Ingrid Mattson – Our Muslim Neighbor Conference
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of diverse culture and acknowledging the demands of neighbors. They stress the need for attention to relationships and acknowledging cultural differences. The speakers also emphasize the importance of trusting oneself and showing faith in oneself to avoid further harm. The speakers stress the need for constant engagement and sharing experiences to achieve goals.
AI: Summary ©
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
May God's peace and blessings be with all
of you.
It is really such an honor and such
a joy, more than anything, to be here
with you today.
I am
so blessed to be among people of faith,
people
who
remember God regularly,
who care deeply, who care enough
to really stand forth with moral courage and
say our faith can be something good in
the world and I'm gonna be part of
that.
I'm so grateful to God for having created
us with this diversity.
In the Holy Quran, God says that, certainly,
as the creator
of all things,
God could have made us
one people with no difference
among us.
Sounds like a recipe for perfect harmony,
but
it was God's will to create us with
diversity.
All kinds of diversity, linguistic,
racial,
including religious.
And in fact, it is this through these
differences that we come to know each other,
we come to know God
because we explore
what we can be and how we can
be better.
In the holy Quran, God says,
worship God and do not ascribe divinity to
anything apart from him.
Be good to your parents
and to relatives and to orphans,
to those in need
and to neighbors
to whom you are close,
and to neighbors with whom there is some
distance.
To the friend by your side and the
wayfarer,
and for those who are under your authority,
verily God does not love those who are
arrogant and boastful.
The prophet Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings
be upon him, said, none of you believes
who goes to bed satiated
while his neighbor is hungry.
And he said, by God,
he does not believe
the person
from whose harm his neighbor is not safe.
The obligation to care for the neighbor,
to do good for the neighbor,
whether that neighbor is a friend, is a
relative or someone
with whom you do not have a particularly
close relationship is an obligation
in Islamic law
and in Islamic ethics.
Now,
why all of this emphasis on the neighbor?
The reality is,
it's not always easy to get along with
neighbors.
Even those who share our local customs and
have lived in the same area for generations,
we know that. We've all had annoying neighbors.
And maybe sometimes,
maybe in our student days more,
we were not always the best neighbor either.
There's a delicate balance
in being a neighbor of granting privacy
and being helpful.
We have to judge our circumstances
and decide
what we can put in the public area
or maybe in our front yard as opposed
to the backyard,
and that differs from place to place.
Whether we sit on our front porch
and socialize
or whether the back deck is the more
appropriate place,
because where we live, like in Canada,
you keep your
socializing
to the back.
What is tasteful or distasteful
to put out front?
Very large
decorative fountain, perhaps, in your front yard that
some neighbors may not
have thought was particularly
appropriate or in keeping with the aesthetics of
the neighborhood.
There's a lot of
conformity, social conformity
that is expected of neighbors and
slight deviations from it can
make feeling p make people feel annoyed that
it's not quite right.
So it's not that easy. It's not that
easy being a neighbor and that's why we're
taught
to be good to the neighbor. We have
to remind ourselves
of that.
And we have to be reminded that it's
a moral obligation to do good to them
and not be harmful. And what is harmful
to them?
Well, again, as Reverend Isaac said,
we won't know
what's harmful to them unless we know them.
Now, in the modern era,
the stresses might even be more.
Some people have tried to escape the
pressures of conformity on our traditional cultures by
escaping to the city and and what they
really want is freedom and
independence
from the expectations of their neighbors about how
they should live or not live.
They're seeking a new identity or new way
of being
in a city.
Affluence
can also divide us and can be a
instrument of separation
to put that
large lawn or that high fence,
that can separate us.
Cars, so that we could drive right by
our neighbor without ever
having to interact with them.
Technology can also divide us. We don't need
each other as much
as we used to, at least for those
of us who live in urban areas, until
a disaster strikes and suddenly the neighbor becomes
very important
when you need some
Your electricity doesn't work and might need to
use that fireplace and you don't have any
wood or
you need
to run a line from your neighbor's generator
when
the power goes out as it did when
I lived in Connecticut and we had a
snowstorm that knocked out our power for 9
days and believe me, everyone knew who their
neighbor was then.
But there are some people who still live
a lifestyle where they they do need to
rely on their neighbors and others to help
them complete a job, those in agricultural
areas
and other places where,
you know, calling in people
from the from around them is necessary just
to get a job done. Where I live
in Canada right now, there's still a lot
of farmers,
and people engage in agricultural work despite all
the modern technology and farm equipment.
You still need a number of extra hands,
when it comes to the harvest.
And so you need to know those people
and that that forces us into relationship.
So sometimes we want that and sometimes we
don't want that.
In today's world,
it's a time of movement and displacement,
voluntary
or involuntary
moving around.
You know, whether whether they're environmental
disasters
or economic collapse or political upheaval, people aren't
in motion constantly.
And we ourselves, those who are privileged
and aren't forced
to move, nevertheless, still do it in search
of education
or employment opportunity
or maybe different weather even
that suits our
constitution.
So
many of us don't have the time for
that,
you know, the luxury
of time to get to know people.
Where over a lifetime,
you experience the ups and downs of living
in a neighborhood, and of getting to know
people, and of sharing
some difficulties and hardships in the area and
of celebrating
together.
So all of this
makes
being a neighbor much more challenging and it
require means that we're required to have be
more attentive and mindful of these relationships.
And sometimes we have to construct
what are somewhat artificial,
opportunities to get to know each other because
a kind of passive approach to getting to
know each other just might not
be sufficient.
Now, new neighbors
can be in in a time of change,
new neighbors can also be really
scapegoated
for the loss of an old way of
life. And I think about this,
when when we see the resentment that some
kind times has turned towards migrants.
And I'm not even someone who is is
free from this kind of tendency because I
think it is a human tendency.
I've returned now after over 20 years in
the United States.
I consider myself an Americanized,
Canadian,
and I've returned to the place where my
ancestors have lived over 200 years.
So I've got very deep roots in Southern
Ontario.
A lot of traditions
and
habits and fond memories. We all have those
fond memories of the rhythm of life when
we were children
and it's different.
You know, it's changed now.
And it's very difficult
sometimes not to distinguish the fact that these
changes
have come
as a result of choices that that we've
made,
as much as
as a result of
new people who have come into the area
with with different customs and habits.
It's so easy to say,
well, these people who are building this or
their house looks like this or their customs
are this way, they're replacing
or they're displacing what we had when already
we had moved on.
But nostalgia
is,
is a big part of the human experience.
We still mourn our expulsion from the Garden
of Eden. So it's it's primordial
in us to mourn the past.
The childhood that we look at through this
rosy lens,
even though we know it wasn't always great.
So I think we need to allow people
and find ways
to allow people to mourn
what it has been lost that they thought
was good
and to share experiences
about a way of life that
necessarily felt closer and more loving and where
people cared more about each other.
If we are able to do that as
a shared human experience as part of our
dialogue,
we may not jump as quickly into scapegoating
and blaming
the newcomers to our area
for having destroyed that because they didn't.
And it's also easy when someone is a
stranger or foreigner
to jump
to an explanation that is racialized
or ideological when they do something we don't
like.
I mean, how easy it is to blame
the
immigrants
who moved into the house next door
from this or that country
and say, well, see those kind of people
do that
when remember
that Betty and John who used to live
there also were pretty annoying neighbors and they
used to drag their put their garbage cans
just a little bit too close to my
fence for my
my taste. I thought they should have put
it a little bit more on their side
of the property.
But we jump
to racialized
explanations. We jump very quickly to stereotypes
when people are from what we perceive
to be another group.
I would say that in particular
in this time,
when we look at what it means to
be a neighbor and we try to overcome
stereotypes and
a resort so quickly to hate and dislike
and irritation
that we have to understand there are some
things that truly are different in the time
we live today. There are some things that
are universal and our old, old stories are
in universal and our old old stories are
in the bible, they're in the Quran, they're
in our
you know, the narratives of human history of
difference being easily susceptible
to division and hatred. That is an old
story, but there's some things that are new
now.
And one of the things that I've noticed
having been engaged in,
you know, interfaith work and social justice work
and and public engagement for so long
is that there are
no longer any naive encounters.
And what I mean by that is that,
when I began,
you know, public engagement and speaking, say, in
the early 19 nineties,
in in a major way,
that I would be able to speak to
a group like this, go to a church
or a library or civic group
and
be able to give an explanation
of a topic like,
what does Islam say about duties to the
neighbor
Or the rights of the neighbor? I would
be able to explain it. I would give
quotes from the Quran,
statements from the prophet Muhammad as I as
I did when I began today.
Then I would open it up for questions
and people would ask a few questions.
We would have a little back and forth,
discussion, comparative,
and that would be it.
By the mid 2000,
at the end of a talk like that,
I would,
see a
often
stony faced audience
and I would inevitably get the question. The
first question would be,
why don't Muslims denounce terrorism?
Why are Muslim women,
not allowed to drive?
Even though my car might actually have been
in the parking lot of that very church
and I had driven there.
You know, why do,
Muslims hate America
even though they had heard my biography and
about, you know, here I was as a
Muslim engaged in this country and in with
the government
and,
civil society.
So suddenly,
what they were hearing,
what I said was being filtered through,
preconceived frames.
They already felt that they knew what Islam
was. They knew what Muslims were.
And so anything that I said was being
filtered through that and really being filtered out
for the most part.
So I realized that
it was no longer simply about this face
to face naive encounter where we shared information.
Now, why is that the case?
And I I, you know, I'm not a
I don't wanna be an amateur
psychiatrist
or, you know,
but but we do know and as Reverend
Isaac said, there is information.
You know, there is a lot of science
behind how we receive information,
how we change, how we interpret things.
And and one thing is clear and there's
many studies to prove it is that
is that the first time we hear about
something novel or new
creates a a cognitive frame that is like
an anchoring. It's like an anchoring effect.
And afterwards,
that
that will always
determine
any
how we weigh or measure any new information
after that.
So that means that if the vast majority
of Americans have never met a Muslim before,
the first place they will encounter Islam,
probably, is on the news.
And that will be a terrorist,
a violent person,
and and that was particularly true.
So
it was interesting because 911 didn't really do
it. It was the war in Iraq
where day after day after day, there were
images of of the war, Americans being killed,
bombs, violence.
So it was really after that,
that this, I believe this anchored within the
mind of most Americans,
the image of the Muslim. And the Muslim
was a was a violent person.
So that's there. And once it's there, it
is it it will always be with you.
And it needs to be worked against.
Now
for those
what happens now, even even worse since then,
is that our our beloved,
you know, Internet
that that is can be such a source
of information
has,
emerged as a source of a vast source
of disinformation
when it comes to Muslims and Islam.
It's very very distressing,
to do a Google search on Islam and
Muslims.
If you, in my Muslim women's spirituality
class, I asked them to do a Google
search
Muslim women and on images, Google images
and you will just see,
picture after picture after picture of,
you know, a woman
black, completely covered.
Sometimes, you know, like, her her face cover
will be like bars, prison bars over her
face and it seems to be very popular.
So even someone who said who who hears
the news and might be interested, well,
you know, I wonder, like, I wonder what
it is about Muslims
will,
be mostly disinformed
by searching the Internet.
And then, of course, there are those who
are ideologically
opposed
to Muslims and Islam either through a political
particular political ideology
or a xenophobic ideology that they've that they've
attached and they associate Muslims with non whites.
Right? There's a racialization
of Islam.
One time, one of my landlords,
who was responding to the fact that we
were having hate crimes,
committed against us by, by one of the
neighbors in our apartment complex and as a
student looked at me and said, well, you
know, it might not be religious. Sometimes, believe
it or not, people just might not like
you because of the color of your skin.
And I said, oh, yeah. I guess there
are those who don't like white people.
So again, you know, she just she saw
me as a person of color because of
because of my hijab. I thought that was
it was quite interesting.
So,
you know, so the result is that many
people
are are terrified of Muslims and that is
their instinct.
You know, they've been they've been made terrified
by Muslims and I see it. You know,
in Southwest Airlines, it used to be that
you could you lined up and you,
you know, you went to the 1st seat
that you found. It was kind of first
come, 1st serve.
I'm actually a very good person to sit
beside in an airplane because I'm not very
big.
So you can kind of like move into
into my my space,
but it would be remarkable to me how
often I would be the one person left
with an empty seat behind beside me. That
was good for me, but,
you know,
it was quite quite
quite amazing but it made me you know,
it just made me really sad. It made
me sad for me, you know, it's it's
it's not nice to be
to feel that people are afraid of you
and it made me sad for them as
well.
Last week,
I had,
you know, when we talk about information,
you know, what what is enough to prove
to someone that you're a good person?
Like, what how much do you have to
do
to prove that you're a good person?
You know, first of all,
we we shouldn't be guilty until proven innocent.
That seems to be what it is. But
even that, the degree of
the degree of misinformation,
the degree to which people are so convinced
they understand
that Islam
requires Muslims to hate Christians,
to hate America,
to be,
you know,
against every value in this country is so
pervasive that that last week,
I saw on CNN,
one of my former students being interviewed
in response to,
Carson's remarks.
Now my student,
it just retired from 35 years
in the,
Army Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel,
Sharita Hussain.
She was one of my students in the
the Islamic Chaplaincy Program.
She served 35 years in the US military.
Retired as a lieutenant colonel.
And
when she was being interviewed,
she was
forced
to explain
why,
you know, to answer the question
about Sharia law. And can you really say
that a that a Muslim can be faithful
to the United States
when they
still follow,
a religious law?
And the kind of questions that were being
asked and she was being forced into this
position, it was amazing to me
that even her whole service, her life of
service
was not enough.
The fact that she'd served all of these
years
and of course,
clearly had been scrutinized
throughout all of these years at multiple levels
about her loyalty, her allegiance,
her patriotism,
none of that was enough.
And it really struck me
what a serious problem
we're dealing with.
I wish I didn't have to talk about
this, but I have to talk about this
now because we we've gotta be we've gotta
be realistic.
Reverend Isaac talked about tactics. And this afternoon,
we're gonna have another keynote where where tactics
is actually in the title. We have to
be realistic
about
what's happening, the dynamics of what's happening.
And one of the things that we hear
again and again,
and and I can't mention who it is,
but there's someone in a very high government
position in a certain country
who once said to me,
well, how do we really know,
you know, how can we really trust what
you're saying when, I'm sorry to say it,
but we know that Muslims
are required to engage in subterfuge,
taqiyah,
subterfuge
to deceive,
to be deceitful about what their faith really
teaches.
And this is something that Carson referred to.
So how how is there all of this,
you know, now you have all these people
who know nothing about Islam and Muslims who
are sure that they have a,
a clear understanding
of Islamic
theological
ethics and that is that Muslims are required
to, lie about their faith.
So we have to understand that,
you know, if
if you are convinced that the person you're
engaging with
whether they're, you know, they seem like a
decent person, they seem like a nice neighbor,
they seem like a good citizen,
served for 35 years in the US military,
but
can you really trust them? Because underneath,
we know that their loyalties
lie somewhere else
and they are religiously,
obligated
to lie about this.
You will never get anywhere.
You know, we will never get anywhere because
right at the beginning,
there there's a wall. This person can't be
believed.
So
I would, first of all, like us to
remember how many times that theme
has been part of alienating
people even within this country.
You know, whether you could really trust a
Catholic to be loyal to the United States
and not to the pope. And now we
see this is what gives me hope. Now
we see the beautiful
beautiful reception that's being given to the head
of the Catholic church in this country,
so that should give us hope and optimism
that these things can change. But how often
people have been considered to be at their
core essentially
disloyal to this country because they
have another faith,
or,
cultural origin or ethnicity.
So let me just say something
about this so called Islamic doctrine, which is
not a doctrine
at all. It's not a pillar of Islam.
It's not a key of Islam and it
does not say that Muslims,
are required to conceal their faith or be
deceitful or any of this.
There's a
verse of the Quran that says,
anyone who denies
God
after having attained faith.
And this, to be sure, does not apply
to one who does it under duress while
his heart remains
true to faith.
The denial,
the one who denies God after being faithful
will be subject to God's judgment.
But this does not apply to the one
who has true faith but renounces it under
duress.
This goes back to the earliest period in
Islam
when there was terrible persecution of the first
believers.
And in particular, this was revealed
with respect to a young man
who was tortured
for being a Muslim
along with his parents.
And his parents were both killed tortured to
death
under his eyes.
His wife his, mother was sexually violated.
The torture include a sexual violation of his
mother.
And in that context,
Omar Ibn Yasir said, okay.
I I renounce God.
I renounce God.
And he came to the prophet Muhammad crying
and feeling that he had done a terrible,
terrible thing.
And the prophet Mohammed told him, if they
come back to you and ask you to
say something, say the same thing.
Save your life.
Because in this case, he
it was unbearable to him.
It was so traumatic.
And so this verse of the Quran was
revealed as a comfort
to those
who were persecuted
and under that
torture
could
not
hold up and
and testify to their faith.
This
was relied upon
in some cases by the Muslims who like
the Jews were subject to the Spanish inquisition
after
Ferdinand and Isabella decided that everyone
in that country must be Catholic or leave
Andalusia.
The Iberian Peninsula.
And there were Jews
and Muslims
who both decided
many of them left
and they said, we just can't live here
anymore.
And there were many others who stayed
and pretended to be Catholic
because they they thought, well, maybe this regime
will last only a little while.
And and and maybe the Ottomans will come
save us, or maybe someone else will come
save us. Maybe we'll be able to be
free.
So
why leave this land
where we've been for
centuries?
You know, they knew no other homeland
And so they stayed
and the inquisition then went and very systematically
found them.
And 100 and 100 and 100, thousands
were burned to death
for being,
not faithful Christians.
And the the theme
of
the perfidious
Jew
and the deceitful Muslim
became integrated
into European literature,
song, themes and,
you you see it in Don Quixote,
the the the fake Christian, the the the
Muslim, the Marisco,
who only pretended to be Christian for the
sake of gain.
So both Jews and Muslims suffered this and
and by the way, a a large number
of them were women,
both Jewish and Muslim women because so much
of Judaism and Christianity
has to do with,
sacred rituals in the home and making the
home a place,
where God's law is followed. So in dietary
habits and festivals and all of these things.
So women were were particularly
subject to,
the inquisition.
So, you know, this is this is it's
a horrible,
you know, it's a horrible
thing that people needed sometimes
in order to save their life or to
escape torture or being burnt to death,
To have to sometimes say, yes, I'm I'm
not a Muslim.
But this has nothing to do with being
disloyal, being unfaithful,
being a liar, being dishonest,
not being a good neighbor.
That is a pure distortion.
And so I really think it's it's important
for us to understand the origin of this
because this word is thrown around by people
who pretend they're experts on Islam and they
aren't.
They're people who hate Muslims who have an
ideological,
reason
to want to distort
Muslim beliefs
and history and values.
And so
let's
you know, where there are those concepts that
come up, we need to discuss them.
It's really important because otherwise, they're sitting there
like the elephant in the room.
And when we have these these conversations,
we don't get,
further
than
that.
The Quran emphasizes again and again, the requirement
to fulfill trust and covenants.
And all Muslim scholars have agreed that it's
an absolute obligation
on Muslims
to fulfill their either explicit or implicit,
social contract and political contract that we are
loyal to each other.
That we will protect and care for each
other.
The prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, is
reported to have said,
it is not permitted to cause harm or
to reciprocate harm. This is an authenticated statement
of the prophet Mohammed and it was adopted
as one of the major
5 major legal maxims in Islamic law.
This is used to to explain a whole
body of law
that that
compels us and requires Muslims
to promote public benefit.
You know, from everything from,
you know, policy initiatives
that will promote the good, take care of
of children who are sick and and others.
2 simple things like zoning laws.
Promoting the good and
and wording off harm are
essential and fundamental foundational,
principles.
It is
necessary though, again, for us to know the
person to know what will cause them harm.
So very often, our intention is not to
hurt someone, but to take care of our
own interests.
So for example, someone puts up a fence
on their yard
and our intention may be to
protect our property
and to provide some privacy for our family.
Yet in building the fence, we unwittingly cause
harm to our neighbor. Maybe they had a
nice garden and we've just put it in
the shade and now they're,
you know, peonies won't grow. Now, peonies will
need a little bit of shade. Right?
Let's think about a flower that needs a
lot of sun.
So the neighbor in turn
may interpret our action as
ill intentioned or selfish
and may retaliate. So the cycle of harm
and
causing the other harm and retaliating harm ensues.
There's no doubt that in most cases, the
cycle of harm could have been interrupted
and antagonism
avoided by a simple act of communication
at various stages.
In the first place, the person building the
fence should be aware of its potential for
delirious,
deleterious impact on his neighbor.
Knowledge of our environment and the people around
us then is necessary to avoid
causing unintended harm.
After knowledge, it's necessary to pray embrace the
ethical principle that other people's interests are as
important as our own. This, of course, is
the golden rule.
Articulated in the Islamic tradition by the prophet
Muhammad's statement, none of you believes until he
loves for his brother what he loves for
himself.
And the scholars interpret brother to mean brotherhood
of humanity.
At the same time, if we experience harm
from our neighbor, we should at the outset
extend the benefit of the doubt
And assume no ill intent on his part
until we have evidence to the contrary. This
is in accordance with an early Islamic teaching
which says extend 70 excuses
to your brother.
So knowledge of the needs, interests, and motivation
of one's neighbor can only be attained
through mutual communication.
Most of the time, there will be little
need to say much. A wave of the
hand and a daily friendly greeting help maintain
a sufficient
connection, so that when there's something to discuss,
there will be a level of trust engagement
as a starting point.
At least you'll know each other's names.
But when society is under stress
and under stress from
external forces, when we're engaged in
global wars,
when there are factors in society that
that have nothing to do with our little
neighborhood,
then we need to be more intentional.
We need to be more deliberate and we
need to engage in constant communication.
Otherwise, it will be very easy to, for
us to resort
to
stereotypes
scapegoating
are,
you know, familiar heuristics where,
what we've heard is what we rely on.
So let me just say a few final
words
for people of
faith,
for Christians and Muslims
who make up the
majority of people of faith in the world,
but for all of us of faith,
You know, there there's a very common statement
now that religion
is
has been the source of the most conflict
in the world.
More wars have been caused by religion. That's
factually untrue.
It is factually untrue. More people have died
in
wars of,
national interest
and by,
secular ideologies.
But some people say, well, that's just because
we've had more technology.
Our technology has been better at killing people
since the, late 19th century.
Whichever case it is,
we know that religion can be a source
of conflict.
Like any difference, it can be used. It
can be leveraged. It can be used as
an excuse. It can be used to whip
up popular sentiment.
We, at a minimum,
do not
want that to happen.
It is in our common interest, whatever our
whatever our views of salvation are. You know,
you don't need to be a universalist,
a theological
universalist
to say that, you know what?
If
our religious communities
continue to be a source of discord and
fighting, most people will say, forget about it.
Forget about religion. What good is it? So
at a minimum,
we need to get along. We need to
show that this is not necessarily the case.
But honestly, if the most we can do
is not cause harm,
like,
what what what good are we?
You know, I would hope that we could
go a little beyond
not causing harm
to find that collective voice to witness for
good in the world.
To witness for compassion and love. To witness
for,
an alternative value.
To witness that success is not just about,
you know, acquiring
consumption.
Or that you are a powerful person in
the consumer market.
I I'm not I'm not, you know, I'm
not here to give an anti capitalist message
or something like that. I'm not an economist.
I'm not an expert in finance.
But I'll tell you, when when the university
you know, I'm at a little Anglican college
that's affiliated with a large public university.
And this large public university last year did
a big marketing campaign
where they have 20 foot posters
of,
alumni from their university,
individual people,
presidents of banks,
head of big corporations,
enticing the students, this is success.
I said to my my Christian colleagues that
are are are are are small Anglican college,
can we just, like, put a little picture
of Jesus weeping at the feet of one
of these
gigantic
icons,
you know, to the the the corporate world?
It was just,
like and and and they said, be ambitious.
You know, things like that.
Achieve
your ambition.
I thought, what are we? What what are
our hopes? What are our dreams? What are
our ambitions?
I think we have something to say. We
have something to bring that can be healing
to this world.
And and, you know, where are where are
the disabled
in that narrative?
Where are the people with with intellectual abilities,
disabilities in that narrative?
Where where are those who are doing
real work?
You know, real work that actually is not
harming anyone unlike much of the financial sector.
Oh, yeah. You know, someone where where is
the poster of that person?
Be do something
good and useful and beneficial to humanity and
the world
that doesn't
that that that doesn't put millions of people
in poverty.
You know, where's that poster? So I would
love to see us get together
and do that kind of thing.
You know, we need to
just as we need to conserve the environment,
we need to conserve a space for religion
in this world
because we're being squeezed out. And one of
the things that I love about America,
and I love both of my countries, one
of the things I love here
is that is that it is whether it's
true or not, Americans believe this country is
founded on religious freedom.
They believe that. And so there's still a
respect I believe and a feeling that
that religion can be something it's something to
be respected and also
can be a force in society that's necessary
and good.
But
I don't think
we're convincing
everyone
of that. And I think less people are
being convinced of that
when they hear us using our religious language
to hate each other.
And that's my community,
and that's your community. That's all that's all
of us.
So let's get together and and do some
good. And I know that all of you
are doing that. And I'm so I feel
so grateful to God
to
be encountering you again, to be among you
again.
And and to be part of this this
really beautiful and holy sacred movement,
towards doing good as faithful witnesses
to God's,
good creation. Thank you.