Ingrid Mattson – Canadian Muslims Response to Violent Extremism & Islamophobia
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
We would like to welcome
our, esteemed guests
on your behalf,
doctor Ingrid Madsen, I will introduce her in
a few minutes,
and sheikh Farazir Bani,
you see
him every other month he gives here. He
is regular. He has spoken many times here.
And
today, as you saw, and he was advertised,
we talked about the Canadian Muslims response
to violent extremism
and Islamophobia.
Before we start,
we read a few verses from the holy
Quran.
To address this topic which is a huge
topic, it's the topic of the hour. We
invited and we're very honored
to have a scholar,
a sister,
a professor,
an academic person,
doctor Ingrid Madsen.
She was born in Kingston.
She's a Muslim religious leader, professor of Islamic
Studies,
and a very known and interfaith activist.
She's currently the London,
London, Ontario, of course, and Windsor
Community Chair in Islamic Studies
at Huron University College
at the University of Western Ontario
in London, Ontario, Canada.
Matson
is former
president of the Islamic
Society
of North America,
ISNA,
and was described as perhaps the most noticed
figure among American
North American Muslim women in a 2010 New
York Times
article.
We can say a lot. This is a,
her actually
biography probably will take up all the time.
So if I miss anything that is critical,
doctor Ingrid, but she
has done a wonderful job
with, Hartford Seminary for over 13 years.
13 years,
which is the 1st accredited,
theological seminary for Muslims to graduate. Quite a
few imams actually
are her students in America and some of
them here in Canada.
And she has impacted
a lot of them. And actually tomorrow
tomorrow,
she's here for the Canadian Center For Indian
Studies
for our,
many imams and many students of CCDS
who will be actually attending her training workshop
on Khutba and lecture and then so on
and so forth. So
without further ado, doctor Ingrid Madsen.
I'm honored to be, invited here to speak
to you tonight in this very beautiful place.
It is,
really such a testament to this community that
you've come together to build such a beautiful
place in this land. May Allah bless you,
bless your leadership, and all those who have
contributed to making
this a community
that is righteous and lives in obedience of
Allah.
The first thing I wanna say is that
I believe that that
the foremost response
of Canadian Muslims and American Muslims to violent
extremism up to now
has been
laudable,
has been praiseworthy,
and I'm very proud of our community.
One of the things I noticed immediately after
9 11, and I I,
just moved back to Canada 2 years ago
after living in the United States since 19
89.
What I noticed within a very short time
after 911,
when we were faced with
2 very disturbing forms of discourse.
On the one hand,
there were Muslims
who were appearing again and again with increasing
frequency
on television and media,
claiming that they were acting in the name
of Islam, claiming
claiming that they
were, justified in their actions by the Quran
and they were doing the most horrible reprehensible
things.
Very disturbing.
At the same time,
mirroring this and paralleling this
were those who were
taking advantage of these horrible events,
people who were already predisposed negatively towards Muslims,
who had a a political or religious
ideological
bias against Muslims and agenda against Muslims.
And those people
who then said, yes. What these extremists, what
these militants are saying is Islam, and this
is why Islam is bad.
And this is why we have to keep
Muslims out of the public sphere. This is
why we have to
Islam or many of them,
interestingly,
many of them who were atheists
saw
Islam by by by attacking Islam as an
opportunity for them actually to attack religion in
general. So their main goal was attacking religion.
And whichever religion, you know, religious figure institution
was in the news that that was having
problems or
that's what they would attack to say, see,
this is the problem with religion, and we
know those people who, who went on and
did these kind of things.
So these two discourses,
which remarkably mirrored each other and both of
them saying Islam is this
violent extremist crazy thing. Some of them saying
it is and that's, you know, we're justified
in doing these actions. And the other one
saying this is why we should get rid
of Muslims. So both extremist discourse and Islamophobia
coming together.
What I saw, the response
in our community
was remarkable,
ordinary Muslims who said enough is enough.
You know, most people
just wanna live their life.
Most people wanna live peacefully.
They don't wanna have trouble. They're very busy
with trying to make a living, trying to
take care of their family, feed their family
nutritious food, keep people healthy, keep relationships.
In ordinary circumstances,
the vast majority of people don't get involved
in public debates, public discourse,
They may do some civic work, some civic
engagement,
you know, once a month go serve in
the soup kitchen or something like this. But
they, you know, they're just ordinary people. And
most
courses, I saw in every community
ordinary Muslim saying,
I need to do something about this.
Many of those,
I saw many of them come,
to study Islam.
I personally had students
who came from California.
If you know the difference between California and
Connecticut, Connecticut's by, you know, between Boston and
New York.
Canadians know more about American geography than Americans
know about Canadian geography, so I probably don't
have to tell you that.
I had I had students who came from
Florida,
from Tennessee,
from Iowa,
and each of in each of these cases,
these were
what you would call housewives.
These were,
middle aged,
Muslim women
who never thought of themselves as
as
people who could speak about Islam,
but they were so appalled by what they
saw. They were so outraged
by
what was being said about their own precious
religion,
their faith,
their holy book,
concerned about the impact on their families, on
their children, on their community
that they undertook great efforts to educate themselves.
And and others went and signed up for
other programs. I'm sure Sheikh Faraz has many
of these people who have signed up for
his wonderful
programs,
that can be accessed online as well.
In every community, we saw the interest in
learning about our religion
more and more on a deeper level so
we know
what is right and wrong so that we
could answer these very,
sometimes sophisticated attacks on our religion.
And
I saw people take
public speaking
training, and they went and they learned how
to do public speaking. They learned how to
create a PowerPoint.
They
went out and spoke in churches and synagogues
and civic organizations. They went to their kids'
schools. They went to libraries.
They even if they were normally a little
bit shy, they reached out to their neighbors.
They started engaging in social justice work, in
interfaith work.
Finding out who were people in the community
who were doing good and saying, I wanna
do good with you because this is what
my religion religion teaches me.
What a real Muslim is is a Muslim
who cares about his or her neighbors,
who cannot sleep when her neighbor is is
hungry.
This is what a real Muslim is, and
all over the place, Muslims have done this.
There is so much
in our community.
Allah
says maybe you hate a thing and is
it good for you. Yes. There's so many
hateful things that have happened,
but our response to it has been
good.
We have become stronger. We have become more
knowledgeable. We have become more engaged.
It does not mean that it's easier. Struggle
is difficult.
We don't like it. We don't want it.
We get tired, and that means that we
need to support each other. We need to
pace ourselves.
We need to make sure that we balance
this work
with all of the things that are around
us, but there is a lot of good
that has been done,
and that is all over the world.
I'm very blessed
with being able to travel and meet Muslims
all over this country, all over the United
States, in Europe, in other parts of the
world, and you see the same thing. You
see the vast majority of Muslims are increasing
in their awareness
and in their commitment
to stand up for
true Islam,
the Islam that we know that is about
justice and peace and love and harmony and
and respecting,
people.
If this is the case, however, if I
see this
and I notice this,
and I am absolutely convinced that this is
the truth,
why is it the case that when I
talk to many Muslim young people,
their vision of the world right now is
completely doom and gloom.
Very, very negative.
I had a a group of of students,
of university students who asked me to come
speak to them because they were feeling overwhelmed
by the situation. They were feeling overwhelmed by
they said they said there's so much there's
so many negative images of Muslims in the
news right now, and, you know, why are
we always being criticized, and why is Islam
always being singled out? This is what they
were saying to me.
So,
so I asked them. I said,
the one person who said,
there's so much negativity and and bad news
about Muslims. Why is the media always so
bad towards Muslims?
I said to her,
what news are you watching?
She said, oh, I don't watch the news.
I said,
well, what newspapers are you reading? She says,
I don't read any newspapers.
I said, are you listening to the radio?
No. Not really.
So I said, then
where are you getting your news from? You
said that the media is this way. Where
are you getting all this news?
Well, it turns out she told me, and
then the other students told me the same
thing. Almost all of them except for 1
out of maybe 20,
they all said they get their news on
their Facebook page.
And the way they get the so called
news is their friends will post items on
their Facebook page,
or they,
subscribe to,
a Twitter
Twitter feed or something else that directs
news to them, but only news about
Islamophobic incidents,
hate crimes against Muslims, civil rights violations against
Muslims.
So I've I've had
they get things like I asked them what
kind of things did you showed up in
your in your, Facebook lately? They said, well,
did you hear about that Muslim woman in
Paris who someone pulled off her hijab?
I said, interesting.
This this news that you've gotten. And then
other
incidents like that. Oh, there was a mosque
in in this, some state in the United
States that had, vandalism.
So I I said to them,
you know,
part of the the issue here, part of
the problem
is that you're not listening to the news.
You are only a a a a kind
of filter for bad news.
If you tell me that there was a
an act of arson against a mosque in
the United States,
I wanna tell you
that in,
10 years,
the number of mosques in the United States
increased by 800. 800 new mosques were built
in a decade after 911.
Why is that not your news?
You tell me about one woman whose hijab
was pulled off. Can you tell me how
many women whose hijabs were not pulled off,
who walked around with their hijab on?
We are constantly
being fed
and actually looking for the bad news.
It is not to say it does not
exist,
does not to say that these things don't
happen,
but it's completely distorting our our perception in
precisely the same way that the perception
of the average Canadian about what Muslims do
is distorted
because of the news they get.
So the the
news is about what's violent, what's alarming,
what's disturbing.
If it bleeds, it leads. This is an
this is the nature of
of of news.
Now that's different if you watch
magazines or comment magazine, you get something else.
You listen to CBC. They have these long
essays and research and and documentaries about different
issues. But I'm saying the headlines,
you know, at the top of the hour,
what's happening right now?
And and and so those are the disturbing
things that come in the news.
So people's views are distorted and shaped by
that.
The the amount of disturbing news has increased
because there there we have had a number
of series of wars where Muslims have been
involved. They're Muslim countries.
So Muslims are being fed and or people
generally, Canadians are being fed this kind of
bad news. It
has changed their perceptions. We say, well, why
don't they put anything about, you know, ordinary
Muslim family goes out for dinner and,
takes their kids tobogganing? Well, we know that
that's news. We know that that's not news.
So how do
people
understand that information? How do they get that
information? How do they balance? How do they
filter what they see on the news, which
is negative and upsetting? And
and and instead of saying, well, that's what
Islam and Muslims are about,
rather than putting it in the Islam and
Muslim category, they put it in the criminality
category. They put it along the same category
as top of the news about some gang
that did this
or some criminal who did this or some
murder. That's where that belongs in their mental
categories, in their cognitive frames.
The reason
the only reason someone would put in the
Muslim framework is that they don't know enough
Muslims.
And study after study after study has shown
that
that when non Muslims
have relationships
with Muslims
that
they will,
understand
that these activities, that this violence is
not mainstream Islam. They will understand that this
is criminality
rather than what Islam teaches.
How is that gonna happen? The only way
that that happens is with outreach.
The only way that happens is with actually
having a relationship with someone. Not what is
a relationship? It's where you know know them
and they know you, where you care about
them, where they care about you, where you
understand some of their hopes and dreams, and
they do as well.
We need to have these relationships to ameliorate
what will continue to happen, which is that
news will always continue to give news.
And it is also the case that cognitively,
we retain negative and scary information far longer
than positive information. Think about when you were
a kid. I bet everyone can remember a
nightmare that they had.
But how many dreams can we remember?
We this is we we are for survival,
we are alerted to remember things that are
scary. What is a threat?
So those things will stick in our mind,
whether we feel as Muslims
unsafe because people are are are there are
people who say bad things about Muslims or
hate Muslims or Islamophobia
or whether it's a non Muslim Canadian who
hears about the these stories about these crazy
Muslims who are saying these
things, and they feel, that they're under threat.
Terrorism has worked to this extent that we're
all feeling terrorized.
We're all feeling a little terrorized right now
or at least a little bit afraid.
So how do we make sure that it
doesn't work? How do we stop that from
those people from succeeding?
It is to have a better understanding of
reality.
There was a great
news item on CBC yesterday.
It was very interesting.
There was a photographer, and he was out
on the ocean,
and he he
saw another boat, and there was a man
who was sitting on the boat with his,
with his Blackberry or his phone, and he
was looking and he was texting. And right
behind him, immediately behind him,
came out of the water
right behind him. And he was so busy
texting
that he didn't notice it.
And so the the man who was looking
the other way took a picture of this
and actually videotaped this.
Unbelievable.
You know, there there's this beautiful, majestic, amazing
thing. Not only did he not see it,
he didn't hear think of all the sound
that it would have made and the water
and the smell of the of the water
droplets that would have come. He's completely oblivious
to his surroundings
because of looking on this. And sometimes I
feel this is how we are.
Honestly, Allah
has blessed us.
I
in in my day, as I go throughout
my day,
I have dozens and dozens of encounters with
people in my neighborhood,
in my, place of work, in the gas
station, who are nice, who are friendly, who
are kind,
who are eager to be to show that
they're nice.
I put that in the balance with the
negativity.
The reality of where I live, the reality
of the people that I live with, And
I know that you are having the same
experience too. Yes. You're having some some posit
some negative experiences,
but how do they weigh out against the
positive?
Let's not be so distracted
by this
stream
of very selective cherry picked negative news
that we are ungrateful to Allah
for the good that we have.
And ungrateful to the people who we live
with,
who are
to us and are nice and want to
help us build a society that is peaceful,
that is loving, and that can be exemplary.
And in the end, this is the best
thing we can do.
There's very little we can do sometimes.
You know, some people say, and I'll close
with this, they say,
you know, how can we
or how can a Muslim just stand there
and not do anything when they see Muslims
in the world suffering?
How can you do that?
The answer is sometimes
you can't do anything
to stop people from being harmed.
The prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, who is
our example,
had to stand and watch
2 beloved
companions who were who were among the earliest
Muslims, the earliest people who received his message.
Sumayya
and Yasir. May Allah be pleased with them.
He had to stand there and watch them
be tortured.
What is it like to watch someone be
tortured
and be killed in in the most
brutal and degrading way?
And he,
he could only
stand and say,
paradise family of Yasser
or patients, oh family of Yasser, verily paradise
is yours.
SubhanAllah.
Because
there are limits that that Allah
has set.
And in that time,
it was not allowed for the prophet, Mohammed,
alaihis salaam, to use he had no he
had no authority to use any force to
to intervene, to even rush and say stop
it.
He had no authority in that city,
yet he prayed.
Do we say it's only a prayer? Do
we think so little
of prayer? Do we think so little of
faith? Do we think so little of the
power of Allah, which in the end,
there There is no power except through Allah.
We think so little of it that we
think that that praying for the suffering people
is nothing.
No. It's the greatest thing. It's the most
important thing. If we spent as much time
praying for those suffering people
as we did watching news of them,
I think
there would be a change in the world.
So we do that. We do something.
And there are other things that we can't
do,
but we start with that prayer and then
we look
in gratitude to the many many opportunities that
Allah
has presented to us
to live the way that a Muslim should
within the limits that Allah has set
and live that generous life and that life
full of compassion and mercy for other people.
And that is the best thing we can
do, and it is not something
small.