you gained the confidence through various… And you had already gained the confidence in Hadith studies through your… well, through the madrasa curriculum.

Then you said your whole journey of getting the confidence in the secular sciences as well, so-called secular sciences. Can you also expand on that if you can? On this whole journey of how did you not fear being ostracized by your peers?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

his is a very important question that I don't want to make too personal on my life. But I think it relates to so many people over here. And what is that? You grow up in a family. Your family has certain traditions, habits. The people around you, your local masjid has certain traditions and habits. And you find yourself evolving, growing. And at some point, you realize, I need to make certain changes in my life. I want to do certain things differently.

When you try to explain that to your family, when you try to introduce that to your family, you get one of two reactions, right? More often than not, it's a visceral reaction that, you know, why are you doing this? Why are you saying this? Whether it's something as simple as, you know what, I want to go out of state for my college education or I don't want to be a doctor, I want to be an artist or like, I don't know, I feel like my passion is to study Islam as opposed to becoming like a lawyer.

Whatever it is, like oftentimes when we want to challenge certain established norms, it can become very difficult, right? And that is true for any field or any society, any area.

For me in particular, this book honestly did cause some rifts because there's a famous statement which says that people's most ardent enemies happens to be their own ignorance. So when I wrote this book, word started getting around just as an FYI, so people don't misunderstand what my main contention in this book is.

There's an authentic hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari that says that Adam was a particular height. My response to it is, there are three ways of understanding this. One way is, let's interpret the hadith in a way that perhaps can reconcile science and the hadith together. My second approach was, perhaps the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam never said this. And the third is, you don't have to have answers for everything. You can even just say, Wallahu A'lam. And that was my conclusion.

But however, word started getting around that, okay, this person is criticizing Sahih al-Bukhari, this person, he's bending backwards just for the purposes of science and all that good stuff. And it did cause a degree of pushback.

And it was a learning curve for me because I'll tell y'all this, not every time you get ostracized or you get pushed to a particular corner is it a bad thing for you. Like when I was getting pushed to the corner and a lot of people are like, hey, why are you saying this? What are you trying to achieve? What about what the scholars are saying?

It gave me a moment of pause and made me reconsider. Is it possible that I'm going too into one direction and giving too much credence to the science? And then that allowed me to reevaluate the middle ground.

But on the other hand, it showed me that, okay, this is a very important crossroads for me. That not between science and religion, but between should I try to say something that will be helpful for people I feel are struggling with this, on the one hand, or should I just stay quiet and not really air my views?

And I thought, you know what, it's important for me to make sure I did my due diligence because anybody can air their views, right? I can come today and say, you know what, based on my reading of Islam, it's perfectly fine for people to not pray and pay zakah instead. Or I don't have to fast, I can drink water and eat bread and that should be enough.

I can come out with the most ridiculous views just because I want to, but getting that pushback really opened my eyes to the importance of qualification and consultation.

So my next step was, I'm taking my book to different scholars and telling them, hey, this is what I'm saying, do you agree, disagree? And the general consensus was, we agree with you, but we're too scared to say it openly.

It was at that point that I realized, you know what? If the only pushback is not that this is like heresy or this is like anathema. The only problem is I don't want to go open about it. Then you know what? Let me take a bullet for the team and let me be open about it.

00:29:20 Inspiration Behind the Book

Anzar Lateef

Wow, mashallah.

So you mentioned you were questioning whether you should air these views or not, and all the other scholars were like, oh, I agree with you, but don’t tell anybody.

Was there any personal experience that made you realize, like, as Mufti Muntasar Zaman, it is my duty to actually go out with this? I mean, you can literally live in comfort and not tell anybody about this and not face any backlash.

But was there a personal experience that caused you to be like, this is something I must do. This is my duty?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

For the fear of sounding like Superman or Batman, like somehow I had this moment of like I’m gonna save the universe or like I invented the wheel. I mean, I don’t think it’s that dramatic. I just wrote a book on hadith and science, right? Inshallah, it was beneficial for other people.

I didn’t have to make this like life-threatening decision of like, okay, I’m gonna write this book and there’s gonna be like a target on my back. Well, there was a bit, like a social media target for whatever that’s worth.

No, honestly, I do feel, personally, not all views should be aired. I have a lot of views and I’m not going public with all of those views because I feel everybody has this journey, this journey of development where you’re thinking and you’re criticizing and you’re critiquing and researching.

I wasn’t comfortable to air all of my views, although I found some of them to be helpful, until I was comfortable and confident that my views were well researched and peer reviewed. So I think it was more of a selfish reason. It’s not like I put on a cape and I said, let me save the world.

It’s more like, man, I did like four years of research. Let me just put it out there at this point. I’m not going to… you know, just delete the file and like have a tear go down and go like for the betterment of the ummah, I’m going to delete this.

I said, listen, I wrote a book. Let me publish it. Let’s see what happens of it. So I decided to go forward with it.

Funny story, by the way, I remember, like I said, I dropped out in second grade, right? So like typing, writing, English composition, a lot of this I did on my own.

So when I was writing my first book, I was still learning some of the short keys like control Z, control A, you know, copy, paste.

So, my first book was on the science of hadith. And like, are the collections of hadith a reliable and accurate representation of the Prophet’s words and deeds?

So anyways, I remember I was in South Africa writing and still like poking at the keyboard, figuring out how to write like a caveman.

And at some point, I figured out command A is select everything. Command C is copy and then command V is it to paste.

So anyways, I’m figuring all of this stuff out. So I put command A and I selected everything, but I forgot the next step. And then I pressed like a letter and I saw the entire book in front of me just erase and vanish.

At that time, I didn’t learn command Z, which is like undo. So like, my entire book, it was like a whole year of work, just like, got erased right in front of me.

And I’m thinking like, like literally, the book is gone. I could have just command Zed it.

So I’m thinking like, okay, what’s the best way to do this? Maybe if I close the file, and I open it up again, it’ll give me the option, do you want to recover it?

And let’s just say a book was lost at that point, and I never had a book again. I could have done that with this book, but I decided not to, and eventually I published it.

By the way, I know how to type and everything. This was just like 2013.

00:32:50 Empirical Sciences

Anzar Lateef

Dang, that’s a loss.

So…

It is very rare for the common person to hear about ulema engaging with hadith in the context of biology and archaeology.

Were you the first to engage with the content of hadith based on the empirical sciences? Or were there hadith scholars in the last 1400 years that were doing this as well?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

I think the only benefit I have of making it seem like I'm the first person, although by no stretch of the imagination am I, is just social media. I just happened to post my research on Twitter and Facebook, and I think most people's memory is circa 2020. If you go back up on your Facebook feed, if it doesn't exist and never existed in humanity.

So yeah, I'm by no stretch of the imagination the first person to explore this question. If you look at some of the earliest scholars of hadith like Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Yahya ibn Ma'in, they grappled with this question as well, but there was a reason why they didn't do so very openly.

So if I want to talk about scholarly engagement with this issue...

By the way, is everybody feeling hot? Over here, am I the only one? I know I'm wearing like a hijab over here so it's kind of like my fault. Like I should blame myself. But like, is everybody okay? There's a fan over here. If everybody's okay, like I apologize for the heat in advance. I'm not responsible for that.

But go and buy some more notepads and inshallah we can have a... we gotta up the game and start selling some more stuff. We'll have the brothers sing some more poetry, inshallah, and put a hat over there and hopefully we'll get some more funds.

No, I like to divide Islamic history into three parts. The first half of Islamic history, the second—you don't have to give it to me, by the way. I didn't mean that so you take it away from 300 people and just give it to me. Let them enjoy, it's fine. I'll melt away over here on my own.

So basically, when I look at Islamic history, I like to divide it into three parts. The first 700 years, you can talk about the early period of Islamic intellectual history. The second 700 years, the second part of Islamic intellectual history. And then I look at the modern era, circa 1850 and beyond, the advent of modernity.

In the first 600-700 years, Muslim scholars were really grappling with these same questions. Like, we're not the first people to think about the problem of evil. We're not the first people to talk about the existence of a creator. We're not the first people to talk about gender norms. These were questions that scholars grappled with.

But the early Muslim scholars grappled with it much more subtly than others only because they had some concerns of it being abused.

Then when you start looking at later scholars like Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Hajar, Suyuti, Shah Waliyullah, they start addressing this much more openly.

And then you have the modern era where it's like an open game where everybody's grappling with these questions.

The challenge though is—and why people think that I somehow made this new contribution although I never did, I just happened to write it—is that in the English language, we have this weird dichotomy.

We have this weird dichotomy. You have people who've gone to one particular extreme and because we're being recorded—I don't want to take any names over here—but let's just say some people have gone to one particular extreme and they're like, "Okay, what is the arbiter of truth? What is my... what do I consider to be the be all and end all?" And for them, it was science, morality. So they would say evolution—we really don't care what the Quran and Hadith have to say. As a Muslim, my first priority is to privilege empirical science. My first priority is to give preference to whatever philosophy has to say. And you have that entire group, and I'm talking about in English, and they have written a lot on this.

And then you have a second group of people who went to the opposite extreme. And they're like, "You know what? To hell with all of these scientists, these philosophers, they just drank the Kool-Aid of the modern West and secularism and all these isms, and you can't trust them and who cares about them. We need to double down and hold to our tradition and just translate what we've already been, what we've inherited."

And then I realize I'm like, you know, I walk into this middle space and I'm like, "Wait, hey guys, like you can hear your own echo. Like there's nobody here." I'm like, "You know, why don't we come to the middle ground over here?"

In Arabic, this discussion is happening. In Urdu, the discussion is happening. In Farsi and all these languages, they're coming to this middle ground.

But in English, because we've only started writing more popularly in English from the 60s and the 70s and much more common in the early 2000s, it's only now that we realize, you know what, why don't we come to this middle space?

And that's why I started writing and I noticed that people are, you know, there's a need to publish on this.

So to answer your question, no, I'm not the first one. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of scholars have addressed it.

In the modern era, people have and continue to address these issues. It's just the middle ground between one extreme of over-privileging science and philosophy and archaeology and the other extreme of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This small little lacuna that I'm trying to fill—there aren't that many people doing it. There aren't that many people who are writing accessible [works]. Perhaps that makes it seem like somehow, you know, I'm donning a cape and trying to save humanity, where in reality, I'm really not.

00:38:23 Controversy in Society Today

Anzar Lateef

And in that regard of finding this middle zone, and of course there’s a lot of writers throughout Islamic history and in all the other languages, you write down in your book, on page 8, that hadith scholars engage with and often critique the content of hadith based on the empirical knowledge that was available to them.

The precision of this form of engagement sharpened as their knowledge of the empirical sciences grew.

So... throughout your book, you quote various examples of such, right? So clearly this engagement was common amongst hadith scholars in the past.

Why is it something so controversial today? Like you mentioned the two extremes, but I mean, obviously like the other extreme makes the whole thing controversial.

But why is it so extreme for even a middle path, like even finding a middle zone? Like, why is it so controversial?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Before I answer that question, by a show of hands, how many people are still following along? How many people are still with me? All right, good. I just want to make sure I’m not losing people along the way. I know it’s kind of hot in here and the subject isn’t the most accessible. If I’m confusing anybody or you need some clarification, feel absolutely free to raise your hands.

If you’re feeling hot, I’ve got a suggestion for you. You can go buy a notepad over there and use it as a fan. That’s one way of feeling better, but you have to buy it, otherwise the fan won’t work, I’m telling you.

But anyways, everybody with me so far? We’re going to get to the prompt soon, don’t worry. If I lost anybody, feel free to raise your hand. I’ll go back a few steps or all the way to the beginning again and hopefully lose nobody. It’s a bit of a deep subject and I hope that everybody’s able to benefit.

All right, so to answer this question: this is a question some of you may have thought about in the past. And that is, why is it that when Muslim communities, particularly in the West, they get pushback on certain issues? That why do you do certain things? Or why aren’t you doing certain things? Instead of engaging with it, in some ways we retreat to our comfort zone.

There are two answers to this. Do you guys understand what the question is? Everybody with me? Anybody not with me so far? You can raise your hand. Yes? No? Okay. I’ll buy a notepad for you if you want. I’ll buy a second one. Two fans work better than one. Yes? Sorry, yeah.

So the question is this: when we look at some of the questions that often face the Muslim community—whether it’s evolution, whether it’s why do you not accept certain scientific issues, or whether it’s something like the hijab, or whether it’s dress code, or whether it is gender norms—the moment you express a critical voice, oftentimes you’ll find people in the masajid or in our communities, instead of welcoming critique, they tend to have a very negative reaction and they retreat back into this comfort zone where they feel silencing the question tends to be a better response than trying to engage with it.

Is that clear? That’s very often the case in many communities.

And why is that the case? I want to give two answers.

The first one is more of a sympathetic answer. I think it’s important for us not to be so harsh on ourselves and our communities because in a post-colonial world, you have to understand this inferiority complex.

Dr. Sherman Jackson talks about this in one of his papers, that we have this double consciousness that we often struggle with. Imagine you’re an immigrant who comes from a different community—whether it’s Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, Jordan, Bangladesh, India—and you come to the West in the 90s, and you have this reality, you have this existence, and now you’re trying to raise a family in Dallas, Texas, or in Detroit, Michigan, or in Queens, New York.

And you’re beginning to realize, whether you’re a scholar or a layman, that we’re not equipped to really answer these questions. And you don’t want to look weak. So when somebody’s pushing back, the natural response is, let’s shut down the question—not because we’re scared, it’s just that given our new post-colonial reality, we may just not have the answers.

And it will take a new generation of people to grow up in this society who kind of learn both sciences and both worlds and are able to provide a more coherent answer.

So the first thing I would say is I don’t want to be so harsh on our uncles and aunts and our imams and community leaders because trying to tackle these very serious existential questions is not easy.

Imagine coming to your local imam and telling them, “Hey, can you explain Islam’s stance on sexuality?” And he’s like, “I don’t even know what that word means. Don’t say that word in the masjid, it’s haram,” because for them this is like a completely different universe that they’re trying to explore.

The second reason is what you call the floodgate argument. That if you try to probe a question even a little bit, it’s like you give a finger, they’re gonna grab the hand.

It’s that if I start entertaining these questions, there’s this fear that this army of liberal, atheist, agnostics will come and take over our masajid—which is completely unfounded—but that generally tends to be, and sometimes for good reason, you’ll see that certain spaces are co-opted by people with certain agendas.

So now to answer your question, I feel it’s the responsibility of this generation—you and I who were born and raised over here—we understand what it means to be American, we understand what it means to be part of the West, we understand Islamic history, we understand Western history, we understand the questions of morality while we have a firmly rooted commitment to Islam, and particularly the scholars amongst us, to really tackle the bull and take it by its horns.

Anzar Lateef

Exactly.

I 100% agree, Mufti Saab.

That’s so enlightening.

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

By the way, I’m sorry if I’m giving very long-winded answers. If I have a two-minute timer, please just put a timer over there. I’m sorry. I know we haven’t even gotten to the first prompt and I’m yapping away. I apologize for that.

00:44:57 Prompt #1 Abandoning Engagement with Islam

Anzar Lateef

No, no, we're on schedule.

Okay.

But what you said about the post-colonial anxieties and this fear of breaking away—because of this, I think that we've sought these rigid definitions of Islam where we've basically turned not just the core, but a lot of these prayerful matters into unquestionable tenets of the faith.

And to question even something like the height of Adam, or whether the Prophet really said it, it’s like, what are you doing? You're destroying the whole tradition.

Another example from your book, in one of the footnotes, you mentioned Shah Waliullah’s opinion on the splitting of the moon.

Now, Shah Waliullah—whom you mentioned earlier today—is one of the greatest scholars of Islamic history. The majority of the Muslim world owes their conception of Islam to him. I think South Asia makes up a huge chunk, as well as South Africa and many other areas in the Muslim world.

But he didn’t believe that the splitting of the moon story was authentic. And if you were to mention that to somebody today, they’d call you a heretic. Like if I say that, I’m called a heretic. It’s like, oh, he didn’t believe the moon split, and he interpreted the Quran accordingly—what are you using?

But because of this fear, this post-colonial anxiety, people have resorted to this comfortable dogmatic approach where we don’t question anything. We just listen and go on.

And I believe your work stands as an antidote to this phenomenon of dogmatic approaches. By engaging with hadith critically, you demonstrate that Islam is not a stagnant repetition of inherited knowledge, but a living tradition that invites inquiry and engagement.

Islam is not about passive acceptance but about an active and thoughtful relationship between humanity and the divine.

And with that, I would like to go to prompt one.

Dogmatic meaning when you don’t question and you just listen and repeat.

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Let me simplify that for you in second grader’s terms, since I’m from second grade.

Basically, the question, the prompt is:

Do you feel in your personal life and in your communal life as a Muslim—either individually, or going to your masajid, or speaking to your families—that we’ve adopted this approach of blindly following everything we’ve inherited without questioning it? Whether it’s the way we pray, our history, our fiqh, our aqidah—do we find ourselves just accepting things without questioning?

Is that the case? Or do you think we’re more on the other side, that we’re too critical?

If either, the question is: what are some consequences of resorting to a dogmatic understanding?

In whatever capacity—whether it’s family ties or family-related matters, like “I can’t imagine my son or daughter not becoming a doctor or not taking a degree”—that dogmatic approach, particularly to Islam, have you witnessed it in your life? If so, what do you feel are some of the negative ramifications of that?

It’s like silent writing for five minutes, and then discussion after.

You see, that’s a trick. You can’t write if you don’t have a notepad. And when you come here, they tell you no notepads are allowed in this event.

So you get the final conclusion, right?

00:48:20 Prompt #1 Discussion

Mustafa Syed

Okay, who wants to answer? All right, there we go.

Attendee #1

As-salamu alaykum, guys. So my answer, what is it? So the question is pretty much asking, do we take everything at face value or are we just questioning everything? I feel as though we've reached a point where both is happening simultaneously.

So to elaborate on that a little bit, we've reached a point where we've accepted everything at face value and we blindly just question everything. If somebody says, oh, it's from an authentic hadith, they show us the hadith, they say, all right, it's from a hadith. So if the hadith says so, we go with it.

But on the flip side of it, we've also reached a point where if something goes against the hadith or if something is like deliberately haram somebody says okay show me proof. They will question you, they will counter you, they will like they will question you to no ends and no avails.

So I feel as though we've reached a point where both is happening simultaneously and a line is hard to be drawn because where do we draw the line on that? Where is the balance between both sides of that spectrum?

Mustafa Syed

Now a sister. All right, I see a hand in the back.

Attendee #2

So I kind of took the question a little bit differently. Like I kind of said, when I first started learning about Islam, there was so much to learn. And so there was just so much information that I was trying to absorb.

Because I wanted to learn things so quickly, I kind of just took things as they were—not really questioning it. So I guess when you’re not being more intentional with your learning, you can come into like a dogmatic understanding, like just listening to everyone telling you what to believe.

If you’re not being like—what am I trying to say—if you’re not careful, it’s very easy to fall into that. Or just like a more unanimous example is like when your family is telling you to do something, and you’re questioning why you’re supposed to be doing that thing, and they feel as respecting that you shouldn’t be questioning them.

But it’s just like you’re just curious to know, like, to understand what it actually is. So yeah.

Jazakallah khair.

00:59:46 Prompt #1 Discussion

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Mashallah, both very profound observations. Hopefully you can keep the timer in front of me in case I go on for too long.

To the first point, I think that is a very good answer to the prompt because ultimately there's no such thing as one reality. Everyone's reality is different. If you grow up in a certain family, perhaps in that family, everything is being questioned.

If I'm going to college, if I'm going to university, if I grow up around people of a particular background or mindset, we may be hyper skeptical. And in many circles, that tends to be the problem where anytime something comes our way, it's fake news or like, I don't trust it, I'm going to question it until I satisfy this insatiable desire to get to the bottom of things.

So I think that is the correct answer, in my opinion, that the prompt is, do you agree we've abandoned engagement with Islam for a dogmatic understanding of it? I think the answer is, who is we? Who are we?

Because certain families, even the most basic things cannot be accepted. I remember I had just finished studying and I was in my local masjid in New York and there was somebody who followed the Maliki fiqh. And I'm sitting down talking to him about the Maliki way of praying salah where you call it sadal, where you let the hands on the side as opposed to folding it.

And this one Imam, he passes by and he says, tell this person to stop asking and talking about too many things, asking too many questions and talking about too many things. And in my mind, I realized like this is such a legitimate question and engagement that we're having.

That person's critique is coming from a place of pure ignorance. But on the other hand, I remember going to certain events. I remember I was once invited to this missed event near Columbia University. They rented out a hall. And I had these people coming and asking me such fundamental questions about Islam, which was fine.

But when I gave a follow-up answer, they start questioning the answer. And then when I gave an answer to that, I realized that there's something more serious that's at play over here. They're not looking for answers. They're suffering from this hyper skepticism, which honestly can never be satiated.

And have we abandoned, you know, engagement with Islam? For some of us, we're way too critical. But in many other circles, we just follow whatever comes our way. So if our parents are telling us to do certain things, when somebody comes to us with something slightly different, we feel like we're drowning, we start to panic, we're not sure what to do, where we should actually try to engage.

But then you raise something very important, which I think is at the heart of this. And that is... where's the line? Like, where's the line between accepting things at face value and being critical?

Because on the one hand, mashallah, the sister brought up a very important point. And that is, if we somehow get too comfortable, we may just blindly accept everything. But if we want to be critical, there has to be some qualification.

So Allah tells us in the Quran, فَاسْأَلُوا أَهْلَ الذِّكْرِ إِن كُنْتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ — The general default of people who are unqualified is we need to seek out scholarship.

So if somebody comes to me and says, the fiqh has to be in a particular way. Your theology has to be in a particular way. Islamic history is such and such. I should be critical in the way I engage with it. But I have to be critical based on knowledge that I either know or I ask somebody who's knowledgeable or I refer back to somebody who's knowledgeable.

If I don't do that, honestly being dogmatic may be more helpful than me exploring areas without qualification and getting lost.

In fact, one of the scholars you would say, what is the biggest calamity to befall the Ummah? He says, half a physician, half a scholar, and half a grammarian. Because one of them destroyed your tongue, the other destroyed your body, and the last one is the worst of all of them, he destroyed your deen.

So having qualification is that.

So there's two or three tiers.

Tier one, where I'm too lazy to do research on the topic, it's better for me to just stay quiet and just refer back to scholarship.

Number two, I do research. It's enough to pick between opinions, but not hold an opinion. In that case, I can kind of choose between, okay, this fiqhi opinion or this theological position.

And the highest here is, I've done the craft and the work, and I'm willing to go down the need to study and give a proper answer.

I think I'm like five minutes over for that. Anyways, I hope that provides some commentary.

00:56:00 Dogma in Religion

Anzar Lateef

All right. So speaking of dogmatic approaches, the first mention in your book of dogma, of dogmatic approaches, has really nothing to do with how we approach Islam, actually.

In your book, you describe the worldview that holds science as the ultimate arbiter of defining reality as dogmatic scientism.

This clearly shows that dogma is not limited to what we traditionally call religion.

Why did you feel the need to make this point?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

It's so important for us to not stereotype religious folk, right? We often look at the stereotypical uncle in the masjid or the aunt in the masjid who has nothing to do but rabble and yell at people.

Well, maybe there's some truth to that, right? Like, I'm not gonna deny that reality. But dogmatism, what happens is, in our minds, when we think about critical thinking, when we think about intellectuals, you think about Richard Dawkins, you think about scientists, you think about your teacher, your instructor, your professor of philosophy.

These are the people who come to our mind. But just because people can put on a veneer of intellectual thinking, it does not mean that they'll fall into dogmatism themselves, right?

I have a friend who currently just passed his PhD. He got his PhD in biomolecular science. And he was telling me how enshrined evolution is in the academy that even the most critical thinking intellectuals of his university, when he tries to push back on it, you can see how upset they are, as though you're burning down their church, as though you're critiquing their religion.

So the same people who are crying about religious dogmatism fall into it themselves. Ultimately, Islam is trying to promote a level of healthy critical thinking which allows us to find the balance between, on the one hand, exploring the unknown but doing so with qualification.

00:58:10 Secular vs. Religious

Anzar Lateef

So basically, you're saying that these dogmatic attitudes people have where they take these worldly claims as axiomatic, as something so obvious that there's no point in questioning or proving it.

It's no different from what other people call traditional, like what is traditionally called religious dogma, right?

So then is there really any difference between, so to speak, "secular" and "religious" if the dogmatic approaches are the same?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

So this is an important question. Do we have something known as religious and secular? These terms, religious and secular, are born out of a very particular religious experience among Catholics and the Protestant revolution. The term secular and the term religion are very weird terms that it's very hard to speak about.

Islamically, we have what is known as the deen and dunyawi binary, where there are certain things that are religious, like the Quran, the Hadith, the way you pray, giving charity, respect to your parents. And then there are certain things that are considered disworldly.

For instance, what you decide to wear, what you decide to eat for breakfast, do you want to go to the gym, not go to the gym. These are certain decisions that aren't really impacted by religion.

There's two parts to this. First of all, what's the question? The question is, when we talk about blindly following, dogmatism, is this something specific to religion? Absolutely not.

You can be a dogmatic vegan for all that I care, right? Like, you're so dogmatic about it that, you know what, this is my way of life. Anybody who doesn't follow it, I'm going to critique them. You can be a dogmatic gym rat that if somebody decides not to, I don't know, do bench presses, he's a loser. Or if you're not doing cardio in a particular way, you're wasting your life. You can be a dogmatic artist or painter.

Dogmatism is a human problem where we decide that we like something, we pursue something, and everything else is either problematic or unacceptable.

Now, is there a binary between religious and the secular? Islamically, these terms are loaded, but I would say for sure you have three tiers.

You have what is considered disworldly — like I said, what you dress like, what you eat, what your dietary decisions are. Islam isn't going to force you to have falafel for breakfast or have za'atar as a side. Islam isn't concerned too much with this.

The other is your prayer, your zakah, your dua, your reading of the Quran. That's religious.

But then you have this middle tier, which is kind of, it can be religious if you have the right intention. That I'm going to sleep at night. Islam doesn't care if you're going to sleep at 8 o'clock or you're going to sleep at 10 o'clock. But if I decide to go to sleep early so that I can wake up for fajr.

Islam doesn't care if you decide to go to the gym or not. But if I want to get healthy so I can spend more time with my family, so that I can pray better, so that I can be more connected with my religious obligations, what was once considered quote-unquote secular dunyawi now picks up a level of religiosity on a secondary level.

01:01:27

Anzar Lateef

So in other words, this so-called religion versus secular binary doesn't really impact us. And it's a very Catholic idea of the world, right? This whole separation into religious versus secular, sacred or profane.

In your book, you combined the study of hadith, which is quote-unquote religious, with biology and anthropology, which are quote-unquote secular, to have a more holistic understanding of conceptualizing Islam.

With that, as Wali recited in the beginning, there is the poem from Iqbal, that last line in Payam-e-Mashik.

Now, please forgive my pronunciations, Wali. I am Desi.

Iqbal was really into German philosophy, and he was really into Nietzsche and all of them. So people were asking him, like, where in the Sharia is this? Where in Islam is this? Why are you into this? Why are you studying all this?

And he was like, every mulk, every dominion, every field — every mulk is a mulk of ours because it's a mulk of the God of ours.

And like you said, anything that is dunyawi, from the food you eat, from the clothes you wear, from everything, it has a potential to be dini, like with the intentionality and everything, right?

So can you please give some impact on that?

Oh, and there's another quote by Akbar as well: "All that is secular, therefore, is sacred in the roots of its being. There is no such thing as a profane world. All is holy ground."

As a prophet so beautifully puts it, the whole of this earth is a mosque.

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

By the way, Holy Ground is the name of the flyer. I was telling them, like, they said, mashallah, this thing was RSVP’d very quickly. I said, because it looks like I just dropped a mixtape based on the flyer. If you look at the flyer, it’s such a dark, like, “I’m coming for your money,” right? But mashallah, I like the aesthetics of it. I don’t know who the designer is, so no offense to that guy, but I really like it.

Anyway, before we get to the prompt, I know that’s going to be the next thing, I do want to drive this point home.

In Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, there is this separation of religion and secular. It’s actually rooted in the biblical concept of the spirit and the flesh. There’s this idea of the spirit, and then there’s this idea of the flesh. You know, “give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give unto God what belongs to God,” this complete separation.

But as Muslims, we do not believe in a mutually exclusive relationship, meaning that politics is purely this world, secular, with no religious connotation. The Quran and Hadith is purely this religious experience that has no worldly connection.

The best evidence of this distinction between secular and religious being a product of this Catholic experience is the concept of monasticism. You have these people who completely disassociate from the world and live in caves because there’s a separation between the spirit and the flesh.

As Muslims, the Prophet ﷺ actually said to a person who came to meet Aisha and said, “Explain to me the ibadah of the Prophet.” Aisha’s response was, “You know, this is his day-to-day experience.” They responded by saying, “What? That’s all the Prophet does?” The word that was used is يَتَقِلُّونَ — they felt as though it was insignificant.

When the Prophet ﷺ found out about this, what he did was he went onto the pulpit and said, إِنِّي أَتْقَاكُمْ وَأَخْشَاكُمْ لِلَّهِ — “Don’t think you understand religion better than me.”

One person found out that the Prophet got married and said, “I’m going to live a life of celibacy.” Another person found out that the Prophet slept that night and said, “I’m going to spend the entire night doing ibadah.” Another person found out that the Prophet spent time with his family, and this person said, “I’m going to spend all of my time and my wealth in the path of Allah.”

The Prophet ﷺ grounded them in this reality that there’s no distinction between the religious and the secular. Rather, there are three tiers.

You have the hukuq and the rights that you owe to the first tier — what you eat, your family, you have to do that. Then you have the religious tier. But there is this bridge that is needed where you put science in conversation with religion. You put your family responsibilities in conversation.

Like, to give you an example, I got one of my students who came to me the other day and said, “Listen, I got two offers. I got an offer from medical school in Brown University or do I go to Florida?” I said, “Look, this is really a mundane choice that’s up to you, but Islam does play a slight role in this,” and that is which of the two will be more conducive for your Islamic livelihood.

If you find yourself going to Florida and getting stuck in the party life, maybe it makes more sense for you to go to Brown where you’ll have better company. So again, we face these questions all the time: Where am I going to college? Who am I going to marry? What am I going to do? What name am I going to give my child?

They do seem like very profane questions, but Islam does play a role in how we go about making these decisions.

I still have 30 seconds, so I beat the clock.

01:06:58 Prompt #2: Interacting with Islam

Anzar Lateef

Exactly. And that’s exactly right. This religion versus secular binary has impacted us as Muslims because we use this word “religion” to describe Islam. We say, “What is Islam? Oh, it’s a religion.” And subconsciously, we ascribe this Western definition of religion onto Islam, which impacts how we...

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Let me just elaborate on the question very quickly.

One of the struggles that we often have as young professionals in the West is this compartmentalizing of Islam where I'm going to college, I'm going to school, and my Muslim identity goes into my backpack.

Now, how has that distinction between Abdullah or Zainab in school or Abdullah and Zainab in work versus Abdullah and Zainab in the masjid or at home impacted the way you interact?

And maybe you don't experience that compartmentalization. Maybe that's not your experience. You can write on that as well.

So, five minutes of silent writing time.

Mustafa Syed

All right, who wants to go first? Okay, I see one person in the back.

Attendee #3

For me, I grew up as a Christian.

And so I think this question of the religious versus secular mindset was really… profound in a way.

Growing up Christian, there was too much freedom. You could do whatever you wanted as long as you attended your Sunday service.

And in that, I think we naturally as humans want to, with too much freedom, do everything. And we’ll do everything.

I think that reverting to Islam brought me structure.

So in that religious versus secular question, I was wanting that structure so that I know there are things that I can’t do.

I mean, being a visible Muslim, I’m not really… There are places you really shouldn’t be.

Like, if you’re probably in a club, they’re going to be like, “What is this girl doing? Like, there’s alcohol. I thought she couldn’t drink,” you know?

Yeah, that’s my perspective on it.

I think in that way, we should be appreciative that there are things that we can’t do. We should want to represent Islam in the best possible way.

But that’s just my perspective as a revert.

Yeah. Inshallah.

Mustafa Syed

All right, now one of the brothers

Attendee #4

All right, now one of the brothers.

My two cents on the topic is basically I noticed that when it comes to balancing religion versus secular, I and a lot of us tend to get kind of lost in the style, so to speak.

Like, we're always focused on—for those of us who have jobs—we're like, use our pictures, buy the latest car, buy cool clothes, stuff like that.

And I've learned not too long ago to just have a balance in religion versus secular by creating systems and reminders.

Basically, one thing I like to do is I like to listen to nasheeds and listen to different Islamic scholars online.

And then it'll kind of just... so every time I get too distracted by the dunya, I'll just do those things and use them as reminders to focus more on going to Jannah, the deen, things like that.

And then it creates more balance.

And, like, I kind of just had a stronger deen, basically.

Yeah. Yeah.

01:11:02 Prompt #2 Discussion

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

I just wanted to comment on the sister's point first that you know sometimes there's a famous Arabic proverb that says sometimes you begin to appreciate a thing by looking at its opposite. So somebody who grew up in a very Christian upbringing where there is this separation between the spirit and the flesh, that physically you can do anything because Jesus died for your sins as long as you show up at church on Sundays the rest is free to go.

We don't realize how negatively that can impact discipline and structure in your life.

Whereas from an Islamic perspective, we have a somewhat more holistic approach to our faith. That Islam can kind of guide us even the way we sleep—that I'll sleep on the right side—it will guide us on the way we enter the bathroom, our cleanliness, our hygiene. For many of us who live in a very godless and unstructured world, it provides us with so much clarity.

You know, like I remember once I was coming back from South Africa and I was sitting next to this elderly South African lady. She just saw the way I was dressed, so she assumed I was a Muslim and she started talking to me about politics, Islam, justice. I quoted this one statement of the Prophet regarding justice, how that if you find somebody being oppressed or oppressing you, stop both of them. It's a decently sized hadith.

After I mentioned it, she started tearing up and she said that, you know, that's the most touching thing I've heard regarding religion.

And I said that, you know, one of the reasons for this is our Prophet not only does he teach us how to pray, he also laughed with his companions. He hung out with them. He had fun. He had a good time with them. He showed them career choices. He showed them what it means to be a father, a mother, a child.

And as Muslims, we learn not to compartmentalize when we have that in mind.

01:13:02 Non-Beneficial Knowledge

Anzar Lateef

So one way that I've actually seen this manifest around people around me is instead of religious versus secular, people instead replace it with beneficial versus non-beneficial. Like, there's like, oh, beneficial knowledge, and then there's not beneficial knowledge, right?

But in your book itself, your book itself is an example of how we Muslims can find deen-y benefits in all Duniawi topics. Like, your citations mention, of course, the various scientists, various biologists and archaeologists, but you also mention atheist philosophers, and you mention like Daniel Dennett and stuff, and then you also mention various Muslim scholars and non-Muslims.

And one of the citations is also your three-year-old daughter. You credit her with one of the... She's in the category of scholars. Okay, okay. Scholars include... My three-year-old scholarly daughter.

So in this, how do you address this whole concept of non-beneficial knowledge?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

There is this discussion. What's the timer? Okay, just let me know. It's becoming a nice game. I'm like trying to make sure I beat the clock.

So this question Islamically, there's a dua. Allahumma inni asaluka ilman naafi'a. I ask you for beneficial knowledge and I seek your protection from knowledge that is not beneficial. And the scholars explain that beneficial knowledge can be that which is beneficial for your akhirah or it's good for your dunya as well. Unbeneficial, harmful knowledge is that knowledge that is harmful for your world as well as your akhirah.

Like so for instance, this is a random point, but I was speaking to my cousin the other day, just like three or four days ago. I was in New York and my relatives were over there. I was speaking to my cousin and he's like, I want to move to Dallas. And I said, oh, mashallah, you know, I noticed that there's this huge hijrah happening for Muslim communities. And I said, okay, where are you going to move to? Near Epic or near ICI or near Valley Ranch? And he's like, listen, I never heard of those terms before. I said alright then why are you moving to Dallas he says and I'm trying to quote him more particularly he said that the fortnight servers are now in Dallas. Any fortnight guys over here anybody okay good mashallah it looks like we have a lot of uh over here anyways so he told me that that because the servers have moved today I said listen I don't understand anything you're saying but if you're gonna do you're gonna do a hijrah to Dallas my suggestion is just tweak your intentions a little bit, right?

Supposedly you'll make a lot of money doing this. In my textbook, that is the definition of harmful knowledge, right? Where you know everything about Fortnite and there's nothing beneficial over there. I'm not saying it's haram. That's up to you and your creator and your personal life if you want to waste your time watching a bunch of costumed people running around beating each other up. You can tell what I think about it, but that's between you and your creator. But that's what we call unbeneficial knowledge. Knowledge that's not too beneficial.

However, Islamically, as we quoted Iqbal earlier on, anything, Nabi SAW says, wisdom is the lost knowledge of the believer. Wherever you find it, you take it. If you're able to make something more purposeful, meaningful for your religious growth, then something as basic as pottery, something as basic as painting can be your expression of your faith.

You know, subhanAllah, I know people who are into spoken word. Like that was their strength. Like the Shu'ara, Hassan ibn Thabit, he was a Sha'ir. But then when he accepted Islam, he used his poetry to praise the Prophet to defend Islam. So that's an example of someone taking something that's very profane and mundane such as poetry and then using it for Islam.

I have friends who are into spoken word. You'll see a lot of these rappers who accept Islam, a lot of them then they take their talents are musicians. They take their talents and they use it towards an Islamic cause. Like Yusuf Islam is an example, right? Where he was a famous musician and then he's using that towards an Islamic cause.

So to answer the question — Am I good on time? That's saying, wait a second. That was a minute and 30 seconds. I saw you bring that down to eight seconds, all right? Listen, you cannot change the clock. I was pacing myself. There was a minute and 30. This way I look back, there's eight seconds left. Listen, I'll give the mic freely, man. Here, take the mic back. I'm joking, I'm joking, it's fine, it's fine. Hopefully I answered whatever question was posed.

01:17:34 Expression of Islam

Anzar Lateef

Oh, no, you did, mashallah.

So regarding that, regarding that, the way I personally see it is like Islam has an individual aspect and a collective aspect. There's the individual Islam as truth and then there's the collective Islam as civilization.

Like this individual Islam as truth is your own personal journey to getting close to Allah and achieving the best akhirah. Like I can, yes, I can take a teacher. Yes, I can read your book. Yes, I can take a guide. But in the end, it's my individual choice to accept it.

But then there's the collective Islam. There's the Islamic civilization where it's the anthropological, sociological, psychological phenomena of preserving and propagating the deen in order to maximize reverence for Allah and His Prophet.

It involves art, ethics, aesthetics, science, philosophy, da'wah, community building, culture production, etc. Anything that involves more than one person.

And you were mentioning pottery. You were mentioning painting. You were mentioning the musicians. You were mentioning all of these, right?

How can we ensure that our passions, from art to cooking, from engineering to gardening, from fashion to the natural sciences, whatever our passions may be...

Like, for example... Raheem is recording. His passion is videography. And is him not spreading an expression of Islam?

Or you were talking about the flyer. Neba designed those flyers, right? And inviting people to come. You shouldn't have said that name. I apologize a hundred times in advance.

Isn't this artwork not an expression of Islam?

So how can we ensure that whatever our passions may be, how can we ensure that they're expressions of Islam?

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Everyone understand the question? All right.

How do we ensure that everything that we do, from painting to pottery to trolling people on YouTube and TikTok or like whatever it is that you get a kick out of, Fortnite or whatnot, how do we make our so-called mundane habits something more religious and Islamic?

First of all, I want to be very clear over here, and I don't want anyone to misunderstand me when I say this. Islamically, there are things that are primarily dini, primarily faith-based. Reading Quran will always be purely in the category of the religious.

Again, I'm using this in very basic terms. Reading the Quran will always be something that connects you to Allah in ways that doing pottery will never connect you to Allah.

Reading the hadith, praying salah, crying to Allah, this category of the dini is something that is inseparable to our understanding and commitment to Islam.

That said, because of a hadith like actions are based on intention, we have this potential of taking the most mundane things and infusing within it a more Islamic concept.

Like for instance, I gave you the example, videography for instance. Instead of going around and I don't know, taking pictures of pigeons flying in there, which must be really cool, or the architecture, the non-existing architecture of Dallas or like whatever it is, you're going around and doing that.

Like that's not haram, but it's not like that's your ticket to Jannah either. But using your time for something that's more Islamic, something that can draw people.

Like for instance, I have friends who travel a lot. But they made this point that whether I'm going to Greece, whether I'm going to Turkey, whether I'm going to Saudi, I'm going to take pictures and then I'm going to post about it and try to find relevant hadith. Try to talk about the creation of Allah.

By bringing that twist into something that is otherwise mundane, now gives it a secondary element of being Islamic. Does that make sense?

So I want to be clear here that if my job in my profession is videography, me going around and taking pictures of Masajid doesn't equate, again, I'm not trying to put you in front of the camera, but like just taking pictures and doing all of that doesn't equate to reading the Quran.

But unlike the secular binary of religious versus secular, it doesn't mean it's bereft of reward as well.

And the key is two things. How do I make my mundane practices something more Islamic?

Intention. Intention is the most important thing.

When I'm going to work in the morning, I can either go to work or I can say I'm going to support my family. Something as simple as that would make me crunching numbers in the most boring job alive around, or counting pills as a pharmacist, or meeting patients as a doctor, when my intention is I'm going to support my family as a caretaker, and that was the responsibility Allah has given me, goes from being something mundane to something rewarding.

When I'm composing poetry, when I am editing videos, when I'm doing things like that, and I try to do something with the intention of drawing people closer to Islam, what is primarily mundane now can take on a flavor of Islam as well.

01:22:38 Prompt #3

Anzar Lateef

JazakAllah khairan.

And that brings us to prompt three.

Every one of you has a passion, right?

And as Mufti Sahab said, there are those rituals and beliefs that are purely Islamic.

But Islam is more than those rituals and beliefs.

Like all these passions, like the videography that Raheem does and all these things, like everything that you can make Islamic, these are all like expressions of Islam, right?

Islam encompasses more than just rituals and beliefs.

01:23:16 Prompt #3 Discussion

Mustafa Syed

Okay, we can have two quick sharing, so who wants to go? About how they can turn their passion into a form of expression.

Attendee #5

As-salamu alaykum. So, Ferrit Sanders' prompt, I connected it to one of the classes I have to take from my major. And it’s about the articulations of what words you pronounce and where it comes from the certain letters. And lately I’ve been connecting that back to the Quran and where the words in Arabic come out from. And instead of looking at it as something I’m just studying, I like to connect it back to the Quran like I said in order for it to be something meaningful and that goes back to that thing you said earlier about the middle tier in Islam about taking something of the dunya aspect and connecting that back to the Islamic meaning of it.

Alhamdulillah.

Mustafa Syed

We’ll do one brother or we can do another sister.

Attendee #6

I had to, I’m Anzar’s mom. So no, I was, my passion, I mean, when I do that, I’m really passionate about it. So I volunteer at work with hijab on. And you know, in my mind, I’m thinking, see all the, because in TSA, I have tough time, right? So now when I’m volunteering, I always keep in mind all these people, you know, who think we carry bombs, you know, now they think that I’m compassionate. I mean, not that I am. I’m representing a community who’s compassionate, who care about, you know, all these people around us, all these white people in order.

Mufti Muntasir Zaman

Both on the tajweed point because I’m mashallah like a tajweed Nazi so I love tajweed — we can talk about that at a separate time — but to the sister slash auntie’s point I think honestly sometimes to infuse a level of Islam in your work could be as simple as wearing a hijab.

As simple as making sure your conversations in your workplace are a little bit more consciously Muslim. Like for instance, I’ll give you an example. Sometimes I have a group of non-Muslim friends, we’ll play basketball for instance, or we’ll go do something. I’m very conscious about making sure that I pray salah in between the game.

Like that is something I’m very particular about even though there’s like two hours left for dhuhr salah I could easily go not interrupt the game go home and pray salah but I make it a point to tell them listen I’m gonna need a five minute break to go and pray — to show to them how and how important Islam is in my life that I’m willing to stop something that I enjoy so that I can go and pray.

And doing this for a few months I’ve seen the impact of something as subtle as praying in the middle of a game had on them that then they started asking me like hey tell me more about Islam and mashallah one of them just accepted Islam recently. So again we don’t even realize the way we can impact people.

In your case, just speaking to people in your job. But for us, just stopping for Salah or mentioning Allah’s name or talking about why we make certain decisions because we follow the Prophet ﷺ as a role model.

Mustafa Syed

JazakAllah khair Mufti Salah.

I think that’s a very beautiful way to end off this very insightful discussion. So if I could first have a round of applause for Mufti Muntasir Zaman.

Alhamdulillah.

Disclaimer: Material published by Nuun Collective is meant to foster inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published media do not necessarily represent the views of Nuun Collective or any member thereof.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Note: This transcript has been slightly edited for readability.

He sat down with Nuun Collective last month for a talk & discussion on community building. Below is a transcript from that event.

Note: This transcript has been slightly edited for readability in written format.

Introduction

I know we're behind time, so we'll get right into it. Shaykh, you have been part of this community for such a long time, a key pillar of it, and you've seen it become the city on a hill that it is today, a city the world talks about. I want to ask you how we got here and what roles you've seen people play in making it happen.

Shaykh Abdul Nasir Jangda

It's good to be here with everyone, alhamdulillah. I'm really pleased to see everyone come out and participate and strive to understand and think a little more deeply about things. This is always an interesting topic for me and an interesting point of discussion. When I travel around the country, we have visitors coming all the time, and it’s become an interesting dynamic. I'm still not comfortable with it, but whenever people come to town, it's almost like visiting the campus is a tourist destination—it’s always on their list of places they want to stop, visit, and see. The bizarre thing is when people come to town and I ask what brings them here, they say this. When I travel around the country, people talk about Dallas, and I sometimes don't even realize what they're actually discussing.

It is quite interesting, and sometimes hard to grasp and believe, what the city has become and what it represents. With all that being said, I sometimes joke with people and tell them that I'm one of the people in Dallas who's actually from Dallas. A lot of people have moved here over the last 15 or 20 years, but I was born and raised here.

There's a very interesting observation about where we were and where we are now. The actual task is to try to connect those two dots. I can sit here and tell you where we were, what it used to look like, and I'll share some of that with you, and you obviously see where we are today. But the thing I can't provide for you is the connection between those two things—how we got here. Now, you might say, "Wait a second, that's an objective thing, that's history." It is, but at the same time, history depends on perspective.

History depends on perspective. Someone very economically focused might say, "We got here because jobs came, companies headquartered here, which brought more professionals, people, and an influx of money." Or, “The real estate market—that’s how we got here.” Someone else, more socially or educationally focused, might say, "We had a demographic that was more educated." Someone spiritually focused might say, "Someone came here a long time ago, made dua, and asked Allah to make this place flourish, and boom, that's how we got here." Everyone has their own perspective, and that’s what's fascinating.

That’s why I appreciate tonight's program. It's putting the onus on everyone here to not just sit back and listen but to think, reflect, and put pen to paper. Really jot down your thoughts—what factors do you think helped us go from point A to point B?

To talk about where we were: I can share with you some of the older students like Abdelrahman Murphy and Fatima Lette. I've driven them around and shown them where things were and how they progressed step by step. Suffice it to say, I actually remember a time when I was a child, a very long time ago, when we didn’t have a single place to pray in the entire DFW area. Every Thursday night or Friday morning, a few brothers, including my father, would get on the phone—I’m talking about old-school phones—and try to see if they could find a place where 10 or 12 people could pray. They would coordinate that, and that was their focus. I still remember actual Fridays when it didn’t happen because they couldn’t find a place.

Also, what's interesting is there weren’t many people—probably 10 or 15 Muslim families—but most of them were on the Tarrant County side, in Arlington and Fort Worth. That’s kind of where our community started, which is probably surprising to a lot of people. That was our reality. I remember when we had our first place to pray, a small house off the UT Arlington campus. That’s now a parking lot, but I remember that spot, and it became a big deal for people to drive from wherever they lived to congregate there.

I also remember the first time the community bought land. It was the Islamic Association of North Texas. We called it the Richardson Masjid. They bought the land, and it was the first piece of land the Muslim community owned. That was huge. There was a small house on the land where they prayed, but the first masjid that was built from the ground up was the Islamic Center of Denton. That’s not a joke—it sounds like a joke, but it’s not. That was the first masjid built, shoutout to Saudi Arabia. It was the mid-80s, and that’s how things worked. Some Saudi graduate students got money from their rich uncles back home, and they built it. You could tell they didn’t really know what they were doing, but it was built.

That was the beginning of our community. Even up until the early 2000s, things didn’t change drastically. When I came back after 12 years of studying overseas, we had a couple of purpose-built masjids in Arlington, Fort Worth, and Richardson, but Plano’s masjid wasn’t built yet. Irving’s masjid wasn’t built yet. They were still in office buildings and shopping centers. EPIC Masjid didn’t exist yet, and there was nothing in between. The community was very sparse, disconnected, and disjointed, way behind Houston and Austin. That was our reality.

Before I talk about the changes, let me share a specific story. In 1988, we had built just the first part of the Richardson Masjid. If you go inside now, to the innermost part, that was the entire building back then. Everything else was added later. My uncle was part of the core team that built that.

Now that we had our own masjid, it was exciting, but we didn’t have spiritual leadership. We didn’t have a scholar or an imam. We didn’t even have someone to lead us in salah. My uncle went to Pakistan, to Karachi, where we're from, and he visited an Islamic university. There, he met the head of the institution, Shaykh Muhammad Naim, who would later become my teacher, shaykh, and mentor. My uncle told him about our fledgling community in Texas and asked him to come help us. The shaykh eventually agreed and came to spend the last ten nights of Ramadan with us in 1989.

Shaykh Naim was a world-class scholar, running an institution with thousands of students, producing hundreds of huffaz and dozens of scholars every year. He put all of that on hold and came to Dallas, stayed in the masjid, and did itikaf with us. This was such a big deal that the 20 or 30 families in the community put their lives on hold. Kids didn’t go to school, adults didn’t go to work if they could afford it, and we were all in.

We had a routine. We'd gather before Maghrib, make duas, break our fast, pray Maghrib, eat, get ready for Isha, and he would lead us in salah. After Taraweeh, he’d give lectures, and we’d have tea and prayers. Then, he'd answer questions for an hour or two. After more prayers and dhikr, we'd pray Fajr together, go home, sleep, and repeat the whole routine for ten days.

I still remember that experience—it was remarkable. At the end of it, the last night, he told us, “You’re never going back home. This is home.” Some brothers got upset because the mentality back then was that this was temporary. But he insisted, “This is home. You have to think about the future and build for it.” His main emphasis was investing in people, particularly through knowledge and scholarship. He said we’d need people to lead the community going forward.

That night, I heard him, and I’d already been obsessed with trying to memorize the Qur'an. I told my dad, “I want to go study,” and he said, “Great, but who's going to tell your mom?” Eventually, we decided that the shaykh would tell her. We took him to our apartment, and I still remember the last time I met him in person, which was about six months before he passed away, right before the lockdown began.

As I close, I want to emphasize this: What motivated a world-class scholar, a teacher of teachers, running an institution ten times the size of anything here? He was already doing it. He didn't come here to start something; he was already doing it. But what motivated him to leave, put it all on hold, and come here to spend time with 40-50 of us, the twenty families or so, every night in some remote corner of the world?

Because he understood: Doing big things requires taking small steps. The Prophet ‎ﷺ said never to underestimate any good you can do. But he had a vision, a maqsad, a purpose. He was willing to sacrifice, to do hard, difficult things, to plant seeds, even if he’d never sit under the shade of the tree they’d become.

He never saw the new Qalam campus. He never did. I studied under him; he mentored me, taught me; he was everything to me for 32 years of my life. Qalam is a direct fruit of his tree. If you ever go to Southern California, there's a huge, beautiful institution called the Institute of Knowledge. The founder, the director, Shaykh Nomaan Baig, was our mentor. There’s a Darul Uloom in New York, started by someone from his institution. Even the founders of Miftaah studied at Binoria, and he was their mentor too.

So now you see all these gardens, but they were the seeds he planted more than 30 years ago. That's why it's important to do the work and to be willing to sacrifice.

I wanted to mention, we discussed a couple of weeks ago Imam Yusuf Kavakçı, who spent 20+ years with us in Dallas. He was a scholar in his own right, trained in the Ottoman system and the Western academic system. He was a remarkable scholar, and Turkey recruited him back because they knew his worth. But he invested over two decades here in a community that, frankly, didn’t appreciate him. Why? Because he understood: You’ve got to do the hard work and sacrifice.

That's what God said1 to the Prophet ‎‎ﷺ. Be steadfast in what you have been told to do.

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In his talk, Imam Suhaib explores the paradigm of culture, challenging prevailing assumptions about how faith and identity are expressed in the modern world. He urges listeners to critically examine inherited cultural frameworks—both secular and religious—and invites them to develop authentic, God-conscious cultural expressions rooted in integrity, relevance, and mercy.

Below is a full transcript of his talk & discussion at Nuun Collective on May 2, 2025.

00:00:00 Introduction

Mustafa Syed:

All right, Assalamu alaikum, everyone. Welcome to Nuun once again. Inshallah, we're joined by Shaykh Saheb Webb, who needs no introduction.

Assalamu alaikum, Shaykh. How are you doing?

Suhaib Webb:

Doing good.

Mustafa Syed:

Alhamdulillah. So I guess the first point.

Suhaib Webb:

I'm trying to figure out who that is, bro. Guy looks like GTA from 2004. What happened to me?

00:00:27 Muslim Upbringing & Culture

Mustafa Syed:

We're selling stickers after this. It'll go towards a new projector. All right. So basically, I want to preface the conversation kind of going off of what Anzar said, talking about a little bit of my upbringing.

So I grew up in a small town in the Midwest in Illinois. And there wasn't really a huge Muslim community. So I didn't feel much semblance of a Muslim culture. And one of the biggest examples of myself finding a Muslim culture was the first time I went to an ISNA conference. I went to this ISNA conference in Detroit in 2014. And Sharif, that's actually where I met you for the first time, almost 10 years ago. And that was the first time I saw so many Muslims come together. I saw dynamic speakers. I saw people basically celebrating their faith in such a large space. I had never in America seen that many Muslims together all in the same place. So I reflected on that experience, and I realized that the conventions are not just about listening to lectures, but they're a form of culture-producing events, giving Muslims a space to engage with their community. So I didn't feel this as much again until I moved to Dallas, where we have a huge, massive Muslim culture.

Basically our conversation today is going to be about analyzing that and analyzing how culture works and how we need to, I guess, end of March. So it's actually a very unfortunate statistic for those of us who are Muslim. It's 23 percent of Muslims that are born Muslim in the U.S. They do not identify as Muslim in adulthood. That's almost one fourth of U.S. born Muslims. So, Shaykh, you're someone who has been all over the US and all over the world, and you've seen Muslim people and their cultures. What's your point of view on culture in terms of facilitating and preserving Islam in the U.S., like in these cases where 23% are leaving?

00:02:39 Preserving Islam in the U.S.

Suhaib Webb:

Very important question. So I think before, I think it might be important to define what you mean by culture. So before I answer, in our traditional system of Islam, our traditional education, and this is not to put you on the spot, we have what's called, which means that we should define what we mean before we talk about it. Because all of us have maybe a different subjective understanding of what culture is. So that would mean my answer would be impossible to answer all those assumptions. So before I answer, let me nicely ask you: what is meant by culture?

Mustafa Syed:

What do you think is meant by culture?

Yeah. There's a good quote that I was reading in preparation for this. But actually, before I get to that, so basically, you know, culture, I think, and in the reading I did a little bit before this event, from my perspective, I thought that culture, you know, a lot of people actually can't define it. It's almost like when you see it, you know it when you see it. Basically, it's a culmination of all sorts of things, almost like the human experience. Your language, your practices, the places you go, your beliefs, your ethics, all of these culminate into what can be defined as a culture. And different places embody this in different ways. But I think, Sheikh, you'll know a little bit more about this than I do.

Suhaib Webb:

I have four kids. I keep looking at my phone, that's why. One of my kids jumped in a poison ivy thing. So whenever I travel, as soon as I get on the plane, they do this. And then Maryam’s like, “Every time you leave,” right? So, sorry.

So I think—I’m not going to give the definition now—but the Islamic sort of understanding of culture and what are called norms is so important that it actually forms one of the five major axioms of Islamic law. In Islamic law, we have five fundamental legal axioms that actually everyone agrees on, which is really rare. And that is al-‘ādah muḥakkamah, which means that culture can be a decider.

That plays out in really three or four areas. One is mentioned by Al-Jaṣṣāṣ. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ is one of the great Hanafi jurists. He lived in Iran. He was from a place called Ray, which is now in a place called Sha‘b al-‘Aẓīm in Tehran, northern Tehran. The Hanafis were all over Iran, as were the Shāfiʿīs in Shiraz. He has a text called Aḥkām al-Qur’ān, Tafsīr Āyāt al-Aḥkām. And in that text—it’s just dedicated to all the verses of Qur’an that deal with law.

I don’t want to pigeonhole us into a legal discussion, but I do hope we can talk about the problem of identity and how using the word “identity,” unpacked as it is, actually positions us as Muslims in a problematic place. The same goes with the word “religious,” because classical Islam didn’t designate something as “Islamic.” That is the outcome of coloniality and secularism. It actually categorized things according to one of our three sciences: whether it was faith, whether it was law, or whether it was purification of the heart. These are our three disciplines that formulate the bulwark of the lexicon needed to function as a Muslim.

So, not to get off topic—that’s a great question. I hope that we can talk about, as we continue, why we shouldn’t say the minaret is Islamic. The minaret is permissible. It doesn’t mean the minaret is Islamic. And we have to be careful of Peter Berger. I hear a lot of Peter Berger in y’all’s language—The Sacred Canopy—and, you know, we need to be careful of that book. Maybe we can talk about why. Again, not to be critical, not to be the uncle, not to be chacha sāḥib, but culture in Islam is something which is seen as an imperative for a number of reasons.

Number one: Jaṣṣāṣ talks about when the text is ambiguous, culture becomes a decider. I’m trained in the Hanafi and Maliki schools, but I roll Maliki—forgive me. I love Quduri, but at the end of the day, I’ve already started to Ibn Abī Zayd. These two books we study. But in the Maliki madhhab, we have a great axiom—and forgive me if I’m nerdy, I was told I was supposed to be nerdy—we have an axiom that says al-‘urf ka’l-sharṭ, meaning that custom is like a condition. Very similar to what Jaṣṣāṣ is saying. Jaṣṣāṣ says in Aḥkām al-Qur’ān, based on this axiom, that culture decides. The Mālikīs say that culture is a condition.

Ibn ʿĀbidīn, in his famous Radd al-Muḥtār for the Hanafis, has an entire essay on culture: Why? When does it come into play? Number one: when the text is ambiguous and it has a social impact. For example, when Allah says, “Give them their mahr,” the Qur’an doesn't specify what the mahr is. So what decides what mahr should be? Custom—culture.

Islam, in fact, has culture baked into its scripture and into the teachings of the Prophet ﷺ. There is an essential need for culture to animate the sacred, because you can’t have one without the other. How do you have sacred texts if they’re not speaking to people—what people do, what they employ, how they go about things? Even if you look in the Muslim world, the minaret looks different depending on the region, because there were different needs in each place.

I’m not going to get into the other three types of texts because it gets too complicated. But very simply put, when there is a text which is extremely ambiguous or intentionally left ambiguous—what’s called mujmal fayubayyinuhu al-‘urf—we say that custom (‘urf) acts as the tafsir, or explanation, of that ambiguous text. It helps us understand and apply it.

Another instance where culture plays a critical role is in the work of the Mufti or jurist. As we’re taught, Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said that one of the conditions for being a Mufti is maʿrifat al-nās—to know the people. That’s why Al-Suyūṭī, in Al-Ashbāh wa al-Naẓāʾir, says it is farḍ (obligatory) on every community in their city to have a Mufti. I actually asked ChatGPT, what was the average distance between cities in the time of Al-Suyūṭī? Twenty-three miles. So every 23 miles, there should be a Mufti. Why? Because he or she would know the unique "pixels," if you will, of their local culture.

So, culture is a must. Without culture, we don’t have the functionality of religion.

00:10:05 Culture in Islamic History

Mustafa Syed:

JazakAllah khair, Sheikh. So again, I read this quote—actually, you mentioned earlier that culture is an imperative. That reminded me of a paper titled Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Umar Faruq Abd-Allah. In it, he writes that historically, Islam showed itself to be culturally friendly. In that regard, it has often been likened to a crystal-clear river. Its waters—representing Islam—are pure, sweet, and life-giving, but having no color of their own, they reflect the bedrock indigenous culture over which they flow. So in China, Islam looked Chinese; in Mali, it looked African. Sheikh, could you tell us more about how different cultures adopted and engaged with Islam throughout history?

Suhaib Webb:

Can you read the quote again, sir?

Mustafa Syed:

Yes. Islam showed itself to be culturally friendly, and in that regard, it’s been likened to a crystal clear river. Its waters are pure, sweet and life-giving, having no color of their own. They reflect the bedrock, the indigenous culture over which it flows. In China, Islam looked Chinese. In Mali, it looked African.

Suhaib Webb:

So it's a quote of Dr. Omar Fuqabdallah, good, very respected elder, alhamdulillah, and teacher. I might add a cadence to that. And again, I don't want to seem like the angry gore in the room. I wouldn't say that Islam is culturally friendly. I would say that Islam is culturally engaging. And there's a great quote of Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah who says that Islam is like polish. It comes into a situation and amplifies what's best and sort of covers, if you will, what's worse. I personally, in these kind of situations, like to refer to revelation. It's like revelation does a great job of helping us frame sort of how we are. Because... The Qur'an notes that our role in society is one to be contributors, as Dr. Omar mentions, but also to be agitators. So Allah says about the Prophet ﷺ, We sent you as a witness. We sent you as someone who brings glad tidings, but also who warns. So I may be able to cooperate societally, civically, in areas that are enhancing the overall good of society, but at the same time I should be enraged at the mass murder of George Floyd. I have a prophetic responsibility to take on injustice and inequality at a systemic as well as private level. So there is a duality to our role in society. And that allows us to have prophetic balance. And that's the danger of being co-opted by the left and the right. We're not Democrats. We're not Republicans. We're Mohammed-y. And that emancipates us from sort of the secular kind of entrapments that we find. So I agree in a conditional way. But at the same time, our primary role as people is to enhance the good as found to be Sharia compliant and to reduce harm. And so that means, as the Prophet is described in the Quran, as a contributor, but also an adversary to evil. An adversary to what's wrong. So that we find ourselves in a balance here within society. So I think he's talking about the positive side. I would also say that Something today is he was reading Iqbal. You know, if you're a leader, you know, I know these poems of Iqbal. Subhanallah. And I know he was reading Shakwa. I said, Subhanallah, he's going to read the whole Shakwa? I'm going to start making Shakwa because we're going to be here for a long time. But Iqbal is a poet who writes in Urdu, Arabic, and Persian. So if you speak Arabic, you heard Arabic words like wujud, mawujud. He was using words that are Arabic. And then Chayturi, Azizam, I speak some Persian so I can hear the Persian in there. That poem embodies really who you are now. None of us can trace anything Islamic that we are wearing or talking or saying that is exclusive to our own culture, whether here or back home. A Muslim, whether they know it or not, is embodying centuries of contributions to where we are to the extent that the thobes you're wearing, brothers, are made in China. I'm serious. Maybe the tariff is going to kick in, the thobe is going to get more expensive, but I’m just saying. The jilbab you’re wearing is made in China or made in Bangladesh. So we are actually embodying this whether we like it or not or know it or not or aware of it or not. We are very much a product of generational contributions from different societal angles.

00:15:34 Immigrants vs. Native Culture

Mustafa Syed:

Exactly. And coming from that lens of us being a product of different cultures and different contributions throughout history, a lot of us are children of immigrants—of immigrant Muslims to this country. So as children of immigrants, we interact with two cultures. Some would say at least two cultures: the culture of our parents, which evolved in a sense to preserve Islam, and our local culture here, which developed without Islam really in mind. So this clash kind of leads to a dichotomy.

Suhaib Webb:

How did it develop without Islam in mind?

Mustafa Syed:

Well, I’m talking more about Western culture. I think some would say that it perhaps developed without Islam necessarily in mind in terms of broader Western culture. No, no, no, no, no, not that. So in America, can you tell us about you know, a little bit about this dichotomy and a little bit about like, you know, how we should, I guess, like engage with all of this.

Suhaib Webb:

So it'd be very difficult for me to reflect on that. I'm not the child of immigrants from recent times—I’m the child of immigrants from Ireland who came in 1631 as an indentured servant. Terrence Webb, that's my uncle; he's buried somewhere in Virginia. So I would feel like I'm being that white guy who steps into a place where I shouldn’t be. Maybe I can reflect as someone who’s seen it from the outside and served in the community and then also as someone who embraced Islam.

Yeah, I think we have to be very, very careful even with the words we use. I don’t like the word “immigrant”—not because it’s a bad thing, but because of how it’s been adopted historically in America, all the way back to Lyndon Johnson, even in the 1920s against the Irish as a pejorative. Now we see in the United States a green card doesn’t necessarily have the same power it had before January 6th or whatever. So I want to emphasize something here. I believe—and this is coming from someone who taught in the academy—that we should refer to four sciences for terminology. And that’s it.

Number one is the Quran. Number two, of course, is the Sunnah. Added to the Sunnah is the Seerah. I personally don’t have a problem with weak narrations in the historical accounts of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam because they’re not a source of law, and our ancestors left them in the Seerah for a reason. There was obviously an academic decision made over centuries to keep them there. So the Quran and Sunnah is one. The other three are theology—and what I mean by theology is not just as found in the Quran, regardless of what theological school you may adhere to or learn. All three Sunni schools in particular, and then Shi’i theologies, contain a plethora of words that help us understand the moments we’re living. We don’t need to employ words like “Islamic” or “identity” or “religious.”

Number two is fiqh, law. Sometimes in our community, everything is law. Dr. Sherman talks about that in his book, now Islam and Secularism or something—he talks about Islam and the Islamic secular, like fiqh-ing everything out. There’s not a rule for everything for a reason: the majority of actions have no rule—they’re permissible. So our legal history, our legal system—whether it’s dealing with the actions of people, which is fiqh, or the theory of law, which is usul al-fiqh—that’s also an important reference for terminology.

The third is tasawuf, taskiyatun nafs, purification of the heart. We have our own, and Sheikh Mikael has done a great job capturing classic terms—not because I want to be anachronistic or live in the past; the past has its problems—but I think we should take those terms and see how they work now instead of immediately adopting terminology from outside and imposing it on us. Because what you may inadvertently do is secularize us by imposing a set of definitions and ideas that might be... And again, I’m not trying to put that brother on blast; feel free to put me on blast—I’m not that sensitive, don’t worry.

For example, the minaret is not Islamic because it’s not unique to Muslims. Non-Muslims have built minarets in the Muslim world. Sometimes the term “Islamic” is used and invoked to create division where none exists. So if we talk about law, we say the minaret is something commendable; that implies the whole community can be involved. Or “this is Islamic dress”—there’s no such thing. Ibn Taymiyyah says there’s no such thing as Islamic dress; clothes belong to everybody, wear whatever you want.

I remember when we went to Egypt in 2004, a brother from Oklahoma was with us. He saw a man with a big turban and a white galabia, Sudani style. The brother greeted him in Arabic, trying to talk, and the man said, “I’m not Muslim.” The brother said, “No, you’re Muslim, but you’re wearing a turban.” The man said, “You’re crazy, even we wear turbans, bro. I’m Christian.” He had tattoos and everything. The brother was like, “What?” There’s no Islamic dress.

So sometimes coloniality not only imposes economic, political, and military handcuffs on us, but also intellectual ones—specifically through terminology. That’s why the first thing Allah taught Adam was what? Terms, names, how you think. A Muslim unfamiliar with the lexicon found in Quran and Sunnah, theology, fiqh and usul, and tasawuf will be trying to live in Texas like Adam if he had no names—the inability to understand what? I’m not saying that to bring you down; I’m saying it so you can say, “Yo, I gotta get busy.” I want to inspire you.

For us as new Muslims, I can’t reflect on the diaspora experience—it would be unfair. But I have seen this battle between the uncles and aunties—the khala and amm and cha-cha and cha-chi—and the young people. As I’ve gotten older, I realize all my children are from interracial marriages. There’s good in both. There’s a lot of “hair” in what comes from overseas. The West sets us in a way—Trump is a cantankerous figure, Stephen Miller is a less benign form of anti-immigrant rhetoric packaged in bravado, but it trickles down to even less benign and explicit forms, still harmful.

We look at how come we don’t have a word instead of “fobs” (fresh off the boat)? Why don’t we have a word for those born and raised here? That’s a pejorative. Why is it always “that looks bad” but “here looks good”? I think having someone like Dr. Yasser is good. Someone with that experience like Abdul Nasser is good, Murphy is good, Mustafa Primal is good because they’ve dealt with what you’ve dealt with.

For us new Muslims, it’s very different because we’re trying to acquire religion and parse culture that’s being forced on us that’s not our culture. That’s a lot to take on. Sometimes you don’t know if it’s religion or culture. That battle is there, but—and I didn’t want to answer this long, sorry—you gotta be careful what you amputate from back home.

As a father of two children whose mother’s Lebanese and Iranian—my mother’s Iranian grandmother—I’ve never seen anyone in salawat mode like this woman. It changed my whole view of that situation because of how she could read Quran and make salawat upon the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. She died at 96. When she was in hospice, she said, “Turn me to the Qibla.” They did. She said, “Allahumma salli ala Muhammad,” and died. I thought, if I could go out like that, just get me to the Qibla, forget the salawat.

Compare that to how my non-Muslim relatives died. They didn’t smoke enough weed in Oklahoma, didn’t get Jack Daniels, didn’t get to go to the casino on the border—that’s how they died. The juxtaposition of these two different types of death is striking. Every time I meet a Muslim who has lived a righteous life, they die with dignity. That’s a habit she got from childhood, seeing people around her make salawat.

I had a sheikh in Egypt who was blind, memorized the Hanafi madhab, all the poetry, all the language. I read a famous poem to him. He couldn’t see, but he would make poetry about my children—Shifa and Malik would come into his house and he’d drop bars about them. I said, “Shaykh, I’ll be rude, but you’re blind—how do you do this?” He said, “My mother used to play in Al-Azhar; she was blind. I have genetic blindness. She taught me everything you hear now.” I said, “How?” He said, “Because she would play, she would hear, and after years and years, like how we learn ABCs, she learned and memorized and became a scholar.”

My sheikh from West Africa, Senegal, learned 13 qiraat from his sister—not his father. I asked how. He said she just used to read.

So there is a unique marriage that needs to happen, and a critique of what works culturally here and overseas. And if you think about this room, you’ve synthesized it beautifully—we’re like in a hipster coffee shop reading Iqbal. This is a beautiful marriage we’re seeing with a white convert from Oklahoma in Texas. I’m not even allowed in Texas because I’m crimson and cream for life.

Isn’t this in itself a beautiful thing? I would say in your interpersonal relationships, be very careful how you see back home. If it’s dismissive and arrogant, you’re infected by the false universal of America. If it’s “all America’s going to hell” or “these Americans are shouting,” that’s too much as well. We want to find that balance.

00:28:15 Prompt #1: Islam’s Preservation in Culture

Mustafa Syed:

Jazakallah khair, Shaykh. And so one thing we do here at Nuun is that we love to make people write. That's what our organization is named after. It's named after Surah Qalam, right? Nuun wal Qollami wa ma yastroon—Nuun by the pen and that which they write. So we're going to head to our first prompt, actually. There we go.

Basically now, and again, we're working our best on adjusting our structure to try and push very meaningful reflections and push very meaningful responses to the prompts that we do. So we're going to give you guys a little bit more time to write, like five whole minutes, but we're going to ask that everyone keeps silent for just these five minutes. Really get your thoughts out on paper. You know, reflect on the question that's being asked, and the question that's being asked is—and they were trying to be a little different, you know—because so many times you go to a lecture and you have to take everything at face value. Here, we want you guys to engage. So we're asking you guys: do you agree with this premise that Islam is preserved via culture? Do you agree with this premise, yes or no? And we want you guys to reflect on that and to write it out. And then, inshallah, you guys can discuss with people around you. But our leadership, they'll give you guys a signal for that.

Kamran, you have a timer? Yeah. Kamran’s going to do it. Ok. All right. So you guys can go ahead and get started. And then, again, silent writing time for the next few minutes. Thank you.

Okay, we're going to pick on people to answer this question. We'll do one guy, one girl, and we'll go back to the discussion.

00:29:53 Prompt #1 Discussion

Attendee #1:

So I really like this prompt because personally I come from my mom's Ethiopian and my dad is white. So I have like two different cultures, but I really align with my Ethiopian culture because my mom raised me. In Ethiopia, the culture there, the people are mostly like half Christian and half Muslims that live there. And so Islam came later on when it comes to the history of Ethiopia and stuff like that. So I think the culture there is kind of like its own thing because it involves Christian values, and I think with the Muslim values, it's not really aligned with that type of culture. Like, a lot of the things I had to unlearn when I truly started to seek knowledge and stuff like that. So for me, I would say yes and no just because of the history that comes with that culture. But I'm sure everyone has their own experience when it comes to this. I think it definitely depends on what country you come from and what they practice.

Attendee #2:

I actually think the premise itself is flawed because it's kind of hard to say that Islam is preserved by a culture or culture in general when culture is such a volatile thing that's always subject to change. Whether it be through the social landscape, the political landscape, the economic landscape, even your cultures back home. Like, I went back to Bali like a year ago and it's completely different than what it was when I left. American culture changes like every day based on the TikTok trend. And so expecting something so volatile to preserve a practice and a belief is a little unreasonable. If anything, culture is more of a sponge that absorbs Islam and then Islam kind of essentially keeps what it should keep and gets rid of what you should get rid of. But I don't think it's reasonable to say that culture can preserve something like Islam.

00:32:07 Prompt Reflection

Suhaib Webb:

I have to speak Amharic because I live in D.C. I had no choice — I had to learn the Ethiopian language. And she’s correct. My neighbors were Ethiopian Christians, and they would do Ramadan with us.

The idea of Islam is really challenged within, I would say, convert communities here or new Muslim communities, and in places like Ethiopia and Malaysia where that flow is there. So I agree with what you’re saying. I think the point you’re making is valid, but at the same time, without culture, you wouldn’t have Muslims. You wouldn’t have the practice of Islam because many of those practices require a community, and a community naturally brings culture.

But you said something very profound — that Islam filters cultural expressions. The Prophet said, “People are like metal,” meaning gold and silver. How do you get gold and silver? You have to filter. So Islam filters culture.

One thing I want to say, and I say this without sounding mean — and I have resting imam face, so don’t think I’m mad. My wife tells me I’m always mad, but I’m just chilling, thinking about the ummah, thinking about Iqbal. And congratulations to Bangladesh — what’s happened there in the last year is impressive. I was invited by students there, so I’m looking forward to going.

For those of us who embraced Islam, many of us — I can’t speak for everyone — but most people I’ve grown up with, Islam is an adventure, excitement, something to be in awe of, and something to constantly discover, like Easter eggs, metaphorically.

I feel sometimes that with born Muslims, Islam is calcified, almost like a great piece in a museum. Like, I really don’t care what Islam did in Andalusia; I care what Islam does in Oak Cliff. I could care less about what Islam did in Samarkand; I care about what Islam is doing in Sherman. Because the Quran says, “Tilka ummatun qara kharat” — those old communities are gone.

But each of those expressions, when we look back at the architecture or how they contributed to worship — for example, the mihrab is not from the Quran and Sunnah. These things come through communities coming together to culturally practice Islam.

Here’s a good example you have yet to see in America — largely because of the engagement of Salafism, which has sometimes waged war on cultural expression under the name of bid’ah (innovation) or hyper-traditionalism, which also rejects cultural expressions by saying “this is not from the tradition.” Both views are very much imagined.

I say that not to attack either group. When I lived in Egypt — I don’t know if you have any Egyptians here — every morning on the way to school, even policemen conducting traffic would be reading the Quran. Everyone on the bus was reading the Quran. Even people who didn’t look religious — like more Amr Diab than Shaykh Husri — they were reading.

You might judge by appearances and think these people aren’t religious, but they were really engaged with the Quran.

In Malaysia, every Thursday night, people gather at the mosque to recite Yasin together. All the kids there basically read Yasin without any problem.

Where is that culture of Quran in America among those who embrace Islam, or even among you?

So what he said is powerful, but there is a cultural component. Islam doesn’t need culture, but Muslims use culture to articulate expressions of Islam. That’s why that axiom — that culture can be a decider — exists.

So yeah, these are great points, just some nuances to think about.

Like here in America, we worry about — no disrespect — things like music, entertainment, even coffee shops. I love coffee, just don’t burn it above 180 degrees.

But where is the focus on religious cultural contributions — like Quran, like dhikr? We were hit with the “Bida disease,” where everything’s considered bid’ah, and that shut down, especially among new Muslims. It got shut down and hampered in a way that now our children don’t even know the Quran.

00:37:41 Culture vs. Religion Dichotomy

Mustafa Syed:

I think it’s really interesting that you mentioned that — how people were almost fighting themselves by stifling their religious practices, labeling them as, like you said, “this doesn’t fit.”

In that same vein, you also mentioned earlier a clash between cultural expression and religion, right?

A lot of people say, “Oh, there’s no culture in religion. Religion exists just as it is.”

Can you share your reflections on that dichotomy — the culture versus religion dichotomy?

Suhaib Webb:

So if we look at the historical and anthropological record—not just through the lens of religious sciences—wherever Islam has gone, it has not subdued people in the way the West has subdued people. Wherever Islam went as a political, military, and economic force, as a conqueror, it did not command people to abandon all their cultural expressions.

As our brother said, it filtered and polished.

For example, I became Muslim, but my family—every Saturday—they’re big OU fans. They get together, cook ham and more ham, smoke fat blunts, and drink Johnny Walker Red all day. I can still watch the game; I just don’t partake. So immediately, I’m adjusting my cultural thermostat, dictated by the teachings of religion.

All of us, when we start new jobs, feel that worry. I worked at AT&T once, wondering how I’d navigate the space as a Muslim—Salah, the parties, the networking events. Club soda with lime became my go-to. We begin to negotiate.

The idea is: we can’t function without cultural expression. But I want to talk about how the challenge is that we’re looking for religious answers through a secular glossary. That’s why I started my talk this way.

Even religious people—this is not an attack on anyone—I’m not attacking Salafis or traditionalists—but sometimes culture isn’t “Bid‘ah” (innovation). Religious practices can be innovation, or rather heterodoxy (I prefer that word). But how you dress, talk, and eat? Remember, the default ruling on culture in all four Sunni schools is permissibility.

Islam did not come into society saying it needed to change your culture, address your culture, or remove it.

Even Islamist thinkers like Sayyid Qutb maybe went too far, painting Islam like a fascist ideology forcing everyone to wear taubes and turbans—but Islam didn’t care about what you wear, bro.

New Muslims here experienced that too, because many of us were ignorant of Islam at first. Our imagination of Islam in the early ’90s was very much driven by Malcolm X.

You need to appreciate this: for ’90s generation ex-Muslims, our sage, our Abduqar al-Jilani, our Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah, Rabbi al-Adawiyah was Malcolm Shabazz. That’s who he belonged to. That’s why his family is loved and protected. People want to start working with Farrakhan? We’re like, “What? They killed our uncle.” We’re sensitive about that.

But on the other hand, what I’ve seen with Muhajireen Muslims (I prefer that term over “immigrants”—it’s the Quranic term) and their children is that they imagine Islam through the colonized secular system they were taught and shown as social, political, and economic agency.

If you want to get right, be white.

So now Muslims name their kids Noah. Do you see what’s going on in Gaza? You should name your son Salahuddin.

The challenge is that we have to sift through this.

Sometimes secularism—in its conservative nature—is far more brutal and harsh religiously than religion itself.

For example, you can say someone who drinks is not religious, but can you say they’re not Muslim? You see that? Islam is actually less limiting than secular understandings.

So as new Muslims, we battle this. We respect the older generations who come from Mecca, Masr, or Rawab Hindi, but what they tell us can sound more like Peter Berger or John Locke than Islamic orthodoxy.

Trying to imagine Islam through the lens of Malcolm X is difficult. So marrying that is why I think it's important. I always say the default of culture is permissibility, man. And it's very important for your parents. I'm a parent. I got four of them. God help me. And sometimes I have to, I've never told my daughter to wear hijab. Never in my life. Never told my wife to wear hijab. Never in my life. My daughter wore hijab by herself. And I didn't tell her, oh, congratulations, you wore hijab. You do that for Allah. That's a choice you make. And I know as a woman, there's a lot of pressure on you. And I know how a man, big six-foot-five country boy, can come across, especially when he's imam. Because people, my daughter grew up, oh, this is the Bint of Suhaib. No, it's not Bint Suhaib. This is Shifa. She's her own person. So I've seen in my own children this need to remind them that cultural expression falls under the general lens of permissibility. And oftentimes it's confused by either the enthusiasm of new Muslims that's uneducated, built on the lens of Malcolm, or the imagination which is very much informed by the secular, through the secular education system that has infiltrated the East, by Muhajireen. And I think in some ways we share in this. Whether you're born Muslim or you're legacy Muslim or you're new Muslim, we got upgraded later on, that parsing is hard. It can become difficult. So in that line, you talked about the value of engaging with all of this.

00:45:24 Maintain Sanctity Between Religion & Culture

Mustafa Syed:

So in that line, you talked about the value of engaging with all of this. But kind of like what one of the responses was earlier, how do we, I guess, find that middle path? How do we maintain the sanctity of religion when we're trying to form new cultures? How do we prevent this moral relativism in the pursuit of culture? And you kind of mentioned earlier we should formulate our understanding based on the sciences of Islam. So could you maybe give us some examples on how we can put all this together and really create that synthesis?

Suhaib Webb:

But kind of like what one of the responses was earlier, how do we, I guess, find that middle path? How do we maintain the sanctity of religion when we're trying to form new cultures? How do we prevent this moral relativism in the pursuit of culture? And you kind of mentioned earlier we should formulate our understanding based on the sciences of Islam. So could you maybe give us some examples on how we can put all this together and really create that synthesis?

So don't sleep on the statement when I said that culture falls under permissibility. What does that mean? We say that something, in fact, there's a great, the second axiom of the five major axioms of Islam is that the origin of everything that is untexted is permissible as long as it's beneficial. I made it as a rhyme for you. The origin of everything that's untexted, meaning not in the Quran, not in the Sunnah, is permissible, is permissible unless there's a text that says it's not, as long as it's beneficial. So the origin of things that are untexted is permissible as long as they're beneficial, as long as it accomplishes what we call one of the goals of Sharia — preservation of the mind, the intellect, preservation of religion, preservation of family, preservation of wealth, preservation of dignity. These are the foundations of Islamic law.

So what does that mean? It means like if I'm an uncle, right, and you're wearing a Kyrie Irving jersey, that should not even bother me, man. That's permissible. I had a number of African Americans contact me and say, look, man, I got braids. I went to the masjid, and this dude told me braids are bitter. I was like, what? There were Sahaba that had braids. There were Sahaba who had Afro hair. They had braids. Some of them had what we considered even like dreads. Seriously. But my question is, coloniality is a monster. And many of the fiqh opinions that were crafted in the last 200 years were very much about being anti-colonial. And it fit that moment. Like in India, if you look at some of the fatwa, don't dress like the British, don't look like the British. It made sense because they understood that that outfit meant power, that that outfit meant subjugation, that that outfit meant that I have now surrendered myself to something. I get it. It doesn't have the same meaning now. We call it takhrij al-mana'atan fatwa. I got to make sure it has the same meaning.

So I don't care, man, how you dress, as long as it's not, you know, haram. You know what I'm saying? I could care less. And so the uncle that's checking the young man for wearing a Kyrie Irving jersey, it should be a Jason Tatum jersey, to be honest, but I get it, right? Who cares? Or, you know, sister, your clothes. What about my clothes? My wife told me one time, a lady comes in, sister, you know your clothes. What about, I just, I don't know. I just don't like how they look. That ain't your business, right? Because we have a greater mandate as a community to bring prophetic light to people, we don't have time to get caught up in things that are permissible. It's permissible. It's permissible. It's permissible.

So I'll give you some examples of what I meant by using our... We have three wells that we refer to generally in sciences: Aqeedah, Fiqh, Tazkirt al-Nafs. Theology, rules for devotion in life, and purification of the heart. And you have thousands of years now, thousands or more years of scholarship that's developed this, unpacked, engaged cultures, engaged societies. You know, Al-Hasla Basri was asked about a community where the Muslims came, the whole city became Muslim, but they married their sisters. They were all married to their sisters. So they wrote to Hassan al-Basri. He had his own madhhab. He said to him, man, these people, these guys, they're marrying two sisters. And then they said, in some cases, the sisters are marrying each other and living together. This is in Iraq and Kurdistan. And now what we know is Khurasan, Afghanistan. You know what he said to them? Leave them alone and let Islam settle. Like, give it time.

When I became Muslim, there was a brother who used to shoot heroin in Oklahoma. And I remember one time, he taught me how to pray. So one time, I could tell the lines on his, I'm a former, you know, organic pharmacist, so I could tell that there were lines on his arm that indicated he was doing something. So I said, hey, man. I think, you know, there's something going on with you, man. I was a farmer's market, you know what I'm saying?

So he said, I told the police one time, "It's a farmer's market." He arrested me. But I was 16. He said, "Man, alhamdulillah for Isha." I said, "What?" He said, "I used to call him sheikh." Like, sheikh, right? He said, "You know, because from Isha to Fajr, I can gnaw it out, man. I can shoot heroin." And see, this is what I meant by the unique adventure of conversion. My best friend became Muslim with me. I took him to the masjid to make wudu. We used to be drug dealers. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a dime bag of Indo. Indo comes from Indonesia—cultural synthesis. You know, he said to me, he used to call me Wax. This is Oklahoma. He’d say, "Wax, man. Just one more, bro. Just like, let's just roll up one more, man." Man will lie is the hardest no I've ever said in my life. I said, "I can't do that. I can't, man. I'm Muslim now. No more dope game." That's what Tupac said, "Can't do it."

And he said to me—and I saw him throw $500 of weed in the toilet, man. I almost cried for real, but at the same time, I said, you know, these are things you might not know about us that we experience. Brother bringing his girlfriend to Fajr? No, because there's this—because we experience the organic engagement of religion, emergent... I'm looking for an intellectual term, emergent religiosity. We emerge. It's not imposed. It's kind of like a process, right?

So I remember the brother with the heroin. I said to him, and he passed away, may Allah give him Jannah. He made Tawbah. He was a few years before me. He was older though. And he said to me, "Don't worry about me. Allah will clean me up." Because he knew that I was, you know, I was young, thundercat, man, 19. You know, hurrah, hurrah, I'm ready to go tear him up. "How you gonna teach me salah, man? You got train tracks on your arms, man." You know, I'm going heavy. And he says to me, "Allah will clean me up, brother. Just let me keep praying." And then, alhamdulillah, he came out of it.

So number one, our sciences that I'm going to talk about quickly are very much rooted in the engagement and emergent religiosity of Islam socially, culturally, politically, and economically. One of the challenges that we have now is we are taught to imagine Islam—especially if you're a legacy Muslim—as a cultural epic to be imposed on a situation without taking into consideration the cultural particulars that have to be there for you to achieve one word: hikmah.

And that's why our scholars say, when I used to work in Dara Iftah, I trained as a mufti in Dara Iftah in Masriya. You know what they used to tell me? "How come all the Americans never want to come and talk to you?" You know why? Because they know they can't get away with nothing. Because if you come to me from America and you start, yeah, I see them train tracks on your arm. Okay, I see the green on your finger. I'm going to know what's going on with you. But if you go to the Egyptian sheikh who can barely speak English, you can pull the okey-doke on him, can't you? And all the Egyptians want to go to me and not go to the Egyptian sheikh. Why? So they could get away with stuff. They're not going to get away with it religiously. They're going to get away with it using what? Culture.

So when you look at the classic Islamic text, sometimes you may even come across opinions like, "What the heck is that?" They're dealing with a specific thing that we might not be able to relate to. The challenge that you have as a legacy Muslim—and I don't mean this in a bad way—is that suddenly you're expected to almost like a template. You're supposed to take a template of Islam and bam, but Islam don't work like that, man. As my brother said, Islam is going to be filtering and there's ebbs and flows.

So number one, we'll start with the Quran. I gave an example last night on Black Lives Matter, nafas. Right there, you go to the Qur'an, nafas. Powerful word, those who breathe. I can't breathe. Where were we on that? Allah says, "Do not kill those that breathe." Because the most sacred thing we have in our body is what? When you die, what happens? What leaves you? The breath.

Where were we on that? We're too busy caught up in trying to appease the liberal left or the far right and make them feel like we're good, we're safe, we're fine, I'm more conservative than you are, I'm more liberal than you are, and we forgot to be prophetic. In other words, we became imbalanced. You can't do it. Don't get off balance. You can't be prophetic. We made you a balanced ummah so you can bear witness. That means without the balance, there's no witness.

Number two, from the seerah of the Prophet, many people talk about, can we work with this group? Can we work with this group? Can we work with sinners? I mean, do you think you're in Jannah, bro? Like what is this kind of fascism? Muslims have worked with sinners since the beginning. The guide of the Prophet on Hijrah was what? He wasn't Muslim. Imagine the person who guided Abu Bakr and Sayyidina Muhammad is not Muslim. That shows you there's a powerful understanding of how to work.

And when the Prophet goes to Mecca and his camel stops, this is at the height of their hatred for him and Sahih Bukhari, and he points at Mecca and says, if those people ask me to cooperate to do good, I'll work with them. Ibn Qayyim said that means the Muslims can work with anybody because there's never been anyone worse on the face of the earth than those who wanted to kill the Messenger of Allah. There's no sin in America you can tell me is worse outside of shirk. We have no problem working with shirk people, by the way. We're not sensitive to shirk. We're not sensitive to kufr. But we've allowed ourselves to get caught up in their cultural wars and to see our cultural concerns through their lens.

So, quote-unquote, the Muslim that has issues can't be religious is now equated within the mind of the Muslim that's been secular. They are not Muslim, but we're not khawarij. We don't believe people leave Islam because of sin, as Al-Tahawi mentions, it's aqidah. So when the Prophet says, I'm going to work with them? That's crazy! The redeemability of people is never given up on by the Messenger of Allah. That's why Ar-Razi says, when Abu Talib died, that was in Mecca. The order not to pray for him is in Surah Tawbah, which comes in the 13th year in Medina. That means that the Prophet was praying for his uncle's redemption for almost 16 years, or 13 years, because that's the heart of the Prophet.

Number two or number three, theology. Transmodernity cannot explain trauma. C.S. Lewis wrote a great book, The Problem of Suffering. Where do we find meaning in struggle? Where do those Ghazans and those people in Kashmir find meaning in Sudan, in the Congo? Where do they find meaning through struggle? Through the lens of Tawheed. The more I'm tested, the greater the what? In Namad Usri? There you go. There's one from theology.

Number two from fiqh. Too many examples. But for every action I do, there is a potential ruling. And that touches on everything around me. So I have to be very careful and responsible how I live. But also I don't have to be so uptight. So for example, I'm trying to navigate culture versus religion in my family. Everything is permissible unless it's a text. Okay, I'm good now.

Third, tasawuf and tazkiyat al-nafs causes me to look into my inner self. You know what secular society has done? They've replaced all of the religious sciences with their own hip sciences. For example, self-improvement is now tasawuf. But that's not tasawuf. Something very different. So I can look into the science of tazkiyat al-nafs and understand my soul and understand my attachments. Sheikha Yasmin Mogahed writes about this beautifully and correct myself internally to make sure that my heart, my tongue and my actions have equilibrium.

Four sciences, five sciences we can use now to discuss anything happening in our world. And they have their own definition. Like last night we talked about fear and hope. I was giving you a definition of Qushiri and Al-Ghazali of fear and hope and how that impacts. And I said it in the khutbah: Are we looking at the world to Islam or Islam to the world? Am I looking at myself to Islam or Islam to myself? The right one is Islam should be at the forefront. But to do that, I need to know. I have to learn to improve myself.

00:59:44 Prompt #2: Dallas Culture in 10 Years

Mustafa Syed:

I think that's a lot to reflect on, which is good, because we're going to head to our next prompt. If someone could hit the slide, inshallah. So we're going to not speed through it, but a little bit shorter than last time, just so we stay on track with timing. So the question is, picture Dallas in 2035. What signs would prove a healthy, authentic, and we coined this term Dalai, Muslim culture? What are some things you'd like to see as staples of Dalai culture in the next 10 years? And take into account everything that Sheikh was talking about with reflecting on the sciences of Islam and all that kind of stuff, but also give maybe some practical examples of things that you'd like to see.

So we'll do, Kamran, three minutes, three minutes of writing, and then maybe like two minutes of conversation. So we're going to go kind of quick. We're gonna do one response this time, from the guys or the girls.

01:00:45 Prompt #2 Discussion

Attendee #3:

I said that communities being able to connect with each other, even with different opinions and beliefs, because even being Sunni and Shia and stuff, when Sunnis are here, someone’s Shia, even if we don’t show it, there’s that kind of judgmental sense in us, like, oh, they’re Shia kind of thing. Or like being able to come together and talk about actual inner struggles without shame and stuff like that, and also culture groups mixing and actually expanding because most of our friend groups are like, oh, just Desi, and then like Arab — everyone’s more separated even though we’re all Muslim and we’re all a part of the same ummah.

Attendee #4:

So we were thinking, like, I think one of the ways Dallas is known for is for our masjids. We have tens and tens of masjids, and even the local ones are constantly expanding. Obviously, it’s important for us to fit people during Tarawih and everything. But one of the things we want to see in 10 years is that we Muslims are known for opening schools and being pioneers in education. Now, I think the other thing that we will be known for is our coffee shops, which is great obviously, but what we were thinking is having schools open to the general public. It can be led by Muslims, but it can have students from all backgrounds. And then us being successful in education would actually show the general public that Muslims do have knowledge that can relate to anybody from any background. So I think it’s important for us to not only thrive in Islamic education but also secular education. And the other thing we would say is having libraries or coffee shops that have a little bit of bookshelves and everything. So yeah, that’s what we envision for 2035.

01:02:56 Suhoor Fest Culture

Mustafa Syed:

And Sheikh, kind of in the lens of that and talking about what our culture should look like, a lot of our cultural production seems very capitalistic almost. We have things like Suhoorfest, etc. Is this necessarily a bad thing? But how can we maybe—kind of what she was saying in her response—how can we grow beyond these things as a community to guide that cultural production towards something more robust and more meaningful?

Suhaib Webb:

These are great questions, mashallah. First of all, I just want to say thank you to all of you for being here also. It’s very invigorating, very great to see, you know, and thank you guys for organizing. And that’s my man. I don’t know, my man owned a coffee shop from years ago, alhamdulillah.

So I think like you ideally, right, you want to have a community that’s rooted in broader religious values. And I alluded to it earlier about sort of how referring to the lexicon of our sciences can save us a lot of trouble. And I can give you one example.

Oftentimes when you talk with Muslims, their imagination of unity is one of a neoliberal utopic idea of unity. Like, why don’t we all have E together? Because we don’t have to. Like religion is not asking us all to have to eat together. And so that clashes with the secular idea of Wakanda, right? It’s got to be perfect. Islam is not asking for perfection.

And so it recognizes that oftentimes in negotiating culture and the growth of culture, there are going to be areas where we don’t have to have unity, but we have to have practical unity. So like when someone came to Imam Ahmed and said, would you pray behind someone who ate camel’s meat and didn’t make wudu? He’s like, would I not pray behind Malik? Like the Malik is, we don’t say Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim in Salah. But if we are the Imam of a Shafi’i or Hanbali Masjid, it is recommended that we say Bismillah.

So I want us to be very careful about the idea of Islamic. Like it doesn’t need to lead to fascism. And unfortunately, many of the modern Islamic movements, and I respect them, whether they’re Ikhwan or whatever, I respect them generally, but the more cancerous forms of Islamic movements, like the jihadi groups, for example — like ISIS wanted to kill me and Yasir, they put me and Yasir in a magazine together, a hundred grand. I told my wife, you married a centerfold girl, right? They had me as a center, it was better than that pic, that’s for sure. Iraqi jihadis got better pictures than you, man, right?

But the point is, what they wanted to kill me and Yasser for was they said, we don’t agree with what they teach. We’re not teaching anything that’s not founded in the tradition or supported by scripture. The Ba’lawis, yesterday I went to the Ba’lawi zikr. We don’t make noise and stand in our crew, but with them, I’m just doing it, man. Stood up, everything. It’s beautiful with the brothers making dhikr, alhamdulillah.

So I think sometimes our expectation of what culture is going to look like, we have to be very careful that we understand there’s fluidity and there’s going to be dynamics to that culture.

The other thing is I think you’re already doing this. Like, no offense to Dallas. Y’all new to this. Go to the Bay Area, man. The Bay Area was Dallas 30 years ago. Chicago was Dallas 50 years ago. The DMV is a quiet Bay Dallas Chicago. You can’t go anywhere in the DMV except you see a Niqabi at Costco. Adi knows. Or you see someone in a turban or a toub. Like, our Costco had halal meat back in 84, bro. When it was called Sam’s Club. You know what I mean? So it would be good to even go and look and see sort of how they’ve manifested.

But I do agree, and it’s very difficult — the Catholics say there’s no priest in capitalism. It’s very hard to untether our work from money because money is the qibla of where society is today.

And it’s gonna sound strange, in order to escape being hinged to money, ironically, you need what? Money. In order to escape riba, you need money. That’s how it works.

Dave Chappelle has a great quote. He says, money is the fuel of choices. And those people in Sotokaf, when they came out of the cave, what’s the first thing? They needed money.

So we can’t separate it, but we have to make sure that we begin to think about it ethically. Like I gave a khutbah on how not to be a gentrifier with a J. Jin in New York and in D.C. How do we begin to tackle?

Because I would say this — is our theology in America, and brothers, you know this — TikTok Ox and Instagram homies and YouTube cats, is the theology that we see debated now amongst Muslims on YouTube, is it a theology that’s dealing with the past or dealing with now?

We don’t even have a resume outside of, that’s why we love Malcolm. Malcolm sort of inadvertently takes on all these great theological discussions without being a theologian. Racial supremacy, social stratification, right?

I think that if you really want to build culture Islamically, you have to untether yourself from being Sufi, Salafi, Ash’ari, Maturidi, Athari, whatever you see yourself on those classical frames — hold on to it, no problem. But don’t allow it to stifle solving the problems of now.

We have Pharaoh and we have Qarun living in Austin. Elon Musk is Qarun. Pharaoh is Trump. And if you don't see it that way, then what are you reading? When you read, so to you, if you read about the shirt, or you're reading about a kidnapped child who is physically abused, part of the prison industrial complex, right? That's how I should read. So it took half is Musa. Why can't Moses be quiet? Why can't he be quiet? Why does he say that? Because he knows a prophet cannot be silent in front of injustice. That's why even Hajar puts that under the section on Qadah and Qadr. Because he knows that a prophet cannot be muted in the face of injustice.

Why don't we read it that way? What kind of dog was it, bro? Where was the cave? Really? Where was the cave? Like that's what you got from the story? But why is he unable to remain silent in front of murder? Because prophets have Isma. They cannot hide when something wrong is happening. We're watching murder. We're watching entire population of children in Gaza being starved to death. And these people want to tell us that we came from a history of barbarity and jihadism? Really? Be quiet, bro. Because all of us right now, if we could, we would change that situation.

Why can't he be quiet in the face of property being destroyed? That's why we should be very careful. If we're protesting, we shouldn't be destroying property. We have a certain prophetic sort of guidance here. Why does he have to see that those people paid for their work? Because where is our voice now on fair wages in this country? Every single major prophet, almost all of them are immigrants. They were forced to migrate. Why have we not tied that into the discourse now about all these poor people, my homie, my neighbor in Maryland and his beautiful wife, Jessica, who's sent to El Salvador without due process. And he was told he could stay. And he has an autistic son who's six years old that no one talks about.

Do we forget that the Prophet ﷺ lost his father? So I would say, how do we untether it as best we can? It's to do what I just did. I did it on purpose. How do you go back and ask yourself, if I'm going to think about my situation right now on campus, what story of the Quran talks to this moment? Like when you write now, you're reflecting, you're introspective, right? When I'm going to look at the situation around me, what verses of Qur'an, hadith of the Prophet, awrad of the Salihin, aqwal al-arifin fit this moment? Then I can go ask the Shaykh, you know, this is what I think speaks to this moment. Can you help maybe enhance this? Can you help?

Look, every time we come, we just talk. When's that going to change? Well, you guys will tell, hey, this is the idea. Is this what we're going through? Does this verse work? Does this ayat work? Does this statement work? Does this fiqh work? Does this theology work, right? But if we don't have that exposure, I think that's why Qalam is so important, so strategic here, right? If we don't, and Tissa, if we don't have that exposure, then we don't, what are you really learning when you learn? You learn the vocabulary. You're learning meaning, and that informs who you are. So I would say that is the key. I keep saying that over being able to go into the wells.

Vincent Lloyd has a great book called Religion of the Field Negro. Incredibly brilliant Catholic theologian, black man, highly inspired, obviously, by Malcolm. And he talks about the cleansing nature of religious terminology.

01:12:48 Greatest Examples of Muslim Culture

Mustafa Syed:

So my next question is, where is the cave? No, I'm kidding. It's the last question I'll ask before we head to our final prompt, because we're getting a little close to Maghrib. And I have to preface it with a little bit, like a one-minute story. Long story short, some friends of mine and myself, we were visiting Sheikh Suhaib when he lived in New York. And I thought this was a very profound experience because he took actually time out of his schedule to come and meet with us, to come spend time with this small group of guys from Texas.

In that interaction, we were getting food and different things, and somebody like an unhoused, a homeless person, came up to us and started asking for money, etc. And Sheikh Suhaib actually went and took this person to go and get food. He went and bought him food, actually. I thought that was such a profound example of someone embodying Muslim culture, you know? And so basically, I wanted to ask Sheikh, like from your perspective, what’s one of, if not a couple of examples of the greatest examples of Muslim culture and the way that people have embodied Islam that impacted you as an individual?

Suhaib Webb:

So why did I get him food, though? Anybody that has any type of street smarts, why did I not give him money? Her—as a her, actually. Why did I not give her money? She’s going to use it for primos, man. And, you know, Johnny Walker Red, man. She’s going to use it for haram. So that’s why I bought her food, right?

And I think that’s how we find the balance of what religion says to do. We should never say no to someone if we have the ability—if they need food, right? In the Quran, the Prophet said to feed people. So that’s not coming from me. Sultanul Ulama Izzeddin Abdul Salam said, every good thing a Muslim does goes back to Sayyidina Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. We are embodying teachings of the Prophet.

So the first greatest, most inspirational example to me is Sayyidina Rasulillah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. As someone who embraced Islam—again, not to say we’re better than anyone else, that’s not why I’m saying this—we feel like the Prophet’s here, man. Like, we actually live like the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and we know he’s not dead. He answers our salawat, and it’s authentically reported, especially on Friday, it’s a good time for dua right now, by the way.

And so we function very much as though we are with him. You’ll be with who you love. Allah make us lovers of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And the Sahaba used to love to be with him. One of them said, “Ya Rasulullah, when I’m with you, I feel so good. But when I go home, I realize you’re going to be Maqam Mahmood, and I won’t even be with you in Jannah. I will miss you in Jannah.” I wrote a poem, Jannah tibidunik naru — my heaven without you is hell, Ya Ahmad.

So first, for me, it’s how the Prophet did it. The Prophet says to him, who comes back and conquers Mecca, and then they say, “Destroy the Kaaba. It’s built on the wrong foundations.” He uses culture. He says, “What? Ya Aisha.” It’s related by America in the Muatta and Muslim in the Sahih. He said, “If it wasn’t that your people just became Muslim, I would do it.” He takes into consideration his flock; he understands his people.

The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, when the young man came to him and said, “Can I kiss my wife in Ramadan?” He said, “Nah, man.” The old man, yeah, no problem. Because a young man’s energy, young woman’s energy is a little high, man. Young people, older people. That’s why Allah says Mawadda wa Rahmah. Mawadda is physical attraction; Rahmah is psychological attraction. So we physically are in love with each other when we’re young, but we grow to psychological love as we get older and our physical power wanes.

So the first is Sayyidina Muhammad.

In America, I would say, number one, Dr. Jackson has always been, for me, someone very inspirational. We might not agree on everything, which is great. I don’t believe relationships are about agreement. You should marry who you can hate. Because you love everybody. Right? But what I mean is marry the person that you can argue with enough, but you’ll love, because without arguments, it’s boring. Seriously, right? It’s not Virgin River. That’s garbage, man.

There’s going to be some differences that actually help you learn more about yourself and grow as a person. And through that sort of adversity, you find yourself. I tell people to marry not who you can hate, but who you can argue with, right? Who you can discuss things with.

So Dr. Jackson.

The other one I would say is Imam Siraj. And I feel like Imam Suraj doesn’t get his flowers, man. But for you guys, Imam Suraj was our Abu Salimah. Man, we used to trade his cassettes. I know Generation Z, this thing called cassette—you’ve probably never seen it—unless you went back home, you saw cassettes, right, with the Quran on it.

And so we would, man, we were femen for Imam Siraj. I was in Oklahoma; I listened on a little cassette recorder in the masjid and he was like, “Brothers, don’t be on welfare just because you became Muslim.” For us as new Muslims, that’s like, “Yeah, I need to have financial autonomy to be a good Muslim.”

So I think Imam Siraj has been a great, great example.

And then I’ll say my parents, even though they’re not Muslim. My parents are people very Church of Christ. You know what the Church of Christ is? The old Church of Christ, no pants, no shorts, no music, right? None of that. I used to wear a suit to church, man, with a clip-on tie, church on Sunday, church on Wednesday.

My grandfather was a preacher in Troop, Texas, Church of Christ in Troop. And so I saw my parents, even though different religion, but very much—and not politically—they were liberal, not politically conservative, but religiously conservative, and they kind of managed this very well to the extent that I became Muslim. My mom said, "I prayed to Jesus and you became Muslim." I said, "Well, Jesus is trying to tell you something." But I think also my parents really did a good job of modeling. And then my wife—my wife is born Muslim in Northeast DC, which is a hood Iranian. So she got the Sunni, Shia thing. By the way, the whole Sunni, Shia thing was exacerbated after 1979 and brought on more in the recent conflict, and you have to be very careful as a Sunni and Shia and to appreciate, yes, we differ on a lot of issues but also sometimes Sunnis aren't aware of what happened historically to the family of the prophets. You have to be aware of this, you have to study as a Sunni history—our history. You read in Sahih Muslim when Sayyidina Muawiyah told Sa'ad to curse Ali. That's in Sahih Muslim, in the narration. You don't have to get sensitive now. That's in Sahih Muslim. Get mad at Imam Muslim, not me. And then Sa'ad says to him, "The one who is most beloved to the Messenger of Allah." So there are things that sometimes Sunnis have blind spots. As one brother told me, Sean King told me, "I became Muslim. I went to class. They stopped to Sayyidina Ali. I went to another class. They stopped to Sayyidina Ali." He said, "What happens after Sayyidina Ali?" I said, "Yeah, brother. It's a lot there, right?" But even our own Sunnis, we have unfortunately been neglectful of the family of Rasulullah and demanding justice for his family. It doesn't mean you're Shia. We have our differences theologically and fiqh-wise that are very difficult, but we had pragmatic unity through history. And oftentimes the murders and the massacres that happened—whether it was the 700 Malikis who were killed in one day by the Fatimi in Egypt, the Safouis when they came into Iran—they slaughtered the Sunnis. We notice, right? And we see now Sunnis, whether it's in Pakistan or anywhere, there's been violence in Afghanistan against the Hazaras. We see this, right? Oftentimes, these are much more the outcome of a political project or an identity project, not a theological project. So I would say as we move forward, we have to think about practical unity. And I'm just going to leave you with this: keep doing what you're doing. Be inspired today. Don't feel like you have to achieve something monumental. Just be a good person. Make salawat upon the prophet every day. Say la ilaha illallah every day at least a hundred times. Be good to people because you naturally... I'm sorry to take a lot of time. But you embody something that you don't understand because you're born with it. You're born with a gift. To be a Muslim is to be born with a gift that you didn't ask for. That's why Hidayah is from what? Hadiyah. Gift in Arabic is hadiyah. And I, as someone who wasn't Muslim, used to watch you. We had a guy, I played basketball for Blake Griffin's father, inner city high school, called John Marshall. Now it's nice, but back then it was mashallah, tabarakallah. And I remember there was a guy, we couldn't say his name. May Allah forgive me. We called him Salim Salim. We couldn't say his name. We're from Oklahoma, bro. We don't speak English. So we called him Salim Salim. And he had a sister. And we used to watch them. We were 100% USDA approved Kafirs. And we would watch them. And even as bloods, we would say, "Don't mess with them." There's something about him, it's sacred. It was very strange. And yo, his sister's cute, man, you know, she's cute, right? I was 14. I didn't say this, I didn't say this. My wife said it, I didn't say it. And then one of the brothers was like, "Man, her daddy, Alibaba, man, he will cut you to pieces, boy. You talk to that girl." So we had a—we might have been wrong, right? And it was rooted in some really problematic, but it led to ihtiram—that we had respect for him. And I remember there was a guy one time making fun of Salim Salim. I don't know what happened to Salim Salim. I don't even know his real name. And I remember the whole school, like, "You don't mess with Muslims, man. You don't mess with the Muslims because they will come and kill all of us." Not terrorism, but we understood people in the nation. I had a girlfriend before I was Muslim. Please don't let my wife get mad about this story. I'm already in trouble. She's a millennial. I'll be throwing millennials under the bus. But it's so easy to. I like Generation Z. But I had a girlfriend. I was a Muslim. I was reading the Quran. I was in her house. And she was cooking bacon. I said to her, I can't have that bacon. No pork on my fork, strictly fish on my dish. Right? Big Daddy Kane. And then she said to me, why? Why, baby? I said, I'm Muslim. She started laughing, man. She said, you? You're Muslim? No, no, you're not Muslim. I said, why? She said, my uncle is Muslim, and he don't live like you. This is not, and I said, Allah is working on me. Allah was working, I was very young. My wife, I was not mukhalaf almost. Okay, so don't get mad, baby. And I remember I said, what do you mean? She said, Muslims don't have girlfriends. That's haram. This is in the projects in Northeast Oklahoma City. And she told me, Muslims live godly lives. So it's something that you don't know you have. So don't burden yourself to, I've got to create a culture. Nah, man, just keep making coffee shops, bro. Just keep being you. And don't allow people to necessarily box you in in your religious expression. That's not organic. You're going to grow into who you are. It'll make you a better husband, better wife, better parent, better person, and a conduit of prophetic rahmah. So I want you to leave inspired, man. And don't allow our community to bring you down. Sometimes they do it. They don't mean to, but they do. They hold you back. Every time I give a khutbah, mashallah, brother, mashallah, lakin. I hate that lakin, man. If I ever find lakin, I'm going to kill him. Like today, I read with a different qira. The brother came to you, he's like, Wallahi, man, your khutbah can shams. But brother, you do not read Quran. I said, man, it's a different qira, man. So don't let people bring you down. I want you to leave. And you keep doing this great work that you're doing. It's meaningful. It's powerful. Writing, reflecting, introspection, writing prompts. This is a beautiful thing. But don't force it. And then one day we'll see here, Dallas, the marriage of Barak and Brisket.

01:26:10 Prompt #3: Analyze Your Culture

Mustafa Syed:

Right? It happened. I think that's a great note for us to end off on and just head to our last prompt.

Sheikh, you said anything you do can bring change. It doesn't have to be super monumental. Likewise, anything we do can impact those around us—our local culture.

So what we want you guys to do—and actually, we'd like to give short callbacks to our previous events as well. Go back to that slide. Basically, you can read the quotes here. But Sheikh AbdulNasir, when he was here with us at Nuun, he talked a lot about locus of control—like what you can actually impact.

And Sheikh Yasir, in our last event that we did in Ramadan, he said a really profound quote:
"What we do for the next 30 years will dictate Islam for the next 300 in this country."

So, if I can go to prompt three...

We want you guys to think about this:
Analyze the culture of your family, friends, and spaces in your locus of control. Then name one passion of yours and one concrete way that it can seed lasting Islamic culture here in Dallas.

Everyone got a card, right? We want you to write it on the card. Because what we're going to do is put them all together. If you don’t have a card, we have some extras. Two minutes to write, and then we’ll break for Maghreb. That’ll mark the end of our interview session.

So again, JazākAllāhu Khayr, Sheikh Suhaib. We really appreciate having you. It was a lot of fun. I think this is the first time a speaker has pushed back on the interview questions, I think that’s amazing.

Suhaib Webb:

No, no, I was refining. What the brothers say, filtering, filtering.

Mustafa Syed:

But I think that’s one thing that’s really great about what we’re trying to do here, that spirit of engagement. Actually questioning. Saying: “Wait, maybe you can adjust the way you're asking your question.” And I think that’s something really profound.

Inshallah, you guys can answer this, I think it provides a lot more depth to the conversation.

Suhaib Webb:

It’s important that you look, and we learned this in the academy, right? Any terminology that’s being used. You examine it well. And you understand it. Like “Islamic”, you ask, where did that come from? It’s a very modernist term. It’s a very modern term. It’s a very post-colonial style of religious.

And that allows you not to be constantly a jerk, but you want to think constructively and critically.

So I wasn’t trying to model being just a contrarian, but I also wanted to make sure that we’re refining. And I’m hearing these theorists we study—like I know Peter Berger, and I have serious issues with The Sacred Canopy as an idea. But that’s not our conversation here. But at the same time, there’s a lot of good that came from it. Peter Berger is a genius. The book The Sacred Canopy.

So forgive me if I was overly critical.

Mustafa Syed:

JazākAllāhu khayr

Sheikh Yasir advocates for intentional actions to restore community cohesion and collective responsibility. He emphasizes the need for active participation in local and faith-based spaces, encouraging individuals to cultivate authentic relationships, support one another’s wellbeing, and foster environments where shared values and mutual aid thrive. His work inspires a transformative approach, moving from self-centered pursuits to community-centered initiatives, as a vital step toward healing the social fabric in an increasingly disconnected world.

Below is a full transcript of his talk & discussion at Nuun Collective on March 16, 2025.

00:00:00 Introduction

Kamran Kazmi:

So this week, I've been preparing for this talk, and I was researching these statistics known as deaths by despair. These are deaths that happen due to suicide, alcohol, drug overdose, depression, etc, etc, etc.

In the past two decades, these numbers have skyrocketed, and that's no surprise to you guys, right?

But what was interesting about my research was between the 70s and into the 90s, these numbers were not only low but they were declining.

And I was like, whoa, that's amazing. Sheikh, you grew up during this time. You were in Houston, Texas. I want to just take a time machine and go back into that time.

How was it growing up for you in that environment and how is it compared to what it is now?

00:00:49 Growing Up

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

It’s a very deep question, obviously. So I want to begin by stating that we all have a tendency—as human beings—to romanticize the past, to imagine it as somehow being better, purer, more pristine. As you grow older, you’ll do the same with your own childhood. And in fact, look around you—look at the MAGA movement. There’s this nostalgia for some past that they’ve retrieved. The brutal reality is that every single epoch and era has its good and bad. We just have a tendency to reimagine the good as bigger than it was and to overlook the bad. That’s human nature.

I say this because I don’t want you to feel deprived, thinking, “Oh, we’re in a bad time and a bad place.” No—you have different challenges, and I’ll be the first to tell you that. But you also have amazing opportunities that I didn’t have. So I want to begin by prefacing this notion: don’t assume that things are always getting worse in every single arena and department. Because if you set your stage and paradigm with that negativity, it’s going to impact your productivity—and we don’t want that.

Now, I completely agree with you that in some aspects, there are a lot of problematic statistics. Every survey has shown—and even Harvard has a detailed report—about the rise in mental health issues, suicide, and other troubling statistics. At the very least, those numbers have tripled or quadrupled in the last 40 years. That’s a fact, even in the most conservative data. But that shouldn’t lead you to think that it was all rosy and glamorous back in the 80s or 90s either. We had other sets of problems. We had other issues.

You asked about my own experience. I was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s. Our community was so small. I honestly am in awe of what I’m seeing these last few nights—our youth just thriving, flourishing. You have to understand—this is surreal for me. We couldn’t have imagined this back in the 80s or 90s. The sheer quantity and quality of enthused Muslims gathering together during Ramadan, at 11:40 PM, not just to socialize but because deep down inside, there’s a connection to the religion—you want to hear about Islam, about your culture, identity, and religiosity. That is a massively positive development that simply didn’t exist back then.

So yes, I had a different childhood, a different upbringing. Our entire community in Houston in the early 80s was one masjid—just one. Then two or three slowly popped up. Maybe just a few dozen families, that’s it. My father was probably one of the first Pakistani Americans to come to Houston—he arrived in 1962. So when I got to university—the University of Houston—our MSA was probably as large as your group is now. But here’s the difference: I was one of only two, as far as I know, who were born in America. The rest were all foreign students—some of your parents’ generation. That’s all I am—part of that generation.

The types of problems we dealt with were very different. We were dealing with foreign students from Pakistan, Malaysia, the Gulf, India—so many international students. In the 80s and 90s, that was the peak of American universities actively recruiting foreign students. As I said, most of your parents are probably from that generation. I was one of the only Americans in our MSA board—actually, I was the only one. There was one other brother who would pray with us who was also born in America. Everyone else was from overseas.

Now, I’m pretty sure hardly any of you grew up overseas. Even if you were born overseas, almost all of you were raised here. That’s a very different dynamic. It has its pros and cons. We had to deal with a very different mindset. The khutbahs I gave weren’t even directed toward Americans—they were for foreign students. My first khutbah at U of H was for an audience made entirely of foreign students. The level of activism, political engagement, and sense of ownership of society—that wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my rhetoric; it wasn’t even in me. It took me decades to think through who I am, to form my own identity.

What I see in you is different—you know your identity much earlier than I had to figure mine out. You’ve been blessed with that. You’re ahead of the curve in that regard. You didn’t grow up among foreigners. You grew up with your heritage, your identity, your attachment to this place. Alhamdulillah, that’s a big positive.

So bottom line: the reality of Islam in the 80s and 90s was much more of a fresh immigrant Islam. I have to put in the caveat that I grew up among the immigrant community. The sad reality is that the African American Muslim community at that time—and still, unfortunately—was a bit disconnected from ours. We have two trajectories of Islam in this country. It’s sad, but I’m just being factual. You have the African American community—Alhamdulillah, they make up 30% of Muslims in America—and their masjids, their khatibs, their scholarship are slightly disconnected from the immigrant community. That’s just a fact.

9/11, by the way, did help form some bridges. You know, we did start bringing some, alhamdulillah, you know, ties and whatnot, but pre-9-11, completely disconnected communities, right?

So anyway, to finish off my point here that I would say the biggest difference is that number one, the quantity of Muslims now is much more.

And number two, the attachment that you all have to your American Islamic identity is much more pronounced.

And hence that comes with a new set of pros and cons, a new set of challenges.

That answers your question.

00:08:14

Kamran Kazmi:

I think one of the things I wanted to highlight was like, because of the immigrant populations, mostly coming from the East, there were also this idea of collectivism versus here is very much individualized. And as much as like we have the benefits of big community and we have events like this, I think a consequence is also like, like I've had so many friends come to me like, man, I go to Qalam and I go to all these places and they're beautiful and they're doing amazing stuff. But then when I try to have deep, meaningful connections, I'm not able to do that.

People say like everyone already has their friends, everyone already has their cliques, you know, and I would even say like a lot of the people that I know who have gone through depression and drug abuse and addictions is because of this feeling like I don't have a community behind me. Yet people are moving here for a community.

So what are your thoughts on like the hyper individualization that's happening in America now, in our communities?

00:09:05

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

So actually, when you're talking about this issue of community, I just remembered my father telling me of the first group that formed the first masjid in all of Texas, which is now the Richmond Center, located in almost downtown Houston. This was back in the late 60s or early 70s—before I was born. There was one Iranian, two Pakistanis, two Turks, one Malay, and one Arab. It was a complete mix, even including both Sunni and Shia. Everybody came together because you needed the support of whoever was around; you didn't have the luxury to be divided.

My earliest memories, which go back to the late 70s—around 1978 or 1979—are of that group of six or seven families coming together. Everyone dressed differently, spoke differently, but we knew: these were our people. Because there weren’t thousands of desis or large communities. It was a small group, and we stuck together. Now, as we’ve grown and reached a critical mass—with people from similar backgrounds—unfortunately, it’s easier to form cliques and to subdivide. That’s a reality we need to be honest about.

There’s also the big elephant in the room we haven’t talked about yet: social media, the internet, and cell phones. Every single study on the rise of depression, loneliness, and even suicide points to one primary cause: isolation and an overemphasis on social media. That isolation from physical connection, from people, allows you to retreat into your own bubble, and social media facilitates that. It gives you the illusion of connection, but it's not real. You might find companions who are not the best influences, or people pretending to be something they’re not. And so you cut yourself off from society.

This is something I thank Allah for. One of the biggest blessings in my opinion is that I’m old enough to have missed that era. Cell phones didn’t come out until long after I finished university. Throughout university, no one had a cell phone. I remember one student—a very wealthy Kuwaiti—was the first person I saw with a cell phone. It came with a backpack. It was larger than a water bottle with a huge antenna. This was around 1994, and we were amazed that he could carry a phone in a backpack.

The internet arrived in my last year of university. In 1994, it was just becoming a thing. There were no cell phones, no social media. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to physically go to the MSA and sit there hoping people showed up. You couldn’t text or coordinate times. You’d just go and interact. You formed social skills, friendships, bonds. It was a very different world.

Now, you can stay home all day and be "talking" to people without ever speaking to anyone. It’s surreal for me because I caught the tail end of the pre-digital era. A few years later, everything changed.

I was also in Medina for ten years. When I would stay there for nine or ten months at a time, I'd come back for the summer and be shocked at how fast technology had changed. This was the late 90s. I didn’t have a cell phone or internet in Medina until the 2000s. So every time I returned to the U.S., there’d be this technological whiplash.

I have a funny story about that. I think it was 1997 or 1998. After spending ten months in Medina, cut off from everything, I landed at the airport and saw a well-dressed man walking and having a full-blown conversation with seemingly no one. I thought, "What’s wrong with this guy?" I genuinely thought he was a lunatic. I didn’t realize he was wearing a Bluetooth earpiece. I’d never seen one in Medina. He was just walking and talking, and I couldn't see the device in his ear. It took me a minute to understand how much technology had changed.

You guys can’t even imagine a world without phones and internet. But I caught that world. And I feel, in my humble opinion, that while I wouldn’t want to go back to it entirely—because of the perks of technology and social media—we should recognize the value of that time. This phone can connect you to anyone in the world. That’s phenomenal. If you had told me this when I was your age, I wouldn’t have believed it.

That technology hadn’t been invented. You can literally, wherever you are, make a phone call. We had to go, there was one phone in the whole house. And you had to literally dial the nine all the way back there, right? You would have to dial every number manually.

And whenever the phone rang, everybody would run to see who it was. There was no caller ID when I was growing up. That came when I was 17 years old, no caller ID. The world has changed so much for all of you. And that’s a lot of good, but there’s also negative.

So I want to finish off this question with the point of: You need to ask yourselves, what are the harms of not having that personal connection with other people?
What are the negatives that come in my life when my relationship with another physical human being is primarily through texts? Primarily through emails? I’m not seeing the human. I’m seeing light on a screen. And I’m sorry, that’s not a human being.

So I think we need a healthy balance. Yes, take advantage of technology. But whatever you do, never stop your connection, your physical connection with other human beings: friends, family, cousins, relatives.

There has to be a physical back-and-forth interaction, discussion, the flesh and blood, not just on a screen, or else you are disconnected from society.

In fact, the reason why we are called humans is because we’re social creatures.
The reason why Allah (Subhānahu wa Ta‘āla) created us, we are creatures of social conduct. We congregate together. That is the Sunnah of Allah (Subhānahu wa Ta‘āla).

One hadith that comes to mind, and then I’ll hand it back to you: The Prophet ﷺ told us that the person who interacts with others in society, even if it’s difficult and he has to bear their negativity, is better than the one who cuts off and remains disconnected from society. He’s not talking about social media, just about how, yes, there are problems interacting with other people, but you’re going to be a better person for it.

How else will you navigate the difficulties of society unless you interact with society? How else will you be productive? How else will you contribute, unless you’re a part of the very society you want to benefit?

If you just shut yourself in your room, lock your door, if you’re just online all the time with your games, with your cell phone, with your text messages, how have you contributed back to a living, flourishing society?

So, bottom line: healthy balance. Take advantage of technology, no doubt. But never forget: humans are humans.

Humans have a soul. Humans have flesh and blood. Humans have physical speech, not just light on a screen.

So make sure you have that human touch with your family, your cousins, your relatives, with your friends.

00:18:37 Prompt #1

Kamran Kazmi:

Awesome. That actually plays really well into our next prompt.

This is an opportunity for you all to sit and reflect on what we just spoke about. Take a moment to quietly write your answer to this. After a few minutes, we’ll pick someone to share.

So take a second, reflect on this question, write about it, and then we can talk about it right after this.

00:19:23 Prompt #1 Discussion

Kamran Kazmi:

Okay, Bismillah. I want to volunteer from the guys and the girls and we'll go back to Sheikh.

Mustafa Syed:

So if you want to share what you and your group, maybe like the people around you were kind of talking about discussing, someone raise your hand or I'll pick somebody random.

00:19:55 Speaker #1

I think I haven't experienced this mindset up until probably this month, actually, where I've really prioritized myself in all aspects of my life. And I think because of that, I went to South by Southwest, and going there and seeing so many successful Muslims within the creative industry and the potential that we have as Muslims in all industries—it really opened my eyes up to the opportunities that we can have as Muslims in this day and age. It’s made me rethink a lot about my career path, my future, and what I want within the next few years.

So I think because of that—and other stuff—I’ve just prioritized myself in general. I’ve distanced myself from some friends and gotten closer with others. That distance and prioritization of myself, I think, negatively impacted some of my connections but greatly positively impacted others. But I think that’s just life.

And then—what was your name? Oh, Safat. Safat had a really good answer too, completely different from me though, if you’d like to share?

Oh, it’s one person? Oh, share what the group said? Okay.

My partner, he said—he was saying how nowadays, with social media, everyone is more... I guess social media has caused communities to kind of disperse because you can have online communities. And so, because of that, it takes away the need of having those in-person communities. You can meet people from around the world. So if you can meet people from around the world, then what's the point of going to see people in person, or moving to Dallas, and having this Muslim community especially?

And so, how has that impacted connections in general? It's good and bad. Good in terms of... well, he thinks it's more negative, just because social media has—kind of like what Yasir Qadhi was saying—negatively impacted a lot of people in terms of leading them to depression, thinking that they have connections through online spaces and not realizing the value of those in-person friendships, relationships, etc. Which is also a really interesting mindset.

00:22:44 Speaker #2

My name is Bintu. I kind of answered in two parts.

For the first part, I said it shifted my world from a space that was surrounded by community to one that’s hyper-individual. I lived under the false pretense that I could thrive alone without depending on others, but that was simply not true. I am who I am today because of community and couldn’t have gotten as far as I have on my own.

For the second part, I said it’s been lonely. There’s a cognitive dissonance where social media makes us feel so connected, yet very alone. I have shaped my online community to reflect my personal values, which has really helped me connect with others in a communal way.

00:24:01

Kamran Kazmi:

I want to give this group a chance to speak real quick because I've heard they were cooking.

00:24:11 Speaker #3

So I think when we look at the hyper-individualistic mindset with people today, it kind of comes to mind that people are so hyper-individualistic that they've lost the reliance on Allah (SWT). And so when we think we can control everything, when we think we have the ability to do whatever we set our minds to without the bounds of Qadr, without the bounds of the rights and responsibilities of other people, it really forces us to take a deeper look at what is possible.

And so when things don't go your way—the job doesn't come through, the college admissions don't come either, or whatever it might be—people tend to crash out. And so we then have to come back and take a look at what we can do at a community level to kind of create that support system. Because at the end of the day, if we don't have the people that are next to us to feel supported when things do go wrong, and we aren't turning to Allah (SWT) in that same process, we tend to rely on things on an external level, whether it be drugs, alcohol, or other addictions.

And so if we firmly root ourselves within that relationship with Allah, it'll then allow us to create a better relationship with our families and then extend towards, you know, your individual community and even potentially, you know, the rest of the world. But at the end of the day, that starts with Allah. Thank you.

00:25:37

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

MashaAllah, really good points. Two of them I want to expound on. The first, somebody mentioned about the illusion of online communities. And that is so, so true. When you're online, you will find people that think like you, talk like you, act like you, but you have no clue who they actually are in their real lives.

And maybe some of you are aware that I have withdrawn myself from social media because of this reality. That social media is quite literally an alternative universe that doesn't actually exist. It is a figment of the collective imagination of those that are in that online community. It has no impact whatsoever in the real world. Generally speaking, social media is an imagined community. And it is possible to get lost in that imagined community until you lose yourself. And that's the danger.

And I found myself spending way too much time trying to defend or get involved in the—you know, if you know what's happening in social media, you know the reality. And I realized, you know what? This is not going to benefit me. I withdrew. And alhamdulillah, I finished three books in the process since I've withdrawn. I've done so much, traveled the world. And you really see online is a fake imagined universe. It has no impact in the actual real world. So I have benefited immensely in my own personal sanity by withdrawing from social media.

I'm no longer in charge of my accounts. I've handed over to somebody else and I rarely, rarely log online and tweet. Rarely. Sometimes I do. I had to recently with the governor and whatnot if you saw what's happening right now. But otherwise, it's not something I get involved with, you know? And it's been, wallahi, I swear to you, infinitely better for my own personal sanity.

Second point somebody raised about family, and allow me to speak, inshallah, as your older brother or older uncle, however you view me, I don't know how you—my uncle G, I don't know, however you view me, right? Look, I have a lot of stress in my life, a lot. Death threats being one of them all the time. Even today, these people are crazy online, and the far right, and internal critics, and—and—and.

I will be very honest with you, I'm sharing something very personal, but I want you to understand this point. One of the biggest motivations for me personally, one of the biggest sources of comfort and sanity is to just be with my wife and children. Just to be with my family. The amount of personal satisfaction, wallahi, I don't care the negativity outside my house when I come home and sit down for dinner and my wife and kids are there. Who cares how much the world is hating on me? I have here all the love that I need.

And I genuinely feel sorry for those who don't understand the benefits that happen when you have that personal connection. And I can understand why people go down dark paths when they don't have physical people to share their love with and to love them back.

One of the biggest sources of personal comfort comes from the connections I have with my own family. And if you don't understand this reality—and again, let me be blunt here—especially when you're in your early 20s and you're single, it's very risky if you go down the path of isolationism.

And again, let me be blunt here, the incel culture is a manifestation of that, right? The incel culture, the mass shootings that take place, one of the reasons, almost invariably, are people who have been disconnected from society. They're literally in their imaginary world. They don't have a human connection. And so they go down a very dark path.

As well, most of the people—and again, as I said—that go down the path of self-harm or even removing themselves from this earth, the majority of them, every study has shown, were those who immersed themselves in the imaginary online world and they didn't have a physical connection.

So I urge all of you to understand online is imaginary. It's not real. Cut back. You need to, I get it, but you have some connection there. But that's not the real world. Make sure you prioritize the real world here. Physical interactions, especially family. Family, and of course the Quran mentions this, the Prophet mentions it. Look at Khadijah. Look at, and he himself said this, that, you know, nobody gave me the comfort of Khadijah. When Iqra' happened, who does he come running back to? Right? He is the Prophet of Allah, but he needs a physical touch of the woman that he loved, the physical comfort to calm him down.

If Rasulullah needed that, you are certainly not better than him that you don't need the love of your partner. So humble yourself and understand Allah created us to be social creatures. And that's where you will find the ultimate connections with life.

00:30:55

Kamran Kazmi:

Before we ended off last question, we were talking about balance. And... we hear from the member, we hear like, love for your brother what you love for yourself. Love someone for the sake of Allah. But when it comes to practicality, it's like, I can't really be friends with everyone at the masjid. And that makes me feel like, oh man, where do I really go from here? So I wanted to ask you, how do we contextualize this in our own lives? And how was this type of stuff manifested during the time of the seerah?

00:31:27

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

So obviously, when the process of saying "love for your brother what you love for yourself," obviously you cannot sacrifice everything for everybody. That's not going to happen.

The goal is that as a Muslim, you must think of the collective and not just be selfish. That’s the point here — imagine what will benefit society. Imagine if I’m going to do something.

So the smallest things — you know, the Prophet literally commanded the Sahaba that, you know, don’t leave something on the street somebody might trip over it. He said it’s a part of iman to remove something from the street. It’s a part of iman.

He literally instructed the Sahaba: don’t spit in public, right? Don’t spit on the road where people are going to be walking. Literally these small things — that is loving for your brother what you love for yourself.

It doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice everything for everybody. That’s unrealistic. But it does mean that every time you undertake an action, you ask yourself: Is this overall going to benefit me and society? Am I doing something that’s going to harm other people?

And yes, at some level, there should be a generic love: I want to benefit my people. I want to benefit the world around me. That’s completely a part of Islam.

So...

Love for your brother what you love for yourself.

I want my brothers and sisters to live better lives.

I want them to have better education.

I want them to live in a land where they’re able to practice their faith.

That is a part of Iman then.

Therefore, tap into this hadith in order to be socially productive and beneficial, and remind yourself of what the Prophet ﷺ said.

This is a beautiful hadith.

I want you to take this as your mantra for the rest of your life:

"The best of the people are those who are the most beneficial to people."

This is a hadith.

The best of the people are those who are the most beneficial to people.

This should be your motto.

This should be your slogan.

I want to benefit the most people in my life.

That’s exactly loving for your brother what you love for yourself.

00:33:23

Kamran Kazmi:

Practically, what can I do? Like, what can I do though? You know, in terms of — like, we go to these, we're part of these communities. I'm part of Noon, you know. I come in here, I’ll say salam to a couple people, you know. But how do we foster that connection? And I don’t want to romanticize the past — that’s not what I’m doing — but how was this manifested during the time of the Seerah? Like, how did the Prophet create that environment where you have a person coming in and saying, “Man, this person loves me more than anyone”?

And then obviously there’s a hadith talking about how he loved Aisha more, but this seemed like this was a feeling that people had during that time. The Sahaba were disunited. Like I said, I have a friend in a different state who tells me, “Man, I moved and I do not feel like I’m part of any community here, even though I’m going to all these places.” So I guess, how do we as communities fix this type of problem?

00:34:11

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

Good question. I would say two things, completely disjointed or completely separate answers. Number one, understand the akhlaq of a Muslim. Why did the people feel the way they did in the presence of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam? It’s how he treated them — the warmth, the friendliness, the smile, just asking. His whole body would turn and he would speak and engage with the person, giving full attention to them, right? These days, you can't even sit with your best friend without the phone coming out in your face while you're talking. And even when you're speaking, he might be texting somebody else. How rude is that, right? Literally, you're talking in front of him and the phone comes out. That's not from the sunnah. So without a doubt, when you're not following basic akhlaq, obviously cliques form, and a new person comes and they feel like they’re outside the clique — you’re not following the sunnah. The warmth, the friendliness, the stranger should feel a part of the community.

Secondly, a very important point, separate from the first one — everybody has certain hobbies, passions, and talents. Find people who share those talents and hobbies. That’s how you form bonds, friendships, and connections. This is human nature. Look at broader society — whether they go hunting, fishing, or golfing, whatever it might be — and yes, all of these are halal sports. You can do that or other things you’re interested in, whether it’s seerah, knowledge, or whatever. Find people that have the same passions as you and physically connect with them, and go on that journey together. As you go on the journey, you will literally form the physical connections and the bonds of brotherhood or sisterhood that need to be formed.

00:35:50 Prompt #2

Kamran Kazmi:

Awesome. I want to take this opportunity to almost ask you guys a similar question. Recall Iqbal's poem that we had in the beginning. That was awesome when you did that, by the way. It speaks of the tension between the individual and communities not being so much a tension, but a symbiotic part and whole relationship.

So, I'm going to give you guys a second to write about this — take two minutes — and then we can talk about it and proceed.

00:36:40: Prompt #2 Discussion

Speaker #4:

So something that I was thinking of, which was actually brought up earlier as well, is trying to think about whether we are community building or clique building. This is something you don’t really think about actively when you’re making friendships or building community, but it takes a lot of self-evaluation to see how much you’re putting yourself out there for people to feel like they’re included and actually cared for outside of being in your clique. Because to build a real community and foster these relationships or connections, you have to have a lot of humility and mercy — it’s just stuff that Allah teaches us to be to other people. To have real community, you have to want the betterment of your community or the people around you as much as, or more than, you want betterment for yourself.

So when you think of building these communities, you have to ask: are the people in my community, the people I hang out with, are we in an echo chamber? Is everybody I’m talking to just echoing what I believe, or am I having meaningful connections where I’m having disagreements, talking to people, and coming to consensuses about things like that? That’s how you make people feel included — by hearing them out, hearing their perspectives, hearing about how they lived and what makes them who they are.

You have to know if you’re building cliques where everyone around you is echoing the same political beliefs, educational backgrounds, cultural backgrounds — is that all you’re building? Is everyone around you thinking exactly the same as you? Or are you reaching out to people and building connections that will last longer than just right now?

I think having access to social media and phones gives us the feeling that people and connections are easily replaceable. Like if somebody doesn’t believe the same thing as me, I’ll find somebody else. You can drop people so quickly. There’s no humility or mercy to grow with people or teach them something they didn’t know. Social media and phones give us a false sense of how easily relationships can be replaced all the time, but that’s not really true. If you want to build community, you have to be with people when they don’t agree with you, when they do agree with you, when they’re at their lowest and at their highest. You can’t just be with people when they think exactly like you all the time.

00:39:27

Speaker #5:

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. Regarding the prompt, I think that Allah SWT has granted everyone here a special niche and a special interest. Just looking at the room alone, I think there are dozens and dozens of interests and occupations that everyone has, whether that be IT, CS, engineering, the medical field, being a lawyer, or anything really. We have to honestly find our niche, identify it, and implement that into our community—not only for the UMA but for the greater space in Dallas as well.

For example, if you're in IT or CS—that's very generic—but you could offer IT services or CS services to your local mosque and local organizations, trying to help them get better websites, etc. If you're into the culinary field, Dallas is already very oversaturated, but wherever you may be, you could open up nice food businesses and restaurants. If you're in the mental health field, you could offer faith-based counseling, counseling services, and medical services that have Islam rooted in them to help Muslims not only feel empowered in their identity but also receive secular treatment as well.

So, I think identifying your niche, implementing that into the community, and getting over that mental hump—that “oh, it’s going to take too long to implement this, I don’t have the energy or willpower, there are so many other people who will beat me”—getting over that mental hurdle and just doing it, I think that’s what’s going to get us far, inshallah.

00:41:08

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

Alhamdulillah. Listening to these responses reminded me of something the Prophet ﷺ said: Shaytan attacks the lone wolf and is further away from two. If you're with two people, it’s more difficult for Shaytan to attack you. The Prophet ﷺ said, Allah’s hand is over the jama’ah, the community, and he said to stick with the community. Whoever breaks away is breaking away towards Jahannam. All these hadith emphasize sticking with people, keeping with the jama’ah, keeping with the community. Don’t be individualistic. Don’t break away. Because when you break away, Shaytan can attack you easier.

This is exactly what mental health experts tell us: when you break away from society and family, Shaytan can cause you to fall into depression and do really bad things. One sister mentioned the online communities that people have—they’re echo chambers. Radicalism thrives online but not as much in the real world. Why? Because online you only interact with people who share your views and reinforce your beliefs, creating an echo chamber. In reality, those same people can’t behave the same way in real life. Everyone has an online alter ego, even those with extreme views—they can’t act like that publicly.

It’s so important for us Muslims to have a reality check and stick with community—always stick with community. As an older brother, one of my concerns for your generation is the rise of fanaticism and fundamentalism. The appeal of simplistic slogans and the slippery slope of fundamentalist understandings of Islam won’t help us in the long run. That kind of radicalism never thrives in mainstream masajid; it’s always online. Look at any community—the movers and shakers of radicalism have no real impact in the communities they live in. The loudest sectarian leaders online—you don’t even know which masjid they pray in because they have zero real-world influence.

That’s why I encourage all of you to get out of the online bubble and interact with real Muslims, find communities. The Prophet ﷺ said Allah’s hand is over the jama’ah. When you interact with a masjid, with a community of thousands, you cannot be simplistic or fall into slogans and fundamentalism. The world is more nuanced than slogans. So get involved with living people, with communities, masajid, large organizations.

I can say much more, but one thing to emphasize is that the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ is a blessed ummah. Don’t have negative thoughts of the ummah. The Prophet ﷺ said, whoever says “my ummah is destroyed,” he is the most destroyed of them (hadith in Sahih Muslim). Whoever says everybody is misguided is himself the most misguided. This ummah is blessed. When you find large communities and people flocking together, inshallah there’s khair and barakah in them. Isolationists and those who break away are heading towards Jahannam as the Prophet ﷺ warned. Allah’s hand is over large communities. Find your space in those communities, be productive with actual people, and inshallah you will contribute positively to a legacy that lasts well beyond your life.

00:45:53

Kamran Kazmi:

First of all, I never thought about how these big celebrities are actually not at all, like you said, an iota in the community. It’s a crazy idea to think about. But I want to talk about how a lot of our topic actually manifested in your life. There was a time when you were thinking about focusing on your—like, let me get my PhD, let me do this. And on the other side of the world, you were seeing the aftermath of what was happening to Muslims after 9/11. Walk me through what you were thinking during that period of your life.

00:46:30

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

I've spoken about this quite a lot and my journey and my understanding of Islam is a very public one. I don't shy away from admitting my mistakes and false and from talking about my own evolution because I do believe there's a lot of benefit learned from the mistakes of other people.

Pre-9-11, and remember, I came of age pre-9-11, right? I got married pre-9-11. I had kids. I was already a young man finishing my bachelor's degree in Medina when 9-11 happened. So I already had a formative understanding of who I thought I was. I thought I knew who I was. I thought I understood a version of Islam that I felt was authentic and correct.

And 9-11 happens, and I was actually in Medina. SubhanAllah, Allah blessed me that I was here in America in the summer, and then end of August, I flew back. If Allah had willed, if I had remained another two weeks, I would have been stuck here and maybe not been able to pursue, because they shut the flights down for months after. So I literally came to Medina a week before, and I was in Medina and we didn't have a TV back then.

An American neighbor, you know, student came running Salat al Asr, I remember, because 9-11 happened in the morning. It was Asr time over there, you know. So I prayed Asr and an American student rushed in because his dad had called him, you know, and he's like, “Hey, Yasir, what happened?” I said, “What happened?” He goes, “Somebody attacked the World Trade Center. You gotta find out what's happening.” So I rushed back home, told my wife, you know, my son Ammar, he's not here. My son Ammar was a little baby. I put him in my hand, rushed outside to my neighbor's house that had a television. I didn't have a television. And that's when I saw the second tower fall, right? I saw the second tower fall.

And I knew deep down inside, the world is gonna change. I just knew this is not a trivial thing. And the rhetoric began and the, you know, and then I remember my father, you know, calling me a few weeks later and I could hear the fear in his voice. And he actually said to me, “Don't come back right now.” Like I could, it's just, he didn't even want me to come back because I was thinking, “Don't come back right now.” Things are changing, you know?

And 9-11 for me really was a massive wake-up call and a personal transformation about who I was, about my understanding of Islam, about my understanding of what I wanted to do with humanity. Because, and this is very public, I don't shy away from this, pre-9-11, I was a very sectarian-minded person. I thought one interpretation of Islam. I was quite black and white in my halal, haram, bid'ashirk type of phase. And I really just thought that is the way forward. Simple fundamentalism, right?

And 9-11 made me realize that the world is far more nuanced. And at the time, pre-9-11, I actually thought that I wanted to leave America permanently. Dar al-Kufr and dar this and dar that. You know, you're taught these slogans and you like them. You don't really think critically. You just follow what people that you trust say. You just start thinking to yourself, and after 9-11, you know what I realized? I realized, actually, that is my country. And what's happening there, somebody has to explain to people on all sides what is going on.

My religion is being smeared, my prophesism is being criticized, my book is being dragged in and being called very negative things. And somebody has to go back and explain why this is happening. And I know this sounds so crazy, but you guys understand this. But if I say this in a non-Muslim audience, it's easily misunderstood.

Obviously, coming from a Muslim background, at that time frame, I understood both sides of the Atlantic. I'll just say that, if you understand what I'm saying here. I understood both sides, why they're doing what they're doing. I fully understood. I could understand. I don't want to say empathize, it's going to be in trouble. I could see the perspectives of both sides. And I realized somebody has to build bridges to explain what's going on.

I never felt as American as I did post 9-11. And that's when I, and my wife knows this, you can talk, that's when I went to my office and said, you know what? I was set, my mind, my life, my vision, my passion. I was gonna be the first American to ever graduate with a PhD in any Islamic university in Saudi Arabia. I was set to be, that was already there. I was doing my master's, my first year of the master's. I was set, that was my goal. I would be the first person, you know, come back, you know, having spent 20 years in Medina and whatnot, I would have been the first, I would have been.

9-11 was what triggered me to come back to America. Because I realized, what's the purpose of me being away when these are my people? I understand my culture. I felt American through and through because this is my land in the end of the day. I couldn't negate or deny who I was. I understood. It's my responsibility to come back and start mentoring my community, protecting my community. And by my community, I mean not just all of you, but the broader public as well. I don't want the broader public to hate my faith. And somebody has to teach them what my faith is.

And that's exactly what I did. As soon as I handed in my master's dissertation, I told my professor, I'm leaving, I'm gonna go back. And they were just shocked. “You're literally set to go and how could you, what are you gonna?” I said, “I have to go, my people need me. I have to go back. I don't know how I'm gonna earn a livelihood. I don't know how I'm gonna get a job. I don't have any idea. But I realized I need to go back.” And that's why I decided to do a PhD on this side of the world, right? And I gave up for over a decade. It was my passion and dream. And Alhamdulillah, Allah chose a better path for me. I didn't know I would have that path, right? I gave that up and I came back here. And the rest, as they say, is history.

And I navigated a lot because when I came back, Oh my God, Islamophobia was a nightmare. You guys, this is the third wave of Islamophobia. And I have to go into a little bit of a tangent here. I have lived through three epochs of Islamophobia in the last 20 years in this country. You guys are just seeing the rise of the third epoch right now with what's happening with the Columbia student, Donald Trump and his 21 list ban, and all of this happening right now. This is the third wave. Reiteration.

So I'm a seasoned vet, been there, done that, bring it on. Because I've seen version one and version two. When I came back, oh my God, being pulled aside, interrogated, the quadruple S's, armed escorts in the plane for me. Do you know how humiliating it is when the pilot announces, “We have a special request from the TSA, whatever. Please, everybody remain seated down.” And you're like, “What's happening here?” And troops come in. Well, not troops, but agents come in and they walk to your place on the plane. Says, “Can you accompany us?” Right. That's happening to me. Simply because I'm a Medina grad, a sheikh, whatever preacher, that's how crazy it was. Go and be interrogated for hours and hours every single time you travel. Get on some weird watch list, this and that. Intimidated, death threats. And then 10 years ago, another rise when you guys were probably in middle school or whatever. And now we're seeing the third wise here. And we're gonna weather through this because in the end of the day, this is the battle that Allah has chosen for us to be a part of. This is our time, our place.

And if you guys are not gonna fight for your rights, then who will? If you guys are not gonna ensure that your children love their faith and can contribute to humanity, who's gonna do that? And so yes, I am extremely passionate. I've said this many times. I have the opportunity to live in over a dozen countries. I could pick and choose where I wanted to live. And I have never once doubted my places here. Because Allah blessed me, tested me to know this land, to speak the language, to understand the culture. I have the most value over here because I know how to contribute. I know how to shape. I know how to move. This is where I know all of these things. If I go to another land, I'm going to be a foreigner, a stranger. I can hardly contribute.

So I'm not looking at the negativity and running away. That's not Islam. That's not the seerah. That's not what my Prophet s.a.w. taught us.

I'm looking at the potential for positive. That's what I'm looking at. And in this country, the potential for positive is second to none. You can accomplish in this country what you cannot accomplish anywhere else, in spite of all the negativity, in spite of all the hatred, in spite of all the Islamophobia. You have the potential to leave a legacy the likes of which you cannot do anywhere else.

And so my final message to you in today's lecture is very simple: embrace who you are. Understand Allah has blessed your generation with a task, with a responsibility that is solely yours. And I said this so many times, I say to you guys as well, you are the only generation. And I'm the older part of your generation, because we're basically firstborns, right? This is our parents immigrated, right? So I'm kind of like caught the very first of your generation. Yes, I am your generation in that sense. I'm not that old yet, okay?

But there's only one generation, that's mine and yours basically, that is going to be first generation immigrants. You are fully in tune with your parents' identity. Almost all of you understand your heritage, understand your language. You might not be fluent, but you understand it and you know it. Your children are not going to have that luxury. And they're gonna be very different, which is fine. My own kids barely speak Urdu and whatnot. It is what it is, right?

This is the one generation, yours and mine, that is going to distill the culture and religion of our parents and lay the foundations for our great-great-grandchildren to come. Your generation and mine. I actually thank Allah I was born in this epoch and era. It's super challenging, but it's also super exciting. What we do for the next 30 years will dictate Islam for the next 300 in this country.

I say that again, and I want you to understand, this is my vision and philosophy. What we do for the next 30 years, because this is the foundational, this is the pivot, this is the filtering of our tradition down to America for many generations to come. What we do for the next 30 years will literally dictate and decide Islam for the next 300 years. And so you have to start thinking long-term.

Success is not gonna happen in one day. I don't know if I'll ever see the end of Islamophobia in my lifetime. That's not my goal. My goal is to contribute to that foundation. My goal is to set up that long-term vision. What does it mean to be a Muslim in America? That is the question I go to at night sleeping about. What does it mean to be a Muslim in modernity? What does it mean to be a Muslim battling all of these identities, nation states and politics and democracy and liberalism and socialism and feminism and all of these things? What does it mean to be a Muslim given this reality? That is the question I'm constantly asking myself.

And if you listen to my lectures, my talks, that is the primary theme that I'm constantly bringing up. Because that's who I am in terms of the intellectual understanding of Islam. And of course, for all of you here, that question can be answered politically, socially, economically, civilizationally. What are you going to contribute back to your nation? What will you show the world? What does your faith contribute to the land that you live in? And the sky's the limit. So many different ways we can contribute.

In fact, we're doing it right here and now. Because right here and now, you are creating a version, a culture of Islam that is unique to this part of the world. This is a new culture. Right here. The coffee shop culture, right? In the tarawiyah prayers and whatnot. This is a new culture. It wasn't around when I was your age. It's not around anywhere else in the world. The notion of, you know what, in this time frame, we're gonna come, talk about our faith, engage, form bonds, friendships. This is civilizational Islam.

And I encourage all of you to understand that Allah Azza wa Jal has blessed and tested you to be in this generation and to then ask yourself What can I contribute to the Ummah? What can I leave as my legacy? So that inshallah, when I'm gone, whatever I’ve done, whatever it might be, will remain for many generations to come. And at the very least, it will impact yourself, your family, and your community. If you do this, inshallah ta'ala, I am very optimistic. I truly believe the future is bright. We will face some hurdles, as we have in the past, but alhamdulillah, on a positive note, wallahi brothers and sisters, it is truly inspiring to see all of you youth. I’ve been to the Lighthouse Initiative, your initiative, and other initiatives across the country. There was the president of Pakistan, Imran Khan, who studied here in the 70s. He went back to Pakistan and said something I also believe in — he said that the children of the people he was with are practicing Islam better than the parents who were here in the 70s. And that is so true. I’m telling you, that is so true.

We respect our parents' generation because they sacrificed a lot. At the same time, I don’t blame them, but there was this notion that they were not comfortable in their identities. There was a lot of shyness, embarrassment, and hesitation. That was their reality. But your generation? I see bravery. I see a claiming of identity. I see a pride that did not exist when I was your age because we didn’t have many of you then. We were very few born and raised in America. You don’t need to prove your Americanness the way our parents did. Because they did, they were understandably more conservative and cautious. But you don’t need to prove who you are. And with that knowledge comes confidence, with confidence comes power, and with power comes civilizational strength.

I personally thank Allah to be part of this generation. I thank Allah that I am at the very beginning of this amazing generation to tap into your talent, your resources, your strength. And I see us going from strength to even stronger, inshallah ta'ala. There are peaks we’re going to conquer, and that will be because of all of your generation. So don’t trivialize your roles.

Do not trivialize your potential. Understand that Allah has blessed you to be at a certain place in time, and then ask Allah that you reach your maximum potential. That will only happen if you know who you are, you know your faith, you have a strong family, and you have a good set of friends. With this, I conclude the three Fs—in that order: faith, family, and friends. This goes back to our theme as well. Faith, family, and friends—that is your recipe for success. Make sure your faith is strong, prioritize your family, and have a good set of friends who will keep you sane, grounded, and productive. This is the maximum efficiency for you to be a thriving human being.

May Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala bless all of us to achieve our maximum potential, to allow us to participate in the legacy-building project of creating civilizational strength for the Ummah. May Allah allow especially this month to be a month of purification where our sins are forgiven, where we connect deeply with our faith, and inshallah wa ta’ala, become spiritually charged.

And with that, inshallah, are we... I want to call it here, to be honest. I want to go home on this note. Is that cool? Okay, let’s call it.

01:03:22

Kamran Kazmi:

Wow. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Until next time, inshallah. Would you like to do one last dua for everyone?

01:03:33

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi:

Okay, Bismillah.
Let's finish off with a dua.
If we can raise our hands to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.

Oh Allah, You have said in the Quran, “When My servants ask of Me, I am ever close to them. I respond to the du'a of the one who makes du'a when he or she makes du'a.”

Ya Allah, here we are raising our hands to You,
believing in You,
knowing You are hearing our du'a.

Ya sami’, ya sami’ad du'a, ya mujibad du'a, ya qareeb, ya Allah.

We ask You to strengthen the Iman of our hearts, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, purify our hearts of any evil, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, make us proud to be Muslims, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, any doubts that we have, eliminate them, Ya Allah.
Allow us to taste the sweetness of Iman, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow us to grow spiritually every single year.
We want to be closer to You, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow us to thrive in this faith, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, grant us beautiful progeny, Ya Allah.
Grant us loving family, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, grant us the blessings of this dunya and the akhira, Ya Allah.
We ask for rizq that is halal, money that is pure and beneficial, Ya Allah.
We ask for family that is loving, Ya Allah.
We ask for friends that are comforting and supporting, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, any calamity that is destined for us,
we ask that You avert that calamity away from us and grant us aafir, Ya Allah.
Give us the best of this dunya and the best of the akhira.
Rabbana atina fid dunya hasana wa fil akhira hasana.

Ya Allah, allow us to contribute to the civilization of this Ummah, Ya Allah.
Allow us to leave a legacy that will, inshallah, continue to accrue good deeds until the Day of Judgment, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, allow us to follow the footsteps of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Ya Allah, we ask You for the best of this world and the best of the hereafter, Ya Allah.

Strengthen our knowledge, Ya Allah.
Strengthen our Iman, Ya Allah.
Strengthen our physical strength, Ya Allah.
Make us the best of the people as You Yourself said.
Make us the best of all people, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, forgive our faults, Ya Allah.
We have sinned, but we know we have sinned, and You are the One who forgives sins.
Ya Allah, allow our good deeds to be more than our bad deeds, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, accept our repentance, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, whatever sins that we do,
cover them and conceal them from the eyes of others, Ya Allah.
Do not embarrass us in this world or the hereafter, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow our Iman to ever remain pure, Ya Allah.
Do not corrupt our Iman, Ya Allah.
Do not test us through our Iman, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, we ask that we live our lives as good Muslims and we die as righteous mu'mins and that we be resurrected with the righteous and the prophets, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, give us a good life and give us a comfortable life and give us a sweet ending in death, Ya Allah.
And allow us comfort in the grave, Ya Allah, and comfort in the Akhira, Ya Allah.

Ya Allah, let us be in the companionship of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in Jannatul Firdawsil A’la, Ya Allah.

And we ask You because You are the Rahman and You are the Raheem.
We know we don't deserve it, and yet we desire it.
And You give based on desire.

Ya Allah, we desire to be in Firdaus al-A’la.
Even if we don't deserve it, we ask You to be in Firdaus al-A’la, Ya Allah.

Ya Rahman, Ya Kareem, Ya Mannan,
give us the best in this world and the best in the Akhira.
Ameen.

Beyond her advocacy, Suad engages in critical discussions on decolonization, the power of independent media, and the role of storytelling in resistance movements. Her work serves as a vital bridge between grassroots activism and global audiences, inspiring others to challenge dominant narratives and reclaim their histories.

Below is a full transcript of her talk & discussion at Nuun Collective on February 25, 2025.

00:00:00 Introduction

Nawal Khan:

Asalam Alaikum Sister Suad! How are you?

Okay so as Kamran has mentioned, you are a two-timer refugee, founder of Decolonize Sudan, as well as a lawyer. Can you please tell me what is going on in Sudan right now?

00:00:13 Current State of Sudan

Suad Abdel Aziz:

Yeah, so as-salamu alaykum everyone. Thank you for being here tonight, and thank you to Nuun Collective for hosting this important talk. I want to first have everyone take a deep breath and ground ourselves. Some of what we'll speak about is a little triggering and dark because it is a harsh reality that we're facing in this dunya currently—so just a disclaimer.

I think what Kamran was getting at is that civil war is not what is happening in Sudan. A genocidal, foreign-backed militia has brutally occupied our lands and is committing a genocide on our people.

One thing that we work at at Decolonize Sudan, that is central in our work, is language and the power of language. We are very intentional about what is happening to our people—what we call it. The language we use—especially regarding conflict and genocide—frame the interventions that are made in genocide and in conflict. We'll speak a little bit more about that, but for just a very brief primer on what has happened in Sudan over the past five or so years:

There was a brutal dictator that the people took to the streets, calling for change. They demanded a viable standard of living, as they were facing extreme poverty. There was an increase in the opposition to the Bashir regime, the dictator in power, due to this poverty. The way he responded to the protesters is with brutal repression. And he did this by hiring a private militia group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

And this was a militia group that had been previously contracted all over the Middle East, North Africa, and the EU to act as brutal mercenaries to harm migrants. In 2016, Saudi Arabia hired them to kill off and massacre Yemeni people, that Saudi was targeting as Houthi. They were in 2018, contracted by the EU and Italy to massacre Libyan migrants coming to the borders of Italy. And these are just a few contracts they had throughout the Middle East and North Africa to kill off people on behalf of governments.

But what followed after that was a power vacuum in which the military told the people theres going to be a temporary transition and we’re going to have civilian rule on April 15, 2023. And the day before, April 14, is when this private militia group that came from outside, the RSF, in a matter of a month, bombed the capital, took over the capital, took over the key military bases of Sudan and occupied much of the country.

The Sudanese people were taken aback and the masses were surprised. This militia, at the time in 2022, was about 10,000 men. And so people were shocked on how did this small militia take over this entire country from this military that was made up of millions? How did this happen? And now we can look back and understand, and you know theres journalism and evidence to show the RSF was planning this takeover from very early on and coordinating with powers such as the UAE, and very early on with Israel.

One of the first things that the RSF did was bomb all of the land records—with the strategy that they were going to take over the homes. So this wasn’t just brutal massacres that were kind of random, it was a very strategic takeover.

Going further back, in 2019, the RSF hired a professional PR and marketing company. It’s an Israeli company called Dickens & Madsen, to craft the civil war narrative that dominates headlines today. And this company would come to be extremely strategic in the Civil War narrative that you see now around Sudan, which shaped many of the headlines and how we talk about what’s going on. And so they very early on strategized with PR and marketing because they understood the power of marketing and of language. and proceeded then to take over the country.

The RSF took over the key telecommunications systems in order to black out the media. This is why you don’t hear from the people on the ground in Sudan and what’s really going on. We can only really rely on journalism from a few journalists. At Decolonize Sudan, we provide who those journalists are to follow, but really there’s just a handful of journalists. Because of the strategic marketing of the RSF and the PR campaign, the subsequent UAE campaign, combined with the mass control of telecommunications in Sudan—this narrative of a “Civil War” was able to flourish while those on the ground are very clear on what was going on.

And what was going on with them was brutal massacres of whole villages. There are entire families, lineages gone. The head of the RSF, Mohamed Daghelo (Hemedti), one of the first things he had said was, “the way you control the men is that you have to control the women.” And that is a very vital part of their strategy.

They rape women, they take women and girls as hostages and as sex trafficking slaves, They also take child soldiers, and this is a main makeup of the militia, that are taken from Sudan but also mostly from neighboring states, such as Chad and Uganda. Another part of the militia are paid mercenaries. These men, mostly in Chad, are promised more money than they can ever imagine in their life, to come and fight in Sudan. They are not told anything about the strategy, the occupying, but they are told if you take over the home, you can occupy it. They’re incentivized. It’s a business of privately paid individuals and also of coerced and trafficked soldiers. And so what’s extremely important to identify with the RSF a registered transnational corporation, and Hemedti himself has become a billionaire since 2023.

00:11:02 Motive behind Sudanese Genocide

Nawal Khan:

Jazakallahu Khairun for that briefing, it was really informative. I did want to ask, you talked about the RSF and how it is a corporation - what do you think is the motive of that corporation and why did they specifically target Sudan?

Suad Abdel Aziz:

Yeah, I mean, it's the motive for, I would say, all of the conflicts in the world that we are facing. It's a land and a resource grab. It is all about resources. And Hemedti has become a billionaire since 2023 from this endeavor. And he has done this mostly by selling gold. He has stolen and sold billions and billions of dollars of gold, and the primary beneficiary of that gold has been the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. And in exchange for this, the UAE has been the primary funder and provider of weapons to the RSF militia.

And so at the core of this to understand is that it is a grab for resources. And this is, like I said, not dissimilar to any other conflict that we see in the world today. So what's happening in Congo is very similar. There was a militia that came out of, that initially, one of the heads had come out of the ranks of the military of Congo, created his own private militia, and then took over, and now he's making deals with countries like Rwanda to extract the mineral resources of Congo. And so the issue of private militias is something that we're not immune to. I mean, I could speak even today,

Trump has deployed the Blackwater American private militia in Gaza, and he is also deploying this same private militia. There is a prospective deal that he's going to use the private militia to detain migrants within the US. This private militia is going to act on the president's behalf to capture people, to kill people abroad and possibly kill people domestically. It's a very, very eerily similar situation to how we got here to present day Sudan. So it's something that the issue of privatization, especially of defense, is something that, defense, military spending, is something that is not an issue unique to Sudan.

00:14:16 Decolonizing the Narrative

Nawal Khan:
So you talked about how, well, everything you're saying right now, we don't see in the mainstream media at all. I would say that I personally thought the Sudan Civil War was actually an internal conflict. I could not have imagined it came from UAE and Israel and everyone else has a play in this part, much less a corporation.

So can you tell us how has the media played such a severe role in misleading almost, I believe, all of us in this aspect?

Suad Abdel Aziz:
Yeah, so I think one of the key issues in journalism around Sudan is that, and this is not even an identity politics issue, it's that the journalists themselves are not Sudanese. But not only are they not Sudanese covering the issue of Sudan, but they have never studied in Sudan, they've never lived step foot in Sudan, they might never have spoken to a Sudanese person and they're maybe just placed on, okay, you got the Sudan story, and they're just repeating what their other journalist colleagues have already published on the issue, which is that it is a civil war. So the civil war narrative began within Zionist sources.

Within the Jerusalem Post was one of the first to publish this kind of framing of Sudan as a civil war. And I would pay attention to that in how particularly Zionist sources use this framing. because now the issue of Sudan is being weaponized against Palestine, and the bodies of Sudanese people are being weaponized against the genocide in Gaza by saying that somehow there's a civil war, or there's genocide happening in Sudan, but people don't care about it because it's an internal issue. It doesn't involve Jewish people, and therefore it's the outrage, the protests around Gaza are anti-Semitic.

This is the argument that they're using. So I'd pay attention to that argument because I'm seeing that rhetoric being weaponized by Zionists in particular. This narrative was very intentionally put out by professional PR and marketing sources. From there, when people talk about how there is anti-blackness around talking about Sudan, what comes to mind for me is because it's an issue of black people and black people in Africa, there's a dismissal of, oh, it's African issues are usually internal. It's just Africans fighting amongst themselves. And therefore, a mental block kind of occurs there that I would call bias, where you don't investigate further what is actually happening there. Who's involved? Who are the actors involved? And where are they getting their mone? is the first thing that you should be asking yourselves when you're seeing these things. Where are they getting their weapons? And where are they getting their money?

And so your question was around media. And I just want to quickly talk about why language is important in these issues. And this is something that the state of Israel has been very keen to. They very intentionally use language around Gaza and around Palestine in general as framing around war. And they do this because when the framing of an occupation of either a state or non-state armed party occupying another, when that occurs, there are certain obligations that the occupier has under international law, and there are also rights that the people who are being occupied have.

And this set of rights and obligations is entirely different when you're talking about war. And that's one of the reasons why I really hate this word, war, because rarely do you see a true war happening where there are two equal sides, battling and the battling only amongst themselves, especially nowadays when empires intervene in conflicts in order to use one or the other party as a proxy. This is rarely something that we would see, is this equal? There's typically an oppressive side that has more power and the word war really, exonerates it, it frees that party of guilt under law, of the shame of what they've done and it makes us not think about things in terms of power because when you think about how power works and how there is one side that has greater power and is targeting maybe targeting civilians, rather than engaging in fair war play, that's something that we need to be careful about is that language.

For me, the importance of language comes from the foundation of law and how that creates and calls for different interventions and how we resolve conflicts. One way that you resolve a war is you do peace talks. You put together and you negotiate about how you're going to resolve this war and you compromise as to what issues each party has and one thing that the Ukrainian president recently stated, so Trump and the US is coercing Ukraine to get into peace talks with Russia. And Zelensky stood up and said, no, I am not going to sit down with my occupier and have talks. There's nothing to talk about. My people unequivocally want this occupying power out.

And Zelensky has been and is being raised as a hero for doing this. And he deservedly so. He's protecting his people and he's standing firm on the demands of his people. But why are African leaders, when they do this, when the Sudanese leaders say we're not going to go to peace talks with this occupying militia, when Congolese leaders say we're not going to sit down with the M23 militia, and also the Rwanda, their funders. We're not going to sit down and talk with them. We have nothing to talk about. When African leaders do this, they are seen as not playing ball, not coming to the table, being difficult, and bringing it upon themselves and their people, the violence that is being wrought. And so I just want us to think about how one small word, Occupation versus Civil War, can create this entirely different reality where people are calling for peace talks and ceasefires rather than an end to occupation and very unequivocally calling for that.

00:23:37 Prompt #1: Media & The Hidden Message

Nawal Khan:
Thank you so much for that information.

Now, I'm talking to you guys. So everything that Sister Suad has talked about, you guys wouldn’t have known if she wasn’t our speaker today. Why is that the reason? So now we're here, and we're passing out articles, and we're going to ask you guys to read the title and see what the real narrative and story behind it is.

Nowadays, I'm sure everyone goes on Instagram. You guys consume media, whether it be CNN, Al Jazeera, et cetera, right? You guys don’t really look past the narrative and the title to see what’s actually happening in the world. So, people are passing out the articles—sit among yourselves, talk about it, and see if you can figure out, based on all the context that Sister SUad gave you, what she's really trying to say and what the hidden meaning and conflict are behind it. Have fun.

00:24:51 Prompt #1 Discussion

Nawal Khan:
Now that you guys have had some time to go through the articles and hopefully you guys have pinpointed specific words, Sister Suad will go through the articles and actually tell you what the article is meant to say, and then we’ll go from there inshā’Allāh.

Suad Abdel Aziz:

So this exercise was just picked out a couple of articles online at random that are pretty infuriating around narrative. And I want you to note something about the authors. So all of the authors of these pieces are white Americans. They don't have experience living or studying in Sudan. I just want you to take note of the authors because I think that's a responsibility of the reader is to look into the author who is writing this piece and what is being said and what may be their particular biases.

The first article that we looked at is Airstrikes Kill at Least 70 Seeking Care at the Last Functioning Hospital North of North Darfur Capital. And so there is no indication that the RSF shot these airstrikes and are exclusively targeting civilians, that they have bombed the largest hospital in Darfur. So that's an alternate title.

The next title is Fighting in Sudan Civil War Sets Ablaze the Country's Largest Oil Refinery.
This article uses passive voice, which implies that the oil refinery “magically” set ablaze. Of course, the RSF set this oil source on fire in the midst of massacres throughout the western regions of Sudan.

Another title: Inside the Mountain Stronghold of an Elusive Rebel Movement.
Someone in the audience pointed out the word "movement" here is interesting. The RSF has no popular support; their support comes from within the RSF itself and from people being paid. So, framing the RSF—this private militia group with no popular support—as a “movement” is misleading.

This one’s an interesting article. You all should read the full text of this one because it’s actually one of the most interesting articles on Sudan. The chief international correspondent with CNN and she travels to Sudan and gets taken hostage by an RSF militia leader, and then befriends her kidnapper. She writes a puff piece about the RSF, framing them as underdogs. The title of her article was How a Militia Feels Ignored. She frames this as a woman being taken hostage and treated well, implying that the militia must not be so bad. Meanwhile, the RSF’s key strategy is to control people through rape, brutal sexual assault, and the abduction of women and girls. This is a very out-of-touch piece.

Then there’s a UNICEF article titled 200 Days of War Leaves a Generation of Children in Sudan on the Brink. This title is grounded in a charity lens and frames the issue as a civil war. This is man-made famine because this militia has come in and bombed the key wheat sources, the key sources of food, clean water sources, is very intentionally destroying vital infrastructure in order to starve the people out.

00:31:33 How did Sister Suad get here?

Nawal Khan:
So, through this activity, hopefully, you guys have learned not to believe exactly what you see in headlines. Now, before all of this, how did you get into the space of advocacy and the Sudan movement? What’s your life story? How did you come into this?

Suad Abdel Aziz:

I was born and raised in a very, in a very poor village in Sudan, called Al-Hasaheisa, in the East. I never had lawyers, I never met lawyers or had any access to anyone who was a lawyer. So I really didn't know what this career field was. I did kind of have like an interest in social justice and there was this word around NGOs.

So the primary NGOs that operated in Sudan at that time and up until they fled in 2023, were white Western NGOs coming in to save the children of Sudan and save the women. This is the big story around saving women and children. And the primary focus of these NGOs was around FGM, Female Gender Mutilation. Just some brief background about FGM in Sudan.

There was a large movement within Sudan of Islamic scholars and combined with medical professionals that would go around and speak to Sudanese people, especially in remote villages, about how it is an un-Islamic practice and how it is medically unsound and dangerous for the child. Due to this internal grassroots movement, the rates of FGM extremely decreased in Sudan. Despite the internal movement happening, these NGOs, again, primarily focused on this issue without any kind of speaking to any Sudanese women, about, hey, what are the issues that you're facing? What are the things that we can focus on that would better your life? And a lot of those issues were around poverty. In Sudan, for 20 years, we were sanctioned under terrorism, sanctioned by the US, which starved out our people. So women might have been telling these NGO heads that maybe that's the problem. We need to lift sanctions off of our country. and issues around education, healthcare, access, that all around kind of just basic living. But these NGOs were not covering those issues. And so this idea of human rights was kind of an idea that was foreign to me. It was something that I always thought about that's not for my people. That's just a kind of a term that's weaponized by other people to come in. It's not really something that's basic and inherent that we have.

So the first lawyer that I encountered, this is all to lead up to that. So we fled Sudan when I was a teenager. And we fled from Sudan to Egypt because it was nearby. And in Egypt, we were extremely impoverished. We suffered greatly awaiting resettlement. And for many, resettlement never comes.

Many Sudanese people are just stuck in Egypt or in that other place that they have fled to. But we were, we just happened to be very lucky. And I'll tell the brief story. My dad was, he would walk all the way from essentially one end of Egypt, of Cairo, to the other in order, every single morning, in order to get to the U.S. Embassy to ask for an interview. And every morning, the receptionist at the embassy would tell him, you don't have an interview, sir, you can't come in. And so he would do this, so he continued to do this. And one day he brought me on his back, and he brought me, and I was sitting there with him in the embassy, and this lady was passing by, and she looked at me and she just thought I was really cute. And she just started talking to me and playing with me. And from there, she was like, what do you need, sir?

She looked at my dad and she said, come in. And he explained to her our story. And I just remember him, this big, powerful man, really... This attorney had such power. And the power she had was that which drastically changed our lives. that she decided whether or not we would come here. And without that decision, my voice would be just as silenced as those of my family members in Sudan. And... So the idea of law and power stuck with me after that experience. And I told her, even in that interview, she asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, I want to be like you.

And I said that because I wanted to be powerful. I wanted to change my family's circumstances, my circumstances. I wanted to change the circumstances of my community. And that was the way in. I knew it was. And so this idea of law and power stuck. And from there, you know, I worked my way to law school.

Along the way, I met passionate and amazing like-minded Sudanese women, organizers and advocacy professionals like myself. And we kept putting off creating an organization, a collective, where we could make change for our people. But the events of 2023 really... made that very rapid, that's the process rapid for us.

We started right away because for myself, I lost many relatives. The majority of my family was internally displaced. And some we even were able to get externally displaced. So it hit very close to home. Our homes are all destroyed. And so, you know, this was an urgency to act and recreated what is now decolonized Sudan.

And initially this was created to report and file human rights complaints on behalf of Sudanese people because the reporting mechanisms do not exist. Again, the NGOs in Sudan are focused on very specific issues and so do not do mass human rights documentation. And then we started to see this this narrative issue.

Why are people talking about our genocide as a civil war? And where is this coming from? What can we do to change this? And so a lot of our focus at the Kalonais Sudan shifted to this narrative work which is a lot of what we're working on now. We are currently working on a documentary in Sudan, and that is going to be an extremely powerful project to give a platform for those on the ground that have been silenced. Again, silenced due to the very intentional telecommunications blackouts, and due to the media manipulation primarily done by the RSF. And so that's some of our work.

00:40:56 Prompt #2: How do we move from being passive consumers of information to active participants in shaping the narrative?

Nawal Khan:
It’s so inspiring. It's funny that you came to the US because a lawyer thought you were cute! You got here because you were cute!

Going through your story, from being cute to now creating a whole decolonizing movement, it shows how you’ve taken control of your own narrative and created such a powerful movement. For us, though, many of us aren’t in the political space—we might be pre-med, students, etc. But there's still something we can do to be active members of society. So, I have a question for you: How do we move from being passive consumers of information to active participants in shaping the narrative?

00:41:50 Prompt #2 Discussion

Mustafa Syed:
Who wants to go first?

Attendee #1:

So I came up with a couple of different ideas. My answer was really, so first let me read a quote of one of my favorite authors, because he, throughout my life, the last 15 years, Throughout my life, the last 15 years, I was inspired by him because he always provoked thought, you know, mind anyway. And one of his quotes says,

"I try to encourage people to think for themselves to question standard assumptions. Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to question Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself."

And the last one I want to talk about is this second quote, and then I'll elaborate on it.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."

And for me, when I think of that quote, I think of the media and how very lively debate is going on on every station, the CNNs, the MSNBCs, the Fox News. And it appears to be free thinking going on when in actuality everybody is thinking within that spectrum, within that box. And there's not really free thought because it's, everybody that seems opposing, they're not opposing. They're just speaking the same language in different ways.

Exactly. So, you know, like the last 10 years, I've always, you know, been able to do in-depth research and really, you know, just try to speak to different people. And I'll leave you with this. I don't want to be too much longer. Being able to grasp a concept of a different perspective has truly challenged me because you don't have to believe everything you hear, but being able to grasp a different concept of a different perspective, it'll allow you to grow. And that's what really sent me down this kind of, you know, I’m like, “Okay, what’s under the curtain?”.

00:45:15 Prompt #2 Response

Suad Abdel Aziz:

I like that idea of what's under the curtain like thinking coming from coming first with a place of skepticism and coming from a place of trying to understand because we all have biases we all have experiences that have shaped who we are when we make or consume or put out knowledge so first coming from a place of trying to understand the biases of the author. Where are they coming from? What perhaps are they trying to get at with this? Because what you were reading, that was all accurate.

They weren't saying anything false. Just the way that they were using language was a little manipulative to kind of mislead you to think that a different underlying narrative was happening. Because you can say 600 children, you can say children killed, but to say who killed them is something that is not being done here, and it's not being done for a reason. What is that reason?

00:46:44 Prompt #2 Discussion

Mustafa Syed:

Speaker 3: Alright, that was all very profound. I need one person from the sisters to share.

Attendee #2:

As-salamu alaykum. Thank you for leading this discussion and this conversation. To answer this question on how we can be more proactive from an ideological perspective, I believe that first and foremost we need to understand what our responsibility as Muslims living in the U.S. is. you know, we have the privileges to get an education, get a job, be able to donate. But in reality, what right do Muslims around the world and what right does the global community have over us? Because may Allah protect us from ever being questioned, but there is a chance that if we are questioned, how will we be able to answer on the day of judgment? So that's an ideological perspective. From a practical point of view, starting off with having grassroots level conversations such as these. It is not as common as we would like to believe they are.

So starting off with spaces like this I think is a great, great opportunity for us to hone these conversations and have them and then share that with the people around us. I know even in our workspaces, it's hard to have open conversations because quickly that could turn into an HR report.

But if you have tailored conversations with your coworker, maybe ask them, hey, I like your Nike shoes. By the way, did you know that they're supporting Oiger labor? You know, little tidbits like that. Share those details. Of course, with coworkers who you feel will not try to put anything against you, but take simple actions within your day-to-day.

Even having tailored conversations with your friend groups. For example, some of my friends and I have started up book clubs where we talk about global history, more specifically global Muslim history. And then even on a political sphere, encouraging those around us to get involved in politics.

Understand if you don't want to learn more on the political side, that's really fine. You don't have to be politically involved necessarily, but like we're talking about, understand the articles, understand the legislation in place and how the legislation is not working in our favor. How can we change these conversations?

So I think those are some practical steps in how we can be proactive in becoming consumers of information and knowledge. Even within our Islamic schools, we're in Dallas. you know, asking leadership within our Islamic schools, what are you teaching our students, our young students, about Muslim history? You know, Muslims were the leaders of algorithm, of different spheres. So understanding, even with Sudan, Sudan falls key into Rasul's ancestry. for example. So learning those type of details and understanding not only the significance of how it affects our day to day as just people, but even from a religious perspective, what responsibility do we have for the people of Sudan?

00:50:18 Discussion Cont.

Attendee #3:

To be an active participant in shaping the narrative, I think we need to understand just how much power lies in ideas and thoughts. We have to recognize that Americans use and rely on ideas to legitimize genocide and legitimize violence against oppressed people. And the way that they do so is not by giving you this whole political narrative.

No, they just make it a common sense understanding. What's happening in Sudan is a civil war. Say that so many times, it becomes common sense. We don't question it because we hear it and they believe it and we don't know the background. So yeah, we believe it too. It's common sense. So when we engage narratives and we contradict these narratives, and we can do them in a multitude of ways, from protests to teach-ins to writing, even an Instagram post, or even music lyrics. If you pay attention to music lyrics, ideas exist in everything, and they can be pushed through everything.

And if we contradict these ideas that legitimize genocide and we contradict them with our own decolonial ideas and we push them everywhere, that's one of the ways that we can shape the narrative.

00:51:39 Prompt #2 Response

Suad Abdel Aziz:

Y'all are really brilliant. Y'all should come up here and speak, honestly. I have no comments. It really resonated to me around how our identity as Muslims living within the belly of the beast, within the nation that actively harms our Muslim people all over the world. how is our education being, you know, what kind of biases might we have from an education system that is grounded in that? And operating from that place is important.

Nawal Khan:

All of these responses were so good, oh my gosh. Listening to it was like so thought-provoking. So I did want to add on to that. Based off of everything you guys said and everything Sister Suad said, why are we in this position? We are the next generation, and we don't understand why we are always targeted. It's not just Sudan.

It's quite literally almost every other Muslim country. And we never really ask ourselves, what can we do to prevent that coming in the new future? So I even want to tie back to your childhood and how you didn't wait for someone to rescue you from Sudan.

You actually took matter into your own hands and tried to accomplish something out of your own will. And that actually reminds me of a very famous quote that one of our team members will be speaking about.

00:53:15 The Mehdi: The Personification of Power & Justice

Anzar Lateef:

The quote is: "Give up waiting for the Mehdi, the personification of power. Go and create him." Iqbal was writing at a time when his homeland was suffering under British colonialism, and one of the greatest obstacles to resistance wasn't just external oppression, it was the people's own inaction. Too many believed the Mahdi would one day arrive and solve all their problems, so they did nothing. The hope for a savior became an excuse for passivity, a defeatist mindset that still paralyzes us today. The Mahdi, the personification of power and justice has become a justification of complacency.

Irrespective of the differing views on the authenticity of the Mahdi Hadiths, ask yourself this, would a true leader emerge for a people unwilling to act? The effectiveness of any leader depends on the strength, vision, and readiness of those he leads. A Mahdi cannot lead the ineffective, the fearful, the idle. A Mahdi, the archetype of an effective, transformative leader, will not rise from a nation unwilling to rise itself. Iqbal's message isn't only about the personal transformation, it's about institution building, about laying the foundations for power and justice now. Stop waiting.

Stop using the Mahdi as an excuse to avoid responsibility. Every problem you hope the Mahdi will solve, you could begin solving today. Build the organizations, the movements, the networks, the systems of justice and strength. You want a change maker? Be that change maker. You want a leader? Cultivate the kind of people and institutions a leader could actually lead. This isn't just theory. We see it happening. Sister Suad, through decolonized Sudan, didn't wait for some distant savior. She'd recognized the urgency of the moment and started the work herself. She built something real, a movement rooted in action and service. That's what it looked like to embody the power we're so often waiting for.

This is Iqbal’s call: Give up waiting for the Mahdi. Go and create him.

00:55:27 Reevaluating Charity and Mutual Aid

Nawal Khan:
As Anzar mentioned, we have to be change-makers. Currently, the only way we believe change is being made is by giving charity or by giving money.

Now, I want to go back to you. Being in the West, our immediate knee-jerk reaction is to go save Palestine or go save Sudan and be like, I need to give money. I'm so privileged that I have the ability to give you guys money.

And in our response, you see on Instagram, you see a little like, give money, give money. OK, we understand that. They don't need that though. So I want you to expand on what charity actually does to everyone else. What is the aspect?

Suad Abdel Aziz:
So whilst there are material needs of people that needs to be met, and there are governments and international institutions that are not meeting those needs, and so that is the importance of mutual aid, at Decolonize Sudan, One of our core principles is to shift from this model, this charity model to a social change model.

And part of that is the way, so like my favorite part in this work is teaching other Sudanese people and organizers and activists within diaspora on advocacy skills and how we can inform our organizing. And one of the things that I really emphasize in that work is the way in which we talk about our, we frame our struggle rather than one of we need help, help us, help Sudan. You know, please help us. It is one of we have... the right to live free of occupation, of genocide. We have a right to live in sovereignty, in self-determination.

We have these rights that are imbued to us and our obligations of third states to ensure these rights, and there are legal obligations to not aid and abet these violations that are causing this situation to happen, and there's an obligation not to kill, do war crimes, crimes against humanity.

So the language around rights and obligations rather than one of need. when it comes to, so the idea of charity is one that we need to, especially within Muslim communities, have a drastic change of understanding into one of mutual aid. And mutual aid is when we give to one another It's from a place of mutual care, a communal act that is mutually beneficial either in the short term or the long term.

And I want us to think about zakat is the ultimate form of mutual aid. It is a divine mutual aid. It serves as a social safety net for Muslim communities. In fact, it is compulsory, sacred mutual aid. It's not just something nice and selfless that we do we aren't doing a favor to the poor but rather they are doing when we give that person is doing us a favor in helping us to fulfill our obligation and receive the greatest of rewards Zakat literally means to grow. The act of redistributing our wealth through zakat comes along with a purification through detachment from dunya. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has promised us that he will reward us. He will double our loan of zakat and grant us forgiveness. And so there is a reward that we get from these actions. But most importantly, zakat is a right of the poor, a divinely established right.

And so zakat plays a role in confronting political repression when we build from this foundation the practice of mutual aid and zakat being its divine form literally establishes the fundamental paradigm that poverty isn't something to look down upon, but rather it is something to proactively address.

And so this paradigm shift is one that is already embedded in our belief system. And it's something that we not only need to theoretically understand, but in practice kind of take on. So one thing, so very briefly, I don't think I have time to touch on the idea of aid washing, but I would love for a continued discussion about this. And we also have resources around what it means to do aid washing and kind of this idea of developmental aid and charity from states being a propeller of the oppression that we're experiencing. And yeah, so you can find more resources on decolonizedsudan.org.

01:01:32 Prompt #3: How can we reevaluate the charity model and understand it in a mutual aid context for different causes?

Nawal Khan:
So essentially, in a nutshell, you were telling us to donate to empower, not out of pity, not out of insult, because when we give charity, we're almost, we're taking, we're stripping them away from their identity, right? And so our support of the ummah, as you mentioned, our zakat, should have political purpose.

It should not be for charitable reasons, but rather to give, build infrastructure, create a long-term change for the ummah, because short-term change doesn't do too much. So I will leave you guys with a prompt and how we can reevaluate the charity model and understand it in a mutual aid context for different causes.

I’ll leave you with this prompt: How can we reevaluate the charity model and understand it in a mutual aid context for different causes?

01:02:14 Prompt #3 Discussion

Mustafa Syed:
All right, in the interest of time, we’re gonna pick one person to share.

Attendee #4:
Hey, everybody. Salaam. How's everybody doing? So I thought about this in the context of a previous conversation I was having about a week ago. And I was having an argument with this guy, and he said that the role of the government is not to provide food for people. That's the role of charitable organizations.

And when I heard this, I was viscerally opposed, and I started arguing with this guy. I was like, you're evil, why would you say that? And reading this prompt, it made me think about it. I still kind of think maybe he's evil, but it made me think about how do we balance the idea of Zakat and being upstanding members of our community and providing charity to the people who need it the most while also continuously pushing on our governments to provide necessary services for the life and liberty of people. We live in one of the richest countries in the world.

If we can be the world police, why can't we be the world humanitarian? There's a standard we have to hold ourselves to to help our community, but at the same time, I think we need to continue to push on our governments to increase the standard for everybody around us um you know it's it's mutual aid but like i said we we have to push on the governments because if they if they can oppress us they also have the ability to help us and and by turning inward and solely trying to become self-sufficient which i agree is very important it takes the responsibility off of them and allows them to continue the the oppression that they're doing and i think that that's something that we should think about.

01:04:28 Prompt #3 Response

Suad Abdel Aziz:
So brother, I would very much agree with you in that we, especially when we're pressuring this particular government, the interventions should be, the demands should be calls for getting no longer destabilizing and causing harm to other nations. And I would disagree around the humanitarian aid portion.

This is, I would disagree around the humanitarian aid portion. that the focus should not be on the humanitarian aid. And this is for the reason around aid washing. So the US has been the primary giver of aid to Sudan throughout the entirety of Sudan's post-colonial history.

They didn't do this out of the goodness of their heart. They do this, they have a country rely on them for aid. in order to control that country's, in Sudan's case, foreign policy. And this was very deliberate decisions to pull aid when Sudan was falling out of

line with US foreign policy and to give aid and take away sanctions when normalization with Israel happened. in 2019 during the power vacuum that was essentially a blackmailing of Sudanese, at the time, the leadership, saying we have control of all of your monetary resources and we will pull them if you do not do this action.

And so I think it's a very dangerous game to play to rely on US humanitarian aid for the livelihood of our people. And that's the reason why a lot of the, there's an alliance of Sahel states that has come together and said we are no longer going to, we're gonna pull all of our financial reliance out of our colonizer, who for them it is France. and so that we can have our own stable economy. For Sudan, this seems to be a far away dream given the current instability, but inshallah we will get there. That's our vision of a secure and stable and sovereign Sudan one that is not reliant on the humanitarian aid of the colonizer.

01:07:34 Calls to Action

Nawal Khan:

So as we talked about in our earlier prompts about taking action and being an active participant in our own narrative, what are some calls to action that we can participate in?

Suad Abdel Aziz:

So a couple of calls to action that we've put together.

The very first one is a very real one that you can join on is the international boycott of the UAE. The UAE, of course, is the primary funder and provider of arms and continues to be despite claiming that it is no longer giving arms.

And so there's also a UAE arms embargo that actually US officials in the Senate and the House have introduced. They have called for a US arms embargo on the UAE until it halts its arming and financing of the genocidal RSF militia. And so we support the proposed legislation in the House and Senate, and on our website we link how exactly to support this legislation, decolonizedsudan.org. Second is to get clear on the narrative that this is not a civil war or an internal conflict between two conflicting generals. This is a genocide and an externally-backed private militia has occupied much of the country, is displacing, massacring, and terrorizing the people.

So learn more about this. More resources, including resources outside of Decolonaisestudent, are available on our website, again, decolonaisestudent.org, where we have a political education resource document that links to a lot of other brilliant works and writers. And then three along that line, shift narratives. educate your own circle about what's happening in Sudan, and reach out to your local community center, your local masjid, your local MSA, your community groups, to schedule a training and mobilize your community. To colonize Sudan, we offer, most of the time they're free trainings, but if you have a budget to provide, especially travel budget, we can come to you, we can provide a training.

So schedule your training. And our team members will be able to facilitate. So this was a very brief version of kind of the training that we put on, which is usually two and a half hour extended advocacy training. And then three, reevaluate the charity model and transform it into understanding of mutual aid.

Support mutual aid efforts for those Sudanese people in diaspora in your network trying to keep their family members alive. So again, there is very real material need that people have. What I have proposed is a better understanding of our own ideology, of what zakat is, and operating from that place, and therefore also calling for interventions from that place. A list of grassroots fundraisers is available on decolonizedsudan.org. And then our last call to action is actually donating to the ongoing documentary on Sudan that we putting on so we are going to Sudan we're going to Nairobi, Kenya, to interview both internally displaced and externally displaced refugees and those on the ground within Sudan to give them direct voice, to voice what is going on to them, their political aspirations and their demands. This has been a gap in our media around Sudan. When do you see people in Sudan talking about what's going on?

Very rarely do you see this. So we have a launch good, launchgood.com slash Sudan documentary. And we have a grant. So this documentary is happening whether or not you donate. Your donation means whether or not we'll be able to go to a different region and interview give voice to hundreds of other Sudanese people.

So consider donating in order for us to have a budget for this documentary. And that is our final call to action, follow us. and keep up to date about what's going on in Sudan. It changes a lot of like the actors and calls to action and demands change on a week by week basis.

So we usually have those updated demands and we link to other people to follow and other organizations to look to for information on Sudan.

01:13:23 Closing Remarks

Nawal Khan
And that concludes our interview. If you guys want to contact Sister Suad, we have an email: nuunxsuad@gmail.com.

Kamran Kazmi:

Can we give her a round of applause? Amazing, amazing, amazing stuff. The other day, I was actually, I was talking to a friend of mine, I asked him, like, he was asking about Noon, we were talking about it, and he was like, yeah, Noon is like, that thing where leaders come in, you guys talk about changing the world. And I was like, you know, the reality is that, the world was changed in rooms like this. So I want you guys to take the opportunity, introduce yourself to the person next to you, talk about what you're passionate about, what you're working on, talk about the topic we spoke about today.

And as you're doing that, I also want to give you guys the opportunity to email Trisha Suad. One of the main tenets and principles that we try to promote here is trying to connect you with incredible people like her.

Take that opportunity. Like, don't wait for the Mahdi type beat. You know what I mean?

Below is a full transcript of her talk & discussion at Nuun Collective on December 15, 2024.

00:00:00 Introduction

Mustafa Syed:

Asalam Alaikum, Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.

Insha'Allah, I hope you guys are all doing well.

Welcome to Nuun Collective! We're very excited to have you all here for our fourth event. We just got started, and we've had a lot of fun along the way. Insha'Allah, we have an amazing program for you tonight.

One thing we're very passionate about at Nuun is sharing perspectives that might not be traditional or very common. Our speaker tonight works in an industry where we don't really see a lot of Muslim representation. At Nuun, we really want to highlight different perspectives and ideas to help us think deeper about the kinds of problems we see in the community.

So with that, I think we'll go ahead.

We'll start with our recitation, insha'Allah, by Hafidh Muaaz, and then we'll go through that.

00:01:05 Qur’an Recitation

Hafidh Muaaz:

أَعُوْذُ بِاللهِ مِنَ الشَّـيْطٰنِ الرَّجِيْمِ

I seek refuge in God from Satan the accursed.

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

In the name of God, the Benevolent, the Merciful.

Quran 9:38

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ مَا لَكُمْ إِذَا قِيلَ لَكُمُ ٱنفِرُوا۟ فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ ٱثَّاقَلْتُمْ إِلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ أَرَضِيتُم بِٱلْحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا مِنَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ ۚ فَمَا مَتَـٰعُ ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا فِى ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ إِلَّا قَلِيلٌ

O believers! What is the matter with you that when you are asked to march forth in the cause of Allah, you cling firmly to ˹your˺ land?1 Do you prefer the life of this world over the Hereafter? The enjoyment of this worldly life is insignificant compared to that of the Hereafter.

Quran 9:39

إِلَّا تَنفِرُوا۟ يُعَذِّبْكُمْ عَذَابًا أَلِيمًۭا وَيَسْتَبْدِلْ قَوْمًا غَيْرَكُمْ وَلَا تَضُرُّوهُ شَيْـًۭٔا ۗ وَٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍۢ قَدِيرٌ

If you do not march forth, He will afflict you with a painful torment and replace you with other people. You are not harming Him in the least. And Allah is Most Capable of everything.

Quran 9:40

إِلَّا تَنصُرُوهُ فَقَدْ نَصَرَهُ ٱللَّهُ إِذْ أَخْرَجَهُ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ ثَانِىَ ٱثْنَيْنِ إِذْ هُمَا فِى ٱلْغَارِ إِذْ يَقُولُ لِصَـٰحِبِهِۦ لَا تَحْزَنْ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ مَعَنَا ۖ فَأَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ سَكِينَتَهُۥ عَلَيْهِ وَأَيَّدَهُۥ بِجُنُودٍۢ لَّمْ تَرَوْهَا وَجَعَلَ كَلِمَةَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ ٱلسُّفْلَىٰ ۗ وَكَلِمَةُ ٱللَّهِ هِىَ ٱلْعُلْيَا ۗ وَٱللَّهُ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ

˹It does not matter˺ if you ˹believers˺ do not support him, for Allah did in fact support him when the disbelievers drove him out ˹of Mecca˺ and he was only one of two. While they both were in the cave, he reassured his companion,1 “Do not worry; Allah is certainly with us.” So Allah sent down His serenity upon the Prophet, supported him with forces you ˹believers˺ did not see, and made the word of the disbelievers lowest, while the Word of Allah is supreme. And Allah is Almighty, All-Wise.

Mustafa Syed:

Alright. Jazakallahu Khairun Muaaz for that amazing recitation, mashallah.

Before we get started, I want to give a quick shoutout to our coffee vendor, Beeso. If we could give them a round of applause.

I think it's fun how they put logos on the coffee. I think it's really interesting—I don’t know, I never saw that before. It’s amazing, alhamdulillah.

I also want to introduce our newest member of the Nuun team, Naba, who's been doing amazing work with all our social media and logos—like that new logo is from her! So give her a round of applause.

I'll hand it off to Kamran for some introductions insha'Allah.

00:03:55 The Third Door

Kamran Kazmi:

So, on the fly—how many of you guys saw The Third Door thing? Like, in a world of two doors, there's a third door. Okay? Who knows what that means?

Fantastic. Okay.

This is real quick, just for context. I was with a mentor the other day, and he was telling me, "Man, when I was younger, I had so many goals and dreams. I wanted to do this, I wanted to do that. But as you get older, you start saying, 'I'll do it later.'

He told me, "When I was 25, if I had just started then, I would have achieved my goals three times over. But now I'm 40, and I’ll probably keep saying this for another 20 years."

We were talking about regrets on the deathbed. And that's heavy, you know?

Have you guys ever seen Three Idiots?

Okay, if you haven't, you guys have to watch that movie. There's this scene where he says, "Man, if I just had the courage..." It’s like, the gate was open, the ticket was in my hand, but if only I had taken that little step forward.

At Nuun, we believe that the antidote to that regret is the concept of The Third Door.

The first door is the main entrance—the one everyone waits in line for, hoping to get in. The second door is the VIP entrance—people who have connections might get in that way.

But the third door? That’s when you go around the back, climb through a window, and make it happen yourself. You take action.

And today, we have a great example of that right here with us.

Let’s get started.

00:05:56 Breakthrough in Journalism

Naba Yasir:

Hello guys salam! I am so excited for today's talk. We have Tahera Rahman—the first Muslim hijabi news reporter in the U.S., mashallah.

So, we’re going to get straight into it. In 2001, you were nine years old, and something happened that changed the trajectory of your whole life. What was that? Take us back there.

Tahera Rahman:
Well, first of all—don’t be math-ing right now!

But yeah, 9/11. I was obviously just a little girl. And I think for most people who grew up as American Muslims, we have in our minds a pre- and *post-*9/11 world. It was very different.

At the time, I was going to an Islamic school. If anyone's familiar with the Chicago area, you’ll know Universal School—it’s one of the biggest private Islamic schools.

After 9/11, we were off school for a few days. When we came back, everything had changed overnight. Suddenly, we had security officers, our principal had to talk to us in an assembly, and the neighbors who had been around the school for years started threatening us, telling us to go home, that we weren’t welcome anymore.

Even in my safe spaces, I saw the backlash—Muslims were suddenly treated as enemies. And then, every time we turned on the news, it was always people who looked like me—my family, my community—being portrayed as the enemy. It became an us vs. them mentality.

I was only nine, but I remember feeling overwhelmed and thinking, If I were on the news, I wouldn’t say that.

It was a very naive and simplistic way of thinking, but that’s how the seed was planted. I thought, If I could just be on the news, I would tell the truth, and everything would be okay.

From that point on, I believed I had two career options: journalism or law. For some reason, I thought those were the only two ways to change the world when I was nine years old. And that’s what sparked my interest in both fields.

Naba Yasir:

Wow. At nine years old, that’s really incredible—not only recognizing a problem but also seeing yourself as part of the solution.

So many people saw those same reports, those same stereotypes, but you looked at them with a completely different perspective. That’s really powerful.

Did you have people around you who helped nurture that sense of agency and responsibility?

Tahera Rahman:
Alhamdulillah, in our community, the most common professions you’ll find are doctors, engineers, and then maybe lawyers.

I talked to a lot of Muslim lawyers because I was curious about what they did and how they worked. But, I could not find any journalists. My parents didn’t know any. It was a very rare profession in our community.

Of course, it’s not like I was constantly thinking about it at nine or ten years old, but it was just something I was aware of. But by middle school, high school, and then college, I started really searching for role models in journalism.

In high school, I took a couple of classes, but in college, the coursework was much more intense. I was going out in the field, putting together stories—and I loved TV reporting. That really solidified my decision.

But I still didn’t know how to break into this competitive field. I didn’t have anybody to ask how to get into a field that is already so competitive. You have people who want to be journalists but also people who just want to be on TV, for the fame of it. Because of that, it is a very competitive role to be a reporter. I remember just straight stereotyping at that point. Every time I saw a Muslim-sounding name in newspapers or on the radio, I would just reach out to them. And I got pretty lucky subhanallah. I met a few women that were so helpful.

There were a couple of people who never responded, of course, but there were a few women who did and also offered advice. And they weren’t necessarily in TV journalism, but they were in the media, and they had a perspective to offer.

One woman was a producer at ABC in Chicago, so she had insight into how things worked behind the scenes. That was kind of my way of trying to get agency and confidence.

That gave me the confidence to take the leap.

I hesitated until the last possible moment to declare my major—second semester of my sophomore year. My parents were paying for college, and my dadi (grandma) was already encouraging me to get a master’s in something else.

But my mom supported me.

And eventually, I took that leap. I said, Okay, I’m declaring journalism as my major. Let’s do this.

00:13:06 How did Tahera adopt the Third Door mentality?

Naba Yasir:

That’s amazing. When you decided to take that leap, you weren’t given a blueprint—you created one yourself. That’s exactly the third door concept we’re talking about, where you take charge of your own passions and dreams—and reach out, network, and figure it out.

What were your emotions prior to making the decision to go all in? Once you were in, what were the mindset shifts you had to keep thinking about to stay consistent and to sustain that drive in you.

Tahera Rahman:

Little did I know that the drive would have to be sustained for a very, very long time until I actually became a reporter. But those foundations were laid early on.

It’s funny because, for some people, when they hear rejection, it’s easy to become complacent. That’s the easier route, right? Even in college, I remember my TV broadcast professor, who had decades of experience in TV news. She was a Caucasian woman—looked the part, right? Perfect hair, always dressed sharply. She told me my options were either Al Jazeera or reporting in Detroit because of the large Arab American and Muslim American community there. And I thought, So there are no Muslims anywhere else that I can represent? It didn’t make sense to me. But it was because she couldn’t picture it either.

At the time, I was interning at CBS in Chicago, and one of my producers was helping me put together my reel. He asked me, If CNN offered you your dream reporting job, but they said you had to take off your scarf, would you do it?

I didn’t have to think long. Right away, I said no. But later, I reflected on why I responded so quickly. It was because—why would I work so hard for something and then forsake the one entity that made it possible? God. It just didn’t compute. So in my mind, I thought, If I don’t get there, it just means it wasn’t in Allah’s plan for me. I needed to either try, trust, and pray—or try, and if it didn’t work, be content knowing it wasn’t meant for me. That’s the concept of istikhara, right?

So at first, I was hesitant. But once I declared my major, I knew I had to make it happen—because everyone kept saying it was impossible. But why was it impossible? It didn’t make sense. This was the 2000s, and they were telling me that a Muslim hijabi reporter wasn’t feasible? People couldn’t stomach that?

At first, it was defiance. But then, it became a greater purpose. What sparked my drive in the first place was the post-9/11 narrative. I thought, We’re never going to get out of this angry Muslim stereotype if we don’t have a seat at the table. If we’re just passive viewers and not active participants in shaping our own narratives, nothing will change.

And it’s not just about the stories that are told—it’s even about the words used in those stories. We’ve all seen it, especially in the last year since October 7th. The words used to describe one side versus the other. In the industry, I’ve realized that a lot of it is just regurgitation. It doesn’t always come from a bad place, but people don’t understand the impact it has on communities of color.

So my mindset shift was realizing this wasn’t just about me. It was about the greater purpose—about us as a community.

00:24:58 Handling societal rejections

Naba Yasir:

So you really focused on your "why" to keep going—wow. Once your journey started, I’m sure you received a lot of pushback. You mentioned your professor, but I imagine your family and community may have also tried to deter you. How did you handle that? Because for a lot of people pursuing their passions, dealing with that kind of pushback is really difficult—especially doing it from a place of compassion and understanding.

Tahera Rahman:

It’s funny—I still get pushback from certain elders in the community. They’ll ask, "Oh, are you going to do something else?" And I’m like, No, I’m in a top-five TV market. I think I’m good. This is my career.

Yes, there was pushback from the community along those lines—even from family members. And I get it. Our grandparents came here to provide a better life for us. They built the masjids, the Islamic schools. They created safe spaces for their kids and grandkids.

But for my generation—Gen Z and younger—it’s about making an impact. It’s about making it clear that we are American Muslims. And I love seeing that shift today—people aren’t afraid to embrace both identities. I am an American Muslim. Deal with it.

That’s the shift that’s driving real change. And that’s what I tried to explain to those who pushed back. Yes, becoming a doctor would have been a more stable path. But what change would that bring? None. We’d still be relying on other communities to give us a voice. We’d have no agency in our own stories.

Once my family understood that, it clicked for them. They saw my purpose.

For me, there was never a question of going back. Once I figured out my purpose, I stuck with it. That’s why, after graduation, I took a radio job—just to get some experience. Then, I took a TV producing job. All the while, I was applying for TV reporting jobs and getting rejected over and over. I sent out hundreds of reels.

I remember one time I got really far in the hiring process—down to the last two candidates for a reporting job. This was in North Dakota. I was willing to go there just to be a reporter. After my third interview, the manager called and said, "I’m so sorry, but we decided to go in a different direction."

I was devastated. I thought, This is it. I’m done.

Fast forward—years later, after I finally got on air, that same manager messaged me on Facebook. She wasn’t at that station anymore, which is probably why she felt comfortable telling me this. She said, "I’m so glad you never stopped pursuing this. You were one of the best candidates I ever interviewed. But that decision was made by the men in suits above me."

And I thought, I knew it! I’m not crazy.

This kind of thing happened constantly for years. Eventually, I took a TV producing position just to get my foot in the door. I told my managers and the general manager of the station, "I’ll be fully transparent—I don’t want to be a producer forever. I’m going to keep applying for reporting positions." They were fine with it, as long as I committed to producing for at least a year.

So, I settled in. At this point, I was in the Quad Cities—on the Illinois-Iowa border. It’s a small town, not a big city. But it was only a two-and-a-half-hour drive from home, so my parents were happy. And for me, it was finally a step forward. I was in the TV industry. I could see hope again.

Naba Yasir:

You know, the fact that you were so persistent with your goal and kept going regardless of the fear, the "no's," and all of that—that in and of itself is such a massive success. I feel like the concept of success is not just the destination but the journey itself, right? The sheer fact that you stayed committed to your goal and kept moving forward—did you feel successful in those moments before you became a reporter on screen?

Tahera Rahman:

I think it was a rollercoaster. But when I got the TV producing job, I was like, "Wow, I did it." I thought, "Yeah, this is happening. This is going to happen next year, inshallah." I was seeing my dream right in front of me.

But then I got rejected three more times. I kept applying for reporting jobs. The first two times I didn't get the job at my own station, I started thinking, "Okay, what am I doing wrong? How can I be better so they don't pass me up? What am I missing here?" So I started coming in on weekends.

I was a full-time producer, working Monday through Friday, and then I would come in on weekends just to shadow reporters. I would help them out, write my own scripts, and edit my own stories just to stay on top of it. Then, when an opening presented itself, I tried again. And when I didn't get it that time, that was the moment when I thought, "This is a sign. This is from Allah—this is my destiny."

You tell yourself you're going to accept whatever Allah's fate is, but it still hurts. It still stings when you think that's what's happening. I remember pushing through my day, producing, and then on my way home—it was late, maybe 10:30 or almost 11 PM—I was driving, and it just hit me. I was a mess. I had to pull over in the middle of cornfields in Iowa, pitch black, and I couldn't stop crying.

I called my mom. She's the best. I told her what had happened, and she was quiet. She let me cry for a while. Then she said, "Well, you're going to get back up. When another opening happens, you're going to apply again. And if you don't get it, you're going to keep applying. This is what you want, and you're going to keep trying until you get it."

She could have said anything at that moment. Especially as a Muslim mom, knowing there were so many other fields I could go into where I could climb the ladder more easily. She could have said, "Okay, yeah, this is the time. Give them your notice, come home." But she didn’t. For some reason, she believed this was going to happen for me. SubhanAllah.

I didn’t bounce back immediately. I went home, took a few weeks, but then I went right back to it. I tried again. And when I applied, I had no hope. At this point, it was my fourth time. I thought, "I've been Employee of the Year at this station. If I don’t get it now, they just don’t want me."

Then the general manager, the owner of the TV station, called me into his office. I was dragging my feet, talking to everyone on my way there, just delaying. I remember Tiffany, the anchor and co-anchor at the time, saying, "Why are you taking forever? Just go." And I told her, "Because I’ve been here before, and I don’t want to have that conversation again in his big office and then try not to cry for four hours on my way home."

She said, "No, just go."

So I thought, "What does she know?" And I went in.

That’s when he told me I got the job.

I didn’t even realize I had been holding my breath. I let out this huge breath and said, "Oh my God, really?" My news director came in, and they were all really happy. They got a lot of publicity out of it, too, so it was a win-win for them.

But at that point, so much had happened that I didn’t even know about. SubhanAllah, when I think about it now, we always say, "Allah is the best of planners," and this was exactly that.

If I had gotten the job when I wanted it—right out of college, one, two, three years out—I wouldn’t have been half the reporter I was at that moment, with all the experience I had gained. Imagine the whole world watching me while I was still bad at my job. I was the first, and I needed to be good.

So subhanAllah, this all came at the exact right time for a reason. At that point, I felt confident. I felt ready. I had been watching reporters, correcting their scripts, internalizing what I liked about how some people presented stories and what I didn’t like. I had a lot of context and background before I went on air—context I never would have had if things had happened sooner.

A couple of months after I got the job, I found out that the two main anchors at my station had actually gone to management and vouched for me. Even if I had asked someone to vouch for me, they wouldn’t have done it like that. SubhanAllah, all this was happening without my knowledge, just because I was dedicated to improving myself.

Of course, I was coming home every night, praying, making du’a for 25 minutes, crying—not just to be a TV reporter, but asking Allah that if this wasn’t meant for me, to send a sign and put it far from my heart. Because when you’re constantly trying for something and not getting anywhere, it takes an emotional toll.

Part of my du’a sequence was, "If it's not meant for me, just make me not want it anymore."

Naba Yasir:

I love that.

Tahera Rahman:

Alhamdulillah.

00:33:01 How was Tahera’s first experience on air?

Naba Yasir:

And I feel like that’s a really consistent theme with people who choose to follow their passions. A really beautiful gift is that deep connection with Allah—that constant conversation, the du’as, the tahajjud. You’re being provided with so many opportunities to truly connect with Him.

And going back to your story about your mom—wow. You really only need that one person to say, "Keep going." And you took that and just kept at it.

So, how was it when you were on air for the first time? What was going through your mind—your thoughts, your emotions?

Tahera Rahman:

It makes me want to cry thinking about it because it was so long ago, and I’ve come so far, subhanAllah. But I still remember it.

There was a lot of build-up. Tiffany, the anchor who vouched for me, pulled me into my boss’s office and said she wanted to do a story about this herself. She wanted to follow me around leading up to my first day of reporting. She even had my family drive in to watch my first live newscast. She was going to put a story together. So there was a lot of extra pressure—for no reason.

I was nervous because my family had waited just as long as I had. And on top of that, my bosses—who were really nice—hired a security guard for me. They said, "We think everyone will be receptive, but it only takes one crazy person for something bad to happen." So the company had someone follow me everywhere for a few weeks.

It was different from what the job is on a day-to-day basis.

But when I actually started doing the work—conducting interviews, writing my scripts, editing at the computer—everything just flowed. I was in the zone.

Then, when I had to get mic’d up for my first live shot, I started getting nervous again. This was it. The camera time. The moment everyone would see me.

Watching that first clip now, I can tell how nervous I was, but hopefully, in general, no one else noticed.

And oh my God, it was so hard to get that mic through my hijab. I did not think about that.

00:36:56 Prompt #1: What is a goal/passion that you have been putting off or that you want to pursue and why is it meaningful to you?

Naba Yasir:

What a story. Allahumma Barik.

So we just heard this incredible journey, and I want us all to take a moment to reflect. Before we move into the next segment, I think what's so inspiring is that now Tahera is able to look back without wondering, What if? She took the plunge and pursued her passion.

Whatever that goal is for you—big or small—we’re going to take five minutes to reflect on it. Write down your thoughts, and then we’ll have a discussion.

00:48:56 Discussion on Prompt #1

Attendee #1:
I’d love to share. One of my biggest goals in life is to become a professional voice actor. We’re seeing more Muslims enter the film and TV industry, but I haven’t seen anyone break into voice acting, especially in video games.

One of my favorite voice actors voiced Batman for almost 30 years—he passed away two years ago. I grew up listening to him, and he gave me hope that I could be a voice actor, too. With everything changing in the industry, I decided I wasn't going to just sit around and wait—I was going to make it happen.

So, over the last two years, I’ve reached out to people in the industry, met some relatively well-known figures, and asked for advice. They all told me the same thing: You need to know someone to get in. But none of them discouraged me. They said, You can make it—it’s just going to take some time.

Tahera Rahman:

That’s awesome! You’ve already taken the initiative and found mentors. You’ve already taken the door. You went out of your way to find people to advise you and that’s the goal. That’s exactly what we want to encourage here. Keep the fire and keep going!

For me, it took five years from when I started pursuing this field to when I finally broke into it and became a reporter. So, if people are telling you it’s going to take time—believe them. Stay persistent, because that breakthrough moment will come.

You will have ups and downs, you won’t be as confident every single day, but I think as long as you have that foresight and you believe in it. And that's awesome, you’re already thinking of the big picture. Like what if I can be that voice for other kids. And imagine how pumped a little kid would be to find out your background.

I'm in my 30’s, I see a hijabi on tv and I’m like “LOOK LOOK!”. So that would be awesome if you become the next batman voice and a muslim kid finds out its a muslim guy, they are gonna be like woah - so that’s awesome.

00:53:46 Discussion on Prompt #1

Attendee #2:

Assalamu alaikum. Sorry, guys. I was trying not to volunteer because I, like, lost my voice, so you guys are going to have to, like, bear with me on this one. I'm just going to read from my paper if that's okay.

Okay. So I had two goals, but I think I'm going to do the second one. So one of my goals is to slash audit the Islamic studies curriculum in Western universities through a whole reform movement, taking scholarship of proper Islamic scholars and embedding them as consultants or contractors to audit or improve the curriculum, moving away from dissecting Islam and religion as a concept and moving toward a more deep appreciation and understanding of the classical science.

It would be sort of like a blend of, like, Qalam, Medina University, Zaytuna, Al-Huda curriculum, Dar-ul-Uloom also, and it's meaningful to me because I feel like it defeats the purpose/significance of the concept of religion whenever, like, right now, in, like, Islamic studies or religion in general as a degree, and so the absolute beauty of Islamic studies becomes sort of lost. And I want to revive that in Western academia, but also use it as a platform of Dawa to non-Muslims.

And there's a lot of non-Muslim individuals who even contributed so much to the Arabic language, and one of the biggest dictionaries that we utilize—I actually go to Qalam Seminary, I'm a seminary student, I think you guys could tell—is a dictionary called Hans Wehr. And Hans Wehr was a German. He was a Nazi. And he understood Fussha, like, the Arabic language, better than any Muslim did. And that's the dictionary we use in our schools.

So I guess, what are the consequences of Michael remaining unshared with the world? Currently, there's basically this fuel to the fire of Islamophobia and the concept of religion, because the more people who don't care about religion, God, or a higher power, or an afterlife, the more people will be invested in the dunya. And the more that the people are invested in the dunya, the top 1% slash, you know, the people who actually control the politics and government, et cetera, have more control over society, and they can get people to do what they want.

So an example of this is, like, the use of psychologists in marketing to fuel the fire of increasing this capitalist economy using algorithms and TikTok shops and all that stuff. So that's one example. And then the other example is, like, the people they can't control, like the Ghazan people, because religion is so important to them. They've analyzed it so much that no matter how much torture they can do, the Muslim people are still content, and they know that they're, like, going to be taken care of in the afterlife.

So I think the world is missing out on unlocking the potential of reorienting the narrative of the concept of religion and, more specifically, the beauty of actually understanding Islam. It doesn't necessarily have to be, like, my goal, 'cause, like, I'm an insignificant person. Like, I can be replaced by a baboon who's been trained by AI. Like, I'm insignificant in all of this. But whoever Allah blesses with his tawfiq to do it, then, like, I think it could change the world.

Tahera Rahman:

I don't know what to add to that because that's like a whole plan for changing the entire world, so that's way bigger than me too. But SubhanAllah, it's such a good idea because we are seeing that a lot, and there's so many people too, including myself. Like when you are in these regular secular colleges, and you see these courses, and you're in those courses, it's just not it, right? They're so superficial, and they take a turn or turns that make you feel uncomfortable as a Muslim in this Islam 101 class at X or Y university, right?

So that's also another concept of having a seat at the table—why are other people teaching our religion or about our religion or trying to share our stories if they don't understand where we're coming from? And I think that is, at its heart, what this starts as, right? So that's awesome.

00:58:36 Prompt #2: What is one small, actionable step you can take right now to honor your true interests, even if it feels uncomfortable? Who is one person you could reach out to today that might support or guide you towards your dream?

Naba Yasir:

Yeah, the next one. Now we're going to move on to prompt two. So we talked about the concept of the third door and taking action, doing something differently to achieve your passions and your goals. And that can mean something different to every single person.

So, what is that one small, actionable step you can take right now to honor your true interests, even if it feels uncomfortable? Who is that one person you could reach out to today that might support or guide you towards your dream?

Listening to your story, you were really able to focus on the solution and the actionable steps rather than your fears and the blocks, right? And so that's a consistent cycle of making yourself focus on, "Okay, now what's that next step I can take?" That small step, and those small steps that add up to you actually reaching the destination that you're trying to get to.

So let's take another five minutes and reflect over this prompt, and we'll do the same discussions again after that.

1:05:55 Discussion on Prompt #2

Attendee #3:

Okay, I'll start off by just mentioning the first prompt. It's nothing as life-changing as the other two people, but I've been trying to learn Arabic because I always wanted to study Islam formally in an institute, and that's always the first step.

So, that's a goal I've been having and something I've always wanted to do. I guess some of the barriers for that are just not being as consistent. I was pretty consistent, but my teacher actually became a father recently. So I guess that was one of the reasons why we slowed down.

But to answer this prompt, I guess a step I could take is to not be that reliant—I could try to find other resources. I mean, I have other friends that study Arabic, I could try to learn with them. So I guess not being as reliant and also kind of taking matters into my own hands—I could use YouTube. I was just talking to a few guys here, and they were telling me about resources. So I guess to answer the prompt, I could just be doing stuff a bit more on my own and not being as reliant on other people.

Tahera Rahman:

I do just have one quick thing—that's similar to one of my experiences. I shared with the Nuun team earlier.

So, I imagine I've reached out to a bunch of people, and it's funny because there was a family member who actually knew a CNN reporter. He happened to be roommates with him in college. And I was like, oh my God, I was so excited to meet him.

We met at a coffee shop that we're now boycotting, but this was a long time ago, a random coffee shop. I was so excited, I was so nervous, I had my little resume.

And he talked to me, and I just got the vibe that he wasn't that interested in helping me. He just thought I was kind of like a little girl or whatever.

And when he was leaving and I was watching him, thinking, Man, that was kind of a bummer, he also dropped my resume. And it was floating in the wind.

And it landed really sadly on the floor. And I was like, hmm, that about sums up this experience.

But I share that because it's not an inspiring story.

I share that because even though that didn't work out, it was a personal connection that didn't work out. But all those cold emails I sent—80% of those worked out.

So, like, Mariam Sobh was a radio reporter, and she was able to show me around. And the ABC producer I mentioned—she gave me a tour and helped me film some of my stand-ups.

So you never know—just cast a wide net. You can learn from several different people.

1:09:09 Discussion on Prompt #2

Attendee #4:

I think one of the biggest obstacles that I've always had when it comes to my goals is I get really caught up, and I get too caught up in the bigger picture of where I want to be and where I currently am and how far that distance is.

I think that makes me really upset a lot, because I'm like, why am I trying if it's so far away? I get it if it's within arm's reach. I get it if someone could just tell me, "Try 20 times," and then I know at the 20th time, I'll get it.

But I keep on trying, and I just don’t know how far I am... I think that has always made me really demotivated.

Another thing is, I'm the type of person who thinks if you want to get something, you have to put a hundred percent of your effort in a hundred percent of the time.

But the thing is, that's not sustainable, and that's how burnout happens so quickly. You try for so long and then afterward, it just fiddles away. One actionable step I need to take is being okay with my effort not being 100%.

It could even be 1%, but I'm okay with that. Even though this is my goal, and I know I need to do this, and even though today, I’m not doing it to the best of my ability, it’s still better than not doing it at all. I think just internalizing that and realizing that even though it feels so far away, doing something is better than doing nothing.

I think it's because I’ve always seen this applied to other people and not to myself. Just realizing that I am no different from anyone else, I just need to be more consistent with it. Consistency starts with doing something that you didn’t do yesterday and having that mindset for a long period of time.

Tahera Rahman:

Okay, three quick things.

One is, yes, I totally feel you on that, and you’re 100% not alone. I think probably most people have a goal where they’re in the same position as you.

One thing I did is—I don’t know what your goal is, but I had to unfollow some people on social media, and it wasn’t because of jealousy, but because it was a constant reminder that I wasn’t there yet.

So that’s one actionable thing you can do: don’t just say, “I’m not going to compare myself,” because when you're seeing it on your feed all the time, you're comparing yourself. So just unfollow and take a break from that.

The second thing is try to put in small wins. If I can get here, that’s a big accomplishment. You don’t necessarily always have to focus on the bigger dream that seems out of reach. If I can get a response from this person in the next month, that would be awesome. If I could speak with this person over coffee, that would be amazing. Small wins along the way will help you feed off of yourself and keep going.

The last thing is, yes, you're correct. You don’t have to give 100% every day. After college, I remember at a certain point—I was back home—literally, my mom was like, "Are you okay?" because I was on the couch for three days, not doing anything. And I was just taking my time. I said, “I’m going to enjoy not being in school right now.” She asked, "Do you want to hang out with your friends?" I said, "No, I just needed to rest for a while."

And I think that’s okay, especially when you talk about burnout. Just take care of yourself too, because imagine getting to that point, achieving your dream, and then being so exhausted that you can’t give your all anymore. You’re on the right track.

01:13:55 Discussion on Prompt #2

Attendee #5:

I just wanted to share something I picked up today in class at the Qalam Seminary.

We were going over Surah Yusuf, particularly when Allah (SWT) was talking to Yusuf A.S. and telling him that we planned this for you. This whole idea of we’ve sent you to Yusuf A.S. and we have established you in that land; it was planned by Allah (SWT).

I want to talk about the relationship between human effort, the effort we put in, and reliance on God. These are things we need to balance. This is something Sister was also touching on—how far you might feel from your goals and where you are now.

One thing we learned was that effort is what we can focus on. It’s our mode of salvation because it’s our Dean; it’s a win-win Dean. Whether or not we achieve the outcome, we still win; we still get the reward. Our religion isn’t like the car salesman who only earns commission if they sell a car. In our religion, it’s about the effort you put in, not the outcome.

So I wanted to get your perspective on this: when you set your goals, say as a 9-year-old, how much of that were you thinking? How has that analogy shaped where you are today?

Tahera Rahman:

That's exactly the mindset you need.

It’s also the model of Istikhara, right? You’re going to try your best, tie your camel, and then leave the rest in God's hands. That’s easier said than done, especially when you really want something and you're actively trying to get it. But reminding yourself of Allah's promise—that He will give you something better—is key.

I thought the best thing in the world would have been being on air right out of college, but He gave me something better. I now have a career, alhamdulillah, and I’m in a spot where people, Muslim or not, people of color or not, many strive to get to. I don’t think that would have been possible if I had sacrificed anything along the way or compromised my religion.

I had 100% certainty that whatever happened would be the best for me. I just had to trust that. That applies to all goals, like career goals, marital goals, anything like that. I can 100,000% vouch that committing to this concept has worked out for me in all aspects of my life.

SubhanAllah, just keep reminding yourself of this. It’s good that you’re going to classes that remind you of this, but if you’re not, you need to remind yourself. Allah’s plans are better than what we imagine, and sometimes that means taking an entirely different route than we expected.

If it wasn’t this, if it wasn’t TV reporting, He would have opened another path. But you just have to trust that this is the best path for you. Either way, we win, right? Because if we don’t achieve the goal, we gain Taqwa from it.

01:19:28 Closing Remarks

Kamran Kazmi:

Thank you, alhamdulillah for an amazing event.

Okay, so we were talking about their door, right? A few examples I forgot to mention earlier. Steve Jobs, before he was Steve Jobs, at 12 years old, he hit up the CEO of HP, he responded after being messaged.

Another example: Steven Spielberg. Does everyone know who Steven Spielberg is? World-famous movie director. He ended up getting off a tour car at Universal Studios, sneaking through a door, and telling everyone he was an intern. He just stayed there and became a ghost.

Tahera Rahman here did the same thing.

We would love for you to have a person in mind, reach out to them, tell them about your goals and what you are trying to do, even if that is Tahera Rahman.

We have an email that will go directly to her; taherarahmanxnuun@gmail.com.

Break down the THIRD door.

Disclaimer: Material published by Nuun Collective is meant to foster inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published media do not necessarily represent the views of Nuun Collective or any member thereof.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Note: This transcript has been slightly edited for readability.

Below is a full transcript from his talk & discussion at Nuun Collective on October 6, 2024.

0:00:00 Qur’an Recitation

أَعُوْذُ بِاللهِ مِنَ الشَّـيْطٰنِ الرَّجِيْمِ

I seek refuge in God from Satan the accursed.

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

In the name of God, the Benevolent, the Merciful.

Quran 4:135-4:137

4:135

۞ يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ كُونُوا۟ قَوَّٰمِينَ بِٱلْقِسْطِ شُهَدَآءَ لِلَّهِ وَلَوْ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِكُمْ أَوِ ٱلْوَٰلِدَيْنِ وَٱلْأَقْرَبِينَ ۚ إِن يَكُنْ غَنِيًّا أَوْ فَقِيرًۭا فَٱللَّهُ أَوْلَىٰ بِهِمَا ۖ فَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا۟ ٱلْهَوَىٰٓ أَن تَعْدِلُوا۟ ۚ وَإِن تَلْوُۥٓا۟ أَوْ تُعْرِضُوا۟ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ خَبِيرًۭا ١٣٥

Believers, be supporters of justice, as witnesses to God, even be it against yourselves, or your parents or relatives; whether one be rich or poor, God is closer and more worthy than either. And do not follow desire, lest you swerve from justice; and if you pervert it or neglect it, God is aware of what you do.

4:136 يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ ءَامِنُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦ وَٱلْكِتَـٰبِ ٱلَّذِى نَزَّلَ عَلَىٰ رَسُولِهِۦ وَٱلْكِتَـٰبِ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنزَلَ مِن قَبْلُ ۚ وَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِٱللَّهِ وَمَلَـٰٓئِكَتِهِۦ وَكُتُبِهِۦ وَرُسُلِهِۦ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرِ فَقَدْ ضَلَّ ضَلَـٰلًۢا بَعِيدًا ١٣٦

Believers, believe in God and God’s messenger, and the Book that God has sent down to the messenger, and the Book that God sent down before. And whoever repudiates God and God’s angels, Books, and messengers, and the last day, has already gone far astray.

4:137 إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ثُمَّ كَفَرُوا۟ ثُمَّ ءَامَنُوا۟ ثُمَّ كَفَرُوا۟ ثُمَّ ٱزْدَادُوا۟ كُفْرًۭا لَّمْ يَكُنِ ٱللَّهُ لِيَغْفِرَ لَهُمْ وَلَا لِيَهْدِيَهُمْ سَبِيلًۢا ١٣٧

As for those who believe and then scoff, and then believe, and then scoff, and then scoff more and more, God is not committed to forgiving them or guiding them in any way.

Quran 93:1-11

93:1 وَٱلضُّحَىٰ ١

By the morning, bright,

93:2 وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا سَجَىٰ ٢

and the night when it is calm,

93:3 مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ وَمَا قَلَىٰ ٣

your Lord has not left you,

and is not incensed:

93:4 وَلَلْـَٔاخِرَةُ خَيْرٌۭ لَّكَ مِنَ ٱلْأُولَىٰ ٤

hereafter will be better for you

than what was before;

93:5 وَلَسَوْفَ يُعْطِيكَ رَبُّكَ فَتَرْضَىٰٓ ٥

your Lord will surely give to you,

and you will be content.

93:6 أَلَمْ يَجِدْكَ يَتِيمًۭا فَـَٔاوَىٰ ٦

Did God not find you orphaned

and give shelter?

93:7 وَوَجَدَكَ ضَآلًّۭا فَهَدَىٰ ٧

And God found you wandering

and gave guidance.

93:8 وَوَجَدَكَ عَآئِلًۭا فَأَغْنَىٰ ٨

And God found you needy

and gave sufficiency.

93:9 فَأَمَّا ٱلْيَتِيمَ فَلَا تَقْهَرْ ٩

So don’t oppress the orphan,

93:10 وَأَمَّا ٱلسَّآئِلَ فَلَا تَنْهَرْ ١٠

and don’t rebuff the seeker.

93:11 وَأَمَّا بِنِعْمَةِ رَبِّكَ فَحَدِّثْ ١١

And tell of the kindness of your Lord.

God, the Most High, the Most Magnificent, has spoken the truth.

0:05:55 Introduction

Kamran Kazmi: Dr. Butch, as-salamu alaikum. Welcome to Nuun. Thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us here today and share your knowledge. I want to start off with a story. You were 15 years old when in one night you read Malcolm X. Within that same week you read the Qur’an. And not only that— you took the shahada and became Muslim. And when I heard this story I realized that Butch Ware was Butch Ware long before he became the Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party.

Butch Ware: Definitely.

Kamran Kazmi: Hundred percent. And tell me more about that.

Butch Ware: أَعُوْذُ بِاللهِ مِنَ الشَّـيْطٰنِ الرَّجِيْمِ I seek refuge in God from Satan the accursed. I think you can probably lower the gain probably half a decibel and you’ll lose that feedback. That’s years of hip hop performances. Just, uh, mic check. Can we go a little bit higher? There we go. Can everyone hear me? Perfect, in sha Allah.

Yeah, you gave an excellent introduction. I’ll just add to this that I grew up initially in extreme poverty in Washington, DC. I was born—my mother was 15 years old — teenage mom, um, pregnant white woman in an extremely segregated city. Pregnant by a black man. She was told by her high school guidance counselor to have an abortion. That if she had me she would be strung out on heroin and prostituting herself by the time she was 17. So they keep me from ever being born. White supremacy is literally at my neck before I came into this world. My father had a sixth grade education. And in the first seven or eight years of my life. I think it’s technically eight eight-and-a-half years we never actually lived for a consecutive year at the same street address. In and out of different apartment buildings, evictions, public housing. Sometimes staying with relatives, couch surfing—not the cool in-your-20s kind but the kind where you don’t have no place else to stay but with relatives. Sometimes in my dad’s locksmith van. Sometimes at a battered women’s shelter.

So, when I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X at age 15 and I read Malcolm’s story of his father murdered by the Klan. Murdered by white supremacists because he was a Garviac — a follower of Marcus Garvey, a black nationalist, a leader of his time. Malcolm’s mother was driven to mental illness by the intersection of misogyny and racial violence. Malcolm himself seeing many of the same dark parts of the streets I had seen. Long story short: what that book did to me and for me was that it showed me that there is no place on this earth that is so dark that the light of God cannot find you there.

And so when I read that book cover-to-cover in one night, I wanted what Malcolm had at the end of that book. I wanted complete and total liberation—internally and externally. And so I went to my high school library and I checked out an English translation of the Qur’an. I think it’s the Arberry translation. It’s the one where the Surahs aren’t in the right order. You know this one? The penguin edition. And I read that cover-to-cover the next night. And then I fell asleep because I had been up for 24 hours straight without sleeping and I missed school the next day. I told my mom when she got home from work that I’m a Muslim and that I wanted a ride to a mosque so that I could make shahāda. And she said “I’m working this week”. I can take you on the weekend. And so that weekend she drove me to Islamic Society of Friendly Minnesota which was the first mosque that showed up in the phonebook and I took my shahada.

Malcolm was the person who not only brought me into Islam but also that taught me about Africa. Taught me to return to the source of knowledge of my ancestors. Malcolm said in another discourse—he said, “If a cat has kittens in an oven, that don’t make ‘em biscuits.” Don’t call them biscuits. Nobody chuckled. You guys don’t know what this means—it sounds cryptic. But I’ll finish the bar. Malcolm said, “If a cat has kittens in an oven, you don’t call them biscuits. You call yourself a Negro. Show me Negro land on a map. Negro, you come from Africa. Call yourself an African.” So Malcolm encouraged me to pursue not just knowledge of Islam but knowledge of self. And a de-colonial, anti-colonial sensibility that was about recovering a past that was stolen from you, taken from you. And that was not just taken from me it was taken from all my people—concealed from us! So that we would not be anything except whatever this colonizer says we’re going to be. Because the only reason a colonizer ever tries to separate you from your history is so that when they tell you who you are you have no choice but to agree with them.

So what I really appreciate about this invitation to Nuun Collective is that it’s clear that this is a space where you guys are trying to cultivate a decolonial and anti-colonial epistemology that’s about getting freed in here (points to heart) and in here (points to head). Because the reality is that all of the political organizing, all of the movement work that we do will only reproduce the internal mental structures of white supremacy unless and until we remove them from the interior of our beings.

0:12:42 What drove Dr. Butch Ware’s research interests?

Kamran Kazmi: That’s amazing. And I think that story actually kicked off a whole journey for you — I think what’s also crazy is you were fifteen and you were doing stuff that no one else was doing. Like, who reads a book all in one night?

Butch Ware: Laughs. Wait so first of all — any other nerds out there that read books? Okay I was going to say it’s not that unusual. Okay? Like black nerds of the world unite. I played sports but I’m like the biggest nerd you’ll ever find. And if I found a good book I did not put it down until I was done with that book. And that book — those were literally the two best books I ever read. The best book ever written in the English language [The Autobiography of Malcolm X] and the best book ever translated into the English language [The Qur’an].

Kamran Kazmi: Talk to me about this. How many of you guys have read Malcolm X? It should be more.

Butch Ware: And how many will read it tonight? Okay, there we go.

Kamran Kazmi: I’ve read Malcolm X myself. But most people who end up reading these books—even though they’re revolutionary—they don’t go on to then go get a PhD and do all this crazy research in West African culture and tradition—the resistance traditions of Usman dan Fodio, Ahmadu Bamba and so much more. So tell me what drove that and tell me about the research that you wanted to do.

Butch Ware: I mean, that’s a good point. Not everybody does this. People that have known me my whole life and even people that have only known me for the last six years like my beautiful wife, Clementina, sitting here in the front row, know that my style in life is to turn it up to 11 and then break off the knob. So, whatever it is, I go full at it. I want to be completely immersed in the thing and understand it completely. By the time I was seventeen years old I was organizing pan-Africanist reading groups. I read everything. I read all of the theorists that you guys have to read in college—I read those voluntarily. Voluntarily as a seventeen or eighteen year old. So I was reading Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks. Reading Walter Rodney. I was reading those by the time I was seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that except that I knew that I needed to, in some way, contribute to what these greats had done. I realized at age 20 that I wasn’t really going to be able to make progress with any of these goals without going to Africa.

And so, I had two professors at the University of Minnesota at that time. One had worked in Senegal and one had worked in Ghana. And they were both encouraging me and saying that they thought I should consider doing a PhD in history. And I said, “a PhD in history? I can’t afford regular school. How am I supposed to afford to graduate school?” I was literally working two jobs at that time to get through school. And they said no you don’t understand, you have really good grades and you write these papers well. You can go get a PhD and they’ll pay not only your tuition but they’ll pay you a stipend for you to go get a PhD. And I literally looked at Genome—and that was her name—I looked Genome dead in the face and I said “man y’all be doing black folk wrong. I have never in my life heard of this. No one in my neighborhood has ever heard of the idea that you could go to school for free and get a PhD and somebody would pay for it.” Never heard of it. So I was like, okay, so I’ll consider it so they said well you should, if that’s the case—what I wanted to do in that time was go to Africa. And I had these two professors, one that worked in Senegal and one that worked in Ghana and they told me about this undergraduate research grant. So you write a proposal, they give you money, and you go study whatever you want. I was like, bet. I can write. I’m going to write a proposal. So, this was 1996 — they gave me $7,000 to go to Senegal. I chose Senegal instead of Ghana because my assumption was that if I went to English-speaking country I would never learn an African language. It would be too easy for me to just be me in that space. So instead, I went to Senegal. I studied French and learned French in one academic year before going to Senegal and I started learning Wolof as soon as I got to Senegal. And within a year or so I was fluent in the Wolof language. I knew I wanted to keep going to Senegal for the rest of my life, and I knew somebody else was going to have to pay for it. Because I was broke. So, yeah, that was when I took seriously that idea of doing a PhD and I wanted to research this topic that everybody else in my academic environment thought was a really stupid idea, except for my PhD advisor, who really encouraged me.

So I had this idea, when I was in the first year of graduate school, that the most important social institution in Senegalese society had never been studied carefully in a non-racist way. And that was Qur’an schooling. And this is before September 11, 2001. People didn’t really pay attention to Islam in academic circles at that point in time. None of my—literally I had professors that said why would you want to write a history of Bible school? Because for them, it was like an intellectually uninteresting question. But the Senegalese colleagues that I had and friends that I had—they were like “no, this is the most important thing you could possibly do.” Yeah. So, they encouraged me to study the history of Qur’an schooling. I mean long story short that began like PhD research in French archival sources, Arabic written sources, hundreds of hours of oral history interviews in the Wolof language with people who grew up in Qur’an schools. And it began the process that eventually led to my first academic book The Walking Qur’an. Islamic education, embodied knowledge, and history in West Africa. That book started out as conversations with friends about how to write a history of Qur’an schooling that was actually respectful of Islam and respectful of Africa. Because no such thing existed at that point in time. So it was really translating those ideas that Malcolm introduced me to Africa and its importance, and of Islam and its importance and then bringing those into my own life and my own work and beginning to put my own academic imprint on it.

0:19:32 What formed Dr. Butch Ware’s worldview?

Kamran Kazmi: So, just like how not many people from your background end up going to do a PhD and research, not many people go from that to being the Vice Presidential candidate—

**Butch Ware: **Laughs.

Kamran Kazmi: You know what I mean?

Butch Ware: Maybe even fewer, yeah.

Kamran Kazmi: So it’s like what really formed your world view? What radical ideas were you dealing with where you were like at the end of the day this is—

Butch Ware: Um, hold on. So, I always take my shoes off when Qur’an is being recited. So let me put them back on because my feet are freezing. Sorry. Okay. So, before I answer that part of the question, actually, now that you’ve framed the question in this way about becoming a Vice President—there’s a story I should tell that I don’t usually tell. When we moved from Washington D.C. to Minneapolis, I moved from a community that was 95% black to a community that was about 20% black, probably 10% indigenous, 10% Asian (mostly Vietnamese and Hmong in our neighborhood). So it was like a mixture of—probably about 10% Latin, mostly Mexican in that neighborhood. So I would say it was probably about a 50-50 split between people of color and white working class folks. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story in a public setting. When we first moved, I was waiting on a bus with my mom and I looked around and said “Mom, there’s a lot of white people here.” And she said, “Yeah honey. Well, you know there’s more white people in America than there are black people.” And I said “Why are you lying to me like that?” I thought that was the most ridiculous thing that I had ever heard, growing up in D.C. Like it was completely inconceivable that that was actually factually true.

At that point in time, we were actually coming home from Howell Elementary on the south side of Minneapolis. And Howell Elementary was actually where my dreams of one day becoming a president were ended. Because, when I was a kid in D.C. I memorized every single piece of presidential trivia. You could pick a date on the calendar and I could tell you a piece of presidential trivia that was associated with it. And my aunt once tested me on this. She was like, “what about today?” And I said, “Oh, I can’t think of anything.” And then I was like “wait, today’s Martha Washington’s birthday.” Like, I had Rolodex recall on all of these pieces of presidential history. And I think the reason is that somewhere in my head, growing up, even under the circumstances that we were in. The fact that I was born on election day in 1973. The fact that I was born in Washington, D.C. in the specter of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. And because, like, I thought, inside my head that I could figure things out and be good at stuff. I think in my head I wanted to be President of the United States when I was a little kid. At Howell Elementary, I was doing my presidential history trivia trip. And a teacher said to me, “You know Butch, there has never been a black President of the United States and there probably won’t be one.”

Kamran Kazmi: This reminds me of Malcolm X.

Butch Ware: You said it. That’s just like Malcolm X. And that’s exactly it. So literally that is the day I stopped giving a damn about school. And you can look it up, I had a 2.9 GPA in high school. I did not go to class. In fifth and sixth grade, in junior high, they had to call in my mother and they threatened me with everything they could. I was in the gifted and talented program at the school but I had not done a single homework assignment in four months. Because I just didn’t care. You couldn’t get me to care. Why should I care? If you’re telling me that there is this ceiling on what I can achieve why should I care? Why should I buy in? And this is what every single black kid goes through in the American educational system. Every single one. It happened to Malcolm. Malcolm wanted to be, if I remember correctly, a lawyer. And his teacher told him that he should think about being a carpenter and that is a good occupation for a Negro. Be what I told you to be. This is what I have slotted for you. So, now to your question. Quite literally, I don’t think I ever thought of being President of the United States again after that. Not one time. My wife three years ago probably said you should consider running for office. I’m like that’s crazy. Never. If you run tape on me teaching in community environments over the last 20 years you will not find a single piece of tape where I’m talking about running for political office or having any kind of political aspirations of any kind. Zero. So when I did this Instagram live with Dr. Jill Stein and was interviewing her about her platform and kind of pressing her and asking these questions, it didn’t really occur to me that 24 hours later they would call me back and ask me if I would consider running on the ticket. And really, probably for the first time since I was seven or eight years old, I had to think about what that would mean. And I realized that while I had never had, as a —literally I’m not even mukallaf right at that time. You know age seven or eight. Right. In all of my time of being a person who is legally responsible from the standpoint of the shari’ah for their own actions, I had never thought about doing politics. And yet, at the same time, in that moment I realized that the people that I wrote about in my academic works, the people that you mentioned like Uthman dan Fodio, like Ahmadu Bamba—the people that Malcolm had guided me to in African history—these African Muslim scholars that, like, if you — so first of all, and don’t lie, but raise your hand if you’ve actually read anything from The Walking Qur’an—from my first book. See, it’s a very small number of people, right? You guys just know me as a politician. That first book The Walking Qur’an was—so most academic books don’t get read by anyone. That has increased in sales every single quarter since it came out because the community has read that book especially the black muslim community. Okay. And another thing about that book is that there were three academic journals that devoted entire special editions just to discussing the epistemological implications of this book. It’s a revolutionary book. And it’s a book about revolutionaries. Because the main characters of that book are muslim scholars that were minding their own business teaching their students, teaching the disciplines of *tasawwuf—*of ethical training, of spiritual training—and then the slave trade arises. And so they realized that their ethical responsibilities under the circumstances is to fight against the principal evil of their time. The same way Ibrahim AS stood up against Nimrod. The same way that Sayyiduna Musa and Sayyiduna Harun peace be upon them both stood up against Pharaoh. The same way that John and Jesus stood up against Rome. These black Muslim scholars, male and female, I should add, stood up against the imperialism of their time. They stood up against white supremacy. In North Africa, Abdul Qadir Jaza’iri, Emir Abdul Qadir, the Algerian leader, he’s crowned with the turban in his community at age nineteen of being the greatest living spiritual heir of the medieval Sufi ibn Arabi. At age twenty he is organizing resistance to French occupation of Algeria. That the scholars were people who when the moment called on them to fight against the fundamental oppression of their time. They didn’t hesitate. So I did not hesitate when I got that call. Never planned for it would have asked for it. Was not going to back down from it. And I realized that after writing the histories of these scholars that stood up against the face of white supremacy, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation in their own time that I was being called into the fight that I had been writing about.

0:28:10 Lessons on how to break the status quo

Kamran Kazmi: Last question and we can go into the prompts. What you just mentioned is people looking at their society, looking at the status quo and just obliterating the status quo.

Butch Ware: Laughs. Yeah, definitely.

Kamran Kazmi: Okay, that’s what we were talking about. But what’s crazy is that’s been your whole life. Really, you know. The first story you mentioned to you going into to research. To doing everything you know. That being said there are people here in this room including me who when we think about the status quo. and breaking it we hesitate, you know. And tell me about what lessons you can give us about going forward.

Butch Ware: That’s an excellent question. The most important thing that we can do to emancipate ourselves is to literally never let an ounce of the colonizer’s narrative occupy any space in our heads or hearts. Like Malcolm said never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are. Do not let them tell you what your capacities and limitations are. My favorite MC one of my top 5 favorite MCs. Wize intelligent from Poor Righteous Teachers—you know, classic 90s hip hop group. He comes to my hip-hop history class over zoom at UCSB every year and he said this thing which to me is better than any bar that he ever rapped. He said that narrative scripts human behavior the way that code scripts computers. Narrative scripts human behavior the way that code scripts computers. And it’s true. And it’s the reason by the way that the majority of the word count in the Qur’an is spent on, what? Qasas. Story-telling. The tales of the previous prophets. Now, what does God say in Suratu Hud? Qur’an’s 11th chapter 120th verse. God says, “Indeed in all that we relate to you in the tales of the previous prophets with it fortify your heart.” We fortify your heart. So God tells us what the function of historical narrative is. The function of historical narrative is to fortify your heart. And what is this heart. And this is the perfect example of how you do not ever let them colonize the way that you think. So, the heart is mentioned 132 times in the Qur’an as qalb and quloob. The Qur’an mentions sadr or sudoor— the breast— as an allusion to the heart, the case that holds the heart 44 times. Okay. The Qur’an mentions the fu’ad, the ardent flame of the heart 16 times. Almost 200 references to the heart in the Qur’an. Zero references to the mind. Not one reference to the mind in the Qur’an. ‘Aql, the term that is usually translated as the mind or intellect, when people translate from classical Arabic into English. ‘Aql never appears in nominal form of the Qur’an, it never appears as a noun in the Qur’an. ‘Aqala, intellection or understanding, appears in verbal form. Never as a noun. Because the thing that does the intellection, or the understanding—the thing that does the aqala-ing. If you’ll bear with me. The thing that does the aqala-ing is the heart in the Qur’an. They have hearts but they don’t understand with them. They have hearts but they don’t reflect with them. Now think about this. Think about this (points to heart). Real quick. Point to your mind. Good, do it. That’s your brain. That is a physical organ that exists inside your head. The mind is a concept that European enlightenment rationalism has foisted upon us. And we associate it with this physical organ that exists inside our bodies but they’re not the same thing. The mind is a concept, it’s an abstraction. It’s not an organ. If the mind were a real thing, I bet God would have mentioned it in the Qur’an. But he mentioned the heart 200 times and never once the mind. Well, if even the instrument that you think that you think with was provided to you by your colonizers, then how will you ever be free? All of our categories, it’s not just our narratives but even the categorizes themselves are poison, they are an intellectual prison designed to make us accept and internalize our chains. So that we take them with us wherever we go. The only advantage that I have ever had over anybody and everything because I did not get dealt the easiest hand to play. That despite being beaten down in those ways by white supremacy, I never for once accepted anything that white supremacy said about anything. Don’t believe a word of its narrative about anything. Don’t trust any of its categories. Instinctively resist them. And when you do that, then that opens up space for you to actually explore what our own indigenous traditions, what our own Abrahamic traditions—the tools of thought that they gave that allowed humanity to thrive for thousands of years before this last 500 years of exploitation, murder, imperialism, and theft. If you think with and through these categories alone, you are the poison. And it doesn’t matter what your skin color is, it doesn’t matter what your ethnic background is. And even the antithesis—this is going to make a bunch of leftists mad—but I often say that about the Muslim community—I often say that capitalism is their religion, Islam is their ritual observance. Can I get a witness from the congregation. That’s where you say amen. Thank you. Right? And when I really want to stick it to them, I say that sunna that we respect the most is middle class respectability and conspicuous consumption, not the sunna of the Messenger of God ‎ﷺ. Peace be upon him. But and people love it and the leftists love it when I go hard on capitalism. And they don’t love it when I say that the antithesis both linguistically and epistemologically must contain the thesis inside it. Do I have to say that again? Antithesis, linguistically and philosophically, contains the thesis. When you argue the opposite of a thing, you have to include the original thesis in it, because you have to respond to the question that was posed. So, Marxism, contains the same toxins, that capitalism does. It is a wholly materialist philosophy. Believes that the metaphysical realm is of no significance or importance in structuring human affairs. So, while I use all the time Marxian critiques of capitalist political economy, I actually do not believe that Marx provided the answers for human development. I think that you can provide an excellent critique and a structural criticism and you can make lots of really really important radical improvements. And I’m a big believer in Stokely Carmichael, Walter Rodney, Kwame Nkrumah and all those African revolutionaries that use Marx, but Kwame Ture himself said that this is a philosophical deficiency in classical Marxism. He said when Marx said that “religion is the opiate of the masses”, that was only true for Europe. He said they were the last ones into Christianity and the first ones out. And it was only used for exploitation, so for sure that critique hold for Europe. But if you study the traditions of the non-Western world, emancipatory spiritual traditions exist and obtain within all of them. And indeed, even in the pre-White supremacist European system, there were the roots of things that were actually nourishing for human souls and reproducible and sustainable. Whiteness is as destructive, white supremacy is as destructive of the humanity of the oppressor as it is of the oppressed. And that’s why the Messenger of God, that’s part of why the Messenger of God, ‘alayhi afdalu al-salatu wa al-salam, said, “Help your brother whether he is oppressed or oppressor.” And they said, Messenger of God how do we help an oppressor? And what the were really saying was why the hell would we help an oppressor? But they said how? And he said, “Stop him from oppressing.” The reality is that all of humanity will breathe free for the first time when they are free from this white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist toxin. We have been breathing in poison our whole lives and calling it air because we didn’t know no better.

0:38:33 Break/Breathing Exercises

Kamran Kazmi: I’m going to let everyone take a second to let the ideas and lessons marinate. Just take a second.

Butch Ware: Okay. As-salamu alaikum. So I’ve been given permission to make an editorial break into the program. This is the point where if this is was one of a program I was organizing instead of just [participating in, this is the part where everyone would stand up and physically move their body. Because the Quran tells us that the human being is comprised of four principle units. A spirit, a ruh; a heart, a physical body, and soul, a nafs. So when we’re in this space of where we’re doing intellectual work, we’re focused primarily on the heart but it can be easy for us to get out of balance. So when we do this much like heartwork and there’s lots of invocation of the Prophet ‎ﷺ, recitation from Quran, we’re focused predominantly on the spirit and on the heart. So I think everybody just needs to take a minute to give the body its right, let’s stand up. Stretch your body a little bit. Move your limbs, try not to knock over your neighbor. And we’re going to do a very, very simple breathing exercise. It’s one I learned at the Shādhilī Zawiya in Avignon, France. And I’ll tell that story just briefly. Nine French families that were all the students of a particular Sufi shaykh in Damascus purchased the castle of a 19th century French philosopher and turned it into a Sufi lodge. It’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen. They raise bees and they have a farm there and it’s amazing and you have to go. And every weekend there they do dhikr. And one of my favorite and simplest dhikr to do that they do is that you breathe in as slowly as you can and you exhale out as slowly as you can the name Hū. Which is one of the oldest primordial names for the uncreated creative essence, Allāh tabāraka wa ta’āla. So we’re just going to 3 times breathe in as slowly as we can feel the breath enter into our lungs. The breath that God breathed into our shared human ancestor Adam, who already contained Eve within him. And we’re going to breathe it out and return it back to its source. And we’ll do this three times.

Breathing exercises.

Butch Ware: Now that you’ve returned to you fitri state. Your innate natural humanity. Turn to your brother or sister in humanity and greet them and see their humanity and so turn to your right and give salams to the one there. And turn to the left and give salams to the one that’s there. Bring it in, bring it in, bring it in. … And then what we’re gonna do is move into the next phase. So the only way we’ll ever bring this gathering back together is I’ll say la ilaha illa Allah. You say Muhammdur Rasulullah. La ilaha illa Allah. Muhammdur Rasulullah. La ilaha illa Allah. Muhammdur Rasulullah. ‎ﷺ*.* Okay let’s everybody sit back down.

Kamran Kazmi: So as part of our signature tradition. So this isn’t like any other halaqa, right. We’re going to be engaging deeply with ideas. So please bring out your pens, your pencil, your paper. And we’re going to be focusing on this prompt that Dr. Butch will introduce.

Butch Ware: So one of the reasons why I was really excited about this is that I really love the innovative pedagogical style that Nuun is working with. I think it’s very fantastic to break things up and make people write. Actually when I do academic writing it usually starts by hand and only later do I type. There’s a different kind of experience when you write it out. So this particular writing exercise is going to, in shā Allāh, help shift us—oh, go ahead. Do you ned to make an announcement? Do people need paper and pen? If you need paper and pen raise your hand.

Butch Ware: And we’re going to do these one at a time, correct? Yes, okay. If anyone wants to buy a notebook. Let’s get that merch moving, come on. No—so hold on—it’s important. No, no but it’s good—she said “I thought we were talking about anti-capitalism?” It’s a beautiful point. Commerce and capitalism are not the same thing. I know, I know. But it’s an important thing to remind people. The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, was a merchant. Commerce is good. Capitalism distorts commerce. So, do business. Business is good. Capitalism is exploitative by its nature. It’s extractive. The next time we have non-racial capitalism will be the first time we’ve had non-racial capitalism. Capitalism has the racism baked into it. And it is a system of transcendent meaning. It assigns value to human beings on the number and nature of their possessions. It’s a dīn of its own. No believing person can believe the basics of its tenets. Because we believe that our innate value comes from our Creator, not from the number and nature of our possessions. So, commerce is good. Capitalism is shirk. Yeah, I said it. Tell your desi uncles. Tell them I said that, too. I’m not expecting them to vote for me, anyway. But you guys. You guys. I’m counting on the 18-29 demographic. And we’re also polling well in the 30-44 right now too. So, yeah—go ahead. We’re going to treat the question with this exercise, I promise. I promise.

0:46:25 Prompt #1: If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?

Butch Ware: Okay, so here’s the exercise. The exercise is built around the three questions of Rabbi Hillel. And this is also about how we model the actual Islamic tradition. It’s that we benefit from and respect the scholars from our brothers and sisters in faith among the ahl-ul-kitab. I personally love Jewish scholarship as much as I hate Zionism. I’m just gonna put that out there. So Rabbi Hillel had these three incredible questions that are great for the writing exercises that we are going to do now. The first of them was: if I am not for myself, then who will be for me? The second, is if I am for myself only then what have I become? And the third was if I do not take action now, when will I take it? So we’re going to do exercises around those three. The first one starts here. If I do not advocate for myself, who will? This is about self-definition. How do you define yourself and your role? So, at the top of your page you write “I am…” And then you start writing, go. I need pen and paper too.

0:53:35 Discussion on Prompt #1

Butch Ware: So no one should feel like they have to share. What you’ve written is for you and nobody else. And also we do not definitely have time for anyone to fully read out everything that they wrote. But we also definitely want to open a conversation. Anybody that wants to share something they took out of this exercise. And we also definitely do not have time for anybody to fully read out everything that they wrote. But we definitely also want to open a conversation for anybody that wants to share something that they took out of this exercise. It doesn't necessarily have to be even the content of what you wrote down but your reflection on what you wrote down or your reflection on the undertaking the exercise itself. Okay, hold on, no nobody's gonna be able to hear that on that side. Let me see if we can get the mic to you.

Attendee: I wrote: I'm self-sufficient and I have the ability to think and speak for myself nobody else can think for me. I am the captain of my own ship. If you allow others to control your way of thinking you risk becoming a sheep to the masses. You'll be nothing but a number to the hive mind.

Butch Ware: We got a hand back there. Just come a little closer.

Attendee #1: Are we reading the whole thing?

Butch Ware: You can, you can if you want or you can just reflect on what you know. If you feel like it's long to read the whole thing you can just say something about it. It's up to you.

Attendee #2: Okay, I'll read it. I’m Muslim and I try to keep on the right path. And I pray we all go to jannat-ul-firdaws, and become rightly guided, and become who we’re meant to be.

Butch Ware: Ameen. Ameen. Ameen.

Attendee #3: If I don't advocate for myself, who will? I said, Allah will. How do you define yourself I define myself as an accumulation of all the ideas that I have encountered, all the experiences I have experienced, and all the people I have met. And your role in the present moment. My role in the present moment is to bring change. Everyone's role in every moment is bring change. Either change yourself, your brother, your sister, your family, your room, or go bigger—change the community. Change ideas, change thoughts, or maybe more than change—just influence.

Butch Ware: Beautiful. Yeah, yeah. Then we'll come back up yeah oh there's a sister right here also.

Attendee #4: Bismillah. I said I'm a Muslim Palestinian woman. My role in this moment is to maintain my identity by continuing to grow intellectually and spiritually, and strive to preserve my identity. Through that, I advocate for myself. I don't allow for the outlined preconceived expectations of society to impact or affect how I define myself for the role that I make for myself in this moment. I was created not to remain silent I believe I was created to speak up.

Butch Ware: Beautiful. So I'll take I'll take that back. So, first of all, just a round of applause. I thank the people who were willing to share. I am—like, really quickly, more about myself. So in addition to being an academic, after George Floyd was murdered in 2020, I opened a public social media account for the first time in my life. Okay, and probably some of you guys follow that Instagram account. Raise your hand if you follow my IG. Raise your hand if you're going to follow my IG. Okay, good. Because I feared that I would be judged by God for any beneficial thing that I could contribute to humanity in that moment that I withheld. So that's why I turned everything public-facing. I stopped writing the academic books that I was writing and I focused on doing things public-facing. And that led to doing online spiritual incentives that are rooted in the the African-Islamic tradition. And in four years since that time we've had over 3,500 people take those online spiritual intensives. I see sister Shayla's taking at least like six of them, no joke. So in those spiritual intensives, and then after quarantine ended, I started doing them in person as well, as you know hybrid online.

So one of the things that has come up consistently and it's germane to this topic of, you know I am, is that in a basic way, all of those great spiritual masters that led resistance movements in Africa—they were always focused on teaching kind of one basic thing—so they they structured society in different ways. Their movements looked different. They were organized according to different kinds of plans. But what they consistently did was they focused not on the architectural blueprints of the building that they were designing, but the structural integrity of every individual human brick in the structure. In other words, what difference does it make if you build a capitalist structure or a socialist structure if every human being in it is corrupt and rotten? If the human ingredients are broken and unhealed then it doesn't matter how good the design was. So that our traditions, what they really are designed to do, is help get us back to our humanity. To restore us to our humanity. And in the West African tradition, this was always defined as two things. They say the roles of a teacher are two: help a person return to their fitra, and help them establish their relationship with the Word. That's it. The rest will take care of itself because if you get back to your innate humanity, fitra, for those that are hearing this word for the first time is a word for innate disposition. It's derived from the name of God, Al-Fatir—the originator—this is your original state. And in Islamic conception, unlike in a Christian conception, there's no original sin in Islam. The human being doesn't come in in a sinful state. The human being comes in in a sound state. A good state. And how could it be otherwise? Everything else in creation in the Quran is created with speech. [إِنَّمَآ أَمْرُهُۥٓ إِذَآ أَرَادَ شَيْـًٔا أَن يَقُولَ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ ٨٢] When God wants to decree a matter he has only to say unto a thing be and it is. But the human being is actually created with God's hand. God says to the devil, “Why did you not bow to that which I made with my hand?” The human being is made with this caress. Intimacy. And the breath of the Divine is breathed into the frame. So the sanctity of the human being is implicit and explicit in our sacred tradition. So going back to uncover your humanity reveals that which is sacred within you.

So this is the last thing that I'm going to say on this and then we'll move on to the second question. The Quran for Muslims teaches us why we are here. But only God is going to teach you why you are here. That means that you have to develop that relationship and you have to probe internally the purpose of your life. You have to do the inner work. You can't put back onto the Quran responsibilities that the Quran puts on you. The Quran does not have all the answers. The Quran has the methodology for you to get the answers. Yes, the Quran says you should marry. But the question is should you marry her? Do y'all understand what I'm trying to say? So that means that you have to be like engaged in a direct relationship of communication. Interrogating your purpose. Calling on God for help. I am is at the foundation of it all. But if we stop there—

Kamran Kazmi: Say that one more time. Say the line where like God tells us why we are here.

Butch Ware: Oh yeah, sure. Yeah that's one one of the favorites from the online spiritual intensives. That's not from any of my teachers I made that one up. The Quran tells us why we are here, right? What our purpose is as human beings. It situates us relationally in the universe, but only God is going to tell you why you are here. Another way of saying it—and thank you for the invitation—because it reminded me of what I actually wanted to say is that you have to uncover what God made when God made you. Am I making sense?

Kamran Kazmi: Too much sense.

Butch Ware: You have to uncover what God made when God made you. And these people that led these movements. People like Khadija bint Muhammad al-Aql. She was the teacher of the first anti-slavery rebel that I've been able to document in West African history. These male and female exemplars—what made them different—the reason why they move differently in the world, the reason why they accomplished things that ordinary people couldn't accomplish, was because they knew exactly what they were here to do. They knew that it was already written and that all that they had to do was go claim their birthright through their efforts in this world. And so that everything that facilitates the completion of a mission that they know their life is for, they undertake, and everything that inhibits the completion of that mission, they leave. Most especially people in their 20s are always trying to figure out which way do I go? How do I make this decision? Well if you already know who you are, these become easy decisions.

Kamran Kazmi: I know we're going a little bit off tangent, but how did you know who you are and how—because I think that's the biggest question we ask ourselves. Like, who am I? What am I doing here? How do I get to that point of understanding?

Butch Ware: Well, okay, yes. So this would take me into the khutba that I gave at the University of Pennsylvania for the Muslim Students Association there. I'm just going to give the short version. So one thing that you'll notice if you read those stories of the prophets in the Quran is that all of the prophets in the Quran have incredibly—what's the word that I'm looking for—an incredibly difficult, hard childhood. The Quran is basically telling you over and over again that extraordinary people don't have ordinary childhoods, usually. Like, Moses is a baby in a basket floating down the mightiest river on Earth to the mightiest tyrant on Earth, tested right from the beginning. Now why am I mentioning this? Because usually when God wants to raise the status of an individual or a people, he first delivers them directly into the hands of their enemies. Because one of the things that you learn when this happens is that you don't have anything else that you can rely on ever, anywhere, except for God. And many of us learn to rely on proximate causes. But those of us that have had everything stripped away from us learn that we don't have anything that we can rely on at all except for Allah. So the sooner you get to the place where you realize that you don't have anything that you can count on at all except for God, the easier that process becomes. Because then it becomes a performance for an audience of One. You lose any concern with how people perceive you, how they might judge you, what they might think of you. Instead, you only focus on “is this thing that I'm doing the best maximization of the gifts that God gave me?” Specifically, whatever my talents and proclivities are, is this the best way that I can lay them down in service to the Divine? And laying them down in service to the Divine always means laying them down in service to humanity. This community, unfortunately, has learned to index its morality in terms of personal piety. But the reality is is that the relationships that we establish in the world are the primary determinant of our fate on the day of judgment. Our personal sins— God washes those away with repentance, or even without repentance if he wants to. But God is The Just. So he gives justice to every last one of his servants, believer or non-believer. Which means that if you allow injustice and oppression to persist in the world when you have the capacity to stop it, you are risking your immortal soul. So when you are evaluating things in that way, then you immediately think “what must I do today to put myself in service of the most precious thing that God ever made: the human being?” And when you start thinking about how you can live a life of benefit and of service then your purpose come to you. But all of us, instead, are thinking “I got to make more money. I got to get ahead. I got to do this, to do that.” The best thing— the favor that God did for me—is that every single thing that I ever tried to do for myself God caused it to crash and burn. And every single thing that I ever did for the benefit of others God made it flower.

1:09:10 Prompt #2: Who are we as a collective?

Kamran Kazmi: I think this is a perfect segue into next prompt.

Butch Ware: Yeah you laid that up nicely. He threw the alley and then you have the oop. All right, so, prompt two. If I'm only for myself then what have I become? If I'm only for myself what does that make me? Who are we as a collective and where are we heading? So, yes, you have to stand for yourself otherwise no one will stand for you. If you don't respect yourself, who's going to respect you? If you don't speak up for yourself, then who will speak up on your behalf? And Muslims, and especially, Muslim women—speak up for yourselves. Stop letting this misogynistic community push you around. And if anybody gives you a hard time send them to me. Because that is actually the job of men. Men's job is to make their shoulders wide to make room for people whose shoulders aren't as wide. That's it and instead of making space for the women in our community we silence them and then get mad when they go running into toxic philosophical systems like white Western feminism. Man, you pushed them there. So, if you don't speak up for yourself, then nobody's going to speak up for you. Speak up for yourself. But then, if you're only selfish, then what have you become, right? So next prompt. Everybody got their pen and paper ready? This one you write at the top of the page—I'm gonna get five minutes and 55 seconds lined up. Right at the top of the page, and everybody study the prompt, you start with we are. Go.

1:17:08 Discussion on Prompt #2

Butch Ware: All right we are now at time. If you need a couple seconds to go ahead and finish that last thought please feel free to do so. And again we can take a couple people that are willing to share.

Attendee #5: If I'm only for myself, what does that make me? Who are we as a collective, and where are we heading? We are the guardians of future generations. Cultivators of the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. We are not just responsible for ourselves. We are the final bastion against the forces of evil that will use technology, AI, and pillage our natural resources, environments, and destroy our world and destroy our humanity and continue our dystopian prison. We are tasked with dismantling that system and creating and building that space for our future.

Butch Ware: Allahu Akbar. We're gonna make sure that everybody that hasn't spoken yet gets a chance. Yeah and people that haven't spoken, sorry.

Attendee #6: We are the ummah that our beloved Prophet ‎ﷺ fought for, made du’a for, and cried for. We have the power to fight for justice and bring about change, not only in our community, but in the world. We are activists, thinkers, innovators, speakers and most important—Muslims.

Butch beautiful yeah get got to get note one cordless mic yeah exactly

Attendee #7: As-salamu alaikum. So I said we are no longer a collective but a collection of individuals whose sole purpose is to benefit their own selves without any regard for anybody else around us. Thereby perpetuating a cycle of individualism and solely fostering a dislike for others based solely on the fact that it's no longer about you but about the ones that are around you.

Butch Ware: Facts. Let's take one one more from the sisters.

Attendee #8: We are the voice for the voiceless. We are the ones who bear the consequence of surrendering, when Allah told us in Surah Nisa, ours is to stand firm for justice as witnesses for Allah, even if it is against ourselves.

Butch Ware: I meant to come back to that. Yeah where's AR because that's that's what he started beautiful and I'll take it back just just in the interest of time. So for all the people that didn't back just just in the interest of time so for all the people that didn't get the chance to share theirs um I have to leave at 6:00 but you guys have the space till 7:00. So the hope is that everybody will be able to share their thoughts that people will be able to exchange ideas um after after we're finished so hold on to those notebooks hold on to those thoughts. I wasn't expecting to do this but I'm going to read mine if I can make out my chicken scratches it's going to be tough. I'm not a medical doctor but you know how like medical doctors are really bad to have that handwriting. Apparently PhDs too. We are at the precipice of a new age for humanity. The days of universal selfishness are over. This is to your point brother. W.E.B. Du Bois said of capitalism—he said “a system of universal selfishness can never bring social good to all”. If everybody is just individuals looking out for themselves then you cannot have social good. So the days of universal selfishness are at an end. The nadir, the bottom, of human development is almost over. We will one day look a back upon these years as the storm that shook the foundations but brought abundant rain. Everything we need to have abundance, prosperity and community is already here. We must simply learn to love one another enough to share it. We are shaping a mass awakening. We will reap its fruit in this lifetime, inshallah. We must be cautious for the next few years. Those whose lights are dimmed will fight with darknesses in their hearts. They will resist, but we will win. It is written. God's promise is true. On this point, we were discussing a moment ago that as Malcolm said “never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are”. The biggest obstacle that we have believe it or not is not these systems of oppression. The biggest obstacles that we have are these systems of oppression we have internalized the limitations that have been imposed upon us. And I'm going to tell just a quick story that one of my mentors told me when I was 19-20 years old. This was on the south side of Minneapolis outside of a Huru Bookstore and his name was Mahmud Alati. He was a professor at a neighboring university. I never took a class with him but I learned so much from him and he said to me “Butch,” he said, “you know how they train elephants at the circus?” And I was like, “No, and what are we talking about right now?” Like, the question kind of hit me out of the blue. He said they take heavy lashes and they whip them. They whip them because even as an infant a baby bull elephant if it gets loose it can trample a half dozen people in no time, right? So they whip them, whip them, whip them. And they take heavy chains to the point where it binds the metal binds into the leg of the animal piercing its flesh. And they tether those heavy chains to iron pegs in the ground or to heavy poles so that every time that animal tries to run, it is whipped and it learns that it has been immobilized that it can't go anywhere that resistance is futile. Yeah, don't go to the circus, first of all. And don't go to SeaWorld either like, this is the same thing. But Mahmud continued he said but once that animal has been broken it can grow to be an an elephant that weighs a couple of tons and you can keep it in place by even just having a semblance of a lash and just making a cracking sound in the air. You can take any insignificant cord and wrap it around its ankle you can take that insignificant cord and tether it to any insignificant peg and that fully grown elephant will never run and then he said to me do you understand why I'm telling you this parable? So I ask you. Do you understand why I'm telling you this parable? I'm asking you a question. Okay, so why? What is the meaning of it?

Attendee: Yeah, because we've been convinced into these systems that these are the only things that we can operate out of. And then you know these are like the mental shackles that have been placed around us. It's like an analogy to that—you just put any like piece of twine and the elephant will think that it's like a chain.

Butch Ware: Yep, exactly. Absolutely. Bob Marley said it, right: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” The reality is that the biggest obstacle between us and freedom right now is us if we actually understood freedom is not just possible. It is inevitable. Every single faith and philosophy in the human tradition shares that simple truth at its core: all empires fall. All empires fall. Every single one—no exceptions. At the end of Surah Maryam, what does God say? Warning Quraish: have you not wandered through the Earth and seen the ruins of those who were more exalted in power and wealth than you? And then God—God loves talking tall—God says, do you see any sight of them now? And do you hear from them so much as a peep? رِكْزًۢا rikza. Do you even hear—do they even say boo? They don't make no noise now, do they? They're gone. The Romans gone. Egyptians gone. Nimrod gone. All empires fall. You have internalized defeat to where you think that it is impossible for you to win when in point of fact it is inevitable that you will win. It doesn't mean that it will be easy. It does not mean that it will come without struggle. It does not mean that it will come without sacrifice. But it will come.

And that is why they condition you to accept their limitations on the possible because then you will keep yourself in chain you will keep yourself a slave. I've got to get this job because I've got to do—and then everybody decides that they're going to look out for thems and sell out the next man. Freedom is here. It is inevitable. It is coming. The question is: what will come after the fall of Empire? It's not “will Empire fall?” It's “what will come after it?” And that's the reason why, in all of these gatherings, I'm trying to remind people that this is not about what we are tearing down but it is about what we are building. It is about offering an alternative to this exploitative and extractive system that has diminished our humanity for the last 500 years. In the Wolof language in Senegal they say that the child of Adam does not release that which his hand is holding until he is reaching for something better. So much of our activist work has been built on deconstruction and criticism. Construction of a beautiful future, of an alternative to this, is the principle affair. Because we actually have everything that we need for every single human being to be fed, to be clothed, to be sheltered, to be educated. All we actually have to do is reallocate the resources that we already have. To reorient the priorities that we have. So that instead of trying to get maximum profit we get maximum benefit. This phone right here—they could build a phone today that would last a hundred years, easily. But they build one that breaks every two years because that's the way that they can make the most money. Well, what if we incentivize fulfilling human needs and fulfilling human potential instead of fulfilling billionaires bank accounts?

You guys remember Star Trek? Star Trek—there's all different colors of people and they speak different languages and they come and go even—though somehow English is spoken in every corner of the universe (we won't go into the linguistic imperialism star star Star Trek right now it's going to mess with my metaphor—but humanity is all one world, right? Everybody has the things that they need, okay? And believe it or not like that is actually possible. It is actually possible. If the United States of America was not busy torturing and tormenting all of humanity with its massive resources and instead was providing an example on how to care for its citizens. If we stop spending $1.3 trillion a year on—what is already the biggest military that has ever existed in human history—our military spending is the equivalent of the next 10 countries on the list. If we put those resources into building community here—I read recently that there are actually six empty housing units in the United States of America for every homeless person that's on the streets. Because capitalism requires artificial scarcity in order to drive up price literally every single homeless person could have two houses. But our priorities are not arranged in that fashion.

It is not going to be easy. The forces of darkness and of selfishness will fight back but they know how fragile they are and that is why they are coming with repression to college campuses. That's why they're trying to get people fired from their jobs. They tried to get me in October. Open letter to the University of California, Santa Barbara. He's a virulent anti-semite. I just quoted Rabbi Hillel for God's sake. So this is the thing is that if everybody continues to make those individual decisions on what's safest and in your own best interest then we’re all dead. And yet, if we all spoke up with one voice—they don't have enough pigs. And that's what they're afraid of. That's why the repression has come so heavy. It’s because they know what happened in Bangladesh, when the students just wouldn't go back. Fall Babylon fall. That's it. They know that it is literally days away. Days away. As soon as y'all free yourself in here. And that's why they keep trying to stem the momentum. But it is inevitable.

1:33:20 Prompt #3: If not now, when?

Butch Ware: Ah, actually yeah, that sets up pretty well the last of the questions. If not now, when? If not now, when? I don't think this one needs much explanation. So write at the top of your page “if not now, when?” and then answer with this: “we will take action now, because…”. 5 minutes 55 seconds.

1:40:11 Discussion on Prompt #3

Attendee #9: As salamu alaikum. We will take action now, because otherwise simply never happen. If you wait for the right time, a right place, a right person to get the job done. Then those dreams of change and peace will be just that.

Attendee #10: Salam. If not now, when? If not now, when we will take action? Now, because, while there are decades when nothing happens we are approaching the weeks when decades happen. The world is about to have major changes America has solidified its status as an empire in Decline and the federal government may not may lose the federal government may lose any power at holds within the next 100 years and we need to make sure that our Dallas Muslim Community survives the aftermath because cities Outlast Empires and we must ensure that the New Order doesn't depend on the impression and exploitation of anyone let alone ourselves.

Attendee #11: Just very short. It’s the fallacy that we have a “tomorrow”.

Butch Ware: That's right. Who told you there’s a tomorrow?

Attendee #12: I just put down what came to my mind first so I'll just say: If not now, when? We will take action now because our community is on the brink of destruction, as prophesized by our Messenger ‎ﷺ. Other empires have made a feast out of us and they're going after our countries one after the other. There is no power that can hold us back if we're united and it wouldn't be the first time that we take control.

Butch Ware: I'm going to take the microphone here for a simple reflection. Political organizing plays a particular role in this moment. Malcolm X, my role model and hero, once said, “Never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are.” He also stated, “We are not outnumbered; we are out-organized.” Many people don't know that, for example, Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party ran for elected office, and Aaron Dixon, the Seattle captain of the Black Panther Party, ran for office in the Green Party. True revolutionaries have always recognized the value of electoral politics as part of the struggle. They’ve never believed that electoral politics is the entirety of the struggle, but they never fell for the idea that your vote doesn’t matter. If your vote didn't matter, the Civil War would never have been fought. They wouldn't have killed so many just to stop Black people from voting. The vote definitely matters; it's just not the only tool we have for change.

We can't think that voting alone will solve everything, nor can we assume that any one political party will solve our problems. Movements are bigger than any political party. Kwame Ture, another student of Malcolm, reflected on this by saying, “People usually mobilize around issues, but revolutionaries organize against systems.”

Now, let's dive into the distinction between mobilizing around issues and organizing against systems. In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, I criticized the Muslim community for its failure to stand up for the sanctity of Black life. I warned that there would come a day when you'd want my people standing at your side, and you shouldn't expect us to be there if you don’t stand with us now. Well, that day is here, and we are reaping what decades of anti-Black racism in the Muslim community have sown.

Those who should know better—who understand that Blackness is an oppositional ideology in the face of white supremacy—are often unwilling to take a stand. They ask, “Where were you?” and while they're right to ask, they are wrong not to act. Our responsibility to fight against injustice should not be transactional. It should be based on what is right and necessary.

However, we cannot ignore the factors that have led us to this moment. If this community wants to be a voice against Islamophobia, racism, and anti-Palestinian sentiment, it needs to clean its own house first. Because every one of you knows that when it comes to issues of money, marriage, or mosque boards, Black folks are often excluded. Can I get a witness? As long as you harbor and foster anti-Black racism, as long as you remain silent in its presence and refuse to tell your relatives to stop using derogatory terms, you have no right to speak about Palestinian liberation. That makes you a hypocrite.

This moment demands action. We have to act now—not just externally, but internally, first and foremost.

Returning to Kwame Ture's point—while many of us mobilized around issues in 2020, we must remember that mobilizing does not create a movement. Even with Team Blue in power, police have killed civilians in greater numbers every year since 2020. We put people in power who claimed to be our friends, but they have acted as anything but. Malcolm said, “You put them first, and they put you last,” referring to Black people and the Democrats. If you swing an election without getting anything in return, you’re a chump.

Now the Muslim community is learning what Malcolm taught the Black community in the 1960s—you’ve been played. Fundraisers have built beautiful suburban mosques, but what has it accomplished? They kill you with impunity and then tell you to vote for them. You are treated worse than a chump; they don’t even see you as human.

If we do not organize against systems, the current genocide in Gaza will unfold just as the Floyd uprising did. There will come a time when a ceasefire or arms embargo is achieved, but the Zionist entity will remain an apartheid state. And those who were merely spectators, their hearts broken by suffering, will forget once the immediate crisis fades from view.

We must transform this moment into a movement. We can no longer just mobilize around issues like police brutality, only to see an increase in that very brutality. Mobilizing around Palestinian liberation often focuses on ceasefire, which is not enough. We must organize against systems.

As a historian, I can tell you that every successful modern revolution begins with political party organizing. Political parties can help channel and structure resistance, and they play a foundational role in revolutions. We need a bloodless revolution in this country, and it is within our grasp if we organize and embrace this moment.

A mere 30% increase in voter registration in the 18-to-29 demographic could lead to significant change. This demographic overwhelmingly opposes genocide, and there is only one non-genocidal party available nationwide. That’s why I want to invite my brother and colleague Eddie Espinoza, who is running for statewide office here in Texas, to share a few words.

It’s not just about using your power at the ballot box to change top-level politics; it’s about building grassroots movements and supporting local politics. As Fahad pointed out, we are custodians for the future. When I read the Quran for the first time at age 15, I learned that in the Islamic tradition, we do not have dominion over the Earth; we have stewardship. This means we are accountable for how we care for it.

Eddie Espinoza is running for Texas Railroad Commissioner, a position crucial for ecological conservation and responsible stewardship of our natural environment. Let’s hear from him now.

1:57:04 Remarks by Eddie Espinosa

Eddie Espinoza: I’m Eddie Espinoza, the Green Party candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner. Contrary to what the name implies, the Railroad Commission regulates the entire oil and gas industry in Texas. Much of this involves fracking, a process that produces huge amounts of toxic wastewater, some of which is radioactive. This toxic wastewater can seep into our freshwater sources, endangering our drinking water.

Effective climate action is essential for the survival of life as we know it. The recent devastating storm was exacerbated by global warming, as droughts and flooding occur globally. The only way to combat global warming is to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like solar and wind. While Texas is already a leader in clean energy, the full transition is being obstructed by greedy fossil fuel insiders who prioritize drilling over our environment.

We need independent regulators on the Railroad Commission, which is why I'm running with the Green Party. We don’t take PAC money or corporate donations, so you can trust that we work for you. The Green Party represents people, planet, and peace. But that requires your donations, support, and, most importantly, your votes.

If either Dr. Stein or I receive just 2% of the vote, the Green Party will gain ballot access in Texas for the next ten years. But we’re not just aiming for 2%; we’re playing to win. If we can convince 28% of Texas voters, we may very well flip Texas.

2:01:50 Closing Remarks by Dr. Butch Ware

Butch Ware: That’s right, Eddie. I haven’t discussed the electoral campaign much until now, but Malcolm X built the Organization for Afro-American Unity to express the political aims of his movement. I see my opportunity within the Green Party to reflect our values as Muslims and as stewards of the environment and human rights.

This is your chance to shape history, not just be subject to it. The Muslim community is being offered a position of ethical and political leadership within the third-largest political party in the U.S. Reflect on that!

This opportunity is unprecedented, especially with Dr. Jill Stein running for president again at 74. She won’t be running in 2028, so who do you think will lead the Green Party ticket then? You’re looking at him.

You have the chance to help elect the first Muslim president of the United States—if you support me as the first Muslim Vice President. This can be achieved with about 34% of the popular vote. If we go from polling at 1.5% to 5%, we could reach 15% quickly.

The American people are not fools. They can recognize quality, morality, and goodness. So let’s get organized and make some noise. Your time and volunteer efforts are crucial. By registering with the Green Party, you’ll help us gain visibility, and the more noise we make, the more our numbers will grow.

Thank you to our hosts, the Nuun Collective. I can’t take questions now as I must move on, but I appreciate your attention. Thank you!

Disclaimer: Material published by Nuun Collective is meant to foster inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published media do not necessarily represent the views of Nuun Collective or any member thereof.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Note: This transcript has been slightly edited for readability.

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