Ali Ataie – Terrorism, Islamophobia & ISIS
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
I don't really consider it Islamophobia.
Islamophobia means to fear Islam. So these people
who run this industry are not really afraid
of Islam. Certainly, there are people that are
afraid of Muslims and that's unfortunate. These are
people that we should reach out to
and people that we should educate.
But this industry known as the the Islamophobia
industry is really an industry that is fueled
by anti Muslim,
bigotry.
So if anti Muslim bigots
with financial
incentives define our terminology,
and this is very very important that we
define our own terminology.
Terms like Jihad
and Sharia
and even like Taskean or Tasowulf,
which they're,
defining as this kind of antinomian,
Sharia rejecting,
tradition within our religion. If we let these
people with financial incentives define our terminology,
then they will control the discourse.
And whoever controls the discourse will tell our
narrative.
And whoever tells our narrative will educate the
masses
or miseducate the masses. There are Muslims in
America
that become atheists all the time. And these
are people whose ancestors
were Aaliyah. They were Irma. They were Mashayas.
And in one generation,
Islam is gone.
They've apostated. They've become atheists. They've left their
religion
altogether. So one point of miseducation I want
to begin with
is this idea,
this theory that Muslims are violent people. So
there's a good book by a political science,
professor at UC Berkeley named N. Stephen Fish,
f I s h like the fish that
swims. He has a book called Are Muslims
Distinctive?
A look at the evidence using reliable data
set, sound scientific methods
and objective,
objective frameworks of analysis as one Princeton
professor put it. So Professor Fish found that
most Muslims in America
sorry, most Muslims and Muslim majority countries
are not inclined to favor the fusion of
religious and political authority
or even remotely prone to mass political violence.
He finds that while gender inequality
is severe
and a lot of that is culturally based,
murder rates and class based inequities
are far less
severe among Muslims than non Muslims. I want
you to look at this. Now according to
the FBI
according to the FBI, according to the Department
of Justice
and I realize people in this Masjid are
probably not taking notes, but you can watch
this for later and write down these numbers.
From 1980
to
2,005,
94%
of terrorist acts committed in America
were carried out by non Muslim elements.
From 1980 to 2005,
according to the Department of Justice,
according to the FBI,
94%
of terrorist acts carried out in the US
were done by non Muslims.
More acts of terror were done by Jewish
elements.
More acts of terror were done by white
supremacists,
Christian elements,
Jewish Defense League, the order, the Aryan Nation,
the Ku Klux Klan, the Army of God,
the Houtharis. We never even heard of these
these people.
A question I get a lot, because I
talk to a lot of non Muslim audiences,
is why don't you Muslim scholars denounce ISIS
more?
A question I get all the time. So
one of my colleagues had an interesting,
way to deal with this. And I tried
this, I was speaking with a group of
about 400 people, 90% of which were probably
non Muslim. So I said to them, have
you ever Googled
Muslim scholars denounced ISIS?
Have you ever Googled it
and nobody raised their hand?
Why haven't you Googled it? You expect it
to come to you? Have you heard of
the open letter to Baghdadi?
Have you heard of this? No one raised
their hand. A 120
signatories.
And these are just not, you know, Joe
Shmo, Joe Abdul or something.
These are ulama that have swear over the
hearts and minds of tens of millions of
people signing this document.
700 ulama and tulab ul Irmin in India
alone
Find a document denouncing ISIS. 700,000
in India alone.
So don't expect MSM,
mainstream media, to give you the truth. You
have to search for it. The reality is
information is selected for us.
We're not getting the whole picture. We're not
even getting
half the picture.
Every year, Google has to,
submit something called the annual transparency report.
This is when the government orders Google to
take things off of YouTube and search engine
results. The number one reason why is hate
speech.
Hate speech. Right? And of course, hate speech
in a country that espouses freedom of speech
is totally subjective.
What's interesting is Voltaire said, if you want
to know who controls you, determine whom you're
not allowed to criticize.
So hate speech is the number one reason.
The second reason is,
copyright infringements.
The third reason is criticism
of the government. This is the third reason
why
the government orders Google to remove things from
YouTube results
and from search engine results.
I'll give you a simple example.
We all know the first African American professional
baseball player.
Jackie Robinson, number 42. His number is retired
from every team in the league. No one
can wear number 42. Who's the first African
American NFL player?
Who knows?
Was he any less of a pioneer?
Did he,
suffer any less racism?
Why don't we know about him? Because he
just wasn't that good.
Right? But he's not less of a pioneer.
So I talked to a lot of non
Muslims as I said. And a non Muslim
woman one time stood up and I I
hate to name drop but I think it's
important and sometimes I'm a professor
so we have to have,
honest dialogue.
A woman stood up and she said, tell
me about Johar Zunayev.
I said, who? And she said, Johar Zunayev.
I said, who is that? She said, don't
you know? Of course I do. 1 of
the alleged Boston bombers. And I asked, she's
an old lady, old caucasian lady in her
seventies or something. So how do you memorize
that name? It's a difficult name to memorize.
She said, I don't know. I just hear
it all the time.
Exactly.
You hear it all the time. I said
to you, have you heard of Eric Rudolph,
Brian Stone Junior? Wade Michael Page?
Anders Breivik? Have you heard of these names?
Never heard of them. Why not?
Check this
out. Wrap your minds around this one. Since
1970,
there have been a 140,000
terror attacks
worldwide
according to the Department of Justice. A 140,000.
If all of these were committed by Muslims,
which is nowhere near the reality, this hypothetical.
If all of them were committed by Muslims,
that's
0.00009%
of the Muslim Ummah.
And people wanna say Islam is violent?
Muslims advocate violence?
This is a terrible, terrible non sequencer argument.
You'll be laughed out of any logic class.
If your conclusion is therefore Islam is inherently
violent or Muslims are violent,
when 0.0009
percent of the Muslim Ummah has committed terror
attack. That's if Muslims have done all of
the terror attacks which is nowhere near the
reality.
In 1925,
60,000
hooded Klansmen
marched on Washington DC. Did you know that?
In 1925,
60,000 hooded Klansmen.
According to PBS,
the national membership of the Ku Klux Klan
in the 19 twenties was between 38,000,000.
According to Pew Research, the number of Muslims
in America right now is about 3,300,000.
That means there was a time in America,
in 19 twenties, there was potentially double the
number of Klansmen
than there are Muslims in America right now.
Double the number.
Possibly triple the number.
Yet, I would never characterize what Christianity
is a violent, you know, racist religion.
There's a 1000000000 and a half Christians. It's
a terrible argument.
Why do people make these arguments? It's mind
boggling to me.
Sometimes we have to
take people by the hand and lead them
a little bit. People don't know the difference
between
Muslim and Islam, believe it or not.
People try to convince me that my religion
is violent. I ask them what's the difference
between Muslim and Islam.
I don't I don't is Islam the country?
Are are you Islam?
That's why I get, are you Islam? Oh,
that's pretty deep question. It's a deep existential
question. Am I Islam? I don't know.
So we have to make things simple for
people. Islam is the active participle. Islam is
a
is to Islam as Christian is to Christianity.
Let's start there. You have a senator, Santoram,
who gives us 2 hour speech on the
dangers of Sharia law. It's a dangerous thing.
Sharia law, 2 hours.
A Muslim 20 years old asked it after
his speech.
Excuse me, senator. What are the 5 Maqasid
al Sharia?
What are the 5 aims of the Sharia?
Sharia 101.
What? That's like me giving this,
impassioned,
critical analysis
of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. When breaking down
the Latin, it's always wrong here and he's
really he's discerning this over here. And then
a Christian asked me, what are the 4
gospels?
And I say, John, Paul,
Ringo,
George, French.
No.
People don't know the difference.
ISIS is to Islam. It's the KKK is
to Christianity.
Use that one. That's a good one.
Terrorism is to jihad. This is from Abdul
Hakimullah.
Terrorism is to jihad
as adultery is to marriage.
To the untrained eye, to the uninitiated, they
look the same, but they're very very different.
Did you know you're more likely to be
struck by lightning
than to be shot by a Muslim terrorist
in America?
Did you know you're more likely to slip
in the bathtub
and kill yourself
than be than to be shot by a
Muslim in America?
Did you know you're more likely to get
shot and killed by a toddler?
Every so often, a toddler,
a little child, finds his parents gun and
shoots and kills someone. You're more likely to
be shot by a toddler
than by a Muslim terrorist
in America.
And in Europe, over the past 5 years,
2% of terrorist acts in Europe are done
by Muslims. People haven't heard Anders Breivik, the
so called neo crusader
who killed 77 people in the name of
Christ.
Obviously, that isn't Christianity.
But it's so easy in our minds to
differentiate the 2. But we've been indoctrinated.
We've been brainwashed in thinking that terrorism and
Islam are one and the same thing.
Another point of miseducation
is that Muslims worship a different god. Right?
You hear this from the likes of Wadi
Shabbat who describes himself as a former Muslim
terrorist.
Right?
These con men who perpetuate this idea.
Arag was the Babylonian moon god. And then
he has this ridiculous
theory that I've already debunked.
Look at my talk online. Is is God
Allah
totally debunked
of the sign of the beast, the mark
of the beast, the book of Revelation? You
sit there and laugh for 10 minutes, but
then you look at the number of hits,
500,000
hits,
600,000
hits, 1,000,000 hits.
People listening to this guy, because he speaks
Arabic. He must know what he's talking about.
Every time picking Abdul who's Arab, speaks Arabic.
Well, obviously, he knows what he's talking about.
Another logical fallacy, an appeal to unqualified
authority.
People don't study logic.
In early Christianity, there was a movement called
Marcionism
where some Christians said the Jews worship a
different God. We worship the real God.
Now the paradigm has shifted. You know the
the alifman and the word Allah? There's an
opinion. It's a definite article. Alida
became Allah. That's not the dominant opinion according
to Edward Lane in his beautiful lexicon.
He says the Alif Lam and the word
Allah is cognate to the
in the Hebrew.
Elam, elohim, elohim. These are cognates. That's how
you say God in Hebrew. That's what that's
what it says in the bible.
In the Arabic
translation of the bible done by Christians, Genesis
1:1.
In the beginning, Allah
created the heavens and the earth. Isa alaihis
salam, he spoke Syria. This is a, Semitic
language according to a Christian text.
A Christian text called the kashita.
Jesus says in Mark
115,
The hour has come. The kingdom of God,
Malakruzah dah Allah,
is at hand. This is how Isa alaihi
salaam said God. Not only did Isa alaihi
salaam call God Allah,
there is no theological difference between the teachings
of Isa alaihi salam and the prophet
The nearest person
the nearest person that Isa alaihis salam is
me, the prophet salallahu alaihi was saying. In
the dunya and in the akhira.
And there's no prophet between us.
Isa alaihi salam according to Christian sources,
he described Allah as echad.
This is probably the only time you're gonna
hear some Hebrew and the Muslim.
This is what he says according to Christian
sources. God is ikhad. God is ikhad.
If you ask a Christian at random I'm
not picking on Christians.
Right? I'm not trying to disrespect the religion.
But ask a Christian at random.
How do I get to heaven?
If there are Trinitarian orthodox which are the
majority that say, oh, Jesus is God and
he died for your sins. Not he sacrificed
himself to make an example. When he died,
he took on your sin, his vicarious atonement.
Isa alaihis salam according to Christian source, Matthew
chapter 9 is is quoting the Old Testament,
is quoting the Hebrew Bible because Allah tells
us
Torah. That Isa alaihis salam said, I confirm
the theology of the Torah. In Matthew 9,
he says,
I require mercy
and not sacrifice.
And the knowledge of God
over burnt offerings.
It's about rahma, krisin,
Mahaba,
rahma, and da'atilohim.
Mari fatullah, knowledge of God. Not burnt offerings
and sacrifices. This is what he says according
to Christian text.
Another point of mis education
that there's no love in Islam.
You hear this a lot. You have this
circle of former Muslims
going on satellite television
from, you know, Muslim countries.
I can pick on
the Persians, Iranians. I'm Persian. We prefer Persian
over Iranian, by the way. It sounds more
friendly.
And, you know, this guy goes on TV
and I challenged him to a debate.
And I said, what's your beef? And he
said he says, Ali John,
Islam
Islam. Islam who should let us. I said,
really? So there's no love in Islam.
Islam is just violence.
Ask this guy,
this former Muslim,
what are the 6
what are the 6 articles of faith?
Allah, he couldn't name them.
He didn't know what they were.
SubhanAllah.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us in the
Quran.
Quran.
He said,
sorry. Means
I did not create jinn and humankind
except to worship me. Really means except to
know me to have ma'rifah. And then he
says, and if you knew Allah, you would
love Allah. So the entire affair is about
love.
The whole point of creation is love. There's
no doubt in Islam. You have these challenges
on social media. There'll be one verse in
the Quran that says God is loving and
people can't do it. What are you talking
about? Where are we? Waful Mafur Uwadud.
Waful Mafur Uwadud.
He is all forgiving. He is loving.
The prophet is salallahu alayhi wasalam is the
prophet of love. This is his station in
this hadith and turubideen.
And the Sahaba were sitting and discussing the
various ma'amat of the prophets.
And they said, Adam alaihi salaam is chosen
by God. And Nour alayhi salam, he's chosen
by God. And,
Ibrahim alayhi salam is kaleemullah.
Musa alayhi salam is
And what you're saying is true.
Indeed, I am the beloved of God
and I do not boast.
This is who he is, salamullah alayhi wasalam.
When we say, What
does it mean? Do we know? We just
say it? Something my father says all the
time. I don't know.
In the name of God, the in the
indiscriminately
compassionate.
The intimately loving. The indiscriminately
compassionate.
The intimately loving. When the woman lost her
son and the Sahaba spread out to look
for her son.
And they found her son and gave her
gave him back to her. He crawled away
and she started to hug and kiss and
breastfeed her child. The prophet said, can you
imagine this woman taking her son and throwing
him in a fire?
He said, did you know? Did you know
Allah is more compassionate and merciful?
Allah has more compassionate towards his servants than
this woman is to her son right now.
There's no love for this tradition.
When the Bediwan came into the masjid, the
prophet was on the minbar and he was
giving the Khutba and the Bediwan came in
and he said,
And the prophet Mohsen, sit down. Don't talk
to him, Khutba, sit down.
And then after the footba, the prophet salallahu
alayhi salallam, then he said, mani sa'il. Who
is the one who was questioning you earlier?
He said, Ada, You Rasulullah. Was your question?
What is the arrow?
What did you prepare for it?
The Sahaba said, we were so
annoyed at this Badawan
Interrupting Mokhikha.
What?
Annoyed.
And then the prophet said what did you
prepare for the hour? And he said, la
shayhi. Nothing much. Nothing with respect to a
lot of prayers and fasting. I just do
the minimum. I just do the minimum.
But I love
Allah and His Messenger.
Now the suhama are listening
very intently.
Allah rasoolullah
alma'u
maaman aham.
A person will be with the one whom
he love. And as Abu Malik said, we
were so annoyed at the better one, but
we had never been happier that he had
come and asked this question.
We had never been happier than when we
heard those words from the prophet salallahu alaihi
wasalam.
How do we increase our love for the
prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam?
Benediction upon him.
How do we increase our love for Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Zikrullah.
I'll give you a case study in love.
The transformative
power of the love of Allah and the
love of Rasool.
Sayyidina Umar wanted to kill the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam. This is the most evil intention
in the history of humanity. When he was
struck, Sayyidina Umar was murdered standing in the
mihrab of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
in the masjid. His feet were touching where
the place of the prophet's feet used to
touch.
He was stabbed under his belly button 6
times.
I'm sorry to say by a Persian, Abu
Lu Du'a.
And saying that Omar, he falls down. He
grabs Abdul Ahmad ibn out from the front
row and pulls him up, says lead the
prayer.
Some of the Sahaba broke ranks. They threw
a shawl over this man and Abu Luqa
takes his own life under the shawl.
And saying, Omar says, was he Muslim?
They say, no. He said, alhamdulillah.
And
they give him some milk and it comes
out of his stomach. They can see the
milk flowing down his clothes. They know he's
going to die. He knows he's going to
die. And he said, what do you want
us to do?
Just go to my mother Aisha. This is
what he's thinking about. This is what he's
thinking about. Go to my mother
Aisha and ask her. Not, you know, my
son, my daughter, my son. No. No. Go
to my mother Aisha and ask her. Can
I have that spot? The greatest real estate
in the universe
next to my Habib, salamu alayhi wasalam. Can
I have that spot?
So Abdullah bin Omar goes to Aisha and
says my says Amir Mopini, Omar is asking
for your spot in the Raudah. And she
says yes.
And she goes back to her mom and
he says,
There's nothing more important to me in this
world than that.
And then Sayid Omar tells his son, Abdullah
ibn Abbas.
He says to
him, when I pass away,
go back and ask her again. Maybe she
said yes out of deference for me. And
don't say Amir al U'min. Say my father
Omar.
My father Omar. So the sinner Omar passes
away and Abdullah ibn Omar, he goes back
to mother Aisha and says my father Umar
is asking for that space. She said, I
already said yes.
I already said yes.
It's a testimony of love.
Another point of
another important point.
We have our young people going to colleges
and universities
without a broad grounding of Islamic tradition.
You know, if you do a PhD program,
you have to submit something called statement of
broad grounding, which is basically bragging about yourself
for 4 or 5 pages about why you're
qualified to even write a PhD.
We have to have broad grounding. This is
important. We need to have our own academic
institutions.
And we have to have the courage to
send our children there.
Many of our children come out of the
university system more unintelligent
than when they went in. More unintelligent.
They used their common sense. They went in
believing in a benevolent creator
who loves and sustains his creation. And they
came out believing that we're on some planet,
on some backwater solar system, on some random
galaxy that's spinning out of control in some
endless universe that's gonna collide with the Andromeda
Galaxy.
Nothing special about us. There's a trillion universes.
There's probably a trillion Earths in the world.
What's special about you? Oh,
so
is not true then? Because the scientists told
me there's nothing special about us.
I know about the universe now.
It created itself
by causing itself to explode for no apparent
reason.
It's philosophical
materialism.
Systematically
removes the divine.
This postmodern
nihilistic critical theory that people study now in
the university.
Right? That there's no objective
morality.
Everything's subjective. There's no objective truth.
They quote these philosophers
and Derrida and Foucault is total garbage.
This is where your 50 k is going,
intuition.
They go into the university
knowing that there's 2 genders.
This is common sense.
X x and x y.
They come out of the university. I think
gender is a social construct.
There's no biological
gender. There's only,
biological *. And it depends on your feelings.
Right? And good term for the gender fluidity,
gender non binary. I can wake up tomorrow
and decide I feel like a woman.
That's why I'm a woman. So I expect
you to call me a woman. That's what
mental illness.
If you're a man, you're not a woman
because you feel like a woman.
There are people who say I feel like
a rhinoceros.
I'm not joking.
Look at the logical conclusion of this. It's
called transpecies.
I'm not joking.
Transpecies.
There are people who say I'm a rhinoceros.
Don't call me he and his. Call me
re and rez.
These are my pronouns.
This is totally serious.
This is what's happening.
Their parents are asking their children, 10 year
old children, what gender do you want to
be?
And the boy says, a girl. Then they
mutilate the child.
Suicide rate in the transgender community is a
steady 40%.
Because people keep reinforcing
mental illness and delusion.
They don't give them help. Somebody comes up
to you and says, I'm a rhinoceros. You
shape them. What are you talking about?
You're a human being.
You're doing them a disservice.
Imagine there would be a woman. A woman
could never be a man. We're physically different.
We think differently. Men and women think differently.
This This is completely indirect science apparently.
Our rods and cones interact with light differently.
That's how different we are. Doesn't mean that
we're unequal,
but we're different.
Somebody can transition into a woman who's a
man, every cell in his body has a
white chromosome.
They go into these universities
knowing that homosexuality
is a sin
and unnatural
and harmful.
I met this master's degree student in Muslim
and psychology
who said to me, I'm having issues with
my iman. My iman is damaged. I said,
why? She said, because gay people are so
nice.
That's the reason why? This is your this
is your argument? So we should sanction his
lust? What about a heterosexual male who wants
to sleep around with a 1,000 women?
Let them do it. Forget about the commandments
of Allah. You know what? He's a nice
guy.
This is your argument?
Interesting. Do we ignore Allah to sanction our
lusts?
Or do we strive against our lusts to
uphold the last commandments? Who takes priority?
And going to the university,
knowing that the human being is Khalifa Tawbah.
The human being is the piceroy of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And then they come out believing after this
random big bang,
right, that inanimate objects,
inanimate matter
like, wood
and gas
from living cells that happens all the time.
Right? From living cells,
and that eventually, there was this goo in
the ocean.
And this goo became a fish.
And then this fish eventually crawled out onto
the beach. Don't Don't you hate it when
you're sitting on the beach and a shark
comes out and spontaneously
turns its fins into lungs? Don't you hate
when that happens?
What are you talking about?
What?
And then this became a small woodland creature
and then became a monkey and then a
bigger monkey and then it became a human
being. This is what people are taught. Right?
It became us. If that's true, there should
be millions, trillions of mutations and transitional form
skeletons in the Earth. Where are they?
Darwin said, we dig up the Earth and
find them. We didn't find anything. We've barely
found a dinosaur.
Where are they?
We should have trillions of transitional form skeletons.
They have a 2 or 3, you know,
built down man, which is a hoax. And
Lucy,
probably extinct apes or ape bones mixed with
human bones. If 2 things, here here they
are. Here's the here's the missing link. There
should be trillions of that. Say 98% of
our DNA is the same as a chimpanzee.
Don't you know that? Did you know a
did you know that a watermelon
and a jellyfish are 98% the same? Let's
eat some jellyfish.
There's 2% that's different. That's not even true,
by the way. We're entertaining what they're saying.
There's 2% difference. But in this 2%, there's
something called the.
Right? I'd like to say a group of
chimpanzees
do some engineering and build a skyscraper. Do
some spherical trigonometry.
This is our differentia.
God created Adam in his form. What is
the form of Allah? It's majaz. It doesn't
mean Allah
Just as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has any
mudlaq, absolute knowledge that is perfect, we also
have knowledge that is contingent,
derived from him but limited. We have the
ability to reason.
This is why the
khalifa
of you of of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is the human being.
But they wanna tell us we're just animals.
This is why people start stop coming to
the masjid. This is why the youth don't
come to the mosque. They're harboring these things.
They don't tell you. They tell me. I'm
in academia.
You have people over there criticizing
circumcision. Oh, this is brutal.
Child abuse, circumcision.
They're advocating abortion.
The killing of children. Most of them are
girls by the way.
There used to be laws in countries where
you can only have 1 child. So you
have a girl abort, girl abort, girl abort.
When the little girl buried alive is going
to ask why was she killed?
You have people who criticize the killing of
animals. They protest. There was a gorilla shot
at the Cincinnati Zoo.
Right? And there was protests Harambe. His name
was Harambe, by the way. Harambe. Long lived
Harambe. People protest walking in the streets of
Cincinnati.
Right? Just, animal rights cruelty.
There was a human child he had in
his hand. He was shaking around. He killed
a child anytime.
What are you talking about? During that week,
bombs were dropped on Syrians.
Who cares? Right? No protests. Civilians, men, women
and children.
Not priority. We're just animals.
There are people who go into the university
believing that ultimate justice is
And they come out these radicalized
neo Marxist
who want to establish their utopia
by any means necessary even to the detriment
of their own values and beliefs.
Even if it means smandering and insulting
because you disagree with them.
Whoever shows enmity towards my friend, my Walid,
take take notice of
war from me.
People who attack the ulama because of a
difference of opinion, you put yourself in danger
of Surah Al Khattimah, of a bad ending.
This is Mujannah. This is tested and tried
over time. People who attacked the prophet salallahu
alaihi wasalam. The mustaaziyoon.
The those who abused the prophet and made
fun of them. Not a single one of
them became Muslim.
Beat your shira.
Not a single one of them. It's very
dangerous.
But this is what's being taught to these
a lot of these kids, our children, and
we're paying for it. May Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala
give us a tawfiq to build our own
institutions.
They give us the courage not to fear
loss of wealth,
not to fear not to love the gunia
so much that we don't have the courage
to send our children to these institutions.