Ammar Alshukry – The Ingredients of a Muslim Identity
AI: Summary ©
The importance of learning one's worldview and history to become a part of one's identity is emphasized, along with the need for a shared memory and history. Personal history is also discussed as a source of courage and being a part of the community. Growth in confidence and language learning is also emphasized, along with the importance of showingcase one's character through showcasing one's character through language and language learning. Overall, the need for community and language learning is emphasized as a way to access one's history.AI: Transcript ©
Our topic is the topic of
identity.
And one of the greatest fathers who ever
lived, Allah
tells his story in the Quran.
Allah
says,
When Yahuw was dying and Yahuw had taken
his children
from a a a from Palestine or Canaan,
the land of Canaan, and he had brought
them to a non Muslim land, Egypt.
And he had the concern
that every righteous parent has over their children.
What are you gonna worship after me?
Are you going to be Muslim
or are you not?
And so they said,
we are going to worship your father. We're
going to worship your god rather. We're going
to worship your god and the god of
your fathers, Ibrahim and Ismael.
So the question becomes
So the question then becomes,
how do you cultivate
this Islamic identity?
And I'm gonna share with you 5
things in this talk. The first and the
most important
is your theology, your worldview.
Where do you get your sense of morality
from? How do you know
when something is right? And how do you
know when something is wrong? When the entire
world is going in one direction and telling
you that this is okay and it's acceptable
and it's fine,
and you say, no. I still see this
as being immortal. Where do you get that
from?
It is from your theology, your worldview.
And the believer, their world view comes from
the Quran and sunnah. And so the believer
is always going back to the Quran and
to the sunnah of the prophet salallahu alaihi
wa sallam to get their values. For them
to be able to recognize what Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala loves and then they seek it
and to know what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
hates and they avoid it. Even if the
entire world calls them in one direction, they
recognize that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala dislikes something
so they don't do it. It doesn't matter
what it is.
So the first is your worldview,
but then the second
is very, very important. When we come to
these conferences, we're concerned about learning our worldview.
When we go home, we study theology,
and it should be studied because it is
the most important foundation in bedrock. But the
second one, we don't pay attention to as
much, and that is our history.
Anybody come here from Canada?
Okay.
My Canadians, when you guys were in high
school, did they teach you about the California
Gold Rush?
Did they teach you about the Alamo?
No.
They taught you about all sorts of things,
I'm sure, that happened in Canada even though
nothing happens in Canada. The point is
is that when you're in Canada, you're studying
Canadian history.
And when you're in the United States, you're
studying American history.
And the question then becomes, why is it
that a person who's in New York will
learn about the California Gold Rush even though
California is so much more distant from you
than Toronto is or Quebec is.
The reason is because
history becomes a shared memory. And so for
any people
who want to have a sense of identity
with a community,
they have to have a shared memory.
They have to know each other's history. And
so every country will teach its own history
so that the people can have a shared
identity.
He used to teach his children
the seal of the prophet salallahu alayhi wa
sallam and he used to say
This is your honor. When you're learning the
seed of the prophet
this
is your honor and the honor of
your fathers, so don't squander it.
It is important that you learn the history
of the ummah, that you learn
their history, that you learn about the tabein,
you learn about the Umayyads, you learn about
the Abbasids, you learn about the Muhwads, you
learn about the mrubitun,
You learn about the 12,000,000
people who were shackled and brought over to
the United States
and slaves with 1 third of them or
1 fifth of them actually, 1 third of
them being Muslim.
That is a part of your history.
And when you know your history
in this land, it becomes very difficult for
somebody to tell you to go back home,
because you didn't come here in the sixties
and the seventies and the eighties. Rather, you
came here at the bedrock of this nation
right at the beginning.
My point is is that your history becomes
a sense of identity.
And I will never forget a Somali kid
who I met, who was 24 years old
at the time, and he was doing a
PhD in African Studies.
And I asked him, I said, why are
you studying
African Studies?
Out of everything in the world that you
could have specialized in. He said, when I
was in high school, that's when the Somali
pirates were all over the noose.
So it was around 2,012.
And he said,
one of the kids, you know, in high
school, kids are mean.
So he said, one kid said to me,
y'all are still
being pirates, like, 300 years later.
Then he said, what have Somalis ever contributed
to humanity?
And he said,
as hurtful as that question was, you know
what hurt me even more?
I didn't know the answer.
So he said, this became my
passion. This became my field of study.
When a person doesn't know their history,
they have nothing to stand on.
You become whoever people tell you you are.
If people point at you and say, you
guys are nothing but terrorists, then you say,
I don't have anything else to prove that
we're scientists or that we're inventors or that
we're poets or that we're and we learned
in American history that one of the first
things that they did when they brought slaves
over
was that they changed their last names because
that alters your history. If you don't have
access to your history,
otherwise, it becomes very hard for you to
convince a person that they should be picking
cotton in Georgia if they know that they
come from a lineage of scholarship or they
come from a lineage of merchants or they
come from a lineage of warriors, you have
to remove that sense of history. And I
would tell you, all of you this,
my young brothers and sisters, it is not
just about the history of the ummah that
you need to learn, but you should also
learn your own personal history.
What village do you come from? Who are
your grandparents?
Ask your parents to tell you these stories
And when your parents do tell you these
stories,
be engaged so that they could tell you
more stories.
Realize that they are giving you the gift
of your identity. I was walking in my
village in Sudan a long time ago and
I was you know, my village
at times would have a until now, at
times it would have electricity, and at times
it wouldn't have electricity. Come it comes in
and out. May Allah
protect Sudan and its people.
So we were walking.
I was walking with an 8 year old
kid, and
it was dark and there was no electricity,
and we could hear the barking of a
dog.
And the dogs over there, they're not pets.
These are they don't belong to anybody. So
this is a wild dog somewhere, and we're
hearing him bark. And so I say to
the 8 year old, I say to him,
are you scared?
And as he's walking besides me in the
darkness, he says to me, me be scared?
My father,
my grandfather
was the killer of a lion.
He said,
And I also get to myself, what lions
do we have in this area? We don't
have any lions.
Allah knows best what happened a 100 years
ago,
but the story
of a grandfather who killed a lion was
a source of courage for this boy.
And so these stories
that we
know,
that we learn
become a source of courage for us. You
know, I'll give you condolences on
on 1 soldier
and one
leader of the Muslims who passed away, rahim,
was killed actually last week. His name was
Muhammad Sadiq. Muhammad Sadiq. Muhammad Sadiq was a
soldier, a first lieutenant in the Sudanese army.
And
in 2019, when the world protested,
everyone in Khartoum was protesting,
and the army was going to attack
the protesters,
this first lieutenant
showed up with a tank to defend the
protesters.
And he told all of the soldiers that
anybody
who has power should be protesting the people.
They should be protecting the people.
So immediately, he was dismissed.
He was dismissed because he wasn't loyal to
the army.
Then when the war broke out in Sudan
last year,
the army was in need of every last
soldier, anybody who's got any military training, anything.
Please bring them. And so Mohammed Sadiq came
back.
He's a young man.
And when the RSF
closed in on an a region called the
last weekend,
Mohammed
told everybody, he said,
I'm not going to wait for these people,
this militia to come into our town.
Our wives are here, our parents are here,
our children are here. I'm going to go
out and meet them even if I go
by myself.
And he recorded a video, and he said,
May the may the eyes of cowards never
touch sleep.
You know who that's a quote of?
Khalil.
It was the last thing that Khali
said. May the eyes of cowards never touch
sleep. Because Khali was saying that I've I've
been in a 100 battles, and here I
am dying like a a camel.
I die by myself.
I'm not killed in any battle. That shows
you that
being close to danger does not cause you
to die. So may the eyes of cowards
never touch sleep.
But a person doesn't get that courage
unless they are
inspired by their history. Allah
says
Allah says, we relate to you the stories
of the prophets
that which will make your heart firm. When
you learn the stories of the prophets, you
are granted courage, you are granted resolve. I
see what Allah
did to Yusuf, and I see how
Allah brought Yusuf out. I see how Allah
brought Musa out. I see how Allah
saved Yunus.
And that is how we save the believers.
Allah
Every time and place, I see what he
does.
My heart is granted resolve and this man
went out and Allah
chose him for himself and selected him as
a martyr. May Allah have him and have
mercy on him and all of our shuhada,
allahu alaihi wa aamin, everywhere in the world.
The second is history. The third is language.
Language is very important
because language is what gives you access to
your history. So if a person says, I
wanna learn the language of my people, chances
are, unless you're,
you know, American pretty much, your
history is going to be tied up in
the language of the people that you come
from. So it'll be Arabic or it'll be
in Urdu or it'll be in French or
it'll be in whatever language. It'll be in
Wolof even. You might need to go back
and actually learn your language to be able
to have access to your history, and that's
incredibly important. And then the 4th
is
just having confidence.
Just having confidence. You know, Rasulullah
says
in a hadith that every young person should
know. He
says,
The prophet
said Islam began as something strange,
and it will return to being strange. So
give glad tidings to the strangers. You have
to develop a comfort with being weird.
It's okay to be weird.
You
know, Austin, Texas, they have a slogan.
Keep Austin weird.
Portland, Oregon, the same thing. Keep Portland weird.
You have to be cool. You have to
be calm. You have to be okay with
being weird.
There's nothing wrong with that. The prophet
said, glad tidings to the strangers. But what
type of weirdness are we talking about? He
said, those who are righteous when the people
are corrupt.
When everybody else goes in one direction, you
say, you know what? I'm comfortable over here.
I'm, you know, there's a story of 2
young, Palestinian sisters,
from Atlanta,
Jamila and Latifa.
And these 2 girls,
are top tier wrestlers.
You know their story, I take it.
Oh, okay. So
top tier wrestlers,
They're qualified to go to Paris for the
Olympics.
But
their hijab
their hijab,
they were not allowed because of their hijab.
And I remember
listening to a a session with them a
couple weeks ago, and they quoted the hadith.
They said, you know what? Islam began as
something strange. If my hijab is going to
not allow me to go
to the Paris Olympics, which is a once
in a lifetime opportunity,
then
forget the Paris Olympics.
My deen is more important. But that comes
from a confidence and a comfort
in having
Allah
If I have Allah and I lose everything
else, then I won. And if I lose
Allah and I gain everything else, then I
lost.
Also part
of having confidence,
and this is really, really important,
is that you
become confident
in showcasing your character beyond your community. I
give you guys a a quick example, and
I need I need to know how much
time I have because I could talk about
this for a long time.
But
I'll give you a a quick example. When
I moved I originally moved from New York
to Houston.
And I when I moved to Houston, I
was really surprised to find that everybody there
says, hello, good morning.
You're standing there. Okay. You're standing there. You're
minding your business, and a person says, hi.
How are you? And they're waiting for you
to respond.
I wasn't used to that.
So then when I would, you know, over
time, I started to say hi, good morning,
hello, and I was having conversations with random
strangers on the street.
When I would go back to New York,
I would start walking around the street saying,
hi, good morning.
And you know what they're gonna do? They're
gonna completely avoid you.
They're gonna ignore you. They're gonna walk past
you. So I started to feel like, man,
I'm I'm looking like a tourist in my
own city. I need to but then I
asked myself, here's hold here's the thing. The
prophet, salallahu alayhi salam, he says
I was only sent to perfect good character.
Now is
saying hello, good morning, is it good character?
Yes or no?
So then, should you do it even if
you're in New York?
Are you gonna do it now, my New
Yorkers, when you go back?
We just agreed.
We just said that it's good character and
that you should have the confidence
to share your character and goodness everywhere that
you go.
So when I did that
and I started getting ignored, I thought to
myself, hold on a second. No. No. No.
This is not how it's gonna go. I
am going to
look at what are the reasons why a
person might ignore me. Number 1, I'm not
making eye contact. You know? Just you're just
walking by a person and say good morning.
Like, by the time they notice what you
said, you're already halfway down the block. So
number 1, I'm gonna make eye contact. Number
2, I'm going to smile. Number 3, I'm
going to say it loud because so many
people, unfortunately, they only say what they say
underneath their breath. When they say hello, they
say it underneath their breath. When they say
thank you, they say underneath their breath. Meanwhile,
that person who's holding the door open thinks
you're the rudest person in the world because
you didn't say thank you. You did say
thank you, but you said it like this,
thank you,
and you walked on.
And so the idea here is that I'm
going to speak loudly, I'm gonna speak confidently,
and I'm gonna say to people, good morning.
It happened that it was the weekend where
it was the weekend where
New York City had its 1st Eid off.
It was, like,
7, 8 years ago. It was the 1st
Eid off.
And I'm walking around Queens and Brooklyn and
Manhattan, and I'm wearing my robe, and I'm
saying to everybody, hi, good morning. Quick disclaimer,
The only people who I said that I
was not going to say hi, good morning
to was women between the ages of, like,
15 and an upper limit just so that
I don't end up on a weird, you
know,
video anywhere.
So
I just said that I was but everybody
else, hi. Good morning. Hello. And I was
gonna be loud. I was gonna make eye
contact. I was gonna smile. I was gonna
I tell you,
that entire weekend,
every single person that I said that to
said, hi. Good morning. How are you?
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