Ali Ataie – Muslims In America The Struggle To Keep The Faith Alive
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses various humorous and hilarious moments in television, including the use of "interest" in media to justify labeling Islam as a "monster" or "monster" and the confusion surrounding " (Diana)" in French. They also discuss the use of " (Diana)" in French and the importance of achieving priorities and working on their communities. The speaker emphasizes the importance of achieving their priorities and working on their communities, while also highlighting the need for support and choice in wearing what one wants.
AI: Summary ©
I'd like to begin by telling you a
true story.
A story that demonstrates and epitomizes the massive
amount of work we have to do as
Muslims living in America, or American Muslims, Muslim
Americans, however you want to call yourself.
A story that demonstrates, oftentimes, there is an
inverse relationship between information and knowledge.
Because you would think if there's a lot
of information, or someone has a lot of
information, they'd be very knowledgeable.
So you can go on the internet today
and you can find a lot of information
about Islam that will keep you busy until
you're 90 years old.
But yet, the ignorance of the ignoramuses has
yet ceased to amaze me.
People are still getting stupider.
Why are people getting stupider when there's so
much information?
Why is this inverse relationship present?
Because, as Qadi Abu Bakr al-Nu'arabi
said, that the secret of this ummah, the
secret of this Islamic nation, is the sanad,
is the transmission.
Transmission from a qualified source.
Information is converted into knowledge only when the
source of the information is authoritative.
It's common sense.
I gave this example last night at the
church, and I'll give it again.
Do you guys know who Elmo is?
Elmo, he's on Sesame Street.
Yes, the kids know.
If Elmo told you that drinking Diet Coke,
for example, gives you osteoporosis, you may be
inclined not to believe Elmo.
You say, Elmo's a puppet, and his best
friend is Cookie Monster, and Cookie Monster's an
addict.
So I'm not going to believe Elmo.
But if someone like Dr. Oz, for example,
whose first name is Muhammad, by the way,
Shaykh Abu Bakr, he told us, his first
name is Mehmed, which is an apocryphated form
of Muhammad, but you never hear about his
first name.
There's always Oprah, or Geraldo, first names, or
Dr. Phil.
Even Donahue, you know his first name is
Phil.
But you never hear the first name of
Dr. Oz.
Anyway, if Dr. Oz told you that drinking
Diet Coke would lead to osteoporosis, you might
say, you know what?
He's a doctor, and he knows what he's
talking about.
Because the source is authoritative.
So the problem, however, is today we have
a bunch of Elmos wearing Dr. Oz costumes
and talking about our religion, like they know
what they're talking about.
But you have like Daniel Elmo Pops, or
Steve Gonzo Emerson, or Ayaan Hirsi, whatever, George
Jetson, something or other.
This is a major problem.
So the story I want to tell you,
getting to the story now, is I was
at a church one time.
I do a lot of, like we've heard,
I do a lot of interfaith work.
And I was at a church, and there
was a pastor who apparently was a former
Muslim, and he was giving a sermon called,
Why I Am Not a Muslim.
This was the name of his sermon.
And it's interesting, do you guys know who
Ergun Kainer is?
We just need to stay on top of
current events.
Ergun Kainer was a man who was the
dean of Liberty University.
Liberty University is the most so-called prestigious
university, evangelical Christian university in America.
He was the dean.
He was recently fired, terminated from his position,
because they had found out, Liberty had found
out, that he had lied on his application,
and that he was never a Muslim at
all.
At least the moral of the story for
Ergun Kainer is, he never conned a con
man.
Nonetheless, so I went to this church sermon
called, Why I Am Not a Muslim.
And the first thing they did was they
showed this video.
And the first shot was a black and
white shot of the Twin Towers on fire.
There's this really dramatic music, and then there's
this voiceover, right, that said, they're amongst us.
You know like the movie guy, the movie
voiceover guy?
It was like similar to that.
And I was thinking, who's amongst us?
Oh!
And then they showed, they suddenly cut to
this woman in a hijab, buying groceries at
a supermarket.
And it said, they live in our neighborhoods.
And then they cut to another shot of
a little girl with a hijab walking across
the street, past a crossing guard with a
little backpack.
They go to our schools.
And then it said, they work in our
cities.
And it showed a man, a Sikh, driving
a cab with a turban on.
And I was thinking, you know, the turban
is obviously sunnah of our messengers.
But if people don't know the difference between
a Sikh and a Muslim, they probably should
not be making informational videos about Islam.
But I looked around the crowd to see
if, you know, they thought I was as
funny as I thought I was funny.
But people were absolutely riveted by this video.
They just, oh my goodness, I can't believe
it.
And then, of course, you know, they kind
of look at me, you know, because I
was sitting in the back.
You know, but that's show business.
There's no business like it.
No business, I know.
So these are truly interesting times that we're
living in.
You know, the Chinese, they have this blessing.
Some say it's a curse.
They say, may you live in interesting times.
We live in times where freedom of expression
is used to justify the denigration of the
holiest of Islamic sanctities, like International Book Burning
Day, whatever, or International Cartoon Drawing Day.
But when Muslims want to exercise that very
same freedom and build a mosque for the
love of God, it's a mosque, it's a
house of worship in New York City.
It's called inappropriate, unacceptable, offensive, right?
That's like telling us, you can sit on
the bus, but you have to go to
the back.
If that mosque is not built, then we
are no longer American.
This isn't America anymore.
If that mosque isn't built, the very founding
principles of America are compromised.
We live in interesting times where people who
actually think and use their brains and point
out the massive inconsistencies, contradictions, and inconceivabilities in
the so-called official version of events are
called crazy conspiracy nuts.
Yet, it is these same people who are
doing the name-calling who believe wholeheartedly that
the Muslim conspiracy was successfully pulled off to
control the White House.
One in five Americans believe that the President
of the United States is a secret Muslim.
He's a Muslim on the DL, right?
He has other connotations which we won't go
into.
He's practicing taqiyya.
He's a secret Muslim.
Most of these people who believe this are
part of a party that likes to drink
a lot of chai.
They catch my drift.
They give chai a bad name.
Maybe they should be refugiated.
If that's even a word.
These are interesting times where people who don't
even know a shred about Islam are teaching
Muslims about Islam.
According to their caprice, and defining our own
terminology.
And as we know, whoever defines the terminology
will control the discourse.
So what they want to do is they
want to conflate the word terrorist with Muslim.
The goal is to make them interchangeable.
To make them synonymous.
But the truth of the matter is that
no two words are more diametrically opposed than
these two words.
Muslim obviously comes from the word Salaam, which
means peace.
And peace and terror are, to put it
grammatically, absolute antonyms, opposites.
Terrorist is to Muslim as black is to
white, or as up is to down.
But you have these jokers going on TV
who are saying these unbelievable things.
And again, I don't know whether to laugh
or cry.
You know, they have this Eid stamp.
Remember the Eid stamp?
It said E-I-D in English.
And then it said it in Arabic calligraphy.
There's this guy on TV who said, if
you read it backwards, because Muslims read right
to left, it says die.
It's hilarious, isn't it?
So I'm sitting there waiting.
Is this a comedy act or what's going
on here?
I was in a Starbucks the other day
when I was suddenly accosted by someone.
And they were saying these types of things.
Muslims are violent, blah, blah, blah.
So I said, you know, a lot of
your information actually comes from these sources that
make up these things like the Eid stamp,
right?
And I wrote it out for him and
he saw it and he's like, oh my
goodness, that's true.
Wow.
And I said, you know, if you put
Mubarak there, Eid Mubarak, it says kaboom, die.
And then he found out that I was
joking.
So that's what they want to do.
They want to conflate these terms, terrorist and
Muslim.
I remember when this person, he was an
Asian student at VTech.
He killed like 30 people there.
You guys remember this a few years ago?
Nobody even talks about it anymore.
The VTech, right?
I was there that day.
I went to CNN.com and I read
one of the first reports that came out.
And they gave a perfect physical description of
him.
Right down to the color of this and
that.
And at the very end, it said there's
no indication that he was a terrorist.
There was no indication that he was a
terrorist.
So I thought to myself, what's a terrorist
then?
Because if I'm chilling in my French class,
and a guy rolls up and puts his
9mm in my face, I'm going to be
terrified.
Won't you be terrified?
Doesn't that invoke terror?
You see, the point is that he wasn't
Muslim or didn't look Muslim.
He didn't look the part, so he's obviously
not a terrorist.
This type of thing.
So they are trying to define our terminology.
Now I asked one of my professors, why
wasn't he not a terrorist?
And he said, well, he didn't have a
religious motive.
There was no religious motive.
And then I read his manifesto.
I don't know if people have read his
manifesto.
It was a long manifesto.
But at the very end of the manifesto,
he said, quote, I die like Jesus Christ.
But I guess he's not a terrorist.
These are interesting times in which countries like
France have demonstrated that they are against Islam
mandating a dress code for women.
How do they demonstrate that?
By mandating a dress code for women.
I don't know if you guys saw this
2020 special on ABC.
They were talking about Islam or something, Islam
in America.
They interviewed this man from the French Parliament.
And they said to him, aren't you doing
the very same thing that you're condemning?
You're saying it's against the law to wear
the hijab in France in protest for Muslims.
It's a very bad opinion of women to
believe that every woman in France is being
forced by some overlord husband or brother or
someone to wear the hijab.
This has a bad opinion of women in
general to think for themselves.
They have to be told what to do.
If it's really about freedom, why don't we
just give them the choice and let them
wear what they want to wear.
It's about freedom and liberty.
But it's not about freedom.
Freedom is a pretense.
It's all about control.
So in conclusion, I'd like all of us
to ask ourselves, what are we doing to
better ourselves and others?
What kind of a world are we leaving
for our children?
What are we doing to better ourselves?
And go back to the basics.
We have to go back to basics.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the
Quran that if your children, your parents, your
spouses, your houses, your wealth, anything is more
dear to you.
حَبَّ إِلَيْكُمْ مِنَ اللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ وَجِهَادِكْ فِي سَبِيلِهِ
فَتَرَبَّسُوا حَتَّى يَدْيَرَهُ بِأَمْرِهِ If any of these
things, any of these material, ephemeral, temporal things
are more dear to you then you should
stop struggling in this path and just wait
about, wait until Allah brings about this decision.
So certain verses in the Quran, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala will make a وَعَد, He'll
make a promise.
And Allah never breaks His promise.
وَعَدَ اللَّهِ حَقِّ He never breaks His promise.
And there are certain verses in the Quran
where Allah will make a threat, a وَعِيد,
وَعَد وَعِيد وَوَعِيد When Allah makes a threat,
you should take it seriously.
If someone calls your house Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is making a وَعِيد, we should
take it seriously.
We have to ask ourselves, where do we
stand?
Do we love Allah and His Messenger more
than anything?
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says النَبِيُ أَوْلَادِ
الْمُؤْمِنِينَ مِنَ نَفُسِهِمْ The believers prefer the life
of the Prophet over their own lives.
So we have to ask ourselves, where do
we stand?
When a companion, Khubey, was taken to this
place called Qad'im on the cross, they
said to him, don't you wish Muhammad was
in your place and you were at home
safe?
And he said, I don't wish that a
thorn pricked the finger of the Messenger of
God.
And Abu Sufyan ibn Al-Hak was there
at the time he was a Muslim.
And he said, مَا رَأَيْتُ أَحَدًا يُحِبُ أَحَدًا
كَفُرُكِ أَسْحَابِ مُحَمَّدٍ مُحَمَّدًا I have never seen
anyone love anyone like the companions of Muhammad
love Muhammad.
So we're going through the cause of many
of these issues, the cause of many of
these things I mentioned earlier about our interesting
times.
It's all our fault.
It's all our fault when I'm presenting the
message.
We don't get our priorities straight.
This is what happens.
The Prophet ﷺ said, none of you truly
believe, no, I am more beloved to him
than his father, his son, and all of
mankind, and all of mankind.
So this is what we have to work
on, institute the sunnah of the messengers of
Allah ﷺ.
It's extremely important within our own household.
How was the Prophet ﷺ?
How did he treat his wife?
How did he treat his children?
How did he treat his neighbor?
These things start at the local level, and
then we move to the community, and then
we move to the country.
There's a reason why we're in this state
that we're in, why there's such heightened Islamophobia.
There's many examples like this.
But first and foremost, we should start with
ourselves, and inshallah ta'ala, when we implement
the sunnah, the sunnah is a shining light.
People are attracted to it.
It never goes in and out of, it's
never unfashionable.
Sometimes people used to wear, when I was
in elementary school, they used to wear their
clothes backwards.
That was the fad at the time.
Or you have some kind of hairdo or
something like that, or some kind of shoe.
The sunnah is always infashionable.
People recognize it.
People are drawn to it, like a normal
human being.
He's the best of creation.
So implement the sunnah, inshallah ta'ala, and
support these causes.
And I'm sorry for going over my time.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala bless all
of you.
Salam alaykum.